Overexertion

“ I am rejoiced to see that you have acquired that power of exertion, which is so useful both to young and old—and that you have the will, as well as the power, to conquer little habits that are disagreeable to your friends. ”

“ Leaving all to individual exertion, it perhaps often leaves too much; since there are matters in which individual exertion has an insufficient interest, while there are others which it is unable to accomplish without unjustifiable sacrifices. We do not desire the perpetual, nor even the frequent interference of Government, that is most certain ”

“ For the sake of those consequences, inequality of conditions is necessary, on account of its effect in creating new and powerful stimulants to exertion, which the natural utility of wealth, considered merely in reference to the primary gratifications resulting from its use, would be utterly insufficient to produce. After the necessary wants have been supplied, the next powerful motive to exertion is the spirit of emulation, and the desire of rising in the world. ”

“ If it flag for an instant, an oversight is committed, resulting in injury or defeat. The possible moves being not only manifold but involute, the chances of such oversights are multiplied; and in nine cases out of ten it is the more concentrative rather than the more acute player who conquers, In draughts, on the contrary, where the moves are unique and have but little variation, the probabilities of inadvertence are diminished, and the mere attention being left comparatively unemployed, what advantages are obtained by either party are obtained by superior acumen. ”

“ For, as the engines you throw stones or darts with throw them out with the greater force the more they are strained and drawn back; so it is in speaking, running, or boxing—the more people strain themselves, the greater their force. Since, therefore, this exertion has so much influence—if in a moment of pain groans help to strengthen the mind, let us use them; but if they be groans of lamentation, if they be the expression of weakness or abjectness, or unmanly weeping, then I should scarcely call him a man who yielded to them. ”

“ They are promised great events from this year’s exertion. If—disappointed—you have only to persevere and the contest will soon be at an end. The present struggles are like the pangs of a dying man, violent but of a short duration. ”

“ This is the case in all trades where immense efforts of bodily power are required. The exertion itself wears out the people, and the dram, which gives a momentary impulse to the exertion, wears them out still more. ”

“ If desperation will sometimes spur men to exceptional exertion the effect is fleeting, and, for a permanence, a more stable condition is better suited to foster that blend of restraint and energy which makes up the tissue of a life of normal health. ”

“ You can work at high pressure for a week, but to run at low pressure, uniformly and unwearyingly for a year, is beyond most of you ; and yet this power of sustained continuous exertion is the very first requisite for political success, and if these anticipated checks only teach you this, they will prove not misfortunes but blessings in disguise. ”

“ He first considers muscular exertion as an afferent feeling, then examines into the power of the will over exertion, analyzing the cases of acts in which no effort of either is required, in which the stress of effort is laid on the exertion while the will is lightly taxed, on the will when the muscular exertion required is insignificant, and cases in which the will effort operates in all its vigor while the muscular function is not regarded. ”

“ With such fearful odds against it, private exertion is lost; it is the concentrated effort of the nation, acknowledged and helped by Government, which alone can rid our dear land of the plague spot which has been creeping on step by step, until none can be blind or deaf, much less, we should hope, careless, to the threatened danger. ”

“ If you diminish or annihilate it, you diminish or annihilate the means of your own safety and prosperity; which means, if they were to be measured like mathematical quantities, would be in exact proportion, as the power is greater or less. But this is not the case; for power that does not reach, or is inadequate to the object, is worse than none. An exertion of such power would increase the evil it was intended to remove, and at the same time create a further evil, which might be a very great one—the expense of a fruitless exertion. ”

“ I do not say that to all men has been given physical strength sufficient for such exertion as this, but I do believe that real exertion will enable most men to work at almost any season. I had previously to this arranged a system of task-work for myself, which I would strongly recommend to those who feel as I have felt, that labour, when not made absolutely obligatory by the circumstances of the hour, should never be allowed to become spasmodic. There was no day on which it was my positive duty to write for the publishers, as it was my duty to write reports for the Post Office. ”

“ Consequently, you must abandon the principle of concentration of superior numbers against your enemy; and, what is more, must be prepared to maintain that such concentration on his part against yourself would be ineffectual. ”

“ You will sometimes see nations struggle with almost superhuman efforts against certain impending dangers; but an overruling fatality seems to frustrate all their exertions. This overruling fatality, which stands above the power of majorities and governments, I will call by a simple term—the logic of things and events. ”

“ Every one confesses in the abstract that exertion which brings out all the powers of body and mind is the best thing for us all; but practically most people do all they can to get rid of it, and as a general rule nobody does much more than circumstances drive him to do. ”

“ But it is never safe to expect that a class or body of men will act in opposition to their immediate pecuniary interest; and even a doubt on the subject would be almost as fatal as a certainty, for when a person is considering whether or not to undergo a present exertion or sacrifice for a comparatively remote future, the scale is turned by a very small probability that the fruits of the exertion or of the sacrifice will be taken away from him. ”

“ The exertion, however, required to feign disturbs the system, and the struggle which always accompanies the act renders it frequently impossible to make the necessary observation with requisite nicety. ”

“ This suppression of the modifications is produced by "exercise" and "dispassion" [i. 12] . "Exercise is the repeated effort that the internal organ shall remain in its proper state" [i. 13] . This "remaining in its proper state" is a particular kind of development, whereby the thinking principle remains in its natural state, unaffected by those modifications which at different times assume the form of revealing, energising, and controlling. [427] "Exercise" is an effort directed to this, an endeavour again and again to reduce the internal organ to such a condition. ”

“ We may, by parallel reasoning, reach the conclusion that, even apart from the action of any external force, the equilibrium of a homogeneous aggregate must be destroyed by the unequal actions of its parts on each other. ”

“ But to these must be added another set of an entirely distinct character—that is to say, the conditions which, the motive to exertion being given, shall render exertion of the kind required possible for the largest number who happen to be theoretically capable of it. Now modern democratic thinkers have supplied the world with a formula by which, in their judgment, these conditions are sufficiently indicated. ”

“ There will be more or less loafing, a good deal of exertion unwisely applied, a certain waste of strength in random and unsystematic efforts, and a want of the business-like precision and force which makes every blow tell, and tell in the right place. ”

“ To do this demanded, patience, abstinence, strict subordination, and a degree of resolution far higher than that required to combat obstacles, however formidable in themselves, where active exertion, which tasks the utmost energies of the soldier, renews his spirits and raises them to a contempt of danger. ”

“ The exertion becomes superhuman. Now a thrust, a vicious bite, and you are the victor. Victor for the moment, for already the next man, who has just finished off one of your mates, is upon you—. You suddenly remember that you have a dagger about you. After a hasty fumbling you find it in the prescribed place. A swift movement and the dagger buries itself deeply in the body of the other man. ”

“ Now although, since exertion is utterly inconceivable without volition, and since volition is equally inconceivable without consciousness, it must be impossible for any forces ever to exert themselves altogether unintentionally, it is yet perfectly possible for their exertion to have no ulterior intention beyond that of gratifying an unprospective will. ”

“ Those arrested motions, where the rest is only apparent, not real—where the 'yielding' forces are only, as it were, annihilated, whether by equilibrium of forces, or an absolute predominance, but biding their time, ready to burst their bonds and renew their wrestling, ready to show themselves, not as 'subjects,' but predominators—not as states, but revolutions. ”

“ Great exertions were made to stop the excesses which at such times are to be expected; but the utmost exertions can do little among troops who believe themselves privileged by the occasion to break loose from the restraints of military discipline, and who are not more fearless of death than they are, while in health and strength, of judgment. ”

“ Then, all at once, when the force exerted horizontally is as great as possible, and the men are exerting their strength in the opposite direction in order to resist it, the girl abruptly ceases the pressure WITHOUT WARNING and exerts it in the OPPOSITE DIRECTION. Unprepared for this change, the victims lose their equilibrium and find themselves at the mercy of the girl, and so much the more so in proportion as they are stronger and their efforts are greater. ”

“ The urgent necessity which I think now exists for exertion, in all those who are capable of it among us, has again turned my thoughts to these two considerations. My father's property, and all that we might ever have hoped to derive from it, being utterly destroyed in the unfortunate issue of our affairs, his personal exertions are all that remain to him and us to look to. There are circumstances in which reflections that our minds would not admit at other times of necessity force themselves upon our consideration. ”

“ But these are only manifestations of that natural property of matter, inertia, which causes it to consider every effort, even if it be necessary and salutary, as unpleasant for the moment, and the apparent discontent with the compulsion to effort, can never be accepted as a proof against its usefulness. ”

“ We place more confidence in a system in which the artisan-soldier will reap the fruits of his labour, than in athletic games, which are not to be neglected, but which become irksome when they are enjoined upon the soldier by regulation. Serious exertion, too, with a useful result, is always more invigorating in the [Pg 335] long run than exertion which leaves no result at all. Work, in short, within reasonable limits, is more healthful than play. ”

“ The loss of the competitive spur to exertion had not, indeed, done anything to interfere with the necessary production of the community, but how if it should make men dull by giving them too much time for thought or idle musing? ”

“ But let these statical conditions be once changed, whether by the advent of man or from whatever cause, and this equilibrium is immediately disturbed. The chained forces are set free; a general swarming begins; some individuals are destroyed, others are liberated; each pushes its advantage to the utmost, and all move forward in the direction of least resistance, till at length they again mutually neutralize each other, and again come, under new conditions and modified forms, into the former state of quiescence. ”

“ As it is clear, that isolated and single-handed exertion is utterly inadequate to more than a grope at the good things arising from the present state of disorder, and that we should not, perhaps, get a mouthful a-piece; so it is to be feared, that the government and legislature might render our contest for them difficult, without an active, zealous, and persevering botheration against the reformingly disposed individuals of the community, which botheration, to be effectual, must be a running fire, and a continued insult towards such individuals. ”

“ He may then again endeavor, by a rule of equivalence, to conceive the same amount of exertion in quite another way; to imagine human forces equal in quantity to all that putting forth of strength, physical, mental, and financial, for annoyance and destruction, expended instead, in the operation of effecting the utmost improvement which they could effect, in the mental cultivation and the morals of the inhabitants of one large town in his own country. ”

“ Those which were to be benefited have complied with the requisitions; others have totally disregarded them. Have not all of us been witnesses to the unhappy embarrassments which resulted from these proceedings? Even during the late war, while the pressure of common danger connected strongly the bond of our union, and incited to vigorous exertion, we have felt many distressing effects of the important system. ”

“ The tremendous exertions which I have gone through during the last day or two have worn me out. Not so much bodily exertion, you understand, as the strain upon the mind. You will appreciate that, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, for we are both brain-workers. ”

“ Hence different effects may proceed from one and the same cause, and equal effects from different causes, acting under different conditions.
IV. The exertion of power is called action, and its intensity, in the material world, depends on the distance of the agent from the patient.
V. The amount of the exertion, or the quantity of the action, is measured by its true effect, which is the only true exponent or representative of the degree of the exertion; for, all matter being equally indifferent to receive motion, the amount of its passion must always agree with the amount of the action received ”