Passivity

“ I had lone, schooled myself to be oblivious to pain. I had neither doubts nor fears. All the content of my mind seemed to be an absolute faith in the overlordship of the mind. This passivity was almost dream-like, and yet, in its way, it was positive almost to a pitch of exaltation. ”

“ The passivity which pervades them is not the calm of completion or of the perfect rest which comes after mental exercise, but rather the calm of the lethargic mind which avoids thought, dislikes action and is content to dream. ”

“ If, as some suppose, they have to be entirely passive and lose themselves in the object before them, they should remember that, by thus encouraging passivity, they, in fact, allow the development of mediumistic faculties in themselves. ”

“ Further, there seems no reason to doubt that it is the contrast of activity, and passivity, — of resistance encountered and instinctive effort put forth against the resistance, to which may be added the contrast of want and satisfaction, of restless craving and the stilling of appetite by its appropriate gratification, — it is these contrasts which awaken and intensify the distinction between the sensitive subject and objects independent of itself. ”

“ In point of fact, the activity of such a being is no activity at all, but pure passivity; for a derivative act is not properly action, but passion. In merely receiving and passing on an act, a creature is not an agent, but a patient. ”

“ But if the thing cannot act unless the act is occasioned, then the transition, so far, is imported into it by the act of something outside. But this, as we saw, was passivity. Whatever acts then must be passive, so far as its change is occasioned. If we look at the process as the coming out of its nature, the process is its activity. If we regard the same process, on the other hand, as due to the occasion, and, as we say, coming from that, we still have activity. But the activity now belongs to the occasion, and the thing is passive. ”

“ We will empty his true and real being of all passivity whatsoever, in opposition to those doctrines of a false, inert, and contradictory philosophy, which, making him at first, and in his earliest stage, the passive recipient of the natural effluences of things, the involuntary effect of some foreign cause, seeks afterwards to engraft freedom upon him; a vain, impracticable, and necessarily unsuccessful endeavour, as the whole history of philosophy, from first to last, has shown. ”

“ The difference is as great as that between passivity and activity, as that between the defensive and the aggressive mood. Gradual as are the steps by which an individual may [pg 042] grow from one state into the other, many as are the intermediate stages which different individuals represent, yet when you place the typical extremes beside each other for comparison, you feel that two discontinuous psychological universes confront you, and that in passing from one to the other a “critical point” has been overcome. ”

“ He is also an agent—a reactor, one trying experiments, one concerned with undergoing in a way which may influence what is still to happen. Sheer endurance, side-stepping evasions, are, after all, ways of treating the environment with a view to what such treatment will accomplish. Even if we shut ourselves up in the most clam-like fashion, we are doing something; our passivity is an active attitude, not an extinction of response. ”

“ Human nature was made for action; and perhaps the most distressing and disconcerting situation which confronts it is to be played on by the stimulations without the ability to functionate. The mere superinducing of passivity, as in the extreme case of solitary confinement, is sufficient to produce insanity, and the emotion of dread or of passive fear is said to be the most painful of the emotions, because there is no possibility of relief by action. ”

“ Meeting the sure-enough lady shortly after, he upbraided her for her cold passivity on the occasion named.
A passive woman—one who consents to be loved—should seek occupation among those worthy firms who warrant a fit in ready-made gowns, or money refunded. ”

“ And to this physiological fact corresponds the psychological fact that no stronger exertion of will-power is known to us than that sometimes necessary to the attainment of mere passivity. A definition that would exclude such passive states from the province of the will must exclude, on the same principle, all other willing not issuing in muscular action, and so all voluntary control of thought. ”

“ Doubtless this characteristic has a sexual basis, psychological perhaps rather than directly physiological, being an instinctive assertion of the fundamental principle of passivity, which in its turn is translated into the need to be held down and subdued. Thus, if the man does not beat her, she will beat herself; if he is a fool, she will often apply caustic to her wisdom, so that she may reverence him; if he is a knave, she will choke her honesty. ”

“ It is the sun that never sets over the empire of modern passivity. ”

“ Thence we call the presentations of the senses impressions, those of the conscience commands or dictates. In the senses we find our receptivity, and as far as our personal being is concerned, we are passive, but in the fact of the conscience we are not only agents, but it is by this alone that we know ourselves to be such—nay, that our very passiveness in this latter is an act of passiveness, and that we are patient (patientes) , not, as in the other case, simply passive. ”

“ Is it only in this sense that our acts are ours? Are they ours only because they are necessarily caused to exist in our minds? If so, then indeed we understand these writers; but if they are not merely passive impressions, why resort to states of the intelligence and the sensibility, which are conceded to be passive, in order to illustrate the reasonableness of their scheme, and to expose the unreasonableness of the opposite doctrine? We admit that every passive impression is caused; but the question is, Can the mind be caused to act? ”

“ In the passive part, which even the most active among us play for the greater portion of our lives, self is merged in the detached and impersonal interest which we take in what passes before our eyes. ”

“ The passive is that which teaches us to bear the vicissitudes of nature as well as of history with such composure that we shall hold our ground against them, being always equal to ourselves, and that we shall not allow our power of acting to be paralyzed through any mutations of fortune. Passive habit is not to be confounded with obtuseness in receiving impressions, a blank abstraction from the affair in hand which at bottom is found to be nothing more than a selfishness which desires to be left undisturbed: it is simply composure of mind in view of changes over which we have no control. ”

“ While articulating these words, which are registered by the unconscious, one must not think of anything particular, neither of one's illness nor of one's troubles, one must be passive, just with the desire that all may be for the best. ”

“ It is certain that nothing can be active without an occasion, and that what is active, being made thus by the occasion, is so far passive. The occasion, again, since it enters into the causal process—a thing it never would have done if left to itself—suffers a change from the cause; and it therefore itself is passive in its activity. If the cause is A, and the occasion B, then each is active or passive, according as you view the result as the expression of its nature, or as an adjective imported from outside. ”

“ The commonplaces of moralists and the general sympathies of mankind are in favor of the passive type. Energetic characters may be admired, but the acquiescent and submissive are those which most men personally prefer. The passiveness of our neighbors increases our sense of security, and plays into the hands of our wilfulness. ”

“ But no person should permit himself to become passive in his feelings and affections while waiting for Spirits to come and develop him as a medium; for in that condition he will be liable to be influenced by bad Spirits. He may become the instrument of one of the lowest and most debasing influences, and may be influenced to commit the most filthy and disgusting deeds. While the body should be passive, the affections should be ardent, the soul must send forth its most earnest aspirations. ”

“ SECTION X. OF ACTION AND PASSION. There are no two things in nature which are more perfectly distinct than action and passion; the one necessarily excludes the other. Thus, if an effect is produced in any thing, by the action or influence of something else, then is the thing in which the effect is produced wholly passive in regard to it. The effect itself is called passion or passiveness. It is not an act of that in which it is produced; it is an effect resulting wholly from that which produces it. To say that a thing acts then, is to say that it is not passive ”

“ In like manner to these are heat and cold called passive qualities, not from the recipients themselves suffering any thing, but because each of the above-mentioned qualities produces passion in the senses, they are denominated passive qualities; for as sweetness, produces a certain passion in the taste, and warmth, in the touch, so also do the rest. ”

“ That is, if by action be understood the positive determinate tendency or the additional impulse to the production of any effect, and by passiveness an indifference in any agent to this or that motion, except as it is acted upon by, and transmits the efficacy of other causes, this distinction will remain as broad and palpable as ever. Any thing is so far active as it modifies and re-acts upon the original impulse; it is passive in as far as it neither adds to, nor takes from that original impulse, but merely has a power of receiving and continuing it. ”

“ Starting from the conception of substance, we have posited a passiveness of the Ego through its own activity. Here the passiveness in respect of quality is the same as activity, it being only a diminished activity. While, therefore, according to the first view, the passive Ego has a ground distinct in quality from the Ego, and thus a real ground, yet here its ground is only a diminished activity of the Ego, distinct only in quantity from the Ego, and is thus an ideal ground. ”

“ But the passive temperament most frequently feels first and sees afterwards, the visionary process being entirely devoid of speculation and mental activity. In a word, the distinction between them is that the one sees and thinks while the other feels and sees. ”

“ And thus I made reply.
"The eye it cannot chuse but see,
"We cannot bid the ear be still;
"Our bodies feel, where'er they be,
"Against, or with our will.
"Nor less I deem that there are powers,
"Which of themselves our minds impress,
"That we can feed this mind of ours,
"In a wise passiveness. ”

“ Passive perception.—In contrast to active perception we perceive much from the environment in a passive manner without that participation of the "ego." This occurs when our attention is diverted in any particular direction or concentrated on a certain thought, and when its continuity for one or another reason is broken up, which, for instance, occurs in cases of so-called distraction. ”

“ Thus, if we start from mind as a given substance, we, of course, are compelled to make this, in the first instance, passive, and only active through a species of reaction. But the ego is never passive. Its being is pure act. To hold it passive is to hold it annihilated. It is for ever acting against the fatalistic forces of nature. Its free and antagonist power shows itself equally to the eye of reflection in our simplest perceptive as in our highest moral acts. It lives, and has a being, only in so far as it refuses to bow under the yoke of causality ”

“ Had I not, in the wild career of fervent feeling, had sufficient strength of mind to stop short, and to reason calmly, how often, in the bitterness of my spirit, should I have accused you of sporting with my feelings, by involving me in a hopeless maze of conjecture—by leaving me a prey to the constant, oppressive, apprehension of hearing something, which I should not have had the fortitude to support with dignity ”

“ The passive as well as the active obsessions can be overcome by cultivating the commonplace, or average normal, attitude, and resolving gradually to accustom one's self to the disagreeable. This change of attitude can be made in adult life as well as in youth. ”

“ When the adjustment is made in response to an instinctive tendency to react, we have what is called passive or involuntary attention. The boy who looks at the door when it opens, who makes a paper boat instead of doing his work in arithmetic, or who talks to his neighbor about the ball game they are to play after school, is passive so far as any attempt to control his mental activities is concerned. ”

“ Therefore the accuser, when he says that anything has been done in compliance with some impulse, ought to exaggerate that impulse, and any other agitation or affection of the mind, with all the power of language and variety of sentiments of which he is master, and to show how great the power of love is, how great the agitation of mind which arises from anger, or from any one of those causes which he says was that which impelled any one to do anything. ”

“ But there is a passive goodness which in some sort excludes nobility and generosity of sentiment, a yielding weakness, which may be a charming characteristic, but which, under difficult circumstances, compromises with duty and betrays the interests of mankind generally to spare itself and one or two others a little suffering? ”

“ In such circumstances as ours there is no such thing as 'a wise passiveness.' If we are to attain to a high morality or to strong love of beauty, attainment must be the result of strenuous effort, of strong will. ”

“ I only want to explain it, and get your advice, and any little assistance you can give me; and surely that is not unreasonable?'
'I have learned one secret, and am exposed to one danger. I have taken—to save you—it may be only a respite—one step, the remembrance of which is insupportable. But I was passive. ”