Sansculottism

“ Of course if your moral turpitude is of such a low order that the preservation of your life and limbs is of vastly more importance than any other consideration whatsoever, then there is no appeal of mine, or anyone else's, that can pierce your hide of self-satisfied consciousness. ”

“ Now, what less than the highest degree of ill-nature can permit a man to pamper his own vanity at the price of another's shame? Is the glutton, who, to raise the flavour of his dish, puts some birds or beasts to exquisite torment, more cruel to the animal than this our proud man to his own species?
This character then is a composition made up of those odious, contemptible qualities, pride, folly, arrogance, insolence, and ill-nature. ”

“ Man's history has been a history of selfishness and sin, and his body bears the marks thereof. His features are "seamed by sickness, dimmed by sensuality, convulsed by passion, pinched by poverty, shadowed by sorrow, branded by remorse." Men's bodies are consumed by sloth, broken down by labor, tortured by disease, dishonored by foul uses, until beholding the "marks" of character in the natural face in a glass multitudes would fain forget what manner of men they are. For the human face is a canvas, and nature's writing goes ever on. ”

“ In that vast human bulk that sprawls over every continent, the primitive [9] ferocity still exists, veiled perhaps under familiar livery and uniform, but untamed by centuries of training. It is this gloomy mass, saturated with superstitious cowardice, savage with the selfish instinct of greed, or dull with the languor of gorged and exhausted passion, that deliberates not in words or thought, but in some impenetrable free-masonry of instinct like that which beggars illustrate when they silently display their deformities and mutilations as the most eloquent appeals. ”

“ TO comprehend, then, more particularly, how it is that temptations are sent us by God for our good, we must consider, that man, because of the evil inclinations of corrupt nature, is proud, ambitious, conceited, and always thinks himself to be more than he is. This self-esteem is so dangerous to true spiritual progress, that the very scent of it is enough to hinder the attainment of perfection. ”

“ Its face portrayed the severest form of suffering that life is capable of experiencing. If Nature ever made a frail article, it is our tender offspring, so bewildered, so utterly helpless, so [Pg 52] agonizingly delusioned, so pitifully searching for some familiar face; something to make it discover its lost self. Oh, what power ever made us so tender, so incapable of self-help, as to have us undergo and feel such terrific suffering! It is injustice enough when adults are made to suffer mental and physical ills, without inflicting such a painful decree upon mere infants. ”

“ O terrible tragi-comedy of life, O strange, tangled world, in which poor, petty man must walk, tripped by endless coils—religion, race, sex, custom, wealth, poverty! World that from boyhood he had seemed to see stretching so clearly before him, to be mapped out with lucid logic, to be bestridden with triumphant foot by men become as gods, knowing good and evil. ”

“ Shall I say to them, 'You are living an abnormal life, and you can never be well until you cut out root and branch all your habits of self indulgence which are destroying you?' But no, I can't say that—not one time in a thousand. ”

“ When we take an introspective view of our sane personality, we shudder to see how near it is to the borderlands of insanity and the bizarre and eccentric world of crankdom. There hardly lives a man who does not possess some eccentricity, or who does not cherish, hidden, perhaps, deep within himself, some small delusion, which he is ashamed to acknowledge to the outside world. Social relations and the iron rules of custom hold in place the balance-wheel of many a disordered mind. ”

“ But, after all, what can be expected of creatures without souls? One sees, now and seen, stupid human beings, whose eyes have no thoughts in them, and whose souls seem to be sound asleep. Such lumps of dulness might almost as well be gnomes, and slip into the earth and have done with it.
These underground folk had a great horror of our world. ”

“ Would you wean a man from sensual excesses by the inevitable consequences to which they lead?—What holds more antipathy to pleasure than pain? The mind given up to self-indulgence revolts at suffering, and throws it from it as an unaccountable anomaly, as a piece of injustice when it comes. ”

“ Whether from a self-inquisitorial habit that he grew into from jealousy of the sins to which men of thought are liable, he has acquired, in disentangling and demonstrating that particular form of moral disease, an acumen which no conscience can resist. ”

“ Thus the disorder in man’s life and disposition, when grown intolerable, leads him to condemn the very elements out of which order might have been constituted, and to mistake his total confusion for his total depravity. ”

“ So, in a measure, you have found yourself: have retreated behind all that flowing appearance, that busy, unstable consciousness with its moods and obsessions, its feverish alternations of interest and apathy, its conflicts and irrational impulses, which even the psychologists mistake for You. Thanks to this recollective act, you have discovered in your inmost sanctuary a being not wholly practical, who refuses to be satisfied by your busy life of correspondences with the world of normal men, and hungers for communion with a spiritual universe. ”

“ I felt younger, lighter, happier in body; within I was conscious of a heady recklessness, a current of disordered sensual images running like a millrace in my fancy, a solution of the bonds of obligation, an unknown but not an innocent freedom of the soul. I knew myself, at the first breath of this new life, to be more wicked, tenfold more wicked, sold a slave to my original evil; and the thought, in that moment, braced and delighted me like wine. I stretched out my hands, exulting in the freshness of these sensations; and in the act, I was suddenly aware that I had lost in stature. ”

“ For the soul finding itself in such a state of dryness, and, in addition to that trial, having to endure temptations the very thought of which seems scandalous, is led by this means to such a fear and loathing of self, and to such a state of lowliness as God desires; although, as it has been said, the soul not knowing at the time this secret, abhorred and recoiled from this discipline, as one who is unwilling ever to be left without sweetness and consolation, and who, when these are absent, esteems all other exercises to be but loss of time and labour without profit. ”

“ The body, with its bodily wants and limitations, leaned on the couch, half slumberously; while the mind, himself, full of vague aspirations, keen intellectual hunger, and overlaid with error, obstinacy, and the thick crust of self-contemplation, which stifles all true progress,—these assimilated qualities made himself, what he felt he was, not an attractive object to himself more than to anybody else. ”

“ By this mental bondage morbid sympathy is clearly and definitely distinguished from all subordinate degrees of this instinct, however closely allied the imitation of a disorder may seem to be to that of a mere folly, of an absurd fashion, of an awkward habit in speech and manner, or even of a confusion of ideas. Even these latter imitations, however, directed as they are to foolish and pernicious objects, place the self-independence of the greater portion of mankind in a very doubtful light, and account for their union into a social whole. ”

“ Into how many houses would not the note of the monastery-bell, dividing the day into manageable portions, bring peace of mind and healthful activity of body? We speak of hardships, but the true hardship is to be a dull fool, and permitted to mismanage life in our own dull and foolish manner. ”

“ But if through the lure of base desires the mind has sunk into sloth and the pleasures of the body, when it has enjoyed ruinous indulgence for a season, when strength, time, and talents have been wasted through indolence, the weakness of human nature is accused, and the guilty shift their own blame to circumstances. ”

“ We are a wincing mass of self-consciousness and corruption, within our plausible rind. The most unselfish, the most humanitarian of us all, he is the hollowest and fullest of rottenness. The more rotten we become, the more insistent and insane becomes our desire to ameliorate the conditions of our poorer, and maybe healthier neighbours.
Fools, vile fools! Why cannot we acknowledge and admit the horrible pulse and thresh of corruption within us. What is this self-consciousness that palpitates within us like a disease? ”

“ From the effect produced upon your involuntary powers from indigestion, you can judge of the living nightmare freaks of insanity which have been provoked from ages of conceptive indulgence to give birth to hallucinations of your present progressive civilizations. Once entered upon the realities of self-legislation, in its current form of affectionate solicitation for the welfare of others, the germ of goodness will expand for reciprocation, until in revivication it embraces not only the human race, but in instinctive effect and degree the lower orders of animality. ”

“ Have you not at this time, and in consequence of this deficiency, a tendency to misanthrophy, a bitter feeling that you are the victim of an unkind Providence, or else bowed by humiliation due to your own ignorance or vices? Does not your very incapacity keep your mind filled with lewd thoughts, which in a state of perfect manhood would not exist? ”

“ Nothing, then, I believe, chills the soul and checks the progress of man so much as a hopeless sense of inferiority; and, had I time, I might turn the attention of the reader to the universality of this law, and to the numerous instances that have been collected to prove the depressing and injurious effects that even nature, on a grand and overwhelming scale, seems to exercise on the mind and spirit of man—how it makes him timid, credulous, and superstitious, and produces effects which retard his progress. ”

“ His character is irresolute, suspicious, and false; in the prime of life he has all the appearances of senility, and in later years sinks into complete idiocy. Avoiding the society of man, he seeks the dark forest, or some solitary ruin, and there, for days together, indulges in his pernicious habit. ”

“ This I have called elsewhere "Will to power through weakness," and it is as old as Adam and Eve. The weak have their wills and their weapons as have the strong.
The highest sublimation, in the face of an insuperable obstacle to purpose or an inescapable life situation, finds a socially useful substitute in philanthropy, kindness, charity, achievement of all sorts; the lowest seeks it in a direct but illicit compensation for the self and in a way that merely increases the social and personal confusion; and a pathological sublimation in part, at least, manifests itself iii sickness. ”

“ Poverty, chastity, humility, obedience, self-sacrifice, ignorance, sickness, and dirt may all acquire a religious worth which reason, in its direct application, might scarcely have found in them; yet these reversed appreciations are merely incidental to a secret rationality, and are justified on the ground that human nature, as now found, is corrupt and needs to be purged and transformed before it can safely manifest its congenital instincts and become again an authoritative criterion of values. ”

“ Let him ask himself—Can they live and toil there without contracting a probably diseased habit of body; without contracting a certainly dull, weary, sordid habit of mind, which craves for any pleasure, however brutal, to escape from its own stupidity and emptiness? ”

“ Wherefore their depravity is the more to be wondered at, who being given up to the pleasures of the body pass their life in luxury and idleness, but allow their mind, than which there is nothing else in human nature either better or greater, to slumber in neglect and sloth ”

“ To the vulgar-minded, all persons who present deformities, whether physical or mental, are subjects of derision and hatred; to those who realise something of the disabilities under which these unfortunates are labouring, they are the objects of either active or passive sympathy,—in the abstract, of course; should the insane, the leprous, or even the man of genius get in our way we, as normal persons, feel ourselves justified in ridding the world of its nuisance. ”

“ But it would perhaps be nearer the truth to say, that their being poets, artists, etc. has been owing to their original poverty of spirit and weakness of constitution. As a general rule, those who are dissatisfied with themselves, will seek to go out of themselves into an ideal world. Persons in strong health and spirits, who take plenty of air and exercise, who are ‘in favour with their stars,’ and have a thorough relish of the good things of this life, seldom devote themselves in despair to religion or the Muses. ”

“ Bodily imperfections, infirmities and disease, unless retained psychologically by having constantly encroached upon the mind, or deformities that are dwelt upon mentally, are dropped with the body; but such infirmities of mind as are born of an undue “egotism,” undue self love, (the capital “I” around which the universe revolves) , must be removed before the spirit can enter upon real work. ”

“ Since it was impossible, according to his insight, that our faculties should be intrinsically evil, all evil had to arise from the disorder into which these faculties fall, their too great weakness or strength in relation to one another. If the animal part of man was too strong for his reason, he fell into incontinence,—that is, into lust, gluttony, avarice, wrath, or pride. ”

“ At the age at which life takes its direction, I contracted an inclination for the exact and natural sciences which I would permit myself to describe as irresistible, and a disgust for practical life which I would call unconquerable, if I had not overcome both this disgust and this inclination. It is fate that disposes of individuals, and their qualities as well as their defects decide upon their careers. ”