Sluggishness

“ No physical thirst, no physical hunger, has ever been stronger than this thirst and hunger, which yearned to make all that is unfamiliar, familiar; or in other words, all that is outside the spirit, inside the spirit. ”

“ Think of its being called drudgery to take care of a clean, light, airy nursery, to wash and dress and care for two or three children, to mend their clothes, tell them stories, make them playthings, take them out walking or driving; and rather than this, to wear out the whole livelong day, extending often deep into the night, in endless sewing, in a close room of a dressmaking establishment! Is it any less drudgery to stand all day behind a counter, serving customers, than to tend a door-bell and wait on a table? ”

“ The sluggard and the self-indulgent can have no knowledge of Truth. He who, possessed of health and strength, wastes the calm, precious hours of the silent morning in drowsy indulgence is totally unfit to climb the heavenly heights. ”

“ Thus, naked, sick, exhausted with fatigue and fasting, drenched with wet, and unable to lie down, our misery might be supposedsupposed to be incapable of increase. But, alas! where are the bounds which we can set to human woe?——Thirst, that most dreadful of pains, occasioned by the drenching with salt water, seized us: we begged, we entreated, we clamoured for water; but the inhuman wretches, deaf to the groans and screeches of their fellow-creatures, (for some grew delirious with the agony of thirst) , refused them even the cheap and miserable indulgence of a drop of water! ”

“ I thought how vividly that old glutton illustrated the fools who, in their effort to gulp down the sensual pleasures of this world, choke the soul, and nothing but the clap-board of hard experience, well laid on, can dislodge the ham, and restore the equilibrium. ”

“ You have quenched one thirst; ought you not to excite another—a thirst which is not to be slaked in the whiskey shop, but in the library or lecture-room—a thirst for knowledge? The human mind is never idle, least of all will it be idle when healthful action is no more impeded by the paroxysms and depressions of intemperance. ”

“ The rust of idleness has eaten into my vitals while I lay in my silken bed, and my chance is gone forever. I was bright, and strong, and sharp once, but I feared work and worry, and I hid, growing duller, dimmer, and more useless every day. ”

“ In truth, the mental strain, bred of our gloomy surroundings and of the dread of starvation that had possessed us, had taxed our physical strength more severely than our mountain climbing and our lack of nourishment. ”

“ Coming now to human beings, and to what we know about our own actions, it seems clear that what, with us, sets a behaviour-cycle in motion is some sensation of the sort which we call disagreeable. Take the case of hunger: we have first an uncomfortable feeling inside, producing a disinclination to sit still, a sensitiveness to savoury smells, and an attraction towards any food that there may be in our neighbourhood. ”

“ A sluggard is here exposed as a fool, for, 1. All his care is to save himself from labour and cold. See his posture: He hides his hand in his bosom, pretends he is lame and cannot work; his hands are cold, and he must warm them in his bosom; and, when they are warm there, he must keep them so. He hugs himself in his own ease and is resolved against labour and hardship. Let those work that love it; for his part he thinks there is no such fine life as sitting still and doing nothing. ”

“ Then he delivered himself upon this wise:
“It is well known that much exercise and weariness consume the spirits and substance, refrigerate the body; and such humours which nature would have otherwise concocted and expelled, it stirs up and makes them rage; which, being so enraged, diversely affect and trouble the body and mind.” ”

“ The monotony of progress through this unreal, leaden world became almost unbearable. The repeated strainings and twistings they suffered in walking the slippery ridge reduced the men to weariness; their legs grew clumsy and their feet uncertain. ”

“ But, with few exceptions, every civic face meets you with the same anxious, worried look of unsatisfied craving; there is hunger in all the restless, eager eyes, and the thin, impatient lips work nervously, as if scarcely able to repress the cry which the children of the horse-leech have uttered since the beginning of time. ”

“ Having seen the slothful man in fear of his work, here we find him in love with his ease; he lies in his bed on one side till he is weary of that, and then turns to the other, but still in his bed, when it is far in the day and work is to be done, as the door is moved, but not removed; and so his business is neglected and his opportunities are let slip. See the sluggard's character. 1. He is one that does not care to get out of his bed, but seems to be hung upon it, as the door upon the hinges. Bodily ease, too much consulted, is the sad occasion of many a spiritual disease. ”

“ The rain affords such a grand excuse to be idle and do nothing. One can lounge about, and smoke, and read the newspapers or a novel all day, and justly feel it is quite impossible to be energetic. I am often told that my besetting sin is laziness. ”

“ You may be certain then that this invincible languor is a sign of grave internal disorder. And apart from that, where have you ever seen idle people? Take those who are so-called idle people by race, habit, and taste. ”

“ The suggestions of stodginess are appalling, including, even at best, hints of overweight, general uninterestingness, and a disposition to sit at home in smoking-jacket and slippers after one’s evening meal. ”

“ It is very easy to generalise from the mass: the dweller of the slums stands before the mind's eye, beery, unwashed, in rags, inarticulate, his brain filled with thoughts which may better{323} be described as suspicions, desirous of nothing but of food, drink, and warmth. ”

“ When slumber refuses to visit one, there is something peculiarly irritating, not to the temper, but to the nerves, in the consciousness that some one is in your immediate presence, actually enjoying the boon which you are seeking in vain ”

“ Not many men were met; but a few lay on the scorched grass, sleeping heavily in the sunlight. However, the stench was becoming unbearable—a stench of misery as when the human animal eschews all cleanliness to wallow in filth. ”

“ Hunger and thirst are special, indecomposable states. Disgust and fatigue are revived easily enough, and, as we have seen, by almost every one; but it must be remembered that these states are composed of somewhat heterogeneous—sensory and motor—elements, and that they approach the character of aggregates. ”

“ That the various species of uneasiness, which are elementary parts of our appetites, recur, at intervals, in which there is some degree of regularity, does not alter their nature, when they do recur, so as to render a peculiar arrangement necessary for including them. The mental states, which constitute the uneasiness that is felt, recur thus at intervals, not from any thing peculiar in the mind itself, the phenomena of which alone we are considering, but because the body is only at intervals in the state, which precedes or induces those peculiar mental affections. ”

“ He neither lies in a bed nor sits in a chair; his clothing is neither dyed, spun nor woven, but is of finest texture and most brilliant hue. His warning cry ought to call all sluggards from their slumbers: he utters it in every land and every age ”

“ But this is no mere languor which now begins to oppress him;—it is a sense of vital exhaustion painful as the misery of convalescence: the least effort provokes a perspiration profuse enough to saturate clothing, and the limbs ache as from muscular overstrain;—the lightest attire feels almost insupportable;—the idea of sleeping even under a sheet is torture, for the weight of a silken handkerchief is discomfort. ”

“ But of what avail, when the drop of a shoe on the floor twinges through him like a dart? when the creak of a bed plays on his nerves as on a jangled harp? when the repressed sound of their voices, whispering, becomes a source of suffering worse through the very quality of stillness and of effort? ”

“ Laying his head down on his folded arms, with one short but fervent ejaculation of thankfulness hovering on his parched lips, the man whose iron frame had hitherto seemed almost impervious to fatigue, and proof against the ordinary ills that flesh is heir to, grew gradually insensible to outer things, losing all sense whether of joy or sorrow, in the heavy and lethargic slumber which is too often the precursor of serious illness. ”

“ When he had finished the last word he turned round, and then his whole person, with his countenance and his eyes, exhibited one of the justest pantomimic representations of laziness which it is possible to conceive. After he had a moment dwelt upon [Pg 125] this personification, which his fancy suggested to him, he made an expressive transition to the looks and manners of a person filled with that dread and abhorrence which the idea of laziness should ever inspire. ”

“ She lost the fresh elasticity of form, the colour and the mien of health, and became wasted, wan, and feeble. She appeared to have no formed complaint; yet it was evident to those who looked on her that her strength waned daily. ”

“ At last I feel myself drifting into slumberland. The weary eyelids close peacefully over aching eyeballs. The tired brain ceases to concern itself automatically with things past or with things present. ”

“ Others, lying on their backs with mouths agape, snored loudly as if still venting the plaint of their sorry life. And others tossed restlessly, still struggling in their slumber against fatigue and cold and hunger, which pursued them like nightmares of monstrous shape. ”

“ Similarly, the filth and poverty permitted or ignored in the midst of us are as dishonourable to the whole social body, as in the body natural it is to wash the face, but leave the hands and feet foul. ”

“ The generous liquid life may inspire the brain and blood with noble impulse and vital force, or it may be sinned away and drained out of the system until the jaded brain, the faded cheek, the enervated young manhood, the gray hair, narrow chest, weak voice, and the enfeebled mind show another victim in the long catalogue of the degraded through lust. ”

“ If we can devote ten thousand actions of the jaw, daily, to senseless or vicious gossip, WHAT SENSE is there in denying adequate jaw service to the most important function of living?
WHAT SENSE is there in a rich person glutting his Mind-Power Plant with more food-fuel than it needs, just because he happens to have an abundance to glut with, or glut on? ”

“ If it were possible to bring the soul into view, and to behold it with our bodily eyes, that of the luxurious would seem depressed, mournful, miserable, and wasted with leanness, for the more the body grows sleek and gross, the more lean and weakly is the soul. ”

“ Weary and dispirited, with a vague presentiment of evil, he flung himself on his bed, and a heavy stupor stole over him, binding his faculties in a lethargic slumber from which he did not arouse until the new day began to wax toward its meridian. ”

“ it is the just doom of laziness and gluttony, to be inactive without ease, and drowsy without tranquillity. ”

“ Thenceforward the logic of the slums, that the world which gave him poverty and ignorance for his portion "owes him a living," is his creed, and the career of the "tough" lies open before him, a beaten track to be blindly followed to a bad end in the wake of the growler. ”

“ The ever-recurring question, what shall be cooked to-day? the ever-recurring necessity of sweeping, and beating, and brushing, and dusting is the continuously falling drop that slowly, but surely, wears away mind and body. ”

“ Meantime, to higher or lower ends, they move too often with something of a sad countenance, with hurried and ignoble gait, becoming, unconsciously, something like thorns, in their anxiety to bear grapes; it being possible for people, in the pursuit of even great ends, to become themselves thin and impoverished in spirit and temper, thus diminishing the sum of perfection in the world, at its very sources. ”

“ Well for us it often is, that the sluggish frame is a mask and veil, but slowly responding to the inner working of our minds, or the tide of battle would oftener be turned in its course. She said nothing, which was the very best reply she could have made. ”

“ A continual struggling forward with endless difficulties to contend against. To all intents and purposes no rest, a thirst that could never be quenched, and an utter distaste for the monotonous diet of dates and “couscous” well mixed with sand!
I often now wonder how one got through those weary days. When we halted in the daytime, as I could not sleep I used to attempt to write and work up my notes, but the discomfort was so great that the work I got through did not amount to much. ”

“ They can't sleep, everything is so quiet. Not a rooster crowing. Nor a hen cackling! They get up and look out. All down the street the blinds are drawn. Everybody is asleep—and it all looks so blamed lazy. ”

“ Often the watchers could not tell whether she was conscious, or only incapacitated from expression, by the fearful weight on her breath, which caused a restlessness most piteous in the exhausted helpless frame, wasted till the softest touch was anguish. ”

“ But above all, if you decide, rightly as we think, to play through your staleness, play with all the concentration and briskness you are capable of, and do not lay the foundations of a habit of slackness. ”

“ Hence clumsiness in the movement of the body indicates clumsiness in the movement of the thoughts, and will be regarded as a sign of stupidity both in individuals and nations, as much as sleepiness of the countenance and vacancy of the glance. ”