Stablehand

“ By what half-development of human power has the left hand been neglected? When we arrive at the acme of civilization shall we not all be ambidextrous, and in our hand-to-hand contests against difficulties shall we not be doubly triumphant? It occurs to me, by the way, that when my teacher was training my unreclaimed spirit, her struggle against the powers of darkness, with the stout arm of discipline and the light of the manual alphabet, was in two senses a hand-to-hand conflict. ”

“ It is, therefore, a stable which your gaping scientists would condemn; and though as yet they have not got their ugly hands upon the dwellings of beasts as they have upon those of men, yet I often fear for this stable, and am always glad when I come back and find it there. ”

“ However, I should never have broken a horse or bull and taken him to board for any work he might do for me, for fear I should become a horse-man or a herds-man merely; and if society seems to be the gainer by so doing, are we certain that what is one man’s gain is not another’s loss, and that the stable-boy has equal cause with his master to be satisfied? ”

“ Then, again, to be pursued by others, he might be seen suddenly changing to the back and heel-forward movement, offering them his hand, and, at the same time, eluding their grasp by his dexterous and instantaneous deviations to the right and left, leaving them to their hard work of striking out after him with all their might and main. ”

“ Rather must two different things converge : firstly, the multiplying of stable strength through mental binding in faith and common feeling ; secondly, the possibility of attaining to higher aims, through the fact that there are deviating natures and, in consequence, partial weakening and wounding of the stable strength ; it is precisely the weaker nature, as the more delicate and free, that makes all progress at all possible. ”

“ And if that partner, strong in traditional authority and conventional habits, seeks to "break in" the turbulent and storm-tossed creature—well, it comes to a mere trial of strength and endurance, whether that driven creature will fall panting and crushed, or whether it will turn in its despair, assert its Divine right to intellectual liberty, rend its fetters in pieces, and, discovering its own strength in its extremity, speak at all risks its "No" when bidden to live a lie. ”

“ Yes, I feel as if I could only live in a life of enterprise. Inaction seems to chain me down into a slavish bondage; but when the weapon is in my grasp, and the motive within my soul, an atmosphere of freedom breathes around me, and I rise above the herd into something nearer the superiority to which I aspire. ”

“ In such a trying position as that in which you were placed, with the bands of discipline relaxed, the instincts of self-preservation have often led men to act selfishly. Others in your position might have thought that, being stronger than the rest of the party--able perhaps to pursue game, catch fish, or to pound nardoo--it would have been consistent with duty to escape to the nearest settlement, perhaps with the vague idea of sending back assistance to your comrades. ”

“ Manager, I have come to ask you to get rid of the whole stable."
"What, you want to get rid of our horses?"
"I'm not talking of the horses, but of the stablemen."
"How many stablemen have you, M. Lachenel?" ”

“ It is metaphysically and physically certain, that when we maintain one and the same bodily posture or gesture, as in standing, sitting, or holding out the hand, whatever be the seeming continuousness and unity of the effort, the posture or gesture is really maintained only by a series of rapidly succeeding efforts. What is more likely than that, in such a continual renewing of voluntary actions, our fancy, or the sympathy between our will and our thoughts, should give a bias to the results, even when we most try to neutralize its influence? ”

“ Royal knowledge which knows no toil, no sweat of work, no common drudgery, art thou of the soul herself, or art thou altogether from outside the soul? This I know, that though the first mode would seem to be very small and to deal with littleness, and the last mode seems to be entirely apart from it because of the greatnesses with which it deals that they are linked and that the power is one power soaring to the highest, condescending to the smallest. ”

“ And now came the reaction of the altered conditions.
'Under the new conditions of perfect comfort and security, that restless energy, that with us is strength, would become weakness. Even in our own time certain tendencies and desires, once necessary to survival, are a constant source of failure. Physical courage and the love of battle, for instance, are no great help—may even be hindrances—to a civilized man. And in a state of physical balance and security, power, intellectual as well as physical, would be out of place. ”

“ Shall we ever be able to find in this world anything stable? No; we leave one place, but only to go and occupy another, which, in its turn, is soon vacated. No one is able to enumerate the countless changes that incessantly take place. ”

“ Two causes have thus to be recognised as operating in the development of right-handedness, and begetting certain differences in its manifestation under varying social influences. There is a progressive scale, from the imperfect to the more perfectly developed, and then to the perfectly educated hand: [Pg 16] all steps in its adaptation to the higher purposes of the manipulator. The hand of the rude savage, of the sailor, the miner, or blacksmith, while well fitted for the work to which it is applied, is a very different instrument from that of the chaser, engraver, or cameo-cutter ”

“ A fortnight of almost forced marches, of toils and struggles with nature, most bravely and pluckily borne by all hands. Indeed, there had been an utter absence of selfishness. Every one in sunshine, storm, or tempest, seemed to think of others all the time, and not of himself. ”

“ As ever and alway I tried in vain
To shun the labour I hated so.
Over and over I came this way
For just one purpose: O stubborn soul!
Turn with a will to your work to-day,
And learn the lesson of Self-Control. ”

“ With what an air of conscious power; of evident mastery of all that might confront them; of calm, unflinching determination for the conflict, those men moved and acted. They felt themselves part of a mighty machine, that had its work before it, and would move with resistless force to perform the appointed task. ”

“ If you have no interest in your stable and have no time, say half an hour a day, to devote to it, and no other member of the family knows or cares anything about it, by all means job your horses and do not attempt a stable. ”

“ Reserve Power has been watching over him and ever giving him new strength,—even while he sleeps.
If we be conscious of any weakness, and desire to conquer it, we can force ourselves into positions where we must act in a way to strengthen ourselves through that weakness, cut off our retreat, burn our bridges behind us, and fight like Spartans till the victory be ours. ”

“ Curious to consider the institution of the Right hand among universal mankind; probably the very oldest human institution that exists, indispensable to all human co-operation whatsoever. He that has seen three mowers, one of whom is left-handed, trying to work together, and how impossible it is, has witnessed the simplest form of an impossibility, which but for the distinction of a ‘right hand,’ would have pervaded all human things. ”

“ A mind so severely trained as his had been brings to a great crisis, involving severe self-denial, an amount of reserved moral force quite inexplicable to those less habituated to self-control. He was like a warrior whose sleep even was in armour, always ready to be roused to the conflict. ”

“ We have believed that stability depended upon rigid strength, not realizing that, in nature, the strong are the most fragile, while the weak are the most enduring.
The source of triumphant living is not the adamantine will that refuses to bend or budge, but is the will that yields itself to higher power. ”

“ Is it the mind that controls the bewildered body and points out the way to physical habits uncertain of their affinities? Or is it not much rather automatic inward machinery that executes the marvellous work, while the mind catches here and there some glimpse of the operation, now with delight and adhesion, now with impotent rebellion? ”

“ Out of ten thousand conflicting spurs of action comes, in the snapping of a finger, a sinister unity of purpose, which knows not the individual brain that conceived it, nor the logic of its action. Ten thousand clods, jumbled in confusion, are instantly turned into a single straight furrow. ”

“ Only one man in the world to-day could show, by the ravage in his face, the appalling weight of responsibility slowly crushing one of the most vigorous and resilient personalities in Europe. His figure, erstwhile erect and well-knit, seemed to have shrunk, and his withered arm, unnaturally looped away into his pocket, assumed a prominence that lent something sinister to that forbidding grey and harassed face. ”

“ It is not, also, to be forgotten, that the absorption of all the principal ability of the country into the governing body is fatal, sooner or later, to the mental activity and progressiveness of the body itself. ”

“ We have but one more process to undergo, and the attendant already stands at the head of our couch. This is the course of passive gymnastics, which excites so much alarm and resistance in the ignorant Franks. It is only resistance that is dangerous, completely neutralizing the enjoyment of the process. Give yourself with a blind submission into the arms of the brown Fate, and he will lead you to new chambers of delight. ”

“ Why should he starve in a city of plenty? He had arms and hands, if he hadn't a head. Indeed, he had begun of late to believe that his head, which he used to think so much of, was the least important part of his body. He caught himself feeling his forearm and his biceps. ”

“ We must confine the forces in order to prevent every displacement. We must separate the physical from the moral horse, and force [81] these impressions to concentrate in the brain. He will then be a furious madman whose limbs we have bound to prevent him from carrying his frenzied thoughts into execution. ”

“ We are all harnessed from our cradle, with bearing reins, not only to give our necks the proper curve, but also to prevent us from taking the bit in our mouths, kicking out, plunging over the barriers, and deserting the ring, and the saw-dust, the lights, and the crack of the manager's whip. ”

“ Furthermore, the stability possessed by the various utility-form organizations that exist within or among the stable nations of the world is, in large part, the result of the stability and permanence of the nations themselves. The stability of all three of the utility forms thus rests upon the inherent stability of the sympathy type of organization. ”

“ These defects and disquietudes are seldom found but in the stables where the master rarely or ever condescends to obtrude his person and commands upon the tenacious dignity of a self-important groom; the preserving industry of whose careful endeavours, and the pliability and elasticity of whose joints, if properly exerted, would prove the truest and most infallible preventive of swelled legs and cracked heels, in preference to all the nostrums ever yet brought into private practice or public use. ”

“ But I do not believe that a stable society, made up of healthy, vigorous, instructed, and self-ruling people would ever incur serious risk of that fate. They are not likely to be troubled with many competitors of the same character just yet ”

“ And the chief thing demanded by these intricacies of civilisation was control, restraint--a poise of self that was as delicate as the fluttering of gossamer wings and at the same time as rigid as steel. ”

“ This rest is won through the man's prior discipline in the toils of strife, in order that when the tumult of disturbance ceases, his mind, through the grace of contemplation, may be translated to gaze upon the face of truth. But since one attains to this rest only through labour and conflict, how can one reach it who has not gone down into the strife? ”

“ From this and similar cases it would seem that much of our inherited voluntary command over our muscles is ordinarily disguised or marked, as it were—held in abeyance—how or why we know not, and we are enabled to get glimpses of it during those states of mental and organic spontaneity and mobility which, for want of a better name, we call abnormal, and which often seem temporarily to put the individual en rapport with the secret chambers of his own boundless wealth—the countless treasures of ages of accumulation. ”

“ How often we see people trying to listen with their arms and shoulders! Such illustrations might be multiplied indefinitely, and, in all cases, the false sympathy of contraction in the parts of the body which are not needed for the work in hand comes from a wrong dependence,—from the fact that the pats of the body that are not needed, are officiously dependent upon those that are properly active, instead of minding their own affairs and saving energy for their own work. ”

“ Yet for a long time mortal men has discussed the question whether success in arms depends more on strength of body or excellence of mind; for before you begin, deliberation is necessary, when you have deliberated, prompt action. Thus each of these, [1] being incomplete of itself, requires the other’s aid. ”