Vulnerability

“ And similarly, among women we have the thief, the prostitute, the blackmailer, the vamp, and the “charity girl.”
122. The Desire for Security. The desire for security is opposed to the desire for new experience. The desire for new experience is, as we have seen, emotionally related to anger, which tends to invite death, and expresses itself in courage, advance, attack, pursuit. The desire for new experience implies, therefore, motion, change, danger, instability, social irresponsibility. The individual dominated by it shows a tendency to disregard prevailing standards and group interests. ”

“ But my soul is firm, and I can bring myself up to face a danger which a less-nervous man might shrink from. What I am doing now is done from no compulsion, but entirely from a sense of duty, and yet it is, beyond doubt, a desperate risk. ”

“ Thus in a word, to avoid a long detail, those suspicious attachments, loose conversations, ridiculous compliances, and desires of pleasing, too much attended, have filled you with dispositions so nearly allied to guilt and debauchery, that you are no longer capable of resistance against any of their attacks; the corruption prepared by the whole train of your past actions, will be lighted up in an instant; your weakness will overcome your reflection; your heart will go against glory, duty, and yourself. ”

“ Every selfish argument for my own safety had passed in review before my mind, and something so akin to judicious caution, which we trappers in plain language called "cowardice," was insidiously assailing my better self, I cast logic's sophistries to the winds, and dared death or torture to drive me from my post. Whence comes this sublime, reasonless abandon of imperiled human beings, which casts off fear and caution and prudence and forethought and all that goes to make success in the common walks of life, and at one blind leap mounts the Sinai of duty? ”

“ Will you trust yourself and trust the other agents enough to face the risk?’ Should you in all seriousness, if participation in such a world were proposed to you, feel bound to reject it as not safe enough? ”

“ Often have I felt my own utter helplessness—the impossibility that the strength of man could avail me—when standing, it seemed, on the very brink of destruction; and in a way beyond all calculation, I have found myself rescued and placed in safety. ”

“ Sense of danger, dread of danger, impulse to batter and destroy what threatens and opposes, triumphant delight in succeeding: this is pugnacity, the great adversary of the social impulse to live and let live; to establish our rights by shouldering our share of the social burden; to face and examine danger instead of striking at it ”

“ What energies a difficult crisis called forth! How her spirit and self-possession bore up in the midst of danger and insult, and how she contrived to preserve her dignity even while compelled to make the most humiliating concessions! ”

“ When actual physical danger presents itself, I am able to take care of myself at least as well as the next man, but this unintelligible threat made me shiver. “What does the character stand for?” I asked. ”

“ And so, through all the relations of society, wherever a sacred trust is abused, and a confidence outraged, and obligations rent recklessly asunder, there this self-incurred species of suffering, in a greater or less degree, exists accordingly as the moral sensibilities are blunted, or the contrary. ”

“ Surely, a fearful responsibility rested somewhere,—a stern necessity was laid on some one to cry put against the wickedness. If the strong ones were silent it might be because their experience had not been like her own. ”

“ But the evils that surround us—that come to our knowledge and under our very eyes—are real and tangible and dreadful. So much the more reason for our being here;—but so much the less likely that you, gently reared and delicately cared for, will be allowed to risk your delicate nurture in this land of savages. ”

“ What would they think—those three hundred speech-tired boys—if some man who had been held before them as exemplary were to rise and lay bare his own life—its weaknesses, its faults, perhaps its crimes—and tell them there was weakness and there was strength in every human being, and that the world-old struggle of life was to overcome one's weakness with one's strength. ”

“ You are man of the world enough to understand that at certain crises we are obliged to speak our minds, to face the truth boldly and see what it means. Is it not so?"
"It may be so, but I am not aware that the present crisis demands such plain speaking."
"Then you must be blind," said his hearer, with a burst of indignation, "blind—blind—blind! Or mad? is that it? What sort of crisis do you expect? What can be worse than the present state of things? Are not your life and her character at stake? Why do you not take your present opportunity and save her and yourself? ”

“ For what else is courage but an affection of mind that is ready to undergo perils, and patient in the endurance of pain and labor without any alloy of fear? Now, this certainly could not be the case if there were anything else good but what depended on honesty alone. But how can any one be in possession of that desirable and much-coveted security (for I now call a freedom from anxiety a security, on which freedom a happy life depends) who has, or may have, a multitude of evils attending him? How can he be brave and undaunted, and hold everything as trifles which can befall a man? ”

“ I would gladly turn to the coarsest drudgery, if I could only be safe. But after what has happened no good people will have anything to do with us, and I am a feeble, helpless creature, that can only shrink and tremble as I am pushed nearer and nearer. ”

“ When we turn to the page of history, and read of men visited by adversity—what do we say to those of their fellow-creatures who fall off from them on account of their misfortunes? Do we not call them little-minded, and visit them with our contempt? ”

“ This distress of the gentle was so acute that those who shared it in civil life, without having to shed blood with their own hands, or witness destruction with their own eyes, hardly care to obtrude their own woes. ”

“ To heighten the danger of a conflict between natures essentially incompatible, both were in a morbid and nervous state, consumed with discontent, sensitive to the most trifling injury, abandoned to a fierce egoism, which the course of their lives and the circumstances of their profession kept constantly inflamed. ”

“ Probably all great suffering comes accompanied with a reserve of strength or with a power of resistance which may even spring from weakness, but which invests the sufferer with courage, and perhaps, too, with hope, to meet it. ”

“ The greatest danger of all, he feels, is in "the enervation which gains on everyone, the sudden impulses of fear, of prolonged anxiety...." And then he made one more appeal to the sanity of the people. ”

“ In several of my maturer ventures, I can recognize the same mental condition of serene indifference to danger while doing what I thought my duty, owing, perhaps, in a great measure to ignorance or incapacity to realize the danger, but also largely to ingrained confidence in an overruling Providence which took account of my steps and would carry me through. ”

“ Such then is our situation; critical indeed, but after all perhaps not desperate. We have one great fear; some there are amongst us whose courage, moral as well as physical, may give way, and over failing spirits such as these we may have no control. ”

“ In sheer self-defense she was obliged to move, to say something, to break the tensity of the strain. One step—the single step by which she had dared to draw nearer him, stretching out yearning hands toward him—one step sufficed to take her back to the world of conventionalities and commonplaces, where the heart's aching is taboo. ”

“ The mind is in a state of tension, in a state of anxiety, in restless, uneasy discord, due to the fear instinct, the companion of the impulse of self-preservation. The contesting mental set, charged with intense fear emotion, presses into the foreground of consciousness, and a contest, a discord, ensues in [147] the mind of the individual, a contest, a discord, a conflict which keeps the person in a state of indecision and lack of will power. ”

“ By one curt act he could protect his daughter from endless misery and frustration, and protect the world from this anonymous intruder and protect this poor little waif from the monstrous cruelty of the world. ”

“ Dangers encompass us, unseen at every moment. Within us, in the wonderful and delicate organisation of our bodies--around us, when in circumstances of the greatest comfort and apparent safety--are dangers unseen, which at any moment might terminate our earthly career. ”

“ Then consider the anxieties and caprices they have to put up with, the risks they run of danger and death, of maiming and wounds, of affronts, insults, quarrels, terrors, pains and penalties of every kind. ”

“ What is there in personality that makes aggression an injury, and (2) what is it that makes anything one's own? The answer was sought in a theory of natural rights, or of certain qualities inherent in individual human beings and demonstrated by reason to which society, state, and law were bound to give effect. ”

“ You were willing to risk everything here; you were willing to risk hereafter everything that may be the fate of those who lay violent hands upon their own lives. Why need you risk anything at all, either for the boy's sake or in the hereafter, because of laying violent hands upon your life? ”

“ Thus also the disturbance and fear, which often follow upon a man’s having done an injury, arise from a sense of his being blameworthy; otherwise there would, in many cases, be no ground of disturbance, nor any reason to fear resentment or shame. On the other hand, inward security and peace, and a mind open to the several gratifications of life, are the natural attendants of innocence and virtue. ”

“ We were so apt in this world of struggle and ambition to become centred solely in ourselves, that possibly the wrong done to another,—the wrong that turned our thoughts from ourselves, and kept them bent in agony and despair upon the suffering we had caused another, and knew not how to mitigate—possibly this wrong, nay, certainly this wrong, was good in disguise. ”

“ Should misfortune bring poverty, and the Almighty try his creatures by affliction, how beautiful is it then to behold the exertions which the finest minds are capable of making when sustained by religious submission, and encouraged by fond affection; but to place ourselves willingly in situations which our strength may not prove sufficient to admit of our filling conscientiously, is to presume upon our own powers, and is therefore dangerous. ”

“ Comme ce cri n’était arraché que par une sorte d’instinct dans les occasions pressantes, pour implorer du secours dans les grands dangers ou du soulagement dans les maux violents, il n’était pas d’un grand usage dans le cours ordinaire de la vie, où règnent des sentiments plus modérés. ”

“ He then spoke of the danger menacing, in more or less these words:—“The tendencies prevalent in the life of the present day will continue to gather strength, until they end by annihilating themselves. ”

“ The extent and reality of the distress they suffer, the impossibility of expecting such masses of people to be eternally patient and forbearing, to restrain all their natural impulses, and endure tamely severe privations when they are encouraged and stimulated to do otherwise, and are thus accessible to every sort of internal and external temptation,—all these considerations may well beget a serious presentiment of danger. ”

“ Recently, when you have laid violent hands upon my person, and endangered my life, I said it was violence of temper, not malignity of heart, and I resolved, for your sake and mine, to keep our secret, and to bear with it. ”

“ I need not say how silently I strove to banish this conviction. My struggles on this subject were precisely those which are felt by nervous men suddenly approaching a precipice, and, though secure, flinging themselves off, in the extremity of their apprehensions of that danger which has assumed in their imaginations an aspect so absorbing. With such persons, the extreme anxiety to avoid the deed, whether of evil or of mere danger, frequently provokes its commission. ”

“ He put himself under obligation--in moments of supreme need--to dangerous persons, and suffered from the familiarity and perhaps the contempt of some who were his inferiors in breeding, in heart, and in soul. ”

“ In our approbation of the character of the just man, we feel, with equal complacency, the security which all those connected with him, whether in neighbourhood, society, or business, must derive from his scrupulous anxiety never either to hurt or offend. ”

“ The welfare and happiness of too many human beings were at stake to permit him to think of personal consequences, and he was ready and dared to encounter any risk for himself, so that he could insure the safety of those fleeing from bondage. ”

“ We have so continuously ourselves insisted upon the profound danger, and frequently operative abuse, of any and all complete apartness between any one means, function, or attrait of the spiritual life and the others, that we can, without any unfairness, restrict ourselves here to the attack upon the general acceptation of Impersonal means as helps towards the constitution of Personality. ”

“ What have we done or said to make you think that we would harm you? We would injure no one. Still our ways, even our life, is not the same as yours, or under the same conditions. So, if in any way you are distressed, say what you wish, and we will obey. ”

“ And the danger, in both directions,—let us have the frankness to admit the fact,—is constant and profound: even to see it continuously is difficult; to guard against it with effect, most difficult indeed. ”