Anxiety

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• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  There is no one of his old friends in the regiment Alexey cares for as he does for you.' 'Delighted,' said Yashvin with a smile, from which Vronsky could see that he liked Anna very much. Yashvin said good-bye and went away; Vronsky stayed behind. 'Are you going too?' she said to him. 'I'm late already,' he answered. 'Run along! I'll catch you up in a moment,' he called to Yashvin. She took him by the hand, and without taking her eyes off him, gazed at him while she ransacked her mind for the words to say that would keep him. 'Wait a minute, there's something I want to say to you,' and taking his broad hand she pressed it on her neck. 'Oh, was it right my asking him to dinner?' 'You did quite right,' he said with a serene smile that showed his even teeth, and he kissed her hand. 'Alexey, you have not changed to me?' she said, pressing his hand in both of hers. 'Alexey, I am miserable here. When are we going away?' 'Soon, soon. You wouldn't believe how disagreeable our way of living here is to me too,' he said, and he drew away his hand. 'Well, go, go!' she said in a tone of offence, and she walked quickly away from him. XXXII W HEN Vronsky returned home, Anna was not yet home. Soon after he had left, some lady, so they told him, had come to see her, and she had gone out with her. That she had gone out without leaving word where she was going, that she had not yet come back, and that all the morning she had been going about somewhere without a word to him— all this, together with the strange look of excitement in her face in the morning, and the recollection of the hostile tone with which she had before Yashvin almost snatched her son's photographs out of his hands, made him serious. He decided he absolutely must speak openly with her. And he waited for her in her drawing-room. But Anna did not return alone, but brought with her her old unmarried aunt, Princess Oblonsky. This was the lady who had come in the morning, and with whom Anna had gone out shopping. Anna appeared not to notice Vronsky's worried and inquiring expression, and began a lively account of her morning's shopping. He saw that there was something working within her; in her flashing eyes, when they rested for a moment on him, there was an intense concentration, and in her words and movements there was that nervous rapidity and grace which, during the early period of their intimacy, had so fascinated him, but which now so disturbed and alarmed him. The dinner was laid for four. All were gathered together and about to go into the little dining-room when Tushkevitch made his appearance with a message from Princess Betsy.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  And in the whole arsenal of his convictions, so far from finding any satisfactory answers, he was utterly unable to find anything at all like an answer. He was in the position of a man seeking food in toy-shops and tool-shops. Instinctively, unconsciously, with every book, with every conversation, with every man he met, he was on the lookout for light on these questions and their solution. What puzzled and distracted him above everything was that the majority of men of his age and circle had, like him, exchanged their old beliefs for the same new convictions, and yet saw nothing to lament in this, and were perfectly satisfied and serene. So that, apart from the principal question, Levin was tortured by other questions too. Were these people sincere? he asked himself, or were they playing a part? or was it that they understood the answers science gave to these problems in some different, clearer sense than he did? And he assiduously studied both these men's opinions and the books which treated of these scientific explanations. One fact he had found out since these questions had engrossed his mind, was that he had been quite wrong in supposing from the recollections of the circle of his young days at college, that religion had outlived its day, and that it was now practically non-existent. All the people nearest to him who were good in their lives were believers. The old prince, and Lvov, whom he liked so much, and Sergey Ivanovitch, and all the women believed, and his wife believed as simply as he had believed in his earliest childhood, and ninety-nine hundredths of the Russian people, all the working-people for whose life he felt the deepest respect, believed. Another fact of which he became convinced, after reading many scientific books, was that the men who shared his views had no other construction to put on them, and that they gave no explanation of the questions which he felt he could not live without answering, but simply ignored their existence and attempted to explain other questions of no possible interest to him, such as the evolution of organisms, the materialistic theory of consciousness, etc. Moreover, during his wife's confinement, something had happened that seemed extraordinary to him. He, an unbeliever, had fallen into praying, and at the moment he prayed, he believed. But that moment had passed, and he could not make his state of mind at that moment fit into the rest of his life. He could not admit that at that moment he knew the truth, and that now he was wrong; for as soon as he began thinking calmly about it, it all fell to pieces. He could not admit that he was mistaken then, for his spiritual condition then was precious to him, and to admit that it was a proof of weakness would have been to desecrate those moments.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  XXXIV B EFORE the end of the course of drinking the waters, Prince Shtcherbatsky, who had gone on from Carlsbad to Baden and Kissingen to Russian friends—to get a breath of Russian air, as he said—came back to his wife and daughter. The views of the prince and of the princess on life abroad were completely opposed. The princess thought everything delightful, and in spite of her established position in Russian society, she tried abroad to be like a European fashionable lady, which she was not—for the simple reason that she was a typical Russian gentlewoman; and so she was affected, which did not altogether suit her. The prince, on the contrary, thought everything foreign detestable, got sick of European life, kept to his Russian habits, and purposely tried to show himself abroad less European than he was in reality. The prince returned thinner, with the skin hanging in loose bags on his cheeks, but in the most cheerful frame of mind. His good-humour was even greater when he saw Kitty completely recovered. The news of Kitty's friendship with Madame Stahl and Varenka, and the reports the princess gave him of some kind of change she had noticed in Kitty, troubled the prince and aroused his habitual feeling of jealousy of everything that drew his daughter away from him, and a dread that his daughter might have got out of the reach of his influence into regions inaccessible to him. But these unpleasant matters were all drowned in the sea of kindliness and good-humour which was always within him, and more so than ever since his course of Carlsbad waters. The day after his arrival the prince, in his long overcoat, with his Russian wrinkles and baggy cheeks propped up by a starched collar, set off with his daughter to the spring in the greatest good-humour. It was a lovely morning: the bright, cheerful houses with their little gardens, the sight of the red-faced, red-armed beer-drinking German waitresses, working away merrily, did the heart good. But the nearer they got to the springs the oftener they met sick people; and their appearance seemed more pitiable than ever among the everyday conditions of prosperous German life. Kitty was no longer struck by this contrast.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Again, just as at the first moment of hearing of her rupture with her husband, Vronsky, on reading the letter, was unconsciously carried away by the natural sensation aroused in him by his own relation to the betrayed husband. Now while he held his letter in his hands, he could not help picturing the challenge, which he would not likely find at home today or tomorrow, and the duel itself, in which, with the same cold and haughty expression that his face was assuming at this moment, he would await the injured husband's shot, after having himself fired into the air. And at that instant there flashed across his mind the thought of what Serpuhovskoy had just said to him, and what he had himself been thinking in the morning—that it was better not to bind himself—and he knew that this thought he could not tell her. Having read the letter, he raised his eyes to her, and there was no determination in them. She saw at once that he had been thinking about it before by himself. She knew that whatever he might say to her, he would not say all he thought. And she knew that her last hope had failed her. This was not what she had been reckoning on. 'You see the sort of man he is,' she said, with a shaking voice; 'he . . . ' 'Forgive me, but I rejoice at it,' Vronsky interrupted. 'For God's sake, let me finish!' he added, his eyes imploring her to give him time to explain his words. 'I rejoice, because things cannot, cannot possibly remain as he supposes.' 'Why can't they?' Anna said, restraining her tears, and obviously attaching no sort of consequence to what he said. She felt that her fate was sealed. Vronsky meant that after the duel—inevitable, he thought—things could not go on as before, but he said something different. 'It can't go on. I hope that now you will leave him. I hope'—he was confused, and reddened—'that you will let me arrange and plan our life. Tomorrow…' he was beginning. She did not let him go on. 'But my child!' she shrieked. 'You see what he writes! I should have to leave him, and I can't and won't do that.' 'But, for God's sake, which is better?—leave your child, or keep up this degrading position?' 'To whom is it degrading?' 'To all, and most of all to you.' 'You say degrading . . . don't say that. Those words have no meaning for me,' she said in a shaking voice. She did not want him now to say what was untrue. She had nothing left her but his love, and she wanted to love him. 'Don't you understand that from the day I loved you everything has changed for me?

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  When they were left alone, Katavasov addressed him. 'What different positions they come from, all those fellows who are going off there,' Katavasov said vaguely, not wishing to express his own opinion, and at the same time anxious to find out the old man's views. The old man was an officer who had served on two campaigns. He knew what makes a soldier, and judging by the appearance and the talk of those persons, by the swagger with which they had recourse to the bottle on the journey, he considered them poor soldiers. Moreover, he lived in a district town, and he was longing to tell how one soldier had volunteered from his town, a drunkard and a thief whom no one would employ as a labourer. But knowing by experience that in the present condition of the public temper it was dangerous to express an opinion opposed to the general one, and especially to criticise the volunteers unfavourably, he too watched Katavasov without committing himself. 'Well, men are wanted there,' he said, laughing with his eyes. And they fell to talking of the last war news, and each concealed from the other his perplexity as to the engagement expected next day, since the Turks had been beaten, according to the latest news, at all points. And so they parted, neither giving expression to his opinion. Katavasov went back to his own carriage, and with reluctant hypocrisy reported to Sergey Ivanovitch his observations of the volunteers, from which it would appear that they were capital fellows. At the big station at a town the volunteers were again greeted with shouts and singing, again men and women with collecting-boxes appeared, and provincial ladies brought bouquets to the volunteers and followed them into the refreshment-room; but all this was on a much smaller and feebler scale than in Moscow. IV W HILE the train was stopping at the provincial town, Sergey Ivanovitch did not go to the refreshment-room, but walked up and down the platform. The first time he passed Vronsky's compartment he noticed that the curtain was drawn over the window; but as he passed it the second time he saw the old countess at the window. She beckoned to Koznishev. 'I'm going, you see, taking him as far as Kursk,' she said. 'Yes, so I heard,' said Sergey Ivanovitch, standing at her window and peeping in. 'What a noble act on his part!' he added, noticing that Vronsky was not in the compartment. 'Yes, after his misfortune, what was there for him to do?' 'What a terrible thing it was!' said Sergey Ivanovitch. 'Ah, what I have been through! But do get in. . . . Ah, what I have been through!' she repeated, when Sergey Ivanovitch had got in and sat down beside her. 'You can't conceive it! For six weeks he did not speak to anyone, and would not touch food except when I implored him.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  'A splendid baby!' said Lizaveta Petrovna. Levin sighed with mortification. This splendid baby excited in him no feeling but disgust and compassion. It was not at all the feeling he had looked forward to. He turned away while Lizaveta Petrovna put the baby to the unaccustomed breast. Suddenly laughter made him look round. The baby had taken the breast. 'Come, that's enough, that's enough!' said Lizaveta Petrovna, but Kitty would not let the baby go. He fell asleep in her arms. 'Look, now,' said Kitty, turning the baby so that he could see it. The aged-looking little face suddenly puckered up still more and the baby sneezed. Smiling, hardly able to restrain his tears, Levin kissed his wife and went out of the dark room. What he felt towards this little creature was utterly unlike what he had expected. There was nothing cheerful and joyous in the feeling; on the contrary, it was a new torture of apprehension. It was the consciousness of a new sphere of liability to pain. And this sense was so painful at first, the apprehension lest this helpless creature should suffer was so intense, that it prevented him from noticing the strange thrill of senseless joy and even pride that he had felt when the baby sneezed. XVII S TEPAN A RKADYEVITCH ' S affairs were in a very bad way. The money for two-thirds of the forest had all been spent already, and he had borrowed from the merchant in advance at ten per cent discount almost all the remaining third. The merchant would not give more, especially as Darya Alexandrovna, for the first time that winter insisting on her right to her own property, had refused to sign the receipt for the payment of the last third of the forest. All his salary went on household expenses and in payment of petty debts that could not be put off. There was positively no money. This was unpleasant and awkward, and in Stepan Arkadyevitch's opinion things could not go on like this. The explanation of the position was, in his view, to be found in the fact that his salary was too small. The post he filled had been unmistakably very good five years ago, but it was so no longer.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  The excitement grew more intense, and every face betrayed some uneasiness. The excitement was specially keen for the leaders of each party, who knew every detail, and had reckoned up every vote. They were the generals organising the approaching battle. The rest, like the rank and file before an engagement, though they were getting ready for the fight, sought for other distractions in the interval. Some were lunching, standing at the bar, or sitting at the table; others were walking up and down the long room, smoking cigarettes, and talking with friends whom they had not seen for a long while. Levin did not care to eat, and he was not smoking; he did not want to join his own friends, that is Sergey Ivanovitch, Stepan Arkadyevitch, Sviazhsky and the rest, because Vronsky in his equerry's uniform was standing with them in eager conversation. Levin had seen him already at the meeting on the previous day, and he had studiously avoided him, not caring to greet him. He went to the window and sat down, scanning the groups, and listening to what was being said around him. He felt depressed, especially because everyone else was, as he saw, eager, anxious, and interested, and he alone, with an old, toothless little man with mumbling lips wearing a naval uniform, sitting beside him, had no interest in it and nothing to do. 'He's such a blackguard! I have told him so, but it makes no difference. Only think of it! He couldn't collect it in three years!' he heard vigorously uttered by a round-shouldered short country gentleman, who had pomaded hair hanging on his embroidered collar, and new boots, obviously put on for the occasion, with heels that tapped energetically as he spoke. Casting a displeased glance at Levin, this gentleman sharply turned his back. 'Yes, it's a dirty business, there's no denying,' a small gentleman assented in a high voice. Next a whole crowd of country gentlemen, surrounding a stout general, hurriedly came near Levin. These persons were unmistakably seeking a place where they could talk without being overheard. 'How dare he say I had his breeches stolen! Pawned them for drink, I expect. Damn the fellow, prince indeed! He'd better not say it, the beast!' 'But excuse me! They take their stand on the act,' was being said in another group; 'the wife must be registered as noble.' 'Oh, damn your acts! I speak from my heart. We're all gentlemen, aren't we? Above suspicion.' 'Shall we go on, your excellency, fine champagne?'

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Kartasov, a fat, bald man, was continually looking round at Anna, while he attempted to soothe his wife. When the wife had gone out, the husband lingered a long while, and tried to catch Anna's eye, obviously anxious to bow to her. But Anna, with unmistakable intention, avoided noticing him, and talked to Yashvin, whose cropped head was bent down to her. Kartasov went out without making his salutation, and the box was left empty. Vronsky could not understand exactly what had passed between the Kartasovs and Anna, but he saw that something humiliating for Anna had happened. He knew this both from what he had seen, and most of all from the face of Anna, who, he could see, was taxing every nerve to carry through the part she had taken up. And in maintaining this attitude of external composure she was completely successful. Anyone who did not know her and her circle, who had not heard all the utterances of the women expressive of commiseration, indignation, and amazement, that she should show herself in society, and show herself so conspicuously with her lace and her beauty, would have admired the serenity and loveliness of this woman without a suspicion that she was undergoing the sensations of a man in the stocks. Knowing that something had happened, but not knowing precisely what, Vronsky felt a thrill of agonising anxiety, and hoping to find out something, he went towards his brother's box. Purposely choosing the way round furthest from Anna's box, he jostled as he came out against the colonel of his old regiment, talking to two acquaintances. Vronsky heard the name of Madame Karenin, and noticed how the colonel hastened to address Vronsky loudly by name, with a meaning glance at his companions. Ah, Vronsky! When are you coming to the regiment? We can't let you off without a supper. You're one of the old set,' said the colonel of his regiment. 'I can't stop, awfully sorry, another time,' said Vronsky, and he ran upstairs towards his brother's box. The old countess, Vronsky's mother, with her steel-grey curls, was in his brother's box. Varya with the young Princess Sorokin met him in the corridor. Leaving the Princess Sorokin with her mother, Varya held out her hand to her brother-in-law, and began immediately to speak of what interested him. She was more excited than he had ever seen her. 'I think it's mean and hateful, and Madame Kartasov had no right to do it. Madame Karenin . . . ' she began. 'But what is it? I don't know.' 'What? you've not heard?' 'You know I should be the last person to hear of it.' 'There isn't a more spiteful creature than that Madame Kartasov!' 'But what did she do?' 'My husband told me. . . . She has insulted Madame Karenin. Her husband began talking to her across the box, and Madame Kartasov made a scene.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  The assistant inquired in German whether he should give it, and receiving an affirmative reply from behind the partition, he took a bottle and a funnel, deliberately poured the opium from a bigger bottle into a little one, stuck on a label, sealed it up, in spite of Levin's request that he would not do so, and was about to wrap it up too. This was more than Levin could stand; he took the bottle firmly out of his hands, and ran to the big glass doors. The doctor was not even now getting up, and the footman, busy now in putting down the rugs, refused to wake him. Levin deliberately took out a ten-rouble note, and careful to speak slowly, though losing no time over the business, he handed him the note, and explained that Pyotr Dmitrievitch (what a great and important personage he seemed to Levin now, this Pyotr Dmitrievitch, who had been of so little consequence in his eyes before!) had promised to come at any time; that he would certainly not be angry; and that he must therefore wake him at once. The footman agreed, and went upstairs, taking Levin into the waiting-room. Levin could hear through the door the doctor coughing, moving about, washing, and saying something. Three minutes passed; it seemed to Levin that more than an hour had gone by. He could not wait any longer. 'Pyotr Dmitrievitch, Pyotr Dmitrievitch!' he said in an imploring voice at the open door. 'For God's sake, forgive me! See me as you are. It's been going on more than two hours already.' 'In a minute; in a minute!' answered a voice, and to his amazement Levin heard the doctor was smiling as he spoke. 'For one instant.' 'In a minute.' Two minutes more passed while the doctor was putting on his boots, and two minutes more while the doctor put on his coat and combed his hair. 'Pyotr Dmitrievitch!' Levin was beginning again in a plaintive voice, just as the doctor came in dressed and ready. 'These people have no conscience,' thought Levin. 'Combing his hair, while we're dying!' 'Good-morning!' the doctor said to him, shaking hands, and, as it were, teasing him with his composure. 'There's no hurry. Well now?' Trying to be as accurate as possible, Levin began to tell him every unnecessary detail of his wife's condition, interrupting his account repeatedly with entreaties that the doctor would come with him at once. 'Oh, you needn't be in any hurry. You don't understand, you know. I'm certain I'm not wanted, still I've promised, and if you like, I'll come. But there's no hurry.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  She's unhappy as only an unhappy woman can be, and you cannot refuse in such . . . ' 'As much of what I promised as is possible. Vous professez d'être libre pehseur. But I as a believer cannot, in a matter of such gravity, act in opposition to the Christian law.' 'But in Christian societies and among us, as far as I'm aware, divorce is allowed,' said Stepan Arkadyevitch. 'Divorce is sanctioned even by our church. And we see . . . ' 'It is allowed, but not in the sense…' 'Alexey Alexandrovitch, you are not like yourself,' said Oblonsky, after a brief pause. 'Wasn't it you (and didn't we all appreciate it in you?) who forgave everything, and moved simply by Christian feeling was ready to make any sacrifice? You said yourself: if a man take thy coat, give him thy cloak also, and now…' 'I beg,' said Alexey Alexandrovitch shrilly, getting suddenly on to his feet, white and his jaws twitching, 'I beg you to drop this . . . to drop . . . this subject!' 'Oh no! Oh, forgive me, forgive me if I have wounded you,' said Stepan Arkadyevitch, holding out his hand with a smile of embarrassment; 'but like a messenger I have simply performed the commission given me.' Alexey Alexandrovitch gave him his hand, pondered a little, and said— 'I must think it over and seek for guidance. The day after tomorrow I will give you a final answer,' he said, after considering a moment. XIX S TEPAN A RKADYEVITCH was about to go away when Korney came in to announce— 'Sergey Alexyevitch!' 'Who's Sergey Alexyevitch?' Stepan Arkadyevitch was beginning, but he remembered immediately. 'Ah, Seryozha!' he said aloud. 'Sergey Alexyevitch! I thought it was the director of a department. Anna asked me to see him too,' he thought. And he recalled the timid, piteous expression with which Anna had said to him at parting: 'Anyway, you will see him. Find out exactly where he is, who is looking after him. And Stiva . . . if it were possible! Could it be possible?' Stepan Arkadyevitch knew what was meant by that 'if it were possible,'—if it were possible to arrange the divorce so as to let her have her son…. Stepan Arkadyevitch saw now that it was no good to dream of that, but still he was glad to see his nephew. Alexey Alexandrovitch reminded his brother-in-law that they never spoke to the boy of his mother, and he begged him not to mention a single word about her. 'He was very ill after that interview with his mother, which we had not foreseen,' said Alexey Alexandrovitch. 'Indeed, we feared for his life. But with rational treatment, and sea-bathing in the summer, he regained his strength, and now, by the doctor's advice, I have let him go to school. And certainly the companionship of school has had a good effect on him, and he is perfectly well, and making good progress.'

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  She knew that the old lady was expected from day to day, that she would be pleased at her son's choice, and she felt it strange that he should not make his offer through fear of vexing his mother. However, she was so anxious for the marriage itself, and still more for relief from her fears, that she believed it was so. Bitter as it was for the princess to see the unhappiness of her eldest daughter, Dolly, on the point of leaving her husband, her anxiety over the decision of her youngest daughter's fate engrossed all her feelings. Today, with Levin's reappearance, a fresh source of anxiety arose. She was afraid that her daughter, who had at one time, as she fancied, a feeling for Levin, might, from extreme sense of honour, refuse Vronsky, and that Levin's arrival might generally complicate and delay the affair so near being concluded. 'Why, has he been here long?' the princess asked about Levin, as they returned home. 'He came today, mamma.' 'There's one thing I want to say . . .' began the princess, and from her serious and alert face, Kitty guessed what it would be. 'Mamma,' she said, flushing hotly and turning quickly to her, 'please, please don't say anything about that. I know, I know all about it.' She wished for what her mother wished for, but the motives of her mother's wishes wounded her. 'I only want to say that to raise hopes…' 'Mamma, darling, for goodness' sake, don't talk about it. It's so horrible to talk about it.' 'I won't,' said her mother, seeing the tears in her daughter's eyes; 'but one thing, my love; you promised me you would have no secrets from me. You won't?' 'Never, mamma, none,' answered Kitty, flushing a little, and looking her mother straight in the face; 'but there's no use in my telling you anything, and I . . . I . . . if I wanted to, I don't know what to say or how . . . I don't know . . . ' 'No, she could not tell an untruth with those eyes,' thought the mother, smiling at her agitation and happiness. The princess smiled that what was taking place just now in her soul seemed to the poor child so immense and so important. XIII A FTER dinner, and till the beginning of the evening, Kitty was feeling a sensation akin to the sensation of a young man before a battle. Her heart throbbed violently, and her thoughts would not rest on anything. She felt that this evening, when they would both meet for the first time, would be a turning-point in her life. And she was continually picturing them to herself, at one moment each separately, and then both together.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  The foot, the jaw, the lips, even the eyelid, have been in turn made organs of reaction, and the apparatus has been modified accordingly.[106] The time usually elapsing between stimulus and movement lies between one and three tenths of a second, varying according to circumstances which will be mentioned anon. The subject of experiment, whenever the reactions are short and regular, is in a state of extreme tension, and feels, when the signal comes, as if it started the reaction, by a sort of fatality, and as if no psychic process of perception or volition had a chance to intervene. The whole succession is so rapid that perception seems to be retrospective, and the time-order of events to be read off in memory rather than known at the moment. This at least is my own personal experience in the matter, and with it I find others to agree. The question is, What happens inside of us, either in brain or mind? and to answer that we must analyze just what processes the reaction involves. It is evident that some time is lost in each of the following stages: 1. The stimulus excites the peripheral sense-organ adequately for a current to pass into the sensory nerve; 2. The sensory nerve is traversed; 3. The transformation (or reflection) of the sensory into a motor current occurs in the centres; 4. The spinal cord and motor nerve are traversed; 5. The motor current excites the muscle to the contracting point. Time is also lost, of course, outside the muscle, in the joints, skin, etc., and between the parts of the apparatus; and when the stimulus which serves as signal is applied to the skin of the trunk or limbs, time is lost in the sensorial conduction through the spinal cord. The stage marked 3 is the only one that interests us here. The other stages answer to purely physiological processes, but stage 3 is psycho-physical; that is, it is a higher-central process, and has probably some sort of consciousness accompanying it. What sort? Wundt has little difficulty in deciding that it is consciousness of a quite elaborate kind. He distinguishes between two stages in the conscious reception of an impression, calling one perception , and the other apperception , and likening the one to the mere entrance of an object into the periphery of the field of vision, and the other to its coming to occupy the focus or point of view. Inattentive awareness of an object, and attention to it, are, it seems to me, equivalents for perception and apperception, as Wundt uses the words. To these two forms of awareness of the impression Wundt adds the conscious volition to react, gives to the trio the name of 'psycho-physical' processes, and assumes that they actually follow upon each other in the succession in which they have been named.[107] So at least I understand him. The simplest way to determine the time taken up by this psycho-physical stage No.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  But what is lost for thought is converted into feeling, in this case into the peculiar feeling of effort, difficulty, or strain. The stream of our thought is like a river. On the whole easy simple flowing predominates in it, the drift of things is with the pull of gravity, and effortless attention is the rule. But at intervals an obstruction, a set-back, a log-jam occurs, stops the current, creates an eddy, and makes things temporarily move the other way. If a real river could feel, it would feel these eddies and set-backs as places of effort. "I am here flowing," it would say, "in the direction of greatest resistance, instead of flowing, as usual, in the direction of least. My effort is what enables me to perform this feat." Really, the effort would only be a passive index that the feat was being performed. The agent would all the while be the total downward drift of the rest of the water, forcing some of it upwards in this spot; and although, on the average , the direction of least resistance is downwards, that would be no reason for its not being upwards now and then. Just so with our voluntary acts of attention. They are momentary arrests, coupled with a peculiar feeling, or portions of the stream. But the arresting force, instead of being this peculiar feeling itself, may be nothing but the processes by which the collision is produced. The feeling of effort may be 'an accompaniment,' as Mr. Bradley says,' more or less superfluous,' and no more contribute to the result than the pain in a man's finger, when a hammer falls on it, contributes to the hammer's weight. Thus the notion that our effort in attending is an original faculty, a force additional to the others of which brain and mind are the seat, may be an abject superstition. Attention may have to go, like many a faculty once deemed essential, like many a verbal phantom, like many an idol of the tribe. It may be an excrescence on Psychology. No need of it to drag ideas before consciousness or fix them, when we see how perfectly they drag and fix each other there. I have stated the effect-theory as persuasively as I can.[378] It is a clear, strong, well-equipped conception, and like all such, is fitted to carry conviction, where there is no contrary proof. The feeling of effort certainly may be an inert accompaniment and not the active element which it seems.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible. To sustain the arguments for the good course and keep them ever before us, to stifle our longing for more flowery ways, to keep the foot unflinchingly on the arduous path, these are characteristic ethical energies. But more than these; for these but deal with the means of compassing interests already felt by the man to be supreme. The ethical energy par excellence has to go farther and choose which interest out of several, equally coercive, shall become supreme. The issue here is of the utmost pregnancy, for it decides a man's entire career. When he debates, Shall I commit this crime? choose that profession? accept that office, or marry this fortune?—his choice really lies between one of several equally possible future Characters. What he shall become is fixed by the conduct of this moment. Schopenhauer, who enforces his determinism by the argument that with a given fixed character only one reaction is possible under given circumstances, forgets that, in these critical ethical moments, what consciously seems to be in question is the complexion of the character itself. The problem with the man is less what act he shall now choose to do, than what being he shall now resolve to become. Looking back, then, over this review, we see that the mind is at every stage a theatre of simultaneous possibilities. Consciousness consists in the comparison of these with each other, the selection of some, and the suppression of the rest by the reinforcing and inhibiting agency of attention. The highest and most elaborated mental products are filtered from the data chosen by the faculty next beneath, out of the mass offered by the faculty below that, which mass in turn was sifted from a still larger amount of yet simpler material, and so on. The mind, in short, works on the data it receives very much as a sculptor works on his block of stone. In a sense the statue stood there from eternity. But there were a thousand different ones beside it, and the sculptor alone is to thank for having extricated this one from the rest. Just so the world of each of us, howsoever different our several views of it may be, all lay embedded in the primordial chaos of sensations, which gave the mere matter to the thought of all of us indifferently. We may, if we like, by our reasonings unwind things back to that black and jointless continuity of space and moving clouds of swarming atoms which science calls the only real world. But all the while the world we feel and live in will be that which our ancestors and we, by slowly cumulative strokes of choice, have extricated out of this, like sculptors, by simply rejecting certain portions of the given stuff. Other sculptors, other statues from the same stone! Other minds, other worlds from the same monotonous and inexpressive chaos!

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  What is called sustained voluntary attention is a repetition of successive efforts which bring back the topic to the mind.[341] The topic once brought back, if a congenial one, develops ; and if its development is interesting it engages the attention passively for a time. Dr. Carpenter, a moment back, described the stream of thought, once entered, as 'bearing him along.' This passive interest may be short or long. As soon as it flags, the attention is diverted by some irrelevant thing, and then a voluntary effort may bring it back to the topic again; and so on, under favorable conditions, for hours together. During all this time, however, note that it is not an identical object in the psychological sense (p. 183), but a succession of mutually related objects forming an identical topic only, upon which the attention is fixed. No one can possibly attend continuously to an object that does not change. Now there are always some objects that for the time being will not develop . They simply go out ; and to keep the mind upon anything related to them requires such incessantly renewed effort that the most resolute Will ere long gives out and let its thoughts follow the more stimulating solicitations after it has withstood them for what length of time it can. There are topics known to every man from which he shies like a frightened horse, and which to get a glimpse of is to shun. Such are his ebbing assets to the spendthrift in full career. But why single out the spendthrift when to every man actuated by passion the thought of interests which negate the passion can hardly for more than a fleeting instant stay before the mind? It is like 'memento mori ' in the heyday of the pride of life. Nature rises at such suggestions, and excludes them from the view:—How long, O healthy reader, can you now continue thinking of your tomb?—In milder instances the difficulty is as great, especially when the brain is fagged. One snatches at any and every passing pretext, no matter how trivial or external, to escape from the odiousness of the matter in hand.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  In this way I have seen the time of reaction upon a sound so weak as to be barely perceived rise to 0.4" or 0.5", and for a strong sound to 0.25". It is also matter of general experience that a stimulus expected in a general way, but for whose intensity attention cannot be adapted in advance, demands a longer reaction-time. In such cases . . . the reason for the difference can only lie in the fact that wherever a preparation of the attention is impossible, the time of both perception and volition is prolonged. Perhaps also the conspicuously large reaction-times which are got with stimuli so faint as to be just perceptible may be explained by the attention tending always to adapt itself for something more than this minimal amount of stimulus, so that a state ensues similar to that in the case of unexpected stimuli. . . . Still more than by previously unknown stimuli is the reaction-time prolonged by wholly unexpected impressions. This is sometimes accidentally brought about, when the observer's attention, instead of being concentrated on the coming signal, is dispersed. It can be realized purposely by suddenly thrusting into a long series of equidistant stimuli a much shorter interval which the observer does not expect. The mental effect here is like that of being startled;—often the startling is outwardly visible. The time of reaction may then easily be lengthened to one quarter of a second with strong signals, or with weak ones to a half-second. Slighter, but still very noticeable, is the retardation when the experiment is so arranged that the observer, ignorant whether the stimulus is to be an impression of light, sound, or touch, cannot keep his attention turned to any particular sense-organ in advance. One notices then at the same time a peculiar unrest, as the feeling of strain which accompanies the attention keeps vacillating between the several senses. "Complications of another sort arise when what is registered is an impression anticipated both in point of quality and strength, but accompanied by other stimuli which make the concentration of the attention difficult. The reaction-time is here always more or less prolonged. The simplest case of the sort is where a momentary impression is registered in the midst of another, and continuous, sensorial-stimulation of considerable strength. The continuous stimulus may belong to the same sense as the stimulus to be reacted on, or to another. When it is of the same sense, the retardation it causes may be partly due to the distraction of the attention by it, but partly also to the fact that the stimulus to be reacted on stands out less strongly than if alone, and practically becomes a less intense sensation.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  It might seem that in these persons some sort of a sub-conscious record was kept of the lapse of time per se . But this cannot be admitted until it is proved that there are no physiological processes, the feeling of whose course may serve as a sign of how much time has sped, and so lead us to infer the hour. That there are such processes it is hardly possible to doubt. An ingenious friend of mine was long puzzled to know why each day of the week had such a characteristic physiognomy to him. That of Sunday was soon noticed to be due to the cessation of the city's rumbling, and the sound of people's feet shuffling on the sidewalk; of Monday, to come from the clothes drying in the yard and casting a white reflection on the ceiling; of Tuesday, to a cause which I forget; and I think my friend did not get beyond Wednesday. Probably each hour in the day has for most of us some outer or inner sign associated with it as closely as these signs with the days of the week. It must be admitted, after all, however, that the great improvement of the time-perception during sleep and trance is a mystery not as yet cleared up. All my life I have been struck by the accuracy with which I will wake at the same exact minute night after night and morning after morning, if only the habit fortuitously begins. The organic registration in me is independent of sleep. After lying in bed a long time awake I suddenly rise without knowing the time, and for days and weeks together will do so at an identical minute by the clock, as if some inward physiological process caused the act by punctually running down.—Idiots are said sometimes to possess the time-measuring faculty in a marked degree. I have an interesting manuscript account of an idiot girl which says: "She was punctual almost to a minute in her demand for food and other regular attentions. Her dinner was generally furnished her at 12.30 P.M., and at that hour she would begin to scream if it were not forthcoming. If on Fast-day or Thanksgiving it were delayed, in accordance with the New England custom, she screamed from her usual dinner-hour until the food was carried to her. On the next day, however, she again made known her wants promptly at 12.30. Any slight attention shown her on one day was demanded on the next at the corresponding hour. If an orange were given her at 4 P.M. on Wednesday, at the same hour on Thursday she made known her expectation, and if the fruit were not given her she continued to call for it at intervals for two or three hours.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  But other factors in reality are present; for we find the reaction-time more prolonged by the concomitant stimulation when the stimulus is weak than when it is strong. I made experiments in which the principal impression, or signal for reaction, was a bell-stroke whose strength could be graduated by a spring against the hammer with a movable counterpoise. Each set of observations comprised two series; in one of which the bell-stroke was registered in the ordinary way, whilst in the other a toothed wheel belonging to the chronometric apparatus made during the entire experiment a steady noise against a metal spring. In one half of the latter series (A) the bell-stroke was only moderately strong, so that the accompanying noise diminished it considerably, without, however, making it indistinguishable. In the other half (B) the bell-sound was so loud as to be heard with perfect distinctness above the noise. [image file=Image00039.jpg] "Since, in these experiments, the sound B even with noise made a considerably stronger impression than the sound A without, we must see in the figures a direct influence of the disturbing noise on the process of reaction. This influence is freed from mixture with other factors when the momentary stimulus and the concomitant disturbance appeal to different senses. I chose, to test this, sight and hearing. The momentary signal was an induction-spark leaping from one platinum point to another against a dark background. The steady stimulation was the noise above described. [image file=Image00040.jpg] "When one reflects that in the experiments with one and the same sense the relative intensity of the signal is always depressed [which by itself is a retarding condition] the amount of retardation in these last observations makes it probable that the disturbing influence upon attention is greater when the stimuli are disparate than when they belong to the same sense . One does not, in fact, find it particularly hard to register immediately, when the bell rings in the midst of the noise; but when the spark is the signal one has a feeling of being coerced, as one turns away from the noise towards it. This fact is immediately connected with other properties of our attention. The effort of the latter is accompanied by various corporeal sensations, according to the sense which is engaged.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  [413] Ueber Gemüthsbewegungen, uebersetzt von H. Kurella (Leipzig, 1887).[414] The bronchial tubes may be contracted as well as the ramifications of the pulmonary artery. Professor J. Henle has, amongst his Anthropologische Vorträge, an exquisite one on the 'Natural History of the Sigh,' in which he represents our inspirations as the result of a battle between the red muscles of our skeleton, ribs, and diaphragm, and the white ones of the lungs, which seek to narrow the calibre of the air-tubes. "In the normal state the former easily conquer, but under other conditions they either conquer with difficulty or are defeated. . . . The contrasted emotions express themselves in similarly contrasted wise, by spasm and paralysis of the unstriped muscles, and for the most part alike in all the organs which are provided with them, as arteries, skin, and bronchial tubes. The contrast among the emotions is generally expressed by dividing them into exciting and depressing ones. It is a remarkable fact that the depressing emotions, like fear, horror, disgust, increase the contraction of these smooth muscles, whilst the exciting emotions, like joy, anger, etc., make them relax. Contrasts of temperature act similarly, cold like the depressing, and warmth like the exciting, emotions. Cold produces pallor and gooseflesh, warmth smooths out the skin and widens the vessels. If one notices the uncomfortable mood brought about by strained expectation, anxiety before a public address, vexation at an unmerited affront, etc., one finds that the suffering part of it concentrates itself principally in the chest, and that it consists in a soreness, hardly to be called pain, felt in the middle of the breast and due to an unpleasant resistance which is offered to the movements of inspiration, and sets a limit to their extent. The insufficiency of the diaphragm is obtruded upon consciousness, and we try by the aid of the external voluntary chest-muscles to draw a deeper breath. [This is the sigh.] If we fail, the unpleasantness of the situation is increased, for then to our mental distress is added the corporeally repugnant feeling of lack of air, a slight degree of suffocation. If, on the contrary, the outer muscles overcome the resistance of the inner ones, the oppressed breast is lightened. We think we speak symbolically when we speak of a stone weighing on our heart, or of a burden rolled from off our breast. But really we only express the exact fact, for we should have to raise the entire weight of the atmosphere (about 820 kilog.) at each inspiration, if the air did not balance it by streaming into our lungs." (P. 55.) It must not be forgotten that an inhibition of the inspiratory centre similar to that produced by exciting the superior laryngeal nerve may possibly play a part in these phenomena. For a very interesting discussion of the respiratory difficulty and its connection with anxiety and fear, see 'A Case of Hydrophobia' by the lamented Thos. B. Curtis in the Boston Med. and Surg.

• From The Principles of Psychology (Volume 1 of 2) (1890)

  An invisible law, as strong as gravitation, keeps him within his orbit, arrayed this year as he was the last; and how his better-bred acquaintances contrive to get the things they wear will be for him a mystery till his dying day. The great thing, then, in all education, is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy . It is to fund and capitalize our acquisitions, and live at ease upon the interest of the fund. For this we must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can , and guard against the growing into ways that are likely to be disadvantageous to us, as we should guard against the plague. The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work. There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision, and for whom the lighting of every cigar, the drinking of every cup, the time of rising and going to bed every day, and the beginning of every bit of work, are subjects of express volitional deliberation. Full half the time of such a man goes to the deciding, or regretting, of matters which ought to be so ingrained in him as practically not to exist for his consciousness at all. If there be such daily duties not yet ingrained in any one of my readers, let him begin this very hour to set the matter right. In Professor Bain's chapter on 'The Moral Habits' there are some admirable practical remarks laid down. Two great maxims emerge from his treatment. The first is that in the acquisition of a new habit, or the leaving off of an old one, we must take care to launch ourselves with as strong and decided an initiative as possible . Accumulate all the possible circumstances which shall re-enforce the right motives; put yourself assiduously in conditions that encourage the new way; make engagements incompatible with the old; take a public pledge, if the case allows; in short, envelop your resolution with every aid you know. This will give your new beginning such a momentum that the temptation to break down will not occur as soon as it otherwise might; and every day during which a breakdown is postponed adds to the chances of its not occurring at all. The second maxim is: Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life . Each lapse is like the letting fall of a ball of string which one is carefully winding up; a single slip undoes more than a great many turns will wind again. Continuity of training is the great means of making the nervous system act infallibly right.