Bewilderment

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

Page 2 of 69 · 20 per page

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality CHAPTER TWENTY On Mona Lisa’s Mind Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.) W ALT W HITMAN, Song of Myself Faced with the mysteries of woman, Sigmund Freud, who seemed to have an answer for everything else, came up empty. “Despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul,” he wrote, “I have not yet been able to answer … the great question that has never been answered: what does a woman want?” It’s no accident that what the BBC called “the most famous image in the history of art” is a study of the inscrutable feminine created by a homosexual male artist. For centuries, men have been wondering what Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa was thinking. Is she smiling? Is she angry? Disappointed? Unwell? Nauseated? Sad? Shy? Turned on? None of the above? Probably closer to all of the above. Does she contradict herself? Very well, then. The Mona Lisa is large. Like all women, but more—like all that is feminine—she reflects every phase of the moon. She contains multitudes. Our journey into a deeper understanding of the “feminine soul” begins in a muddy field in the English countryside. In the early 1990s, neuroscientist Keith Kendrick and his colleagues exchanged that season’s newborn sheep and goats (the baby sheep were raised by adult goats, and vice versa). Upon reaching sexual maturity a few years later, the animals were reunited with their own species and their mating behavior was observed. The females adopted a love-the-one-you’re-with approach, showing themselves willing to mate with males of either species. But the males, even after being back with their own species for three years, would mate only with the species with which they were raised. 1 Research like this suggests strong differences in degrees of “erotic plasticity” (changeability) in the males and females of many species—including ours. 2 The human female’s sexual behavior is typically far more malleable than the male’s. Greater erotic plasticity leads most women to experience more variation in their sexuality than men typically do, and women’s sexual behavior is far more responsive to social pressure. This greater plasticity could manifest through changes in whom a woman wants, in how much she wants him/her/them, and in how she expresses her desire. Young males pass through a brief period in which their sexuality is like hot wax waiting to be imprinted, but the wax soon cools and solidifies, leaving the imprint for life. For females, the wax appears to stay soft and malleable throughout their lives. This greater erotic plasticity appears to manifest in women’s more holistic responses to sexual imagery and thoughts. In 2006, psychologist Meredith Chivers set up an experiment where she showed a variety of sexual videos to men and women, both straight and gay.

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  With a breeding adult typically living thirty years or more, these “model parents” have at least two dozen “families” in a lifetime. Did someone say “ideal example of monogamy”? Whether you found the film to be cloyingly sweet or refreshingly so, a bold, if somewhat perverse, double feature would pair The March of the Penguins with Werner Herzog’s Encounters at the End of the World. Herzog’s documentary of the Antarctic is a masterpiece of photography and interviews with a range of surprising characters, including Dr. David Ainley, an almost comically reserved marine ecologist who has been studying penguins in Antarctica for two decades. Under Herzog’s wry questioning, Ainley reports having witnessed cases of penguin ménages-à-trois, in which two males take turns caring for a particular female’s egg, as well as “penguin prostitution,” where females receive prime nest-building pebbles in exchange for a bit of penguin poontang. The prairie vole is another supposed paragon of “natural monogamy.” According to one newspaper article, “Prairie voles—squat rodents indigenous to plains and grasslands—are considered to be a near-perfect monogamous species. They form pair bonds that share a nest. Both male and female actively protect each other, their territory, and their young. The male is an active parent and, if one of the pair dies, the survivor does not take a new mate.” 19 Considering the vitriol Darwin faced 150 years ago when he dared compare humans to apes, it’s striking to note the scraps of comfort contemporary scientists find in equating human sexual behavior with that of the ratlike prairie vole. We who once compared ourselves to angels now see ourselves reflected in this lowly rodent. But C. Sue Carter and Lowell L. Getz, who have studied the biology of monogamy in prairie voles and other species for thirty-five years, are unambiguous: “Sexual exclusivity,” they write “is not a feature of [the vole’s] monogamy.” 20 Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health (formerly director of Yerkes Primate Center) and an expert on the prairie vole, says that those in the know have a less exalted view of the prairie vole’s monogamy: “They’ll sleep with anyone but they’ll only sit by their partners.” 21 Then there’s that line (invariably directed at women, for some reason) that goes, “If you’re looking for monogamy, marry a swan.” * So what about swans, then? Many species of birds have long been believed to be monogamous because two parents are needed for the 24/7 labor of incubating eggs and feeding nestlings. As with humans, investment-minded theorists assumed males would help out only if they were certain the young were their own.

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  These same dynamics apply to human groups. Aside from “the social habits of man as he now exists,” why presume the monogamous pair-based model of human evolution currently favored would have been adaptive for early humans, but not for bonobos in the jungles of central Africa? Unconstrained by cultural restrictions, the so-called continual responsiveness of the human female would fulfill the same function: provide plentiful sexual opportunity for males, thereby reducing conflict and allowing larger group sizes, more extensive cooperation, and greater security for all. As anthropologist Chris Knight puts it, “Whereas the basic primate pattern is to deliver a periodic ‘yes’ signal against a background of continuous sexual ‘no’, humans [and bonobos] emit a periodic ‘no’ signal against a background of continuous ‘yes’.” 24 Here we have the same behavioral and physiological adaptation, unique to two very closely related primates, yet many theorists insist the adaptation must have completely different origins and functions in each. Based on Dewaal and Lanting (1998) This increased social cohesion is, in fact, probably the most common explanation for the potent combination of extended receptivity and hidden ovulation found only in humans and bonobos. 25 But most scientists seem to see only half of this logical connection, as in this abstract: “Females who concealed ovulation were favored because the group in which they lived maintained a peaceful stability that facilitated monogamy, sharing and cooperation.” 26 It’s clear how greater female sexual availability could increase sharing, cooperation, and peaceful stability, but why monogamy should be added to the list is a question that not only goes unanswered but is almost never asked. Those anthropologists willing to acknowledge the realities of human sexuality see its social benefits clearly. Beckerman and Valentine point to the fact that partible paternity defuses potential conflicts between men, noting that such antagonisms tend to be unhelpful to a woman’s long-term reproductive interests. Anthropologist Thomas Gregor reported eighty-eight ongoing affairs among the thirty-seven adults in the Mehinaku village he studied in Brazil. In his opinion, extramarital relationships “contribute to village cohesion,” by “consolidating relationships between persons of different [clans]” and “promoting enduring relationships based on mutual affection.” He found that “many lovers are very fond of one another and regard separation as a privation to avoid.” 27 Rather than risk overwhelming you with dozens more examples of this community-building, conflict-reducing human sexuality, we’ll conclude with just one more. Anthropologists William and Jean Crocker visited and studied the Canela people—also of the Brazilian Amazon region—for more than three decades, beginning in the late 1950s. They explain: It is difficult for members of a modern individualistic society to imagine the extent to which the Canela saw the group and the tribe as more important than the individual. Generosity and sharing was the ideal, while withholding was a social evil. Sharing possessions brought esteem. Sharing one’s body was a direct corollary. Desiring control over one’s goods and self was a form of stinginess.

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  Take the average height of a full-grown man living in prehistoric times (using skeletal remains as a guide): about six feet tall (72 inches). Then take the average size of a prehistoric infant’s skeleton (let’s say about 20 inches). Then extrapolate from the ratio of infant-to-adult skeletons at known archaeological burial sites and presume that in general, for every three people who lived to adulthood, seven died as infants. Thus, owing to the high rate of infant mortality, average human height in prehistory was (3 × 72) + (7 × 20) ÷ 10 = 35.6 inches. Roughly three feet. 1 Absurd? Yes. Misleading? Yup. Statistically accurate? Well, kinda. This height expectancy “truth” is no more absurd or misleading than what most people are led to believe about human life expectancy in prehistory. Exhibit A: In an interview with NBC Nightly News, 2 UCSF bio-physicist Jeff Lotz was discussing the prevalence of chronic back pain in the United States. The millions of people watching that night heard him explain, “It wasn’t until two or three hundred years ago that we lived past age forty-five, so our spines really haven’t evolved to the point where they can maintain this upright posture with these large gravity loads for the duration of our lives [emphasis added].” Exhibit B: In an otherwise solid book about women in prehistory (The Invisible Sex), an archaeologist, an anthropologist, and an editor of one of the world’s leading science magazines team up to imagine the life of a typical woman they call Ursula, living in Europe 45,000 years ago. “Life was hard,” they write, “and many, especially the young and the old, died of starvation in winter and accidents of one sort or another, as well as disease…. Ursula [having had her first daughter at age fifteen] lived long enough to see her first granddaughter, dying at the ripe old age of 37 [emphasis added].” 3 Exhibit C: In a New York Times article, 4 James Vaupel, director of the laboratory of survival and longevity at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, explains, “There is no fixed life span.” Dr. Vaupel points to the increase in life expectancy from 1840 to today in countries where the figure is rising quickest and notes that this increase is “linear, absolutely linear, with no evidence of any decline or tapering off.” From this, he concludes, “There’s no reason that life expectancy can’t continue to go up two to three years per decade.” Except that there is. At some point, all the babies who can survive to adulthood, do. Further advances will be slight. When Does Life Begin?

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  The underlying motivation for claiming that female orgasm was unique to human beings probably lay in the role it played in the standard narrative. According to this view, orgasm evolved in the human female to facilitate and sustain the long-term pair bond at the heart of the nuclear family. 18 Once you’ve swallowed that story, it becomes problematic to admit that the females of other primate species are orgasmic, too. Your problem gets worse if the most orgasmic species happen to be the most promiscuous as well, which appeares to be the case. As Alan Dixson writes, this monogamy-maintenance explanation for female orgasm “seems farfetched. After all,” he writes, “females of other primate species, and particularly those with multimale–multifemale [promiscuous] mating systems such as macaques and chimpanzees, exhibit orgasmic responses in the absence of such bonding or the formation of stable family units.” On the other hand, Dixson goes on to note, “Gibbons, which are primarily monogamous, do not exhibit obvious signs of female orgasm.” 19 Although Dixson classifies humans as mildly polygynous in his survey of primate sexuality, he seems to have doubts, as when he writes, “One might argue that … the female’s orgasm is rewarding, increases her willingness to copulate with a variety of males rather than one partner, and thus promotes sperm competition.” 20 Donald Symons and others have argued that “orgasm is most parsimoniously interpreted as a potential all female mammals possess.” What helps realize this “potential” in some human societies, argues Symons, are “techniques of foreplay and intercourse [that] provide sufficiently intense and uninterrupted stimulation for females to orgasm.” 21 In other words, Symons thinks women have more orgasms than mares simply because men are better lovers than stallions. Stomp your foot three times if you believe this. In support of his theory, Symons cites studies like Kinsey’s showing that fewer than half of women questioned (Americans in the 1950s) experienced orgasm at least nine out of ten times they had intercourse, whereas in other societies (he refers to Mangaia, in the South Pacific), elaborate and extended sexual play result in nearly universal orgasm for women. “Orgasm,” Symons concludes, “never is considered to be a spontaneous and inevitable occurrence for females as it always is for males.” For Symons, Stephen Jay Gould, Elisabeth Lloyd, 22 and others, some women have orgasms sometimes because all men do every time. For them, the female orgasm is the equivalent of male nipples: a structural echo without function in one sex of a trait vital in the other. Given all the energy required to get there, it’s surprising that the female reproductive tract is not a particularly welcoming place for sperm cells.

• From Sex at Dawn (2010)

  Were these chimps living in a perpetual war zone, it’s unlikely these females would have been free to slip away easily enough to account for over half their pregnancies. Ovulating female chimps (despite the heightened male monitoring predicted by the standard model) eluded their male protectors/captors long enough to wander over to the other groups, mate with unfamiliar males, and then saunter back to their home group. This sort of behavior is unlikely in a state of perpetual high alert. Whatever the truth regarding relations between unprovisioned groups of chimpanzees in the wild, unconscious bias rings out in passages like this one: “In war as in romance, bonobos and chimpanzees appear to be strikingly different. When two bonobo communities meet at a range boundary at Wamba … not only is there no lethal aggression as sometimes occurs in chimps, there may be socializing and even sex between females and the enemy community’s males.” 15 Enemy? When two groups of intelligent primates get together to socialize and have sex with each other, who would think of these groups as enemies or such a meeting as war? Note the similar assumptions in this account: “Chimpanzees give a special call that alerts others at a distance to the presence of food. As such, this is food sharing of sorts, but it need not be interpreted as charitable. A caller faced with more than enough food will lose nothing by sharing it and may benefit later when another chimpanzee reciprocates [emphasis added].” 16 Perhaps this seemingly cooperative behavior “need not be interpreted as charitable,” but what’s the unspoken problem with such an interpretation? Why should we seek to explain away what looks like generosity among nonhuman primates, or other animals in general? Is generosity a uniquely human quality? Passages like these make one wonder why, as Gould asked, scientists are loath to see primate continuity in our positive impulses even as many clearly yearn to locate the roots of our aggression deep in primate past. Just imagine that we had never heard of chimpanzees or baboons and had known bonobos first. We would at present most likely believe that early hominids lived in female-centered societies, in which sex served important social functions and in which warfare was rare or absent. F RANS DE W AAL 17 Because they live only in a remote area of dense jungle in a politically volatile country (Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly Zaire), bonobos were one of the last mammals to be studied in their natural habitat. Although their anatomical differences from common chimps were noted as long ago as 1929, until bonobos’ radically different behavior became apparent, they were considered a subgroup of chimpanzee—often called “pygmy chimps.” For bonobos, female status is more important than male hierarchy, but even female rank is flexible and not binding. Bonobos have no formalized rituals of dominance and submission like the status displays common to chimps, gorillas, and other primates.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  But he was reassured at once by seeing that the words 'he's asleep' referred not to him, but to Landau. The Frenchman was asleep as well as Stepan Arkadyevitch. But Stepan Arkadyevitch's being asleep would have offended them, as he thought (though even this, he thought, might not be so, as everything seemed so queer), while Landau's being asleep delighted them extremely, especially Countess Lidia Ivanovna. 'Mon ami,' said Lidia Ivanovna, carefully holding the folds of her silk gown so as not to rustle, and in her excitement calling Karenin not Alexey Alexandrovitch, but 'mon ami ,' 'donnez-lui la main. Vous voyez? Sh!' she hissed at the footman as he came in again. 'Not at home.' The Frenchman was asleep, or pretending to be asleep, with his head on the back of his chair, and his moist hand, as it lay on his knee, made faint movements, as though trying to catch something. Alexey Alexandrovitch got up, tried to move carefully, but stumbled against the table, went up and laid his hand in the Frenchman's hand. Stepan Arkadyevitch got up too, and opening his eyes wide, trying to wake himself up if he was asleep, he looked first 'at one and then at the other. It was all real. Stepan Arkadyevitch felt that his head was getting worse and worse. 'Que la personne qui est arrivée la dernière, celle qui dentande, qu'elle sorte! Qu'elle sorte!' articulated the Frenchman, without opening his eyes. 'Vous m'excuserez, mais vous voyez . . . Revenez vers dix heures, encore mieux demain.' 'Qu'elle sorte!' repeated the Frenchman impatiently. 'C'est moi, n'est-ce pas?' And receiving an answer in the affirmative, Stepan Arkadyevitch, forgetting the favour he had meant to ask of Lidia Ivanovna, and forgetting his sister's affairs, caring for nothing, but filled with the sole desire to get away as soon as possible, went out on tiptoe and ran out into the street as though from a plague-stricken house. For a long while he chatted and joked with his cabdriver, trying to recover his spirits. At the French theatre where he arrived for the last act, and afterwards at the Tatar restaurant after his champagne, Stepan Arkadyevitch felt a little refreshed in the atmosphere he was used to. But still he felt quite unlike himself all that evening. On getting home to Pyotr Oblonsky's, where he was staying, Stepan Arkadyevitch found a note from Betsy. She wrote to him that she was very anxious to finish their interrupted conversation, and begged him to come next day.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Shouts were raised, and for a moment all was confusion, so that the marshal of the province had to call for order. 'A ballot! A ballot! Every nobleman sees it! We shed our blood for our country! . . . The confidence of the monarch. .. . No checking the accounts of the marshal; he's not a cashier…. But that's not the point. . . . Votes, please! Beastly! . . .' shouted furious and violent voices on all sides. Looks and faces were even more violent and furious than their words. They expressed the most implacable hatred. Levin did not in the least understand what was the matter, and he marvelled at the passion with which it was disputed whether or not the decision about Flerov should be put to the vote. He forgot, as Sergey Ivanovitch explained to him afterwards, this syllogism: that it was necessary for the public good to get rid of the marshal of the province; that to get rid of the marshal it was necessary to have a majority of votes; that to get a majority of votes it was necessary to secure Flerov's right to vote; that to secure the recognition of Flerov's right to vote they must decide on the interpretation to be put on the act. 'And one vote may decide the whole question, and one must be serious and consecutive, if one wants to be of use in public life,' concluded Sergey Ivanovitch. But Levin forgot all that, and it was painful to him to see all these excellent persons, for whom he had a respect, in such an unpleasant and vicious state of excitement. To escape from this painful feeling he went away into the other room where there was nobody except the waiters at the refreshment-bar. Seeing the waiters busy over washing up the crockery and setting in order their plates and wineglasses, seeing their calm and cheerful faces, Levin felt an unexpected sense of relief as though he had come out of a stuffy room into the fresh air. He began walking up and down, looking with pleasure at the waiters. He particularly liked the way one grey-whiskered waiter, who showed his scorn for the other younger ones and was jeered at by them, was teaching them how to fold up napkins properly. Levin was just about to enter into conversation with the old waiter, when the secretary of the court of wardship, a little old man whose speciality it was to know all the noblemen of the province by name and patronymic, drew him away. 'Please come, Konstantin Dmitrich,' he said, 'your brother's looking for you. They are voting on the legal point.' Levin walked into the room, received a white ball, and followed his brother, Sergey Ivanovitch, to the table where Sviazhsky was standing with a significant and ironical face, holding his beard in his fist and sniffing at it.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  As he listened to his brother's argument with the professor, he noticed that they connected these scientific questions with those spiritual problems, that at times they almost touched on the latter; but every time they were close upon what seemed to him the chief point, they promptly beat a hasty retreat, and plunged again into a sea of subtle distinctions, reservations, quotations, allusions, and appeals to authorities, and it was with difficulty that he understood what they were talking about. 'I cannot admit it,' said Sergey Ivanovitch, with his habitual clearness, precision of expression, and elegance of phrase. 'I cannot in any case agree with Keiss that my whole conception of the external world has been derived from perceptions. The most fundamental idea, the idea of existence, has not been received by me through sensation; indeed, there is no special sense-organ for the transmission of such an idea.' 'Yes, but they—Wurt, and Knaust, and Pripasov—would answer that your consciousness of existence is derived from the conjunction of all your sensations, that that consciousness of existence is the result of your sensations. Wurst, indeed, says plainly that, assuming there are no sensations, it follows that there is no idea of existence.' 'I maintain the contrary,' began Sergey Ivanovitch. But here it seemed to Levin that just as they were close upon the real point of the matter, they were again retreating, and he made up his mind to put a question to the professor. 'According to that, if my senses are annihilated, if my body is dead, I can have no existence of any sort?' he queried. The professor, in annoyance, and as it were mental suffering at the interruption, looked round at the strange inquirer, more like a bargeman than a philosopher, and turned his eyes upon Sergey Ivanovitch, as though to ask: What's one to say to him? But Sergey Ivanovitch, who had been talking with far less heat and one-sidedness than the professor, and who had sufficient breadth of mind to answer the professor and at the same time to comprehend the simple and natural point of view from which the question was put, smiled and said— 'That question we have no right to answer as yet.' 'We have not the requisite data,' chimed in the professor, and he went back to his argument. 'No,' he said; 'I would point out the fact that if, as Pripasov directly asserts, perception is based on sensation, then we are bound to distinguish sharply between these two conceptions.' Levin listened no more, and simply waited for the professor to go. VIII W HEN the professor had gone, Sergey Ivanovitch turned to his brother. 'Delighted that you've come.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  As a bachelor, when he had watched other people's married life, seen the petty cares, the squabbles, the jealousy, he had only smiled contemptuously in his heart. In his future married life there could be, he was convinced, nothing of that sort; even the external forms, indeed, he fancied, must be utterly unlike the life of others in everything. And all of a sudden, instead of his life with his wife being made on an individual pattern, it was, on the contrary, entirely made up of the pettiest details, which he had so despised before, but which now, by no will of his own, had gained an extraordinary importance that it was useless to contend against. And Levin saw that the organisation of all these details was by no means so easy as he had fancied before. Although Levin believed himself to have the most exact conceptions of domestic life, unconsciously, like all men, he pictured domestic life as the happy enjoyment of love, with nothing to hinder and no petty cares to distract. He ought, as he conceived the position, to do his work, and to find repose from it in the happiness of love. She ought to be beloved, and nothing more. But, like all men, he forgot that she too would want work. And he was surprised that she, his poetic, exquisite Kitty, could not merely in the first weeks, but even in the first days of their married life, think, remember, and busy herself about tablecloths, and furniture, about mattresses for visitors, about a tray, about the cook, and, the dinner, and so on. While they were still engaged, he had been struck by the definiteness with which she had declined the tour abroad and decided to go into the country, as though she knew of something she wanted, and could still think of something outside her love. This had jarred upon him then, and now her trivial cares and anxieties jarred upon him several times. But he saw that this was essential for her. And, loving her as he did, though he did not understand the reason of them, and jeered at these domestic pursuits, he could not help admiring them. He jeered at the way in which she arranged the furniture they had brought from Moscow; rearranged their room; hung up curtains; prepared rooms for visitors; a room for Dolly; saw after an abode for her new maid; ordered dinner of the old cook; came into collision with Agafea Mihaiovna, taking from her the charge of the stores. He saw how the old cook smiled, admiring her, and listening to her inexperienced, impossible orders, how' mournfully and tenderly Agafea Mihalovna shook her head over the young mistress's new arrangements. He saw that Kitty was extraordinarily sweet when, laughing and crying, she came to tell him that her maid, Masha, was used to looking upon her as her young lady, and so no one obeyed her.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  'But in what do you see the special characteristics of the Russian labourer?' said Metrov; 'in his biological characteristics, so to speak, or in the condition in which he is placed?' Levin saw that there was an idea underlying this question with which he did not agree. But he went on explaining his own idea that the Russian labourer has a quite special view of the land, different from that of other people; and to support this proposition he made haste to add that in his opinion this attitude of the Russian peasants was due to the consciousness of his vocation to people vast unoccupied expanses in the East. 'One may easily be led into error in basing any conclusion on the general vocation of a people,' said Metrov, interrupting Levin. 'The condition of the labourer will always depend on his relation to the land and to capital.' And without letting Levin finish explaining his idea, Metrov began expounding to him the special point of his own theory. In what the point of his theory lay, Levin did not understand, because he did not take the trouble to understand. He saw that Metrov, like other people, in spite of his own article, in which he had attacked the current theory of political economy, looked at the position of the Russian peasant simply from the point of view of capital, wages and rent. He would indeed have been obliged to admit that in the eastern—much the larger—part of Russia rent was as yet nil, that for nine-tenths of the Russian peasants wages took the form simply of food provided for themselves, and that capital does not so far exist except in the form of the most primitive tools. Yet it was only from that point of view that he considered every labourer, though in many points he differed from the economists and had his own theory of the wage-fund, which he expounded to Levin. Levin listened reluctantly, and at first made objections. He would have liked to interrupt Metrov, to explain his own thought, which in his opinion would have rendered further exposition of Metrov's theories superfluous.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  I have been set free from falsity, I have found the Master. 'Of old I used to say that in my body, that in the body of this grass and of this beetle (there, she didn't care for the grass, she's opened her wings and flown away), there was going on a transformation of matter in accordance with physical, chemical, and physiological laws. And in all of us, as well as in the aspens and the clouds and the misty patches, there was a process of evolution. Evolution from what? into what— Eternal evolution and struggle…. As though there could be any sort of tendency and struggle in the eternal! And I was astonished that in spite of the utmost effort of thought along that road I could not discover the meaning of life, the meaning of my impulses and yearnings. Now I say that I know the meaning of my life: "To live for God, for my soul." And this meaning, in spite of its clearness, is mysterious and marvellous. Such, indeed, is the meaning of everything existing. Yes, pride,' he said to himself, turning over on his stomach and beginning to tie a noose of blades of grass, trying not to break them. 'And not merely pride of intellect, but dulness of intellect. And most of all, the deceitfulness; yes, the deceitfulness of intellect. The cheating knavishness of intellect, that's it,' he said to himself. And he briefly went through, mentally, the whole course of his ideas during the last two years, the beginning of which was the clear confronting of death at the sight of his dear brother hopelessly ill. Then, for the first time, grasping that for every man, and himself too, there was nothing in store but suffering, death, and forgetfulness, he had made up his mind that life was impossible like that, and that he must either interpret life so that it would not present itself to him as the evil jest of some devil, or shoot himself. But he had not done either, but had gone on living, thinking, and feeling, and had even at that very time married, and had had many joys and had been happy, when he was not thinking of the meaning of his life. What did this mean? It meant that he had been living rightly, but thinking wrongly. He had lived (without being aware of it) on those spiritual truths that he had sucked in with his mother's milk, but he had thought, not merely without recognition of these truths, but studiously ignoring them. Now it was clear to him that he could only live by virtue of the beliefs in which he had been brought up.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  He tried to avoid meeting musical connoisseurs or talkative acquaintances, and stood looking at the floor straight before him, listening. But the more he listened to the fantasia of King Lear the further he felt from forming any definite opinion of it. There was, as it were, a continual beginning, a preparation of the musical expression of some feeling, but it fell to pieces again directly, breaking into new musical motives, or simply nothing but the whims of the composer, exceedingly complex but disconnected sounds. And these fragmentary musical expressions, though sometimes beautiful, were disagreeable, because they were utterly unexpected and not led up to by anything. Gaiety and grief and despair and tenderness and triumph followed one another without any connection, like the emotions of a madman. And those emotions, like a madman's, sprang up quite unexpectedly. During the whole of the performance Levin felt like a deaf man watching people dancing, and was in a state of complete bewilderment when the fantasia was over, and felt a great weariness from the fruitless strain on his attention. Loud applause resounded on all sides. Everyone got up, moved about, and began talking. Anxious to throw some light on his own perplexity from the impressions of others, Levin began to walk about, looking for connoisseurs, and was glad to see a well-known musical amateur in conversation with Pestsov, whom he knew. 'Marvellous!' Pestsov was saying in his mellow bass. 'How are you, Konstantin Dmitritch? Particularly sculpturesque and plastic, so to say, and richly coloured is that passage where you feel Cordelia's approach, where woman, das ewig Weibliche, enters into conflict with fate. Isn't it?' 'You mean . . . what has Cordelia to do with it?' Levin asked timidly, forgetting the fantasia was supposed to represent King Lear. 'Cordelia comes in . . . see here!' said Pestsov, tapping his finger on the satiny surface of the programme he held in his hand and passing it to Levin. Only then Levin recollected the title of the fantasia, and made haste to read in the Russian translation the lines from Shakespeare that were printed on the back of the programme. 'You can't follow it without that,' said Pestsov, addressing Levin, as the person he had been speaking to had gone away, and he had no one to talk to.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  He's not Landau any more now, but Count Bezzubov. That's neither here nor there, though; but Lidia—I'm very fond of her, but she has a screw loose somewhere—has lost her heart to this Landau now, and nothing is settled now in her house or Alexey Alexandrovitch's without him, and so your sister's fate is now in the hands of Landau, alias Count Bezzubov.' XXI A FTER a capital dinner and a great deal of cognac drunk at Bartnyansky's, Stepan Arkadyevitch, only a little later than the appointed time, went into Countess Lidia Ivanovna's. 'Who else is with the countess?—a Frenchman?' Stepan Arkadyevitch asked the hall-porter, as he glanced at the familiar overcoat of Alexey Alexandrovitch and a queer, rather artless-looking overcoat with clasps. 'Alexey Alexandrovitch Karenin and Count Bezzubov,' the porter answered severely. 'Princess Myaky guessed right,' thought Stepan Arkadyevitch, as he went upstairs. 'Curious! It would be quite as well, though, to get on friendly terms with her. She has immense influence. If she would say a word to Pomorsky, the thing would be a certainty.' It was still quite light out of doors, but in Countess Lidia Ivanovna's little drawing-room the blinds were drawn and the lamps lighted. At a round table under a lamp sat the countess and Alexey Alexandrovitch, talking softly. A short, thinnish man, very pale and handsome, with feminine hips and knock-kneed legs, with fine brilliant eyes and long hair lying on the collar of his coat, was standing at the other end of the room gazing at the portraits on the wall. After greeting the lady of the house and Alexey Alexandrovitch, Stepan Arkadyevitch could not resist glancing once more at the unknown man. 'Monsieur Landau!' the countess addressed him with a softness and caution that impressed Oblonsky. And she introduced them. Landau looked round hurriedly, came up, and smiling, laid his moist, lifeless hand in Stepan Arkadyevitch's outstretched hand and immediately walked away and fell to gazing at the portraits again. The countess and Alexey Alexandrovitch looked at each other significantly. 'I am very glad to see you, particularly today,' said Countess Lidia Ivanovna, pointing Stepan Arkadyevitch to a seat beside Karenin. 'I introduced you to him as Landau,' she said in a soft voice, glancing at the Frenchman, and again immediately after at Alexey Alexandrovitch, 'but he is really Count Bezzubov, as you're probably aware. Only he does not like the title.' 'Yes, I heard so,' answered Stepan Arkadyevitch; 'they say he completely cured Countess Bezzubov.' 'She was here today, poor thing!' the countess said, turning to Alexey Alexandrovitch. 'This separation is awful for her. It's such a blow to her!' 'And he positively is going?' queried Alexey Alexandrovitch. 'Yes, he's going to Paris.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  'Oh yes, that is most…' Stepan Arkadyevitch, glad they were going to read, and let him have a chance to collect his faculties. 'No, I see I'd better not ask her about anything today,' he thought. 'If only I can get out of this without putting my foot in it!' 'It will be dull for you,' said Countess Lidia Ivanovna, addressing Landau; 'you don't know English, but it's short.' 'Oh, I shall understand,' said Landau, with the same smile, and he closed his eyes. Alexey Alexandrovitch and Lidia Ivanovna exchanged meaning glances, and the reading began. XXII S TEPAN A RKADYEVITCH felt completely nonplussed by the strange talk which he was hearing for the first time. The complexity of Petersburg, as a rule, had a stimulating effect on him, rousing him out of his Moscow stagnation. But he liked these complications, and understood them only in the circles he knew and was at home in. In these unfamiliar surroundings he was puzzled and disconcerted, and could not get his bearings. As he listened to Countess Lidia Ivanovna, aware of the beautiful, artless—or perhaps artful, he could not decide which—eyes of Landau fixed upon him, Stepan Arkadyevitch began to be conscious of a peculiar heaviness in his head. The most incongruous ideas were in confusion in his head. 'Marie Sanin is glad her child's dead . . . How good a smoke would be now! … To be saved, one need only believe, and the monks don't know how the thing's to be done, but Countess Lidia Ivanovna does know . . . And why is my head so heavy? Is it the cognac, or all this being so queer? Anyway, I fancy I've done nothing unsuitable so far. But, anyway, it won't do to ask her now. They say they make one say one's prayers. I only hope they won't make me! That'll be too imbecile. And what stuff it is she's reading! but she has a good accent. Landau—Bezzubov— what's he Bezzubov for?' All at once Stepan Arkadyevitch became aware that his lower jaw was uncontrollably forming a yawn. He pulled his whiskers to cover the yawn, and shook himself together. But soon after he became aware that he was dropping asleep and on the very point of snoring. He recovered himself at the very moment when the voice of Countess Lidia Ivanovna was saying 'he's asleep'. Stepan Arkadyevitch started with dismay, feeling guilty and caught.

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

  And it has furthermore challenged the race of philosophers to banish something of the mystery by formulating the process in simpler terms. The problem which the philosophers have set themselves is that of ascertaining principles of connection between the thoughts which thus appear to sprout one out of the other, whereby their peculiar succession or coexistence may be explained. But immediately an ambiguity arises: which sort of connection is meant? connection thought-of , or connection between thoughts ? These are two entirely different things, and only in the case of one of them is there any hope of finding 'principles.' The jungle of connections thought of can never be formulated simply. Every conceivable connection may be thought of—of coexistence, succession, resemblance, contrast, contradiction, cause and effect, means and end, genus and species, part and whole, substance and property, early and late, large and small, landlord and tenant, master and servant,—Heaven knows what, for the list is literally inexhaustible. The only simplification which could possibly be aimed at would be the reduction of the relations to a smaller number of types, like those which such authors as Kant and Renouvier call the 'categories' of the understanding.[462] According as we followed one category or another we should sweep, with our thought, through the world in this way or in that. And all the categories would be logical, would be relations of reason. They would fuse the items into a continuum. Were this the sort of connection sought between one moment of our thinking and another, our chapter might end here. For the only summary description of these infinite possibilities of transition, is that they are all acts of reason , and that the mind proceeds from one object to another by some rational path of connection. The trueness of this formula is only equalled by its sterility, for psychological purposes. Practically it amounts to simply referring the inquirer to the relations between facts or things, and to telling him that his thinking follows them. But as a matter of fact, his thinking only sometimes follows them, and these so-called 'transitions of reason' are far from being all alike reasonable. If pure thought runs all our trains, why should she run some so fast and some so slow, some through dull flats and some through gorgeous scenery, some to mountain-heights and jewelled mines, others through dismal swamps and darkness?—and run some off the track altogether, and into the wilderness of lunacy? Why do we spend years straining after a certain scientific or practical problem, but all in vain—thought refusing to evoke the solution we desire?

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

  Thus also, and even more emphatically, must we insist upon the complete inability of physiology to suggest an explanation for conscious memory, in so far as it is memory —that is, in so far as it most imperatively calls for explanation. . . . The very essence of the act of memory consists in the ability to say: This after-image is the image of a percept I had a moment since; or this image of memory is the image of the percept I had at a certain time—I do not remember precisely how long since. It would, then, be quite contrary to the facts to hold that, when an image of memory appears in consciousness, it is recognized as belonging to a particular original percept on account of its perceived resemblance to this percept. The original percept does not exist and will never be reproduced . Even more palpably false and absurd would it be to hold that any similarity of the impressions or processes in end organs or central organs explains the act of conscious memory. Consciousness knows nothing of such similarity; knows nothing even of the existence of nervous impressions and processes. Moreover, we could never know two impressions or processes that are separated in time to be similar, without involving the same inexplicable act of memory. It is a fact of consciousness on which all possibility of connected experience and of recorded and cumulative human knowledge is dependent that certain phases or products of consciousness appear with a claim to stand for (to represent)[610] past experiences to which they are regarded as in some respect similar. It is this peculiar claim in consciousness which constitutes the essence of an act of memory; it is this which makes the memory wholly inexplicable as a mere persistence or recurrence of similar impressions. It is this which makes conscious memory a spiritual phenomenon, the explanation of which, as arising out of nervous processes and conditions, is not simply undiscovered in fact, but utterly incapable of approach by the imagination. When, then, we speak of a physical basis of memory, recognition must be made of the complete inability of science to suggest any physical process which can be conceived of as correlated with that peculiar and mysterious actus of the mind, connecting its present and its past, which constitutes the essence of memory." This passage seems to me characteristic of the reigning half-way modes of thought.

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

  Inspirational speaking, playing on musical instruments, etc., also belong to the relatively lower phases of possession, in which the normal self is not excluded from conscious participation in the performance, though their initiative seems to come from elsewhere. In the highest phase the trance is complete, the voice, language, and everything are changed, and there is no after-memory whatever until the next trance comes. One curious thing about trance-utterances is their generic similarity in different individuals. The 'control' here in America is either a grotesque, slangy, and flippant personage ('Indian' controls, calling the ladies 'squaws,' the men 'braves,' the house a 'wigwam,' etc., etc., are excessively common); or, if he ventures on higher intellectual flights, he abounds in a curiously vague optimistic philosophy-and-water, in which phrases about spirit, harmony, beauty, law, progression, development, etc., keep recurring. It seems exactly as if one author composed more than half of the trance-messages, no matter by whom they are uttered. Whether all sub-conscious selves are peculiarly susceptible to a certain stratum of the Zeitgeist , and get their inspiration from it, I know not; but this is obviously the case with the secondary selves which become 'developed' in spiritualist circles. There the beginnings of the medium trance are indistinguishable from effects of hypnotic suggestion. The subject assumes the role of a medium simply because opinion expects it of him under the conditions which are present; and carries it out with a feebleness or a vivacity proportionate to his histrionic gifts. But the odd thing is that persons unexposed to spiritualist traditions will so often act in the same way when they become entranced, speak in the name of the departed, go through the motions of their several death-agonies, send messages about their happy home in the summer-land, and describe the ailments of those present. I have no theory to publish of these cases, several of which I have personally seen. As an example of the automatic writing performances I will quote from an account of his own case kindly furnished me by Mr. Sidney Dean of Warren, R. I., member of Congress from Connecticut from 1855 to 1859, who has been all his life a robust and active journalist, author, and man of affairs. He has for many years been a writing subject, and has a large collection of manuscript automatically produced. "Some of it," he writes us, "is in hieroglyph, or strange compounded arbitrary characters; each series possessing a seeming unity in general design or character, followed by what purports to be a translation or rendering into mother English. I never attempted the seemingly impossible feat of copying the characters. They were cut with the precision of a graver's tool, and generally with a single rapid stroke of the pencil. Many languages, some obsolete and passed from history, and professedly given. To see them would satisfy you that no one could copy them except by tracing. "These, however, are but a small part of the phenomena.

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

  This is Weber's law , which in so far forth expresses an empirical generalization of practical importance, without involving any theory whatever or seeking any absolute measure of the sensations themselves. It is in the Theoretic Interpretation of Weber's Law that Fechner's originality exclusively consists, in his assumptions, namely, 1) that the just-perceptible increment is the sensation-unit , and is in all parts of the scale the same (mathematically expressed, D s = const.); 2) that all our sensations consist of sums of these units; and finally, 3) that the reason why it takes a constant fractional increase of the stimulus to awaken this unit lies in an ultimate law of the connection of mind with matter, whereby the quantities of our feelings are related logarithmically to the quantities of their objects. Fechner seems to find something inscrutably sublime in the existence of an ultimate 'psychophysic' law of this form. These assumptions are all peculiarly fragile. To begin with, the mental fact which in the experiments corresponds to the increase of the stimulus is not an enlarged sensation , but a judgment that the sensation is enlarged . What Fechner calls the 'sensation' is what appears to the mind as the objective phenomenon of light, warmth, weight, sound, impressed part of the body, etc. Fechner tacitly if not openly assumes that such a judgment of increase consists in the simple fact that an increased number of sensation-units are present to the mind; and that the judgment is thus itself a quantitatively bigger mental thing when it judges large differences, or differences between large terms, than when it judges small ones. But these ideas are really absurd. The hardest sort of judgment, the judgment which strains the attention most (if that be any criterion of the judgment's 'size'), is that about the smallest things and differences. But really it has no meaning to talk about one judgment being bigger than another. And even if we leave out judgments and talk of sensations only, we have already found ourselves (in Chapter VI) quite unable to read any clear meaning into the notion that they are masses of units combined. To introspection, our feeling of pink is surely not a portion of our feeling of scarlet; nor does the light of an electric arc seem to contain that of a tallow-candle in itself.

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

  The alphabet, or the series of numbers, when handed over to the attention of the secondary personage may for the time be lost to the normal self. Whilst the hand writes the alphabet, obediently to command, the 'subject,' to her great stupefaction, finds herself unable to recall it, etc. Few things are more curious than these relations of mutual exclusion, of which all gradations exist between the several partial consciousnesses. How far this splitting up of the mind into separate consciousnesses may exist in each one of us is a problem. M. Janet holds that it is only possible where there is abnormal weakness, and consequently a defect of unifying or coordinating power. An hysterical woman abandons part of her consciousness because she is too weak nervously to hold it together. The abandoned part meanwhile may solidify into a secondary or sub-conscious self. In a perfectly sound subject, on the other hand, what is dropped out of mind at one moment keeps coming back at the next. The whole fund of experiences and knowledges remains integrated, and no split-off portions of it can get organized stably enough to form subordinate selves. The stability, monotony, and stupidity of these latter is often very striking. The post-hypnotic sub-consciousness seems to think of nothing but the order which it last received; the cataleptic sub-consciousness, of nothing but the last position imprinted on the limb. M. Janet could cause definitely circumscribed reddening and tumefaction of the skin on two of his subjects, by suggesting to them in hypnotism the hallucination of a mustard-poultice of any special shape. "J'ai tout le temps pensé à votre sinapisme," says the subject, when put back into trance after the suggestion has taken effect. A man N., . . . whom M. Janet operated on at long intervals, was betweenwhiles tampered with by another operator, and when put to sleep again by M. Janet, said he was 'too far away to receive orders, being in Algiers.' The other operator, having suggested that hallucination, had forgotten to remove it before waking the subject from his trance, and the poor passive trance-personality had stuck for weeks in the stagnant dream. Léonie's sub-conscious performances having been illustrated to a caller, by a 'pied de nez ' executed with her left hand in the course of conversation, when, a year later, she meets him again, up goes the same hand to her nose again, without Léonie's normal self suspecting the fact.