Despair

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.

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• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Pelagianism begins with self-exaltation and ends with the sense of self-deception and impotency. Augustinianism casts man first into the dust of humiliation and despair, in order to lift him on the wings of grace to supernatural strength, and leads him through the hell of self-knowledge up to the heaven of the knowledge of God. The Pelagian system is clear, sober, and intelligible, but superficial; the Augustinian sounds the depths of knowledge and experience, and renders reverential homage to mystery. The former is grounded upon the philosophy of common sense, which is indispensable for ordinary life, but has no perception of divine things; the latter is grounded upon the philosophy of the regenerate reason, which breaks through the limits of nature, and penetrates the depths of divine revelation. The former starts with the proposition: Intellectus praecedit fidem; the latter with the opposite maxim: Fides praecedit intellectum. Both make use of the Scriptures; the one, however, conforming them to reason, the other subjecting reason to them. Pelagianism has an unmistakable affinity with rationalism, and supplies its practical side. To the natural will of the former system corresponds the natural reason of the latter; and as the natural will, according to Pelagianism, is competent to good, so is the natural reason, according to rationalism, competent to the knowledge of the truth. All rationalists are Pelagian in their anthropology; but Pelagius and Coelestius were not consistent, and declared their agreement with the traditional orthodoxy in all other doctrines, though without entering into their deeper meaning and connection. Even divine mysteries may be believed in a purely external, mechanical way, by inheritance from the past, as the history of theology, especially in the East, abundantly proves. The true solution of the difficult question respecting the relation of divine grace to human freedom in the work of conversion, is not found in the denial of either factor; for this would either elevate man to the dignity of a self-redeemer, or degrade him to an irrational machine, and would ultimately issue either in fatalistic pantheism or in atheism; but it must be sought in such a reconciliation of the two factors as gives full weight both to the sovereignty of God and to the responsibility of man, yet assigns a preëminence to the divine agency corresponding to the infinite exaltation of the Creator and Redeemer above the sinful creature. And although Angustine’s solution of the problem is not altogether satisfactory, and although in his zeal against the Pelagian error he has inclined to the opposite extreme; yet in all essential points, he has the Scriptures, especially the Epistles of Paul, as well as Christian experience, and the profoundest speculation, on his side.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  personal character and experience of its author. Pelagius was an upright monk, who without inward conflicts won for himself, in the way of tranquil development, a legal piety which knew neither the depths of sin nor the heights of grace. Augustine, on the other hand, passed through sharp convulsions and bitter conflicts, till he was overtaken by the unmerited grace of God, and created anew to a life of faith and love. Pelagius had a singularly clear, though contracted mind, and an earnest moral purpose, but no enthusiasm for lofty ideals; and hence he found it not hard to realize his lower standard of holiness. Augustine had a bold and soaring intellect, and glowing heart, and only found peace after he had long been tossed by the waves of passion; he had tasted all the misery of sin, and then all the glory of redemption, and this experience qualified him to understand and set forth these antagonistic powers far better than his opponent, and with a strength and fulness surpassed only by the inspired apostle Paul. Indeed, Augustine, of all the fathers, most resembles, in experience and doctrine, this very apostle, and stands next to him in his influence upon the Reformers. The Pelagian controversy turns upon the mighty antithesis of sin and grace. It embraces the whole cycle of doctrine respecting the ethical and religious relation of man to God, and includes, therefore, the doctrines of human freedom, of the primitive state, of the fall, of regeneration and conversion, of the eternal purpose of redemption, and of the nature and operation of the grace of God. It comes at last to the question, whether redemption is chiefly a work of God or of man; whether man needs to be born anew, or merely improved. The soul of the Pelagian system is human freedom; the soul of the Augustinian is divine grace. Pelagius starts from the natural man, and works up, by his own exertions, to righteousness and holiness. Augustine despairs of the moral sufficiency of man, and derives the now life and all power for good from the creative grace of God. The one system proceeds from the liberty of choice to legalistic piety; the other from the bondage of sin to the evangelical liberty of the children of God. To the former Christ is merely a teacher and example, and grace an external auxiliary to the development of the native powers of man; to the latter he is also Priest and King, and grace a creative principle, which begets, nourishes, and consummates a new life. The former makes regeneration and conversion a gradual process of the strengthening and perfecting of human virtue; the latter makes it a complete transformation, in which the old disappears and all becomes new. The one loves to admire the dignity and strength of man; the other loses itself in adoration of the glory and omnipotence of God. The one flatters natural pride, the other is a gospel for penitent publicans and sinners.

• From The Diary of a Young Girl (The Definitive Edition) (2020)

  And all because they’re Jews. Yours, Anne FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 1942 Dearest Kitty, We don’t really know how to react. Up to now very little news about the Jews had reached us here, and we thought it best to stay as cheerful as possible. Every now and then Miep used to mention what had happened to a friend, and Mother or Mrs. van Daan would start to cry, so she decided it was better not to say any more. But we bombarded Mr. Dussel with questions, and the stories he had to tell were so gruesome and dreadful that we can’t get them out of our heads. Once we’ve had time to digest the news, we’ll probably go back to our usual joking and teasing. It won’t do us or those outside any good if we continue to be as gloomy as we are now. And what would be the point of turning the Secret Annex into a Melancholy Annex? No matter what I’m doing, I can’t help thinking about those who are gone. I catch myself laughing and remember that it’s a disgrace to be so cheerful. But am I supposed to spend the whole day crying? No, I can’t do that. This gloom will pass. Added to this misery there’s another, but of a more personal nature, and it pales in comparison to the suffering I’ve just told you about. Still, I can’t help telling you that lately I’ve begun to feel deserted. I’m surrounded by too great a void. I never used to give it much thought, since my mind was filled with my friends and having a good time. Now I think either about unhappy things or about myself. It’s taken a while, but I’ve finally realized that Father, no matter how kind he may be, can’t take the place of my former world. When it comes to my feelings, Mother and Margot ceased to count long ago. But why do I bother you with this foolishness? I’m terribly ungrateful, Kitty, I know, but when I’ve been scolded for the umpteenth time and have all these other woes to think about as well, my head begins to reel! Yours, Anne SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 2g, 1942

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  As he watched the whole of China mobilizing for war, it seemed that human beings were about to erase themselves from the face of the earth. If they could not curb their selfishness and greed, they would destroy one another. The only way they could survive was by cultivating a boundless sympathy that did not depend upon emotional identification but on the reasoned, practical understanding that even their enemies had the same needs, desires, and fears as themselves. T oward the end of the fifth century, a kshatriya from the republic of Sakka, in the foothills of the Himalayas, shaved his head and beard, put on the saffron robe of the renouncer, and set out on the road to Magadha. His name was Siddhatta Gotama, and he was twenty-nine years old. Later he recalled that his parents wept bitterly when he left home. We are also told that before leaving he stole into his wife’s bedroom while she was asleep to take one last look at her and their newborn son, as though he did not trust his resolve should she beg him to stay. 70 He had begun to find his father’s elegant house constricting: a miasma of petty duties weighed him down. When he looked at human life, Gotama could see only the grim cycle of suffering, which began with the trauma of birth and proceeded inexorably to “aging, illness, death, sorrow and corruption,” only to start again with the next life cycle. But like the other renouncers, Gotama was convinced that these painful states must have their positive counterparts. “Suppose,” he said, “I start looking for the un born, unaging, deathless, sorrowless, incorrupt and supreme freedom from all this bondage?” 71 He called this blissful liberation nibbana *4 (“blowing out”), because the passions and desires that tied him down would be extinguished like a flame. He had a long, arduous quest ahead, but he never lost hope in a form of existence—attainable in this life—that was not contingent, flawed, and transient. “There is something that has not come to birth in the usual way, which has neither been created and which remains undamaged,” he insisted. “If it did not exist, it would be impossible to find a way out.” 72 He believed that he did find it, as did the monks who followed his teachings and transmitted them orally, until they reached their present form about a hundred years after Gotama’s death. They called him the Buddha, the “enlightened” or “awakened” one. These Buddhist scriptures were composed in Pali, one of the Sanskrit dialects of northeast India, and are our main source of information about the Buddha’s life. As in most of the new schools that were springing up in the eastern Ganges plain, Buddhist teachings and practices ( dhamma ) *5 were based on the life experience of the founder, and the Pali texts therefore emphasize those aspects of his biography that would help others to achieve nibbana.

• From The Diary of a Young Girl (The Definitive Edition) (2020)

  Trainloads of young men depart daily. Some of them try to sneak off the train when it stops at a small station, but only a few manage to escape unnoticed and find a place to hide. But that’s not the end of my lamentations. Have you ever heard the term “hostages”? That’s the latest punishment for saboteurs. It’s the most horrible thing you can imagine. Leading citizens -- innocent people -- are taken prisoner to await their execution. If the Gestapo can’t find the saboteur, they simply grab five hostages and line them up against the wall. You read the announcements of their death in the paper, where they’re referred to as “fatal accidents.’ Fine specimens of humanity, those Germans, and to think I’m actually one of them! No, that’s not true, Hitler took away our nationality long ago. And besides, there are no greater enemies on earth than the Germans and the Jews. Yours, Anne WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 14, 1942 Dear Kitty, I’m terribly busy. Yesterday I began by translating a chapter from La Belle Nivemaise and writing down vocabulary words. Then I worked on an awful math problem and translated three pages of French grammar besides. Today, French grammar and history. I simply refuse to do that wretched math every day. Daddy thinks it’s awful too. I’m almost better at it than he is, though in fact neither of us is any good, so we always have to call on Margot’s help. I’m also working away at my shorthand, which I enjoy. Of the three of us, I’ve made the most progress. I’ve read The Storm Family. It’s quite good, but doesn’t compare to Joop ter Heul. Anyway, the same words can be found in both books, which makes sense because they’re written by the same author. Cissy van Marxveldt is a terrific writer. I’m definitely going to let my own children read her books too. Moreover, I’ve read a lot of Korner plays. I like the way he writes. For example,

• From The Diary of a Young Girl (The Definitive Edition) (2020)

  OCTOBER 9, 1942 Dearest Kitty, Today I have nothing but dismal and depressing news to report. Our many Jewish friends and acquaintances are being taken away in droves. The Gestapo is treating them very roughly and transporting them in cattle cars to Westerbork, the big camp in Drenthe to which they’re sending all the Jews. Miep told us about someone who’d managed to escape from there. It must be terrible in Westerbork. The people get almost nothing to eat, much less to drink, as water is available only one hour a day, and there’s only one toilet and sink for several thousand people. Men and women sleep in the same room, and women and children often have their heads shaved. Escape is almost impossible; many people look Jewish, and they’re branded by their shorn heads. If it’s that bad in Holland, what must it be like in those faraway and uncivilized places where the Germans are sending them? We assume that most of them are being murdered. The English radio says they’re being gassed. Perhaps that’s the quickest way to die. I feel terrible. Miep’s accounts of these horrors are so heartrending, and Miep is also very distraught. The other day, for instance, the Gestapo deposited an elderly, crippled Jewish woman on Miep’s doorstep while they set off to find a car. The old woman was terrified of the glaring searchlights and the guns firing at the English planes overhead. Yet Miep didn’t dare let her in. Nobody would. The Germans are generous enough when it comes to punishment. Bep is also very subdued. Her boyfriend is being sent to Germany. Every time the planes fly over, she’s afraid they’re going to drop their entire bomb load on Bertus’s head. Jokes like “Oh, don’t worry, they can’t all fall on him” or “One bomb is all it takes” are hardly appropriate in this situation. Bertus is not the only one being forced to work in Germany.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  Each action led to a new round of duties that bound him to the inexorable cycle of samsara. The only way to find release was to “go forth” into the forest and become a hermit or a mendicant, who had none of these tasks. People in India did not regard the renouncers as feeble dropouts, but revered them as intrepid pioneers, who, at considerable cost to themselves, were trying to find a spiritual solution for humanity. Because of the prevailing despair in the region, many were longing for a Jina, a spiritual conqueror, or a Buddha, an Enlightened One, who had “woken up” to a different dimension of existence. The spiritual malaise was exacerbated by a social crisis. Like the Greeks, the peoples of north India were undergoing major political and economic change. The Vedic system had been the spirituality of a highly mobile society, engaged in constant migration. But by the sixth and fifth centuries, people were settling down in ever larger permanent communities and were seriously engaged in agriculture. The introduction of iron technology, including the heavy plow, made it possible to reclaim more fields, to irrigate them, and to clear the dense forests. The villages were now surrounded by carefully supervised plots of land with a network of ditches. New crops were produced: fruit, rice, cereal, sesame, millet, wheat, grains, and barley. Farmers were becoming richer. 104 There was also political development. By the end of the sixth century, the small chiefdoms had been absorbed into larger units. The largest of these new kingdoms were Magadha in the southeast and Kosala in the southwest. They were ruled by kings who had, very gradually, imposed their rule by force and had slowly changed the old patterns of allegiance from clan loyalty to an incipient patriotism that focused on territory rather than kinship. As a result, the kshatriya warrior class, which was responsible for defense and administration, had become even more prominent. The new kings were no longer as deferential to the Brahmins as their forebears had been, though they might still pay lip service to the older ideals. Monarchy was not the only form of government. To the east of the new kingdoms, a number of differently run states had also emerged, ruled by an assembly (sangha) of the elders of the old clans (ganas).

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  His trance was not nibbana, because nibbana could not be temporary. Gotama had no problem with yoga, but he would not accept interpretations that did not coincide with his own experience. 73 Gotama left his teachers and joined a group of ascetics. With them he practiced severe extremities that gravely damaged his health. He lay on a mattress of spikes, ate his own urine and feces, and fasted so rigorously that his bones stuck out “like a row of spindles . . . or the beams of an old shed.” At one point, he became so weak that he was left for dead beside the road. 74 But all to no avail. However severe his penances—perhaps even because of them —his body still clamored for attention, and he continued to be plagued by the lust and cravings that bound him to the grim cycle of rebirth. There was no hint of the peace and liberation he sought. Nevertheless, Gotama did not give up. Henceforth he would rely only on his own insights. This would become one of the central tenets of his spiritual method. He constantly told his disciples that they must not accept anybody’s teachings, no matter how august, if those teachings did not tally with their own experience. They must never take any doctrine on faith or at second hand. Even his own teachings must be jettisoned if they failed to bring followers to enlightenment. If people relied on an authority figure, they would remain trapped in an inauthentic version of themselves and would never attain the freedom of nibbana. So in a moment of mingled despair and defiance, his health broken down by excessive penance, and at a spiritual dead end, Gotama resolved to strike out on his own. “Surely,” he cried, “there must be another way to achieve enlightenment!” And as if to prove that his declaration of independence was indeed the way forward, the beginnings of a new solution declared itself to him. 75 He suddenly recalled an incident from his early childhood. His nurse had left him under the shade of a rose apple tree while she watched the ceremonial plowing of the fields before the spring planting. The little boy sat up and saw that young shoots of grass had been torn up by the plow, and insects had been killed. Gazing at the carnage, Gotama had felt a strange pang of grief, as though his own relatives had died. 76 The surge of selfless empathy brought him a moment of spiritual release. It was a beautiful day, and the child had felt a pure joy welling up within him.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  An eye-witness, Stefaneschi, has described the journey to the hermit’s retreat by three bishops who were appointed to notify him of his election. They found him in a rude hut in the mountains, furnished with a single barred window, his hair unkempt, his face pale, and his body infirm. After announcing their errand they bent low and kissed his sandals. Had Peter been able to go forth from his anchoret solitude, like Anthony of old, on his visits to Alexandria, and preach repentance and humility, he would have presented an exhilarating spectacle to after generations. As it is, his career arouses pity for his frail and unsophisticated incompetency to meet the demands which his high office involved. Clad in his monkish habit and riding on an ass, the bridle held by Charles II. and his son, Peter proceeded to Aquila, where he was crowned, only three cardinals being present. Completely under the dominance of the king, Coelestin took up his residence in Naples. Little was he able to battle with the world, to cope with the intrigues of factions, and to resist the greedy scramble for office which besets the path of those high in position. In simple confidence Coelestin gave his ear to this counsellor and to that, and yielded easily to all applicants for favors. His complaisancy to Charles is seen in his appointment of cardinals. Out of twelve whom he created, seven were Frenchmen, and three Neapolitans. It would seem as if he fell into despair at the self-seeking and worldliness of the papal court, and he exclaimed, "O God, while I rule over other men’s souls, I am losing the salvation of my own." He was clearly not equal to the duties of the tiara. In vain did the Neapolitans seek by processions to dissuade him from resigning. Clement I. had abjured his office, as had also Gregory VI. though at the mandate of an, emperor. Peter issued a bull declaring it to be the pope’s right to abdicate. His own abdication he placed on the ground "of his humbleness, the quest of a better life and an easy conscience, on account of his frailty of body and want of knowledge, the badness of men, and a desire to return to the quietness of his former state." The real reason for his resigning is obscure. The story went that the ambitious Cardinal Gaëtani, soon to become Coelestin’s successor, was responsible for it. He played upon the hermit’s credulity by speaking through a reed, inserted through the wall of the hermit’s chamber, and declared it to be heaven’s will that his reign should come to an end.292 As the Italians say, the story, if not true, was well invented, si non è vero è ben trovato.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  Eventually he allowed himself to be dressed in women’s clothes so that he could spy on these revels unobserved. But in their hysteria, the women tore him to pieces with their bare hands, thinking that they had killed a lion. Agaue, Pentheus’s mother, triumphantly carried her son’s head into Thebes at the head of a demented procession. The tragic dramas had often depicted the slaying of kinsfolk, but by making Dionysus, the patron of tragedy, responsible for this unnatural murder, Euripides seemed to be calling the entire genre into question. There was no glimmer of hope at the end of the play. The royal house had been shattered, the women reduced to animals, enlightened reason defeated by savage mania, and Thebes—like Athens at this juncture—seemed doomed. What had been the value of the annual release of emotion in honor of a god who killed, tortured, and humiliated human beings without giving any plausible explanation? Athens was beginning to grow beyond tragedy, and in so doing, was also parting company with the Axial Age. The play warned the polis that it was dangerous to refuse admittance to the outsider. In Oedipus at Colonus (406), Sophocles had shown Athens receiving with honor the polluted, sacred figure of the dying Oedipus, an act of compassion that would be a blessing for the city. But in The Bacchae, Pentheus rejected the stranger and was destroyed. Not only was it politically disastrous, but individuals also had to recognize and accept the stranger that they encountered within themselves during the mystery celebrations. By giving Dionysus his due in the annual festival, Athens had given the alterity that he represented an honored place in the heart of the city; but over the years it had failed to respect the inviolable separateness of the other poleis, had exploited and attacked them, and in the process had fallen prey to hubris. In this last play, Euripides approached the heart of the Axial vision. The chorus of Maenads, the regular worshipers of Dionysus, had been correctly initiated into his cult; they experienced a vision of peace, rapture, and integration. But the women of Thebes, who were unschooled in the disciplines of transformation, were simply out of control, driven mad by the darker regions of their psyche that were unknown to them. As she entered the city, holding aloft the ghastly trophy of her son’s head, Agaue did not achieve ekstasis, but was enchanted only by her own achievements: Great in the eyes of the world, Great are the deeds I have done And the hunt I’ve hunted there. 43 The apotheosis of this barren selfishness was an act of unspeakable, unnatural violence. In this play, Euripides also presented one of the most moving and truly transcendent Greek experiences of the divine. Dionysus might seem amoral, cruel, and alien, yet he was incontrovertibly present onstage, and could neither be willed nor driven away.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  His was an essentially utopian ideal. It is difficult to see how a sage who had reached this level of “emptiness” would ever come to power, since he would be incapable of the calculation that was necessary to win office. 55 Like Mencius, Laozi may have nurtured some kind of messianic hope that the horrors of his time would impel the people to gravitate spontaneously toward a mystically inclined ruler. But, of course, it was not a Daoist sage but the Legalist state of Qin that ended the violence of the Warring States and unified the empire. This spectacular success seemed to prove that universal kingship could not be achieved without recourse to military power. It brought a peace of sorts, but spelt the death knell to the Axial hopes for morality, benevolence, and nonviolence. Under the empire, the Axial spiritualities would effect a synthesis and transmute into something quite different. The Chinese were isolated from the other Axial peoples, so they knew nothing about the extraordinary career of Alexander the Great, Aristotle’s old pupil, who conquered the Persian empire in 333 when he routed the army of Darius III at the river Issus in Cilicia. He then led his army on a rampage through Asia, creating an empire that included most of the known world. His progress had been violent and ruthless. He brooked no opposition, but mercilessly destroyed any cities that had the temerity to stand in his way and massacred their populations. His empire was based on fear, and yet Alexander had a vision of political and cultural unity. But the empire did not survive his early death in Babylonia in 323. Almost immediately fighting broke out among his leading generals, and for the next two decades the lands conquered by Alexander were devastated by the battles of these six diadochoi (“successors”). The “peace” of the empire had given way to destructive warfare. Finally, at the very end of the century, two of the diadochoi eliminated the others and divided Alexander’s territories between them. Ptolemy, one of the most shrewd of Alexander’s generals, took Egypt, the African coast, Palestine, and southern Syria, while Seleucus, who had been appointed satrap of Babylonia by Alexander, controlled large parts of the old Persian empire, including Iran. Seleucus settled the far eastern boundary by relinquishing the Indian territories, which proved impossible to maintain. Alexander made little impression on the people of India. He conquered only a few minor tribes, and his invasion was not even mentioned by some of the early Indian historians. His achievement was not the conquest of India, but the feat of actually getting there, and his two years in India were more of a geographical expedition than a military campaign. Alexander seemed the embodiment of the Greek ethos. He had been brought up on the Homeric myths, inspired by the ideals of Athens, and tutored by Aristotle. Greece had not participated as fully in the religious vision of the Axial Age as the other regions.

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  Ancient Israel tried initially to escape the agrarian state, yet Israelites soon discovered that much as they hated the exploitation and cruelty of urban civilization, they could not live without it; they too had to become “like all the nations.” Jesus preached an inclusive and compassionate kingdom that defied the imperial ethos, and he was crucified for his pains. The Muslim ummah began as an alternative to the jahili injustice of commercial Mecca, but eventually it had to become an empire, because an absolute monarchy was the best and perhaps the only way to keep the peace. Modern military historians agree that without professional and responsible armies, human society would either have remained in a primitive state or would have degenerated into ceaselessly warring hordes. Before the creation of the nation-state, people thought about politics in a religious way. Constantine’s empire showed what could happen when an originally peaceful tradition became too closely associated with the government; the Christian emperors enforced the Pax Christiana as belligerently as their pagan predecessors had imposed the Pax Romana. The Crusades were inspired by religious passion but were also deeply political: Pope Urban II let the knights of Christendom loose on the Muslim world to extend the power of the Church eastward, and create a papal monarchy that would control Christian Europe. The Inquisition was a deeply flawed attempt to secure the internal order of Spain after a divisive civil war. The Wars of Religion and the Thirty Years’ War may have been pervaded by the sectarian quarrels of the Reformation, but they were also the birth pangs of the modern nation-state. When we fight, we need to distance ourselves from the adversary, and because religion was so central to the state, its rites and myths depicted its enemies as monsters of evil that threatened cosmic and political order. During the Middle Ages, Christians denounced Jews as child-killers, Muslims as “an evil and despicable race,” and Cathars as a cancerous growth in the body of Christendom. Again, this hatred was certainly religiously motivated, but it was also a response to the social distress that accompanied early modernization. Christians made Jews the scapegoat for their excessive anxiety about the money economy, and popes blamed Cathars for their own inability to live up to the gospel. In the process they created imaginary enemies who were distorted mirror images of themselves. Yet casting off the mantle of religion did not bring an end to prejudice. A “scientific racism” developed in the modern period that drew on the old religious patterns of hatred and inspired the Armenian genocide and Hitler’s death camps.

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  46 Muslims had become soft and had abandoned jihad because they were afraid of dying. Their only hope was to summon again the courage at the heart of Islam. Hence the importance of the huge martyrdom operation that would show the world that Muslims were no longer fearful. Their plight was so desperate that they must either fight or be killed. Radicals also love the Quranic story of David and Goliath that concludes: “How often a small force has defeated a large army!” 47 The more powerful the enemy, therefore, the more heroic the struggle. Killing civilians is regrettable but, fighters argue, the Crusader-Zionists have also shed innocent blood, and the Quran commands retaliation. 48 So the martyr must soldier on bravely, stoically repressing pity or moral revulsion for the terrible acts that he is tragically obliged to commit. 4 9 The al-Qaeda leadership had been planning the “spectacular” attack of September 11, 2001, for some time but could not proceed until they found the right recruits. They needed men who were technologically competent, were at home in Western society, and had the ability to work independently. 50 In November 1999 Muhammad Ata, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Marwan al-Shehhi, and Ziad Jarrah, on their way (or so they thought) to Chechnya, were diverted to an al-Qaeda safe house in Kandahar. They came from privileged backgrounds, had studied engineering and technology in Europe—Jarrah and al-Shehhi were engineers, and Ata was an architect—and would blend easily into American society while they trained as pilots. They were members of a group now known as the Hamburg Cell. Of the four, only Bin al-Shibh had a deep knowledge of the Quran. None had the madrassa training that is often blamed for Muslim terrorism but had attended secular schools; until he met the group, Jarrah was not even observant. 51 Unused to allegoric and symbolic thought, their scientific education inclined them not to skepticism but toward a literalist reading of the Quran that diverged radically from traditional Muslim exegesis. They also had no training in the traditional fiqh, so their knowledge of mainstream Muslim law was at best superficial. In his study of the 9/11 terrorists and those who worked closely with them—five hundred people in all—the forensic psychiatrist Marc Sageman found that only 25 percent had a traditional Islamic upbringing; that two-thirds were secularly minded until they encountered al-Qaeda; and the rest were recent converts. Their knowledge of Islam was therefore limited. Many were self-taught, and some would not study the Quran thoroughly until they were in prison.

• From The Diary of a Young Girl (The Definitive Edition) (2020)

  For the last two weeks we’ve been eating lunch at eleven-thirty on Saturdays; in the mornings we have to make do with a cup of hot cereal. Starting tomorrow it’ll be like this every day; that saves us a meal. Vegetables are still very hard to come by. This afternoon we had rotten boiled lettuce. Ordinary lettuce, spinach and boiled let- tuce, that’s all there is. Add to that rotten potatoes, and you have a meal fit for a king! I hadn’t had my period for more than two months, but it finally started last Sunday. Despite the mess and bother, I’m glad it hasn’t deserted me. As you can no doubt imagine, we often say in despair, “What’s the point of the war? Why, oh, why can’t people live together peacefully? Why all this destruction?” The question is understandable, but up to now no one has come up with a satisfactory answer. Why is England manufacturing bigger and better airplanes and bombs and at the same time churning out new houses for reconstruction? Why are millions spent on the war each day, while not a penny is available for medical science, artists or the poor? Why do people have to starve when mountains of food are rotting away in other parts of the world? Oh, why are people so crazy? I don’t believe the war is simply the work of politicians and capitalists. Oh no, the common man is every bit as guilty; otherwise, people and nations would have re- belled long ago! There’s a destructive urge in people, the urge to rage, murder and kill. And until all of humanity, without exception, undergoes a metamorphosis, wars will continue to be waged, and everything that has been carefully built up, cultivated and grown will be cut down and destroyed, only to start allover again! I’ve often been down in the dumps, but never desperate. I look upon our life in hiding as an interesting adventure, full of danger and romance, and every privation as an amusing addition to my diary. I’ve made up my mind to lead a different life from other girls, and not to become an ordinary housewife later on. What I’m experiencing here is a good beginning to an interesting life, and that’s the reason -- the only reason -- why I have to laugh at the humorous side of the most dangerous moments.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  He wanted to show that before Abraham, history had been a succession of disasters; humanity seemed caught in a downward spiral of rebellion, sin, and punishment, but Abraham had reversed this grim trend. The covenant with Abraham had been the turning point of history. Abraham was special to J because he was a man of the south. He had settled in Hebron; his son Isaac lived in Beersheba; and Abraham had been blessed by Melchizedek, king of Salem/Jerusalem. The career of Abraham also looked forward to King David, who was born in the southern town of Bethlehem, was crowned king of Israel and Judah in Hebron, and had made Jerusalem his capital. For the people of Judah, the eternal covenant that God had made with the house of David was far more significant than the covenant with Moses on Sinai. 24 J was much more interested in God’s promise that Abraham would be the father of a great nation and a source of blessing to the whole of humanity than in the Sinai covenant. E’s narrative of the patriarchs, however, never mentioned the covenant with Abraham, and gave more prominence to Jacob, his grandson, whom God renamed “Israel.” But of even greater importance to E was the story of the exodus, in which the little-known god Yahweh had defeated Egypt, the greatest power in the region. It showed that it was possible for a marginal people to overcome oppression and break out of obscurity, as the little kingdom of Israel had become a major power in the Near East during the ninth century. 25 For E, Moses was the prophet par excellence. It was he, not Abraham who turned history around. J was sometimes quite critical of Moses, 26 while E was filled with sympathy for his hero during the long march through the wilderness to the Promised Land. When Yahweh’s anger flared out against his people, E poignantly described Moses’ anguish: “Why do you treat your servant so badly?” he demanded of his god. “I am not able to carry this nation by myself alone. The weight is too much for me. If this is how you want to deal with me, I would rather you killed me! If only I had found favour in your eyes, and not lived to see such misery as this!” 27 There is nothing similar to this in J’s portrait of Moses. Neither J nor E presented Moses as a great lawgiver. When they described the covenant on Mount Sinai, they did not even mention the Ten Commandments.

• From The Diary of a Young Girl (The Definitive Edition) (2020)

  them so light-fingered. Little children, eight- and eleven- year-olds, smash the windows of people’s homes and steal whatever they can lay their hands on. People don’t dare leave the house for even five minutes, since they’re liable to come back and find all their belongings gone. Every day the newspapers are filled with reward notices for the return of stolen typewriters, Persian rugs, electric clocks, fabrics, etc. The electric clocks on street corners are dismantled, public phones are stripped down to the last wire. Morale among the Dutch can’t be good. Everyone’s hungry; except for the ersatz coffee, a week’s food ration doesn’t last two days. The invasion’s long in coming, the men are being shipped off to Germany, the children are sick or undernourished, everyone’s wearing worn-out clothes and run-down shoes. A new sole costs 7.50 guilders on the black market. Besides, few shoemakers will do repairs, or if they do, you have to wait four months for your shoes, which might very well have disappeared in the meantime. One good thing has come out of this: as the food gets worse and the decrees more severe, the acts of sabo- tage against the authorities are increasing. The ration board, the police, the officials-they’re all either helping their fellow citizens or denouncing them and sending them off to prison. Fortunately, only a small percentage of Dutch people are on the wrong side. Yours, Anne FRIDAY, MARCH 31, 1944 Dearest Kitty, Just imagine, it’s still fairly cold, and yet most people have been without coal for nearly a month. Sounds awful, doesn’t it? There’s a general mood of optimism about the Russian front, because that’s going great guns! I don’t often write about the political situation, but I must tell you where the Russians are at the moment. They’ve reached the Polish border and the Prut River in Romania. They’re close to Odessa, and they’ve surrounded Ternopol. Every night we’re expecting an extra communique from Stalin. They’re firing off so many salutes in Moscow, the city must be rumbling and shaking all day long. Whether they like to pretend the fighting’s nearby or they simply don’t have any other way to express their joy, I don’t know!

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  The old administrative offices had been tied to the great families, but now the king could choose his own functionaries, and if they were disobedient, he could simply get rid of them. Unsatisfactory politicians were summarily exiled or executed. As other states followed the example of Wei, politics became an extremely dangerous game. The princes occasionally consulted the shi moralists, but paid far more attention to the merchants. Increasingly their policies reflected the shrewd pragmatism and calculation of the new commercial ethos. The economic boom accentuated inequalities and caused massive social disruption. Peasants were regularly drafted into the army and torn away from their homes and fields; some became successful farmers, but others fell into debt and were turned off their land. The rulers purloined many of the marshes and forests where peasants had fished, hunted game, or gathered wood. Village communities were fatally damaged, and many peasants were forced to become laborers in the factories and foundries. Some aristocratic families were ruined, and the small, old-fashioned principalities were in constant danger of annihilation. A great void had opened in the lives of many people. “What is lawful, what is unlawful?” asked Ku Yuan, prince and poet of Chu. “This country is a slough of despond! Nothing is pure any longer! Informers are exalted! And wise men of gentle birth are without renown!” 3 He had begged his prince to consult a holy man and return to the Way, but was dismissed, banished, and in 299 committed suicide. Others wanted nothing whatever to do with this brave new world and retired to the forests. Hermits had been opting out of city life for some time; Confucius had met some of these anchorites, who had ridiculed his attempts to reform society. 4 These solitaries were nothing like the renouncers of India. They simply wanted a quiet life. Some took the high moral ground, however, speaking in a “critical and disparaging” way about the current state of affairs. 5 Their hero was Shen Nong, the legendary sage king who had invented agriculture. 6 Unlike the ambitious rulers of their own day, Shen Nong had not tried to centralize his empire but had allowed each fiefdom to remain autonomous; he had not terrorized his ministers and, apart from a regular inspection of the crops, had ruled by “doing nothing” ( wu wei ). Other hermits were content simply to live an idyllic life, hunting and fishing in the forests and marshlands, 7 but by the middle of the fourth century, they too had developed a philosophy, which they attributed to one Master Yang. 8 Yangzi left no book, but his ideas were preserved in other texts.

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  We can only piece together the progress of Sumerian militarization from fragmentary archaeological evidence. Between 2340 and 2284 BCE, the Sumerian king lists record thirty-four intercity wars.77 The first kings of Sumer had been priestly specialists in astronomy and ritual; now increasingly they were warriors like Gilgamesh. They discovered that warfare was an invaluable source of revenue that brought them booty and prisoners who could be put to work in the fields. Instead of waiting for the next breakthrough in productivity, war yielded quicker and more ample returns. The Stele of Vultures (c. 2500 BCE), now in the Louvre, depicts Eannatum, king of Lagash, leading a tightly knit and heavily armed phalanx of troops into battle against the city of Umma; this was clearly a society equipped and trained for warfare. The stele records that even though they begged for mercy, three thousand Ummaite soldiers were killed that day.78 Once the plain had become militarized, each king had to be prepared to defend and if possible extend his territory, the source of his wealth. Most of these Sumerian conflicts were tit-for-tat campaigns for booty and territory. None seem to have been decisive, and there are signs that some people saw the whole business as futile. “You go and carry off the enemy’s land,” reads one inscription; “the enemy comes and carries off your land.” Yet disputes were still settled by force rather than by diplomacy and no state could afford to be militarily unprepared. “The state weak in armaments,” commented another inscription, “the enemy will not be driven from its gates.”79 During these inconclusive wars, Sumerian aristocrats and retainers were wounded, killed, and enslaved, but the peasants suffered far more. Because they were the basis of any aristocrat’s wealth, they and their livestock were regularly slaughtered by an invading army, their barns and homes demolished, and their fields soaked with blood. The countryside and peasant villages would become a wasteland, and the destruction of harvests, herds, and agricultural equipment often meant severe famine.80 The inconclusive nature of these wars meant that everybody suffered and that there would be no permanent gain for anybody, since today’s winner was likely to be tomorrow’s loser. This would become the besetting problem of civilization, since equally matched aristocracies would always compete aggressively for scarce resources. Paradoxically, warfare that was supposed to enrich the aristocracy often damaged productivity. Already at this very early date it had become apparent that to prevent this pointless and self-destructive suffering, it was essential to hold these competing aristocracies in check. A higher authority had to have the military muscle to impose the peace.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  But the Mahabharata also reflects the terror inspired by the sacrificial contests, before they had been reformed by the ritualists. At the beginning of the story, Yudishthira, the oldest Pandava brother, having won the kingdom by force of arms, summoned the chieftains to his royal consecration (rajasuya). He had to prove that he possessed the brahman by submitting to the challenge and ordeal of the ritual. He was duly consecrated and anointed king, but the rajasuya had a disastrous outcome. Overcome with envy, Duryodhana challenged Yudishthira to the dice game that was mandatory during the rites, but the gods loaded the dice against Yudishthira, who lost his wife, his property, and his kingdom. The Pandavas were forced into exile for twelve years, and the war that would almost result in the destruction of the world became inevitable. The story’s catastrophic view of the sacrificial contest gives us some insight into the anxiety that inspired the ritual reform of the Brahmanas. The plight of Yudishthira shows that the Mahabharata was not, after all, untouched by the Axial Age. He seems to have been profoundly affected by the new ideals. He was—to the frequent exasperation of his brothers—gentle, tolerant, and singularly lacking in the warrior ethos. He not only had no desire to assert himself and trumpet his ego in the conventional way, but appeared to find it well-nigh impossible to do so and regarded war as evil, savage, and cruel.63 Yudishthira was a man of the Axial Age, and this proved to be an almost intolerable handicap. He could not go off to the forest and practice ahimsa. He was the son of the god Dharma, a manifestation of Varuna, who upheld the order that made life possible. As his earthly representative, it was Yudishthira’s inescapable duty to achieve the sovereignty that alone could bring order to the world. As the son of Dharma, he was also obliged to practice the traditional virtues of absolute truthfulness and fidelity to his sworn word, without which the social order could not be maintained. Yet during the war, Yudishthira was forced—quite disgracefully—to lie. In the course of the eighteen-day battle, the Pandavas had to kill two of the generals fighting on the Kaurava side. As the epic was set in the heroic age, none of these men were ordinary mortals; they were demigods, with supernormal powers. When the Pandavas rode into battle, for example, their chariots did not touch the earth. Warriors were not subject to the same constraints as the human beings of our own debased Kali Yuga; and Bhishma and Drona, who led the Kaurava troops, could not be killed by regular means. They had inflicted so many casualties on the Pandavas’ army that the brothers despaired of victory. The future of the world hung in the balance, because if Yudishthira failed to achieve sovereignty, the divine order would be hopelessly violated. At this terrible moment, Krishna stepped in with advice that filled the brothers with dismay.

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

  But when scientific and moral postulates war thus with each other and objective proof is not to be had, the only course is voluntary choice, for scepticism itself, if systematic, is also voluntary choice. If, meanwhile, the will be undetermined, it would seem only fitting that the belief in its indetermination should be voluntarily chosen from amongst other possible beliefs. Freedom's first deed should be to affirm itself. We ought never to hope for any other method of getting at the truth if indeterminism be a fact. Doubt of this particular truth will therefore probably be open to us to the end of time, and the utmost that a believer in free-will can ever do will be to show that the deterministic arguments are not coercive. That they are seductive, I am the last to deny; nor do I deny that effort may be needed to keep the faith in freedom, when they press upon it, upright in the mind. There is a fatalistic argument for determinism, however, which is radically vicious. When a man has let himself go time after time, he easily becomes impressed with the enormously preponderating influence of circumstances, hereditary habits, and temporary bodily dispositions over what might seem a spontaneity born for the occasion. "All is fate," he then says; "all is resultant of what pre-exists. Even if the moment seems original, it is but the instable molecules passively tumbling in their preappointed way. It is hopeless to resist the drift, vain to look for any new force coming in; and less, perhaps, than anywhere else under the sun is there anything really mine in the decisions which I make." This is really no argument for simple determinism. There runs throughout it the sense of a force which might make things otherwise from one moment to another, if it were only strong enough to breast the tide. A person who feels the impotence of free effort in this way has the acutest notion of what is meant by it, and of its possible independent power. How else could he be so conscious of its absence and of that of its effects? But genuine determinism occupies a totally different ground; not the impotence but the unthinkability of free-will is what it affirms. It admits something phenomenal called free effort, which seems to breast the tide, but it claims this as a portion of the tide. The variations of the effort cannot be independent, it says; they cannot originate ex nihilo, or come from a fourth dimension; they are mathematically fixed functions of the ideas themselves, which are the tide. Fatalism, which conceives of effort clearly enough as an independent variable that might come from a fourth dimension, if it would come but that does not come, is a very dubious ally for determinism. It strongly imagines that very possibility which determinism denies.