Excitement

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)

  Leaving Sicily,415 whence Philip had sailed eleven days before, Richard proceeded to Cyprus, and as a punishment for the ill treatment of pilgrims and the stranding of his vessels, he wrested the kingdom in a three weeks’ campaign from Isaac Comnenus. The English at their occupation of Cyprus, 1878, might well have recalled Richard’s conquest. On the island, Richard’s nuptials were consummated with Berengaria of Navarre, whom he preferred to Philip’s sister Alice, to whom he had been betrothed. In June he reached Acre. "For joy at his coming," says Baha-ed-din, the Arab historian, "the Franks broke forth in rejoicing, and lit fires in their camps all night through. The hosts of the Mussulmans were filled with fear and dread."416 Acre, or Ptolemais, under Mount Carmel, had become the metropolis of the Crusaders, as it was the key to the Holy Land. Christendom had few capitals so gay in its fashions and thronged with such diverse types of nationality. Merchants were there from the great commercial marts of Europe. The houses, placed among gardens, were rich with painted glass. The Hospitallers and Templars had extensive establishments. Against Acre, Guy of Lusignan had been laying siege for two years. Released by Saladin upon condition of renouncing all claim to his crown and going beyond the seas, he had secured easy absolution from the priest from this solemn oath. Baldwin of Canterbury, Hubert Walter, bishop of Salisbury, and the justiciar Ranulf of Glanvill had arrived on the scene before Richard. "We found our army," wrote the archbishop’s chaplain,417 "given up to shameful practices, and yielding to ease and lust, rather than encouraging virtue. The Lord is not in the camp. Neither chastity, solemnity, faith, nor charity are there—a state of things which, I call God to witness, I would not have believed if I had not seen it with my own eyes." Saladin was watching the besiegers and protecting the garrison. The horrors of the siege made it one of the memorable sieges of the Middle Ages.418 It was carried on from the sea as well as on the land. Greek fire was used with great effect by the Turks.419 The struggle was participated in by women as well as the men. Some Crusaders apostatized to get the means for prolonging life.420 With the aid of the huge machine Check Greek, and other engines constructed by Richard in Sicily, and by Philip, the city was made to surrender, July, 1191. By the terms of the capitulation the city’s stores, two hundred thousand pieces of gold, fifteen hundred prisoners, and the true cross were to pass into the hands of the Crusaders.

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

  Once the Federalists were put down with horrible reprisals, four revolutionary armies arrived in the Vendée early in 1794 with instructions from the Committee of Public Safety that recalled the rhetoric of the Catharist Crusade: “Spear with your bayonets all the inhabitants you encounter along the way. I know there may be a few patriots in this region—it matters not, we must sacrifice all.”66 “All brigands found with weapons or suspected of having carried them will be speared by the bayonet,” General Turreau instructed his soldiers. “We will act equally with women, girls and children.… Even people only suspected will not be spared.”67 “The Vendée no longer exists,” François-Joseph Westermann reported to his superiors at the end of the campaign. “Following the orders I have received, I have crushed children beneath the hooves of our horses, and massacred women.… The roads are littered with corpses.”68 The revolution that had promised liberty and fraternity may have slaughtered a quarter of a million people in one of the worst atrocities of the early modern period. Human beings have always sought intensity and moments of ecstasy that give their lives meaning and purpose. If a symbol, icon, myth, ritual, or doctrine no longer yields a sense of transcendent value, they tend to replace it with something else. Historians of religion tell us that absolutely anything can become a symbol of the divine, and that such epiphanies occur “in every area of psychological, economic, spiritual and social life.”69 This was soon evident in France. No sooner had the revolutionaries rid themselves of one religion than they invented another, making the nation an embodiment of the sacred. It was the audacious genius of the revolutionary leadership to recognize that the potent emotions traditionally connected with the Church could be just as powerfully felt if directed toward a new symbol. On August 10, 1793, while the nation was tearing itself apart in war and bloodshed, a festival choreographed by the artist Jacques-Louis David celebrated the Unity and Indivisibility of the Republic in Paris. It began at sunrise on the site of the Bastille, where an imposing statue of Nature decanted water from her breasts into a cup held by the president of the National Convention; he then passed it to eighty-six elderly men representing the French départements in a holy communion. In the Place de la Révolution the president torched a great bonfire of heraldic symbols, scepters, and thrones before a statue of Liberty, and at the Invalides the public gazed at a giant effigy of the French people as Hercules. These festivals became so frequent that people wrote of “festomania.”70 As the nineteenth-century historian Jules Michelet explained, the state festivals celebrated the arrival of “a strange vita nuova, one eminently spiritual.”71

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

  that point yet, and I’d hate to anticipate the glorious event. Still, you’ve probably noticed that I’m telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. For once, I’m not rattling on about high ideals. Furthermore, Hitler has been so kind as to announce to his loyal, devoted people that as of today all mthtary personnel are under orders of the Gestapo, and that any soldier who knows that one of his superiors was involved in this cowardly attempt on the Fuhrer’s life may shoot him on sight! A fine kettle of fish that will be. Little Johnny’s feet are sore after a long march and his commanding officer bawls him out. Johnny grabs his rifle, shouts, “You, you tried to kill the Fuhrer. Take that!” One shot, and the snooty officer who dared to reprimand him passes into eternal life (or is it eternal death?). Eventually, every time an officer sees a soldier or gives an order, he’ll be practically wetting his pants, because the soldiers have more say-so than he does. Were you able to follow that, or have I been skipping from one subject to another again? I can’t help it, the prospect of going back to school in October is making me too happy to be logical! Oh dear, didn’t I just get through telling you I didn’t want to anticipate events? Forgive me, Kitty, they don’t call me a bundle of contradictions for nothing! Yours, Anne M. Frank TUESDAY, AUGUST 1, 1944 Dearest Kitty, “A bundle of contradictions” was the end of my previous letter and is the beginning of this one. Can you please tell me exactly what “a bundle of contradictions” is? What does “contradiction” mean? Like so many words, it can be interpreted in two ways: a contradiction imposed from without and one imposed from within. The former means not accepting other people’s opinions, always knowing best, having the last word; in short, all those unpleasant traits for which I’m known. The latter, for which I’m not known, is my own secret. As I’ve told you many times, I’m split in two. One side contains my exuberant cheerfulness, my flippancy, my joy in life and, above all, my abthty to appreciate the lighter side of things. By that I mean not finding anything wrong with flirtations, a kiss, an embrace, an off-color joke. This side of me is usually lying

• From The Sexual Life of Catherine M. (2001)

  In spite of this, I have never used the frequent, long-distance journeys necessitated by my work to collect lovers. I fucked infinitely less when my timetable was more flexible than it is in Paris, and when I could have made the most of those casual relationships with no tomorrows. However hard I try to remember, I can think of only two men that I have met on a journey and with whom I had some form of sexual relationship during the journey itself. And when I say relationship, there was only one instance each time, between breakfast and the first meeting of the morning with one, and during what was left of the night with the other. There are two explanations. Firstly, right at the beginning of my career a more experienced female colleague had led me to understand that symposia, seminars and other meetings held in seclusion with people who were temporarily cut from their ties were God-given opportunities for furtive comings and goings up and down hotel corridors. I was used to sexual rendezvous of a more advanced nature; nevertheless this shocked me to the same extent as the shapeless clothes people wear to show that they are on holiday when they would usually be very particular about their appearance. With the intransigence of the newly converted, I believed that fucking – and by that I meant fucking frequently and willingly whoever was (or were) the partner (or partners) – was a way of life. If not, if this thing were only permitted when certain conditions were met, at pre-determined times, well then it was carnival! (A little aside to put this severe verdict into context. We no longer need to prove that our sexual tendencies can turn inside out like an old umbrella, and the device that protects us when the wind blows with reality can flip the other way and leave us to get soaked in the squalls of our fantasies. Once again in this book, I am bringing together fact and fantasy, in this case to expose a pleasing antinomy: despite the moral stance I have just expressed, I have often been aroused by imagining myself as a spunk bag for a group of stressed executives at a meeting, they would each dump their load on me secretly, at the back of a hotel bar, even in a phone box, with the receiver in one hand as they carried on their ritual conversation with their wife: ‘Yes darling, it’s going well, it’s just the food that’s not …’ etc. That’s a surefire stellar scenario for me to get off on in a state of complete degradation.)

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

  (2) The glossolalia in the Corinthian church, with which that at Caesarea in Acts 10:46, and that at Ephesus, 19:6, are evidently identical, we know very well from the description of Paul. It occurred in the first glow of enthusiasm after conversion and continued for some time. It was not a speaking in foreign languages, which would have been entirely useless in a devotional meeting of converts, but a speaking in a language differing from all known languages, and required an interpreter to be intelligible to foreigners. It had nothing to do with the spread of the gospel, although it may, like other devotional acts, have become a means of conversion to susceptible unbelievers if such were present. It was an act of self-devotion, an act of thanksgiving, praying, and singing, within the Christian congregation, by individuals who were wholly absorbed in communion with God, and gave utterance to their rapturous feelings in broken, abrupt, rhapsodic, unintelligible words. It was emotional rather than intellectual, the language of the excited imagination, not of cool reflection. It was the language of the spirit (pneu'ma) or of ecstasy, as distinct from the language of the understanding (nou'"). We might almost illustrate the difference by a comparison of the style of the Apocalypse which was conceived ejn pneuvmati (Apoc. 1:10) with that of the Gospel of John, which was written ejn noi>v. The speaker in tongues was in a state of spiritual intoxication, if we may use this term, analogous to the poetic "frenzy" described by Shakespeare and Goethe. His tongue was a lyre on which the divine Spirit played celestial tunes. He was unconscious or only half conscious, and scarcely knew whether he was, "in the body or out of the body." No one could understand this unpremeditated religious rhapsody unless he was in a similar trance. To an unbelieving outsider it sounded like a barbarous tongue, like the uncertain sound of a trumpet, like the raving of a maniac (1 Cor. 14:23), or the incoherent talk of a drunken man (Acts 2:13, 15). "He that speaketh in a tongue speaketh not to men, but to God; for no one understandeth; and in the spirit he speaketh mysteries; but he that prophesieth speaketh unto men edification, and encouragement, and comfort. He that speaketh in a tongue edifieth himself; but he that prophesieth edifieth the church" (1 Cor. 14:2–4; comp. 26–33). The Corinthians evidently overrated the glossolalia, as a showy display of divine power; but it was more ornamental than useful, and vanished away with the bridal season of the church. It is a mark of the great wisdom of Paul who was himself a master in the glossolalia (1 Cor. 14:18), that he assigned to it a subordinate and transient position, restrained its exercise, demanded an interpretation of it, and gave the preference to the gifts of permanent usefulness in which God displays his goodness and love for the general benefit.

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

  and read aloud. Number four: my movie stars are in a terrible disarray and are dying to be straightened out, but since it’ll take several days to do that and Professor Anne is, as she’s already said, up to her ears in work, they’ll have to put up with the chaos a while longer. Then there’re Theseus, Oedipus, Peleus, Orpheus, Jason and Hercules all waiting to be untangled, since their various deeds are running crisscross through my mind like mul- ticolored threads in a dress. Myron and Phidias are also urgently in need of attention, or else I’ll forget entirely how they fit into the picture. The same applies, for example, to the Seven Years’ War and the Nine Years’ War. Now I’m getting everything all mixed up. Well, what can you do with a memory like mine! Just imagine how forgetful I’ll be when I’m eighty! Oh, one more thing. The Bible. How long is it going to take before I come to the story of the bathing Susanna? And what do they mean by Sodom and Gomorrah? Oh, there’s still so much to find out and learn. And in the meantime, I’ve left Charlotte of the Palatine in the lurch. You can see, can’t you, Kitty, that I’m full to bursting? And now something else. You’ve known for a long time that my greatest wish is to be a journalist, and later on, a famous writer. We’ll have to wait and see if these grand illusions (or delusions!) will ever come true, but up to now I’ve had no lack of topics. In any case, after the war I’d like to publish a book called The Secret Annex. It remains to be seen whether I’ll succeed, but my diary can serve as the basis. I also need to finish “Cady’s Life.” I’ve thought up the rest of the plot. After being cured in the sanatorium, Cady goes back home and continues writing to Hans. It’s 1941, and it doesn’t take her long to discover Hans’s Nazi sympathies, and since Cady is deeply concerned with the plight of the Jews and of her friend Marianne, they begin drifting apart. They meet and get back together, but break up when Hans takes up with another girl. Cady is shattered, and because she wants to have a good job, she studies nursing. After graduation she accepts a position, at the urging of her father’s friends, as a nurse in a TB sanatorium in Switzerland. During her first vacation

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

  amazing feats. A few of the wounded who are already back in England also spoke on the radio. Despite the miserable weather, the planes are flying dthgently back and forth. We heard over the BBC that Churchill wanted to land along with the troops on D Day, but Eisenhower and the other generals managed to talk him out of it. Just imagine, so much courage for such an old man he must be at least seventy! The excitement here has died down somewhat; still, we’re all hoping that the war will finally be over by the end of the year. It’s about time! Mrs. van Daan’s constant griping is unbearable; now that she can no longer drive us crazy with the invasion, she moans and groans all day about the bad weather. If only we could plunk her down in the loft in a bucket of cold water! Everyone in the Annex except Mr. van Daan and Peter has read the Hunaarian Rhapsody trilogy, a biography of the composer, piano virtuoso and child prodigy Franz Liszt. It’s very interesting, though in my opinion there’s a bit too much emphasis on women; Liszt was not only the greatest and most famous pianist of his time, he was also the biggest womanizer, even at the age of seventy. He had an affair with Countess Marie d’ Agoult, Princess Carolyne Sayn-Wittgenstein, the dancer Lola Montez, the pianist Agnes Kingworth, the pianist Sophie Menter, the Circassian princess Olga Janina, Baroness Olga Meyen- dorff, actress Lilla what’s-her-name, etc., etc., and there’s no end to it. Those parts of the book dealing with music and the other arts are much more interesting. Some of the people mentioned are Schumann, Clara Wieck, Hector Berlioz, Johannes Brahms, Beethoven, Joachim, Richard Wagner, Hans von Bulow, Anton Rubinstein, Frederic Chopin, Victor Hugo, Honore de Balzac, Hiller, Hummel, Czerny, Rossini, Cherubini, Paganini, Mendels- sohn, etc., etc. Liszt appears to have been a decent man, very generous and modest, though exceptionally vain. He helped others, put art above all else, was extremely fond of cognac and women, couldn’t bear the sight of tears, was a gentleman, couldn’t refuse anyone a favor, wasn’t interested in money and cared about religious freedom and the world. Yours, Anne M. Frank TUESDAY, JUNE 13, 1944 Dearest Kit,

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  The Hellenistic philosophies did not affect the old pagan religion: sacrifices, festivals, and rituals continued without interruption. The mysteries became even more popular, and were often combined with congenial eastern cults. In 399, Socrates had been executed for turning people away from the traditional gods. After the fourth century, no philosopher was persecuted for his religious views, even though Epicurus, Zeno, and Pyrrho attempted to discredit the old beliefs. There was a new tolerance that was never officially endorsed by the establishment, but that gained ground among the elite.63 Most people continued to practice the ancient rites, which remained largely untouched by the Axial Age and would remain in place until Christianity was forcibly imposed as the state religion in the fifth century CE. The Hellenistic philosophers may not have been as revolutionary as their predecessors, but they had lasting influence, and in many ways they epitomized the emerging Western spirit. In the West, people gravitated toward science and logos, and were less spiritually ambitious than the sages of India and China. Instead of making the heroic effort to discover a realm of transcendent peace within, the Hellenistic philosophers were prepared to settle for a quiet life. Instead of training the intuitive powers of the mind, they turned to scientific logos. Instead of achieving mystical enlightenment, the West was excited by a more mundane illumination. The Western genius for science eventually transformed the world, and in the sixteenth century its scientific revolution introduced a new Axial Age. This would greatly benefit humanity, but it was inspired by a different species of genius. Instead of the Buddha, Socrates, and Confucius, the heroes of the second Axial Age would be Newton, Freud, and Einstein.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  56 Only then did the new colony become a reality: “One becomes a settler when he builds the fire altar,” said one of the later texts, “and whoever are builders of fire altars are settled.” 57 Raiding was built into the Aryan rituals. In the soma ritual, the sacred drink seemed to lift warriors up to the world of the gods. Once filled with the divine power of the god, they felt that they “had surpassed the heavens and all this spacious earth.” But this hymn began: “This, even this was my resolve, to win a cow, to win a steed: have I not drunk of Soma juice?” 58 During the soma ritual, the patron and his guests had to leave the sacrificial ground and raid a nearby settlement to procure cattle and soma for the sacrifice. In the rajasuya, after the new king had drunk the soma juice, he was dispatched on a raid. If he returned with plunder, the officiating priests acknowledged his kingship: “Thou, O King, art brahman !” 59 During the late Vedic period, the Aryans developed the idea of brahman, the supreme reality. Brahman was not a deva, but a power that was higher, deeper, and more basic than the gods, a force that held all the disparate elements of the universe together, and stopped them from fragmenting. 60 Brahman was the fundamental principle that enabled all things to become strong and to expand. It was life itself. 61 Brahman could never be defined or described, because it was all-encompassing: human beings could not get outside it and see it objectively. But it could be experienced in ritual. When the king arrived back safely from his raid, with the spoils of battle, he had become one with the brahman. He was now the axis, the hub of the wheel that would pull his kingdom together, and enable it to prosper and expand. Brahman was also experienced in silence. A ritual often ended with the brahmodya competition to find a verbal formula that expressed the mystery of the brahman. The challenger asked a difficult and enigmatic question, and his opponent answered in an equally elusive manner. The match continued until one of the contestants was unable to respond: reduced to silence, he was forced to withdraw. 62 The transcendence of the brahman was sensed in the mysterious clash of unanswerable questions that led to a stunning realization of the impotence of speech. For a few sacred moments, the competitors felt one with the mysterious force that held the whole of life together, and the winner could say that he was the brahman. By the tenth century some rishis started to create a new theological discourse. The traditional devas were beginning to seem crude and unsatisfactory; they must point to something beyond themselves.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  The third century was the great age of Greek science. The new Hellenistic kingdoms of Ptolemy and Seleucus were far richer than the old poleis, and kings vied with one another to attract scholars to their capitals, bribing them with grants and salaries. Euclid and Archimedes both lived and worked in Alexandria. The Milesian and Eleatic philosophers had concentrated on those aspects of natural science that related to human beings, rather like popular scientists today, whereas the new scientists of the third century were at the cutting edge of mathematics, physics, astronomy, and engineering. Science had now lost its early religious orientation and become a wholly secular pursuit. The Hellenistic philosophies did not affect the old pagan religion: sacrifices, festivals, and rituals continued without interruption. The mysteries became even more popular, and were often combined with congenial eastern cults. In 399, Socrates had been executed for turning people away from the traditional gods. After the fourth century, no philosopher was persecuted for his religious views, even though Epicurus, Zeno, and Pyrrho attempted to discredit the old beliefs. There was a new tolerance that was never officially endorsed by the establishment, but that gained ground among the elite. 63 Most people continued to practice the ancient rites, which remained largely untouched by the Axial Age and would remain in place until Christianity was forcibly imposed as the state religion in the fifth century CE. The Hellenistic philosophers may not have been as revolutionary as their predecessors, but they had lasting influence, and in many ways they epitomized the emerging Western spirit. In the West, people gravitated toward science and logos, and were less spiritually ambitious than the sages of India and China. Instead of making the heroic effort to discover a realm of transcendent peace within, the Hellenistic philosophers were prepared to settle for a quiet life. Instead of training the intuitive powers of the mind, they turned to scientific logos. Instead of achieving mystical enlightenment, the West was excited by a more mundane illumination. The Western genius for science eventually transformed the world, and in the sixteenth century its scientific revolution introduced a new Axial Age. This would greatly benefit humanity, but it was inspired by a different species of genius. Instead of the Buddha, Socrates, and Confucius, the heroes of the second Axial Age would be Newton, Freud, and Einstein. A new empire had also been established in India, but it was very different from Alexander’s.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  He rebuilt the rural shrines that Hezekiah had destroyed, set up altars to Baal, brought an effigy of Asherah into the Jerusalem temple, set up statues of the divine horses of the sun at the entrance of the temple, and instituted child sacrifice outside Jerusalem. 95 The biblical historian was appalled by these developments, but few of Manasseh’s subjects would have found them very surprising, since, as archaeologists have discovered, many had similar icons in their own homes. 96 Nevertheless, there was widespread unrest in the rural districts, which had been devastated during the Assyrian invasions. 97 Even though Hezekiah’s nationalist policies had been so disastrous, some may have harbored dreams of a golden age when their forefathers had lived peacefully in their land, without the constant threat of enemy invasion and domination by foreign powers. This smoldering discontent erupted after the death of Manasseh. His son Amon reigned for only two years before he was assassinated in a palace uprising led by the rural aristocracy, whom the Bible calls am ha-aretz (“the people of the land”). 98 The leaders of the coup put Amon’s eight-year-old son, Josiah, on the throne; because his mother came from Bozkath, a small village in the Judean foothills, he was one of their own. 99 Power had shifted away from the urban elites to the leaders of the countryside, and at first everything seemed to be going their way. By this time, Assyria was in decline and Egypt was in the ascendancy. In 656 Pharaoh Psammetichus I, founder of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty, forced the Assyrian troops to withdraw from the Levant. With astonishment and joy, the Judahites watched the Assyrians vacating the territories of the old northern kingdom of Israel. True, Josiah had now become the vassal of Egypt, but Pharaoh was too busy taking control of the lucrative trade routes in the Canaanite lowlands to bother about Judah, which—for the time being—was left to its own devices. When Josiah was about sixteen years old, he had some kind of religious conversion, which probably meant that he wanted to worship Yahweh exclusively. 100 This principled devotion to the national god could also have been a declaration of political independence. In 622, some ten years later, Josiah began extensive building work on Solomon’s temple, the great memorial of Judah’s golden age. During the construction, the high priest Hilkiah made a momentous discovery, and hurried to Shaphan, the royal scribe, with this exciting news: “I have found the book of the law [ sefer torah ] in the temple of Yahweh.”

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

  Yours, Anne M. Frank TUESDAY, JUNE 6, 1944 My dearest Kitty, “This is D Day,” the BBC announced at twelve. “This is the day.” The invasion has begun! This morning at eight the British reported heavy bombing of Calais, Boulogne, Le Havre and Cherbourg, as well as Pas de Calais (as usual). Further, as a precautionary measure for those in the occupied territories, everyone living within a zone of twenty miles from the coast was warned to prepare for bombardments. Where possible, the British will drop pamphlets an hour ahead of time. According to the German news, British paratroopers have landed on the coast of France. “British landing craft are engaged in combat with German naval units,” according to the BBC. Conclusion reached by the Annex while breakfasting at nine: this is a trial landing, like the one two years ago in Dieppe. BBC broadcast in German, Dutch, French and other languages at ten: The invasion has begun! So this is the “real” invasion. BBC broadcast in German at eleven: speech by Supreme Commander General Dwight Eisenhower. BBC broadcast in English: “This is 0 Day.” General Eisenhower said to the French people: “Stiff fighting will come now, but after this the victory. The year 1944 is the year of complete victory. Good luck!” BBC broadcast in English at one: 11,000 planes are shuttling back and forth or standing by to land troops and bomb behind enemy lines; 4,000 landing craft and small boats are continually arriving in the area between Cher-bourg and Le Havre. English and American troops are already engaged in heavy combat. Speeches by Gerbrandy, the Prime Minister of Belgium, King Haakon of Norway, de Gaulle of France, the King of England and, last but not least, Churchill. A huge commotion in the Annex! Is this really the beginning of the long-awaited

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

  33 Timothy Dwight, Jonathan Edwards’s grandson and president of Yale University, predicted that the revolution would usher in “Immanuel’s land”; 34 the Connecticut preacher Ebenezer Baldwin argued that liberty, religion, and learning had been driven out of Europe and moved to America, where Jesus would establish his kingdom; and Provost William Smith of Philadelphia maintained that the colonies were God’s “chosen seat of Freedom, Arts and Heavenly Knowledge.” John Adams saw the English settlement of America as part of God’s plan for the world’s enlightenment, 35 and Thomas Paine was convinced that “we have it in our power to begin the world over again. A situation such as the present hath not happened since the days of Noah.” 36 This exaltation, though, was laced with hatred for the enemies of God’s kingdom. After the passing of the Stamp Act (1765), patriotic songs portrayed its perpetrators—Lords Bute, Grenville, and North—as the minions of Satan, and during political demonstrations their pictures were carried alongside effigies of the devil. When George III granted religious freedom to the French Catholics in the Canadian territory, he was denounced by the American colonists as the ally of Antichrist; and even the presidents of Harvard and Yale saw the War of Independence as part of God’s design for the overthrow of Catholicism. 37 This virulent sectarian hostility enabled the colonists to separate themselves definitively from the Old World, for which many still felt a strong residual affection; hatred of Catholic “tyranny” would long remain a crucial element in American national identity. The Founders may have been followers of Locke, but “religion” had not yet been banished from the colonies; had it been so, the revolution might not have succeeded. As soon as independence was declared in July 1776, the colonies began to compose their new constitutions. In Virginia, Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) proposed a formula that would not survive the ratification process: “All persons shall have full and free liberty of religious opinion; nor shall any be compelled to frequent or maintain any religious institution.” 38 This guaranteed freedom for religion and freedom from it. But we must bear in mind that Jefferson’s conception of “religion” was based on two early modern innovations to which most of his countrymen did not subscribe. First was the reduction of religion to “belief” and “opinion.” As an apostle of Enlightenment empiricism, Jefferson rejected the idea that religious knowledge was acquired by revelation, ritual, or communal experience; it was merely a set of beliefs shared by some. Like all Enlightenment philosophes, Jefferson and James Madison (1751–1836), the pioneers of religious liberty in America, believed that no idea should be immune from investigation or even outright rejection. Nevertheless, they also insisted on the right of conscience: a man’s personal convictions were his own, not subject to the coercion of government.

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

  “Because you get dimples in your cheeks. How do you do that?” “I was born with them. There’s also one in my chin. It’s the only mark of beauty I possess.” “No, no, that’s not true!” “Yes it is. I know I’m not beautiful. I never have been and I never will be!” “I don’t agree. I think you’re pretty.” “I am not.” “I say you are, and you’ll have to take my word for it.” So of course I then said the same about him. Yours, Anne M. Frank WEDNESDAY, MARCH 29, 1944 Dearest Kitty, Mr. Bolkestein, the Cabinet Minister, speaking on the Dutch broadcast from London, said that after the war a collection would be made of diaries and letters dealing with the war. Of course, everyone pounced on my diary. Just imagine how interesting it would be if I were to publish a novel about the Secret Annex. The title alone would make people think it was a detective story. Seriously, though, ten years after the war people would find it very amusing to read how we lived, what we ate and what we talked about as Jews in hiding. Although I tell you a great deal about our lives, you still know very little about us. How frightened the women are during air raids; last Sunday, for instance, when 350 British planes dropped 550 tons of bombs on IJmuiden, so that the houses trembled like blades of grass in the wind. Or how many epidemics are raging here. You know nothing of these matters, and it would take me all day to describe everything down to the last detail. People have to stand in line to buy vegetables and all kinds of goods; doctors can’t visit their patients, since their cars and bikes are stolen the moment they turn their backs; burglaries and thefts are so common that you ask yourself what’s suddenly gotten into the Dutch to make

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

  In the next two types of decision, the final fiat occurs before the evidence is all 'in.' It often happens that no paramount and authoritative reason for either course will come. Either seems a case of a Good, and there is no umpire as to which good should yield its place to the other. We grow tired of long hesitation and inconclusiveness, and the hour may come when we feel that even a bad decision is better than no decision at all. Under these conditions it will often happen that some accidental circumstance, supervening at a particular movement upon our mental weariness, will upset the balance in the direction of one of the alternatives, to which then we feel ourselves committed, although an opposite accident at the same time might have produced the opposite result. In the second type of case our feeling is to a certain extent that of letting ourselves drift with a certain indifferent acquiescence in a direction accidentally determined from without, with the conviction that, after all, we might as well stand by this course as by the other, and that things are in any event sure to turn out sufficiently right. In the third type the determination seems equally accidental, but it comes from within, and not from without. If often happens, when the absence of imperative principle is perplexing and suspense distracting, that we find ourselves acting, as it were, automatically, and as if by a spontaneous discharge of our nerves, in the direction of one of the horns of the dilemma. But so exciting is this sense of motion after our intolerable pent-up state, that we eagerly throw ourselves into it. 'Forward now!' we inwardly cry, 'though the heavens fall.' This reckless and exultant espousal of an energy so little premeditated by us that we feel rather like passive spectators cheering on the display of some extraneous force than like voluntary agents, is a type of decision too abrupt and tumultuous to occur often in humdrum and cool-blooded natures. But it is probably frequent in persons of strong emotional endowment and unstable or vacillating character. And in men of the world-shaking type, the Napoleons, Luthers, etc., in whom tenacious passion combines with ebullient activity, when by any chance the passion's outlet has been dammed by scruples or apprehensions, the resolution is probably often of this catastrophic kind. The flood breaks quite unexpectedly through the dam. That is should so often do so is quite sufficient to account for the tendency of these characters to a fatalistic mood of mind. And the fatalistic mood itself is sure to reinforce the strength of the energy just started on its exciting path of discharge.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  The sacrificial ritual of Delphi reflected the violence of his death. While the victim was killed, the local people stood around with their knives at the ready. As soon as the animal was dead, they would close in and savagely cut off as much of the meat as they could, often leaving the priest with nothing. The savagery of the sacrifice, which violated the civilized values of the polis, formed a sinister counterpoint to the luminous cult of Apollo, god of order and moderation. Apollo had fought and killed a monstrous she-dragon at Delphi, a triumph that symbolized the victory of the Olympians over the chthonian powers. He called the dragon Python, because her carcass had rotted away ( pythein ) in the earth. Later he founded the Pythian games in her memory, and people came from all over the Greek world to consult Apollo’s prophetess, the Pythia. 66 She sat on a tripod beside the sacred fire in the inner sanctum. When possessed by Apollo, she would shudder with anguish and sing or even scream the inspired words, but in fact her advice was often quite practical and sensible. Unlike most of the other shrines, Delphi was not attached to a polis, but was isolated on a steep mountain, far from arable land. It was independent, therefore, a religious center based on insight rather than political power. Delphi had no agenda of its own, and became an agora, an “open space,” where petitioners and pilgrims could meet and discuss the problems and ideals that, they discovered, were shared by most of the poleis. Delphi played an important role in the new wave of colonization that began in the middle of the eighth century. 67 Before leaving home, colonists would often consult the Pythia, who helped them to arrive at a reasoned decision. By the end of the century, new Greek settlements had been established all around the Aegean. Greece was coming to life again; there was a dawning excitement, a sense of discovery, fresh opportunities for trade, expanding horizons, and the stimulus of foreign culture. Increase in trade led to new contacts with the east. 68 Greek merchants traveled to the Middle East, and refugees from the Assyrian invasions migrated to the Greek poleis, bringing new skills and crafts. The Greeks adapted the Phoenician script for their own use, and were thus able to participate in the new literary culture that now stretched from the Euphrates to Italy. The Greeks also imported eastern religious ideas. During the eighth century, they began to build large temples on the Near Eastern model, to house the effigy of a god. The cult of the Pythia may have been influenced by the ecstatic prophecy of the Middle East. The poets’ descriptions of the underworld began to resemble the Mesopotamian world of the dead. Some of their most popular gods may have come from the East.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  Some of them gave lessons on rhetoric and the art of persuasion. Gorgias, for example, wrote several handbooks on public speaking, and taught his pupils that it was possible to argue any case. He once wrote a famous defense of the indefensible Helen of Troy, and was himself an electrifying lecturer. When he arrived in Athens as an ambassador for Leontinum in 427, Gorgias became an overnight sensation, and young Athenians crowded into his classes. One of his students was Alcibiades, the nephew of Pericles, who once soundly defeated his uncle in an argument about democracy, using Sophistic methods. Alcibiades became a brilliant speaker in the assembly, and as we shall see, this had terrible consequences for Athens. Some of the Sophists’ pupils certainly abused the skills that they had learned, but this was not the Sophists’ fault. Gorgias believed that effective oratory kept freedom alive. Somebody who truly understood how to marshal an argument could defend the innocent and advance his polis. In a democracy, the Attic orator Antiphon once observed, “Victory goes to him who speaks best.”20 This was not necessarily a cynical observation, but a statement of fact about the way democracy worked. If victory did indeed go to the person who argued most convincingly in the assembly, the Sophists’ skills could indeed ensure that the right prevailed. Not all Sophists concentrated on public speaking. The most prominent Sophist was Protagoras of Abdera, who had little interest in rhetoric. His specialty was law and government, but he also wrote about language and grammar, and produced a philosophical treatise on the nature of truth. He arrived in Athens during the 430s, and became a friend of Pericles, who commissioned him to write the constitution for the new settlement at Thurii in Italy. Protagoras taught his students to question everything. They must accept nothing on hearsay or at second hand, but test all truth against their own judgment and experience. There must be no more self-indulgent speculation about the cosmos, unsupported by hard evidence. Naïve reliance on traditional mythology was also unacceptable, if it contradicted the laws of common sense.

• From The Erotic Mind (1995)

  I first realized the value of peak sexual experiences in my work as a therapist. Years later I created the Sexual Excitement Survey so that respondents could write anonymously, and in considerable detail, about their most unforgettable turn-ons. Their sexy tales will serve as fascinating illustrations of the erotic mind in action. If you read this book solely as an interested observer, I’m sure you’ll be informed and entertained. But I hope you’ll use it to embark on a voyage of erotic self-exploration. I will regularly invite you to examine your own peak erotic experiences and show you how to search gently for clues to your eroticism. You’ll open new pathways to sexual satisfaction by reading about other people’s erotic truths—the ones that rarely are given a voice—while simultaneously attending to your own. You’ll identify the factors that make peak experiences stand out and discover that eroticism is dynamic and paradoxical because it springs from the interplay between your attractions and the obstacles that stand in your way. It will become clear that predictable challenges of early life, faced by us all, become the cornerstones of eroticism. You already know how positive emotions can energize arousal, but you’ll see how unexpected aphrodisiacs such as anxiety, guilt, and anger can have similar effects. As your awareness expands you’ll marvel at your erotic mind’s amazing ability to transform life’s inevitable difficulties and emotional wounds into sources of excitation. In Part II, “Troublesome Turn-ons,” we’ll use the paradoxical perspective to gain insight into extremely common but rarely discussed erotic problems. We’ll look at how the same emotions that excite us can turn against us, blocking our enjoyment. We’ll also explore how ingrained erotic patterns can unconsciously draw us into relationships as frustrating as they are intense. Then we’ll discover how erotic conflicts during childhood and adolescence can split our lustful from our tender feelings. And we’ll observe how low self-esteem sometimes links with high arousal to produce the most overwhelming and destructive of all turn-ons. As you study these difficulties they will become understandable rather than frightening. Part II concludes with a practical look at the erotic mind as a potent force for healing and growth, including a seven-step program that anyone can follow to promote positive erotic changes. In Part III, “Positively Erotic,” we’ll explore how your growing self-awareness can guide you toward more joy and satisfaction in your life. The paradoxical perspective will provide you with new insights into the age-old challenge of deepening intimacy while sustaining passion in long-term relationships. While acknowledging the inherent conflict between closeness and sexual excitement, you’ll learn how erotic couples actively cultivate key skills to keep the spark alive between them as their relationships grow. Next we’ll reevaluate the true nature of erotic health. Crucial signposts will help you evaluate your sexual well-being and prepare you for lifelong erotic development. The book concludes with an inspiring look at the rewards of the erotic adventure.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  When Josiah was about sixteen years old, he had some kind of religious conversion, which probably meant that he wanted to worship Yahweh exclusively.100 This principled devotion to the national god could also have been a declaration of political independence. In 622, some ten years later, Josiah began extensive building work on Solomon’s temple, the great memorial of Judah’s golden age. During the construction, the high priest Hilkiah made a momentous discovery, and hurried to Shaphan, the royal scribe, with this exciting news: “I have found the book of the law [sefer torah] in the temple of Yahweh.”101 This, he said, was the authentic Law, which Yahweh had given to Moses on Mount Sinai. At once Shaphan took the scroll to the king and read it aloud in his presence. [image file=image_rsrc5K1.jpg] Most scholars believe that the scroll contained an early version of the book of Deuteronomy, which describes Moses gathering the people together on Mount Nebo in Transjordan shortly before his death, and delivering a “second law” (Greek: deuteronomion). But instead of being an ancient work, as Shaphan and Hilkiah claimed, it was almost certainly an entirely new scripture. Until the eighth century there had been very little reading or writing of religious texts in either Israel or Judah. There was no early tradition that Yahweh’s teachings had been written down. In J and E, Moses had passed on Yahweh’s commands by word of mouth, and the people had responded verbally: “All that Yahweh has spoken we will do.”102 J and E did not mention the Ten Commandments; originally the stone tablets—“written with the finger of God”103—probably contained the divinely revealed plans for the tabernacle where Yahweh had dwelt with his people during the years in the wilderness.104 It was only later that the Deuteronomist writers added to the JE narrative, explaining that Moses “wrote down all the words of Yahweh” and “took the scroll of the covenant [sefer torah] and read it in the hearing of the people.”105 Now Shaphan claimed that this was the very scroll that Hilkiah had discovered in the temple. For centuries this precious document had been lost, and its teachings had never been implemented. Now that the sefer torah had been discovered, Yahweh’s people could make a new start.

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

  The aim of the Crusades was the conquest of the Holy Land and the defeat of Islam. Enthusiasm for Christ was the moving impulse, with which, however, were joined the lower motives of ambition, avarice, love of adventure, hope of earthly and heavenly reward. The whole chivalry of Europe, aroused by a pale-faced monk and encouraged by a Hildebrandian pope, threw itself steel-clad upon the Orient to execute the vengeance of heaven upon the insults and barbarities of Moslems heaped upon Christian pilgrims, and to rescue the grave of the Redeemer of mankind from the grasp of the followers of the False Prophet. The miraculous aid of heaven frequently intervened to help the Christians and confound the Saracens.316 The Crusaders sought the living among the dead. They mistook the visible for the invisible, confused the terrestrial and the celestial Jerusalem, and returned disillusioned.317 They learned in Jerusalem, or after ages have learned through them, that Christ is not there, that He is risen, and ascended into heaven, where He sits at the head of a spiritual kingdom. They conquered Jerusalem, 1099, and lost it, 1187; they reconquered, 1229, and lost again, 1244, the city in which Christ was crucified. False religions are not to be converted by violence, they can only be converted by the slow but sure process of moral persuasion. Hatred kindles hatred, and those who take the sword shall perish by the sword. St. Bernard learned from the failure of the Second Crusade that the struggle is a better one which is waged against the sinful lusts of the heart than was the struggle to conquer Jerusalem. The immediate causes of the Crusades were the ill treatment of pilgrims visiting Jerusalem and the appeal of the Greek emperor, who was hard pressed by the Turks. Nor may we forget the feeling of revenge for the Mohammedans begotten in the resistance offered to their invasions of Italy and Gaul.318 In 841 they sacked St. Peter’s, and in 846 threatened Rome for the second time, and a third time under John VIII. The Normans wrested a part of Sicily from the Saracens at the battle of Cerame, 1063, took Palermo, 1072, Syracuse, 1085, and the rest of Sicily ten years later. A burning desire took hold of the Christian world to be in possession of — "those holy fields Over whose acres walked those blessed feet Which fourteen hundred years ago were nail’d For our advantage on the bitter cross." Shakespeare.