Fear

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

  But if certain of our emotional reactions can be explained by the two principles invoked—and the reader will himself have felt how conjectural and fallible in some of the instances the explanation is—there remain many reactions which cannot so be explained at all, and these we must write down for the present as purely idiopathic effects of the stimulus. Amongst them are the effects on the viscera and internal glands, the dryness of the mouth and diarrhœa and nausea of fear, the liver-disturbances which sometimes produce jaundice after excessive rage, the urinary secretion of sanguine excitement, and the bladder-contraction of apprehension, the gaping of expectancy, the 'lump in the throat' of grief, the tickling there and the swallowing of embarrassment, the 'precordial' anxiety' of dread, the changes in the pupil, the various sweatings of the skin, cold or hot, local or general, and its flushings, together with other symptoms which probably exist but are too hidden to have been noticed or named. It seems as if even the changes of blood-pressure and heart-beat during emotional excitement might, instead of being teleologically determined, prove to be purely mechanical or physiological outpourings through the easiest drainage-channels—the pneumogastrics and sympathetic nerves happening under ordinary circumstances to be such channels. Mr. Spencer argues that the smallest muscles must be such channels; and instances the tail in dogs, cats, and birds, the ears in horses, the crest in parrots, the face and fingers in man, as the first organs to be moved by emotional stimuli.[444] This principle (if it be one) would apply still more easily to the muscles of the smaller arteries (though not exactly to the heart); whilst the great variability of the circulatory symptoms would also suggest that they are determined by causes into which utility does not enter. The quickening of the heart lends itself, it is true, rather easily to explanation by inherited habit, organic memory of more violent excitement; and Darwin speaks in favor of this view (see his Expression, etc., pp. 74-5). But, on the other hand, we have so many cases of reaction which are indisputably pathological, as we may say, and which could never be serviceable or derived from what was serviceable, that I think we should be cautious about pushing our explanations of the varied heart-beat too far in the teleological direction. Trembling, which is found in many excitements besides that of terror, is, pace Mr. Spencer and Sig. Mantegazza, quite pathological. So are terror's other strong symptoms. Professor Mosso, as the total result of his study, writes as follows:

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

  The king’s rod of force is essential for the welfare of the world, Arjuna argued. No king has ever attained glory without slaying his enemies; indeed, it is impossible to exist without harming other creatures: “I don’t see anyone living in the world with nonviolence. Even ascetics cannot stay alive without killing.” 113 Like Ashoka, who was also unable to stem the violence of imperial warfare, Yudishthira focuses on kindness to animals, the only form of ahimsa that he is able realistically to practice. At the end of his life, he refuses to enter heaven without his devoted dog and is congratulated for his compassion by his father, Dharma. 114 For centuries, the Indian national epic has compelled its audience to appreciate the moral ambiguity and tragedy of warfare; whatever the warrior’s heroic code maintained, it was never a wholly glorious activity. Yet it was essential not only to the survival of the state but also for civilization and progress and, as such, had become an unavoidable fact of human life. Even Arjuna, who is often irritated by his brother’s yearning for nonviolence, has an “Ashoka moment.” In the Bhagavad-Gita he and Krishna debate these problems before the final battle with the Kauravas. As he stands in his chariot beside Krishna in the front line, Arjuna is suddenly horrified to see his cousins and beloved friends and teachers in the enemy ranks. “I see no good in killing my kinsmen in battle,” he tells Krishna, “I do not want to kill them, even if I am killed.” 115 Krishna tries to hearten him by citing all the traditional arguments, but Arjuna is not impressed: “I will not fight!” he cries. 116 So Krishna introduces an entirely novel idea: a warrior must simply dissociate himself from the effects of his actions and perform his duty without any personal animus or agenda of his own. Like a yogin, he must take the “I” out of his deeds, so that he acts impersonally—indeed, he will not be acting at all. 117 Instead, like a sage, even in the frenzy of battle, he will remain fearless and without desire. We do not know whether this would have convinced Arjuna, because he is suddenly blasted by a terrifying epiphany. Krishna reveals that he is really an incarnation of the god Vishnu, who descends to earth whenever the cosmic order is in jeopardy.

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

  Against the snares of demons, Against the temptations of vices, Against the lusts of nature, Against every man who meditates injury to me. Whether far or near, With few or with many. 6. I have set around me all these powers, Against every hostile savage power, Directed against my body and my soul, Against the incantations of false prophets, Against the black laws of heathenism, Against the false laws of heresy, Against the deceits of idolatry, Against the spells of women, and smiths, and druids, Against all knowledge which blinds the soul of man. 7. Christ protect me to-day Against poison, against burning, Against drowning, against wound, That I may receive abundant reward. 8. Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ within me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ at my right, Christ at my left, Christ in the fort [i.e. at home], Christ in the chariot-seat [travelling by land], Christ in the poop [travelling by water]. 9. Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me, Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks to me, Christ in every eye that sees me, Christ in every ear that hears me. 10. I bind to myself to-day The strong power of an invocation of the Trinity, The faith of the Trinity in Unity, The Creator of [the elements]. 11. Salvation is of the Lord, Salvation is of the Lord, Salvation is of Christ; May thy salvation, O Lord, be ever with us." The fourth and last document which has been claimed as authentic and contemporary, is a Latin "Hymn in praise of St. Patrick" (Hymnus Sancti Patricii, Episcopi Scotorum) by St. Sechnall (Secundinus) which begins thus: "Audite, omnes amantes Deum, sancta merita Viri in Christo beati Patrici Episcopi: Quomodo bonum ob actum simulatur angelis, Perfectamque propter uitam aequatur Apostolis." The poem is given in full by Haddan & Stubbs, 324–327, and assigned to "before A.D. 448 (?)," in which year Sechnall died. But how could he anticipate the work of Patrick, when his mission, according to the same writers, began only eight years earlier (440), and lasted till 493? The hymn is first mentioned by Tyrechanus in the "Book of Armagh." The next oldest document is the Irish hymn of St. Fiacc on St. Patrick, which is assigned to the latter part of the sixth century, (l.c. 356–361). The Senchus Mor is attributed to the age of St. Patrick; but it is a code of Irish laws, derived from Pagan times, and gradually modified by Christian ecclesiastics in favor of the church. The Canons attributed to St. Patrick are of later date (Haddan & Stubbs, 328 sqq.). It is strange that St. Patrick is not mentioned by Bede in his Church History, although he often refers to Hibernia and its church, and is barely named as a presbyter in his Martyrology.

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

  1198–1216) commissioned Philip II of France to lead a Crusade against the Cathars in Languedoc, who, he wrote, were worse than the Muslims. The Cathar Church “gives birth continually to a monstrous brood by which its corruption is vigorously renewed after that offspring has passed on to others the canker of its own madness and a detestable succession of criminals emerges.” 99 Philip was happy to oblige, since this would enhance his hold over southern France, but Counts Raymond VI of Toulouse and Raymond- Roger of Béziers and Carcassonne refused to join his Crusade. When one of Raymond’s barons stabbed the papal legate, Innocent was convinced that the Cathars were determined “to annihilate us ourselves” and eliminate orthodox Catholicism in Languedoc. 100 In 1209 Armand-Amalric, abbot of Citeaux, led a large army there, laying siege to the city of Béziers. It is said that when his troops asked the abbot how they could distinguish orthodox Catholics from the heretics in the town, he had replied: “Kill them all; God will know his own.” Indiscriminate slaughter followed. In fact, it seems that when the Catholics of Béziers were ordered to leave the town, they refused to abandon their Cathar neighbors and chose to die with them. 101 This Crusade was as much about regional solidarity against outside intrusion as it was about religious affiliation. The extremity of both the rhetoric and the military ruthlessness of the Catharist Crusade is symptomatic of a profound denial. Popes and abbots were dedicated to the imitation of Christ, but, like Ashoka, they had come up against the dilemma of civilization, which cannot exist without the structural and military violence against which the Cathars were protesting. Innocent III was the most powerful pope in history: he had secured the libertas of the Church and, unlike his predecessors, could command kings and emperors as their monarch. But he headed a society that had almost succumbed to barbarism after the collapse of the Roman Empire and was now in the process of creating the world’s first predominantly commercial economy. All three Abrahamic faiths began with a defiant rejection of inequity and systemic violence, which reflects the persistent conviction of human beings, dating back perhaps to the hunter-gatherer period, that there should be an equitable distribution of resources. Yet this militated against the way Western society was heading. Cathars, Waldenses, and Franciscans all felt torn by this impasse, realizing perhaps that as Jesus had pointed out, all who benefit from the inherent violence of the state are implicated in its cruelty.

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

  Even Arjuna, who is often irritated by his brother’s yearning for nonviolence, has an “Ashoka moment.” In the Bhagavad-Gita he and Krishna debate these problems before the final battle with the Kauravas. As he stands in his chariot beside Krishna in the front line, Arjuna is suddenly horrified to see his cousins and beloved friends and teachers in the enemy ranks. “I see no good in killing my kinsmen in battle,” he tells Krishna, “I do not want to kill them, even if I am killed.”115 Krishna tries to hearten him by citing all the traditional arguments, but Arjuna is not impressed: “I will not fight!” he cries.116 So Krishna introduces an entirely novel idea: a warrior must simply dissociate himself from the effects of his actions and perform his duty without any personal animus or agenda of his own. Like a yogin, he must take the “I” out of his deeds, so that he acts impersonally—indeed, he will not be acting at all.117 Instead, like a sage, even in the frenzy of battle, he will remain fearless and without desire. We do not know whether this would have convinced Arjuna, because he is suddenly blasted by a terrifying epiphany. Krishna reveals that he is really an incarnation of the god Vishnu, who descends to earth whenever the cosmic order is in jeopardy. As Lord of the World, Vishnu is ipso facto involved in the violence that is an inescapable part of human life, but he is not damaged by it, “since I remain detached in all my actions, Arjuna, as if I stood apart from them.”118 As he gazes at Krishna, Arjuna sees that everything—gods, humans, and the natural order—is somehow present in Krishna’s body, and although the battle has not even begun, he sees that the Pandava and Kaurava warriors are already hurtling into the god’s blazing mouth. Krishna/Vishnu has therefore already annihilated both armies, and it makes no difference whether Arjuna fights or not. “Even without you,” Krishna tells him, “all these warriors … will cease to exist.”119 Many politicians and generals have similarly argued that they are only instruments of destiny when they commit atrocities—though few have emptied themselves of egotism and become “free from attachment, hostile to no creature.”120 The Bhagavad-Gita has probably been more influential than any other Indian scripture. Yet both the Gita and the Mahabharata remind us that there are no easy answers to the problems of war and peace. True, Indian mythology and ritual often glorified greed and warfare but it also helped people to confront tragedy and even devised ways of extirpating aggression from the psyche, pioneering ways for people to live together without any violence at all. We are flawed creatures with violent hearts that long for peace. At the same time as the Gita was being composed, the people of China were coming to a similar conclusion.

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

  When the Prussian army broke through the frontier and threatened Verdun, the last line of defense before Paris, recalcitrant clergy were imprisoned. In September, amid fears of royalist clerics planning simultaneous uprisings, violent mobs descended on the prisons and murdered between two to three thousand prisoners, many of them priests. Two weeks later France was declared a republic. The French and the Americans had adopted diametrically opposed policies toward religion: all the American states eventually disestablished their churches, but because their clergy were not implicated in a long- established aristocratic regime, there was no virulent hostility toward the traditional denominations. In France, however, the Church, which had been so deeply involved in aristocratic rule, could be dismantled only by an outright assault. 64 By now it was clear that a nonreligious regime had just as much potential for violence as a religiously constituted one. After the September Massacres, there were more atrocities. On March 12, 1793, an uprising began in the Vendée in western France in protest against conscription to the army, unfair taxation, and above all, the anti-Catholic policies of the revolution. 65 The rebels were especially incensed by the arrival in the Vendée of Constitutional clergy, who had no roots in the region, to replace priests who were known and loved. They formed the Catholic and Royal Army, carried banners of the Virgin, and sang hymns as they marched. This was not an aristocratic uprising but an army of the people, who were determined to retain their Catholicism: over 60 percent were farmers, and the others, artisans and shopkeepers. Three armies dispatched from Paris to quell the uprising were diverted to deal with the Federalist Revolt, in which moderate provincial bourgeois and republicans joined forces with royalists in Bordeaux, Lyons, Marseilles, Toulouse, and Toulon to protest measures taken in Paris. 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.”

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

  He exhorted and strengthened the timid Protestants of France, usually closing with the words of Paul If God be for us, who can be against us?" He prepared in Paris a flaming address on reform, which was ordered to be burned; he escaped from persecution in a basket from a window, like Paul at Damascus, and wandered for two years as a fugitive evangelist from place to place until he found his sphere of labor in Geneva. With his conversion was born his Pauline theology, which sprang from his brain like Minerva from the head of Jupiter. Paul never had a more logical and theological commentator than John Calvin.380 But the most Paul-like man in history is the leader of the German Reformation, who combined in almost equal proportion depth of mind, strength of will, tenderness of heart, and a fiery vehemence of temper, and was the most powerful herald of evangelical freedom; though inferior to Augustin and Calvin (not to say Paul) in self-discipline, consistency, and symmetry of character.381 Luther’s commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, though not a grammatical or logical exposition, is a fresh reproduction and republication of the Epistle against the self-righteousness, and bondage of the papacy. Luther’s first conversion took place in his twenty-first year (1505), when, as a student of law at Erfurt, on his return from a visit to his parents, he was so frightened by a fearful thunder-storm and flashes of lightning that he exclaimed: "Help, dear St. Anna, I will become a monk!" But that conversion,

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  The myriad creatures all rise together And I watch their return. The teeming creatures All return to their separate roots. Returning to one’s roots is known as stillness. 36 Everything else returned to its origins, in the same way as the leaves fell to the roots of the tree, became compost, and reentered the cycle of life. The leaves had emerged from the unseen world, had become manifest for a while, and then returned to the dark. The enlightened sage ruler stood aloof from this flux. Once he had aligned himself with the unseen, he attained perfect wisdom and impartiality. He can identify himself with the Way, the poem concluded; “he can endure, and to the end of his days will meet with no danger.” 37 Emptiness brought a release from the fear that pervaded the Daodejing. The ruler who dreaded annihilation was afraid of a chimera. We should not fear nothingness, because it was at the heart of reality. “The thirty spokes of the wheel share one hub,” Laozi pointed out, “but it is where there is nothing [the hole for the axle] that the efficacy of the cart lies.” 38 So too, when making a pot, we kneaded the clay into an attractive shape, but the raison d’être of the vessel was the place where there was nothing. Laozi concludes: Thus we think we benefit from perceptible things But it is where we perceive nothing that true efficacy lies. 39 It was the same with public policy. Once he had discovered the fertile Void within himself, the prince was ready to rule. He had attained a “kingliness” modeled on Heaven and the dao. 40 The sage ruler must behave like Heaven, which pursued its own inscrutable course without interfering with the Ways of other creatures. This is the Way things ought to be, and this—not ceaseless, purposeful activism—would bring peace to the world. Everywhere rulers, politicians, and administrative officials were plotting and scheming. Many of the philosophers had done more harm than good. Mohists stressed the importance of analysis, strategy, and action. Confucians glorified the culture that, Laozi believed, had interrupted the flow of the dao. The Confucian heroes Yao, Shun, and Yu had constantly meddled with nature—by directing the flow of rivers, and setting fire to forests and mountains to create arable land. By imposing their rituals on society, Confucians had encouraged people to concentrate on a purely external spirituality. There was far too much goal-directed, yu wei activity; it was incompatible with the gentle, unassertive and spontaneous course of the Way, which let creatures alone: The way never acts, yet nothing is left undone. Should lords and princes be able to hold on to it, The myriad creatures will be transformed of their own accord. And, the Daoist ruler concluded: “If I cease to desire and remain still, the empire will be at peace of its own accord.” 41 The secret of survival was to act counterintuitively.

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

  It is important to explore the ideal of martyrdom, which has surfaced alarmingly in our own time and is now associated with violence and extremism. Christian martyrs, however, were victims of imperial persecution and did not kill anybody else. The memory of this harassment would loom large in the consciousness of the early Church and shape the Christian worldview. However, until the third-century crisis, there had been no official empire-wide persecution, only sporadic local outbreaks of hostility; even in the third century, there were only about ten years when the Roman authorities intensively pursued Christians.128 In an agrarian empire the ruling aristocracy expected its religion to be different from that of their subjects, but ever since Augustus, the worship of the gods of Rome was deemed essential to the empire’s survival. The Pax Romana was thought to rely on the Pax Deorum, the peace imposed by the gods, who in return for regular sacrifice would guarantee the empire’s security and prosperity. So when Rome’s northern frontier was threatened by the barbarian tribes in 250, the emperor Decius ordered all his subjects to sacrifice to his genius to procure the gods’ aid on pain of death. This decree was not directed specifically against Christians; moreover, it was difficult to implement, and the authorities do not seem to have hunted down anybody who failed to turn up to the official sacrifice.129 When Decius was killed in action the following year, the edict was rescinded. In 258, however, Valerian was the first emperor to target the Church specifically, ordering that its clergy be executed and the property of high-ranking Christians confiscated. Once again, not many people seem to have been killed, and two years later Valerian was taken prisoner by the Persians and died in captivity. His successor, Galienus, revoked the legislation, and Christians enjoyed forty years of peace.

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

  screamed. Pim switched on the lamp. I expected the room to burst into flames any minute. Nothing happened. We all rushed upstairs to see what was going on. Mr. and Mrs. van D. had seen a red glow through the open window, and he thought there was a fire nearby, while she was certain our house was ablaze. Mrs. van D. was already standing beside her bed with her knees knocking when the boom came. Dussel stayed upstairs to smoke a cigarette, and we crawled back into bed. Less than fifteen minutes later the shooting started again. Mrs. van D. sprang out of bed and went downstairs to Dussel’ s room to seek the comfort she was unable to find with her spouse. Dussel welcomed her with the words “Come into my bed, my child!” We burst into peals of laughter, and the roar of the guns bothered us no more; our fears had all been swept away. Yours, Anne SUNDAY, JUNE 13, 1943 Dearest Kitty, The poem Father composed for my birthday is too nice to keep to myself. Since Pim writes his verses only in German, Margot volunteered to translate it into Dutch. See for yourself whether Margot hasn’t done herself proud. It begins with the usual summary of the year’s events and then continues: As youngest among us, but small no more, Your life can be trying, for we have the chore Of becoming your teachers, a terrible bore. “We’ve got experience! Take it from me!” “We’ve done this all before, you see. We know the ropes, we know the same.” Since time immemorial, always the same. One’s own shortcomings are nothing but fluff, But everyone else’s are heavier stuff: Faultfinding comes easy when this is our plight, But it’s hard for your parents, try as they might, To treat you with fairness, and kindness as well; Nitpicking’s a habit that’s hard to dispel. Men you’re living with old folks, all you can do Is put up with their nagging -- it’s hard but it’s true. The pill may be bitter, but down it must go, For it’s meant to keep the peace, you know. The many months here have not been in vain,

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

  the men? What was that bang? Were they fighting with the burglars? We were too scared to think; all we could do was wait. Ten o’clock, footsteps on the stairs. Father, pale and nervous, came inside, followed by Mr. van Daan. “Lights out, tiptoe upstairs, we’re expecting the police!” There wasn’t time to be scared. The lights were switched off, I grabbed a jacket, and we sat down upstairs. “What happened? Tell us quickly!” There was no one to tell us; the men had gone back downstairs. The four of them didn’t come back up until ten past ten. Two of them kept watch at Peter’s open window. The door to the landing was locked, the book- case shut. We draped a sweater over our night-light, and then they told us what had happened: Peter was on the landing when he heard two loud bangs. He went downstairs and saw that a large panel was missing from the left half of the warehouse door. He dashed upstairs, alerted the “Home Guard,” and the four of them went downstairs. When they entered the warehouse, the burglars were going about their business. Without thinking, Mr. van Daan yelled “Police!” Hur- ried footsteps outside; the burglars had fled. The board was put back in the door so the police wouldn’t notice the gap, but then a swift kick from outside sent it flying to the floor. The men were amazed at the burglars’ audacity. Both Peter and Mr. van Daan felt a murderous rage come over them. Mr. van Daan slammed an ax against the floor, and all was quiet again. Once more the panel was re- placed, and once more the attempt was foiled. Outside, a man and a woman shone a glaring flashlight through the opening, lighting up the entire warehouse. “What the . . .” mumbled one of the men, but now their roles had been reversed. Instead of policemen, they were now burglars. All four of them raced upstairs. Dussel and Mr. van Daan snatched up Dussel’s books, Peter opened the doors and windows in the kitchen and private office, hurled the phone to the ground, and the four of them finally ended up behind the bookcase. END OF PART ONE

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

  We’ve all become more frightened since the van Hoeven business. Once again you hear “shh” from all I sides, and we’re doing everything more quietly. The police forced the door there; they could just as easily do that here too! What will we do if we’re ever . . no, I mustn’t write that down. But the question won’t let itself be pushed to the back of my mind today; on the contrary, all the fear I’ve ever felt is looming before me in all its horror. I had to go downstairs alone at eight this evening to use the bathroom. There was no one down there, since they were all listening to the radio. I wanted to be brave, but it was hard. I always feel safer upstairs than in that huge, silent house; when I’m alone with those mysterious muffied sounds from upstairs and the honking of horns in the street, I have to hurry and remind myself where I am to keep from getting the shivers. Miep has been acting much nicer toward us since her talk with Father. But I haven’t told you about that yet. Miep came up one afternoon all flushed and asked Father straight out if we thought they too were infected with the current anti-Semitism. Father was stunned and quickly talked her out of the idea, but some of Miep’s suspicion has lingered on. They’re doing more errands for us now and showing more of an interest in our troubles, though we certainly shouldn’t bother them with our woes. Oh, they’re such good, noble people! I’ve asked myself again and again whether it wouldn’t have been better if we hadn’t gone into hiding, if we were dead now and didn’t have to go through this misery, especially so that the others could be spared the burden. But we all shrink from this thought. We still love life, we haven’t yet forgotten the voice of nature, and we keep hoping, hoping for. . . everything. Let something happen soon, even an air raid. Nothing can be more crushing than this anxiety. Let the end come, however cruel; at least then we’ll know whether we are to be the victors or the vanquished. Yours, Anne M. Frank WEDNESDAY, MAY 31, 1944

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

  Because no priest would perform the ceremony for an excommunicate, in March 1229 Frederick defiantly crowned himself King of Jerusalem in the Holy Sepulcher Church. The Teutonic Knights of the Holy Roman Empire proudly declared that this ceremony had made him God’s vicar on earth, and that it was the emperor, not the pope, who stood “between God and mankind and was chosen to rule the entire world.” 87 By now a Crusade’s political impact at home seemed more important than what was happening in the Middle East. Christians lost Jerusalem again in 1244, when the marauding Khwarazmian Turks in flight from the Mongol armies rampaged through the holy city, a portent of a terrifying threat to both Christendom and Islamdom. Between 1190 and 1258, Genghis Khan’s Mongol hordes had overrun northern China, Korea, Tibet, Central Asia, Anatolia, Russia, and eastern Europe. Any ruler who failed to submit immediately saw his cities laid waste and his subjects massacred. In 1257 Hulugu, Genghis Khan’s son, crossed the Tigris, seized Baghdad, and strangled the last Abbasid caliph; then he destroyed Aleppo and occupied Damascus, which surrendered and was spared destruction. At first King Louis IX of France and Pope Innocent IV hoped to convert the Mongols to Christianity and let them destroy Islam. Instead the Muslims would save the Crusaders’ coastal state and, possibly, Western Christendom from the Mongols. Finally, the Mongol rulers who established states in the Middle East would convert to Islam. In 1250 a group of disaffected Mamluks took over Saladin’s Ayyubid Empire in a military coup. Ten years later the brilliant Mamluk commander Baibars defeated the Mongol army at the Battle of Ain Jalut in Galilee. But the Mongols had conquered vast swaths of Muslim territory in Mesopotamia, the Iranian mountains, the Syr-Oxus Basin, and the Volga region, where they established four large states. Mongol violence was not caused by religious intolerance: they acknowledged the validity of all faiths and usually built on local traditions once a region had been subjugated; so by the early fourteenth century, the Mongol rulers of all four states had converted to Islam. The Mongol aristocracy, however, still followed the Yasa, Genghis Khan’s military code. Many of their Muslim subjects were dazzled by their brilliant courts and were fascinated by their new rulers. But so much Muslim scholarship and culture had been lost in the devastation that some jurists decreed that the “gates of ijtihad [independent reasoning]” had closed. This was an extreme version of the conservative tendency of agrarian civilization, which lacked the economic resources to implement innovation on a large scale, valued social order over originality, and felt that culture was so hard won that it was more important to conserve what had already been achieved. This narrowing of horizons was not inspired by an inherent dynamic of Islam but was a reaction to the shocking Mongol assault. Other Muslims would respond to the Mongol conquests very differently.

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

  The Red King was shot dead by an arrow,—nobody knows whether by a hunter or by an assassin, Aug. 2, 1100, while hunting in the New Forest. "Cut off without shrift, without repentance, he found a tomb in the Old Minster of Winchester; but the voice of clergy and people, like the voice of one man, pronounced, by a common impulse, the sentence which Rome had feared to pronounce. He received the more unique brand of popular excommunication. No bell was tolled, no prayer was said, no alms were given for the soul of the one baptized and anointed ruler, whose eternal damnation was taken for granted by all men as a thing about which there could be no doubt."111 § 24. Anselm and Henry I. At the death of the Red King, one archbishopric, four bishoprics, and eleven abbeys were without pastors. Henry I., his younger brother, surnamed Beauclerc, ascended the throne (1100–1135). He connected the Norman blood with the imperial house of Germany by the marriage of his daughter Matilda to Henry V. After the emperor’s death, Matilda was privately married to Geoffrey Plantagenet, count of Anjou (1128), and became the mother of Henry II., the founder of the Plantagenet dynasty. King Henry I. is favorably known by his strict administration of justice. He reconciled the clergy by recalling Anselm from exile, but soon renewed the investiture controversy. He instituted bishops and abbots, and summoned Anselm to consecrate them, which he steadfastly refused to do. He sent him into a second exile (1103–1106).112 The queen, Maud the Good, who had an extraordinary veneration for the archbishop, strove to mediate between him and her husband, and urged Anselm to return, even at the sacrifice of a little earthly power, reminding him that Paul circumcised Timothy, and went to the temple to conciliate the Jewish brethren. Pascal II. excommunicated the bishops who had accepted investiture from Henry. But the king was not inclined to maintain a hostile attitude to Anselm. They had an interview in Normandy and appealed to the pope, who confirmed the previous investitures of the king on condition of his surrendering the right of investiture in future to the Church. This decision was ratified at Bec, Aug. 26, 1106. The king promised to restore to Anselm the profits of the see during his absence, to abstain from the revenues of vacant bishoprics and abbeys, and to remit all fines to the clergy. He retained the right of sending to vacant sees a congé d’élire, or notice to elect, which carried with it the right of nomination. Anselm now proceeded to consecrate bishops, among them Roger of Salisbury, who was first preferred to Henry’s notice because he "began prayers quickly and closed them speedily."113

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

  A desperate but futile assault was made on the fifth day. Boiling pitch and oil were used, with showers of stones and other missiles, to keep the Crusaders at bay. The siege then took the usual course in such cases. Ladders, scaling towers, and other engines of war were constructed, but the wood had to be procured at a distance, from Shechem. The trees around Jerusalem, cut down by Titus twelve centuries before, had never been replaced. The city was invested on three sides by Raymund of Toulouse, Godfrey, Tancred, Robert of Normandy, and other chiefs. The suffering due to the summer heat and the lack of water was intense. The valley and the hills were strewn with dead horses, whose putrefying carcasses made life in the camp almost unbearable. In vain did the Crusaders with bare feet, the priests at their head, march in procession around the walls, hoping to see them fall as the walls of Jericho had fallen before Joshua.370 Help at last came with the arrival of a Genoese fleet in the harbor of Joppa, which brought workmen and supplies of tools and food. Friday, the day of the crucifixion, was chosen for the final assault. A great tower surmounted by a golden cross was dragged alongside of the walls and the drawbridge let down. At a critical moment, as the later story went, a soldier of brilliant aspect371 was seen on the Mount of Olives, and Godfrey, encouraging the besiegers, exclaimed: "It is St. George the martyr. He has come to our help." According to most of the accounts, Letold of Tournay372 was the first to scale the walls. It was noticed that the moment of this crowning feat was three o’clock, the hour of the Saviour’s death. The scenes of carnage which followed belong to the many dark pages of Jerusalem’s history and showed how, in the quality of mercy, the crusading knight was far below the ideal of Christian perfection. The streets were choked with the bodies of the slain. The Jews were burnt with their synagogues. The greatest slaughter was in the temple enclosure. With an exaggeration which can hardly be credited, but without a twinge of regret or a syllable of excuse, it is related that the blood of the massacred in the temple area reached to the very knees and bridles of the horses.373 "Such a slaughter of the pagans had never been seen or heard of. The number none but God knew."374

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  When, despite Baal’s patronage, Israel was afflicted by a severe drought, Elijah saw his opportunity, and challenged 450 of Jezebel’s priests to a contest on Mount Carmel.21 First he harangued the people who had come to watch. It was time that they made a choice between Yahweh and Baal, once and for all. Next he called for two bulls—one for Yahweh and the other for Baal—to be placed on two altars. He and the Baal priests would call upon their respective gods and see which one sent down fire to consume the victim. For a whole morning, the Baal priests shouted Baal’s name, yelling and gashing themselves with swords and spears and performing a hobbling dance around their altar. Nothing happened. But the second Elijah called on Yahweh, fire fell from heaven and devoured both bull and altar. The people fell on their faces: Yahweh was their god! Elijah ordered all the prophets of Baal to be slaughtered in a nearby valley and then climbed up Mount Carmel and sat with his head between his knees, deep in prayer, begging Yahweh to end the drought. The rain fell in torrents, and Elijah tucked his hairy cloak into his leather loincloth and ran in ecstasy beside Ahab’s chariot. Yahweh had successfully usurped the function of Baal, proving that he was as effective at maintaining the fertility of the land as at war. In proposing that Israel worship only one god, Elijah had introduced a new tension into its traditional religion. Ignoring Baal required the people to relinquish an important and valuable divine resource. Thousands of them had found that the cult of Baal had enhanced their understanding of the world, had made their fields fertile, and given meaning to the backbreaking struggle against sterility and famine. When they performed the rites, they believed that they were tapping into the sacred energies that made the earth productive. Elijah was asking Israelites to give all that up and put their entire faith in Yahweh, who had no reputation in the field of fertility.22 After the storm, Elijah fell into depression and feared for his life, convinced that Jezebel would avenge the massacre of her prophets. He left Israel and took sanctuary in Yahweh’s shrine on Mount Sinai, which the people of the northern kingdom called Mount Horeb. There Elijah hid in a cleft of the rock and waited for a revelation.23 In the past, like Baal, the divine warrior Yahweh had often revealed himself in the convulsions of nature. The mountains had shaken, the trees had writhed, and the rivers had quailed at his approach. But this time it was different:

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

  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. There is a fourth form of decision, which often ends deliberation as suddenly as the third form does. It comes when, in consequence of some outer experience or some inexplicable inward charge, we suddenly pass from the easy and careless to the sober and strenuous mood, or possibly the other way. The whole scale of values of our motives and impulses then undergoes a change like that which a change of the observer's level produces on a view. The most sobering possible agents are objects of grief and fear. When one of these affects us, all 'light fantastic' notions lose their motive power, all solemn ones find theirs multiplied many-fold. The consequence is an instant abandonment of the more trivial projects with which we had been dallying, and an instant practical acceptance of the more grim and earnest alternative which till then could not extort our mind's consent. All those 'changes of heart,' 'awakenings of conscience,' etc., which make new men of so many of us, may be classed under this head. The character abruptly rises to another 'level,' and deliberation comes to an immediate end. [486] In the fifth and final type of decision, the feeling that the evidence is all in, and that reason has balanced the books, may be either present or absent. But in either case we feel, in deciding, as if we ourselves by our own wilful act inclined the beam; in the former case by adding our living effort to the weight of the logical reason which, taken alone, seems powerless to make the act discharge; in the latter by a kind of creative contribution of something instead of a reason which does a reason's work. The slow dead heave of the will that is felt in these instances makes of them a class altogether different subjectively from all the three preceding classes.

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

  Mr. X., a merchant, born in Vienna, highly educated, master of German, Spanish, French, Greek, and Latin. Up to the beginning of the malady which took him to Professor Charcot, he read Homer at sight. He could, starting from any verse out of the first book of the Iliad, repeat the following verses without hesitating, by heart. Virgil and Horace were familiar. He also knew enough of modern Greek for business purposes. Up to within a year (from the time Charcot saw him) he enjoyed an exceptional visual memory, He no sooner thought of persons or things, but features, forms, and colors arose with the same clearness, sharpness, and accuracy as if the objects stood before him. When he tried to recall a fact or a figure in his voluminous polyglot correspondence, the letters themselves appeared before him with their entire content, irregularities, erasures and all. At school he recited from a mentally seen page which be read off line by line and letter by letter. In making computations, he ran his mental eye down imaginary columns of figures, and performed in this way the most varied operations of arithmetic. He could never think of a passage in a play without the entire scene, stage, actors, and audience appearing to him. He had been a great traveller. Being a good draughtsman, he used to sketch views which pleased him; and his memory always brought back the entire landscape exactly. If lie thought of a conversation, a saying, an engagement, the place, the people, the entire scene rose before his mind. His auditory memory was always deficient, or at least secondary. He had no taste for music. A year and a half previous to examination, after business-anxieties, loss of sleep, appetite, etc., he noticed suddenly one day ail extraordinary change in himself. After complete confusion, there came a violent contrast between his old and his new state. Everything about him seemed so new and foreign that, at first he thought he must be going mad. He was nervous and irritable. Although he saw all things distinct, he had entirely lost his memory for forms and colors. On ascertaining this, he became reassured as to his sanity. He soon discovered that he could carry on his affairs by using his memory in an altogether new way. He can now describe clearly the difference between his two conditions.

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

  Years after this tragedy, the events of that day are still horrifying. Our task in this book is to assess the role of religion in this atrocity. In the West there was a widespread conviction that Islam, an inherently violent religion, was the chief culprit. A few weeks after September 11, in an article entitled “This Is a Religious War,” the American journalist Andrew Sullivan quoted from Bin Laden’s Declaration of War: The call to wage war against America was made because America spearheaded the Crusade against the Islamic nation, sending thousands of troops to the Land of the Two Holy Mosques, over and above its meddling in Saudi affairs and its politics, and its support of the oppressive, corrupt, and tyrannical regime that is in control. 57 Sullivan alerted his readers to the use of the word Crusade, “an explicitly religious term,” and pointed out that “bin Laden’s beef is with American troops defiling the land of Saudi Arabia, ‘the land of the Two Holy Mosques’ in Mecca and Medina.” 58 The words Crusade and holy mosques were enough to persuade Sullivan that this really was a religious war, whereupon he felt free to embark on a paean to the Western liberal tradition. Way back in the seventeenth century, the West had understood how dangerous it was to mix religion and politics, Sullivan reasoned, but the Muslim world, alas, had yet to learn this important lesson. Yet Sullivan failed to discuss or even dwell upon the two highly specific and clearly political aspects of American foreign policy mentioned by Bin Laden in the quoted extract: its interference in the internal affairs of Saudi Arabia and its support for the despotic Saudi regime. 59 Even the “explicitly religious” terms—Crusade and holy mosques—in fact had political and economic connotations. Since the early twentieth century, the Arabic al-salibiyyah (“crusade”) has become an explicitly political term, applied routinely to colonialism and Western imperialism. 60 The deployment of American troops in Saudi Arabia was not only a violation of sacred space but also a humiliating demonstration of the kingdom’s dependence on the United States and of America’s domination of the region. The American troops involved the kingdom in expensive arms deals; its Saudi base gave the United States easy access to Saudi oil and had enabled the U.S. military to launch air strikes against Sunni Muslims during the Gulf War. 61 The hijackers themselves certainly regarded the 9/11 atrocities as a religious act but one that bore very little resemblance to normative Islam. A document found in Ata’s suitcase outlined a program of prayer and reflection to help them through the ordeal. 62 If psychosis is “an inability to see relationships,” this is a deeply psychotic document. The principal imperative of Islamic spirituality is tawhid (“making one”): Muslims truly understand the unity of God only if they integrate all their activities and thoughts.

• From Available: The unfiltered and empowering new memoir for women about sex, dating and divorce after 40 (2021)

  I have to hold onto the rocks with one hand and secure the tube with the other so that neither I nor it are propelled forward downstream without each other, but I am panicked and stuck in place as the water is coming too rapidly for me to right myself. Suddenly Hudson appears next to me in his tube and he’s not laughing, which means he’s worried. “Mom, I’m holding the tube steady for you, let go of the rocks and pull yourself into it.” “No, I can’t let go, I’m too scared.” “I’ve got it, I promise. Just move quickly.” I do as I’m told, gracelessly hurling my body forward and landing awkwardly across the tube on my stomach. He holds my tube next to his while I roll over to rearrange myself as we are pushed away together by the water. “Do you want to get out?” he asks. “Get out?” I respond indignantly. “We just started.” “Oh, OK, I just thought maybe falling under would be enough for you,” he says. “We can stop now. I’d still be proud of you for trying.” “Nope, let’s go. I’ve got this.” For the next couple of hours, we drift together and apart downstream. There are a few relaxing moments in which we gently bob along while I catch my breath and prepare for the next set of rapids. Miraculously, I do not fall out again, though I have enough heart-stopping close calls to feel I am facing down a fierce element. When I see big arrows spray-painted on the side of a bridge, I am surprised to realize we are at the end of the course and have to pull our tubes ashore. I am cold, muddy and a bit worse for the wear, but I made it to the finish line. “I’m proud of you, Mom. I didn’t think you’d be able to do it,” he says. “And this water is freezing, even for me.” I am aglow with pride. We climb up the hill to reach the road back. A couple on the path ahead of us shush us and point to a tree in the woods about ten feet away, in which a mother bear is up in the branches with her four cubs. Silently, we watch in awe until enough people come up the path that the bear gets nervous and climbs down the tree. We are not sure what to do, slowly back away or stand motionless, but she turns away from us disinterestedly and lazily makes her way to the water while her babies jump down and frantically scurry to catch up with her. I think of our past few months together, me and my own baby bears, the fervent love I feel for them, the exceedingly bumpy road we have travelled together, the way they are always at my heels, knowing I will do everything in my power to lead them in the right direction.