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 What Belongs to You (2016)

  Maybe that’s why, when I finally did have sex, it wasn’t so much pleasure I sought as the exhilaration of setting aside restraint, of pretending not to be afraid, a thrill of release so intense it was almost suicidal. As I sat flipping through brochures, waiting for someone to collect and usher me elsewhere, I remembered the first time I was tested, in my last year of high school, at a free clinic in Michigan. I had left my hometown two years before, and in that time news had reached me of friends falling ill. I knew I must have been exposed to it, I had been extravagantly reckless; and as I waited for the nurse to call my name, two weeks after the test, I was sure of the news she would bring. My best friend was beside me, and I held his hand as the woman read me the results and I felt not relief, exactly, but disappointment, or something so bewilderingly mixed I still have no good name for it. Maybe it was just that I wanted the world to have a meaning, and that the meaning I wanted it to have was chastisement. For the first time since I had arrived, the clinic door opened, and the nurse I had spoken with that morning came in. She was moving slowly, holding between two fingers of one hand a thin plastic cup of coffee, the bottom sagging, distended with heat. Hello, she said in her strange accent, are you here for your results, and when I told her that I had been waiting for some time, that I was beginning to feel forgotten, her face darkened in sympathy. Well, she said, let’s see what we can do, and she turned and began speaking quickly to the receptionist. She referred to me as gospodinut , the gentleman, which surprised me; older people here usually call me momcheto , the boy, a friendly term I like more. Come with me, she said, turning, and I followed her to the room she had taken me to before, a strange weightlessness in my abdomen.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  The brothers separate, and we next see and hear Harmonica in the cool of the evening (not yet in the heat of the night) unconcernedly walking along a deserted country road. Headlights flash behind him; white men leap out of their cars, the boy turns to face them; and the next time we see him, he is hanging from a tree. 508 THE DE VIL FIND S WO RK His older light white brother cuts him down and carries him to where the darkics arc assembled, beginning to moan the darkics, that is. The older light white brother vows ven geance, over the Christian plea tor forgiveness of the old black preacher, to whom he appears-th ough certainly not physi cally -to be related. He puts his brother's body on a table in the cabin, while the darkics watch; douses it with kerosene, while the darkics watch, and moan; lights a match, setting his brother, the cabin, and, presumably, the entire neighborhood aflame, while the darkics keep moaning; and, sensibly enough, leaves. There tallows a somewhat opaque episode, involving the french idea of a drunken, cowardly Southerner-an idea which is not absolutely inaccurate, bearing in mind that New Orleans is tound in the state of Louisiana, for very precise reasons, and leaving aside the Haitian adventure, and to go, tor the moment, no funhcr than that-f rom whom our hero, indisputably evolue, needs credentials for Trenton: a city to be found, he has been told, in the North. For he is going Nonh, he is going to "cross the line," and he is, in eff ect, black mailing the Southern drunkard into being his accomplice. There is a great deal of unsuspcnseful business with a loaded shotgun, but our hero gets the letter, th rows the loaded shot gun toward the arms of his drunken friend, gets into his car, and drives otr (None of this paranoia is in Vi an's book. ) Our hero takes what is, in effect, his letter of racial credit to an aging bookstore owner in Trenton, and so we meet the far from merry maidens of our hero's grim desire.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  One of them said, The very time I thought I was lost, My dungeon shook and my chains fell off MY DUNGEON SHOOK 295 You know, and I know, that the count ry is celebrating one hu ndred years of freedom one hundred years too soon. We cannot be free until they are free. God bless you, James, and Godspeed. Your uncle, James Down at the Cross Letter from a Region in My Mind Take up the White Man's bur den Ye dare not stoop to less- Nor call too loud on Freedom To cloak your weariness; By all ye cry or whisper, By all ye leave or do, The silent, sullen peoples Shall weigh your Gods and you. -Kip ling Down at the cross where my Saviour died, Down where for cleansing from sin I cried, There to my heart was the blood applied, Singing glory to His name! -H ymn I UNDERWENT, during the summer that I became fourteen, a prolonged religious crisis. I use the word "religious" in the common, and arbitrary, sense, meaning that I then dis covered God, His saints and angels, and His blazing Hell. And since I had been born in a Christian nation, I accepted this Deit y as the only one. I supposed Him to exist only within the walls of a chur ch-in fact, of our chu rch-and I also sup posed that God and safety were synonymous. The word "safety" brings us to the real meaning of the word "religious" as we use it. Therefore, to state it in another, more accurate way, I became, during my fourteenth year, for the first time in my life, afraid-afraid of the evil within me and afraid of the evil without. What I saw around me that summer in Har lem was what I had always seen; nothing had changed. But now, without any warning, the whores and pimps and rack eteers on the Avenue had become a personal menace. It had not before occurred to me that I could become one of them, but now I realized that we had been produced by the same circumstances. Many of my comrades were clearly headed for the Avenue, and my father said that I was headed that way, 296 DO WN AT THE CROSS 297 too. My friends began to drink and smoke, and embarked at first avid, then groaning-on their sexual careers. Girls, only slightly older than I was, who sang in the choir or taught Sunday school, the children of holy parents, underwent, be fore my eyes, their incredible metamorphosis, of which the most bewildering aspect was not their budding breasts or their rounding behinds but something deeper and more subtle, in their eyes, their heat, their odor, and the inflection of their voices. Like the stranger s on the Avenue, they became, in the twinkling of an eye, unut terably different and fantastically present.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  I lay there after he left, feeling my fear, which grew more intense, so that for a minute or perhaps for two or three I couldn’t force myself to move, not even to close the door. I observed, as if at a distance, my quick breathing and the pain I felt, not an especially bad pain, maybe there would be no bruise to explain away. Finally I hauled myself up, surprised by how unsteady I was though so little had happened, everything was fine, I said to myself, I was safe now. But as I turned the latch on the door I realized I wasn’t safe, that the thin tongue of metal between the two wooden wings might easily be forced, it offered almost no resistance at all. And the latches on the windows were flimsy too, a push would be enough to snap them. They were large windows, big enough to pass in or out of, and some of them faced the street, which meant there wouldn’t be any need to enter the courtyard to gain access, anyone could avoid the supposed watchman sleeping in his glassed-in porch. I paused then and looked at those windows, realizing that I was visible to anyone peering in through the ill-fitting drapes. So the crisis isn’t past, I thought, using that word, crisis; I was right to still be afraid. I was frozen in place, pinned where I stood, a feeling I remembered from childhood, when stillness was the only response to the terror I often felt at night. It was all I could do to reach out and turn off the lights, listening for any noise outside as I thought again of the face Mitko had shown me, his real face, I thought now. He had so carefully arranged our trip; maybe he had chosen this hotel not because of price or its nearness to the sea, but for a different set of reasons altogether, its ease of access and the inadequacy of its locks. I thought of the many friends he had introduced me to, some of whom he had encouraged me to invite into our room, where I would have been, it now occurred to me, completely vulnerable; I thought of the boy he called brat mi , who had been so obedient in the bathrooms at NDK, ready to do Mitko any service.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  In one dream Arthur and I were there, and others, old school friends, a gaggle of black kids from the Shaft, my grandfather tearful and hopeless. We knew we had no chance of surviving the violence that surrounded us, closing in fast, and I was gripped by a nauseating terror. I woke up in the certain knowledge that I was about to die: the bedsprings were ticking from the sprinting vehemence of my heartbeat. I didn’t dare go back to sleep and after a while sat up and read, while Arthur slept deeply beside me. It took days to lose the mood of the dream, and its power to prickle my scalp. The neighbourhood seemed eerily impregnated with it, and its passing made possible a new confidence, as if a sentence had been lifted. That Thursday I had my lunch with Lord Nantwich. I told Arthur I had a long-standing arrangement and he made a point of saying, ‘Okay, man—I mean you’ve got to lead your own life: I’ll be all right here.’ I realised I’d been apologising in a way and I was relieved by his practical reply. ‘You can always have some bread and cheese, and you can finish off that cold ham in the fridge. Anything you want me to get you?’ ‘No, ta.’ He stood and smiled crookedly. I didn’t kiss him but just patted him on the bum as I slipped out. I’d put a suit on, smarter perhaps than I needed to be, but I enjoyed its protective conformity. I so rarely dressed up, and not having to wear a suit for work I seldom took any of mine off their hangers. My father had had me kitted out with morning suits and evening dress as I grew up and I had always relished the handsomeness of dark, formal clothes, wing-collars, waistcoats over braces: I looked quite the star of my sister’s wedding when the pictures appeared in Tatler. But I rarely wore this stuff. I had always been a bit of a peacock—or rather, whatever animal has brightly coloured legs, a flamingo perhaps. I was a bit late so I took a cab—which also solved the problem of finding Wicks’s. My father was a member of the Garrick and my grandfather a member of the Athenæum, but otherwise I was unsure about London Clubs. I could easily confuse the Reform and the Travellers’, and might well have wandered into three or four of them this morning before hitting on Wicks’s. Cabbies, through a mixture of practicality and snobbery, always know which of those neo-classical portals is which. ‘I’ve come to see Lord Nantwich,’ I told the porter in his dusty glass cabin. ‘William Beckwith.’ And I was told to make my way upstairs to the smoking-room. As I climbed the imposing stairway, lined with blackened, half-familiar portraits, a mild apprehensiveness mingled with a mood of irresponsibility in my heart. I had no idea what we might talk about.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  “There were days when I couldn’t breathe,” Walter recalled later. “I hadn’t ever experienced anything like this before in my life. I was around all these murderers, and yet it felt like sometimes they were the only ones trying to help me. I prayed, I read the Bible, and I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you that I was scared, terrified just about every day.” Ralph Myers was faring no better. He had also been charged with capital murder in the death of Ronda Morrison, and his refusal to continue cooperating with law enforcement meant that he was sent to death row, too. He was placed on a different tier to prevent contact with McMillian. Whatever advantage Myers thought he could gain by saying he knew something about the Morrison murder was clearly gone now. He was depressed and sinking deeper into an emotional crisis. From the time he was burned as a child, he had always feared fire, heat, and small spaces. As the prisoners talked more and more about the details of the Evans’s execution and Wayne Ritter’s impending execution, Myers became more and more distraught. On the night of the Ritter execution, Myers was in full crisis, sobbing in his cell. There is a tradition on death row in Alabama that, at the time scheduled for the execution, the condemned prisoners bang on their cell doors with cups in protest. At midnight, while all the other prisoners banged away, Myers curled up on the floor in the corner of his cell, hyperventilating and flinching with each clang he heard. When the stench of burned flesh that many on the row claimed they could smell during the execution wafted into his cell, Myers dissolved. He called Tate the next morning and told him that he would say whatever he wanted if he would get him off death row. Tate initially justified keeping Myers and McMillian on death row for safety reasons. But Tate immediately picked Myers up and brought him back to the county jail the day after the Ritter execution. Tate didn’t appear to discuss with anyone the decision to move Myers off death row. Ordinarily, the Alabama Department of Corrections couldn’t just put people on death row or let them off without court orders or legal filings—and certainly no prison warden could do so on his own. But nothing about the prosecution of Walter McMillian was turning out to be ordinary. Once removed from death row and back in Monroe County, Myers affirmed his initial accusations against McMillian. With Myers back as the primary witness and Bill Hooks ready to say that he saw Walter’s truck at the crime scene, the district attorney believed that he could proceed against McMillian. The case was scheduled for trial in February 1988.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. xxxi. 1) He means not here, that to believe on the Son is sufficient to gain everlasting life, for elsewhere He says, Not every one that saith unto Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven. (Matt. 7) And the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost is of itself sufficient to send into hell. But we must not think that even a right belief on Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, is sufficient for salvation; for we have need of a good life and conversation. Knowing then that the greater part are not moved so much by the promise of good, as by the threat of punishment, he concludes, But He that believeth not the Son, shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him. See how He refers to the Father again, when He speaketh of punishment. He saith not, the wrath of the Son, though the Son is judge; but maketh the Father the judge, in order to alarm men more. And He does not say, in Him, but on Him, meaning that it will never depart from Him; and for the same reason He says, shall not see life, i. e. to shew that He did not mean only a temporary death. AUGUSTINE. (Tr. xiv. c. 13) Nor does He say, The wrath of God cometh to him, but, abideth on him. For all who are born, are under the wrath of God, which the first Adam incurred. The Son of God came without sin, and was clothed with mortality: He died that thou mightest live. Whosoever then will not believe on the Son, on him abideth the wrath of God, of which the Apostle speaks, We were by nature the children of wrath. (Eph. 2:3) CHAPTER 4 4:1–61. When therefore the Lord knew how the Pharisees had heard that Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John, 2. (Though Jesus himself baptized not, but his disciples,) 3. He left Judæa, and departed again into Galilee. 4. And he must needs go through Samaria. 5. Then cometh he to a city of Samaria, which is called Sychar, near to the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. 6. Now Jacob’s well was there. Jesus therefore, being wearied with his journey, sat thus on the well: and it was about the sixth hour. GLOSS.1 The Evangelist, after relating how John checked the envy of his disciples, on the success of Christ’s teaching, comes next to the envy of the Pharisees, and Christ’s retreat from them. When therefore the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard, &c.

• From What Belongs to You (2016)

  And after all, I thought, his belief was what mattered, and I wondered when he had been given this account of his father, of the absence of his father, whether he was still a child, and I wondered too how the absence had weighed on him, how he had explained it to himself until then. I wanted to know who had told him and why, whether his mother to make him angry or his grandfather to make him afraid. Besides, my sister said, it explains what happened to her, to my father’s mother, she meant, who seemed to seek out not just other men but the least acceptable men, as if she gave herself to them not just to defy her father but to injure him, and increasingly to injure herself. Often they were violent men, my sister said, repeating what she had been told; from as early as he could remember my father was scared of them, and he was frightened of his grandfather, too, who lashed out at him and his brothers without warning. And they fought with one another, as kids and as adults, these boys with different fathers; one of them died a soldier before I was born and we hardly knew the others, we saw them so seldom. Two or three times when I was very young my father took us to a reunion, and each time there was a fight, a quick flare of violence that left one or more of them in the dirt. When they were children they felt no loyalty to one another, my father and his brothers; they shifted their allegiances whenever it suited, teaming up against one and then another, or making friends with one or another of the men who appeared as if from nowhere and never stayed for long. Most of all they courted their grandfather, whom they hated but needed, too, especially as their mother sought out more and more brutal men. It was like she wanted to be hurt by them, my sister said, and didn’t care what happened to her sons. One day, she went on, when our father was still a boy, maybe eight or nine, he heard his mother shouting and ran to find her standing with one of his brothers in a field. In front of them was the boy’s father, who was enraged past all restraint, my father realized; he wasn’t surprised when he struck their mother, first with his open hand and then with his fist. And not just the woman, he struck the child too, not once or twice but many times, with a ferocity that frightened my father, who ran for help to the garage where his grandfather was working, bent over the hood of their car.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  The Africans seemed at once simpler and more devious, more di rectly erotic and at the same time more subtle, and they were proud. If they had ever despised themselves for their color, it did not show, as far as I could tell. I envied them and feared the m-feared that they had good reason to despise me. What did Richard feel? And what did Richard feel about other American Negroes abroad? For example: one of my dearest friends, a Negro writer now living in Spain, circled around me and I around him for months before we spoke. One Negro meeting another at an all-white cocktail part y, or at that larger cocktail party which is the American colony in Europe, cannot but wonder how the other got there. The question is: Is he for real? or is he kissing ass? Almost all Negroes, as Rich ard once pointed out, are almost always acting, but before a white audience-which is quite incapable of judging their perfor mance: and even a "bad nigger" is, inevitably, giving something of a perfor mance, even if the entire pu rpose of his performance is to terrifY or blackmail white people. Negroes know about each other what can here be called family secrets, and this means that one Negro, if he wishes, can "knock" the other's "h ustle"-can give his game away. It is still not possible to overstate the price a Negro pays to climb out of obscuri ty-for it is a particular price, involved with being a Negro; and the great wounds, gouges, amputa tions, losses, scars, endured in such a journey cannot be cal culated. Bu t even this is not the worst of it, since he is really dealing with two hierar chies, one white and one black, the latter modeled on the former. The higher he rises, the less is his journey worth, since (unl ess he is extremely energetic and anarchic, a genuinely "bad nigger" in the most positive sense of the term) all he can possibly find him self exposed to is the gri m emptiness of the white world-which does not live by the standards it uses to victimize him -and the even more ghastly emptiness of black people who wish they were white. Therefore, one "exceptional" Negro watches another "excep- 262 NOBOD Y KNOW S MY NAME tiona!" :Negro in order to find out if he knows how vastly succe ssful and bitterly funny the hoax has been. Alliances, in the great cocktail party of the white man's world, are formed, almost pu rely, on this basis, for if both of you can laugh, you ha\'e a lot to laugh about. On the other hand, if only one of you can laugh, one of you, inevitably, is laughing at the other.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  No American film, relating to blacks, can possibly incorporate this observation. This obser vation-set to music, as are so many black observations denies, simply, the validity of the legend which is responsible for these films: films which exist tor the sole purpose of per petuating the legend. Black men, after all, have been the lovers, and victims, of women lik e the woman in In This, Our Life: and these women CHAPTER TWO 523 have also been the victims of black men: and sometimes they have loved each other: and sometimes had to live in hell to pay for it. Even the most thoughtless, even the most deluded black person knows more about his lif e than the image he is offered as the justification of it. Black men know something about white sheriffs. They know, for one thing, that the shcritf is no freer to become friends with them than they arc to be come friends with the she riff: For example : A white taxi driver once drove me from the airport in Bir mingham, Alabama, to the Gaston Motel. This is a long, dark, tree-lined drive, and the taxi driver was breaking the law: for a white taxi driver is not-or was not, it is hard to be accurate concerning the pace of my country's progress-allowed to pick up a black fare. That this was not a wicked man is proven, perhaps, by the fact that I am still here. But I was in his cab only because the idea of waiting another hour at the airport (sitting on my typewriter, which I never carried South again) was too frightening. I had had no choice but to gamble on him. Y ct, I could not be at case about his motives in breaking the law for a black, Northern journalist. It was perfectly pos sible, after all, that he had no intention of driving me to the Gaston Motel (which had already been bombed three times) but to my death. And there was no way for this thought not to have entered my mind: I would have had to be mindless not to have thought it. And what was he thinking? For, I felt that he wanted to talk to me, and I certainly wanted to talk to him. But neither of us could manage it. It was not his fault, and it was not my fault. We could find no way out of our common trouble, for we had been forbidden-and on pain of death-to trust, or to usc, our common humanity, that con frontation and acceptance which is all that can save another human being. Bla cks know something about black cops, too, even those called Mister, in Philadelphia. They know that their presence on the force docsn 't change the force or the judges or the lawyers or the bondsmen or the jails.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  But manage it we did, and so the day came when I was deposited in the waiting room of the prison at Holstenglacis. The prison is part of a complex of intimidating structures, scattered over quite a large area-a little like the complex on l' lle de Ia Cite in Paris, or the complex on Center Street in New York-b ut it resembles neither of the m. It is more me dieval than either, and gives the impression of being far more isolated-th ough, as I say, I could walk to it from my ex ceedingly fashionable hotel. Yet, the streets were torn up all around it-men at work; I learned to walk from there because taxis seemed never to come anywhere near it; there was a tramline, but I did not know how to use it, and it also seemed to skirt the prison. The only people I ever saw around there were clearly connected with the prison, or were visitors; you could tell the lawyers by their briefcases and their slightly chas tened air of self -importance. To visit the prisoner, one had, of course, to have a pass. I am not, legally, related to Tony by blood, and my only pretext to have the right to visit (a right 416 NO NAM E IN THE STREE T later to be taken from me) was that I was the only friend he had in Germany, and I had traveled quite a long way to see him. This was all arranged between my publish ers and the lawyer, and I will never quite know how it was done. But the lawyer rang the bell, anyway, one frosty afternoon, before the great door, which opened and let us in. Then, I was deposited in the waiting room, and before me, at the height of two or three steps, was the great barred door which led to the interior of the prison. There were two or three people in the room with me. One man silently offered me a cigarette and, silently, I took it. The smoke between us, then, was all that we could manage of communion. I was frightened in a way very hard to describe. The fact that this was the fabled Germany of the Third Reich, and this was a German prison, certainly had something to do with it. I was not so much afraid to see him as I was afraid of what might have happened to him-in him-the way one feels when about to see a loved one who has encountered great misfortune.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  I answer that, As stated above ([3300]FS, Q[61], AA[3],4), those virtues are said to be cardinal or principal which have a foremost claim to that which belongs to the virtues in common. And among other conditions of virtue in general one is that it is stated to “act steadfastly,” according to Ethic. ii, 4. Now fortitude above all lays claim to praise for steadfastness. Because he that stands firm is so much the more praised, as he is more strongly impelled to fall or recede. Now man is impelled to recede from that which is in accordance with reason, both by the pleasing good and the displeasing evil. But bodily pain impels him more strongly than pleasure. For Augustine says (QQ[83], qu. 36): “There is none that does not shun pain more than he desires pleasure. For we perceive that even the most untamed beasts are deterred from the greatest pleasures by the fear of pain.” And among the pains of the mind and dangers those are mostly feared which lead to death, and it is against them that the brave man stands firm. Therefore fortitude is a cardinal virtue. Reply to Objection 1: Daring and anger do not cooperate with fortitude in its act of endurance, wherein its steadfastness is chiefly commended: for it is by that act that the brave man curbs fear, which is a principal passion, as stated above ([3301]FS, Q[25], A[4]). Reply to Objection 2: Virtue is directed to the good of reason which it behooves to safeguard against the onslaught of evils. And fortitude is directed to evils of the body, as contraries which it withstands, and to the good of reason, as the end, which it intends to safeguard. Reply to Objection 3: Though dangers of death are of rare occurrence, yet the occasions of those dangers occur frequently, since on account of justice which he pursues, and also on account of other good deeds, man encounters mortal adversaries. Whether fortitude excels among all other virtues?Objection 1: It seems that fortitude excels among all other virtues. For Ambrose says (De Offic. i): “Fortitude is higher, so to speak, than the rest.” Objection 2: Further, virtue is about that which is difficult and good. But fortitude is about most difficult things. Therefore it is the greatest of the virtues. Objection 3: Further, the person of a man is more excellent than his possessions. But fortitude is about a man’s person, for it is this that a man exposes to the danger of death for the good of virtue: whereas justice and the other moral virtues are about other and external things. Therefore fortitude is the chief of the moral virtues. Objection 4: On the contrary, Tully says (De Offic. i): “Justice is the most resplendent of the virtues and gives its name to a good man.”

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  This servility, however, does not belong to the species of servile fear, even as neither does lifelessness to the species of lifeless faith. For the species of a moral habit or act is taken from the object. Now the object of servile fear is punishment, and it is by accident that, either the good to which the punishment is contrary, is loved as the last end, and that consequently the punishment is feared as the greatest evil, which is the case with one who is devoid of charity, or that the punishment is directed to God as its end, and that, consequently, it is not feared as the greatest evil, which is the case with one who has charity. For the species of a habit is not destroyed through its object or end being directed to a further end. Consequently servile fear is substantially good, but is servility is evil. Reply to Objection 1: This saying of Augustine is to be applied to a man who does something through servile fear as such, so that he loves not justice, and fears nothing but the punishment. Reply to Objection 2: Servile fear as to its substance is not born of pride, but its servility is, inasmuch as man is unwilling, by love, to subject his affections to the yoke of justice. Reply to Objection 3: Mercenary love is that whereby God is loved for the sake of worldly goods, and this is, of itself, contrary to charity, so that mercenary love is always evil. But servile fear, as to its substance, implies merely fear of punishment, whether or not this be feared as the principal evil. Whether servile fear is substantially the same as filial fear?Objection 1: It would seem that servile fear is substantially the same as filial fear. For filial fear is to servile fear the same apparently as living faith is to lifeless faith, since the one is accompanied by mortal sin and the other not. Now living faith and lifeless faith are substantially the same. Therefore servile and filial fear are substantially the same. Objection 2: Further, habits are diversified by their objects. Now the same thing is the object of servile and of filial fear, since they both fear God. Therefore servile and filial fear are substantially the same. Objection 3: Further, just as man hopes to enjoy God and to obtain favors from Him, so does he fear to be separated from God and to be punished by Him. Now it is the same hope whereby we hope to enjoy God, and to receive other favors from Him, as stated above ([2463]Q[17], A[2], ad 2). Therefore filial fear, whereby we fear separation from God, is the same as servile fear whereby we fear His punishments. On the contrary, Augustine (In prim. canon. Joan. Tract. ix) says that there are two fears, one servile, another filial or chaste fear.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  THE SOUL AND CORPOREAL FIREThe assertion that a soul separated from its body can be tortured by corporeal fire should not seem nonsensical when we reflect that it is not contrary to the nature of a spiritual substance to be confined to a body. This happens in the ordinary course of nature, as we see in the union of the soul with the body. The same effect is sometimes produced by the arts of black magic, by which a spirit is imprisoned in images or amulets or other such objects. The power of God can undoubtedly bring it about that spiritual substances, which are raised above the material world by their nature, may nevertheless be tied down to certain bodies, such as hell-fire; not in the sense that they animate the body in question, but that they are in some way fettered to it. And this very fact, brought home to the consciousness of a spiritual substance, namely, that it is thus subjected to the dominion of a lowly creature, is grievous to it. Inasmuch as this awareness is distressing to the spiritual substance, the contention that the soul “burns by the very fact that it perceives itself to be in fire” [Dialogi, IV, 29], is substantiated. Thus understood, the fire is plainly spiritual, for what directly causes the distress is the fire apprehended as imprisoning. But inasmuch as the fire in which the spirit is incarcerated is corporeal fire, the further statement made by Gregory is borne out, namely, that “the soul is in agony not only because its perceives, but also because it experiences, the fire.” Furthermore, since this fire has the power of imprisoning the spiritual substance, not of its own nature, but by the might of God, the view is fittingly expressed by some that the fire acts on the soul as an instrument of God’s vindictive justice. This does not mean that the fire acts on the spiritual substance as it acts on bodies, by heating, parching, and consuming; its action is restrictive, as we said. And since that which directly afflicts the spiritual substance is the awareness that the fire incarcerates it for its punishment, we can reasonably suppose that the suffering does not cease even if, by God’s dispensation, the spiritual substance should happen for a time to be released from the fire. In the same way a criminal who has been sentenced to perpetual irons feels no dimunition of his unremitting pain even though the chains should be struck off for an hour. CHAPTER 181

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  It is the priest who covers for the trapped and weary girl when she attempts to smuggle a gun into the prison, and it is the priest whom Fonda murders, with a gun. And I won dered about that, the well-meaning accomplice and his fate: he is murdered because Fonda does not believe him, even though he is, in fact, speaking the truth. But the prisoner has no way of knowing with whom the priest is playing ball at the moment and so dares not risk believing him. This dread is underscored by the film's last line, delivered (in the dying prisoner's memory) by the priest: the gates are open. I knew damn well that the gates were not open, and, by this time, in any case, the lovers were dead. Dead End, on the other hand, left me cold, and so did Street Scene, for the same reason: my streets were funk ier and more dangerous than that. I had seen the gangster, Baby-Face Martin (H umphrey Bogart), in my streets, with his one-h undred dollar suits, and his silk shirts, and his hat: sometimes he was a pimp and sometimes he was a preacher and often he was THE DE VIL FIND S WORK both: but Baby-Face always had the same taste in women, boys, and cars. I knew no one like the heroine, Drina (Sylvia Sidney), except certain high-yellow bitches, whose concern for their younger brother, if they had any concern, would long before have forced them to hit the block, hit the road, or hit a clean old banker, and steal the keys to the long old highway; or, in other words, the severity of the social situation which Dead E11d so romanticizes (somewhat like its direct descen dant, West Side Story) utterly precludes the innocence of its heroine. Much closer to the truth are the gangster, his broken mother, and his broken girl-ye s: I had seen that. The script is unable to face the fact that it is merely another version of that brutal fantasy known as the American success story: this helpless dishonesty is revealed by the script's resolution. I was by no means certain that I approved of the hero's decision to inform on Baby- Face, to turn him over to the police, and bring about his death. In my streets, we never called the cops, and whoever turned anyone in to the cops was a pariah.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  "You really believe that, don't you?" I said, "I wish I didn't. But I'm afraid I do." "Wel l," he said, at last, "if you're black, you don't have to worry too much about where you stand. They've got that covered, I believe." Indeed, they do. And, therefore, people like the people in the Hol lywood hills can be looked on as the highly problem atical leaven in the loaf. Instinctively, when speaking before them, one attempts to fan into a blaze, or at least into positive heat, their somewhat chilled apprehension of lif e. In attempt ing to lessen the distance between them and oneself , one is TO BE BAPTI ZED 437 also, unconsciously and inevitably, suggesting that they lessen the distance between themselv es and their deepest hopes and fears and desires; even that they dispense with that middleman they call doctor, who is one of their greatest, most infantile self -indulgences. One senses sometimes in their still faces an intense, speculative hesitation. Bobby Seale insists that one of the things that most afflict white people is their disastrous concept of God; they have never accepted the dark gods, and their fear of the dark gods, who live in them at least as surely as the white God does, causes them to distrust lif e. It causes them, profoundly, to be fascinated by, and more than a little frightened of the lives led by black people: it is this tension which makes them problematical. But, on the other hand, it must be becoming increasingly clear to some, at least, that all of us are standing in the same deep shadow, a shadow which can only be lif ted by human courage and honor. Many still hope to keep their honor and their safety, too. No one can blame them for this hope, it is impossible indeed not to share it: but when queried as to the soundness of such a hope, for a people caught in a civilization in crisis, history fails to give any very sanguine answers. Eventually, Martin arrived, in a light blue suit, accompanied by Andrew Young, and they both looked very tired. We were very glad to see each other. We sat down in a relatively se cluded corner and tried to bring each other up to date. Alas, it would never be possible for us to bring each other up to date. We had first met during the last days of the Mont gomery bus boycott-and how long ago was that?

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  And white men couldn't bear it-knowing that they knew: it is not only in the Orient that white is the color of death. I remember the Reverend S., for example, a small, pale man, with hair resembling charred popcorn, and his tiny church, in a tiny town, where every black man was owned by a white man. In democratic parlance, of course, one says that every black man JVorked for a white man, and the democratic myth wishes us to believe that they worked together as men, and respected and honored and loved each other as men. But the democratic circumlocution pretends a level of li berty which docs not exist and cannot exist until slavery in America comes to an end: in those towns, in those days, to speak only of the towns, and only of those days, a black man who displeased his employers was not going to cat for very long, which meant that neither he, nor his wife, nor children, were intended to live for very long. Yet, here he was, the Reverend S., every Sunday, in his pulpit, with his wife and children in the church, TAKE ME TO THE WATER 403 and bullet holes in the church basement, urging the people to move, to march, and to vote. For we believed, in those days, or made ourselves believe, that the black move to the registrar's office would be protected from Washington. I re member a Reverend D., who was also a grocer, and the night he described to me his conversion to nonviolence. A black grocer in the Deep South must also, like all grocers every where, purchase somewhere, somehow, the beans he places on his shelves to sell. This means that a black grocer who is one of the guiding spirits of a voting registration drive and who is also, virtually, a one-man car pool, can find remaining in business, to say nothing of his skin, an exceedingly stren uous matter. This was a big, cheerful man, as strong as an ox and stubborn as a mule, a fly not destined for the fly-paper , and he stayed in business. It cost him something. Bombing was not yet the great Southern sport which it was to become: they simply hurled bricks through his windows.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  CHRYSOSTOM. (ubi sup.) The Jews creep on by degrees, glorifying God, yet thinking Him not God, for His flesh stood in their way. But still it was no slight thing to consider Him the chief of mortal men, and to have proceeded from God. AMBROSE. But they had rather fear the miracles of divine working, than believe them. As it follows, And they were filled with fear. But if they had believed they had not surely feared, but loved; for perfect love casteth out fear. But this was no careless or trifling cure of the paralytic, since our Lord is said to have prayed first, not for the petition’s sake, but for an example. AUGUSTINE. (l. ii. qu. 4.) With respect to the sick of the palsy, we may understand that the soul relaxed in its limbs, i. e. its operations, seeks Christ, i. e. the meaning of God’s word; but is hindered by the crowds, that is to say, unless it discovers the secrets of the thoughts, i. e. the dark parts of the Scriptures, and thereby arrives at the knowledge of Christ. BEDE. And the house where Jesus was is well described as covered with tiles, since beneath the beggarly covering of letters is found the spiritual power of grace. AMBROSE. Now let every sick person have those that will pray for his salvation, by whom the loosened joints of our life and halting steps may be renewed by the remedy of the heavenly word. Let there be then certain monitors of the soul, to raise the mind of man, though grown dull through the weakness of the external body, to higher things, by the aid of which being able again easily to raise and humble itself, it may be placed before Jesus worthy to be presented in the Lord’s sight. For the Lord beholdeth the humble. AUGUSTINE. (ubi sup.) The men then by whom he is let down may signify the doctors of the Church. But that he is let down with the couch, signifies that Christ ought to be known by man, while yet abiding in his flesh. AMBROSE. But the Lord, pointing out the full hope of resurrection, pardons the sins of the soul, sets aside the weakness of the flesh. For this is the curing of the whole man. Although then it is a great thing to forgive the sins of men, it is yet much more divine to give resurrection to the bodies, since indeed God is the resurrection. But the bed which is ordered to be taken up is nothing else but the human body. AUGUSTINE. (ubi sup.) That the infirm soul may no more rest in carnal joys, as in a bed, but rather itself restrain the carnal affections, and tend toward its own home, i. e. the resting-place of the secrets of its heart.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  AUGUSTINE. (de Qu. Evan. l. ii. q. 13.) Or, by the herdsmen of the swine flying and telling these things, He represents certain rulers of the wicked, who though they evade the law of Christianity, yet proclaim it among the nations by their astonishment and wonder. But by the Gerasenes, when they knew what was done, asking Jesus to depart from them, for they were struck with great fear, he represents the multitude delighting in their old pleasures, honouring indeed, but unwilling to endure the Christian law, saying that they cannot fulfil it, while they still marvel at the faithful released from their former abandoned mode of life. AMBROSE. Or there seems to have been a kind of synagogue in the city of the Gerasenes who besought our Lord to depart, because they were seized with great fear. For the weak mind receives not the word of God, nor can it endure the burden of wisdom. And therefore He no longer troubled them, but ascends from the lower parts to the higher, from the Synagogue to the Church, and returned across the lake. For no one passes from the Church to the Synagogue without endangering his salvation. But whoever desires to pass from the Synagogue to the Church, let him take up his cross, that he may avoid the danger. AUGUSTINE. (ubi sup.) But that he, now that he is healed, desires to be with Christ, and it is said to him, Return to thy house, and tell what great things God has done for thee, implies that each should understand, that after the remission of his sins he should return to a good conscience as to his home, and obey the Gospel for the salvation of others, in order that there he may rest with Christ, lest by too early wishing to be with Christ he neglect the ministry of preaching necessary for this redemption of his brethren. 8:40–4840. And it came to pass, that, when Jesus was returned, the people gladly received him: for they were all waiting for him. 41. And, behold, there came a man named Jairus, and he was a ruler of the synagogue: and he fell down at Jesus’ feet, and besought him that he would come into his house: 42. For he had one only daughter, about twelve years of age, and she lay a dying. But as he went the people thronged him. 43. And a woman having an issue of blood twelve years, which had spent all her living upon physicians, neither could be healed of any, 44. Came behind him, and touched the border of his garment: and immediately her issue of blood stanched. 45. And Jesus said, Who touched me? When all denied, Peter and they that were with him said, Master, the multitude throng thee and press thee, and sayest thou, Who touched me? 46. And Jesus said, Somebody hath touched me: for I perceive that virtue is gone out of me.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  Another of the group was across the alleyway, his eyes shifting with amazing speed, as if he was mad. ‘Give us your watch!’ he said, with extreme, petulant vehemence, though never looking at me for a second together. But the sexy one tossed my arm away from him, I gave a nervous gasp of a laugh, and decided I was in control of things. I stepped forward, and around the big boy, who had moved out to block my passage; the other one said, ‘Where do you think you’re going? We want your watch.’ I said rather crossly, ‘Well, you can’t have it.’ At this point a third youth, that I hadn’t spotted in the narrow shaft of the bin-yard on the right, clambered rapidly up one of the six-foot-high bins and sat throned on the top among the black bags of rubbish, banging his heels against the side of the container. ‘Fucking poof!’ he said, with a kind of considered anger. Angry myself, I wanted simply to get away—but as I tried to do so was challenged with ‘Um—excuse me—no one said you could go.’ ‘You can tell he’s a fuckin’ poof,’ said the one on top of the bin. It was an old problem: what to say, what was the snappy putdown? Clever, but not too clever. I acted out a weary sigh, and said, tight-lipped: ‘Actually, poof is not a word I would use.’ ‘Isn’t it, actually? ’ said the leader, again with a smile that seemed to say he knew my game, he knew what I liked. ‘Look, excuse me,’ I said tetchily, nervous, hearing my own voice in my ears as though they had played it to me on a tape-recorder. I felt I mustn’t flatten it, or pretend, but to them it must have sounded a parody voice, pickled in culture and money. The jittery one, skinny, pecking forward with his oddly vulnerable neck and gulping Adam’s apple, said: ‘Yeah! What’s ’is game, any’ow? What’s ’e doin’ ’ere?’ His eyes ran up and down over me, as if wondering where to strike. I knew I needn’t answer and blustered inwardly about a ‘lawless tribunal’. At the same time I had a terrible certainty that I was lost. They had decided on my fate and were nerving themselves up to it by humiliating me. ‘As a matter of fact I’ve come to see a friend.’ I was hopeless at this, and my looking about showed how I wanted to escape. ‘Fuckin’ shit-hole wanker,’ the skinhead on the bin said, then spat, hitting the ground just in front of me. The leader took in his boys with an ironic glance, and said: ‘I think his friend must be one of our little coloured brothers, don’t you?’