Sadness

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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 Anna Karenina (1877)

  He was looking for traces of the conversation which he knew that, staying so long in Dolly's room, she must have had with her. But in her expression of restrained excitement, and of a sort of reserve, he could find nothing but the beauty that always bewitched him afresh though he was used to it, the consciousness of it, and the desire that it should affect him. He did not want to ask her what they had been talking of, but he hoped that she would tell him something of her own accord. But she only said— 'I am so glad you like Dolly. You do, don't you?' 'Oh, I've known her a long while, you know. She's very good-hearted, I suppose, mais excessivement terre-à-terre. Still, I'm very glad to see her.' He took Anna's hand and looked inquiringly into her eyes. Misinterpreting the look, she smiled at him. Next morning, in spite of the protests of her hosts, Darya Alexandrovna prepared for her homeward journey. Levin's coachman, in his by no means new coat and shabby hat, with his ill-matched horses and his coach with the patched mudguards, drove with gloomy determination into the covered gravel approach. Darya Alexandrovna disliked taking leave of Princess Varvara and the gentlemen of the party. After a day spent together, both she and her hosts were distinctly aware that they did not get on together, and that it was better for them not to meet. Only Anna was sad. She knew that now, from Dolly's departure, no one again would stir up within her soul the feelings that had been roused by. their conversation. It hurt her to stir up these feelings, but yet she knew that that was the best part of her soul, and that that part of her soul would quickly be smothered in the life she was leading. As she drove out into the open country, Darya Alexandrovna had a delightful sense of relief, and she felt tempted to ask the two men how they had liked being at Vronsky's, when suddenly the coachman, Philip, expressed himself unasked— 'Rolling in wealth they may be, but three pots of oats was all they gave us. Everything cleared up till there wasn't a grain left by cockcrow. What are three pots? A mere mouthful! And oats now down to forty-five kopecks. At our place, no fear, all comers may have as much as they can eat.' 'The master's a screw,' put in the counting-house clerk. 'Well, did you like their horses?' asked Dolly. 'The horses! —there's no two opinions about them. And the food was good. But it seemed to me sort of dreary there, Darya Alexandrovna. I don't know what you thought,' he said, turning his handsome, good-natured face to her. 'I thought so too. Well, shall we get home by evening?' 'Eh, we must!'

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  She positively envied the baby's healthy appearance. She was delighted, too, at the baby's crawling. Not one of her own children had crawled like that. When the baby was put on the carpet and its little dress tucked up behind, it was wonderfully charming. Looking round like some little wild animal at the grown-up big people with her bright black eyes, she smiled, unmistakably pleased at their admiring her, and holding her legs sideways, she pressed vigorously on her arms, and rapidly drew her whole back up after, and then made another step forward with her little arms. But the whole atmosphere of the nursery, and especially the English nurse, Darya Alexandrovna did not like at all. It was only on the supposition that no good nurse would have entered so irregular a household as Anna's that Darya Alexandrovna could explain to herself how Anna with her insight into people could take such an unprepossessing, disreputable-looking woman as nurse to her child. Besides, from a few words that were dropped, Darya Alexandrovna saw at once that Anna, the two nurses and the child had no common existence, and that the mother's visit was something exceptional. Anna wanted to get the baby her plaything, and could not find it. Most amazing of all was the fact that on being asked how many teeth the baby had, Anna answered wrong, and knew nothing about the two last teeth. 'I sometimes feel sorry I'm so superfluous here,' said Anna, going out of the nursery and holding up her skirt so as to escape the plaything standing in the doorway. 'It was very different with my first child.' 'I expected it to be the other way,' said Darya Alexandrovna shyly. 'Oh no! By the way, do you know I saw Seryozha?' said Anna, screwing up her eyes, as though looking at something far away. 'But we'll talk about that later. You wouldn't believe it, I'm like a hungry beggar-woman when a full dinner is set before her, and she does not know what to begin on first. The dinner is you, and the talks I have before me with you, which I could never have with anyone else; and I don't know which subject to begin upon first. Mais je ne vous ferai grâce de rien. I must have everything out with you.' 'Oh, I ought to give you a sketch of the company you will meet with us,' she began. 'I'll begin with the ladies. Princess Varvara—you know her, and I know your opinion and Stiva's about her. Stiva says the whole aim of her existence is to prove her superiority over Auntie Katerina Pavlovna: that's all true; but she's a good-natured woman, and I am so grateful to her. In Petersburg there was a moment when a chaperon was absolutely essential for me. Then she turned up. But really she is good-natured. She did a great deal to alleviate my position.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  There's no great harm done. God is merciful . . . thanks . . .,' he said, not knowing what he was saying, as he responded to the tearful kiss of the princess that he felt on his hand. And the prince went out of the room. Before this, as soon as Kitty went out of the room in tears, Dolly, with her motherly, family instincts, had promptly perceived that here a woman's work lay before her, and she prepared to do it. She took off her hat, and, morally speaking, tucked up her sleeves and prepared for action. While her mother was attacking her father, she tried to restrain her mother, so far as filial reverence would allow. During the prince's outburst she was silent; she felt ashamed for her mother, and tender towards her father for so quickly being kind again. But when her father left them she made ready for what was the chief thing needful— to go to Kitty and console her. 'I'd been meaning to tell you something for a long while, mamma: did you know that Levin meant to make Kitty an offer when he was here the last time? He told Stiva so.' 'Well, what then? I don't understand….' 'So did Kitty perhaps refuse him? . .. She didn't tell you so?' 'No, she has said nothing to me either of one or the other; she's too proud. But I know it's all on account of the other.' 'Yes, but suppose she has refused Levin, and she wouldn't have refused him if it hadn't been for the other, I know. And then, he has deceived her so horribly.' It was too terrible for the princess to think how she had sinned against her daughter, and she broke out angrily. 'Oh, I really don't understand! Nowadays they will all go their own way, and mothers haven't a word to say in anything, and then . . .' 'Mamma, I'll go up to her.' 'Well, do. Did I tell you not to?' said her mother. III W HEN she went into Kitty's little room, a pretty, pink little room, full of knick-knacks in vieux saxe, as fresh, and pink, and white, and gay as Kitty herself had been two months ago, Dolly remembered how they had decorated the room the year before together, with what love and gaiety. Her heart turned cold when she saw Kitty sitting on a low chair near the door, her eyes fixed immovably on a corner of the rug. Kitty glanced at her sister, and the cold, rather ill-tempered, expression of her face did not change. 'I'm just going now, and I shall have to keep in and you won't be able to come to see me,' said Dolly, sitting down beside her. 'I want to talk to you.' 'What about?' Kitty asked swiftly, lifting her head in dismay. 'What should it be, but your trouble ?'

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  And her life was not a cheerful one. Her relations with Stepan Arkadyevitch after their reconciliation had become humiliating. The union Anna had cemented turned out to be of no solid character, and family harmony was breaking down again at the same point. There had been nothing definite, but Stepan Arkadyevitch was hardly ever at home; money, too, was hardly ever forthcoming, and Dolly was continually tortured by suspicions of infidelity, which she tried to dismiss, dreading the agonies of jealousy she had been through already. The first onslaught of jealousy, once lived through, could never come back again, and even the discovery of infidelities could never now affect her as it had the first time. Such a discovery now would only mean breaking up family habits, and she let herself be deceived, despising him and still more herself for the weakness. Besides this, the care of her large family was a constant worry to her: first, the nursing of her young baby did not go well, then the nurse had gone away, now one of the children had fallen ill. 'Well, how are all of you?' asked the mother. 'Ah, mamma, we have plenty of troubles of our own. Lili is ill, and I'm afraid it's scarlatina. I have come here now to hear about Kitty, and then I shall shut myself up entirely, if—God forbid—it should be scarlatina.' The old prince too had come in from his study after the doctor's departure, and after presenting his cheek to Dolly, and saying a few words to her, he turned to his wife— 'How have you settled it? you're going? Well, and what do you mean to do with me?' 'I suppose you had better stay here, Alexandre,' said his wife. 'That's as you like.' 'Mamma, why shouldn't father come with us?' said Kitty. 'It'll be nicer for him and for us too.' The old prince got up and stroked Kitty's hair. She lifted her head and looked at him with a forced smile. It always seemed to her that he understood her better than anyone in the family, though he did not say much about her. Being the youngest, she was her father's favourite, and she fancied that his love gave him insight. When now her glance met his blue kindly eyes looking intently at her, it seemed to her that he saw right through her, and understood all that was not good that was passing within her. Reddening, she stretched out towards him expecting a kiss, but he only patted her hair and said— These stupid chignons! There's no getting at the real daughter, one simply strokes the bristles of dead women. Well, Dolinka,' he turned to his elder daughter, 'what's your young buck about, hey?' 'Nothing, father,' answered Dolly, understanding that her husband was meant. 'He's always out; I scarcely ever see him,' she could not resist adding with a sarcastic smile. 'Why, hasn't he gone into the country yet—to see about selling that forest?'

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  This position of affairs had now lasted three days, and not only the husband and wife themselves, but all the members of their family and household, were painfully conscious of it. Every person in the house felt that there was no sense in their living together, and that the stray people brought together by chance in any inn had more in common with one another than they, the members of the family and household of the Oblonskys. The wife did not leave her own room, the husband had not been at home for three days. The children ran wild all over the house; the English governess quarrelled with the housekeeper, and wrote to a friend asking her to look out for a new situation for her; the man-cook had walked off the day before just at dinner-time; the kitchen-maid and the coachman had given warning. Three days after the quarrel, Prince Stepan Arkadyevitch Oblonsky —Stiva, as he was called in the fashionable world—woke up at his usual hour, that is, at eight o'clock in the morning, not in his wife's bedroom, but on the leather-covered sofa in his study. He turned over his stout, well-cared-for person on the springy sofa, as though he would sink into a long sleep again; he vigorously embraced the pillow on the other side and buried his face in it; but all at once he jumped up, sat up on the sofa, and opened his eyes. 'Yes, yes, how was it now?' he thought, going over his dream. 'Now, how was it? To be sure! Alabin was giving a dinner at Darmstadt; no, not Darmstadt, but something American. Yes, but then, Darmstadt was in America. Yes, Alabin was giving a dinner on glass tables, and the tables sang, Il mio tesoro —not Il mio tesoro though, but something better, and there were some sort of little decanters on the table, and they were women too,' he remembered. Stepan Arkadyevitch's eyes twinkled gaily, and he pondered with a smile. 'Yes, it was nice, very nice. There was a great deal more that was delightful, only there's no putting it into words, or even expressing it in one's thoughts awake.' And noticing a gleam of light peeping in beside one of the serge curtains, he cheerfully dropped his feet over the edge of the sofa, and felt about with them for his slippers, a present on his last birthday, worked for him by his wife on gold-coloured morocco. And, as he had done every day for the last nine years, he stretched out his hand, without getting up, towards the place where his dressing-gown always hung in his bedroom. And thereupon he suddenly remembered that he was not sleeping in his wife's room, but in his study, and why: the smile vanished from his face, he knitted his brows. 'Ah, ah, ah! Oo! . . .' he muttered, recalling everything that had happened.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  That's the beginning of a new thing we're going into. It's a productive association….' Konstantin scarcely heard him. He looked into his sickly, consumptive face, and he was more and more sorry for him, and he could not force himself to listen to what his brother was telling him about the association. He saw that this association was a mere anchor to save him from self-contempt. Nikolay Levin went on talking— 'You know that capital oppresses the labourer. The labourers with us, the peasants, bear all the burden of labour, and are so placed that however much they work they can't escape from their position of beasts of burden. All the profits of labour, on which they might improve their position, and gain leisure for themselves, and after that education, all the surplus values are taken from them by the capitalists. And society's so constituted that the harder they work, the greater the profit of the merchants and landowners, while they stay beasts of burden to the end. And that state of things must be changed,' he finished up, and he looked questioningly at his brother. 'Yes, of course,' said Konstantin, looking at the patch of red that had come out on his brother's projecting cheek-bones. 'And so we're founding a locksmith's association, where all the production and profit and the chief instruments of production will be in common.' 'Where is the association to be?' asked Konstantin Levin. 'In the village of Vozdrem, Kazan government.' 'But why in a village? In the villages, I think, there is plenty of work as it is. Why a locksmiths' association in a village?' 'Why? Because the peasants are just as much slaves as they ever were, and that's why you and Sergey Ivanovitch don't like people to try and get them out of their slavery,' said Nikolay Levin, exasperated by the objection. Konstantin Levin sighed, looking meanwhile about the cheerless and dirty room. This sigh seemed to exasperate Nikolay still more. 'I know your and Sergey Ivanovitch's aristocratic views. I know that he applies all the power of his intellect to justify existing evils.' 'No; and what do you talk of Sergey Ivanovitch for?' said Levin, smiling. 'Sergey Ivanovitch? I'll tell you what for!' Nikolay Levin shrieked suddenly at the name of Sergey Ivanovitch. 'I'll tell you what for. . . . But what's the use of talking? There's only one thing. . . . What did you come to me for? You look down on this, and you're welcome to,— and go away, in God's name go away!' he shrieked, getting up from his chair. 'And go away, and go away!' 'I don't look down on it at all,' said Konstantin Levin timidly. 'I don't even dispute it.' At that instant Marya Nikolaevna came back.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  'It's impossible to give one's heart to a school or such institutions in general, and I believe that that's just why philanthropic institutions always give such poor results.' She was silent for a while, then she smiled. 'Yes, yes,' she agreed; 'I never could. Je n'ai pas le cœur assez large to love a whole asylum of horrid little girls. Cela ne m'a jamais réussi. There are so many women who have made themselves une. position sociale in that way. And now more than ever,' she said with a mournful, confiding expression, ostensibly addressing her brother, but unmistakably intending her words only for Levin, 'now when I have such need of some occupation, I cannot.' And suddenly frowning (Levin saw that she was frowning at herself for talking about herself) she changed the subject. 'I know about you,' she said to Levin; 'that you're not a public-spirited citizen, and I have defended you to the best of my ability.' 'How have you defended me?' 'Oh, according to the attacks made on you. But won't you have some tea?' She rose and took up a book bound in morocco. 'Give it to me, Anna Arkadyevna,' said Vorkuev, indicating the book. 'It's well worth taking up.' 'Oh, no, it's all so sketchy.' 'I told him about it,' Stepan Arkadyevitch said to his sister, nodding at Levin. 'You shouldn't have. My writing is something after the fashion of those little baskets and carving which Liza Mertsalov used to sell me from the prisons. She had the direction of the prison department in that society,' she turned to Levin; 'and they were miracles of patience, the work of those poor wretches.' And Levin saw a new trait in this woman, who attracted him so extraordinarily. Besides wit, grace, and beauty, she had truth. She had no wish to hide from him all the bitterness of her position. As she said that she sighed, and her face suddenly taking a hard expression, looked as it were turned to stone. With that expression on her face she was more beautiful than ever; but the expression was new; it was utterly unlike that expression, radiant with happiness and creating happiness, which had been caught by the painter in her portrait. Levin looked more than once at the portrait and at her figure, as taking her brother's arm she walked with him to the high doors, and he felt for her a tenderness and pity at which he wondered himself. She asked Levin and Vorkuev to go into the drawing-room, while she stayed behind to say a few words to her brother. 'About her divorce, about Vronsky, and what he's doing at the club, about me?' wondered Levin.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Alexey Alexandrovitch sat down, and with a despondent and suffering face watched the nurse walking to and fro. When the child at last was still, and had been put in a deep bed, and the nurse, after smoothing the little pillow, had left her, Alexey Alexandrovitch got up, and walking awkwardly on tiptoe, approached the baby. For a minute he was still, and with the same despondent face gazed at the baby; but all at once a smile, that moved his hair and the skin of his forehead, came out on his face, and he went as softly out of the room. In the dining-room he rang the bell, and told the servant who came in to send again for the doctor. He felt vexed with his wife for not being anxious about this exquisite baby, and in this vexed humour he had no wish to go to her; he had no wish, either, to see Princess Betsy. But his wife might wonder why he did not go to her as usual; and so, overcoming his disinclination, he went towards the bedroom. As he walked over the soft rug towards the door, he could not help overhearing a conversation he did not want to hear. 'If he hadn't been going away, I could have understood your answer and his too. But your husband ought to be above that,' Betsy was saying. 'It's not for my husband; for myself I don't wish it. Don't say that!' answered Anna's excited voice. 'Yes, but you must care to say good-bye to a man who has shot himself on your account…' 'That's just why I don't want to.' With a dismayed and guilty expression, Alexey Alexandrovitch stopped and would have gone back unobserved. But reflecting that this would be undignified, he turned back again, and clearing his throat, he went up to the bedroom. The voices were silent, and he went in. Anna, in a grey dressing-gown, with a crop of short clustering black curls on her round head, was sitting on a settee. The eagerness died out of her face, as it always did, at the sight of her husband; she dropped her head and looked round uneasily at Betsy. Betsy, dressed in the height of a the latest fashion, in a hat that towered somewhere over her head like a shade on a lamp, in a blue dress with violet cross-way stripes slanting one way on the bodice and the other way on the skirt, was sitting beside Anna, her tall flat figure held erect. Bowing her head, she greeted Alexey Alexandrovitch with an ironical smile. 'Ah!' she said, as though surprised.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  Whether it was that the children were fickle, or that they had acute senses, and felt that Anna was quite different that day from what she had been when they had taken such a fancy to her, that she was not now interested in them,— but they had abruptly dropped their play with their aunt, and their love for her, and were quite indifferent that she was going away. Anna was absorbed the whole morning in preparations for her departure. She wrote notes to her Moscow acquaintances, put down her accounts, and packed. Altogether Dolly fancied she was not in a placid state of mind, but in that worried mood, which Dolly knew well with herself, and which does not come without cause, and for the most part covers dissatisfaction with self. After dinner, Anna went up to her room to dress, and Dolly followed her. 'How queer you are today!' Dolly said to her. 'I? Do you think so? I'm not queer, but I'm nasty. I am like that sometimes. I keep feeling as if I could cry. It's very stupid, but it'll pass off,' said Anna quickly, and she bent her flushed face over a tiny bag in which she was packing a nightcap and some cambric handkerchiefs. Her eyes were peculiarly bright, and were continually swimming with tears. 'In the same way I didn't want to leave Petersburg, and now I don't want to go away from here.' 'You came here and did a good deed,' said Dolly, looking intently at her. Anna looked at her with eyes wet with tears. 'Don't say that, Dolly. I've done nothing, and could do nothing. I often wonder why people are all in league to spoil me. What have I done, and what could I do? In your heart there was found love enough to forgive . . . ' 'If it had not been for you, God knows what would have happened! How happy you are, Anna!' said Dolly. 'Everything is clear and good in your heart.' 'Every heart has its own skeletons, as the English say.' 'You have no sort of skeleton, have you? Everything is so clear in you.' 'I have!' said Anna suddenly, and, unexpectedly after her tears, a sly, ironical smile curved her lips. 'Come, he's amusing, anyway, your skeleton, and not depressing,' said Dolly, smiling. 'No, he's depressing. Do you know why I'm going today instead of tomorrow? It's a confession that weighs on me; I want to make it to you,' said Anna, letting herself drop definitely into an armchair, and looking straight into Dolly's face. And to her surprise Dolly saw that Anna was blushing up to her ears, up to the curly black ringlets on her neck. 'Yes,' Anna went on. 'Do you know why Kitty didn't come to dinner?

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

  As said above (p. 137), the hypnotic trance is one method of restoring sensibility in hysterics. But one day when the hysteric anæsthetic named Lucie was already in the hypnotic trance, M. Janet for a certain reason continued to make passes over her for a full half-hour as if she were not already asleep. The result was to throw her into a sort of syncope from which, after half an hour, she revived in a second somnambulic condition entirely unlike that which had characterized her thitherto—different sensibilities, a different memory, a different person, in short. In the waking state the poor young woman was anæsthetic all over, nearly deaf, and with a badly contracted field of vision. Bad as it was, however, sight was her best sense, and she used it as a guide in all her movements. With her eyes bandaged she became entirely helpless, and like other persons of a similar sort whose cases have been recorded, she almost immediately fell asleep in consequence of the withdrawal of her last sensorial stimulus. M. Janet calls this waking or primary (one can hardly in such a connection say 'normal') state by the name of Lucie 1. In Lucie 2, her first sort of hypnotic trance, the anæsthesias were diminished but not removed. In the deeper trance, 'Lucie 3,' brought about as just described, no trace of them remained. Her sensibility became perfect, and instead of being an extreme example of the 'visual' type, she was transformed into what in Prof. Charcot's terminology is known as a motor. That is to say, that whereas when awake she had thought in visual terms exclusively, and could imagine things only by remembering how they looked , now in this deeper trance her thoughts and memories seemed to M. Janet to be largely composed of images of movement and of touch. Having discovered this deeper trance and change of personality in Lucie, M. Janet naturally became eager to find it in his other subjects. He found it in Rose, in Marie, and in Léonie; and his brother, Dr. Jules Janet, who was interne at the Salpétrière Hospital, found it in the celebrated subject Wit. . . . whose trances had been studied for years by the various doctors of that institution without any of them having happened to awaken this very peculiar individuality.[311] With the return of all the sensibilities in the deeper trance, these subjects turned, as it were, into normal persons. Their memories in particular grew more extensive, and hereupon M. Janet spins a theoretic generalization. When a certain kind of sensation, he says, is abolished in an hysteric patient, there is also abolished along with it all recollection of past sensations of that kind . If, for example, hearing be the anæsthetic sense, the patient becomes unable even to imagine sounds and voices, and has to speak (when speech is still possible) by means of motor or articulatory cues.

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

  Every thought we have of a given fact is, strictly speaking, unique, and only bears a resemblance of kind with our other thoughts of the same fact. When the identical fact recurs, we must think of it in a fresh manner, see it under a somewhat different angle, apprehend it in different relations from those in which it last appeared. And the thought by which we cognize it is the thought of it-in-those-relations, a thought suffused with the consciousness of all that dim context. Often we are ourselves struck at the strange differences in our successive views of the same thing. We wonder how we ever could have opined as we did last month about a certain matter. We have outgrown the possibility of that state of mind, we know not how. From one year to another we see things in new lights. What was unreal has grown real, and what was exciting is insipid. The friends we used to care the world for are shrunken to shadows; the women, once so divine, the stars, the woods, and the waters, how now so dull and common; the young girls that brought an aura, of infinity, at present hardly distinguishable existences; the pictures so empty; and as for the books, what was there to find so mysteriously significant in Goethe, or in John Mill so full of weight? Instead of all this, more zestful than ever is the work, the work; and fuller and deeper the import of common duties and of common goods. But what here strikes us so forcibly on the flagrant scale exists on every scale, down to the imperceptible transition from one hour's outlook to that of the next. Experience is remoulding us every moment, and our mental reaction on every given thing is really a resultant of our experience of the whole world up to that date. The analogies of brain-physiology must again be appealed to to corroborate our view. Our earlier chapters have taught us to believe that, whilst we think, our brain changes, and that, like the aurora borealis, its whole internal equilibrium shifts with every pulse of change. The precise nature of the shifting at a given moment is a product of many factors. The accidental state of local nutrition or blood-supply may be among them. But just as one of them certainly is the influence of outward objects on the sense-organs during the moment, so is another certainly the very special susceptibility in which the organ has been left at that moment by all it has gone through in the past. Every brain-state is partly determined by the nature of this entire past succession. Alter the latter in any part, and the brain-state must be somewhat different. Each present brain-state is a record in which the eye of Omniscience might read all the foregone history of its owner.

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

  At four on Friday the process would be repeated but would last less long; and so on for two or three days. If one of her sisters visited her accidentally at a certain hour, the sharp piercing scream was sure to summon her at the same hour the next day," etc., etc.—For these obscure matters consult C. Du Prel: The Philosophy of Mysticism, chap. III. § 1. [539] Ideale Fragen (1878). p. 219 (Essay, 'Zeit und Weile'). [540] Revue Philosophique, vol. III. p. 496. [541] "Empty time is most strongly perceived when it comes as a pause in music or in speech. Suppose a preacher in the pulpit, a professor at his desk, to stick still in the midst of his discourse; or let a composer (as is sometimes purposely done) make all his instruments stop at once; we await every instant the resumption of the performance, and, in this awaiting, perceive, more than in any other possible way, the empty time. To change the example, let, in a piece of polyphonic music—a figure, for instance, in which a tangle of melodies are under way—suddenly a single voice be heard, which sustains a long note, while all else is hushed. . . . This one note will appear very protracted—why? Because we expect to hear accompanying it the notes of the other instruments, but they fail to come." (Herbart: Psychol. als W., §115.)—Compare also Münsterberg, Beiträge, Heft 2, p. 41. [542] A night of pain will seem terribly long; we keep looking forward to a moment which never comes—the moment when it shall cease. But the odiousness of this experience is not named ennui or Langweile , like the odiousness of time that seems long from its emptiness. The more positive odiousness of the pain, rather, is what tinges our memory of the night. What we feel, as Prof. Lazarus says (op cit . p. 202), is the long time of the suffering, not the suffering of the long time per se . [543] On these variations of time-estimate, cf. Romanes, Consciousness of Time. in Mind, vol. III. p. 297; J. Sully, Illusions, pp. 245-261, 302-305; W. Wundt, Physiol. Psych., II. 287, 288; besides the essays quoted from Lazarus and Janet. In German, the successors of Herbart have treated of this subject: compare Volkmann's Lehrbuch d. Psych., § 89, and for references to other authors his note 3 to this section. Lindner (Lbh. d. empir. Psych.), as a parallel effect, instances Alexander the Great's life (thirty-three years), which seems to us as if it must be long, because it was so eventful. Similarly the English Commonwealth, etc. [544] Physiol Optik, p. 445. [545] Succession, time per se , is no force. Our talk about its devouring tooth, etc., is all elliptical. Its contents are what devour. The law of inertia is incompatible with time's being assumed as an efficient cause of anything. [546] Lehrbuch d. Psych., § 87.

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

  Are they the same? Or have I two? Such questions, answered by whatever theory the patient is able to conjure up as plausible, form the beginning of his insane life.[305] A case with which I am acquainted through Dr. C. J. Fisher of Tewksbury has possibly its origin in this way. The woman, Bridget F., "has been many years insane, and always speaks of her supposed self as 'the rat,' asking me to 'bury the little rat,' etc. Her real self she speaks of in the third person as 'the good woman,' saying, 'The good woman knew Dr. F. and used to work for him,' etc. Sometimes she sadly asks: 'Do you think the good woman will ever come back?' She works at needlework, knitting, laundry, etc., and shows her work, saying, 'Isn't that good for only a rat?' She has, during periods of depression, hid herself under buildings, and crawled into holes and under boxes. 'She was only a rat, and wants to die,' she would say when we found her." 2. The phenomenon of alternating personality in its simplest phases seems based on lapses of memory. Any man becomes, as we say, inconsistent with himself if he forgets his engagements, pledges, knowledges, and habits; and it is merely a question of degree at what point we shall say that his personality is changed. In the pathological cases known as those of double or alternate personality the lapse of memory is abrupt, and is usually preceded by a period of unconsciousness or syncope lasting a variable length of time. In the hypnotic trance we can easily produce an alteration of the personality, either by telling the subject to forget all that has happened to him since such or such a date, in which case he becomes (it may be) a child again, or by telling him he is another altogether imaginary personage, in which case all facts about himself seem for the time being to lapse from out his mind, and he throws himself into the new character with a vivacity proportionate to the amount of histrionic imagination which he possesses.[306] But in the pathological cases the transformation is spontaneous. The most famous case, perhaps, on record is that of Fèlida X., reported by Dr. Azam of Bordeaux.[307] At the age of fourteen this woman began to pass into a 'secondary' state characterized by a change in her general disposition and character, as if certain 'inhibitions,' previously existing, were suddenly removed.

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

  In striking contrast with the cases in which inhibition is insufficient or impulsion in excess are those in which impulsion is insufficient or inhibition of in excess. We all know the condition described on p. 404 of Vol. I, in which the mind for a few moments seems to lose its focusing power and to be unable to rally its attention to any determinate thing. At such times we sit blankly staring and do nothing. The objects of consciousness fail to touch the quick or break the skin. They are there, but do not reach the level of effectiveness. This state of non-efficacious presence is the normal condition of some objects, in all of us. Great fatigue or exhaustion may make it the condition of almost all objects; and an apathy resembling that then brought about is recognized in asylums under the name of abulia as a symptom of mental disease. The healthy state of the will requires, as aforesaid, both that vision should be right, and that action should obey its lead. But in the morbid condition in question the vision may be wholly unaffected, and the intellect clear, and yet the act either fails to follow or follow in some other way. "Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor" is the classic expression of the latter condition of mind. The former it is to which the name abulia peculiarly applies. The patients, says Guislain, "are able to will inwardly, mentally, according to the dictates of reason. They experience the desire to act, but they are powerless to act as they should. . . . Their will cannot overpass certain limits: one would say that the force of action within them is blocked up: the I will does not transform itself into impulsive volition, into active determination. Some of these patients wonder themselves at the impotence with which their will is smitten. If you abandon them to themselves, they pass whole days in their bed or on a chair. If one speaks to them or excites them, they express themselves properly though briefly; and judge of things pretty well."[494]

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

  The strongest argument, after all, in favor of the Lamarckian theory remains the a priori one urged by Spencer in his little work (much the solidest thing, by the way, which he has ever written) 'The Factors of Organic Evolution.' Since, says Mr. Spencer, the accidental variations of all parts of the body are independent of each other, if the entire organization of animals mere due to such accidental variations alone, the amount of mutual adaptation and harmony that we now find there could hardly possibly have come about in any finite time. We must rather suppose that the divers varying parts brought the other parts into harmony with themselves by exercising them ad hoc, and that the effects of the exercise remained and were passed on to the young. This forms, of course, a great presumption against the all-sufficiency of the view of selection of accidental variations exclusively. But it must be admitted that in favor of the contrary view, that adaptive changes are inherited, we have as yet perhaps not one single unequivocal item of positive proof. I must therefore end this chapter on the genesis of our mental structure by reaffirming my conviction that the so-called Experience-philosophy has failed to prove its point. No more if we take ancestral experiences into account than if we limit ourselves to those of the individual after birth, can we believe that the couplings of terms within the mind are simple copies of corresponding couplings impressed upon it by the environment. This indeed is true of a small part of our cognitions. But so far as logical and mathematical, ethical, æsthetical, and metaphysical propositions go, such an assertion is not only untrue but altogether unintelligible; for these propositions say nothing about the time—and space-order of things, and it is hard to understand how such shallow and vague accounts of them as Mill's and Spencer's could ever have been given by thinking men. The causes of our mental structure are doubtless natural, and connected, like all our other peculiarities, with those of our nervous structure. Our interests, our tendencies of attention, our motor impulses, the æsthetic, moral, and theoretic combinations we delight in, the extent of our power of apprehending schemes of relation, just like the elementary relations themselves, time, space, difference and similarity, and the elementary kinds of feeling, have all grown up in ways of which at present we can give no account. Even in the clearest parts of Psychology our insight is insignificant enough. And the more sincerely one seeks to trace the actual course of psychogenesis, the steps by which as a race we may have come by the peculiar mental attributes which we possess, the more clearly one perceives "the slowly gathering twilight close in utter night." THE END

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

  In Chapter XXI, as will be remembered, it was said that the sentiment of reality with which an object appealed to the mind is proportionate (amongst other things) to its efficacy as a stimulus to the will. Here we get the obverse side of the truth. Those ideas, objects, considerations, which (in these lethargic states) fail to get to the will, fail to draw blood, seem, in so far forth, distant and unreal. The connection of the reality of things with their effectiveness as motives is a tale that has never yet been fully told. The moral tragedy of human life comes almost wholly from the fact that the link is ruptured which normally should hold between vision of the truth and action, and that this pungent sense of effective reality will not attach to certain ideas. Men do not differ so much in their mere feelings and conceptions. Their notions of possibility and their ideals are not as far apart as might be argued from their differing fates. No class of them have better sentiments or feel more constantly the difference between the higher and the lower path in life than the hopeless failures, the sentimentalists, the drunkards, the schemers, the 'dead-beats,' whose life is one long contradiction between knowledge and action, and who, with full command of theory, never get to holding their limp characters erect. No one eats of the fruit of the tree of knowledge as they do; as far as moral insight goes, in comparison with them, the orderly and prosperous philistines whom they scandalize are sucking babes. And yet their moral knowledge, always there grumbling and rumbling in the background, —discerning, commenting, protesting, longing, half resolving, —never wholly resolves, never gets its voice out of the minor into the major key, or its speech out of the subjunctive into the imperative mood, never breaks the spell, never takes the helm into its hands. In such characters as Rousseau and Restif it would seem as if the lower motives had all the impulsive efficacy in their hands. Like trains with the right of way, they retain exclusive possession of the track. The more ideal motives exist alongside of them in profusion, but they never get switched on, and the man's conduct is no more influenced by them than an express train is influenced by a wayfarer standing by the roadside and calling to be taken aboard. They are an inert accompaniment to the end of time; and the consciousness of inward hollowness that accrues from habitually seeing the better only to do the worse, is one of the saddest feelings one can bear with him through this vale of tears.

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

  An emotional temperament on the one hand, and a lively imagination for objects and circumstances on the other, are thus the conditions, necessary and sufficient, for an abundant emotional life. No matter how emotional the temperament may be, if the imagination be poor, the occasions for touching off the emotional trains will fail to be realized, and the life will be pro tanto cold and dry. This is perhaps a reason why it may be better that a man of thought should not have too strong a visualizing power. He is less likely to have his trains of meditation disturbed by emotional interruptions. It will be remembered that Mr. Galton found the members of the Royal Society and of the French Academy of Sciences to be below par in visualizing power. If I may speak of myself, I am far less able to visualize now, at the age of 46, than in my earlier years; and I am strongly inclined to believe that the relative sluggishness of my emotional life at present is quite as much connected with this fact as it is with the invading torpor of hoary eld, or with the omnibus-horse routine of settled professional and domestic life. I say this because I occasionally have a flash of the old stronger visual imagery, and I notice that the emotional commentary, so to call it, is then liable to become much more acute than is its present wont. Charcot's patient, whose case is given above on p. 58 ff., complained of his incapacity for emotional feeling after his optical images were gone. His mother's death, which in former times would have wrung his heart, left him quite cold; largely, as he himself suggests, because he could form no definite visual image of the event, and of the effect of the loss on the rest of the family at home.

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

  No other disturbances but this loss of visual images. Now when he seeks something in his correspondence, he must rummage among the letters like other men, until he meets the passage. He can recall only the first few verses of the Iliad, and must grope to read Homer, Virgil, and Horace. Figures which he adds he must now whisper to himself. He realizes clearly that he must help his memory out with auditory images, which he does with effort. The words and expressions which he recalls seem now to echo in his ear, an altogether novel sensations for him. If he wishes to learn by heart anything, a series of phrases for example, he must read them several times aloud, so as to impress his ear. When later he repeats the thing in question, the sensation of inward hearing which precedes articulation rises up in his mind. This feeling was formerly unknown to him. He speaks French fluently; but affirms that he call no longer think in French; but must get his French words by translating them from Spanish or German, the languages of his childhood. He dreams no more in visual terms, but only in words, usually Spanish words. A certain degree of verbal blindness affects him—he is troubled by the Greek alphabet, etc.[63] If this patient had possessed the auditory type of imagination from the start, it is evident that the injury, whatever it was, to his centres for optical imagination, would have affected his practical life much less profoundly. "The auditory type," says M. A. Binet,[64] "appears to be rarer than the visual. Persons of this type imagine what they think of in the language of sound. In order to remember a lesson they impress upon their mind, not the look of the page, but the sound of tile words. They reason, as well as remember, by ear. In performing a mental addition they repeat verbally the names of the figures, and add, as it were, the sounds, without any thought of the graphic signs. Imagination also takes the auditory form. 'When I write a scene,' said Legouvé to Scribe, 'I hear; but you see. In each phrase which I write, the voice of the personage who speaks strikes my ear. 'Vous, qui êtes le théâtre même, your actors walk, gesticulate before your eyes; I am a listener, you a spectator.'—' Nothing more true,' said Scribe; 'do you know where I am when I write a piece? In the middle of the parterre.' It is clear that the pure audile, seeking to develop only a single one of his faculties, may, like the pure visualizer, perform astounding feats of memory—Mozart, for example, noting from memory the Miserere of the Sistine Chapel after two hearings; the deaf Beethoven, composing and inwardly repeating his enormous symphonies. On the other hand, the man of auditory type, like the visual, is exposed to serious dangers; for if he lose his auditory images, he is without resource and breaks down completely.

• From The Surprising Lives of Christian Saints (2023)

  4. Perpetua and Felicity: Mothers and Martyrs Felicity’s World There were two male converts present at the time of the arrest and two enslaved people from Perpetua’s household, named Revocatus and Felicity. We know that Felicity belonged to the household of the Vibia, that she was a Christian catechumen along with others in the household, and that she was in her third trimester of pregnancy at the time of her arrest. These are sparse facts, but from them, we can extrapolate much about Felicity’s life and world. In an urban, well-off household, her duties might have entailed tending to the family’s clothes, child minding, food preparation, and general tidying and cleaning. We don’t know about her family or about the father of her child. It’s possible that Felicity was pregnant as a result of rape by either Perpetua’s father or brothers or an enslaved man. Roman histories make clear that men treated the sexual abuse of slaves as their right, and Roman wives turned a blind eye. We have records in which enslaved couples refer to each other as husband and wife. However, because their relationship was not legally formalized, no rights bound the family together; any one of them could be sold at any time. Felicity’s hopes of legal freedom were likely slim. Pregnancy only added to the difficulty of her situation. Christianity offered a welcome support and community for the enslaved and the poor, and it’s unsurprising that Felicity and Revocatus should have found solace in it. The Arrest, Trial, and Imprisonment By the time of Perpetua and Felicity’s arrest, the city of Carthage held half a million people, of whom perhaps 2,000 were Christians. There is a popular misconception that large numbers of Christians were persecuted under the Romans. The truth is that the Romans, while mildly prejudiced against Christians, simply didn’t care that much about them. But Christians did make for excellent scapegoats when the need arose, and any persecutions were local and relatively small-scale. 27

• From Comrade Loves of the Samurai (1972)

  T 6 The Tragic Love of Two Enemies HE LORD OF THE PROVINCE ETJIGO WAS called Jibudayu Mashikura. One day his chief minister, Gyobu Tokuzawa, summoned his master's first page, Senpatji Akanashi, who was in the vestibule with the other pages, whispering: 'I have something to say to you, Akanashi. Come with me.'And, leading him to a secret place behind the trees in the garden, he said to him: 'My master has ordered me to choose someone very Strong to kill his courtier Shingokeï Dizaki, and I can think of no one better fitted than you for this mission. Go then to Shingokefs house and kill him. I am sure that my master has an excellent reason for having him destroyed.' Senpatji asked: 'What is the offence which Shingokeï must expiate? 'But the minister himself did not know. Then Senpatji said to him: '1 have confidence in your word, yet I should like to hear this order from my master's own lips.'So the minister brought Senpatji before the Lord, who, as Senpatji kneeled before him, said: 'Senpatji, you must kill Shingokei, as my minister has told you.' Senpatji returned to his house very sad at having to kill Shingokei, who was one of his best friends. Nevertheless he went to that man's house and, after a short conversation, killed him, saying: 'It is at the command of my master.'Shingokei's slaves tried to seize the murderer; but Senpatji calmed them by saying: 'I have acted on my master's order, and you must obey him.' The Lord confiscated all Shingokei's property and his wealth. His widow was inconsolable. She was the daughter of a retired samurai of the neighbouring Province, and had married Shingokei the year before with customary rites, for Shingokei and her father were old friends. They loved each other tenderly, and her husband's death Stunned her. She wished to die with him and follow him into the other world; but she was pregnant, and could not kill herself because of the child she carried in her womb. So she left the Province, bitterly bewailing her husband's and her own sad destiny. After a long solitary journey full of hardship she came to another very remote Province in the mountains, and decided to live there. Some time after, quite alone and without assistance, she gave birth to a son. She took infinite care of the child, working with her needle to gain a livelihood; for in all the village there was not a single woman who could sew. The two lived thus together in poverty in that place. Time passed, and the son reached his fourteenth year. His features and his manners were gentle and refined, and he recalled to his mother that cherished husband she had loft. She had kept a Corean harp and two swords fashioned by Kunimune, a celebrated ancient Japanese armourer, which her parents had given her when she left them.