FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46  
47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   >>   >|  
this scorn, sufferers as I believe from a hereditary tendency matured by neglect into disease, deserve a more merciful usage than this, and their plea for extenuating circumstances should not be too impatiently rejected. For in them what is to most men a transient ailment has thrown down permanent roots to draw a nourishment from pain: and he who is fortunate enough to be whole should think twice before he makes sport of those in this distress. To me this malady seems to arise from an antinomy between the physical and intellectual elements of the personality, from an unhappy marriage of mind and body, suffering the lower of the two partners to abase the life of the higher by the long-drawn misery of a hateful but indissoluble union. When the physical and mental natures in a man are happily attuned, there is a fair concord in his life and the outward expression of his being is an unimpeded process, to which, as to the functions of a healthy organism, no heedful thought is given. If both natures are of the finest temper, they find utterance in a noble amiability and ease of manner; if both are coarse in the grain, they blend in a naive freedom always sure of itself, the freedom of Sancho spreading himself in the duchess's boudoir. Between these two extremes there intervene a hundred compromises by which minds and bodies less equally yoked contrive to muffle the discordant notes of an inharmonious wedlock. In most cases use gives to this politic agreement the peace and permanence of settled habit; the body proves itself so far amenable that it is accepted as a needful if uninspiring companion, and its plain usefulness ends by dulling the edged criticisms of the mind. But wherever there is a permanent incompatibility too profound for compromise, an elemental difference keeping the personality continually distraught, then shyness, in the sense in which I understand it, assumes its inalienable dominion. The flame of rebellion may smoulder unobserved while the sufferer is in his own home, but among strangers it will blaze fiercely, as the mind protests against the misinterpretations of its unworthy partner. This burning shame is not the proof of a foolish conceit, as unsympathetic criticism proclaims it, but the visible misery of a keen spirit thwarted by physical defect. The man who manifests it is angered with himself because through a physical hindrance he has failed to take the place which would otherwise be his. He i
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46  
47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

physical

 

permanent

 

misery

 
natures
 

personality

 
freedom
 

usefulness

 
contrive
 

compromises

 

incompatibility


profound

 

hundred

 

dulling

 

bodies

 
criticisms
 
equally
 
companion
 

uninspiring

 

inharmonious

 

permanence


settled
 

agreement

 

politic

 
wedlock
 

discordant

 

muffle

 

accepted

 

needful

 
amenable
 
proves

conceit
 

foolish

 
burning
 

protests

 
misinterpretations
 

unworthy

 

partner

 

failed

 

unsympathetic

 

manifests


defect

 

angered

 

hindrance

 

thwarted

 

proclaims

 

criticism

 

visible

 
spirit
 

fiercely

 

understand