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Updated: June 14, 2025
Let us now turn to the teaching of Christ, and see whether it does not explain the deep disorder of the animal instincts in the world of man, and while saving us on the one hand from the self-mutilation of asceticism, and from the swinishness of the fleshly school on the other, whether it does not embrace the truth that is in both and teach us how to correlate the material and the spiritual.
The Christian faith from the beginning, is sacrifice the sacrifice of all freedom, all pride, all self-confidence of spirit, it is at the same time subjection, self-derision, and self-mutilation.
Among the stockbrokers and money-changers of Russian cities, as well as among peasants, may be seen the pale and almost hairless face, wavering voice, and mild manner of the "Skopets" who has put in practice upon himself the strange doctrine of self-mutilation.
Protestant Ulster has never known revolution; for it yesterday and to-day have been happily, naturally, continuous. Political change it has known, normal and beneficent; land purchase came to Ulster as a by-product of what the rest of Ireland endured in torment, and agony, and self-mutilation.
Its subject is the self-mutilation of a noble youth out of zeal for Cybele's worship, and is probably a study from the Greek, though of what period it would be hard to say. A theme so unnatural would have found little favour with the Attic poets; the subject is more likely to have been approached by the Alexandrian writers, whom Catullus often copies.
Self-mutilation in man is almost invariably the result of meditation over the generative function, and the great majority of cases of this nature are avulsions or amputations of some parts of the genitalia. The older records are full of such instances. Benivenius, Blanchard, Knackstedt, and Schenck cite cases.
Johnson so shrewdly pointed out that night at Dr. Taylor's, 'Sir, of a thousand shavers, two do not shave so much alike as not to be distinguished. Perhaps he cuts himself, for a clever man at self-mutilation can do it, even with a safety; but who cares? Come, Little Alum, the shaver's friend, smartly to the rescue! And then, he exercises the shaver's prerogative and powders his face.
Here, to be sure, we must put aside entirely the blundering psychology of former times, which could only teach with regard to cruelty that it originated at the sight of the suffering of OTHERS: there is an abundant, super-abundant enjoyment even in one's own suffering, in causing one's own suffering and wherever man has allowed himself to be persuaded to self-denial in the RELIGIOUS sense, or to self-mutilation, as among the Phoenicians and ascetics, or in general, to desensualisation, decarnalisation, and contrition, to Puritanical repentance-spasms, to vivisection of conscience and to Pascal-like SACRIFIZIA DELL' INTELLETO, he is secretly allured and impelled forwards by his cruelty, by the dangerous thrill of cruelty TOWARDS HIMSELF. Finally, let us consider that even the seeker of knowledge operates as an artist and glorifier of cruelty, in that he compels his spirit to perceive AGAINST its own inclination, and often enough against the wishes of his heart: he forces it to say Nay, where he would like to affirm, love, and adore; indeed, every instance of taking a thing profoundly and fundamentally, is a violation, an intentional injuring of the fundamental will of the spirit, which instinctively aims at appearance and superficiality, even in every desire for knowledge there is a drop of cruelty.
Doubtless such conscientious tyrants would be wretched themselves, and compelled to make sacrifices which would cost them dear; but that would only extend, as it were, the pernicious egoism of that part of their being which they had allowed to usurp a universal empire. The twang of intolerance and of self-mutilation is not absent from the ethics of Mr. Russell and Mr.
'But they're a deep set, they'll be here before we know where we are, some of these days. 'See thee here! said Daniel, exhibiting his maimed hand; 'a reckon a served 'em out time o' t' Ameriky war. And he began the story Sylvia knew so well; for her father never made a new acquaintance but what he told him of his self-mutilation to escape the press-gang.
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