Transformation in Christ_ On the Christian Attitude - Dietrich Von Hildebrand [171]
Even less do we mean by agitation, that inward tension and intensity which goes with every keen, alert or important experience, whether contemplative or active—as distinguished from relaxed states of mind, devoid of all stress of activity, whether purely immanent or transient, and best typified by recreation. The spiritual tension involved by all experiences in which high values move us or in which we respond to them—a tension that, far from disappearing, shall reach its apex in eternal beatitude—obviously implies no opposition whatsoever to inward peace. Rather, it belongs to the very consummation of that peace.
What we are speaking of, then, is agitation in the narrower and more trivial sense of the word, indicating a derangement of the psychic equilibrium and an interruption of the normal course of psychic life.
Insofar as agitation, in this sense, prevents us from a downward concentration, diverts us from contemplative attention, and hampers our pursuit of definite and permanent aims, it evidently interferes with our inward peace. It constitutes, not a material, qualitative or intrinsic antithesis to peace as does disharmony proper, but at any rate a formal or structural one.
There are manifold varieties of agitation, too. It interferes with peace most manifestly when it takes the form of what we sometimes call psychic alteration: the specifically upset state of mind.
The quality of psychic agitation is an ultimate datum which we cannot reduce to anything else. It can only be grasped in an immediate experience. Its presence taints our whole vital rhythm with disorder. It is characterized by a thoroughgoing confusion, a sort of topsy-turvydom in the succession of our affective states. In the place of their normal nexus and progress, there prevails a tendency in the mind to swing to and fro without an aim: to flit impotently round one point, without arriving at a conclusion or achieving any result; to stick endlessly to one topic, or again, to buzz forth to a new one every moment.
We try spasmodically to flee from what is the cause of our agitation, only to return to it again and again from the most varying directions. Without mustering up sufficient strength or courage to deal with it thoroughly and sensibly, we yet constantly remain under its spell.
Moreover, the sufferer from this condition loses touch with the outside world, with the objects and persons that surround him. Not being able to shake off the spell of the thing that excites him he becomes incapable of responding to the logos of a new task or situation. He grows egocentric and apathetic. Imprisoned in a strait jacket, as it were, he can neither relinquish nor really find his own self. In a word, he loses the capacity for composure or recollectedness, for the habitare secum; and in such a dishevelled state of mind, when he has lost his head—he is liable to display unpredictable, irrational reactions.
Sometimes we say of such a person that he is “beside himself”; yet, we might not unreasonably call him locked up within himself, for he certainly is the slave of a subjective concern. Anyhow, he is devoid of any adequate perspective for the world of objects. In this state of alteration we are faced with a specific form of depersonalizing obsession and inner enchainment.
In addition to it, there are other, more superficial, forms of agitation, which are also opposed to inward peace, but whose upsetting action is a more limited one. For example, the agitation that grips one who is subject to what is called a paralysing fear—hypnotized, as it were, by the approach of the dreaded evil—or again, the kind of excitement, much more peripheral for all its explosiveness, which accompanies anger and impatience.
Depression can paralyze the soul
Depression, further, which we have treated above as a source of intrinsic disharmony, also reveals an aspect of formal