The Dyers Hand and Other Essays

"Unintentional wrongs must not be avenged. Ladies must not be kicked. Control your anger!" lady: (noticing what she has done):

"I beg your pardon! I hope I didn't hurt you." self: "Kick her!"

super-ego: "Smile! Say 'Not at all, Madam.' " volitional ego: (to the appropriate voluntary mus­cles):

either "Kick her!"

or "Smile! Say 'Not at all, Madam!' "

Of my five "characters," only one, my cognitive ego, really employs the indicative mood. Of the others, my self and my super-ego cannot, either of them, be a servant. Each is a master who is either obeyed or disobeyed. Neither can take orders. My body, on the other hand (or rather its "voluntary mus­cles"), can do nothing but what it is told; it can never be a master, nor even a servant, only a slave. While my volitional ego is always both, a servant in relation to either my self or my super-ego and a master in relation to my body.

The "demands" of reason are not imperatives because, al­though it is possible not to listen to them and to forget them, as long as we listen and remember, it is impossible to disobey them, and a true imperative always implies the possibility of either obeying or disobeying. In so far as we listen to reason, we are its slaves, not its servants.

iv

I care for nobody, no, not I And nobody cares for me.

—The Miller of Dee

But my five wits nor my five senses can Dissuade one foolish heart from serving thee, Who leaves unswayed the likeness of a man Thy proud heart's slave and vassal wretch to he.

—shakespeare, Sonnet CXLI

Because of its double role the volitional ego has two wishes which, since the Fall, instead of being dialectically related, have become contradictory opposites. On the one hand it wishes to be free of all demands made upon it by the self or the conscience or the outer world. As Kierkegaard wrote:

If I had a humble spirit in my service, who, when I asked for a glass of water, brought me the world's cosdiest wines blended in a chalice, I should dismiss him, in order to teach him that pleasure consists not in what I enjoy, but in having my own way.

When Biron, the hero of Love's Labour's Lost, who has hith­erto been free of passion, finds himself falling in love, he is annoyed.

This senior junior, giant dwarf, Dan Cupid, Sole emperator and great general Of trotting paritors (Oh

nay litde heart) And I to be a corporal of his field And wear his colours like a tumbler's hoop.

On the other hand, the same ego wishes to be important, to find its existence meaningful, to have a telos, and this telos it can only find in something or someone outside itself. To have a telos is to have something to obey, to be the servant of. Thus all lovers instinctively use the master-servant metaphor.

Miranda : To be your fellow

You may deny me; but I'll be your servant, Whether you will or no. Ferdinand: My Mistress, dearest,

And I thus humble ever. miranda : My husband then?

Ferdinand: Aye, with a heart as willing As bondage e'er of freedom.

And so, with calculation, speaks every seducer.

BERTRAM: I prithee do not strive against my vows.

I was compelled to her, but I love thee By love's own sweet constraint, and will for ever

Do thee all rights of service.

diana: Ay, so you serve us

Till we serve you.

To be loved, to be the telos of another, can contribute to the ego's sense of importance, provided that it feels that such giving of love is a free act on the part of the other, that the other is not a slave of his or her passion. In practice, unfortu­nately, if there is an erotic element present as distinct from fhilia, most people find it hard to believe that another's love for them is free and not a compulsion, unless they happen to reciprocate it.