THREE PARABLES AND A DISSERTATION
And which is all the more reason why we cannot dispute the
moral that the horse has drawn from his own parable. Was he correct
in his conclusion? An idle question, for how could he possibly have
been wrong?
If
this be a moral world, then everything in it is a
parable, and one need only know the subject to know the truth.
Though our actions be wrong they are always exemplary, and the
rule to which they belong is always right. Even
if
the moral cannot
be stated, it is there. But isn't this the greatest burden of all?
b. THE CLERK
Morality everywhere. Don't try to advance yourself at another's .
expense, or even at your own. Don't be meticulous. Never weigh
things too fine. The clerk's reflection on the tip, that it would have
had to be more handsome than ordinary, was fatal; for a gratuity is
gracious or it undoes us. In shaving, as in other acts, let well enough
alone, and if hairs remain, let them stand. Or one may say, when
a thing has gone well beyond a natural line, there's no use drawing
an arbitrary one. And so on and so forth, a moral in every word.
This puts it all very explicitly, leaving so little implicit that morality
becomes trivial. And
in
a moral world, where everything is a parable,
it l.s often the case that morality is trivial; the only important moral
is like the clerk's last use of the razor, the stroke of death.
But whose parable is this, is it mine?
If
so, how do I come to
write of government clerks when I am not one myself?
If
not, why
does this parable fascinate me and horrify me (and if it does so to
others, why to them)? In either case, is the bureaucratic setting
incidental or necessary (it seems to me it is necessary: some things
simply cannot be imagined without bureaucratic correlatives) ; is the
sexual analogy that one can so easily devise out of the same materials,
relevant or not? But is it at all important that I be able to answer
these questions? Say that this parable is a construction out of known
elements: can't it also be an outflowing of the unknown? Is the
distinction of any consequence? For one may argue that a man
without an unconscious mind- assuming that's possible-is in no way
different from an ordinary man. Isn't there a point where our subtlety
becomes too fine for itself, and what we write consciously, by calcu"–
lation, becomes all the greater an unconscious act? I wrote this para-
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