838
PARTISAN REVIEW
possessed me. I knew myself no longer. My original soul seemed, at
once, to take its flight from my body; and a more than fiendish
malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrilled every fibre of my frame. I took
from my waistcoat-pocket a pen-knife, opened it, grasped the poor
beast by the throat, and, deliberately cut one of its eyes from the
socket!"
The soul which here takes flight is not, despite the text, the
"original" soul, but rather that part of the psyche which derives
from education: in other words, its moralistic and inhibitory aspects.
Actually, it is the psyche's deepest and truly "original" instinctual
elements which, by the liberating effects of alcohol, take utter posses–
sion of the cat-destroyer's soul. The further significance of this
hideous act, we shall see.
Next morning, the madman recovers his reason-like Poe, after
each "fugue." He then "experienced a sentiment half of horror,
half of remorse," at what he describes as his "crime": "... but it
was, at best, a feeble and equivocal feeling, and the soul remained
untouched." For, in contrast with what happened to the author, the
fictitious hero, from now on,
is
ruled by his sadistic impulses.
"In the meantime the cat slowly recovered. The socket of the lost
eye presented, it is true, a frightful appearance, but he no longer
appeared to suffer any pain."
Yet though the cat moved about the house as before, it now flees
its master's presence. The latter, at first,
is
grieved, then irritated by
its behavior and, throughout this time, continues to drink.
"And then came, as if to my final and irrevocable overthrow, the
spirit of PERVERSENESS. Of this spirit philosophy takes no account.
Yet I am not more sure that my soul lives, than I am that per–
verseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart--one
of the indivisible primary faculties, or sentiments, which give direction
to the character of Man. Who has not, a hundred times, found him–
self committing a vile or a silly action, for no other reason than be–
cause he knows he should
not?
Have we not a perpetual inclination,
in the teeth of our best judgment, to violate that which is
Law,
merely
because we understand it to be such?"
No better description could be given of the counter-compulsions of
instinct to the compulsions of morality; of those categorical
im-
