fashion, there is no help for it. We imagine
a Master and King over what you call The Whole Thing,
and we speak of him as “I,” but when we
try to define him we find we cannot do it. The
intellect and the feelings can act quite independently
of each other; we recognize that, and we look around
for a Ruler who is master over both, and can serve
as a definite and indisputable “I,”
and enable us to know what we mean and who or what
we are talking about when we use that pronoun, but
we have to give it up and confess that we cannot find
him. To me, Man is a machine, made up of many
mechanisms, the moral and mental ones acting automatically
in accordance with the impulses of an interior Master
who is built out of born-temperament and an accumulation
of multitudinous outside influences and trainings;
a machine whose one function is to secure the
spiritual contentment of the Master, be his desires
good or be they evil; a machine whose Will is absolute
and must be obeyed, and always is obeyed.
Y.M. Maybe the Me is the Soul?
O.M. Maybe it is. What is the Soul?
Y.M. I don’t know.
O.M. Neither does any one else.
Y.M. What is the Master?—or, in common
speech, the Conscience?
Explain it.
O.M. It is that mysterious autocrat, lodged
in a man, which compels the man to content its desires.
It may be called the Master Passion—the
hunger for Self-Approval.
Y.M. Where is its seat?
O.M. In man’s moral constitution.
Y.M. Are its commands for the man’s good?
O.M. It is indifferent to the man’s good;
it never concerns itself about anything but the satisfying
of its own desires. It can be trained to
prefer things which will be for the man’s good,
but it will prefer them only because they will content
it better than other things would.
Y.M. Then even when it is trained to high ideals
it is still looking out for its own contentment, and
not for the man’s good.
O.M. True. Trained or untrained, it cares
nothing for the man’s good, and never concerns
itself about it.
Y.M. It seems to be an immoral force seated
in the man’s moral constitution.
O.M. It is a colorless force seated in
the man’s moral constitution. Let us call
it an instinct—a blind, unreasoning instinct,
which cannot and does not distinguish between good
morals and bad ones, and cares nothing for results
to the man provided its own contentment be secured;
and it will always secure that.
Y.M. It seeks money, and it probably considers
that that is an advantage for the man?
O.M. It is not always seeking money, it is not
always seeking power, nor office, nor any other material
advantage. In all cases it seeks a spiritual
contentment, let the means be what they may.
Its desires are determined by the man’s temperament—and
it is lord over that. Temperament, Conscience,
Susceptibility, Spiritual Appetite, are, in fact,
the same thing. Have you ever heard of a person
who cared nothing for money?
