(1921). Psychoanalytic Review, 8:382-406 In Boris Sidis’ Philistine and Genius you will come upon this memorable sentence: “The very men who looked down with delight when the sand of the arena reddened with human blood, made the theatre ring with applause when Terence in his famous line proclaimed the brotherhood of men….” We are all incorrigibly moral. The worst of it is that we are proud of our incorrigibility. The wickedest man will stoutly maintain that his conduct has some higher purpose than self-satisfaction. (Vilely immoral persons have a most rigid justification of their code.) As far as he is concerned, there is no logic on earth, no controverting fact, that will shake his conviction. If it were not so, how could we explain man's inhumanity to man, and to woman, that makes countless thousands mourn? The stagey part he plays in life depends for its theatric success upon the conviction of an impersonal integrity, an impersonality by the side of which the affairs of his convention [This is a summary or excerpt from the full text of the book or article. The full text of the document is available to subscribers.] |
