| | 1 | Author: | Poe, Edgar Allan, 1809-1849 | Add | | | Title: | The Imp of the Perverse  | | | | Published: | 1994 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | In the consideration of the faculties and impulses — of the
prima mobilia of the human soul, the phrenologists have failed to
make room for a propensity which, although obviously existing as a
radical, primitive, irreducible sentiment, has been equally
overlooked by all the moralists who have preceded them. In the
pure arrogance of the reason, we have all overlooked it. We have
suffered its existence to escape our senses solely through want of
belief — of faith; — whether it be faith in Revelation, or faith in
the Kabbala. The idea of it has never occurred to us, simply
because of its supererogation. We saw no need of impulse — for
the propensity. We could not perceive its necessity. We could not
understand, that is to say, we could not have understood, had the
notion of this primum mobile ever obtruded itself; — we could
not have understood in what manner it might be made to further the
objects of humanity, either temporal or eternal. It cannot be
denied that phrenology and, in great measure, all metaphysicianism
have been concocted a priori. The intellectual or logical man,
rather than the understanding or observant man, set himself to
imagine designs — to dictate purposes to God. Having thus fathomed,
to his satisfaction, the intentions of Jehovah, out of these
intentions he built his innumerable systems of mind. In the matter
of phrenology, for example, we first determined, naturally enough,
that it was
the design of the Deity that man should eat. We then
assigned to man an organ of alimentiveness, and this organ is the
scourge with which the Deity compels man, will-I nill-I, into
eating. Secondly, having settled it to be God's will that man
should continue his species, we discovered an organ of amativeness,
forthwith. And so with combativeness, with ideality, with
causality, with constructiveness, — so, in short, with every organ,
whether representing a propensity, a moral sentiment, or a faculty
of the pure intellect. And in these arrangements of the
principia of human action, the Spurzheimites, whether right or
wrong, in part, or upon the whole, have but followed, in principle,
the footsteps of their predecessors; deducing and establishing
everything from the preconceived destiny of man, and upon the
ground of the objects of this Creator. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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