APDL Eductation Resources/APDL Eductation Resources.iso/text/authors/poe/imppervers/IMPPERVERS

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                    The Imp of the Perverse


In the consideration of the faculties and impulses--of the <i 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 <i 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 <p 393 everything from the
preconceived destiny of man, and upon the ground of the objects of this
Creator.

It would have been wiser, it would have been safer, to classify (if
classify we must) upon the basis of what man usually or occasionally
did, and was always occasionally doing, rather than upon the basis of
what he took it for granted the Deity intended him to do.  If we cannot
comprehend God in his visible works, how then in his inconceivable
thoughts, that call the works into being?  If we cannot understand him
in his objective creatures, how then in his substantive moods and phases
of creation?

Induction, a posteriori, would have brought phrenology to admit, as an
innate and primitive principle of human action, a paradoxical something,
which we may call perverseness, for want of a more characteristic term.
In the sense I intend, it is, in fact, a mobile without motive, a motive
not motivirt.  Through its promptings we act without comprehensible
object; or, if this shall be understood as a contradiction in terms, we
may so far modify the proposition as to say, that through its promptings
we act, for the reason that we should not.  In theory, no reason can be
more unreasonable; but, in fact, there is none more strong.  With
certain minds, under certain conditions it becomes absolutely
irresistible.  I am not more certain that I breathe, than that the
assurance of the wrong or error of any action is often the one
unconquerable force which impels us, and alone impels us to its
prosecution.  Nor will this overwhelming tendency to do wrong for the
wrong's sake, admit of analysis, or resolution into ulterior elements.
It is radical, a primitive impulse--elementary.  It will be said, I am
aware, that when we persist in acts because we feel we should not
persist in them, our conduct is but a modification of that which
ordinarily springs from the <i combativeness of phrenology.  But a
glance will show the fallacy of this idea.  The phrenological
combativeness has, for its essence, the necessity of self-defence.  It
is our safeguard against injury.  Its principle regards our well-being;
and thus the desire to be well is excited simultaneously with its
development.  It follows, that the desire to be well must be excited
simultaneously with any principle which shall be merely a modification
of combativeness, but in the case of that something which I term
perverseness, the desire to be well is <p 394 not only aroused, but a
strongly antagonistical sentiment exists.

An appeal to one's own heart is, after all, the best reply to the
sophistry just noticed.  No one who trustingly consults and thoroughly
questions his own soul, will be disposed to deny the entire radicalness
of the propensity in question.  It is not more incomprehensible than
distinctive.  There lives no man who at some period has not been
tormented, for example, by an earnest desire to tantalize a listener by
circumlocution.  The speaker is aware that he displeases, he has every
intention to please; he is usually curt, precise, and clear; the most
laconic and luminous language is struggling for utterance upon his
tongue; it is only with difficulty that he restrains himself from giving
it flow; he dreads and deprecates the anger of him whom he addresses;
yet, the thought strikes him, that by certain involutions and
parentheses this anger may be engendered.  That single thought is
enough.  The impulse increases to a wish, the wish to a desire, the
desire to an uncontrollable longing, and the longing (to the deep regret
and mortification of the speaker, and in defiance of all consequences)
is indulged.

We have a task before us which must be speedily performed.  We know that
it will be ruinous to make delay.  The most important crisis of our life
calls, trumpet-tongued, for immediate energy and action.  We glow, we
are consumed with eagerness to commence the work, with the anticipation
of whose glorious result our whole souls are on fire.  It must, it shall
be undertaken to-day, and yet we put it off until to-morrow; and why?
There is no answer, except that we feel perverse, using the word with no
comprehension of the principle.  To-morrow arrives, and with it a more
impatient anxiety to do our duty, but with this very increase of anxiety
arrives, also, a nameless, a positively fearful, because unfathomable,
craving for delay.  This craving gathers strength as the moments fly.
The last hour for action is at hand.  We tremble with the violence of
the conflict within us,--of the definite with the indefinite--of the
substance with the shadow.  But, if the contest has proceeded thus far,
it is the shadow which prevails--we struggle in vain.  The clock
strikes, and is the knell of our welfare.  At the same time, it is the
chanticleer-note to the ghost that has so long overawed us.  It
flies--it disappears--we are free. <p 395 The old energy returns.  We
will labour now.  Alas, it is too late!

We stand upon the brink of a precipice.  We peer into the abyss--we grow
sick and dizzy.  Our first impulse is to shrink from the danger.
Unaccountably we remain.  By slow degrees our sickness and dizziness and
horror become merged in a cloud of unnamable feeling.  By gradations,
still more imperceptible, this cloud assumes shape, as did the vapour
from the bottle out of which arose the genius in the Arabian Nights.
But out of this our cloud upon the precipice's edge, there grows into
palpability, a shape, far more terrible than any genius or any demon of
a tale, and yet it is but a thought, although a fearful one, and one
which chills the very marrow of our bones with the fierceness of the
delight of its horror.  It is merely the idea of what would be our
sensations during the sweeping precipitancy of a fall from such a
height.  And this fall--this rushing annihilation--for the very reason
that it involves that one most ghastly and loathsome of all the most
ghastly and loathsome images of death and suffering which have ever
presented themselves to our imagination--for this very cause do we now
the most vividly desire it.  And because our reason violently deters us
from the brink, therefore do we the most impetuously approach it.  There
is no passion in nature so demoniacally impatient as that of him who,
shuddering upon the edge of a precipice, thus meditates a plunge.  To
indulge, for a moment, in any attempt at thought, is to be inevitably
lost; for reflection but urges us to forbear, and therefore it is, I
say, that we cannot.  If there be no friendly arm to check us, or if we
fail in a sudden effort to prostrate ourselves backward from the abyss,
we plunge, and are destroyed.

Examine these and similar actions as we will, we shall find them
resulting solely from the spirit of the Perverse.  We perpetrate them
merely because we feel that we should not  Beyond or behind this there
is no intelligible principle; and we might, indeed, deem this
perverseness a direct instigation of the arch-fiend, were it not
occasionally known to operate in furtherance of good.

I have said thus much, that in some measure I may answer your
question--that I may explain to you why I am here--that I may assign to
you something that shall have at least the faint aspect of a cause for
my wearing these fetters, and for my tenanting this cell <p 396 of the
condemned.  Had I not been thus prolix, you might either have
misunderstood me altogether, or, with the rabble, have fancied me mad.
As it is, you will easily perceive that I am one of the many uncounted
victims of the Imp of the Perverse.

It is impossible that any deed could have been wrought with a more
thorough deliberation.  For weeks, for months, I pondered upon the means
of the murder.  I rejected a thousand schemes, because their
accomplishment involved a chance of detection.  At length, in reading
some French memoirs, I found an account of a nearly fatal illness that
occurred to Madame Pilau, through the agency of a candle accidentally
poisoned.  The idea struck my fancy at once.  I knew my victim's habit
of reading in bed.  I knew, too, that his apartment was narrow and
ill-ventilated.  But I need not vex you with impertinent details.  I
need not describe the easy artifices by which I substituted, in his
bed-room candle stand, a wax-light of my own making for the one which I
there found.  The next morning he was discovered dead in his bed, and
the coroner's verdict was--'Death by the visitation of God.'

Having inherited his estate, all went well with me for years.  The idea
of detection never once entered my brain.  Of the remains of the fatal
taper I had myself carefully disposed.  I had left no shadow of a clue
by which it would be possible to convict, or even suspect, me of the
crime.  It is inconceivable how rich a sentiment of satisfaction arose
in my bosom as I reflected upon my absolute security.  For a very long
period of time I was accustomed to revel in this sentiment.  It afforded
me more real delight than all the mere worldly advantages accruing from
my sin.  But there arrived at length an epoch, from which the
pleasurable feeling grew, by scarcely perceptible gradations, into a
haunting and harassing thought.  It harassed me because it haunted.  I
could scarcely get rid of it for an instant.  It is quite a common thing
to be thus annoyed with the ringing in our ears, or rather in our
memories, of the burthen of some ordinary song, or some unimpressive
snatches from an opera.  Nor will we be the less tormented if the song
in itself be good, or the opera air meritorious.  In this manner, at
last, I would perpetually catch myself pondering upon my security, and
repeating, in a low under-tone, the phrase, 'I am safe.'

One day, whilst sauntering along the streets, I arrested myself in <p
397 the act of murmuring, half aloud, these customary syllables.  In a
fit of petulance I re-modelled them thus: 'I am safe--I am safe--yes--if
I be not fool enough to make open confession.'

No sooner had I spoken these words, than I felt an icy chill creep to my
heart.  I had had some experience in these fits of perversity (whose
nature I have been at some trouble to explain), and I remembered well
that in no instance I had successfully resisted their attacks.  And now
my own casual self-suggestion, that I might possibly be fool enough to
confess the murder of which I had been guilty, confronted me, as if the
very ghost of him whom I had murdered--and beckoned me on to death.

At first, I made an effort to shake off this nightmare of the soul.  I
walked vigorously--faster--still faster--at length I ran.  I felt a
maddening desire to shriek aloud.  Every succeeding wave of thought
overwhelmed me with new terror, for, alas! I well, too well, understood
that to think, in my situation, was to be lost.  I still quickened my
pace.  I bounded like a madman through the crowded thoroughfares.  At
length, the populace took the alarm and pursued me.  I felt then the
consummation of my fate.  Could I have torn out my tongue, I would have
done it--but a rough voice resounded in my ears--a rougher grasp seized
me by the shoulder.  I turned--I gasped for breath.  For a moment I
experienced all the pangs of suffocation; I became blind, and deaf, and
giddy; and then some invisible fiend, I thought, struck me with his
broad palm upon the back.  The long-imprisoned secret burst forth from
my soul.

They say that I spoke with a distinct enunciation, but with marked
emphasis and passionate hurry, as if in dread of interruption before
concluding the brief but pregnant sentences that consigned me to the
hangman and to hell.

Having related all that was necessary for the fullest judicial
conviction, I fell prostrate in a swoon.

But why shall I say more?  To-day I wear these chains, and am here!
To-morrow I shall be fetterless!--but where?