The Dyers Hand and Other Essays

To the degree that a vocation or a profession requires some gift, it partakes, for him who is able to practice it, of the nature of a game, however serious the social need it serves. The famous brain surgeon, Dr. Cushing, was once consulted by a student as to whether or not he should specialize in surgery: the doctor settled the question for him in the negative by ask­ing; "Do you enjoy the sensation of putting a knife into living flesh?"

To witness an immoral act, like a man beating his wife, makes a spectator angry or unhappy. To witness an untalented act, like a clumsy man wrestling with a window blind or a piece of bad sculpture, makes him laugh.

Life is not a game because one cannot say: "I will live on con­dition that I have a talent for living." Those who cannot play a game can always be spectators, but no one can hire somebody else to live his life for him while he looks on.

In a game, just losing is almost as satisfying as just winning. But no man ever said with satisfaction, "I almost married the girl I love," or a nation, "We almost won the war." In life the loser's score is always zero.

Nothing can be essentially serious for man except that which is given to all men alike, and that which is commanded of all men alike.

All men alike are given a physical body with physical needs which have to be satisfied if they are to survive, and all men alike are given a will which has the power to make choices. (To say of someone that his will is strong or weak is not like saying that he is tall or short, or even that he is clever or stupid: it is a description of how his will functions, not an assessment of the amount of will power he possesses.)

Corresponding to these gifts are two commands: "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread," and "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God and thy neighbor as thyself," are both commanded of all men alike.

Thus the only two occupations which are intrinsically serious are the two which do not call for any particular natural gifts, namely, unskilled manual labor and the priesthood (in its ideal aspects as the Apostolate). Any unskilled laborer and any priest is interchangeable with every other. Any old porter can carry my bag, any trumpery priest absolve me of a mortal sin. One cannot say of an unskilled laborer or of a priest that one is better or worse than another; one can only say, in the case of the laborer, that he is employed, in the case of the priest, that he has been ordained.

Of all other occupations, one must say that, in themselves, they are frivolous. They are only serious in so far that they are the means by which those who practice them earn their bread and are not parasites on the labor of others, and to the degree that they permit or encourage the love of God and neighbor.

There is a game called Cops and Robbers, but none called Saints and Sinners.

It is incorrect to say, as the Preamble to the American Con­stitution says, that all men have a right to the pursuit of happi­ness. All men have a right to avoid unncessary pain if they can, and no man has a right to pleasure at the cost of another's pain. But happiness is not a right; it is a duty. To the degree that we are unhappy, we are in sin. (And vice versa.) A duty cannot be pursued because its imperative applies to the present instant, not to some future date.

My duty towards God is to be happy; my duty towards my neighbor is to try my best to give him pleasure and alleviate his pain. No human being can make another one happy.

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GENIUS & APOSTLE

No genius has an in order that: the Apostle has absolutely and paradoxically an in order that.

s0ren kierkegaard

I

In such theoretical discussions concerning the nature of drama as I have read, it has always seemed to me that insuf­ficient attention was paid to the nature of the actor. What distinguishes a drama from both a game and a rite is that, in a game, the players play themselves and, in a rite, though the participants may represent somebody else, a god, for instance, they do not have to imitate him, any more than an ambassador to a foreign country has to imitate the sovereign whom he represents. Further, in both a game and a rite, the actions are real actions, or at least, real to the participants—goals are scored, the bull is killed, the bread and wine are transubstan­tiated—but, in a drama, all actions are mock actions—the

actor who plays Banquo is not really murdered, the singer who plays Don Giovanni may himself be a henpecked hus­band.

No other human activity seems as completely gratuitous as "acting"; games are gratuitous acts, but it can be argued that they have a utile value—they develop the muscles or sharpen the wits of those who play them—but what con­ceivable purpose could one human being have for imitating another?