Theophilus North Read Free Page A

celibacy.
    Perhaps as a consequence of this brief aspiration I retained through life an intermittent childishness. I had no aggression and no competitive drive. I could amuse myself with simple things, like a child playing on the seashore with shells. I often appeared to be vacant or “absent.” This irritated some; even valued friends, both men and women (perhaps including my father), broke with me charging me with “not being serious” or calling me a “simpleton.”
    The S ECOND —a secularization of the first—was to be an anthropologist among primitive peoples and all my life I have returned to that interest. The past and the future are always present within us. Readers may observe that the anthropologist and his off-shoot the sociologist continue to hover about this book.
    The T HIRD, the archaeologist.
    The F OURTH, the detective. In my third year at college I planned to become an amazing detective. I read widely in the literature, not only in its fictional treatment, but in technical works dealing with its refined scientific methods. Chief Inspector North would play a leading role among those who shield our lives from the intrusions of evil and madness lurking about the orderly workshop and home.
    The F IFTH, the actor, an amazing actor. This delusion could have been guessed at after a consideration of the other eight ambitions.
    The S IXTH, the magician. This aim was not of my seeking and I have difficulty in giving it a name. It had nothing to do with stage-performance. I early discovered that I had a certain gift for soothing, for something approaching mesmerism—dare I say for “driving out demons”? I understood what a shaman or a medicineman probably relies upon. I was not comfortable with it and resorted to it seldom, but as the reader will see it was occasionally thrust upon me. It is inseparable from a certain amount of imposture and quackery. The less said about it the better.
    The S EVENTH, the lover. What kind of a lover? An omnivorous lover like Casanova? No. A lover of all that is lofty and sublime in women, like the Provençal Troubadours? No.
    Years later I found in very knowledgeable company a description of the type to which I belonged. Dr. Sigmund Freud spent his summers in a suburb of Vienna called Grinzing. I was spending a summer in Grinzing and without any overtures on my part I was invited to call at his villa on Sunday afternoons for what he called Plaudereien —desultory conversations. At one of these delightful occasions the conversation turned upon the distinction between “loving” and “falling in love.”
    â€œHerr Doktor,” he asked, “do you know an old English comedy—I forget its name—in which the hero suffers from a certain impediment [ Hemmung ]? In the presence of ‘ladies’ and of genteel well-brought-up girls he is shy and tongue-tied, he is scarcely able to raise his eyes from the ground; but in the presence of servant girls and barmaids and what they are calling ‘emancipated women’ he is all boldness and impudence. Do you know the name of that comedy?”
    â€œYes, Herr Professor . That is She Stoops to Conquer .”
    â€œAnd who is its author?”
    â€œOliver Goldsmith.”
    â€œThank you. We doctors have found that Oliver Goldsmith has made an exemplary picture of a problem that we frequently discover among our patients. Ach, die Dichter haben alles gekannt !” (“The poet-natures have always known everything.”)
    He then went on to point out to me the relation of the problem to the Oedipus complex and to the incest-tabu under which “respectable” women are associated with a man’s mother and sisters—“out of bounds.”
    â€œDo you remember the name of that young man?”
    â€œCharles Marlow.”
    He repeated the name with smiling satisfaction. I leaned forward and said, “ Herr Professor , can we call that