on of the power which resists creation, become a
vampirizing force of destruction. It may indeed become something
worse than destruction. It may become an abysmal and unutterable
"death-in-life." That voluptuous "pleasure in cruelty" which is an
intrinsic element of the sexual instinct may attach itself to "the
pleasure in death" which is the intrinsic emotion of the aboriginal
inert malice; or rather the "pleasure in death" of the adversary of
creation may insidiously associate itself with the "pleasure in
cruelty" of the sexual instinct and make of "this energy of cruelty"
a new and terrible emotion which is at once cruel and inert.

All this were mere fantastic speculation if it lacked touch with
direct experience. But direct experience, if we have any
psycho-clairvoyance at all, bears unmistakable witness to what I have
been saying. If one glances at the expression in the countenance of
any human soul who is deriving pleasure from the spectacle of
suffering and who, under the pressure of this queer fusion of the
aesthetic sense with the abysmal malice, is engaged in vampirizing
the victim of such suffering one will observe a very curious and
very illuminating series of revelations.

One will observe, for instance, the presence of demonic energy
and of magnetic dominance in such a countenance; but parallel
with this and simultaneously with this, one will observe an
expression of unutterable sadness, a sadness which is inert and
death-like, a sadness which has the soulless rigidity and the frozen
immobility of a corpse. We are thus justified, by an impression of
direct experience, in our contention that the peculiar pleasure
which many artists derive from the contemplation of suffering and
from the contemplation of what is atrocious, obscene, monstrous
and revolting, is the result of a corruption of both the sexual
instinct and the aesthetic sense by the abysmal malice.

For the pleasure which such souls derive from the contemplation
of suffering is identical with the pleasure they derive from
contemplating the "illusion of dead matter." Philosophers who
give themselves up to the profoundest pessimism do not do so, as
a rule, under the influence of love. The only exceptions to this are
rare cases when preoccupation with suffering does not spring from
a furtive enjoyment of the spectacle of suffering but from an
incurable pity for the victims of suffering. Such exceptions are far
more rare than is usually supposed,