Group None

With this,31Identification of two types of sin. we can reconcile between two views about what the evil urge and good urge are. One view, which is well known, is that the evil urge is the force of impurity within a person, which leads him to transgressions, and the good urge is the force of holiness in the person that leads him to do good. This is the view of most major writers.32In the Talmud and most of the classic medieval books of Mussar, the good urge and the evil urge are personified and externalized. It is as if a distinct good entity and a distinct evil entity exist within the person (but are not the person), constantly motivating the individual on to good or bad behaviors. The second view is that the evil urge is the force of desire in a person, which focuses temporarily on whatever is pleasant, which it takes home and lovingly clings to. The good urge is straightforward reason, which anticipates and looks to the future – that is, to the fear of God, blessed be His name, and His truly terrible judgments. It chooses the more beneficial action – suppressing desire – so that it is ultimately sublimated in wondrous pleasure, of which there can be no adequate parsing33Salanter’s pun, based on Isaiah 40:16, switches the ע to an א in “אֵין דֵּי בָּעֵר”. Just as there, there is not enough wood in the Lebanon forest to set a significant fire compared to the infinity of God, so here the imagination cannot adequately describe the eternal rewards and pleasures in the World to Come. of its precious splendor.34A paraphrase of Esther 1:4. This second view, that the struggle between the “urges” is in fact a conflict between desire and reason, is R. Salanter’s own theory (although in his modesty he does not identify himself as the originator). It is striking that he has moved from a medieval, dualist portrait of human psychology (the conflict between multiple distinct urges) to a more unified conception of human psychology, driven by conflict between emotions/instincts and reason.For we see that human situations change at every moment, with each person clinging to a different sin. Some sin more in neglect of Torah than in not following honest business practices or not giving charity, and with others, it is just the opposite. This is true for all transgressions; each person is different. Now, were the evil urge just a force of impurity that tempts him, why would it not wrap its coils around all human beings in the same manner? (This analysis holds if we don’t look at their roots above.)35“Above” is R. Salanter’s depiction of the varied inner drives of people, which conceivably could filter or modify the effects of the force of impurity from person to person. R. Salanter is conceding that his argument that a spirit of impurity would affect all people the same way is only partially convincing. There might be variations in response to the spirit of impurity due to differences in other inner forces between one individual and another.Nevertheless, underlying this analysis is R. Salanter’s focus on the inner psychological forces of humans as the key motivators of behaviors. Also present is R. Salanter’s stress on the uniqueness of each person, with the implication that God judges – and rewards and punishes – each person differently even for seemingly identical actions. This “modern” emphasis on individual differences became a leitmotif of R. Salanter’s writings throughout out his career. Similarly, the role of unconscious forces as the primary driver of human behavior dominates his later writings.However, if we say that the evil urge is the force of desire, then it is true that a person’s lust is a function of his temperament (his birth, his make-up, his condition at the time, and his circumstances). Since human temperaments change, so their transgressions change. Yet even this explanation is not so plausible. With our own eyes we see people commit terrible sins that are not really caused by lust. Sometimes, they run counter to their desires. For example, a person might want and long greatly for imaginary honor, yet his soul will despise the true honor of doing a mitzva – and the like. The only explanation is that the spirit of impurity confuses him and leads him to evil – even against the opposition of his vain desire.