affinity between the two individuals. Both of them are so
absorbed in the relentless pursuit of their interests that
this pursuit shapes every phase of their encounter with
reality. Nothing they experience has a meaning in itself;
nothing counts for them unless it can be turned into a
means for attaining their ends. Even death is not exempt.
Coming face to face with it, they are able to relate only
to the one phase of it which they calculate is of advantage
to them, while they remain indifferent onlookers before
the other aspect, which to them is a useless remainder,
the impact of death itself.

Can we say that this aloofness and lack of participation
are traits characteristic only of persons like the woman in
Goya's etching or like the photographer who, witnessing
the pain of another human being, thinks solely of using
his camera? Such a consoling thought would not be
realistic. There seems to be a tendency in all of us to be-
come indifferent bystanders. In the way we associate with
other people or respond to important happenings we tend
toward a fragmentary encounter. We do not relate to the
other person as a whole or to the event as a whole, but
we isolate the one part which is important to us and
remain more or less remote observers of the rest.

The person who thus splits the real into two parts
becomes divided in his own self. So deep is the cleavage
which goes through the woman in Goya's etching that the
artist seems to show her as two human beings who are
insulated from each other, the one moving toward a
coveted prize, the other miserably looking away from her
own action. There is something uncanny in the condition
of man when he has become a stranger to himself; but

-12-