Y.M. Well—no. O.M. There _is _a physical effect present, then? Y.M. It looks like it. O.M. A cracked skull has resulted in a crazy mind. Why should it happen if the mind is spiritual, and _independent _of physical influences? Y.M. Well—I don’t know. O.M. When you have a pain in your foot, how do you know it? Y.M. I feel it. O.M. But you do not feel it until a nerve reports the hurt to the brain. Yet the brain is the seat of the mind, is it not? Y.M. I think so. O.M. But isn’t spiritual enough to learn what is happening in the outskirts without the help of the _physical _messenger? You perceive that the question of who or what the Me is, is not a simple one at all. You say “I admire the rainbow,” and “I believe the world is round,” and in these cases we find that the Me is not speaking, but only the _mental _part. You say, “I grieve,” and again the Me is not all speaking, but only the _moral _part. You say the mind is wholly spiritual; then you say “I have a pain” and find that this time the Me is mental _and _spiritual combined. We all use the “I” in this indeterminate fashion, there is no help for it. We imagine a Master and King over what you call The Whole Thing, and we speak of him as “I,” but when we try to define him we find we cannot do it. The intellect and the feelings can act quite _independently _of each other; we recognize that, and we look around for a Ruler who is master over both, and can serve as a _definite and indisputable “I,” _and enable us to know what we mean and who or what we are talking about when we use that pronoun, but we have to give it up and confess that we cannot find him. To me, Man is a machine, made up of many mechanisms, the moral and mental ones acting automatically in accordance with the impulses of an interior Master who is built out of born-temperament and an accumulation of multitudinous outside influences and trainings; a machine whose _one _function is to secure the spiritual contentment of the Master, be his desires good or be they evil; a machine whose Will is absolute and must be obeyed, and always _is _obeyed. Y.M. Maybe the Me is the Soul? O.M. Maybe it is. What is the Soul? Y.M. I don’t know. O.M. Neither does any one else. _The Master Passion_ Y.M. What is the Master?—or, in common speech, the Conscience? Explain it. O.M. It is that mysterious autocrat, lodged in a man, which compels the man to content its desires. It may be called the Master Passion—the hunger for Self-Approval. Y.M. Where is its seat? O.M. In man’s moral constitution. Y.M. Are its commands for the man’s good? O.M. It is indifferent to the man’s good; it never concerns itself about anything but the satisfying of its own desires. It can be _trained _to prefer things which will be for the man’s good, but it will prefer them only because they will content _it _better than other things would.