2                                                             A SIMPLE THEORY OF THE SELF

the idea of observing some central spectacle from a particular point of view. How apt this seems to me!

     Common usage over time has worn from this metaphor its connotations of spectacle and play, leaving a bare image of theory as science, a product and tool of knowledge, more schematic than theatrical—conjectural, perhaps, but at bottom practical. What began as a playful effort to see as much and as clearly as possible devolved into an abstract intellectual device. Perhaps more importantly, the idea that any theory is but one of many possible points of view has been all but lost behind most modern theories' implicit claims to special validity. So in the high seriousness of its contemporary context, theory has gained in academic stature, but (like so many of us who propound it) in the process it has lost much vitality. This I suspect is the common fate of metaphors (again, so like their human kin): to outlive the brilliance of their youth, to pass into common parlance no longer recognized, like aging actors "heard no more."¹

     But metaphors can be reborn. One morning not long ago, for no reason that I know, I began to wonder where the term "ivory tower" had come from. On my way to the dictionary I was seized by the image, almost a vision, of a grand, white human skull. Of course! The ivory tower to which we all retreat—where we dwell altogether except for the rarest moments of authentic engagement. I had heard and uttered this worn-out locution for decades but never before experienced it as a metaphor. Now suddenly it dazzled me with meaning. Eureka!

     Such moments are rare, but when they come they incline me towards the thesis of the philosopher Ernst Cassirer, who held that words, myths and religious images all are born in moments of awe:

When, on the one hand, the entire self is given up to a single impression, is "possessed" by it and, on the other hand, there is the utmost tension between the subject and its object, the outer world; when external reality is not merely viewed and contemplated, but overcomes a man in sheer immediacy.... The word, like a god or a