was taught to live for is either rubbish or a dream of a future that lies ages beyond the public expectation.
People don't know--won't know--can't know, in their present frame of mind. Take your little problem, for example."
Her face changed. Interest replaced antagonism. "So all right. Take my problem.
Kick that around awhile!"
"You believe in evolution?"
"A person can still believe in evolution--and in God!"
"Certainly. Something exists in men which they've given the name of all their gods. That's fact. And evolution is a fact, too--a simple reality. A minority of the educated people in our land have accepted the fact that man's body evolved from the bodies of other animals. A still smaller per cent realize that man's mind--personality--
spirit--also must have evolved from animals and the animal equivalent: instinct. The question is, How? Most of such people believe that it is the supreme function of the conscious human mind to repress instinct. That's their answer."
"But not yours!"
"I believe it's the function of consciousness to rediscover instinct, understand it, and pursue it--in the ways that it has to go. That it does go--people by the billions to the contrary notwithstanding. So far, people have made only blind efforts in that direction.
Unconscious efforts. Their religions--according to the soundest hypothesis I've encountered--are the results of such attempts: expressions of animal instinct, as it appears in men--and in men wholly unaware of what they are expressing."
"Is that Freud?"
"It's Jung. Freud never got that far. He merely demonstrated that instinct exists in man. The id--he called it. The raw cravings of the infant. To Freud--the id was pretty much what sin is to a preacher. A disgraceful bunch of bestial lusts and impulses.
Society--through the parents, mostly--disciplined the id by disciplining the infant and the child; this produced the superego--or conscience, according to Freud. As far as Freud could see, man would always live amidst conflicts set up between his id and whatever superego, or culture, had been hammered around it--plus his own common sense, if any.
Dismal view."
"And Jung?"
"Well--Freud showed that instinct exists as a basic motivation of mankind. Not that anybody but a few psychiatrists have ever paid attention to the discovery. But there it was--the beginning of a science of psychological evolution of people. Jung asked what instinct was and how it worked. Jung found out several things Freud only began to realize. For instance, Jung looked at animals and perceived that their instincts unfold in them, individually, as they mature."
"You mean, new-born beavers don't start building dams immediately?"
"Exactly. So the id of infancy is only part of instinct. More instinct appears as the person ages--which is in line with the nature of instinct in all other living beings. Next, Jung noticed that instinct in. animals, and in primitive people who hardly ever use reason and logic abstractedly, takes care of the whole life cycle of every species. So it cannot be viewed as mere lawless, infantile lust. If it were only that, animals, and primitive men, would tear up each other and themselves; all life would commit suicide. From the animal viewpoint--instinct includes whatever animals do that men would call 'good,' 'virtuous,'
'unselfish,' 'self-sacrificing,' and so on. Do you follow?"
"I think so."
"There are--so to speak--checks and balances--compensations--counterinstincts.
That's the idea embodied in Chinese philosophy. In Taoism, for example. That's the concept symbolized by the yin and the yang. It's the idea embodied in Toynbee's theory of history, too-right up till the present, when his own ego confuses its own description of instinct with history. At that point, Toynbee decided that the Church of England--his personal patternization of instinct--might salvage civilization. Which, of course, is pathetic. But let's drag this bundle a little bit further
People don't know--won't know--can't know, in their present frame of mind. Take your little problem, for example."
Her face changed. Interest replaced antagonism. "So all right. Take my problem.
Kick that around awhile!"
"You believe in evolution?"
"A person can still believe in evolution--and in God!"
"Certainly. Something exists in men which they've given the name of all their gods. That's fact. And evolution is a fact, too--a simple reality. A minority of the educated people in our land have accepted the fact that man's body evolved from the bodies of other animals. A still smaller per cent realize that man's mind--personality--
spirit--also must have evolved from animals and the animal equivalent: instinct. The question is, How? Most of such people believe that it is the supreme function of the conscious human mind to repress instinct. That's their answer."
"But not yours!"
"I believe it's the function of consciousness to rediscover instinct, understand it, and pursue it--in the ways that it has to go. That it does go--people by the billions to the contrary notwithstanding. So far, people have made only blind efforts in that direction.
Unconscious efforts. Their religions--according to the soundest hypothesis I've encountered--are the results of such attempts: expressions of animal instinct, as it appears in men--and in men wholly unaware of what they are expressing."
"Is that Freud?"
"It's Jung. Freud never got that far. He merely demonstrated that instinct exists in man. The id--he called it. The raw cravings of the infant. To Freud--the id was pretty much what sin is to a preacher. A disgraceful bunch of bestial lusts and impulses.
Society--through the parents, mostly--disciplined the id by disciplining the infant and the child; this produced the superego--or conscience, according to Freud. As far as Freud could see, man would always live amidst conflicts set up between his id and whatever superego, or culture, had been hammered around it--plus his own common sense, if any.
Dismal view."
"And Jung?"
"Well--Freud showed that instinct exists as a basic motivation of mankind. Not that anybody but a few psychiatrists have ever paid attention to the discovery. But there it was--the beginning of a science of psychological evolution of people. Jung asked what instinct was and how it worked. Jung found out several things Freud only began to realize. For instance, Jung looked at animals and perceived that their instincts unfold in them, individually, as they mature."
"You mean, new-born beavers don't start building dams immediately?"
"Exactly. So the id of infancy is only part of instinct. More instinct appears as the person ages--which is in line with the nature of instinct in all other living beings. Next, Jung noticed that instinct in. animals, and in primitive people who hardly ever use reason and logic abstractedly, takes care of the whole life cycle of every species. So it cannot be viewed as mere lawless, infantile lust. If it were only that, animals, and primitive men, would tear up each other and themselves; all life would commit suicide. From the animal viewpoint--instinct includes whatever animals do that men would call 'good,' 'virtuous,'
'unselfish,' 'self-sacrificing,' and so on. Do you follow?"
"I think so."
"There are--so to speak--checks and balances--compensations--counterinstincts.
That's the idea embodied in Chinese philosophy. In Taoism, for example. That's the concept symbolized by the yin and the yang. It's the idea embodied in Toynbee's theory of history, too-right up till the present, when his own ego confuses its own description of instinct with history. At that point, Toynbee decided that the Church of England--his personal patternization of instinct--might salvage civilization. Which, of course, is pathetic. But let's drag this bundle a little bit further
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