Civilisation : Its Cause and Cure 



symbolised by the gradual resumption of more uni- 

 versal conditions. That is to say that during the 

 civilisation-period, the body being systematically 

 wrapped in clothes, the head 9.\one represents man — 

 the little finnikin, intellectual, self-conscious man in 

 contra-distinction to the cosmical man represented 

 by the entirety of the bodily organs. The body 

 has to be delivered from its swathings in order 

 that the cosmical consciousness may once more 

 reside in the human breast. We have to become 

 " all face " again — as the savage said of himself. ^ 



Where the cosmic self is, there is no more self- 

 consciousness. The body and v/hat is ordinarily 

 called the self are felt to be only parts of the true 

 self, and the ordinary distinctions of inner and 

 outer, egotism and altruism, etc., lose a good deal 

 of their value. Thought no longer returns upon 

 the local self as the chief object of regard, but con- 

 sciousness is continually radiant from it, filling 

 the body and overflowing upon external Nature. 

 Thus the Sun in the physical world is the allegory of 

 the true self. The worshiper must adore the 

 Sun, he must saturate himself with sunlight, 

 and take the physical Sun into himself. Those 

 who live by fire and candle-light are filled with 

 phantoms ; their thoughts are Will-o'-th'-wisp- 

 like images of themselves, and they are tormented 

 by a horrible self-consciousness. 



And when the Civilisation-period has passed 

 away, the old Nature-religion — perhaps greatly 



' See Alonso di Ovalle's Account of the Kingdom of Chile in 

 Churchill's Collection of Voyages and Travels, 1724. 



70 



