From the Unconscious to the Conscious 



upon it. The statesman, the mason, the baker, the 

 butcher, the manufacturer, the artist, all perform 

 different tasks and supply different products, more 

 numerous and varied as the social state is more 

 perfect. The living being, whether plant or animal 

 is a city of this kind.' 



The grave objections to this theory are immediately 

 ' apparent. 



The picture set before us as that of a living being 

 is that of an animal colony pure and simple. Possibly 

 correct for some forms which have only the outward 

 show of individualisation, for inferior animals of the 

 type of zoophytes, it cannot be considered true for 

 animals sharply marked off from other orders of life. 



In the city described by Dastre the most essential 

 feature is missing: a centralised direction, which alone 

 is able, first to unite, and then to maintain, to order, and 

 to direct the State for the common welfare. 



2. DIFFICULTIES RELATING TO THE SPECIFIC FORM OF 



THE INDIVIDUAL, TO THE BUILDING, THE MAIN- 

 TENANCE, AND THE REPAIR OF THE ORGANISM. 



The classical concept leaves unexplained all that 

 , relates to the life, the formation, the development, and 

 the maintenance of the organism. To it, physiology is 

 an entire mystery. That this mysteriousness is not 

 immediately apparent, is due to a well-known illusion of 

 the human mind, which is always prone to think that it 

 understands a thing merely because it is familiar. The 

 philosophical mind naturally reacts against this tendency; 

 the many are irresistibly carried away by it. ' The 

 more unintelligent a man is,' Schopenhauer writes, ' the 

 less mysterious existence seems to him. Everything 

 seems to him to carry in itself the explanation of its 

 How and Why.' 



41 



