From the Unconscious to the Conscious 



must be only because of the certainty that if they 

 fall, they fall back on her own breast, where they are 

 in shelter; so that their fall is but a jest. ... If 

 our sight could penetrate to the foundation of 

 things we should think as Nature does. Fortified by 

 this thought, we should explain the indifference of 

 Nature to the death of individuals, by the fact that 

 the destruction of phenomena in no way touches 

 the true and real essence.' 



The argument of this great thinker does not concern 

 life alone; it adapts itself wonderfully to consciousness. 



Personal consciousness is as ephemeral as the earthly 

 life to which it seems to be linked. Yet more, nature 

 seems to set no special value on the perfection or the 

 extent of personal consciousness. The intellectuality 

 of the senseless crowd, of the formless mass and mere 

 dust of humanity are under the same chances as the 

 higher intellectuality of the great men who seek to 

 guide the masses; the rudimentary consciousness of 

 the Russian peasant, little above, if it is at all above, 

 animal consciousness, and that of a Newton, a Pasteur, 

 or a Schopenhauer, are treated alike. If these marvellous 

 intelligences whose entrance on life has required inde- 

 scribable efforts of evolution prolonged through centuries 

 intelligences that actually sum up all the perfection 

 that evolution has as yet engendered, are abandoned 

 without hope of return to the merest chance, to con- 

 tamination of the body by a microbe, or even to senile 

 decay, does not this amount to a declaration of Nature 

 that the disappearance of personal consciousness, however 

 elevated it may be, is a matter of indifference, or, which 

 comes to the same thing, that this disappearance is only 

 seeming disappearance ? 



Yes! If the Mother of all things cares so little 

 for her highest realisation personal consciousness 

 that can be only because of the certainty that when 



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