From the Unconscious to the Conscious 



blessing. Their mediocrity is fitted to the conditions 

 of life as it is, they are adapted to its petty passions, its 

 mean desires, its short pleasures and its long procession 

 of suffering. 



Even when the stammering voice of Art reaches 

 them, it cannot awaken them to a vision or an idea of 

 a higher world. They find it quite natural (fortunately) 

 to live in a world of strife and suffering, and thanks to 

 their ignorance, they do not vainly revolt against the 

 inevitable. Providentially, they find it normal that their 

 activities should be almost entirely taken up in seeking 

 maintenance and in the struggle against hostile condi- 

 tions. Their interests are of a low order, like the 

 character which creates them. It is well that they 

 should have no other outlook than that of present effort; 

 they could not bear the prospect of efforts to which they 

 could see no end. 



Even for the select few ignorance of the future is 

 a benefit. Without this unconsciousness they would 

 suffer more by seeing humanity and life as they are 

 the scanty results of so much effort, the seeming 

 uselessness of so much pain. How small a thing is the best 

 that has yet come into full realisation in the course of 

 human evolution the ideal charm of feminine beauty, 

 the genius of the thinker, are chained to the base and 

 repugnant functions of a weak body, to all its defects 

 and diseases. Contentment in such a world is only 

 consistent with ignorance of a higher world of light 

 and love. Some few, very few, have this intuition 

 more or less clearly. In the present state of evolution 

 they are not privileged beings. The sadness of the 

 best among men has often no other origin than a glimpse 

 from the unconscious on too bright a future, so distant 

 that it seems but an empty dream . . . confronted with 

 tangible realities all that remains when the entrancing 

 vision fades is discouragement, a disdain for the present, 

 and the shadow of a great sadness over all life. 



309 v 



