46 THE BIOCOSMOS GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



million of years of psychical development in 

 the progressive man, what is to be the trend? 

 It is quite soul-stretching enough to think 

 of such a prophecy without attempting more 

 than the faintest foreshadow. The power of 

 association seems to be the line on which 

 mental mankind is at present most distinct- 

 ively evolving. 



But before going further, we should glance 

 at the fact that the Psyche reaches the point 

 of turning back upon itself, grasping itself 

 and therefrom unfolding itself. What is that 

 process but Consciousness, which has now 

 broken through the shell of the Physis, not 

 yet into the sunlight but into the earliest cre- 

 puscule of self-knowledge I That is, the hu- 

 man Ego has arrived, hitherto only immanent 

 in the Physis, implicit, a potentiality evolv- 

 ing to reality. After the long separation in 

 Nature the Psyche has come back to itself 

 in the individual man, has risen to self-aware- 

 ness, and is a Psychosis with its own inner 

 self-divison and self-return, no longer a phy- 

 sically encumbered Psyche. But herewith the 

 entire realm of Nature is transcended, having 

 run its course of separation from and in the 

 Universe (or All-Self), and returned to its 

 fountain-head, with which it has become one 

 even in its separation as individual, who is 

 now psychical man. Or, in the terms already 



