230 Heredity. 



consciousness being incapable of giving us all the elements of the 

 problem. We know motives and acts ; but that which causes the 

 possible to become the actual is unconscious. 



' Languages/ says Turgot, ' are not the work of self-conscious 

 reason.' If his age had understood this as he did, it would have 

 discussed the origin of language less; above all, it would not have 

 seen in it a conscious creation. The source of language is in the 

 unconscious. * Without language it is impossible to conceive the 

 philosophic consciousness, or even human consciousness, and 

 hence it is that it has never been possible that the foundations of 

 language should be laid in a conscious manner. Still, the more 

 we analyze language, the more clearly we perceive that it exceeds 

 in depth the most conscious productions of the mind. It is with 

 language as with all organic beings. We fancy that these beings 

 come into existence, being produced by a blind force, and yet we 

 cannot deny the intentional wisdom that presides over the forma- 

 tion of each one of them.' 1 Many philosophers of our day have 

 in other terms pronounced the same opinion as to the unconscious 

 origin of language. 



In fact, we meet with a final manifestation of the unconscious in 

 sociological phenomena, in history. A people arrives at conscious- 

 ness only as it becomes civilized ; perhaps it was only in the last 

 century that that ideal state was reached wherein the human race 

 has clear consciousness of itself and of its history. Among primi- 

 tive peoples, however, societies are formed, and a certain division 

 of political powers and of vocations is made, though without any 

 definite consciousness of the end or of the means. From this the 

 consciousness of the species afterwards springs by degrees. The 

 process of development is the same in the species as in the indi- 

 vidual ; compare Homer with Aristotle ; Gregory of Tours with 

 Montesquieu. Here, as everywhere, consciousness springs from the 

 unconscious and presupposes it. 



We have now, in the compass of a few pages, given a sketch of 

 a question which would require a volume ; but, brief as it is, it is 

 enough for our purpose. To sum up, we have seen that there is 

 no psychological phenomenon, simple or complex, high or low, 



1 Schelling, Einleitung in die Philosophic der Mythologie. 



