A New Level of Consciousness
Mu:cm has given us a second example of that generalized and not technical type of book of which his Future of an Illusion was the first instance. These two short books, Tice Future of an Illusion and Civilization and its Discontents, will stand as the fruits of this great scientist's old age. After a life-time devoted to the most elaborate investigations, to the scrupulous application of scientific method, with its cautious, narrow, limited, step-by-step approach, this man, who, in fact, intro- duced the possibility of science, instead of unlimited doubt and speculation, into a great new field of human destiny, has permitted himself to stand back from his particular instances, his meticulous and superbly honest collection of evidence, and to suns up for us in calm, economical, and noble prose the general impressions which his immense knowledge of numerous individual human psyches has given bins.
These impressions will inevitably strike the reader as pro- foundly, almost unbearably, pessimistic. But is there any- thing to wonder at in that ? Up till now the great poets have been the men to see deepest and most clearly into the human soul, and was there ever a great poet who did not hold the tragic view of life ? The very idea of an optimistic Shake- speare, a buoyant Keats, is ludicrous. Those who see best see tragedy in human fate. i'Ve must leave optimism in the undisputed possession of the self-deceived.
It is of no little interest that the generalized view which Freud gives us in these two latest works concurs so well with the view of humanity expressed with perfect unanimity by the poets. It is moving that this, the first man who has found a method—as yet, of course, crude and imperfect, but even so the first method—scientifically to investigate the human psyche should have discovered there almost exactly what the poets have found by intuition.
Incidentally, the present volume contains a very beautiful passage on this very matter. After quoting Goethe in support of one of his arguments, Freud adds-:—
" And one may heave a sigh at the thought that it is vouchsafed to a few, with hardly an effort, to salvo from the whirlpool of their own emotions tho deepest truths, to which we hers have to force our way, ceaselessly groping amid torturing uncertainties."
This is not to say, of course, that Freud's work has been one of supererogation, as the poets knew it all before. The poets knew it on one level of consciousness. Freud has taken the knowledge of much (though by no means a great part, of course)-of our mental constitution on to a new and higher level of consciousness, where it is infinitely more usable, more accessible to humanity. But it is an immense confirmation of his general conclusions that the poets, representing the distilled wisdom of mankind over the centuries, should agree so well with his experimentally arrived at findings.
The theme of the present volume is a very simple one, which has often been foreshadowed in Freud's earlier works. Civilization is only made possible by individual renounce- ments. The instinctive life of man is one of unbridled aggression and egoistic self-satisfaction. The whole structure of Culture has been designed to put prohibitions and curbs upon him. But there was no external force which could
do this towards man. Therefore the inhibiting function had to be, in Freud's phrase, " internalized." Some organ had to grow up within the very man himself Which could make him a possible member of a community organized for mutual help, which would prevent him murdering the man who stood in his way, raping the woman he desired. And thus in each civilized man there is built up by the community from infancy a force which we are accustomed to describe as the conscience, but which Freud prefers to call " the super-ego." This force, the guardian of the community. censors and passes judgment upon every act, and not only every act, but every desire, of the individual. This mechanism has been necessary to the development of civilization. But it has done its work at a heavy cost. We have raised up a part of the man in enmity and hostility against himself. The super-ego is a judge set up over the unchecked flow of man's instinctive life. Hence conflict has arisen. Men have become houses divided against themselves ; and when conflict comes neurosis follows quickly in its footsteps. The sense of guilt, conscious and unconscious, has become the hall-mark of civilized humanity.
Such, in crudest outline, is the theme of the new volume. It is developed with the greatest richness of content, and one might use many columns without exhausting the invaluable dicta of men and their institutions which strew the book, How fine, for example, is this footnote on education ! How bitterly do the words ring in the mind of every " nicely brought up " girl or boy :—
" That the upbringing of young people at the present day conceals from them the part sexuality will play in their lives is not the only reproach we are obliged to bring against it. It offends too, in not preparing them for the aggressions of which they are destined to become the objects. Sending the young out into life with such a false psychological orientation is as if one wore to equip people going on a Polar expedition with summer clothing and maps of the :Dalian lakes. One ran clearly see that ethical standards are being misused in a way. The strictness of these standards would not do much harm if education were to say —Ehis is how men ought to be in order to be happy and make others happy, but you have to reckon with their not being so.' Instead of this the young are made to believe that everyone else conforms to the standard of ethics, i.e., that everyone else is good. And then on this is based the demand that the young shall be so too."
As is usual, the book is strewn with warning signs which Freud erects to tell us where the boundaries of his knowledge end. The science of psychology is so new, the material is as yet so unmanageable, the method of investigation so difficult and easily misused, that the greatest caution is necessary. But, once and for ail, the Freudian method has set psychology upon a scientific basis.
JOHN STRACHEY.
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