Animum, Non Coelum

TILE subtitle, " From Group Consciousness through Indi- viduality to Super-Consciousness," sufficiently indicates that in his philosophy of history Mr. Heard wishes to stress the psychical rather than the physical factors. In his view, the

economic interpretation of human events has proved a failure because it has not produced a philosophy of history : the real advance is in man's spirit, in " an unremitting pro- gress in human consciousness." This alone can provide the solution necessary to reconcile understanding and conduct.

" Eden," he says in a striking phrase, " was not a garden,

but a condition " :—

" The great discovery [of modern anthropology] is that primitive man in his consciousness was more different from civilized man than any disparity, however great, in their conditions . . . The vastest change in man's evolution has not been in his anatomy Or his environment or his gear, but in himself, in his consciousness itself. . . . To-day for the first time . . . man is able to recognize a pre-individual condition, and the fact that he can so recognize it is evidence of an evolution in himself which has carried him whither he can conceive that individuality is not final, that other states lie behind him in the past and may await him in the future."

And again :-

" Anthropology in all its branches leaves no doubt that the indi- vidual psyche is a comparatively modern thing. . . . History is comprehensible only as the story of growing consciousness. The first individuals we can recognize in it [priest-kings and witch- doctors] are evidently emerging from sub-individual societies."

Mr. Heard, then, accepts the theory of the group-mind, when earliest man lived in herds without individual con- sciousness. That is the first stage—a stable society, according to the author, just because it was " co-conscious " and "unindividualized." Conscious foresight and invention are evidences of individuality, and the second stage is intro- duced by the rise of leadership, priest-kings, and so forth. It is clear that we are now approaching the third stage, beeanse our minds have at last progressed sufficiently for us to perceive, as our fathers did not, that there was a pre- individual state. This third stage will be, not a reversion to the simple co-consciousness of the primitive, but a super- consciousness, in which the individual will none the less be absorhed in a " dynamic peace " :—

" Individuality has been, and at most can only be, a shifting boundary belt between the endlessly repeated phases of the passions and the eternal, impersonal constancy of ideas . . . Obviously there is ahead of us a condition (into which we are moving) wherein . . . the sharp focus of the night-lamp of individuality, which has led us through the darkness of our separation, vanishes as the com- prehensive light of dawn breaks over us and we see ourselves united in the sunrise."

Psychical growth is visualized by Mr. Heard in spatial terms :-

" As all growth tends to be spiral . . . so when we are carried by it from the posktion, of our_linmediate ancestors we find ourselves directly over, and to that extent on the same side as the position their predecessors occupied. . . . Our change of insight is due to the fact that our spiral advance allows us to see vertically ' down into their minds, While the horizontal displaCement of even a generation ago was so great that, attempting to view the primitive mind from such an obliquity, the whole benefit of a superior educa- tion counted for nothing."

Individualism is due, therefore, to myopia : our immediate ancestors are not to be blamed, as they could not help them- selves. Their psychical equipment was determined by their position in the curve of the spiral. They could not look back,,and therefore could not look forward either.

Mr. Heard is somewhat vague as to what the future has in store for us, and what it is which the super-conscious mind will 'attain. This is 'doubtless inevitable, as he does not set out to be a prophet. But surely, if our minds are determined by a mechanical spirality, there will be still further growth beyond the super-conscious, growth or surcease, and inevitabIL with the swing of the spiral (be each loop a thousand years -or a -millennium)-man will fluctuate between individualism and co-consciousness.

It is unfortunate that Mr. Heard has a difficult, and at times a clumsy, style of writing. For he has read widely and has a great deal of interest to say. His speculations are provocative, and, even if we cannot_ accept his thesis, he has at least thrown open new and suggestive avenues of inquiry. Space does not permit of a detailed criticism, but we shall accept Mr. Heard's challenge on the ground which he has himself selected. For he writes :-

" However many ideas have been followed up . . ., there is ono which is fundamental : Man's consciousness was once pre-individu4 a group consciousness, is now mainly individual, and is becoming super-individual."

Earliest man, according to Mr. Heard, was group-conscious. He was completely merged in the primitive horde and had neither individual existence nor mind. Later a slightly less primitive man evolved individual leadership, but his mentality

was still prerational, prelogical. On this assumption Mr. Heard's thesis stands or falls, as he himself admits. He

avers that the rationality of the savage was invented by the earliest investigators, whereas the school of thought which advocates Mr. Heard's prelogical view largely bases its theories on the irrational character attributed to the savage

by these same investigators. These views, current in France, have found no acceptance either in England or in America, and are largely based on misconceptions, which it would take too long here to controvert. A few of these miscon- ceptions are reproduced by Mr. Heard, who is thus led into such remarkable statements as " speech is older than indiL viduality," or that artists only worked by a group-convention;.

He accepts Freud's explanation of the tabus on the priest-king without apparently realizing that there are other explanationti, and considers that the individual has no place in the " group- rites " of burial. There is in actual fact no foundation foi the presumption that the original community was an undifferentiated horde, or that early man was endowed with

a group-mind or with what Mr. Heard calls co-consciousness. The dust-cover carries the legend " A most valuable con- tribution," which is ascribed to Professor Malinowsky.

When or how this statement was made is not indicated, but if Professor B. Malinowski is intended, Mr. Heard is to be congratulated on converting him to an acceptance of the prelogical savage, a position which we have failed to discover in Professor Malinowski's published views.

J. H. DRIBERG.