These
circuitous ways to death, faithfully retained by the conservative
instincts, would be neither more nor less than the phenomena of
life as we know it."
Freud puts forth these interesting suggestions with much modesty,
admitting that they are vague and uncertain and (what it is even more
important to notice) mythical in their terms; but it seems to me that,
for all that, they are an admirable counterblast to prevalent follies.
When we hear that there is, animating the whole universe, an _Elan vital_,
or general impulse toward some unknown but single ideal, the terms used
are no less uncertain, mythical, and vague, but the suggestion conveyed is
false--false, I mean, to the organic source of life and aspiration, to the
simple naturalness of nature: whereas the suggestion conveyed by Freud's
speculations is true. In what sense can myths and metaphors be true or
false? In the sense that, in terms drawn from moral predicaments or from
literary psychology, they may report the general movement and the
pertinent issue of material facts, and may inspire us with a wise
sentiment in their presence. In this sense I should say that Greek
mythology was true and Calvinist theology was false. The chief terms
employed in psycho-analysis have always been metaphorical: "unconscious
wishes", "the pleasure-principle", "the Oedipus complex", "Narcissism",
"the censor"; nevertheless, interesting and profound vistas may be opened
up, in such terms, into the tangle of events in a man's life, and a fresh
start may be made with fewer encumbrances and less morbid inhibition.
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