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127 pages

English

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English author and literary critic D. H. Lawrence writes in Fantasia of the Unconscious: I am not a proper archaeologist nor an anthropologist nor an ethnologist. I am no "scholar" of any sort. But I am very grateful to scholars for their sound work. I have found hints, suggestions for what I say here in all kinds of scholarly books, from the Yoga and Plato and St. John the Evangel and the early Greek philosophers like Herakleitos down to Fraser and his "Golden Bough," and even Freud and Frobenius. Even then I only remember hints - and I proceed by intuition. This leaves you quite free to dismiss the whole wordy mass of revolting nonsense, without a qualm. Only let me say, that to my mind there is a great field of science which is as yet quite closed to us. I refer to the science which proceeds in terms of life and is established on data of living experience and of sure intuition. Call it subjective science if you like. Our objective science of modern knowledge concerns itself only with phenomena, and with phenomena as regarded in their cause-and-effect relationship. I have nothing to say against our science. It is perfect as far as it goes. But to regard it as exhausting the whole scope of human possibility in knowledge seems to me just puerile. Our science is a science of the dead world. Even biology never considers life, but only mechanistic functioning and apparatus of life.

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Mind

Body

Spirit

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Publié par	The Floating Press
Date de parution	01 août 2009
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781775416401
Langue	English

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FANTASIA OF THE UNCONSCIOUS
* * *
D. H. LAWRENCE

*

Fantasia of the Unconscious First published in 1922.
ISBN 978-1-775416-40-1
© 2009 THE FLOATING PRESS.
While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike.
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Contents
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Foreword Chapter I - Introduction Chapter II - The Holy Family Chapter III - Plexuses, Planes and so On Chapter IV - Trees and Babies and Papas and Mamas Chapter V - The Five Senses Chapter VI - First Glimmerings of Mind Chapter VII - First Steps in Education Chapter VIII - Education and Sex in Man, Woman and Child Chapter IX - The Birth of Sex Chapter X - Parent Love Chapter XI - The Vicious Circle Chapter XII - Litany of Exhortations Chapter XIII - Cosmological Chapter XIV - Sleep and Dreams Chapter XV - The Lower Self Epilogue
Foreword
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The present book is a continuation from "Psychoanalysis and theUnconscious." The generality of readers had better just leave italone. The generality of critics likewise. I really don't want toconvince anybody. It is quite in opposition to my whole nature. Idon't intend my books for the generality of readers. I count it amistake of our mistaken democracy, that every man who can read printis allowed to believe that he can read all that is printed. I count ita misfortune that serious books are exposed in the public market, likeslaves exposed naked for sale. But there we are, since we live in anage of mistaken democracy, we must go through with it.
I warn the generality of readers, that this present book will seem tothem only a rather more revolting mass of wordy nonsense than thelast. I would warn the generality of critics to throw it in the wastepaper basket without more ado.
As for the limited few, in whom one must perforce find an answerer, Imay as well say straight off that I stick to the solar plexus. Thatstatement alone, I hope, will thin their numbers considerably.
Finally, to the remnants of a remainder, in order to apologize for thesudden lurch into cosmology, or cosmogony, in this book, I wish to saythat the whole thing hangs inevitably together. I am not a scientist.I am an amateur of amateurs. As one of my critics said, you eitherbelieve or you don't.
I am not a proper archæologist nor an anthropologist nor anethnologist. I am no "scholar" of any sort. But I am very grateful toscholars for their sound work. I have found hints, suggestions forwhat I say here in all kinds of scholarly books, from the Yoga andPlato and St. John the Evangel and the early Greek philosophers likeHerakleitos down to Fraser and his "Golden Bough," and even Freud andFrobenius. Even then I only remember hints—and I proceed byintuition. This leaves you quite free to dismiss the whole wordy massof revolting nonsense, without a qualm.
Only let me say, that to my mind there is a great field of sciencewhich is as yet quite closed to us. I refer to the science whichproceeds in terms of life and is established on data of livingexperience and of sure intuition. Call it subjective science if youlike. Our objective science of modern knowledge concerns itself onlywith phenomena, and with phenomena as regarded in theircause-and-effect relationship. I have nothing to say against ourscience. It is perfect as far as it goes. But to regard it asexhausting the whole scope of human possibility in knowledge seems tome just puerile. Our science is a science of the dead world. Evenbiology never considers life, but only mechanistic functioning andapparatus of life.
I honestly think that the great pagan world of which Egypt and Greecewere the last living terms, the great pagan world which preceded ourown era once, had a vast and perhaps perfect science of its own, ascience in terms of life. In our era this science crumbled into magicand charlatanry. But even wisdom crumbles.
I believe that this great science previous to ours and quite differentin constitution and nature from our science once was universal,established all over the then-existing globe. I believe it wasesoteric, invested in a large priesthood. Just as mathematics andmechanics and physics are defined and expounded in the same way inthe universities of China or Bolivia or London or Moscow to-day, so,it seems to me, in the great world previous to ours a great scienceand cosmology were taught esoterically in all countries of the globe,Asia, Polynesia, America, Atlantis and Europe. Belt's suggestion ofthe geographical nature of this previous world seems to me mostinteresting. In the period which geologists call the Glacial Period,the waters of the earth must have been gathered up in a vast body onthe higher places of our globe, vast worlds of ice. And the sea-bedsof to-day must have been comparatively dry. So that the Azores rose upmountainous from the plain of Atlantis, where the Atlantic now washes,and the Easter Isles and the Marquesas and the rest rose lofty fromthe marvelous great continent of the Pacific.
In that world men lived and taught and knew, and were in one completecorrespondence over all the earth. Men wandered back and forth fromAtlantis to the Polynesian Continent as men now sail from Europe toAmerica. The interchange was complete, and knowledge, science wasuniversal over the earth, cosmopolitan as it is to-day.
Then came the melting of the glaciers, and the world flood. Therefugees from the drowned continents fled to the high places ofAmerica, Europe, Asia, and the Pacific Isles. And some degeneratednaturally into cave men, neolithic and paleolithic creatures, and someretained their marvelous innate beauty and life-perfection, as theSouth Sea Islanders, and some wandered savage in Africa, and some,like Druids or Etruscans or Chaldeans or Amerindians or Chinese,refused to forget, but taught the old wisdom, only in itshalf-forgotten, symbolic forms. More or less forgotten, as knowledge:remembered as ritual, gesture, and myth-story.
And so, the intense potency of symbols is part at least memory. And soit is that all the great symbols and myths which dominate the worldwhen our history first begins, are very much the same in every countryand every people, the great myths all relate to one another. And so itis that these myths now begin to hypnotize us again, our own impulsetowards our own scientific way of understanding being almost spent.And so, besides myths, we find the same mathematic figures, cosmicgraphs which remain among the aboriginal peoples in all continents,mystic figures and signs whose true cosmic or scientific significanceis lost, yet which continue in use for purposes of conjuring ordivining.
If my reader finds this bosh and abracadabra, all right for him. OnlyI have no more regard for his little crowings on his own littledunghill. Myself, I am not so sure that I am one of theone-and-onlies. I like the wide world of centuries and vastages—mammoth worlds beyond our day, and mankind so wonderful in hisdistances, his history that has no beginning yet always the pomp andthe magnificence of human splendor unfolding through the earth'schanging periods. Floods and fire and convulsions and ice-arrestintervene between the great glamorous civilizations of mankind. Butnothing will ever quench humanity and the human potentiality to evolvesomething magnificent out of a renewed chaos.
I do not believe in evolution, but in the strangeness andrainbow-change of ever-renewed creative civilizations.
So much, then, for my claim to remarkable discoveries. I believe I amonly trying to stammer out the first terms of a forgotten knowledge.But I have no desire to revive dead kings, or dead sages. It is notfor me to arrange fossils, and decipher hieroglyphic phrases. Icouldn't do it if I wanted to. But then I can do something else. Thesoul must take the hint from the relics our scientists have somarvelously gathered out of the forgotten past, and from the hintdevelop a new living utterance. The spark is from dead wisdom, but thefire is life.
And as an example—a very simple one—of how a scientist of the mostinnocent modern sort may hint at truths which, when stated, he wouldlaugh at as fantastic nonsense, let us quote a word from the alreadyold-fashioned "Golden Bough." "It must have appeared to the ancientAryan that the sun was periodically recruited from the fire whichresided in the sacred oak."
Exactly. The fire which resided in the Tree of Life. That is, lifeitself. So we must read: "It must have appeared to the ancient Aryanthat the sun was periodically recruited from life."—Which is what theearly Greek philosophers were always saying. And which still seems tome the real truth, the clue to the cosmos. Instead of life being drawnfrom the sun, it is the emanation from life itself, that is, from allthe living plants and creatures which nourish the sun.
Of course, my dear critic, the ancient Aryans were just doddering—theold duffers: or babbling, the babes. But as for me, I have somerespect for my ancestors, and believe they had more up their sleevethan just the marvel of the unborn me.
One last weary little word. This pseudo-philosophy ofmine—"pollyanalytics," as one of my respected critics might say—isdeduced from the novels and poems, not the reverse. The novels and poemscome unwatched out of one's pen. And then the absolute need which one hasfor some sort of satisfactory mental attitude towards oneself and things ingeneral makes one try to abstract some definite conclusions from one'sexperiences as a writer and as a man. The novels and poems are purepassionate experience. These "pollyanalytics" are inferences madeafterwards, fro