Fantasia of the Unconscious

by D. H. Lawrence

So we may as well settle down to the little god in the machine. We may as well call it the individual soul, and leave it there. It's as far as the bicycle would ever get, if it had to define Mademoiselle. But be sure the bicycle would not deny the existence of the young miss who seats herself in the saddle. Not like us, who try to pretend there is no one in the saddle. Why even the sun would no more spin without a rider than would a cycle-pedal. But, since we have innumerable planets to reckon with, in the spinning we must not begin to define the rider in terms of our own exclusive planet. Nevertheless, rider there is: even a rider of the many-wheeled universe.

But let us leave the universe alone. It is too big a bauble for me.—Revenons.—At the start of me there is me. There is a mysterious little entity which is my individual self, the god who builds the machine and then makes his gay excursion of seventy years within it. Now we are talking at the moment about the machine. For the moment we are the bicycle, and not the feather-brained cyclist. So that all we can do is to define the cyclist in terms of ourself. A bicycle could say: Here, upon my leather saddle, rests a strange and animated force, which I call the force of gravity, as being the one great force which controls my universe. And yet, on second thoughts, I must modify myself. This great force of gravity is not always in the saddle. Sometimes it just is not there—and I lean strangely against a wall. I have been even known to turn upside down, with my wheels in the air; spun by the same mysterious Miss. So that I must introduce a theory of Relativity. However, mostly, when I am awake and alive, she is in the saddle; or it is in the saddle, the mysterious force. And when it is in the saddle, then two subsidiary forces plunge and claw upon my two pedals, plunge and claw with inestimable power. And at the same time, a kind and mysterious force sways my head-stock, sways most incalculably, and governs my whole motion. This force is not a driving force, but a subtle directing force, beneath whose grip my bright steel body is flexible as a dipping highroad. Then let me not forget the sudden clutch of arrest upon my hurrying wheels. Oh, this is pain to me! While I am rushing forward, surpassing myself in an élan vital, suddenly the awful check grips my back wheel, or my front wheel, or both. Suddenly there is a fearful arrest. My soul rushes on before my body, I feel myself strained, torn back. My fibers groan. Then perhaps the tension relaxes.

So the bicycle will continue to babble about itself. And it will inevitably wind up with a philosophy. "Oh, if only the great and divine force rested for ever upon my saddle, and if only the mysterious will which sways my steering gear remained in place for ever: then my pedals would revolve of themselves, and never cease, and no hideous brake should tear the perpetuity of my motions. Then, oh then I should be immortal. I should leap through the world for ever, and spin to infinity, till I was identified with the dizzy and timeless cycle-race of the stars and the great sun...."

Poor old bicycle. The very thought is enough to start a philanthropic society for the prevention of cruelty to bicycles.

Well, then, our human body is the bicycle. And our individual and incomprehensible self is the rider thereof. And seeing that the universe is another bicycle riding full tilt, we are bound to suppose a rider for that also. But we needn't say what sort of rider. When I see a cockroach scuttling across the floor and turning up its tail I stand affronted, and think: A rum sort of rider you must have. You've no business to have such a rider, do you hear?—And when I hear the monotonous and plaintive cuckoo in the June woods, I think: Who the devil made that clock?—And when I see a politician making a fiery speech on a platform, and the crowd gawping, I think: Lord, save me—they've all got riders. But Holy Moses! you could never guess what was coming.—And so I shouldn't like, myself, to start guessing about the rider of the universe. I am all too flummoxed by the masquerade in the tourney round about me.

We ourselves then: wisdom, like charity, begins at home. We've each of us got a rider in the saddle: an individual soul. Mostly it can't ride, and can't steer, so mankind is like squadrons of bicycles running amok. We should every one fall off if we didn't ride so thick that we hold each other up. Horrid nightmare!

As for myself, I have a horror of riding en bloc. So I grind away uphill, and sweat my guts out, as they say.

Well, well—my body is my bicycle: the whole middle of me is the saddle where sits the rider of my soul. And my front wheel is the cardiac plane, and my back wheel is the solar plexus. And the brakes are the voluntary ganglia. And the steering gear is my head. And the right and left pedals are the right and left dynamics of the body, in some way corresponding to the sympathetic and voluntary division.

So that now I know more or less how my rider rides me, and from what centers controls me. That is, I know the points of vital contact between my rider and my machine: between my invisible and my visible self. I don't attempt to say what is my rider. A bicycle might as well try to define its young Miss by wriggling its handle-bars and ringing its bell.

However, having more or less determined the four primary motions, we can see the further unfolding. In a child, the solar plexus and the cardiac plexus, with corresponding voluntary ganglia, are awake and active. From these centers develop the great functions of the body.