For there is reason to suppose that its present organization is very far from being the best of which it is capable. It has come about in a very haphazard manner, and we are not at present making anything like an adequate use of all our powers. Hence by changing the gearing and re-arranging the traditional coupling, so to speak, of our faculties, improvements might conceivably be wrought which would seem to us to border on the miraculous. Thus a pragmatically efficient Psychology might actually invert the miracle of Circe, and really transform the Yahoo into a man.
X
I have endeavoured in this very summary sketch to show that the doom of Tantalus is by no means unconditional, and that he can save himself if he chooses, and that by no superhuman effort, but merely by recognizing facts that are right before his nose and well within his comprehension, and by a little clear thinking upon their import. But I would not presume to predict that he will save himself: history affords no unambiguous guide. It seems to show that something worse and something better than what actually happens is always conceivable, and that neither our hopes nor our fears are ever fully realized. If so, poor Tantalus, hoping against hope, fearing against reason, may muddle along for a good while yet, without repeating either his ancient error of imagining that he could sup with the gods, or his modern folly of using his reason, as Goethe’s Mephistopheles declared, only to become more bestial than any beast!
FOOTNOTES:
[A] The most absurd perhaps was the clause, appearing in all the Peace Treaties, which made ‘reparations’ a first charge on all the assets of the defeated countries. This, of course, completely destroyed their credit, and incapacitated them from raising a loan, forcing them to have recourse to progressive inflation, and so into bankruptcy.
[B] This does not mean, of course, that there are no Christians in the Churches, but only that they are not in control of these institutions.
[C] Icarus, p. 49.
[D] cf. Daedalus, p. 34; Icarus, p. 54.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE:
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.