"Is that Freud?"
"It's Jung. Freud never got that far. He merely demonstrated that instinct exists in man. The id—he called it. The raw cravings of the infant. To Freud—the id was pretty much what sin is to a preacher. A disgraceful bunch of bestial lusts and impulses. Society—through the parents, mostly—disciplined the id by disciplining the infant and the child; this produced the superego—or conscience, according to Freud. As far as Freud could see, man would always live amidst conflicts set up between his id and whatever superego, or culture, had been hammered around it—plus his own common sense, if any. Dismal view."
"And Jung?"
"Well—Freud showed that instinct exists as a basic motivation of mankind. Not that anybody but a few psychiatrists have ever paid attention to the discovery. But there it was—the beginning of a science of psychological evolution of people. Jung asked what instinct was and how it worked. Jung found out several things Freud only began to realize. For instance, Jung looked at animals and perceived that their instincts unfold in them, individually, as they mature."
"You mean, new-born beavers don't start building dams immediately?"
"Exactly. So the id of infancy is only part of instinct. More instinct appears as the person ages—which is in line with the nature of instinct in all other living beings. Next, Jung noticed that instinct in animals, and in primitive people who hardly ever use reason and logic abstractedly, takes care of the whole life cycle of every species. So it cannot be viewed as mere lawless, infantile lust. If it were only that, animals, and primitive men, would tear up each other and themselves; all life would commit suicide. From the animal viewpoint—instinct includes whatever animals do that men would call 'good,' 'virtuous,' 'unselfish,' 'self-sacrificing,' and so on. Do you follow?"
"I think so."
"There are—so to speak—checks and balances—compensations—counterinstincts. That's the idea embodied in Chinese philosophy. In Taoism, for example. That's the concept symbolized by the yin and the yang. It's the idea embodied in Toynbee's theory of history, too—right up till the present, when his own ego confuses its own description of instinct with history. At that point, Toynbee decided that the Church of England—his personal patternization of instinct—might salvage civilization. Which, of course, is pathetic. But let's drag this bundle a little bit further before we drop it and go back to you. If all animals have a proper pattern of instinct—man has. But man is to some extent conscious—and therefore to some degree able to separate out a personal identity of himself—an ego—from the older, more powerful compulsions and countercompulsions of his instinct. And he has used his consciousness—largely—not to maintain and enhance the liaison between his ego and the forces that drive him statistically forever—but to swell up his ego and to conceal from it those fundamental forces."
"I don't understand that."
"Well—man tries to deny he's an animal. Or to hide the fact. To call everything that is animal subhuman. To call every success he makes his own achievement. To call every disaster no fault of his own. Because he is conscious—he has slowly learned to extend the physical capacities of every kind of animal—for his own, immediate benefits. He has telescope-microscope-X-ray eyes. He has atomic energy muscles. Brighter light at night than the fireflies. He can fly faster than any bird—speed through the water faster than any fish—store food for decades when a ruminant or a pelican can store it only for days. He has even developed quite a few techniques that have no good animal correlative, though most of man's inventions were made ages before even apes appeared on the planet. Man has merely learned. But he tells himself he discovered and invented. It gives him a preposterous arrogance. And that's largely what he has used consciousness to swell up."