Fantasia of the Unconscious | Page 4

one exclusive
consummation. Was the building of the cathedrals a working up
towards the act of coition? Was the dynamic impulse sexual? No. The
sexual element was present, and important. But not predominant. The
same in the building of the Panama Canal. The sexual impulse, in its
widest form, was a very great impulse towards the building of the
Panama Canal. But there was something else, of even higher
importance, and greater dynamic power.
And what is this other, greater impulse? It is the desire of the human
male to build a world: not "to build a world for you, dear"; but to build
up out of his own self and his own belief and his own effort something
wonderful. Not merely something useful. Something wonderful. Even
the Panama Canal would never have been built simply to let ships
through. It is the pure disinterested craving of the human male to make
something wonderful, out of his own head and his own self, and his
own soul's faith and delight, which starts everything going. This is the
prime motivity. And the motivity of sex is subsidiary to this: often
directly antagonistic.
That is, the essentially religious or creative motive is the first motive
for all human activity. The sexual motive comes second. And there is a
great conflict between the interests of the two, at all times.
What we want to do, is to trace the creative or religious motive to its

source in the human being, keeping in mind always the near
relationship between the religious motive and the sexual. The two great
impulses are like man and wife, or father and son. It is no use putting
one under the feet of the other.
The great desire to-day is to deny the religious impulse altogether, or
else to assert its absolute alienity from the sexual impulse. The
orthodox religious world says faugh! to sex. Whereupon we thank
Freud for giving them tit for tat. But the orthodox scientific world says
fie! to the religious impulse. The scientist wants to discover a cause for
everything. And there is no cause for the religious impulse. Freud is
with the scientists. Jung dodges from his university gown into a priest's
surplice till we don't know where we are. We prefer Freud's Sex to
Jung's Libido or Bergson's Elan Vital. Sex has at least some definite
reference, though when Freud makes sex accountable for everything he
as good as makes it accountable for nothing.
We refuse any Cause, whether it be Sex or Libido or Elan Vital or ether
or unit of force or perpetuum mobile or anything else. But also we feel
that we cannot, like Moses, perish on the top of our present ideal
Pisgah, or take the next step into thin air. There we are, at the top of our
Pisgah of ideals, crying Excelsior and trying to clamber up into the
clouds: that is, if we are idealists with the religious impulse rampant in
our breasts. If we are scientists we practice aeroplane flying or eugenics
or disarmament or something equally absurd.
The promised land, if it be anywhere, lies away beneath our feet. No
more prancing upwards. No more uplift. No more little Excelsiors
crying world-brotherhood and international love and Leagues of
Nations. Idealism and materialism amount to the same thing on top of
Pisgah, and the space is very crowded. We're all cornered on our
mountain top, climbing up one another and standing on one another's
faces in our scream of Excelsior.
To your tents, O Israel! Brethren, let us go down. We will descend. The
way to our precious Canaan lies obviously downhill. An end of uplift.
Downhill to the land of milk and honey. The blood will soon be
flowing faster than either, but we can't help that. We can't help it if

Canaan has blood in its veins, instead of pure milk and honey.
If it is a question of origins, the origin is always the same, whatever we
say about it. So is the cause. Let that be a comfort to us. If we want to
talk about God, well, we can please ourselves. God has been talked
about quite a lot, and He doesn't seem to mind. Why we should take it
so personally is a problem. Likewise if we wish to have a tea party with
the atom, let us: or with the wriggling little unit of energy, or the ether,
or the Libido, or the Elan Vital, or any other Cause. Only don't let us
have sex for tea. We've all got too much of it under the table; and really,
for my part, I prefer to keep mine there, no matter what the Freudians
say about me.
But it is tiring to go to any more tea parties with the