Civilisation: Its Cause and Cure; and Other Essays — John Shaqi
Civilisation: Its Cause and Cure; and Other EssaysCarpenter, Edward
Philosophy
Civilisation: Its Cause and Cure; and Other Essays
Carpenter, Edward
Civilization; Crime; Evolution; Science
The point of difference throughout (being the transference of the centre
of gravity of life and consciousness from the partial to the universal
man) is symbolised by the gradual resumption of more universal
conditions. That is to say that during the civilisation-period, the body
being systematically wrapped in clothes, the _head_ alone represents
man--the little finnikin, intellectual, _self-conscious_ man in
contra-distinction to the cosmical man represented by the entirety of
the bodily organs. The body has to be delivered from its swathings in
order that the cosmical consciousness may once more reside in the human
breast. We have to become "all face" again--as the savage said of
himself.[15]
Where the cosmic self is, there is no more self-consciousness. The body
and what is ordinarily called the self are felt to be only parts of the
true self, and the ordinary distinctions of inner and outer, egotism and
altruism, etc., lose a good deal of their value. Thought no longer
returns upon the local self as the chief object of regard, but
consciousness is continually radiant from it, filling the body and
overflowing upon external Nature. Thus the Sun in the physical world is
the allegory of the true self. The worshiper must adore the Sun, he must
saturate himself with sunlight, and take the physical Sun into himself.
Those who live by fire and candle-light are filled with phantoms; their
thoughts are Will-o'-th'-wisp-like images of themselves, and they are
tormented by a horrible self-consciousness.
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