"I believe it's the function of consciousness to rediscover instinct, understand it, and pursue it--in the ways that it has to go. That it does go--people by the billions to the contrary notwithstanding. So far, people have made only blind efforts in that direction. Unconscious efforts. Their religions--according to the soundest hypothesis I've encountered--are the results of such attempts: expressions of animal instinct, as it appears in men--and in men wholly unaware of what they are expressing." "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."