bazaar that stand ready for the customer who shall buy them. No one
deceives them; they merely deceive themselves. They are in no wise
persecuted; but their unconscious soul fails to perform its duty. Is
it less adroit than the others: is it less eager? Does it slumber
hopelessly in the depths of its secular prison: and can no amount of
will-power arouse it from its fatal lethargy, and force the redoubtable
doors that lead from the life that unconsciously is aware of all things
to the intelligent life that knows nothing?
13
A friend in whose presence I was discussing these matters said to me
yesterday: "Life, whose questions are more searching than those of the
philosophers, will this very day compel me to add a somewhat curious
problem to those you have stated. I am wondering what the result will
be when two 'lucks'--in other words, two unconsciousnesses, of which
one is adroit and fortunate, the other inept and bungling--meet and in
some measure blend in the same venture, the same undertaking? Which
will triumph over the other? I soon shall know. This afternoon I
propose to take a step that will be of supreme importance to the person
I value above all others in this world. Her entire future may almost
be said to depend upon it, her exterior happiness, the possibility of
her living in accordance with her nature and her rights. Now to me
chance has always been a faithful and far-seeing friend; and as I
glance over my past, and review the five or six decisive moments which,
as with all men, were the golden pivots on which fortune turned, I am
induced to believe in my star, and am morally certain that if I alone
were concerned in the step I am taking to-day, it would be bound to
succeed, because I am 'lucky.' But the person on whose behalf I am
acting has never been fortunate. Her intellect is remarkably subtle
and profound, her will is a thousand times stronger and better balanced
than my own; but, with all this, one can only believe that she
possesses a foolish or malignant unconsciousness, which has
persistently, ruthlessly, exposed her to act after act of injustice,
dishonesty, and treachery, has robbed her again and again of her due,
and compelled her to travel the path of disastrous coincidence. Be
sure that it would have forced her to embark on the ship that you speak
of. I ask myself, therefore, what attitude will my vigilant,
thoughtful unconsciousness adopt towards this indolent and sinning
brother, in whose name it will have to act, whose place, as it were, it
will take?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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