existence that is so vast, so divine, so inexhaustible and
unfathomable, that we must seek for the explanation of fortunate or
contrary chances. Within us is a being that is our veritable ego, our
first-born: immemorial, illimitable, universal, and probably immortal.
Our intellect, which is merely a kind of phosphorescence that plays on
this inner sea, has as yet but faint knowledge of it. But our
intellect is gradually learning that every secret of the human
phenomena it has hitherto not understood must reside there, and there
alone. This unconscious being lives on another plane than our
intellect, in another world. It knows nothing of Time and Space, the
two formidable but illusory walls between which our reason must flow if
it would not be hopelessly lost. It knows no proximity, it knows no
distance; past and future concern it not, or the resistance of matter.
It is familiar with all things; there is nothing it cannot do. To this
power, this knowledge, we have indeed at all times accorded a certain
varying recognition; we have given names to its manifestations, we have
called them instinct, soul, unconsciousness, sub-consciousness, reflex
action, presentiment, intuition, &c. We credit it more especially with
the indeterminate and often prodigious force contained in those of our
nerves that do not directly serve to produce our will and our reason: a
force that would appear to be the very fluid of life. Its nature is
probably more or less the same in all men; but it has very different
methods of communicating with the intellect. In some men this unknown
principle is enshrined at so great a depth that it concerns itself
solely with physical functions and the permanence of the species;
whereas in others it would seem to be for ever on the alert, rising
again and again to the surface of external and conscious life, which
its fairy-like presence quickens; intervening at every instant,
warning, deciding, counselling; blending with most of the essential
facts of a career. Whence comes this faculty? There are no fixed or
certain laws. We do not detect, for instance, any constant relation
between the activity of the unconsciousness and the development of the
intellect. This activity obeys rules of which we know nothing. So far
as we at present can tell, it would seem to be purely accidental. We
discover it in one man, and not in another; nor have we any clue that
shall help us to guess at the reason of this difference.
11
The probable course pursued by fortunate or contrary chances may well
be as follows. A happy or untoward event, that has sprung from the
profound recesses of great and eternal laws, arises before us and
completely blocks the way. It stands motionless there: immovable,
inevitable, disproportionate. It pays no heed to us; it has not come
on our account, but for itself, because of itself. It ignores us
completely. It is we who approach the event; we who, having arrived
within the sphere of its influence, will either fly from it or face it,
try a circuitous route or fare boldly onwards. Let us assume that the
event is disastrous: fire, death, disease, or a somewhat abnormal form
of accident or calamity. It waits there, invisible, indifferent,
blind, but perfect and unalterable; but as yet it is merely potential.
It exists entire, but only in the future; and for us, whose intellect
and consciousness are served by senses unable to perceive things
otherwise than through the succession of time, it is as though it were
not. Let us be still more precise; let us take the case of a
shipwreck. The ship that must perish has not yet left the port; the
rock or the shoal that shall rend it sleeps peacefully beneath the
waves; the storm that shall burst forth at the end of the month is
slumbering, far beyond our gaze, in the secret of the skies. Normally,
were nothing written, had the catastrophe[3] not already taken place in
the future, fifty passengers would have arrived from five or six
different countries, and have duly gone on board. But destiny has
clearly marked the vessel for its own. She must most certainly perish.
And for months past, perhaps for years, a mysterious selection has been
at work amongst the passengers who were to have departed upon the same
day. It is possible that out of fifty who had originally intended to
sail, only twenty will cross the gangway at the moment of lifting the
anchor. It is even possible that not a single one of the fifty will
listen to the insistent claims of the circumstance that, but for the
disaster ahead, would have rendered their departure imperative, and
that their place will be taken by twenty or thirty others in whom the
voice of Chance does not speak with a similar power. Here we touch the
profoundest depths of the profoundest of human enigmas; and the
hypothesis necessarily falters. But is it not more reasonable, in the
fictitious case before us--wherein we merely thrust into prominence
what is of constant occurrence in the more obscure conjunctures of
daily life--to regard both decision and action as emanating from our
unconsciousness, rather than from doubtful, and distant, gods? Our
unconsciousness is aware of the catastrophe: it must be: our
unconsciousness sees it; for it knows neither time nor space, and the
disaster is therefore happening as actually before its eyes as before
the eyes of the eternal powers. The mode of prescience matters but
little. Out of the fifty travellers who have been warned, two or three
will have had a real presentiment of the danger; these will be the ones
in whom unconsciousness is free and untrammelled, and therefore more
readily able to attain the first, and still obscure, layers of
intellect. The others suspect nothing: they inveigh against the
inexplicable obstacles and delays: they strain every nerve to arrive in
time, but their departure becomes impossible. They fall ill, take a
wrong road, change their plans, meet with some insignificant adventure,
have a quarrel, a love affair, a moment of idleness or forgetfulness,
which detains them in spite of themselves. To the first it will never
have even occurred to sail on the ill-starred boat, although this be
the one that they should logically, inevitably, have been compelled to
choose. But the efforts that their unconsciousness has put forth to
save them have their workings so deep down that most of these men will
have no idea that they owe their life to a fortunate chance; and they
will honestly believe that they never intended to sail by the ship that
the powers of the sea had claimed.
12
As for those who punctually make their appearance at the fatal tryst,
they belong to the tribe of the unlucky. They are the unfortunate race
of our race. When the rest all fly, they alone remain in their places.
When others retreat, they advance boldly. They infallibly travel by
the train that shall leave the rails, they pass underneath the tower at
the exact moment of its collapse, they enter the house in which the
fire is smouldering, cross the forest on which lightning shall fall,
entrust all they have to the banker who means to abscond. They love
the one woman on earth whom they should have avoided, they make the
gesture they should not have made, they do the thing they should not
have done. But when fortune beckons and the others are hastening,
urged by the deep voice of benevolent powers, these pass by, not
hearing; and, vouchsafed no advice or warning but that of their
intellect, the very wise old guide whose purblind eyes see only the
tiny paths at the foot of the mountain, they go astray in a world that
human reason has not yet understood. These men have surely the right
to exclaim against destiny; and yet not on the grounds that they would
prefer. They have the right to ask why it has withheld from them the
watchful guard who warns their brethren. But, this reproach once
made--and it is the cardinal reproach against irreducible
injustice--they have no further cause of complaint. The universe is
not hostile to them. Calamities do not pursue them; it is they who go
towards calamity Things from without wish them no ill; the mischief
comes from themselves. The misfortune they meet has not been lying in
wait for them; they selected it for their own. With them, as with all
men, events are posted along the course of their years, like goods in a
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?
"How, and where, is the momentous decision being at this moment arrived
at, in search of which I shall so soon set forth? What power is it
that now, at this very moment, while I am speaking, is balancing the
pros and cons, and decreeing the happiness or sorrow of the woman I
represent? From which sphere, or perhaps immemorial virtue, from what
hidden spirit or invisible star, will the weight fall that shall
incline the scale to light or to darkness? To judge by outward
appearance, decision must rest with the will, the reason, the interest
of the parties engaged; in reality it often is otherwise. When one
finds oneself thus face to face with the problem which directly affects
a person we love, this problem no longer appears quite so simple; our
eyes open wider, and we throw a startled, anxious, in a sense almost a
virgin glance, upon all this unknown that leads us and that we are
compelled to obey.
"I take this step therefore with more emotion, I put forth more zeal
and vigour, than if it were my own life, my own happiness, that stood
in peril. She for whom I am acting is indeed 'more I than I am
myself,' and for a long time past her happiness has been the source of
mine. Of this both my heart and my reason are fully aware; but does my
unconsciousness know? My reason and heart, that form my consciousness,
are barely thirty years old; my unconscious soul, still reminiscent of
primitive secrets, may well date centuries back. Its evolution is very
deliberate. It is as slow as a world that turns in time without end.
It will probably therefore not yet have learned that a second existence
has linked itself to mine, and completely absorbs it. How many years
must elapse before the great news shall penetrate to its retreat? Here
again we note its diversity, its inequality. In one man, perhaps,
unconsciousness will immediately recognise what is taking place in his
heart; in another, it will very tardily lend itself to the phenomena of
reason. There is a love, again, such as that of the mother for her
child, in which it moves in advance of both heart and reason. Only
after a very long time does the unconscious soul of a mother separate
itself from that of her children; it watches over these at first with
far more zeal and solicitude than over the mother. But, in a love like
mine, who shall say whether my unconsciousness has gathered that this
love is more essential to me than my life? I myself believe that it is
satisfied that the step I propose to take in no way concerns me. It
will not appear; it will not intervene. At the very moment when I
shall be feverishly displaying all the energy I possess, when I shall
be striving for victory more keenly than were my salvation at stake, it
will be tending its own mysterious affairs deep down in its shadowy
dwelling. Were I seeking justice for myself, it would already be on
the alert. It would know, perhaps, that I had better do nothing
to-day. I should probably have not the slightest idea of intervention;
but it would raise some unforeseen obstacle. I should fall ill; catch
a bad cold, be prevented by some secondary event from arriving at the
unpropitious hour. Then, when I was actually in the presence of the
man who held my destiny in his hands, my vigilant friend would spread
its wings over me, its breath would inspire me, its light would dispel
my darkness. It would dictate to me the words that I must say: they
would be the only words that could meet the secret objections of the
master of my Fate. It would regulate my attitude, my silence, my
gestures; it would endow me with the confidence, the nameless
influence, which often will govern the decisions of men far more than
the reasons of reason or the eloquence of interest. But here I am
sorely afraid that my unconsciousness will do none of these things. It
will remain perfectly passive. It will not appear on the familiar
threshold. In its obtuseness, impervious to the fact that my life has
ceased to be self-contained, it will act in accordance with its ancient
traditions, those that have ruled it these hundreds of years; it will
persist in regarding this matter as one that does not concern me, and
will believe that in helping my failure it will be doing me service;
whereas in truth it will afflict me more grievously, cause me more
sorrow, than if it were to betray me at the approach of death. I shall
be importing, therefore, into this affair, only the palest reflection,
a kind of phantom, of my own luck; and I ask myself with dread whether
this will suffice to counterbalance the contrary fortune which I have,
as it were, assumed, and which I represent."
14
Some days later my friend informed me that his action had been
unsuccessful. It may be that this reverse was only due to chance or to
his own want of confidence. For the confidence that sees success ahead
pursues it with a pertinacity and resource of which hesitation and
doubt are incapable; nor is it troubled by any of those involuntary
weaknesses which give so great an advantage to the adversary's
instinct. And there may probably be much truth also in his manner of
depicting unconsciousness. For truly, there are depths in us at which
unconsciousness and confidence would seem to blend, and it becomes
difficult to say where the first begins, or the second leaves off.
We will not pursue this too subtle inquiry, but rather consider the
other and more direct questions that life is ever putting to us
concerning one of its greatest problems--chance. This possesses what
may be called a daily interest. It asks us, for instance, what
attitude we should adopt towards men who are incontestably unlucky; men
whose evil star has such pernicious power that it infallibly brings
disaster to whatever comes within the range--often a very wide one--of
its baleful influence. Ought we unhesitatingly to fly from such men,
as Dr. Foissac advises? Yes, doubtless, if their misfortunes arise
from an imprudent and unduly hazardous spirit, a heedless, quarrelsome,
mischief-making, Utopian or clouded mind. Ill-luck is a contagious
disease; and one unconsciousness will often infect another. But if the
misfortunes be wholly unmerited, or fall upon those who are dear to us,
flight were unjust and shameful. In such a case the conscious side of
our being--which, though it know but little, is yet able to fashion
truths of a different order, truths that might almost be the first
flowers of a dawning world--is bound to resist the universal wisdom of
unconsciousness, bound to brave its warnings and involve it in its own
ruin, which may well be a victory upon an ideal plane that one day
perhaps shall appeal to the unconsciousness also.
15
We ask ourselves, therefore, whether unconsciousness, which we regard
as the source of our luck, is really incapable of change or
improvement. Have we not all of us noticed how strange are the ways of
chance? When we behold it active in a small town, or among a certain
number of men within the range of our own observation, the goddess
would seem to become as persistent as a gadfly, and no less fantastic.
Her very marked personality and character will vary in accordance with
the event or being whereon she may fasten. She has all kinds of
eccentricities, but pursues each one logically to the finish. Her
first gesture will tell us nothing; from her second we can predict all
that she means to do. Protean divinity that no image could completely
describe, here she leaps suddenly forth, like a fountain in the midst
of a desert, to disappear after having given birth to an ephemeral
oasis; there she returns at regular intervals, collecting and
scattering, like migratory birds that obey the rhythm of the seasons.
On our right she fells a man and concerns herself with him no further;
on our left she bears down another, and furiously worries her victim.
But, though she bring favour or ruin, she will almost always remain
astoundingly faithful to the character she has once and for all assumed
in a particular case. This man, for instance, who has been
unsuccessful in war, will continue to be unsuccessful; that other will
invariably win or lose at cards; a third will infallibly be deceived; a
fourth will find water, fire, or the dangers of the street especially
hostile; a fifth will be constantly fortunate or unfortunate in love,
money matters, &c., and so to the end. All this may prove nothing, but
we may regard it at least as some indication that her realm is truly
within us and not without; and that a hidden force that emanates only
from us provides her with form and with vestment.
Her habits at times will suddenly alter, one eccentricity producing
another; some brusque change of front will give the lie to her
character, to confirm it the instant after in a new atmosphere. We say
then that "luck turns." May it not rather be our unconsciousness that
is gradually developing, at last displaying some prudence, attention,
and slowly becoming aware that important events are stirring in the
world to which it is attached? Has it gained some experience? Has a
ray of intelligence, a spark of will-power, filtered through to its
lair and hinted at danger? Does it learn, after years have flown, and
trial after trial has had to be borne, the wisdom of casting aside its
confident apathy? Can external disaster arouse it from perilous
slumber? Or, if it always has known what was happening over the roof
of its prison, is it able, after long and painful effort, at last, at
the critical moment, to contrive some sort of crevice in the great
wall, built by the indifference of centuries, that separates it from
its unknown sisters; and does it thus succeed in entering the ephemeral
life on which a part of its own life depends?
16
And yet we must admit that this hypothesis of unconsciousness will not
suffice to account for all the injustice of chance. Its three most
iniquitous acts are the three disasters--the most terrible of all to
which man is exposed--that habitually strike him before birth: I refer
to absolute poverty, disease (especially in the shocking forms of
physiological degradation and incurable infirmities, of repulsive
ugliness and deformity), and intellectual weakness. These are the
three great priestesses of unrighteousness that lie in wait for
innocence and brand it, on the threshold of life. And yet, mysterious
as their method of choice may appear, the triple source whence they
derive these three irremediable scourges is less mysterious than one is
inclined to believe. We need not look for it in a pre-established
will, in fatal, hostile, eternal, impenetrable laws. Poverty has its
origin in man's own province; and though we may marvel why one should
be rich and the other poor, we are well aware that the existence, side
by side, of excessive wealth and excessive misery, is due to human
injustice alone. In this wickedness neither gods nor stars have part.
And as for disease and mental weakness, when we shall have eliminated
from them what now is due to poverty, mother of most of our moral and
physical sorrows, as well as to the anterior, and by no means
inevitable, faults of the parents, then, though some measure of
persistent and unaccountable injustice may still remain, this relic of
mystery will very nigh go into the hollow of the philosopher's hand,
and there he shall, later, examine it at his leisure. But we of today
shall be wise in refusing to allow our life to be unnecessarily
darkened, or hedged round with imaginary maledictions and foes.
As far as ordinary luck is concerned, we shall do well to believe, for
the moment, that the history of our fortune (which is not necessarily
the history of our real happiness, since this may be wholly independent
of luck) is the history of our unconscious being. There are more
elements of probability in such a creed than in the assumption that the
stars, eternity, or the spirit of the universe are taking part in our
petty adventures; and it gives more spur to our courage. And this
idea--even though it may possibly be as difficult to alter the
character of our unconsciousness as to modify the course of Mars or of
Venus--still seems less distant and less chimerical than the other; and
when we have to choose between two probabilities, it is our imperative
duty to select the one that presents the least obstacles to our hopes.
Further, should misfortune be indeed inevitable, there would be I know
not what proud consolation in being able to tell ourselves that it
issues solely from us, and that we are not the victims of a malign will
or the playthings of useless chance that in suffering more than our
brothers we are perhaps only recording, in time and space, the
necessary form of our own personality. And so long as calamity do not
attack the intimate pride of man, he retains the force to continue the
struggle and accomplish his essential mission: which is, to live with
all the ardour whereof he is capable, and as though his life were of
greater consequence than any other to the destinies of mankind.
This idea is also more conformable to the vast law which restores to
us, one by one, the gods wherewith we had filled the world. Of these
gods the greater number were merely the effects of causes that reposed
in ourselves. As we progress we shall discover that many a force that
mastered us and aroused our wonder was only an ill-understood fragment
of our own power; and this will probably become more apparent every day.
And though we shall not have conquered the unknown force by bringing it
nearer or enclosing it within us, there yet shall be gain in knowing
where it abides and where we may question it. Obscure forces surround
us; but the one that concerns us most nearly lies at the very centre of
our being. All the others pass through it: it is their trysting-place:
they re-enter and congregate there; and only in the degree of their
relation to it have they interest for us.