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By Root 5571 0

symbolised in what happens when Pandora defies the instruction not to open her mysterious sealed `vase' or vessel. This is not just another image for humanity breaking loose from the confines of nature. It unleashes into the world a range of wholly new troubles, from envy and lust to hatred and war. And all these are by-products of the emergence of the human ego. It is precisely this sense of having a separate ego-centred existence which cuts human beings off from each other, potentially setting them at odds with each other and with nature itself, to a degree which marks them out from any other species. When Prometheus steals `fire' from the gods, what he is really stealing is that divine spark of consciousness which distinguishes humanity from all those other forms of life which live in unconscious thrall to instinct. Yet for all the new freedom this gives, there is a terrible price to be paid, symbolised in the image of Prometheus stretched out in agony on that Caucasian rock, having his liver eaten away every day by the insatiable eagle. It is the state of perpetual nagging discontent which must follow from that most crucial of all the new faculties that ego-consciouness brings with it: the ability to imagine that things might be different from what they are.

Ego versus the unconscious

The term `consciousness' is often used too loosely, as if only man is conscious and all other forms of life live wholly unconsciously. All animals of course possess consciousness to some degree, right down to the humblest amoeba which shows consciousness of the particle of food it tracks down to eat. Higher up the evolutionary ladder, the degree of conscious intelligence shown by, say, dolphins or chimpanzees is enormous. Similarly, the higher we look up the evolutionary ladder, the more we see animals taking on their own individual personality, so that the individual members of a troop of chimpanzees are much more clearly differentiated from each other than, say, a shoal of herrings. Where the distinction lies is in the degree to which the conscious part of any animal's mind, the foreground from which it is perceiving and making sense of the world, remains automatically in harmony with that much larger part of its mind which operates below the level of conscious awareness, and which is governed by all the framework of instinct. In this respect, even the animal species which have the greatest degree of consciousness still operate entirely instinctively; because they do so in such a way that the unconscious and conscious parts of their minds remain wholly integrated and continue to function in perfect accord with each other.

But if the way an animal spends its life, organises its social system and pairs off to reproduce its kind is all dictated by instinct, then, in the broadest sense, the same is true for Homo sapiens. The history of mankind shows that he has formed societies, propagated his kind, preserved the chain of life from generation to generation, just like any other species. However, in human societies as in no other, an element of instability has crept in. Human societies are not governed by an unchanging framework of order. They are in perpetual flux. Men do not obtain their food, build their dwellings, order their relationship with the rest of nature according to strict unchanging patterns and laws. They have the power to make choices. The patterns governing their lives change. Above all, every component part of their society, whether it be each individual human being making it up or each collective group within it, each family, community, class, generation, nation and race, becomes conscious of its own identity, separate from the rest.

To understand more clearly how this works requires more a precise definition of just where the difference between men and animals lies. Every animal has what may broadly be described as two complementary sets of instincts. On one hand each individual animal has its physical instincts, such as its need to eat, drink, breathe and sleep, its urge for sexual release. Because these relate only