throughout the cities of the world,
there has come into necessary being a series of totally inhuman
controls upon these movements. Every day they nibble their
way into new areasdriving our cars, flying our planes,
interviewing us, diagnosing our diseasesand I cannot even
venture a moral judgment upon these intrusions. They have
become necessary. Ultimately, they may prove salutary.
"The point I wish to make, however; is that we are often
unaware of our own values. We cannot honestly tell what a
thing means to us until it is removed from our life-situation. If
an object of value ceases to exist, then the psychic energies
which were bound up in it are released. We seek after new
objects of value in which to invest thismana, if you like, or
libido, if you don't. And no one thing which has vanished
during the past three or four or five decades was, in itself,
massively significant; and no new thing which came into being
during that time is massively malicious toward the people it has
replaced or the people it in some manner controls. A society,
though, is made up of many things, and when these things are
changed too rapidly the results are unpredictable. An intense
study of mental illness is often quite revealing as to the nature
of the stresses in the society where the illness was made. If
anxiety-patterns fall into special groups and classes, then
something of the discontent of society can be learned from
them. Carl Jung pointed out that when consciousness is
repeatedly frustrated in a quest for values it will turn its search
to the unconscious; failing there, it will proceed to quarry its
way into the hypothetical collective unconscious. He noted, in
the postwar analyses of ex-Nazis, that the longer they searched
for something to erect from the ruins of their liveshaving lived
through a period of classical iconoclasm, and then seen their
new ideals topple as wellthe longer they searched, the further
back they seemed to reach into the collective unconscious of
their people. Their dreams themselves came to take on patterns
out of the Teutonic mythos.
"This, in a much less dramatic sense, is happening today.
There are historical periods when the group tendency for the
mind to turn in upon itself, to turn back, is greater than at other
times. We are living in such a period of Quixotism, in the
original sense of the term. This is because the power to hurt, in
our time, is the power to ignore, to baffleand it is no longer the
exclusive property of human beings"
A buzz interrupted him then. He switched off the recorder,
touched the phone-box.
"Charles Render speaking," he told it;.
"This is Paul Charter," lisped the box. "I am headmaster at
Billing."
"Yes?"
The picture cleared. Render saw a man whose eyes were set
close together beneath a high forehead. The forehead was
heavily creased; the mouth twitched as it spoke.
"Well, I want to apologize again for what happened. It was a
faulty piece of equipment that caused"
"Can't you afford proper facilities? Your fees are high
enough."
"It was a new piece of equipment. It was a factory defect"
"Wasn't there anybody in charge of the class?"
"Yes, but-"
"Why didn't he inspect the equipment? Why wasn't he on
hand to prevent the fall?"
"He was on hand, but it happened too fast for him to do
anything. As for inspecting the equipment for factory defects,
that isn't his job. Look, I'm very sorry. I'm quite fond of your
boy. I can assure you nothing like this will ever happen again."
"You're right, there. But that's because I'm picking him up
tomorrow morning and enrolling him in a school that exercises
proper safety precautions."
Render ended the conversation with a flick of his finger.
After several minutes had passed he stood and crossed the
room to his small wall safe, which was partly masked, though
not concealed, by a shelf of books. It took only a moment for
him to open it and withdraw a jewel box containing a
there has come into necessary being a series of totally inhuman
controls upon these movements. Every day they nibble their
way into new areasdriving our cars, flying our planes,
interviewing us, diagnosing our diseasesand I cannot even
venture a moral judgment upon these intrusions. They have
become necessary. Ultimately, they may prove salutary.
"The point I wish to make, however; is that we are often
unaware of our own values. We cannot honestly tell what a
thing means to us until it is removed from our life-situation. If
an object of value ceases to exist, then the psychic energies
which were bound up in it are released. We seek after new
objects of value in which to invest thismana, if you like, or
libido, if you don't. And no one thing which has vanished
during the past three or four or five decades was, in itself,
massively significant; and no new thing which came into being
during that time is massively malicious toward the people it has
replaced or the people it in some manner controls. A society,
though, is made up of many things, and when these things are
changed too rapidly the results are unpredictable. An intense
study of mental illness is often quite revealing as to the nature
of the stresses in the society where the illness was made. If
anxiety-patterns fall into special groups and classes, then
something of the discontent of society can be learned from
them. Carl Jung pointed out that when consciousness is
repeatedly frustrated in a quest for values it will turn its search
to the unconscious; failing there, it will proceed to quarry its
way into the hypothetical collective unconscious. He noted, in
the postwar analyses of ex-Nazis, that the longer they searched
for something to erect from the ruins of their liveshaving lived
through a period of classical iconoclasm, and then seen their
new ideals topple as wellthe longer they searched, the further
back they seemed to reach into the collective unconscious of
their people. Their dreams themselves came to take on patterns
out of the Teutonic mythos.
"This, in a much less dramatic sense, is happening today.
There are historical periods when the group tendency for the
mind to turn in upon itself, to turn back, is greater than at other
times. We are living in such a period of Quixotism, in the
original sense of the term. This is because the power to hurt, in
our time, is the power to ignore, to baffleand it is no longer the
exclusive property of human beings"
A buzz interrupted him then. He switched off the recorder,
touched the phone-box.
"Charles Render speaking," he told it;.
"This is Paul Charter," lisped the box. "I am headmaster at
Billing."
"Yes?"
The picture cleared. Render saw a man whose eyes were set
close together beneath a high forehead. The forehead was
heavily creased; the mouth twitched as it spoke.
"Well, I want to apologize again for what happened. It was a
faulty piece of equipment that caused"
"Can't you afford proper facilities? Your fees are high
enough."
"It was a new piece of equipment. It was a factory defect"
"Wasn't there anybody in charge of the class?"
"Yes, but-"
"Why didn't he inspect the equipment? Why wasn't he on
hand to prevent the fall?"
"He was on hand, but it happened too fast for him to do
anything. As for inspecting the equipment for factory defects,
that isn't his job. Look, I'm very sorry. I'm quite fond of your
boy. I can assure you nothing like this will ever happen again."
"You're right, there. But that's because I'm picking him up
tomorrow morning and enrolling him in a school that exercises
proper safety precautions."
Render ended the conversation with a flick of his finger.
After several minutes had passed he stood and crossed the
room to his small wall safe, which was partly masked, though
not concealed, by a shelf of books. It took only a moment for
him to open it and withdraw a jewel box containing a
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