Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/327

 Presidential Address. 19

is found to exist in the nature of the symbols utiHsed by the morbid thought-processes of psycho-neurosis and by such consciousness as remains active in sleep. Many attempts have been made to show that this universality of sym- bolism, which is believed to hold good of pathological or quasi-pathological processes, also applies to the myth and rite of the many peoples of the earth. I propose in this address to consider this view critically, and since it is impossible to cover the whole field on such an occasion as this, I intend to examine a special symbol, and for that pur- pose I have chosen the use of water as a symbol of rebirth.

Before, however, I enter upon the consideration of this special topic it will be necessary to consider briefly certain problems with which one is confronted whenever one approaches the problem of the universality of any mani- festation of the human mind. If it could be shown that any human thought, such as the symbolisation of good by the right hand and evil by the left, were universal, we should then have to decide whether this universality depends on an innate capacity for symbolisation of this kind or whether it is the result of a common tradition so prevalent that it influences every member of the community and becomes, perhaps at an early stage of his life, part of the furniture of his mind. We have to decide whether the universal use of the symbol is due to heredity or to what Graham Wallas has fitly called " social heritage." ^ The advocates of the universality of symbolism, such as Jung and Freud and their disciples, seem to believe in the former alternative. The primordial thought-images of Jung which make up his collective unconscious seem to be hereditary, though it is difficult to find any clear expression of Jung's opinion on this point.

It is evident that the question whether certain systems of symbolisation are or are not of universal distribution is

1 Ouy Social Heritage, London, 1921.