Page:Path of Vision; pocket essays of East and West.djvu/28

, never remedies a wrong act. It only complicates it. For though the wrong may cease, temporarily or permanently, the act continues—becomes a part of the unwritten social law. Likewise, a definite consciousness, blossoming in one individual, may have its roots in a generation that is already extinct, and may waft its seeds to generations unborn. It is because we live mostly in the present, however, that we only see the link in the chain of circumstances, and we often mistake effects for causes. Nevertheless, we pretend to be able to define the confusion within us.

Psychology, we call to our aid. But civilized man has but recently began to study the underlying strata of his intellectual and spiritual make-up. We are still lisping in the hornbook of psychology. Why then put on dionysian airs and bamboozle ourselves and the world with introspective profundities? Or with candor, measured and designed? Or with loud, unreserved avowals of seeking and understanding the re-actions of life upon the Ego?