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 PART II CHAPTER I

ASPECTS OF THE LIBIDO I enter upon the contents of this second part, it seems necessary to cast a backward glance over the singular train of thought which the analysis of the poem "The Moth to the Sun" has produced. Although this poem is very different from the foregoing Hymn of Creation, closer investigation of the "longing for the sun" has carried us into the realm of the fundamental ideas of religion and astral mythology, which ideas are closely related to those considered in the first poem. The creative God of the first poem, whose dual nature, moral and physical, was shown especially clearly to us by Job, has in the second poem a new qualification of astral-mythological, or, to express it better, of astrological character. The God becomes the sun, and in this finds an adequate natural expression quite apart from the moral division of the God idea into the heavenly father and the devil. The sun is, as Renan remarked, really the only rational representation of God, whether we take the point of view of the barbarians of other ages or that of the modern physical sciences. In both cases the sun is the parent God, mythologically predominantly the Father God, from whom all living things draw life; He is the fructifier and 127