Page:Psychology of the Unconscious (1916).djvu/434

 he lay exhausted, with half-closed eyes, upon his couch, sunk deep in dreams, the picture of extreme introversion.

We have already seen that, in such circumstances, an infantile internal equivalent for reality appears, in the place of external life and reality. This is also the case with Hiawatha:

"And he saw a youth approaching, Dressed in garments green and yellow, Coming through the purple twilight, Through the splendor of the sunset; Plumes of green bent o'er his forehead, And his hair was soft and golden."

This remarkable apparition reveals himself in the following manner to Hiawatha:

"From the Master of Life descending, I, the friend of man, Mondamin, Come to warn you and instruct you, How by struggle and by labor You shall gain what you have prayed for. Rise up from your bed of branches; Rise, O youth, and wrestle with me!"

Mondamin is the maize: a god, who is eaten, arising from Hiawatha's introversion. His hunger, taken in a double sense, his longing for the nourishing mother, gives birth from his soul to another hero, the edible maize, the son of the earth mother. Therefore, he again arises at sunset, symbolizing the entrance into the mother, and in the western sunset glow he begins again the mystic struggle with the self-created god, the god who has originated entirely from the longing for the nourishing mother.