The organic vision of Hélan Jaworski

by the mammals need not be a material one. The mammals individualise the senses of smell, sight and hearing in order to adapt to jumping, climbing trees and mountains, swimming and hunting, but above all they represent the psychic traits which—in man—reach their apotheosis. So that where, as we have previously seen, the lower animals find their correspondence in the physiological organs and functions—the warm-blooded creatures, the mammals, are the exteriorisation of the psyche and emotions of man. The bear is slow, ponderous and prudent; the fox is incarnated cunning, the lion is courage, the dog faithfulness and the tiger ferocity. The cat is an egotist and the Jackal a coward. Man’s psyche contains them all and, if we listen, we hear in man the wild howlings of the forest.

Man resembles the mammals in the general plan of his organism but is, however, superior to them by his intelligence which permits him to study and know himself, The axis of the body, which is horizontal in all other animals, is in man vertical. All creation goes on bended knee before him. Interiorisation has reached its zenith. The tail, the exteriorising pole, disappears. Man stands erect and raises his gaze to the stars.—He steps forward onto the stage of history.

In his book Etapes de [Historie, Dr Jaworski follows man’s historical progress and continues to demonstrate how the macrocosm is reflected and repeated in the microcosm. He shows, in considerable detail, how the great epochs of history are enacted again by each one of us as we progress from childhood to adulthood. Growing up is a recapitulation.

At the end of the ice age, among the storms and melting glacial waters, man came forth from the caves and started on his long voyage to maturity. Does not every baby experience the same thing when the waters break and he emerges from the womb into the cold outside world?

During the first few weeks of his life all the baby’s wants are attended to and he lives in a land flowing—at least with milk. He experiences the mythical golden age of humanity until he cuts his first teeth and has to learn to bite and chew his food—in other words, he has to work for his living. Like Adam and Eve he has been cast out of the Garden of Eden.

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