Erich Gutkind : as prophet of the New Age

or ‘I feel’ or ‘I eat’. To this centre he ascribed the same existence and permanence as he did to things. He called his inner consciousness ‘soul’ and the inmost ‘l’ which was the subject of all his actions, thoughts and feelings he called ‘spirit’. But this ‘T was a precarious and changeable thing which needed to be carefully tended in order to maintain itself and grow. Just as his body had to be fed, so did his inner self. His body was indeed outer evidence of the reality of himself, but it was not enough. In order to develop the full sense of his own individuality man needed fine clothes, a house of his own, cattle, land, a large family—the more he had the more he needed, even up to an empire, power, fame and a monumentafter his death. The whole process of “empire-building’ to boost one’s ego is too well known to need further description, but it is not always realised what an essential part it has played in the development of man’s individuality. And ifhe could not get, or had no desire for, material wealth or power, there were other more subtle and often more effective ways of feeding the ego to make it grow, such as the accumulation of learning, the practice of moral virtue, self-sacrifice for the sake of others, and the many other ways in which a man can cultivate his self-esteem or the esteem of others.

It is clear that the whole process by which man has built up his world out of raw nature is the counterpart of that by which he has developed the sense of his own self. The two were necessary to each other. The development of reason and intellect has been necessary to both. Science has given us the means of using nature for our own ends and raised us out of our childishly subjective attitude to the world around us. It has raised us beyond the ever-flowing and changing phenomena of nature which could only overwhelm us, so that we stand above it all and look at it and analyse it—that is to say, we cut it up into little bits which we command to stand still, so that we can observe them and put them to our use. What we see when we have done this intellectual act we call “existence’-—what really ‘is-—and it is this of which science gives us knowledge. So Gutkind classes ‘having’, ‘knowing’, ‘being’ and ‘feeding’ all together. The ego feeds on possessions, and knowing is a way of possessing what is, namely being. Man devours possessions or devours knowledge in order to enhance his ego. Gutkind does not say he should not have done this. He recognises that it was wholly

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