I Felt Myself Being Invaded

I Felt Myself Being Invaded Through And Through, I Crumbled, Disintegrated, And Only Emptiness Remained.

The Fate Of A Single Man Can Be Rich With Significance, That Of A Few Hundred Less So, But The History Of Thousands And Millions Of Men Does Not Mean Anything At All, In Any Adequate Sense Of The Word.

Man Does Not Create Gods, In Spite Of Appearances. The Times, The Age, Impose Them On Him. Man Can Serve His Age Or Rebel Against It, But The Target Of His Cooperation Or Rebellion Comes To Him From Outside.

Psychoanalysis Provides Truth In An Infantile, That Is, A Schoolboy Fashion: We Learn From It, Roughly And Hurriedly, Things That Scandalize Us And Thereby Command Our Attention. It Sometimes Happens, And Such Is The Case Here, That A Simplification Touching Upon The Truth, But Cheaply, Is Of No More Value Than A Lie. Once Again We Are Shown The Demon And The Angel, The Beast And The God Locked In Manichean Embrace, And Once Again Man Has Been Pronounced, By Himself, Not Culpable.

So One Must Be Resigned To Being A Clock That Measures The Passage Of Time, Now Out Of Order, Now Repaired, And Whose Mechanism Generates Despair And Love As Soon As Its Maker Sets It Going? Are We To Grow Used To The Idea That Every Man Relives Ancient Torments, Which Are All The More Profound Because They Grow Comic With Repetition? That Human Existence Should Repeat Itself, Well And Good, But That It Should Repeat Itself Like A Hackneyed Tune, Or A Record A Drunkard Keeps Playing As He Feeds Coins Into The Jukebox.