values the erotic impression and the wide-reaching effect of the commotion caused by it. It is this undervaluation, which Freud has formulated more precisely as "repression," which is the reason why the erotic problem does not attain directly conscious treatment, and from this there arise "these psychologic riddles." The erotic impression works in the unconscious, and, in its stead, pushes symbols forth into consciousness. Thus, one plays hideand-seek with one's self. First, it is "the morning stars which sing together"; then "Paradise Lost"; then the erotic yearning clothes itself in an ecclesiastical dress and utters dark words about "World Creation" and finally rises into a religious hymn to find there, at last, a way out into freedom, a way against which the censor of the moral personality can oppose nothing more. The hymn contains in its own peculiar character the marks of its origin. It thus has fulfilled itself—the "Law of the Return of the Complex." The night singer, in this circuitous manner of the old transference to the Father-Priest, has become the "Eternal," the "Creator," the God of Tone, of Light, of Love.
The indirect course of the libido seems to be a way of sorrow; at least "Paradise Lost" and the parallel reference to Job lead one to that conclusion. If we take, in addition to this, the introductory intimation of the identification with Christian, which we see concludes with Cyrano, then we are furnished with material which pictures the indirect course of the libido as truly a way of sorrow. It is the same as when mankind, after the sinful fall, had the burden of the earthly life to bear, or like
