became a stallion; she became a she-ass; he, an ass, and mated with her. From these sprang the whole-hoofed animals. She became a goat; he became a buck; she became an ewe; he became a ram, and mated with her. Thus were created goats and sheep. Thus it happened that all that mates, even down to the ants, he created—then he perceived: 'Truly I myself am Creation, for I have created the whole world!' Thereupon he rubbed his hands (held before the mouth) so that he brought forth fire from his mouth, as from the mother womb, and from his hands."
We meet here a peculiar myth of creation which requires
a psychologic interpretation. In the beginning the
libido was undifferentiated and bisexual;[31] this was followed
by differentiation into a male and a female component.
From then on man knows what he is. Now
follows a gap in the coherence of the thought where
belongs that very resistance which we have postulated
above for the explanation of the urge for sublimation.
Next follows the onanistic act of rubbing or boring (here
finger-sucking) transferred from the sexual zone, from
which proceeds the production of fire.[32] The libido here
leaves its characteristic manifestation as sexual function
and regresses to the presexual stage, where, in conformity
with the above explanation, it occupies one of the preliminary
stages of sexuality, thereby producing, in the
view expressed in the Upanishad, the first human art,
and from there, as suggested by Kuhn's idea of the root
"manth," perhaps the higher intellectual activity in general.
This course of development is not strange to the
psychiatrist, for it is a well-known psychopathological fact
that onanism and excessive activity of phantasy are very
closely related. (The sexualizing-autonomizing of the
