somewhat other forms; similar passions moved mankind, and man was likewise convinced of the uniqueness of his existence. I would liken the impression which the first acquaintance with the monuments of antiquity so easily leaves behind to that impression which Freud's reference to the Oedipus legend makes—for while we are still engaged with the confusing impressions of the variability of the Individual Soul, suddenly there is opened a revelation of the simple greatness of the Oedipus tragedy—that never extinguished light of the Grecian theatre.
This breadth of outlook carries in itself something of revelation. For us, the ancient psychology has long since been buried among the shadows of the past; in the schoolroom one could scarcely repress a sceptical smile when one indiscreetly reckoned the comfortable matronly age of Penelope and the age of Jocasta, and comically compared the result of the reckoning with the tragic-erotic struggles in the legend and drama. We did not know at that time (and who knows even today?) that the mother can be the all-consuming passion of the son, which perhaps undermines his whole life and tragically destroys it, so that not even the magnitude of the Oedipus Fate seems one jot overdrawn. Rare and pathologically understood cases like Ninon de Lenclos and her son1 lie too far removed from most of us to give a living impression. But when we follow the paths traced out by Freud, we arrive at a recognition of the present existence of such possibilities, which, although they are too weak to enforce incest, are still strong enough to cause disturbances of considerable magnitude in the soul. The admission
