hidden recess of our heart, a deadly wish towards the hero. This rule can be applied generally to mythical tradition. It does not set forth any account of the old events, but rather acts in such a way that it always reveals a thought common to humanity, and once more rejuvenated. Thus, for example, the lives and deeds of the founders of old religions are the purest condensations of typical, contemporaneous myths, behind which the individual figure entirely disappears.41
But why does our pious Abbé torment himself with the old Judas legend? He first went into the world to preach the gospel of mercy, and then, after some time, he separated from the Catholic church and became a Swedenborgian. Now we understand his Judas phantasy. He was the Judas who betrayed his Lord. Therefore, first of all, he had to make sure of the divine mercy, in order to be Judas in peace.
This case throws a light upon the mechanism of the phantasies in general. The known, conscious phantasy may be of mythical or other material; it is not to be taken seriously as such, for it has an indirect meaning. If we take it, however, as important per se, then the thing is not understandable, and makes one despair of the efficiency of the mind. But we saw, in the case of Abbé Oegger, that his doubts and his hopes did not turn upon the historical problem of Judas, but upon his own personality, which wished to win a way to freedom for itself through the solution of the Judas problem.
The conscious phantasies tell us of mythical or other material of undeveloped or no longer recognized wish
