And I think that, seeing how great a part chance plays in human affairs, it
is essential that study should be made of chance; it seems to me that an
organon from experiment. Then there is the inner consciousness--the
psyche--that has never yet been brought to bear upon life and its questions.
Besides which there is a super-sensuous reason. Often I have argued with
myself that such and such a course was the right one to follow, while in the
intervals of thinking about it an undercurrent of unconscious impulse has
desired me to do the reverse or to remain inactive.
Sometimes it has happened that the supersensuous reasoning has been correct,
and the most faultless argument wrong. I presume this supersensuous
reasoning, preceeding independently in the mind, arises from preceptions too
delicate for analysis. From these considerations alone I am convinced that,
by the aid of ideas yet to be discovered, the geological time in front may
be immeasurably shortened. These modes of research are not all. The
psyche--the soul in me--tells me that there is much more, that these are
merely beginnings of the crudest kind.

I fully recognise the practical difficulty arising from the ingrained,
hereditary, and unconscious selfishness which began before history, and has
been crossed and cultivated for twelve thousand years since. This renders me
less sanguine of united effort through geological time ahead, unless some
idea can be formed to give a stronger impulse even than selfishness, or
unless the selfishness can be utilised. The complacency with which the mass
of people go about their daily task, absolutely
indifferent to all other considerations, is appalling in its
concentrated stolidity. They do not intend wrong--they intend rightly: in
truth, they work against the entire human race.
So wedded and so confirmed is the world in its narrow groove of self, so
stolid and so complacent under the immense weight of misery, so callous to
its own possibilities, and so grown to its chains, that I almost despair to