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finds its continued nourishment therein. Paradoxically, therefore, a
society born in a certain moment of history comes to find itself outside
history; which is to say, that it lacks any deep-rooted consciousness
of history.
Whereas traditional societies are like natural organisms rooted
in the virgin forests of pre-history, the American society has all the
aspects of a human artifact. Even the ends or purposes of the tradi–
tional society are the product of pre-history-or, to put it psycho–
logically, of the unconscious, which is that part of the individual's
psyche corresponding more closely to the early stages of a society'S
development. These ends have to be dragged into the light of con–
sciousness. The function of history, therefore, is precisely to make
explicit these fundamental ends. The American society, on the con–
trary, was founded for the specific and announced purpose of satis–
fying certain human needs, and thus the ends or purposes of the
society are explicit formulations of the conscious intellect, com–
plete at one stroke and not needing to be brought into the open;
which is to say, they have no real need of a "history."
This distinction between the organic society, which has grown
out of pre-history, and the contractual one, created by man at a
certain moment of history, becomes clearer when we substitute the
term myth for end. Myths are projections which answer a certain
number of questions about life and therefore satisfy a number of
spiritual needs. In organic societies the fabric of the myths contains
the inherited answers to the basic questions of life. Such myths are
born in the realm of the not-yet-conscious, and the course of a
civilization's development is to drag them into the light of con–
sciousness. Such, in Greece, was the case with the Orphic myths
and their subsequent spiritualization by Plato. Thus the apex of a
civilization is reached when the not-yet-conscious has passed over
into the conscious and critical, and the two are held together in
dynamic equilibrium. Where the first predominates, we are still at
a primitive stage, and the predominance of the second is a warning
symptom of decadence.
America has no less need of myths than have the traditional
societies, for a contractual society too has to have its ends objectified
in a way that appeals to the imagination of its members.
On
the
other hand, though the myths of a contractual society are accepted
