The Manticore

"We have agreed, have we not, that everything that makes man a great, as opposed to a merely sentient creature, is fanciful when tested by what people call common sense? That common sense often means no more than yesterday's opinions? That every great advance began in the realm of the fanciful? That fantasy is the mother not merely of art, but of science as well? I am sure that when the very first primitives began to think that they were individuals and not creatures of a herd and wholly bound by the ways of the herd, they seemed fanciful to their hairy, low-browed brothers – even though those hairy lowbrows had no concept of fantasy."

"I know. You think the law has eaten me up. But I have lived by reason, and this is unreason."

"I think nothing of the kind. I think you do not understand the law. So far as we can discover, anything like a man that has inhabited this earth lived by some kind of law, however crude. Primitives have law of extraordinary complexity. How did they get it? If they worked it out as a way of living tribally, it must once have been fantasy. If they simply knew what to do from the beginning, it must have been instinct, like the nest-building instinct of birds."

"Very well; if I accept that the lion represents my somewhat undeveloped feeling, what about it?"

"Not a lion; a manticore. Do not forget that stinging tail. The undeveloped feelings are touchy – very defensive. The manticore can be extremely dangerous. Sometimes he is even described as hurling darts from his tail, as people once thought the porcupine did. Not a bad picture of you in court, would you say? Head of a man, brave and dangerous as a lion, capable of wounding with barbs? But not a whole man, or a whole lion, or a merely barbed opponent. A manticore. The Unconscious chooses its symbolism with breath-taking artistic virtuosity."

"All right. Suppose I am the manticore. Why shouldn't you be the sibyl?"

"Because we have come to a part of our work together where a woman, or a variety of women, are very likely to appear in your dreams in just some such special relationship to you as this. Did you notice the chain?"

"I noticed everything, and I can call it up now. It was a handsome gold chain."

"Good. That is much better than if it had been an iron chain, or a chain with spikes. Now, what have we: an image that appears on the left-hand side, which means that it comes from the Unconscious -"

"I haven't completely swallowed the idea of the Unconscious, you know."

"Indeed I do know. 'Fanciful… fancy dress…' all these scornful words come up whenever we discuss it. But we are at a point where you are going to have to face it, because that is where that blue-mantled sibyl resides. She has emerged from the Unconscious and can be of great help to you, but if you banish her you might as well stop this work now and go home."

"I have never heard you so threatening before."

"There comes a time when one must be strong with rationalists, for they can reduce anything whatever to dust, if they happen not to like the look of it, or if it threatens their deep-buried negativism. I mean of course rationalists like you, who take some little provincial world of their own as the whole of the universe and the seat of all knowledge."

"Little, provincial world… I see. Well, what is the name of this lady I am compelled to meet?"

"Oho – irony! How well that must sound in court? The lady's name is Anima."

"Latin for Soul. I gave up the idea of a soul many years ago. Well?"

"She is one of the figures in your psychological make-up, like the Shadow and the Friend, whom you have met and about whom you entertain few doubts. She is not a soul as Christianity conceives it. She is the feminine part of your nature: she is all that you are able to see, and experience, in woman: she is not your mother, or any single one of the women you have loved, but you have seen all of them – at least in part – in terms of her. If you love a woman you project this image upon her, at least at the beginning, and if you hate a woman it is again the Anima at work, because she has a very disagreeable side which is not at all like the smiling sibyl in the blue mantle. She has given rise to some of the world's greatest art and poetry. She is Cleopatra, the enchantress, and she is Faithful Griselda, the patient, enduring woman; she is Beatrice, who glorifies the life of Dante, and she is Nimue, who imprisons Merlin in a thorn-bush. She is the Maiden who is wooed, the Wife who bears the sons, and she is the Hag who lays out her man for his last rest. She is an angel, and she may also be a witch. She is Woman as she appears to every man, and to every man she appears somewhat differently, though essentially the same."

"Quite a nicely practised speech. But what do women do about this fabulous creature?"