Races and nations as functions of the world whole

modes of judgement. And similarly intuition may be more particularly related to the child’s mode of perception. The possible comparison of adult or genius with sensation is less clear, but we will return to it.

Now Groddeck’s fourfold view of Man introduces the time factor in that the life of every person starts with childhood, goes through the stage of being a grown man or woman, and ideally aims at achieving adulthood in the sense of becoming a fully developed individual. And this development may be compared with that of mankind as a whole, in which it is undeniable that the earliest developed consciousness was in the East and that the centre of gravity of humanity has since proceeded westward, becoming more individuated. It might be said that the childhood consciousness of Man started in the East. And if we associate childhood with intuition, we may observe that the earliest scriptures of mankindin China and India particularly—were marked by an intuitive grasp of wholeness and meanings rather than by observation of detailed physical facts. Thus in the earliest days, it could be said, intuition was the superior function of mankind. It could also be said that the majority of mankind judged more by feeling than by intellect, as children do also.

With the progression of the centre of consciousness from the relative unconsciousness of the early East or South-East towards the modern West or North-West there has been a similar progression from intuition and feeling—represented by the East and South—towards intellect and sensation—represented by the North and West. In America we have indeed the acme of sensation, not only in the obvious sense in which it impinges on us but also, for instance in the exaggerated size and weight of American books, swollen by the desire to observe every detail. The centre of gravity has shiftéd from the heart to the head, in our ‘Atlantic’ culture, which may be strong in awareness of details and in thinking out systems, but this is at the cost of real feeling and the capacity to perceive the wholeness of things.

So it has come about that the ‘Atlantic’ civilisation and culture tends to consider intellect as superior to emotion, and scientific knowledge of details as superior to intuitive understanding of meanings. And it is this undue emphasis on intellect and sensation