Although the old man has, up to now, looked and behaved more or less like a human being, his magical powers and his spiritual superiority suggest that, in good and bad alike, he is outside, or above, or below the human level.
Neither for the primitive nor for the unconscious does his animal aspect imply any devaluation, for in certain respects the animal is superior to man.
It has not yet blundered into consciousness nor pitted a self-willed ego against the power from which it lives; on the contrary, it fulfils the will that actuates it in a well-nigh perfect manner.
Were it conscious, it would be morally better than man.
There is deep doctrine in the legend of the fall: it is the expression of a dim presentiment that the emancipa- tion of ego-consciousness was a Luciferian deed.
Man’s whole history consists from the very beginning in a conflict between his feeling of inferiority and his ar- rogance.
Wisdom seeks the middle path and pays for this audacity by a dubious affinity with daemon and beast, and so
is open to moral misinterpretation. Carl Jung, CW I, Pages 23-24
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