In this essay an endeavor will be made to sketch the place of the individual in the culture of industrialism. The conclusions to be drawn cannot be other than tentative, for we live at the beginning of a new period in world history which we shall call that of industrialism, and our experience with it has been limited. Nonetheless, the subject bears such vital significance for our future that the temerity of the attempt may be justified. Since industrialism emphasizes speedy change, we must continuously check on the direction which it is taking. One of the most revealing indicators is that of the position of the individual; and on that problem a comparison of the role of the individual, actual and potential, in this culture with his role in pre-industrial societies may throw some light. In so brief an essay it is impossible to attempt to explain the change in the position of the individual or to condition general statements by the discussion of exceptions. The interest is concentrated upon the broad lines of the historical process.

The phenomenon of “possession” continues to elude satisfactory explanation because of the ambiguity of its nature. It belongs to one of those marginal zones where beliefs and rites are allied in the closest possible way to still obscure psychological mechanisms. We know that the phenomenon dates from antiquity, and that in numerous so-called primitive societies it is one of the means by which the faithful communicate with the supernatural. Our object is to offer a contribution to the clarification of this ambiguity by an analysis of the forms and functions of the trance in voodoo. This term, originating in Dahomey (in Fon, a voodoo is a god or spirit), denotes the ensemble of religious beliefs and practices observed on the fringes of Catholicism by the common people of Haiti. It is a syncretic religion in which elements from West Africa predominate, although other African cults have left their mark; however, this religious amalgam was impregnated from the beginning with Catholic beliefs and rites. The practice; of voodoo is not limited to Haiti. Under such names as macumba, candomblé, santeria, it is found in Brazil and in Cuba, where the Negroes, closer to the period of slavery, have conserved African traditions more completely than in Haiti. Observations made in Brazil can help to explain certain aspects of possession which, in Haiti, took an aberrant form.

In one of his admirable letters to Princess Elizabeth, Descartes asserts that the best way to overcome the annoyances of life is to “divert one's imagination and one's senses away from them as much as possible and to make use merely of one's understanding in dealing with them.” This advice is not easy to follow, and one of the devil's principal tricks is to identify himself so profoundly with our intimate concerns that, in disowning him, we come to believe that we disown ourselves. It sometimes seems that man cares more for his misery than for his pleasure.

But whether easy or not to follow, the advice is good. To convert the evil which oppresses you, insofar as possible, into a knot to untie, a safety lock to take apart, a problem to resolve, is to detach it from yourself; it is no longer me, it is mine. I can censure it and perhaps even pin it down. When one can state the evil, then what remains is only half-evil.

No research in the field of aesthetics can avoid the question of the value which every work of art poses as urgently as does every living thing: its raison d’être. Traditional aesthetics conceived only an absolute value. That is why it attempted to establish absolute, eternal criteria. More modest, the psychologist of the creative person, the philosopher of creativity and the historian of civilizations tend to acknowledge a value which is of relative importance only. Certain works suggest new criteria and survive them. Others, which conform to established criteria, frequently die with them. A work which does not beget, sooner or later, its own public and the sensitivity which recognizes itself in it, would consequently be ephemeral.

The commercial value of an artistic production is determined by the intensity and the duration of the satisfaction that it procures for a sufficiently widespread need. The relation between supply and demand also regulates the market for that curious species of merchandise which paintings, books, songs, etc., represent-but not definitively. The creative work is quite often devoid of “exchange value” because it scarcely encounters a demand before it has stimulated one. It is sought only after it has been found, sometimes a long time after the death of the artist.

The interpretation of man which I have defended in my book, Theory of Man, agrees with the Linnaean designation of homo sapiens, which is more exact, in my opinion, than the classical one of “rational animal.” In that work I maintain that what is peculiar to man is that he is conscious of a reality outside of himself and of his own intimate being, or, in other words, that he recognizes the independent existence of the world and is an ego. Both matters can be reduced to a unique primary function: the objectifying activity, which in normal, continuous, and accumulative operation belongs only to man, and from which all essentially human traits are derived. The peculiar characteristic of perception properly so called, that is, human perception, is the observation of things that are present, the recognition that a given thing exists. To perceive, then, is to attribute presence or existence to what is perceived, to admit it as an object existing by itself, certainly in different ways according to whether it is a question of external things, of the subjective entity, or of the processes and “states” inherent in it; let it be noted that when perceptive attention fastens upon the “states,” that is to say, on subjective, unintentional processes like those of coenesthesia which ordinarily are not perceived but are lived, enjoyed, or suffered, these become objectified without losing in themselves their condition of states. The capacity to objectify is the bedrock of human nature; animal conscience (if it deserves this name) must be imagined, save for rare exceptions, to be a succession of “states” to which objectifying attention is not applied because such attention can only come from an ego.