ABSTRACT
Human life, as we have seen in Chapter IV, is speaking generally, a projection of the dream on waking experience. This is true both of the race (phylogenetically, as it is called), and of the individual (or ontogenetically). The real meaning of the symbol reaches us sometimes through the channel of religion and the arts, but, for the most part, unless our lives allow a place for these more elevated concerns, the symbol introjected is bald and paltry and it carries our interests little beyond itself. Being a symbol, it carries symbolic efficacy and hence assures attention for itself, provided always that the symbolic efficacy is of a degree that can be tolerated. Symbols to which a high degree of symbolic efficacy attaches may seem "dirty" or unpleasant or terrible, and will tend to be dismissed with a laugh or a shudder.
