ABSTRACT
The 'B' version throws a good deal of light on Yeats' reading between 1925 and 1937, though it is not clear when the bulk of the revision took place. There is some evidence for the period of 1926-8. It is perhaps significant that in it there are a number of footnotes explaining his indebtedness to various sources. They include An Adventure (that of the Petit Trianon), Pierre Duhem's Systeme du Monde, Toynbee's A Study of History, Henry Adams' History as Phase,z and Flinders Petrie's The Revolutions of Civilitation.3 All such references are omitted in the first edition; it looks as if Yeats designed, with how much seriousness we do not know, to give the whole credit to the mysterious 'Instructors' and to excuse some of the obscurities and inconsistencies by the work of the equally mysterious 'Frustrators'. These 'Instructors' and 'Frustrators' deserve a special note in the light of Jung's latest work. Under these somewhat pompous titles they seem to derive from certain normal experiences in Indian mysticism, towards which Yeats was attracted throughout his life. The Guru who guides the mystic in his progress towards enlightenment may be the spirit of some long-dead sage; other 'influences' may convey enlightenment in dreams or visions. But evil or malicious spirits may seek to confuse or intervene or mislead, and this was familiar in the seances, and dramatized in
2 '1 have read Adams & find an exact agreement even to dates with my "law of history'" (Wade, Letters, p. 666). This is dated 14 March 1921. Compare Yeats' later discovery of Spengler.
