ABSTRACT
If you take the preceding chapter, "Before Sunrise," and now "The Bedwarfing Virtue," you cannot see exactly why the one should follow the other. You only have a sort of dull sensation that somehow it is moving correctly, somehow making sense, but nobody could say what sense. This is a very typical quality of all products of the unconscious. The unconscious contents flow out in such a seemingly chaotic river, which meanders on through nature, and only the water can tell what the next move will be. We cannot tell because we are unable to perceive the small differences in the potential, the incline of the soil, but the water knows and follows it. It seems to be a thoroughly unconscious, unpurposive movement that just follows natural gravity. It happens to begin somewhere and it happens to end somewhere. One cannot say that this makes any particular sense, as one cannot say-as was formerly said-that it is due to the wonderful foresight and grace of God that a river is near every town, another proof of the divine providence in nature. One has the uncanny impression of something inhuman, and it is impossible to speculate about it because there is absolutely no ground for speculation; one is simply impressed with the abysmal depths of the meanings of nature.
