ABSTRACT
The "reconstruction" of the ape means the rebuilding of the instinctual personality within the framework of the hierarchy of consciousness. Such a reconstruction is only possible if accompanied by important changes in the conscious attitude. But our modern attitude looks back arrogantly upon the mists of superstition and of medieval or primitive credulity, entirely forgetting that we carry the whole living past in the lower storeys of the skyscraper of rational consciousness. The "four" in Christian iconography appears chiefly in the form of the four evangelists and their symbols, arranged in a rose, circle, melothesia, or as a tetramorph, as for instance in the Hortus deliciarum of Herrad of Landsberg and in works of mystical speculation. The substitute has the obvious purpose of replacing immediate experience by a choice of suitable symbols tricked out with an organized dogma and ritual. The Catholic Church maintains them by her indisputable authority, the Protestant "church" by insistence on belief in the evangelical message.
