"Not separate," he said. "Oh, I suppose you could call it separate in that it might want something that you or I as part of it doesn't want. No, as I say, it's just the self-protective and other reflexes of the race as a whole, raised to the level of something approaching a personality because it's now the reflex-bundle of an intelligent, thinking race, as opposed to the same sort of thing in the case of the race, or genus or species of, say, lions or lemmings - or you name them."
"And that's all it is?" she said. "Then how do you justify talking about it as if it was a sort of wilful individual personality that had to be dealt with?"
"Well, again, that's the difference that's come into it because we, who make it up, while we're a race of intelligent individuals, are also a conglomeration of willful individuals. Because we think, it thinks - after our fashion. Try this for an explanation. It's a sort of collective unconscious, as if all our individual unconsciousnesses were wired together with something like telepathy - again, there's been evidence for that sort of wired-togetherness in the past."
"Yes," she said thoughtfully. "The empathy between twins. Or between parent and child, or any two adults in love, that allows them sometimes to feel at a distance what's happening to the other. I can agree with that. You know, we - you and I - have that, I think."
"All right, then," he said. "But there's one difference from us in the lower orders - particularly in the examples of the bee hive or the ant hill - in our case. It's that we can not only want something different from what the race-animal wants, we can actually try to change its mind and its course, by convincing the unconsciouses of our fellow-individuals. If we can get enough of them wanting what we want, the race-creature has to turn that way from whatever other route it's chosen."
"How do you convince the unconsciousness of others, though? There's nothing there to take hold of. The conscious mind of someone else you can talk to. All right, I know the Exotics do a beautiful job of mending sick minds by talking to the conscious and getting the corrections filtered down to the unconscious. And, for that matter, Bleys' charisma and that of the Others - that's working directly with the unconscious of others. So's hypnosis. But none of those thing have a lasting effect unless what's being put into the subject really agrees with what was there in the unconscious in the first place. There's no direct way to hold converse with other human's unconscious."
"Yes, there is," he said, "and it's a way that's been used at least since a prehistoric people lived in the caves of the Dordogne, back on Old Earth - you can talk to the unconscious of other people through the mediums of art."
"Art…" she said, thoughtfully.
"That's right," he said. "And you know why? Because art - real art - never tells anyone something. It only lays it out there for whoever comes to pick up."
"Perhaps. But it certainly makes whatever it has to say as attractive as possible to whoever comes along. You have to admit that."
"Yes, all right. If it's good. And if it isn't good, it doesn't offer anything to the unconscious of a viewer, reader, or listener. But the difference between that and conscious attempts to persuade is the difference between an order and a demonstration. The maker of the piece of art doesn't convince the person experiencing it - the person experiencing it convinces himself or herself, if they decided what's laid out in the art is worth picking up. That's why I worked my way back down the ladder from Donal, as you put it. All of Donal's strength couldn't move the race one millimeter from its already chosen path. But if I go first and leave footprints in the snow, some may follow, and others may follow them."
"Why?" she said. "I'm not against you, my love, but I want to see the reasons plainly. Why should anyone follow you?"
"Because of my dreams," he said. "Donal dreamed at James' death of a time when no more James' would be killed for stupid or selfish reasons. I've come to dream farther - I see the old dream of the race as a whole, now possible."
"And what does a race dream of?" she asked, so softly that anywhere but in this quiet and private room he would not have been able to hear her.
"It dreams," he said, "of being a race of gods. From the beginning, the individual part of the race, shivering in the wet as a stone-age savage, said, 'I wish I was a god who could turn the rain off,' and, finally, generations and millennia later, he was such a god - and his godlike power was called weather control. But long before that the urge to command wetness to cease had produced hats, and roofs and umbrellas - but always the push in the human heart went on toward the original dreams of being able to just say, 'rain, stop!' and the rain would stop."
He looked down through the dimness at her.
"And that's how it's been with everything else the individual, and therefore the race-animal, dreamed of - warmth when it was cold, coolness when it was too hot, the ability to fly bird-like, to cross great distances of water dry-shod, to hear and talk at as great or even greater distances, to block pain, defy disease and death. In the end, it's added up to one great desire. To be all-mighty. To be a god."
He paused, having heard his voice grow loud in the room and went on more quietly.
"And always the way to what was wanted's been found in a dozen small and practical ways before the single command, the wave of a godlike hand, was developed that could simply make it happen. But always the dream has run in advance. Hunters and cities, conquerors and kings, all succeeded in being and were superceded. The dream was always achieved first in art, time and again, and never forgotten until it was made real. Slowly, the human creature was changing, from a being that lived and died for what was material, to one who lived and died - and fought and died - for what was immaterial; for faith and obligation and love and power, power over the material first and then power over fellow-creatures, and finally, last and greatest, the power over self. And the dreams have gone always ahead, picturing what was wanted as something already possessed; until it became a truism to the race-animal that what could be conceived, could be had."
He stopped talking, finally.
"And you say these dreams were kept in the language of art?" she said.
"Yes," he answered, "and still are. The footprints I want to leave in the snow lead off toward the reality of what has only been barely dreamed of yet. The universe in which to understand a thing is to have it. Do you want a castle? You can have it merely by wanting it - but you have to know and own the materials it'd be built of, the architecture that'll ensure it'll stand, not fall, once it's built, and the very nature and extent of the ground on which it stands. If you know that much, you can have your castle right now, by means already known. But you want more than just the physical structure. Your castle must have those immaterial qualities that made you desire its castleness in the first place. These are not to be found in the physical universe, but in the other one that we all know and reach for, unconsciously. So, such a universe offers much more than the fulfillment of material dreams, it offers satisfaction of that original dream to be a god - the chance to cure all ills, to learn all mysteries, and finally to build what has never been dreamed of by any of us before now."
"You want everyone to dream your dream," Amanda said.
"Yes," he said. "But my dream is their dream, already - unless they shut it out as Bleys and his kind have done. I just articulate it."
"But maybe it never will be articulated, except in your own individual mind," she went on. "And when you're gone, it'll be gone."
"No," he said, strongly. "It's there in other minds as well, too strongly for that. It's there in the race-creature itself, along with the fear of trying for it. Haven't you felt it yourself - haven't you always felt it? It's too late now to hide it or kill it. Four hundred years ago, the race-animal was forced to face the fact that the safe, warm world it was born on was only an indistinguishable mote in a physical universe so big that anything conceivable not only could, but almost certainly must, exist in it. It could try to close its eyes to what it had been brought generally to know, or it could take the risk and step out into the alien territory beyond its atmosphere."