mable value in the work
of sublimation. The race would go mad without it. It sometimes does even
with it, a sign that sublimation is still imperfect and that the race is
far from being spiritually well. A comprehension of the principles here
involved would further the spread of sympathy for all forms of thinking
and tend to further spiritual health in such mutual comprehension of the
needs of others and of the forms taken by sublimation processes.

For the actual work of translation, I wish to express my obligations to
friends Wilfred Lay, and Leo Stein. Without their generous and gifted
assistance I would not have been able to accomplish the task.

SMITH ELY JELLIFFE, M.D.
NEW YORK, Oct. 27, 1917.

Part I.

THE PARABLE.

Section I.

The Parable.

In an old book I discovered an extraordinary narrative entitled Parabola.
I take it as the starting point of my observations because it affords a
welcome guide. In the endeavor to understand the parable and get a
psychological insight into it, we are led on to journey through these very
realms of fancy, into which I should like to conduct the reader. At the
end of our journey we shall have acquired, with the understanding of the
first example, the knowledge of certain psychical laws.

I shall, then, without further prelude introduce the example, and
purposely avoid at the outset mentioning the title of the old book so that
the reader may be in a position to allow the narrative to affect him
without any preconceived ideas. Explanatory interpolations in the text,
which come from me, I distinguish with square brackets.

[1]. As once I strolled in a fair forest, young and green, and
contemplated the painfulness of this life, and lamented how
through the dire fall of our first parents we inherited such
misery and distress, I chanced, while thinking these thoughts, to
depart from the usual path, and found myself, I know not how, on a
narrow foot path that was rough, untrodden and impassable, and
overgrown with so much underbrush and bushes that it was easy to
see it was very little used. Therefore I was dismayed and would
gladly have gone back, but it was not in my power to do so, since
a strong wind so powerfully blew me on, that I could rather take
ten steps in advance than one backward.

[2]. Therefore I had to go on and not mind the r