We drift along from day to day, becoming bored when things are dull, depressed when immediate prospects look poor, using our powers of foresight and imagination only when confronted by an interesting challenge, and allowing them to lie fallow in between. But we are still 99 per cent animal few of us bother to develop this unique capacity. Man’s superior consciousness means that he can see further his sense of purpose stretches into the distance. When an animal is in a dull situation, it becomes dull the fiercest of all birds, the hawk, becomes quiescent when a black bag is placed over its head.

The difference depends upon the unique human faculty of imagination. “Human beings are the only living creatures who have this choice-of following the part that is great, or the part that is trivial. It is a general tendency of consciousness to ‘spread the attention too thinly’ and, like an over-excited child with too many toys on Christmas Day, the result is nervous exhaustion.”

It would not be inaccurate to say that all human beings live in a state of ‘vigilance’ and anxiety that is far above the level they actually need for vital efficiency. The point to observe here is that although hypertension may not be necessary, it is as widespread as the common cold. It is the result of ignorance, of bad management of our vital economy. However, it is not a necessary and inescapable price. Hypertension is the price we pay for the symphonies of Beethoven, the novels of Balzac, the advances in medical knowledge that prevent children dying of smallpox. And if the inhabitants of some Amazon village are ‘closer to nature’ than New Yorkers, this is usually at the cost of dirt and ignorance and inconvenience. The farm labourer going to work is as likely to ignore his surroundings as the harassed car salesman. It is a disease of consciousness-that is, of being human. “Now, although hypertension is accentuated by modern civilisation, it is not specifically a disease of civilisation.

Colin wilson the occult a history