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In the fabric of human involvement the impact of a necessary but also dangerous and destructive force should be demonstrable not only by its effects but also by the prevalence of measures taken to try to forestall or mitigate these effects.
Such a necessary but dangerous force is the hostility between the generations, and more particularly between fathers and sons. This hostility constitutes the major component of the Oedipus complex, but has beyond that a far greater significance for the survival of the species than is generally assumed. Freud4 himself claimed no less than that the entire progress of society rested on it. Its manifestations, its effects, its ubiquitous occurrence and importance have been indicated elsewhere.78 101 102 The present essay will merely attempt to support these previous contentions by outlining some of the precautions which have been taken—in myth and in history—to fend off the inherent danger. Fathers, sons, mothers and society itself, each in their own way, could be expected to have taken protective measures. That this indeed was so and that it resulted in events of the first magnitude is the burden of the following pages.
However, a word first as to method. There is an interplay between man's thoughts and his creation,126 so that whatever he has shaped after his image, be it gods and heroes or political and social institutions, in turn shapes him;3 and the same is true for nature, as when man projects his hopes and fears onto the heavens, but then applies the order of stars and seasons to his own government. And in this way the conformation of man's mind, projected upon the universe