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146 BLACK SKIN, WHITE MASKS

easy. The torturer is the black man, Satan is black, one talks of
shadows, when one is dirty one is black—whether one is thinking
of physical dirtiness or of moral dirtiness. It would be astonishing,
if the trouble were taken to bring them all together, to see the vast
number of expressions that make the black man the equivalent of
sin. In Europe, whether concretely or symbolically, the black man
stands for the bad side of the character. As long as one cannot
understand this fact, one is doomed to talk in circles about the
“black problem.” Blackness, darkness, shadow, shades, night,
the labyrinths of the earth, abysmal depths, blacken someone’s
reputation; and, on the other side, the bright look of innocence,
the white dove of peace, magical, heavenly light. A magnifi cent
blond child—how much peace there is in that phrase, how much
joy, and above all how much hope! There is no comparison with
a magnifi cent black child: literally, such a thing is unwonted. Just
the same, I shall not go back into the stories of black angels. In
Europe, that is to say, in every civilized and civilizing country, the
Negro is the symbol of sin. The archetype of the lowest values is
represented by the Negro. And it is exactly the same antinomy
that is encountered in Desoille’s waking dreams. How else is one
to explain, for example, that the unconscious representing the
base and inferior traits is colored black? With Desoille, in whose
work the situation is (without any intention of a pun) clearer, it is
always a matter of descending or climbing. When I descend I see
caverns, grottoes where savages dance. Let there be no mistake,
above all. For example, in one of the waking-dream sessions that
Desoille describes for us, we fi nd Gauls in a cave. But, it must be
pointed out, the Gaul is a simple fellow. A Gaul in a cave, it is
almost like a family picture—a result, perhaps, of “our ancestors,
the Gauls.” I believe it is necessary to become a child again in
order to grasp certain psychic realities. This is where Jung was an
innovator: He wanted to go back to the childhood of the world,
but he made a remarkable mistake: He went back only to the
childhood of Europe.
In the remotest depth of the European unconscious an
inordinately black hollow has been made in which the most
immoral impulses, the most shameful desires lie dormant. And

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