The Mousetrap AndThe Sphinx. Literary Trails.

9 essays on literature, Emerson and Jung,. 3 of which; The Seacook and the Search for Treasure Island, Alice and the Knockdown Argument and P.G. Wodehouse and the Natural Order first appeared in the Quadrant Magazine. The remaining 6 are; The Thousand Deaths, The Mousetrap and the Sphinx, Emerson and Nightfall, Individuation, The Old Flame and Moral Education. Individuation deals with Jung;s concept of individuation, that is the unification of the ego with the unconscious. This was the ancient dream of the alchemists which they conceptualized as the search for the philosophers' stone. The Mousetrap deals with Emerson's famous proverb about a 'better mousetrap' - which in our time is not regarded as authentic saying of Emerson - but suggests its likely meaning when regarded as a riddle. Emerson and Nightfall, contrasts Isaac Asimov's use of Emerson's opening passages in his book 'Nature' as a science fiction story and Emerson's abiding interest in the Creator. The Thousand Deaths deals with the paradox of 'a coward dies a thousand deaths' and of the individual who seeks the unification of his ego with the unconscious and who might easily exceed this number.The Old Flame is tries to discover who financed the printing of the First Folio 7 years after Shakespeare's death. Moral Education suggests how young children could be taught two simple rules derived from psychology and how this would lead to the greatest benefit for the world.