psychology_of_the_unconscious_Carl Gustav Jung 02

ancient people for the coldness and disillusion which Jarrett Dano Bruno's thoughts on eternity and Kepler's discoveries brought to modern humanity. The naive man of antiquity saw in the sun the great father of the heaven and the earth and in the moon the fruitful good mother. Everything had its demons. They animated equally a human being and his brother the animal. Everything was considered according to its anthropomorphic or paromorphic attributes as human being or animal. Even the disc of the sun was given wings or four feet in order to illustrate its movement. Thus arose an idea of the universe which was not only very far from reality but was one which corresponded wholly to subjective fantasies.

We know from our own experience this state of mind. It is an infantile stage. To a child, the moon is a man or a face or a shepherd of the stars. The clouds in disguise seem like little sheep. The dolls drink, eat, and sleep. The child places a letter at the window for the Christ child. He calls to the store to bring him a little brother or sister. The cows the wife of the horse, and the dog the husband of the cat. We know too that lower races like the [ __ ] look upon the locomotive as an animal and call the drawers of the table the child of the table.

As we learned through Freud, the dream shows a similar type. Since the dream is unconcerned with the real conditional things, it brings the most heterogeneous matter together and a world of impossibilities takes the place of realities. Freud defines progression characteristic of thinking when awake, that is to say, the advancement of the thought excitation from the system of the inner or outer perception through the endocsychic work of association, conscious and unconscious, to the motor end, that is to say towards innervation. In the dream he finds the reverse, namely regression of the thoughts excitation from the preconscious or unconscious to the system of perception by the means of which the dream receives its ordinary impression of sensuous distinctness which can rise to an almost hallucinating clearness. The dream thinking moves in a retrograde manner towards the raw material of memory. The structure of the dream thoughts is dissolved during the progress of regression and to its raw material. The reanimation of the original perception is however only one side of regression. The other side is regression to the infantile memory material which might also be understood as regression to the original perception but which deserves a special mention on account of its independent importance. This regression might indeed be considered as historical. The dream according to this conception might also be described as the substitute of the infantile scene changed through transference into the recent scene. The infantile scene cannot carry through its revival. It must be satisfied with its return as a dream. From this conception of the historical sight of regression, it follows consequently that the modes of conclusion of a dream in so far as one may speak of them must show at the same time an analogous and infantile character. This is truly the case as experience has abundantly shown so that today everyone who is familiar with the subject of dream analysis confirms Freud's proposition that dreams are a piece of the conquered life of the childish soul. In as much as the childish psychic life is undeniably of an archaic type, this characteristic belongs to the dream in quite an unusual degree. Freud calls our attention to this especially. The dream which fulfills its wishes by a short regressive path affords us only an example of the primary method of working of the psychic apparatus which has been abandoned by us as unsuitable. That which once ruled in the waking state when the psychical life was still young and impotent appears to be banished to the dream life in somewhat the same way as the bow and arrow. those discarded primitive weapons of adult humanity have been relegated to the nursery.

All this experience suggests to us that we draw a parallel between the fantastical mythological thinking of antiquity and the similar thinking of children between the lower human races and dreams. This train of thought is not a strange one for us but quite familiar through our knowledge of comparative anatomy and the history of development which show us how the structure and function of the human body are the results of a series of embryionic changes which correspond to similar changes in the history of the race. Therefore the supposition is justified that antogenesis corresponds in psychology to phoggenesis. Consequently, it would be true as well that the state of infantile thinking in the child's psychic life as well as in dreams is nothing but a re-echo of the prehistoric and the ancient. In regard to this, nature takes a very broad and remarkable standpoint. In our sleep and in our dreams, we pass through the whole thought of earlier humanity. I mean in the same way that man reasons in his dreams, he reasons when in the waking state many thousands of years, the first cause which occurred to his mind in reference to anything that needed explanation satisfied him and passed for truth. In the dream, this adivistic relic of humanity manifests its existence within us for it is the foundation upon which the higher rational faculty developed and which is still developing in every individual. The dream carries us back into earlier states of human culture and affords us a means of understanding it better. The dream thought is so easy to us now because we are so thoroughly trained to it through the interminable stages of evolution during which this fantastic and filmm of theorizing has prevailed to a certain extent. The dream is a restorative for the brain which during the day is called upon to meet the severe demands for trained thought made by the condition of a higher civilization. From these facts, we can understand how lately more acute logical thinking, the taking seriously of cause and effect has been developed when our functions of reason and intelligence still reach back involuntarily to those primitive forms of conclusion and we live about half our lives in this condition.

We have already seen that Freud independently of Nietze has reached a similar standpoint from the basis of dream analysis. The step from this established proposition to the perception of a myth as familiar dream images is no longer a great one. Freud has formulated this conclusion himself. The investigation of this folk psychologic formation myths etc is by no means finished at present. To take an example of this, however, it is probable that the myths correspond to the distorted residue of wish fantasies of whole nations, the secularized dreams of young humanity. Ron understands the myths in a similar manner as a mass dream of the people. Ricklin has insisted rightly upon the dream mechanism of the fables and Abraham has done the same for the myths. He says the myth is a fragment of the infantile soul life of the people and thus the myth is a sustained still remaining fragment from the infantile soul life of the people and the dream is the myth of the individual. An unprejudiced reading of the abovementioned authors will certainly allay all doubts concerning the intimate connection between dream psychology and myth psychology. The conclusion results almost from itself that the age which created the myths thought childishly that is to say fantastically as in our age is still done to a very great extent associatively or analogically in dreams. The beginnings of myth formations in the child and taking of fantasies for realities which is in accord with the historical may easily be discovered among children.

End of section four. Section five of psychology of the unconscious by Carl Jung. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Section five, chapter 1, part two.

One might raise the objection that the mythological inclinations of children are implanted by education. The objection is futile. Has humanity at all ever broken loose from the myths? Every man has eyes and all his senses to perceive that the world is dead, cold, and unending, and he has never yet seen a god, nor brought to light the existence of such from empirical necessity. On the contrary, there was need of a fantastic, indestructible optimism, and one far removed from all sense of reality in order, for example, to discover in the shameful death of Christ really the highest salvation and the redemption of the world. Thus, one can indeed withhold from a child the substance of earlier myths, but not take from him the need for mythology. One can say that should it happen that all traditions in the world were cut off with a single blow, then with the succeeding generation, the whole mythology and history of religion would start over again. Only a few individuals succeed in throwing off mythology in a time of a certain intellectual supremacy. The mass never freeze itself. Explanations are of no avail. They merely destroy a transitory form of manifestation but not the creating impulse.

Let us again take up our earlier train of thought. We spoke of the anttogenetic re-echo of the phoggenetic psychology among children. We saw that fantastic thinking is a characteristic of antiquity of the child and of the lower races. But now we know also that our modern and adult man is given over in large part to this same fantastic thinking which enters as soon as the directed thinking ceases. A lessening of the interest, a slight fatigue is sufficient to put an end to the directed thinking, the exact psychological adaptation to the real world and to replace it with fantasies. We digress from the theme and give way to our own trains of thought. If the slackening of the attention increases, then we lose by degrees the consciousness of the present and the fantasy enters into possession of the field. Here the important question obtrudes itself. How are fantasies created? From the poets we learn much about it. From science we learn little. The psychoanalytic method presented to science by Freud shed light upon this for the first time. It showed us that there are typical cycles. The stutterer imagines he is a great ortor. The truth of this deosanes thanks to his energy has proven. The poor man imagines himself to be a millionaire. The child an adult. The conquered fight out victorious battles with the conqueror. the unfit torments or delights himself with ambitious plans. We imagine that which we lack. The interesting question of the why of all this we must here leave unanswered while we return to the historic problem.

From what source do the fantasies draw their materials? We chose as an example a typical fantasy of puberty. A child in that stage before whom the whole frightening uncertainty of the future fate opens puts back the uncertainty into the past through his fantasy and says, "If only I were not the child of my ordinary parents, but the child of a rich and fashionable count and had been merely passed over to my parents, then someday a golden coach would come and the count would take his child back with him to his wonderful castle." And so it goes on as Ingram Grim's fairy tales which the mother tells to her children with a normal childhood stops with the fugitive quickly passing idea which is soon covered over and forgotten. However, at one time and that was in the ancient world of culture. The fantasy was an openly acknowledged institution. The heroes I recall Romulus and Remis Semi Ramis Moses and many others have been separated from their real parents. Others are directly sons of gods and the noble races derive their family trees from heroes and gods. As one sees by this example, the fantasy of modern humanity is nothing but a re-echo of an old folk belief which was very widespread originally. The ambitious fantasy chooses among others a form which is classic and which once had a true meaning. The same thing holds good in regard to the sexual fantasy. In the preamble, we have spoken of dreams of sexual assault. The robber who breaks into the house and commits a dangerous act. That too is a mythological theme and in the prehistoric era was certainly a reality too. Wholly apart from the fact that the capture of women was something general in the lawless prehistoric times. It was also a subject of mythology and cultivated epics. I recall the capture of Braina, the uh nera, Europa, the Sabine women etc. We must not forget that even today marriage customs exist in various regions which recall the ancient custom of marriage by capture. The symbolism of the instrument of coatus was an inexhaustible material for ancient fantasy. It furnished a widespread cult that was designated phallic. The object of reverence of which was the fallus. The companion of Dionis was phales, a personification of the fallus proceeding from the phallic hermy of Dionis. The phallic symbols were countless. Among the sabines, the custom existed for the bridegroom to part the bride's hair with a lance. The bird, the fish, and the snake were phallic symbols. In addition, there existed in enormous quantities theomorphic representations of the sexual instinct in connection with which the bull, the hegoat, the ram, the boar, and the ass were frequently used. An undercurrent to this choice of symbol was furnished by the sodommitic inclination of humanity when in the dream fantasy of modern man the feared man is replaced by an animal. There is recurring in the anttogenetic re-echo the same thing which was openly represented by the ancients countless times. There were hegoats which pursued nymphs saters with shegoats. In still older times in Egypt, there even existed a shrine of a goat god, which the Greeks called Pan, where the Harod doulies prostituted themselves with goats. It is well known that this worship has not died out, but continues to live as a special custom in South Italy and Greece. Today, we feel for such a thing nothing but the deepest abhorance, and never would admit it still slumbered in our souls. Nevertheless, just as truly as the idea of the sexual assault is there, so are these things there too, which we should contemplate still more closely, not through moral eyeglasses with horror, but with interest as a natural science, since these things are venerable relics of past culture periods. We have even today a clause in our penal code against sodomy. But that which was once so strong as to give rise to a worship among a highly developed people has probably not wholly disappeared from the human soul during the course of a few generations. We may not forget that since the symposium of Plato in which homosexuality faces us on the same level with the so-called normal sexuality only 80 generations have passed. And what are 80 generations? They shrink to an imperceptible period of time when compared with the space of time which separates us from the homo neanderalencis or hidleberensus.

I might call to mind in this connection some choice thoughts of the great historian gigelmo Ferrero. It is a very common belief that the further man is separated from the present by time, the more does he differ from us and his thoughts and feelings. that the psychology of humanity changes from century to century like fashions of literature. Therefore, no sooner do we find in past history an institution accustom a law or belief a little different from those with which we are familiar than we immediately search for some complex meanings which frequently resolve themselves into phrases of doubtful significance. Indeed, man does not change so quickly. His psychology at bottom remains the same. And even if his culture varies much from one epic to another, it does not change the functioning of his mind. The fundamental laws of the mind remain the same, at least during the short historical period of which we have knowledge, and all phenomena, even the most strange, must be capable of explanation by those common laws of the mind which we can recognize in ourselves. The psychologist should accept this viewpoint without reservation as peculiarly applicable to himself.

Today indeed in our civilization, the phallic processions, the Dionian mysteries of classical Athens, the bare-faced phallic emblems have disappeared from our coins, houses, temples, and streets. So also have the theomorphic representations of the deity been reduced to small remnants like the dove of the Holy Ghost, the lamb of God, and the [ __ ] of Peter adorning our church towers. In the same way, the capture and violation of women have shrunken away to crimes. Yet all of this does not affect the fact that we in childhood go through a period in which the impulses towards these archaic inclinations appear again and again and that through all our life we possess side by side with a newly recruited directed and adapted thought a fantastic thought which corresponds to the thought of the centuries of antiquity and barbarism. Just as our bodies still keep the reminders of old functions and conditions of many old-fashioned organs, so our minds too, which apparently have outgrown those archaic tendencies nevertheless bear the marks of the evolution passed through and the very ancient ree at least dreamily in fantasies. The symbolism which Freud has discovered is revealed as an expression of a thinking and of an impulse limited to the dream to wrong conduct and to derangements of the mind which form of thinking and impulse at one time ruled as the mightiest influence in past culture epics.

The question of whence comes the inclination and ability which enables the mind to express itself symbolically brings us to the distinction between the two kinds of thinking the directed and adapted on one hand and the subjective fed by our own egotistic wishes on the other. The latter form of thinking presupposing that it were not constantly corrected by the adapted thinking must necessarily produce an overwhelmingly subjectively distorted idea of the world. We regard this state of mind as infantile. It lies in our individual past and in the past of mankind. With this we affirm the important fact that man in his fantastic thinking has kept a condensation of the psychic history of his development. An extraordinarily important task which even today is hardly possible is to give a systematic description of fantastic thinking. One may at the most sketch it. While directed thinking is a phenomenon conscious throughout, the same cannot be asserted of fantastic thinking. Doubtless a great part of it still falls entirely in the realm of the conscious, but at least just as much goes along in half shadows and generally an undetermined amount in the unconscious. And this can therefore be disclosed only indirectly by means of fantastic thinking. Directed thinking is connected with the oldest foundations of the human mind which have been for a long time beneath the threshold of the consciousness. The products of this fantastic thinking arising directly from the consciousness are first waking dreams or daydreams to which Freud Floroi Pik and others have given special attention. than the dreams which offer to the consciousness at first a mysterious exterior and win meaning only through the indirectly inferred unconscious contents. Lastly, there is a so-called wholly unconscious fantasy system in the split off complex which exhibits a pronounced tendency towards the production of a dissociated personality.

Our foregoing explanations show wherein the products arising from the unconscious are related to the mythical. From all these signs, it may be concluded that the soul possesses in some degree historical stratum, the oldest stratum of which would correspond to the unconscious. The result of that must be that an introversion occurring in later life according to the Forian teaching seizes upon regressive infantile reminiscences taken from the individual past that first points out the way. Then with stronger introversion and regression, strong repressions, introversion, psychosis, there come to light pronounced traits of an archaic mental kind which under certain circumstances might go as far as the re-echo of a once manifest archaic mental product. This problem deserves to be more thoroughly discussed.

As a concrete example, let us take the history of the pious Abbe Edgar which Anato France has communicated to us. This priest was a hyperritical man and much given to fantasies especially in regard to one question. This the fate of Judas whether he was really damned as the teaching of the church asserts to everlasting punishment or whether God had pardoned him. After all, Edgar cited with the intelligent point of view that God in his all wisdom had chosen Judas as an instrument in order to bring about the highest point of the work of redemption by Christ. This necessary instrument without the help of which the human race would not have been a sharer in salvation could not possibly be damned by the all good God. In order to put an end to his doubts, Edgar went one night to the church and made supplication for a sign that Judas was saved. Then he felt a heavenly touch upon his shoulder. Following this, Edgar told the Archbishop of his resolution to go out into the world to preach God's unending mercy.

Here we have a richly developed fantasy system before us. It is concerned with the subtle and perpetually undecided question as to whether the legendary figure of Judas is damned or not. The Judas legend is in itself mythical material. Viz the malicious betrayal of a hero. I recall see Freed and Hagen Balder and Loki Sief Freed and Balder were murdered by a faithless traitor from among their closest associates. This myth is moving and tragic. It is not honorable battle which kills the noble but evil treachery. It is too an occurrence which is historical over and over again. One thinks of Caesar and Brutus since the myth of such a deed is very old and still the subject of teaching and repetition. It is the expression of a psychological fact that envy does not allow humanity to sleep and that all of us carry in a hidden recess of our heart a deadly wish towards the hero. This rule can be applied generally to mythical tradition. It does not set forth any account of the old events but rather acts in such a way that it always reveals a thought common to humanity and once more rejuvenated. Thus, for example, the lives and deeds of the founders of old religions are the purest condensations of typical contemporaneous myths behind which the individual figure entirely disappears.

But why does our pious Abbe torment himself with the old Judas legend? He first went into the world to preach the gospel of mercy and then after some time he separated from the Catholic Church and became a Swedenborgian. Now we understand his Judas fantasy. He was the Judas who betrayed his Lord. Therefore, first of all, he had to make sure of the divine mercy in order to be Judas in peace. This case throws a light upon the mechanism of the fantasies in general. The known conscious fantasy may be of mythical or other material. It is not to be taken seriously as such for it has an indirect meaning. If we take it, however, as important per se, then the thing is not understandable and makes one despair of the efficiency of the mind. But we saw in the case of Abbe Edgar that his doubts and his hopes did not turn upon the historical problem of Judas, but upon his own personality, which wished to win away to freedom for itself through the solution of the Judas problem. The conscious fantasies tell us of mythical or other material of undeveloped or no longer recognized wish tendencies in the soul. As is easily to be understood, an innate tendency and acknowledgment of which one refuses to make and which one treats as non-existent, can hardly contain a thing that may be in accord with our conscious character. It concerns the tendencies which are considered immoral and as generally impossible and the strongest resentment is felt towards bringing them into the consciousness. What would Edgar have said had he been told confidentially that he was preparing himself for the Judas role? And what in ourselves do we consider immoral and non-existent or which we at least wish were non-existent? It is that which in antiquity lay widespread on the surface viz sexuality in all its various manifestations. Therefore, we need not wonder in the least when we find this as the base of most of our fantasies even if the fantasies have a different appearance because Edgar found the damnation of Judas incompatible with God's goodness. He thought about the conflict in that way. That is the conscious sequence. Along with this is the unconscious sequence because Edgar himself wished to be a Judas. He first made sure of the goodness of God. To Edgar, Judas was the symbol of his own unconscious tendency and he made use of this symbol in order to be able to meditate over his unconscious wish. The direct coming into consciousness of the Jewish wish would have been too painful for him. Thus, there must be typical myths which are really the instruments of a folk psychological complex treatment. Jacob Burkhart seems to have suspected this when he once said that every Greek of the classical era carried in himself a fragment of the Edipus just as every German carries a fragment of Foust.

The problem which the simple story of the Abbe Edgar has brought clearly before us confronts us again when we prepare to examine fantasies which owe their existence this time to an exclusively unconscious work. We are indebted for the material which we will use in the following chapters to the useful publication of an American woman, Miss Frank Miller, who has given to the world some poetical unconsciously formed fantasies under the title Kelk Dean Creatante. Volume five, archives psycholog 1906.

End of section five. Section six of psychology of the unconscious by Carl Jung. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Section six, chapter 2, the Miller fantasies.

We know from much psychoanalytic experience that whenever one recounts his fantasies or his dreams, he deals not only with the most important and intimate of his problems, but with the one the most painful at that moment. Since in the case of Miss Miller, we have to do with a complicated system, we must give our attention carefully to the particulars which I will discuss following as best I can Miss Miller's presentation in the first chapter.

Suggestion. Miss Miller gives a list of examples of her unusual suggestability which she herself considers as a symptom of her nervous temperament. For example, she is excessively fond of caviar whereas some of her relatives loathe it. However, as soon as anyone expresses his loathing, she herself feels momentarily the same loathing. I do not need to emphasize especially the fact that such examples are very important in individual psychology. That caviar is a food for which nervous women frequently have an a special predilction is a fact well known to the psychoanalyst.

Miss Miller has an extraordinary faculty for taking other people's feelings upon herself and of identification. For example, she identifies herself to such a degree in Sirino with the wounded Christian new vette that she feels in her own breast a truly piercing pain at that place where Christian received the deadly blow. From the viewpoint of analytic psychology, the theater, aside from any aesthetic value, may be considered as an institution for the treatment of the mass complex. The enjoyment of the comedy or of the dramatic plot ending happily is produced by an unreserved identification of one's own complexes with the play. The enjoyment of tragedy lies in the thrilling yet satisfactory feeling that something which might occur to oneself is happening to another. The sympathy of our author with the dying Christian means that there is in her a complex awaiting a similar solution which whispers softly to her hodi cross mi he and that one may know exactly what is considered the effectual moment. Miss Miller adds that she felt a pain in her breast. Lorisa Sarah Burnernhard sir pre therefore the effectual moment is when the love between Christian and Roxan comes to a sudden end.

If we glance over the whole of Ros Ston's play, we come upon certain moments the effect of which one cannot easily escape and which we will emphasize here because they have meaning for all that follows. Sirinod Berserak with the long ugly nose on account of which he undertakes countless duels loves Roxanne who for her part unaware of it loves Christian because of the beautiful verses which really originate from Sirino's pen but which apparently come from Christian. Sirino is the misunderstood one whose passionate love and noble soul no one suspects. The hero who sacrifices himself for others and dying just in the evening of life reads to her once more Christian's last letter the verses which he himself had composed. Roxan Adurus Jam Lamur and Xreme Aur Mear Seal Levet Jean A jri morus vu. Sali whereupon Roxan recognizes in him the real loved one. It is already too late. Death comes and in agonized delirium, Sirino raises himself and draws his sword. No. No. Say blue say to me the song for me lay leopat we vet A rose aria vu ke Marg A m panache sirino who under the hateful exterior of his body hid a soul so much more beautiful is a year urer and one misunderstood and his last triumph is that he departs at least with a clean shield the identification of the author with the dying Christian who in himself is a figure but little impressive and sympathetic expresses says clearly that a sudden end is destined for her love just as for Christian's love. The tragic intero with Christian however is played as we have seen upon a background of much wider significance viz the misunderstood love of sirino for Roxan. Therefore, the identification with Christian has only the significance of a substitute memory de Renerang and is really intended for sino that this is just what we might expect will be seen in the further course of our analysis.

Besides this story of identification with Christian, there follows as a further example an extraordinarily plastic memory of the sea evoked by the sight of a photograph of a steamboat on the high seas. We may mention here the supposition that there are connected with sea journeys, particularly impressive and strong memories which penetrate deeply into the soul and give an especially strong character to the surface memories through unconscious harmony. To what extent the memories assumed here agree with the abovementioned problem? We shall see in the following pages. This example following at this time is singular. Once while in bathing, Miss Miller wound a towel around her hair in order to protect it from a wedding. At the same moment, she had the following strong impression. statue la and so on. Miss Miller identified herself therefore with an Egyptian statue and naturally the foundation for this was a subjective pretention. That is to say, I am like an Egyptian statue, just as stiff, wooden, sublime, and impassive qualities for which the Egyptian statue is proverbial. One does not make such an assertion to oneself without an inner compulsion, and the correct formula might just as well be as stiff, wooden, etc. as an Egyptian statue I might indeed be the sight of one's own unclothed body in a bath has undeniable effects for the fantasy which can be set at rest by the above formula.

The example which follows this emphasizes the author's personal influence upon an artist. Lou shows Gil Jame view atmosphere amb. sampler. This observation stands in abrupt contrast to the fantasy of the Egyptian statue. Miss Miller had here the unspoken need of emphasizing her almost magic effect upon another person. This could not have happened either without an unconscious need which is particularly felt by one who does not often succeed in making an emotional impression upon a fellow being. With that the list of examples which are to picture Miss Miller's auto suggestability and suggestive effect is exhausted. In this respect the examples are neither especially striking nor interesting from an analytical viewpoint. On the contrary, they are much more important since they afford us a glance into the soul of the writer. Veronzi has taught us in an excellent work what is to be thought about suggestability. That is to say that these phenomena win new aspects in the light of the Freudian libido theory in so much as their effects become clear through libido zetzan. This was already indicated above in the discussion of the examples and in the greatest detail regarding the identification with Christian. The identification becomes effective by its receiving and influx of energy from the strongly accentuated thought and emotional feeling underlying the Christian motif. Just the reverse is the suggestive effect of the individual in an especial capacity for concentrating interest that is to say libido upon another person by which the other is unconsciously compelled to reaction the same or opposed. The majority of the examples concern cases where Miss Miller is put under the effects of suggestion. That is to say, when the libido has spontaneously gained possession of certain impressions, and this is impossible if the libido is damned up to an unusual degree by the lack of application to reality. Miss Miller's observations about suggestability inform us therefore of the fact that the author is pleased to tell us in her following fantasies something of the history of her love.

End of section six. Section seven of Psychology of the Unconscious by Carl Jung. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Section seven, chapter 3, part one, the hymn of creation.

The second chapter in Miss Miller's work is entitled GI a dear poem Onorik. When 20 years of age, Miss Miller took a long journey through Europe. We leave the description of it to her. After a long and rough journey from New York to Stockholm, from there to Petersburg and Odessa, I found it a true pleasure to leave the world of inhabited cities and to enter the world of waves, sky, and silence. I stayed hours long on deck to dream, stretched out in a reclining chair. The histories, legends, and myths of the different countries which I saw in the distance came back to me indistinctly blended together in a sort of luminous mist in which things lost their reality, while the dreams and thoughts alone took on somewhat the appearance of reality. At first I even avoided all company and kept to myself lost wholly in my dreams where all that I knew of great beautiful and good came back into my consciousness with new strength and new life. I also employed a great part of my time writing to my distant friends reading and sketching out short poems about the regions visited. Some of these poems were of a very serious character. It may seem superfluous perhaps to enter intimately into all these details. If we recall, however, the remark made above that when people let their unconscious speak, they always tell us the most important things of their intimate selves, then even the smallest detail appears to have meaning. Valuable personalities invariably tell us through their unconscious things that are generally valuable so that patient interest is rewarded.

Miss Miller describes here a state of introversion after the life of the cities with their many impressions had been absorbing her interest with that already discussed strength of suggestion which powerfully enforced the impression. She breathed freely upon the ocean and after so many external impressions became engrossed wholly in the internal with intentional abstraction from the surroundings so that things lost their reality and dreams became truth. We know from psychopathology that certain mental disturbances exist which are first manifested by the individuals shutting themselves off slowly more and more from reality and sinking into their fantasies during which process in proportion as the reality loses its hold the inner world gains in reality and determining power. This process leads to a certain point which varies with the individual when the patients suddenly become more or less conscious of their separation from reality. The event which then enters is the pathological excitation. That is to say the patients begin to turn towards the environment with diseased views to be sure which however still represent the compensating although unsuccessful attempt at transference. The methods of reaction are naturally very different. I will not concern myself more closely about this here. This type appears to be generally a psychological rule which holds good for all neurosis and therefore also for the normal in a much less degree. We might therefore expect that Miss Miller, after this energetic and persevering introversion, which had even encroached for a time upon the feeling of reality, would succumb to an impression of the real world, and also to just as suggestive and energetic an influence as that of her dreams. Let us proceed with the narrative.

But as the journey drew to an end, the ship's officers outdided themselves in kindness to empa. And I passed many amusing hours teaching them English on the Sicilian coast in the harbor of Catania. I wrote a sailor song which was very similar to a song well known on the sea. Brian wine and damsels fine. The Italians in general all sing very well and one of the officers who sang on deck during night watch had made a great impression upon me and had given me the idea of writing some words adapted to his melody. Soon after that I was very nearly obliged to reverse the well-known saying veter napoli a po morier that is to say suddenly I became very ill although not dangerously so. I recovered to such an extent, however, that I could go on land to visit the sights of the city in a carriage. This day tired me very much, and since we had planned to see Pisa the following day, I went on board early in the evening and soon lay down to sleep without thinking of anything more serious than the beauty of the officers and the ugliness of the Italian beggars. One is somewhat disappointed at meeting here instead of the expected impression of reality rather a small intermetso of flirtation. Nevertheless, one of the officers, the singer had made a great impression. Ill m fade boou dre. The remark at the close of the description and so on diminishes the seriousness of the impression. It is true. The assumption, however, that the impression openly influenced the mood very much is supported by the fact that a poem upon a subject of such an erotic character came forth immediately, brine, wine, and damsel's fine, and in the singer's honor. One is only too easily inclined to take such an impression lightly, and one admits so gladly the statements of the participators, when they represent everything as simple and not at all serious. I dwell upon this impression at length because it is important to know that an erotic impression after such an introversion has a deep effect and is undervalued possibly by Miss Miller. The suddenly passing sickness is obscure and needs a psychologic interpretation which cannot be touched upon here because of lack of data. The phenomena now to be described can only be explained as arising from a disturbance which reaches to the very depths of her being.

From Naples to Levero, the ship traveled for a night, during which I slept more or less well. My sleep, however, is seldom deep or dreamless. It seemed to me as if my mother's voice waken me just at the end of the following dream. At first I had a vague conception of the words when the morning stars sang together which were the preludium of a certain confused representation of creation and of the mighty corals resounding through the universe. In spite of the strange contradictory and confused character which is peculiar to the dream, there was mingled in it the chorus of an ortorio which has been given by one of the foremost musical societies of New York. And with that were also memories of Milton's paradise lost. Then from out of this world there slowly emerged certain words which arranged themselves into three strophies. And indeed they seemed to be in my own handwriting on ordinary blue lined writing paper on a page of my old poetry book which I always carried around with me. In short they appeared to me exactly as some minutes later they were in reality in my book. Miss Miller now wrote down the following poem, which she rearranged somewhat a few months later to make it more nearly, in her opinion, like the dream original.

When the Eternal first made sound,

a myriad ears sprang out to hear,

and throughout all the universe there rolled an echo deep and clear,

all glory to the God of sound.

When the eternal first made light,

a myriad eyes sprang out to look,

and hearing ears, and seeing eyes once more a mighty coral took

all glory to the God of light.

When the eternal first gave love,

a myriad hearts sprang into life,

ears filled with music, eyes with light, peeled forth with hearts, with love all rife,

all glory to the God of love.

Before we enter upon Miss Miller's attempt to bring to light through her suppositions the root of this subliminal creation, we will attempt a short analytic survey of the material already in our possession. The impression on the ship has already been properly emphasized so that we need have no further difficulty in gaining possession of the dynamic process which brought about this poetical revelation. It was made clear in the preceding paragraphs that Miss Miller possibly had not inconsiderably undervalued the importance of the erotic impression. This assumption gains some probability through experience, which shows that very generally relatively weak erotic impressions are greatly undervalued. One can see this best in cases where those concerned either from social or moral grounds consider an erotic relation as something quite impossible. for example, parents and children, brothers and sisters, relations homosexual, between older and younger men, and so on. If the impression is relatively slight, then it does not exist at all for the participators. If the impression is strong, then a tragic dependence arises, which may result in some great nonsense or be carried to any extent. This lack of understanding can go unbelievably far. Mothers who see the first directions of the small son in their own bed. A sister who half playfully embraces her brother. A 20-year-old daughter who still seats herself on her father's lap and then has strange sensations in her abdomen. They are all morally indignant to the highest degree if one speaks of sexuality. Finally, our whole education is carried on with the tacit agreement to know as little as possible of the erotic entries spread abroad the deepest ignorance in regard to it. It is no wonder, therefore, that the judgment in punctto of the importance of an erotic impression is generally unsafe and inadequate.

Miss Miller was under the influence of a deep erotic impression as we have seen because of the sum total of the feelings aroused by this. It does not seem that this impression was more than dimly realized, for the dream had to contain a powerful repetition. From analytic experience, one knows that the early dreams which patients bring for analysis are nonetheless of a special interest because of the fact that they bring out criticisms and valuations of the physician's personality which previously would have been asked for directly in vain. They enrich the conscious impression which the patient had of his physician and often concerning very important points. They are naturally erotic observations which the unconscious was forced to make just because of the quite universal undervaluation and uncertain judgment of the relatively weak erotic impression. In the drastic and hyperbolic manner of expression of the dream, the impression often appears in almost unintelligible form on account of the immeasurable dimension of the symbol. A further peculiarity which seems to rest upon the historic strata of the unconscious is this that an erotic impression to which conscious acknowledgement is denied usurps an earlier and discarded transference and expresses itself in that. Therefore, it frequently happens, for example, that among young girls at the time of their first love, remarkable difficulties develop in the capacity for erotic expression, which may be reduced analytically to disturbances through a regressive attempt at resuscitation of the father image or the father imgo. Indeed, one might presume something similar in Miss Miller's case for the idea of the masculine creative deity is a derivation analytically and historically psychologic of the father and aims above all to replace the discarded infantile father transference in such a way that for the individual the passing from the narrow circle of the family into the wider circle of human society may be simpler or made easier in In the light of this reflection, we can see in the poem and its preludium the religious poetically formed product of an introversion depending upon the surrogate of the father Imago. In spite of the incomplete perception of the effectual impression, essential component parts of this are included in the idea of compensation as marks so to speak of its origin. Fister has coined for this the striking expression law of the return of the complex. The effectual impression was that of the officer singing in the night watch when the morning stars sang together. The idea of this opened a new world to the girl. Creation. This creator has created tone then light and then love. That the first to be created should have been tone can be made clear only individually. For there is no cosmogyny except venosis of Hermes, a generally quite unknown system which would have such tendencies. But now we might venture a conjecture which is already apparent and which soon will be proven thoroughly. Viz the following chain of associations. The singer, the singing morning stars, the god of tone, the creator, the god of light, of the sun, of the fire, and of love. The lengths of this chain are proven by the material with the exception of sun and fire which I put in parentheses but which however will be proven through what follows in the further course of the analysis. All of these expressions with one exception belong to erotic speech. My god star light my son fire of love fiery love etc. Creator appears indistinct at first, but becomes understandable through the reference to the undertone of arrows, to the vibrating cord of nature, which attempts to renew itself in every pair of lovers and awaits the wonder of creation.

Miss Miller had taken pains to disclose the unconscious creation of her mind to her understanding and indeed through a procedure which agrees in principle with psychoanalysis and therefore leads to the same results as psychoanalysis. But as usually happens with laymen and beginners, Miss Miller, because she had no knowledge of psychoanalysis, left off at the thoughts which necessarily bring the deep complex lying at the bottom of it to light in an indirect, that is to say, censored manner. More than this, a simple method, merely the carrying out of the thought to its conclusion, is sufficient to discover the meaning. Miss Miller finds it astonishing that her unconscious fantasy does not, following the mosaic account of creation, put light in

The first place instead of tone. Now follows an explanation theoretically constructed and correct ad hoc, the hollowness of which is however characteristic of all similar attempts at explanation. She says, "It is perhaps interesting to recall that Anaxagoras also had the cosmos arise out of chaos through a sort of whirlwind which does not happen usually without producing sound. But at this time I had studied no philosophy and knew nothing either of Anaxagoras or of his theories about the noose which I unconsciously was openly following. At that time also I was equally in complete ignorance of linenets and therefore knew nothing of his doctrine "deus calculat fit mundus." Miss Miller's references to Anaxagoras and to linenets both refer to creation by means of thought, that is to say, that divine thought alone could bring forth a new material reality, a reference at first not intelligible, but which will soon, however, be more easily understood.

We now come to those fantasies from which Miss Miller principally drew her unconscious creation. In the first place, there is the Paradise Lost by Milton, which we had at home in the edition illustrated by Doré and which had often delighted me from childhood. Then the Book of Job, which had been read aloud to me since the time of my earliest recollection. Moreover, if one compares the first words of Paradise Lost with my first verse, one notices that there is the same verse measure of man's first disobedience when the Eternal first made sound. My poem also recalls various passages in Job and one or two places in Handel's oratorio, the creation which came out very indistinctly in the first part of the dream. The lost paradise, which, as is well known, is so closely connected with the beginning of the world, is made more clearly evident by the verse of man's first disobedience, which is concerned evidently with the fall, the meaning of which need not be shown any further.

I know the objection which everyone unacquainted with psychoanalysis will raise. Viz., that Miss Miller might just as well have chosen any other verse as an example, and that accidentally she had taken the first one that happened to appear, which had this content almost accidentally. As is well known, the criticism which we hear equally from our medical colleagues and from our patients is generally based on such arguments. This misunderstanding arises from the fact that the law of causation in the psychical sphere is not taken seriously enough. That is to say, there are no accidents, no "just as well." It is so, and there is therefore a sufficient reason at hand why it is so. It is moreover true that Miss Miller's poem is connected with the fall, wherein just that erotic component comes forth, the existence of which we have surmised above. Miss Miller neglects to tell which passages in Job occurred to her mind. These unfortunately are therefore only general suppositions.

Take first the analogy to the lost paradise. Job lost all that he had, and this was due to an act of Satan who wished to incite him against God. In the same way, mankind, through the temptation of the serpent, lost paradise and was plunged into earth's torments. The idea, or rather the mood, which is expressed by the reference to the lost paradise is Miss Miller's feeling that she had lost something which was connected with satanic temptation. To her it happened just as to Job that she suffered innocently, for she did not fall a victim to temptation. Job's sufferings are not understood by his friends. No one knows that Satan has taken a hand in the game and that Job is truly innocent. Job never tires of avowing his innocence. Is there a hint in that? We know that certain neurotic and especially mentally diseased people continue to defend their innocence against non-existent attacks. However, one discovers upon closer examination that the patient, while he apparently defends his innocence without reason, fulfills without a decandlum the energy for which arises from just those impulses whose sinful character is revealed by the contents of the pretended reproach and calumny. Job suffered doubly: on one side through the loss of his fortune, on the other through the lack of understanding in his friends. The latter can be seen throughout the book. The suffering of the misunderstood recalls the figure of Sirino de Berserk. He too suffered doubly: on one side through hopeless love, on the other side through misunderstanding. He falls, as we have seen, in the last hopeless battle against for me. Job laments, "God delivereth me to the ungodly, and casteth me into the hands of the wicked. I was at ease, and he breaketh me asunder. Yea, he hath taken me by the neck, and dashed me to pieces. He hath also set me up for his mark. His archers compass me round about. He cleaveth my reins asunder and doth not spare. He poureth out my gall upon the ground. He breaketh me with breach upon breach. He runneth upon me like a giant." (Job 16:11-15).

The analogy of feeling lies in the suffering of the hopeless struggle against the more powerful. It is as if this conflict were accompanied from afar by the sounds of creation, which brings up a beautiful and mysterious image belonging to the unconscious and which has not yet forced its way up to the light of the upper world. We surmise rather than know that this battle has really something to do with creation, with the struggles between negations and affirmations. The references to Ros Stan Serinote, through the identification with Christian, to Milton's Paradise Lost, to the sorrows of Job misunderstood by his friends, betrayed plainly that in the soul of the poet something was identified with these ideas. She also has suffered like Sino and Job, has lost paradise, and dreams of creation. Creation by means of thought, fruition through the whirlwind of Anaxagoras.

We once more submit ourselves to Miss Miller's guidance. I remember that when 15 years old, I was once very much stirred up over an article read aloud to me by my mother concerning the idea which spontaneously produced its object. I was so excited that I could not sleep all night because of thinking over and over again what that could mean. From the age of 9 to 16, I went every Sunday to a Presbyterian church, in charge of which at that time was a very cultured minister. In one of the earliest memories which I have retained of him, I see myself as a very small girl sitting in a very large pew, continually endeavoring to keep myself awake and pay attention without in the least being able to understand what he meant when he spoke to us of chaos, cosmos, and the gift of love. Don Damour. There are also rather early memories of the awakening of puberty (9 to 16) which have connected the idea of the cosmos springing from chaos with the Don Damour. The medium in which these associations occur is the memory of a certain very much honored ecclesiastic who spoke those dark words. From the same period of time comes the remembrance of that excitement about the idea of the creative thought which from itself produced its object. Here are two ways of creation intimated: the creative thought in the mysterious reference to the Dawn Damour.

At the time when I had not yet understood the nature of psychoanalysis, I had a fortunate opportunity of winning through continual observation a deep insight into the soul of a 15-year-old girl. Then I discovered with astonishment what the contents of the unconscious fantasies are, and how far removed they are from those which a girl of that age shows outwardly. There are wide-reaching fantasies of truly mythical fruitfulness. The girl was, in that split-off fantasy, the race mother of uncounted peoples. If we deduct the poetically spoken fantasy of the girl, elements are left which at that age are common to all girls. For the unconscious content is to an infinitely greater degree common to all mankind than the content of the individual consciousness. For it is the condensation of that which is historically the average and ordinary. Miss Miller's problem at this age was the common human problem: How am I to be created? Nature knows but one answer to that: through the child. Don Damour. But how is the child attained? Here the terrifying problem emerges which, as our analytic experience shows, is connected with the father, where it cannot be solved because the original sin of incest weighs heavily for all time upon the human race. The strong and natural love which binds the child to the father turns away in those years during which the humanity of the father would be all too plainly recognized, to the higher forms of the father, to the fathers of the church, and to the father-god visibly represented by them, and in that there lies still less possibility of solving the problem. However, mythology is not lacking in constellations. Has not the Logos become flesh too? Has not the divine Numa? Even the Logos entered the virgin's womb and lived among us as the Son of Man. The whirlwind of Anaxagoras was precisely the divine noose which from out of itself has become the world. Why do we cherish the image of the virgin mother even to this day? Because it is always comforting and says, without speech or noisy sermon, to the one seeking comfort: "I too have become a mother through the idea which spontaneously produces its object." I believe that there is foundation enough at hand for a sleepless night. If those fantasies procured to the age of puberty were to become possessed of this idea, the results would be immeasurable.

All that is psychologic has an under and an over meaning, as is expressed in the profound remark of the old mystic: "The heaven above, the heaven below, the sky above, the sky below, all things above, all things below, decline and rise." We would show but slight justice, however, to the intellectual originality of our author, if we were satisfied to trace back the commotion of that sleepless night absolutely and entirely to the sexual problem in a narrow sense. That would be but one half, and, truly to make use of the mystic's expression, only the under half. The other half is the intellectual sublimation which strives to make true in its own way the ambiguous expression of the idea which produces its object spontaneously. Ideal creation in place of the real.

End of Chapter 3, Part One, Section 8 of Psychology of the Unconscious by Carl Jung. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.

Section 8.

In such an intellectual accomplishment of an evidently very capable personality, the prospect of a spiritual fruitfulness is something which is worthy of the highest aspiration, since for many it will become a necessity of life. Also, this side of the fantasy explains to a great extent the excitement, for it is a thought with a presentiment of the future, one of those thoughts which arise, to use one of Metelinks's expressions, from the inconsumerata, that prospective potency of subliminal combinations. I've had the opportunity of observing certain cases of neurosis of years' duration in which, at the time of the beginning of the illness or shortly before, a dream occurred, often of visionary clarity. This impressed itself indelibly upon the memory, and in analysis revealed a hidden meaning to the patient, which anticipated the subsequent events of life, that is to say, their psychologic meaning. I'm inclined to grant this meaning to the commotion of that restless night because the resulting events of life, in so far as Miss Miller consciously and unconsciously unveils them to us, are entirely of a nature to confirm the supposition that that moment is to be considered as the inception and presentiment of a sublimated aim in life.

Miss Miller concludes the list of her fantasies with the following remarks: "The dream seemed to me to come from a mixture of the representation of Paradise Lost, Job, and Creation with ideas such as thought which spontaneously produces its object, the gift of love, chaos, and cosmos." In the same way as colored splinters of glass are combined in a kaleidoscope, in her mind fragments of philosophy, aesthetics, and religion would seem to be combined under the stimulating influence of the journey and the countries hurriedly seen, combined with the great silence and the indescribable charm of the sea. "Only this and nothing more." With these words, Miss Miller shows us out politely and energetically. Her parting words and her negation confirmed over again in English leave behind a curiosity. Viz., what position is to be negated by these words, sir? That is to say, really only "l'écharpe empalée"? And the young man who sang melodiously during the night watch is long since forgotten, and no one is to know, least of all the dreamer, that he was a morning star who came before the creation of a new day. One should take care lest he satisfy himself and the reader with a sentence such as "Sonor fuah." Otherwise, it might immediately happen that one would become disturbed again. This occurs to Miss Miller, too, since she allowed an English quotation to follow, "Only this, and nothing more," without giving the source, it is true. The quotation comes from an unusually effective poem, "The Raven," by Poe. The line referred to occurs in the following:

"While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, 'tapping at my chamber door—

Only this and nothing more.'"

The spectral raven knocks nightly at his door and reminds the poet of his irrevocably lost Lenore. The raven's name is Nevermore, and as a refrain to every verse, he croaks his horrible "Nevermore." Old memories come back tormentingly, and the spectre repeats inexorably, "Nevermore." The poet seeks in vain to frighten away the dismal guest. He calls to the raven: "Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend! I shrieked, upstarting, 'Get thee back into the tempest and the night's Plutonian shore! Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken! Leave my loneliness unbroken! Quit the bust above my door! Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!' Quoth the Raven 'Nevermore.'"

That quotation, which apparently skips slightly over the situation, "Only this and nothing more," comes from a text which depicts in an affecting manner the despair over the lost Lenore. That quotation also misleads our poet in the most striking manner. Therefore, she undervalues the erotic impression and the wide-reaching effect of the commotion caused by it. It is this undervaluation which Freud has formulated more precisely as repression, which is the reason why the erotic problem does not attain direct conscious treatment, and from this there arise these psychologic riddles. The erotic impression works in the unconscious, and in its stead pushes symbols forth into consciousness. Thus, one plays hide-and-seek with oneself. First it is the morning stars which sing together. Then Paradise Lost. Then the erotic yearning clothes itself in an ecclesiastical dress and utters dark words about world creation, and finally rises into a religious hymn to find there at last a way out into freedom, a way against which the censor of the moral personality can oppose nothing more. The hymn contains, in its own peculiar character, the marks of its origin. It thus has fulfilled itself. The law of the return of the complex. The night singer, in this circuitous manner of the old transference to the father-priest, has become the eternal, the creator, the god of tone, of light, of love. The indirect course of the libido seems to be a way of sorrow; at least, Paradise Lost and the parallel reference to Job lead one to that conclusion. If we take in addition to this the introductory intimation of the identification with Christian, which we see concludes with Sirino, then we are furnished with material which pictures the indirect course of the libido as truly a way of sorrow. It is the same as when mankind, after the sinful fall, had the burden of the earthly life to bear, or like the tortures of Job, who suffered under the power of Satan and of God, and who himself, without suspecting it, became a plaything of the superhuman forces which we no longer consider as metaphysical but as meta-psychological. F also offers us the same exhibition of God's wager.

Mephistopheles: "What will you bet? There's still a chance to gain him, if unto me you give gently upon my road to train him."

Satan: "But put forth thine hand now and touch all that he hath, and he will curse thee to thy face." (Job 1:11)

While in Job the two great tendencies are characterized simply as good and bad, the problem in Faust is a pronouncedly erotic one. Viz., the battle between sublimation and Eros, in which the devil is strikingly characterized through the fitting role of the erotic tempter. The erotic is lacking in Job. At the same time, Job is not conscious of the conflict within his own soul. He even continuously disputes the arguments of his friends who wish to convince him of evil in his own heart. To this extent, one might say that Faust is considerably more honorable, since he openly confesses to the torments of his soul. Miss Miller acts like Job. She says nothing and lets the evil and the good come from the other world, from the meta-psychological. Therefore, the identification with Job is also significant in this respect.

A wider and indeed a very important analogy remains to be mentioned. The creative power which love really is, rightly considered from the natural standpoint, remains as the real attribute of the divinity sublimated from the erotic impression. Therefore, in the poem, God is praised throughout as creator. Job offers the same illustration. Satan is the destroyer of Job's fruitfulness. God is the fruitful one himself. Therefore, at the end of the book, he gives forth as an expression of his own creative power this hymn filled with lofty poetic beauty. In this hymn, strangely enough, two unsympathetic representatives of the animal kingdom, Behemoth and the Leviathan, both expressive of the crudest force conceivable in nature, are given chief consideration. The Behemoth being really the phallic attribute of the God of creation.

"Behold now Behemoth, which I made as well as thee; he eateth grass as an ox. Lo now his strength is in his loins, and his forces in the muscles of his belly. He moveth his tail like a cedar; the sinews of his thighs are knit together. His bones are as tubes of brass; his limbs are like bars of iron. He is the chief of the ways of God: he only that made him giveth him his sword. Behold, if a river overflow, he trembleth not: he is confident, though a Jordan swell even to his mouth. Shall any take him when he is on the watch? Or pierce through his nose with a snare? Canst thou draw Leviathan with a fish hook? Or press down his tongue with a cord? Lay thine hand upon him, remember the battle, and do no more. None is so fierce that dare stir him up. Who then is he that can stand before me? Who hath first given unto me, that I should repay him? Whatsoever is under the whole heaven is mine." (Job 40:15-20, 23-24; 41:1, 8, 10-11)

God says this in order to bring his power and omnipotence impressively before Job's eyes. God is like the Behemoth and the Leviathan, the fruitful nature giving forth abundance, the untameable wildness and boundlessness of nature, and the overwhelming danger of the unchained power. But what has destroyed Job's earthly paradise? The unchained power of nature. As the poet lets it be seen here, God has simply turned his other side outwards for once, the side which man calls the devil, and which lets loose all the torments of nature on Job, naturally for the purpose of discipline and training. The God who created such monstrosities, before whom the poor weak man stiffens with anxiety, truly must hide qualities within himself which are food for thought. This God lives in the heart, in the unconscious, in the realm of meta-psychology. There is the source of the anxiety before the unspeakably horrible and of the strength to withstand the horrors. The person, that is to say, his conscious eye, is like a plaything, like a feather which is whirled around by different currents of air. Sometimes the sacrifice and sometimes the sacrificer, and he cannot hinder either.

The Book of Job shows us God at work both as creator and destroyer. Who is this God? A thought which humanity in every part of the world and in all ages has brought forth from itself, and always again anew in similar forms. A power in the other world to which man gives praise. A power which creates as well as destroys, an idea necessary to life. Since psychologically understood, the divinity is nothing else than a projected complex of representation which is accentuated in feeling according to the degree of religiousness of the individual. So God is to be considered as the representative of a certain sum of energy, libido. This energy therefore appears projected metaphysically because it works from the unconscious outwards when it is dislodged from there, as psychoanalysis shows, as I have earlier made apparent in the bed-tongue days. The religious instinct feeds upon the ancestral libido of the infantile period. In the principal forms of religion which now exist, the father transference seems to be at least the molding influence. In older religions, it seems to be the influence of the mother transference which creates the attributes of the divinity. The attributes of the divinity are omnipotence, a sternly persecuting paternalism, ruling through fear (Old Testament), and a loving paternalism (New Testament). These are the attributes of the libido in that wide sense in which Freud has conceived this idea empirically. In certain pagan and also in certain Christian attributes of divinity, the maternal stands out strongly. And in the former, the animal also comes into the greatest prominence. Likewise, the infantile, so closely interwoven with religious fantasies, and from time to time breaking forth so violently, is nowhere lacking. All this points to the sources of the dynamic states of religious activity. These are those impulses which in childhood are withdrawn from incestuous application through the intervention of the incest barrier and which, especially at the time of puberty, as a result of affluxes of libido coming from the still incompletely employed sexuality, are aroused to their own peculiar activity.

As is easily understood, that which is valuable in the God-creating idea is not the form, but the power, the libido, the primitive power which Job's hymn of creation vindicates, the unconditional and inexorable, the unjust and the superhuman are truly and rightly attributes of libido, which lead us unto life, which let the poor be guilty, and against which struggle is in vain. Nothing remains for mankind but to work in harmony with his will. Nichtzsche's Zarathustra teaches us this impressively. We see that in Miss Miller the religious hymn arising from the unconscious is the compensating amend for the erotic. It takes a great part of its materials from the infantile reminiscences which are reawakened into life by the introversion of the libido. Had this religious creation not succeeded, and also had another sublimated application been eliminated, then Miss Miller would have yielded to the erotic impression, either to its natural consequence, or to a negative issue, which would have replaced the lost success and love by a correspondingly strong sorrow. It is well known that opinions are much divided concerning the worth of this issue of an erotic conflict such as Miss Miller has presented to us. It is thought to be much more beautiful to solve unnoticed an erotic tension in the elevated feelings of religious poetry, in which perhaps many other people can find joy and consolation. One is wrong to storm against this conception from the radical standpoint of fanaticism for truth. I think that one should view with philosophic admiration the strange paths of the libido and should investigate the purposes of its circuitous ways. It is not too much to say that we have herewith dug up the erotic route, and yet the problem remains unsolved. Were there not bound up with that a mysterious purpose, probably of the greatest biological meaning, then certainly 20 centuries would not have yearned for it with such intense longing. Doubtless, this sort of Lydian current moves in the same direction as taken, in the widest sense, did that ecstatic ideal of the Middle Ages and of the ancient mystery cults, one of which became the later Christianity. There is to be seen biologically in this ideal an exercise of psychologic projection of the paranoid mechanism, as Freud would express it. The projection consists in the repressing of the conflict into the unconscious and the setting forth of the repressed contents into seeming objectivity, which is also the formula of paranoia. The repression serves, as is well known, for the freeing from a painful complex from which one must escape by all means because its compelling and oppressing power is feared. The repression can lead to an apparent complete suppression, which corresponds to a strong self-control. Unfortunately, however, self-control has limits which are only too narrowly drawn. Closer observation of people shows it is true that calm is maintained at the critical moment, but certain results occur which fall into two categories. First, the suppressed effect comes to the surface immediately afterwards, seldom directly, it is true, but ordinarily in the form of a displacement to another object. For example, a person is in official relations, polite, submissive, patient, and so on, and turns his whole anger loose upon his wife or his subordinates. Second, the suppressed effect creates compensations elsewhere. For example, people who strive for excessive ethics, who try always to think, feel, and act altruistically and ideally, avenge themselves because of the impossibility of carrying out their ideals by subtle maliciousness, which naturally does not come into their own consciousness as such, but which leads to misunderstandings and unhappy situations. Apparently, then, all of these are only especially unfortunate circumstances, or they are the guilt and malice of other people, or they are tragic complications. One is indeed freed of the conscious conflict. Nevertheless, it lies invisible at one's feet and is stumbled over at every step. The technique of the apparent suppressing and forgetting is inadequate because it is not possible of achievement in the last analysis. It is in reality a mere makeshift.

The religious projection offers a much more effectual help. In this, one keeps the conflict in sight—care, pain, anxiety, and so on—and gives it over to a personality standing outside of oneself, the divinity. The evangelical command teaches us this: "Cast all your anxiety upon him because he careth for you." (1 Peter 5:7). "In nothing be anxious, but in everything by prayer and supplication, let your requests be made known unto God." (Philippians 4:6). One must give the burdening complex of the soul consciously over to the deity. That is to say, associate it with a definite representation complex which is set up as objectively real, as a person who answers those questions for us unanswerable. To this inner demand belongs that candid avow of sin and the Christian humility presuming such an avow. Both are for the purpose of making it possible for one to examine oneself and to know oneself. One may consider the mutual avow of sins as the most powerful support to this work of education. "Confess therefore your sins one to another." (James 5:16). These measures aimed at a conscious recognition of the conflicts are thoroughly psychoanalytic, which is also a conditio sine qua non of the psychoanalytic condition of recovery. Just as psychoanalysis, in the hands of the physician, a secular method, sets up the real object of transference as the one to take over the conflicts of the oppressed and to solve them, so the Christian religion sets up the Savior, considered as real, in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins (Ephesians 1:7 and Colossians 1:14). He is the deliverer and redeemer of our guilt. A God who stands above sin, who did no sin, neither was God found in his mouth (1 Peter 2:22). Who his own self bare our sins in his body upon that tree (1 Peter 2:24). Therefore, Christ has been sacrificed once to take away the sins of many (Hebrews 9:28). The God thus thought of is distinguished as innocent in himself and as the self-sacrificer. These qualities are true also for that amount of energy, libido, which belongs to the representation complex designated the redeemer. The conscious projection towards which the Christian education aims offers therefore a double benefit. First, one is kept conscious of the conflict—sins of two opposing tendencies mutually resistant—and through this one prevents a known trouble from becoming, by means of repressing and forgetting, an unknown and therefore so much more tormenting sorrow. Secondly, one lightens one's burden by surrendering it to him to whom all solutions are known. One must not forget that the individual psychologic roots of the deity set up as real by the pious are concealed from him, and that he, although unaware of this, still bears the burden alone and is still alone with his conflict. This delusion would lead infallibly to the speedy breaking up of the system. For nature cannot indefinitely be deceived, but the powerful institution of Christianity meets this situation. The command in the Book of James is the best expression of the psychologic significance of this: "Bear ye one another's burdens." This is emphasized as especially important in order to preserve society upright through mutual love transference. The Pauline writings: "Through love be servants one to another." (Galatians 5:13). "Let love of the brethren continue." (Hebrews 13:1). "And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and good works, not forgetting our own assembling together, as is the custom of some, but exhorting one another." (Hebrews 10:24-25). We might say that the real transference taught in the Christian community is the condition absolutely necessary for the efficacy of the miracle of redemption. The first letter of John comes out frankly with this: "He that loveth his brother abideth in the light." (1 John 2:10). "If we love one another, God abideth in us." (1 John 4:12). The deity continues to be efficacious in the Christian religion only upon the foundation of brotherly love. Consequently, hereto, the mystery of redemption is the unresisting real transference.

One may properly ask oneself, for what then is the deity useful? If his efficacy consists only in the real transference, to this also the evangelical message has a striking answer. Men are all brothers in Christ. So Christ also, having been once offered to bear the sins of many, shall appear a second time apart from sin to them that wait for him unto salvation (Hebrews 9:28). The condition of transference among brothers is to be such as between man and Christ, a spiritual one. As the history of ancient cults and certain Christian sects shows, this explanation of the Christian religion is an especially important one biologically, for the psychologic intimacy creates certain shortened ways between men which lead only too easily to that from which Christianity seeks to release them, namely, to the sexual relation with all those consequences and necessities under which the really already highly civilized man had to suffer at the beginning of our Christian era. For just as the ancient religious experience was regarded distinctly as a bodily union with the deity, just so was worship permeated with sexuality of every kind. Sexuality lay only too close to the relations of people with each other. The moral degeneracy of the first Christian century produced a moral reaction arising out of the darkness of the lowest strata of society, which was expressed in the second and third centuries at its purest in the two antagonistic religions, Christianity on the one side and Mithraism on the other. These religions drove after precisely that higher form of social intercourse symbolic of a projected become flesh idea, Logos, whereby all those strongest impulsive energies of the archaic man, formerly plunging him from one passion into another, and which seemed to the ancients like the compulsion of the evil constellations as destiny, and which in the sense of later ages might be translated as the driving force of the libido. The power for putting in motion of Zeno could be made use of for social preservation. It may be assumed most certainly that the domestication of humanity has caused the greatest sacrifices. An age was produced, historical ideal must certainly have known why and against what it was created. The age of Nero serves to set off effectually the famous extracts from the 41st letter of Seneca to Lucilius.

"One drags the other into error. And how can we attain to salvation when no one bids us halt? When all the world drives us in deeper? Do you ever come across a man unafraid in danger, untouched by desires, happy in misfortune, peaceful in the midst of a storm, elevated above ordinary mortals, on the same plane as the gods? Does not reverence seize you? Are you not compelled to say, 'Such an exalted being is certainly something different from the miserable body which he inhabits'? A divine strength rules there. Such an excellent mind, full of moderation, raised above all trivialities, which smiles at that which we others fear or strive after. A heavenly power animates such a person. A thing of this kind does not exist without the cooperation of a deity. The largest part of such a being belongs to the region from which he came. Just as the sun's rays touch the earth in reality, and yet are at home only there from whence they come, so an eminent holy man associates with us; he is sent to us that we may learn to know the divine better, and although with us, still really belongs to his original home. He looks thither and reaches towards it. Among us, he walks as an exalted being."

The people of this age had grown ripe for identification with the word become flesh, for the founding of a new fellowship united by one idea in the name of which people could love each other and call each other brothers. The old vague idea of a messiah, of a mediator in whose name new ways of love would be created, became a fact, and with that humanity made an immense step forward. This had not been brought about by a speculative, completely sophisticated philosophy, but by an elementary need in the mass of people vegetating in spiritual darkness. The profoundest necessities had evidently driven them towards that, since humanity did not thrive in a state of dissoluteness. The meaning of those cults, I speak of Christianity and Mithraism, is clear. It is a moral restraint of animal impulses. The dynamic appearance of both religions betrays something of that enormous feeling of redemption which animated the first disciples, and which we today scarcely know how to appreciate. For these old truths are empty to us. Most certainly we should still understand it had our customs even a breath of ancient brutality. For we can hardly realize in this day the whirlwinds of the unchained libido which roared through the ancient Rome of the Caesars. The civilized man of the present day seems very far removed from that. He has become merely neurotic. So for us, the necessities which brought forth Christianity have actually been lost, since we no longer understand their meaning. We do not know against what it had to protect us. For enlightened people, the so-called religiousness has already approached very close to a neurosis. In the past 2,000 years, Christianity has done its work and has erected barriers of repression which protect us from the sight of our own sinfulness. The elementary emotions of the libido have come to be unknown to us, for they are carried on in the unconscious. Therefore, the belief which combats them has become hollow and empty. Let whoever does not believe that a mask covers our religion obtain an impression for himself from the appearance of our modern churches, from which staleness and art have long since fled.

With this, we turn back to the question from which we digressed, namely, whether or not Miss Miller has created something valuable with her poem. If we bear in mind under what psychologic or moral conditions Christianity came into existence, that is to say, at a time when fierce brutality was an everyday spectacle, then we understand the religious seizure of the whole personality and the worth of that religion which defended the people of the Roman culture against the visible storms of wickedness. It was not difficult for those people to remain conscious of sin, for they saw it every day spread out before their eyes. The religious product was at that time the accomplishment of the total personality. Miss Miller not only undervalues her sins, but the connection between the depressing and unrelenting need and her religious product has even escaped her. Thus, her poetical creation completely loses the living value of a religious product. It is not much more than a sentimental transformation of the erotic which is secretly carried out close to consciousness and principally possesses the same worth as the manifest content of the dream with its uncertain and delusive perishableness. Thus, the poem is probably only a dream become audible to the degree that the modern consciousness is eagerly busied with things of a wholly other sort than religion. Religion and its object, original sin, have stepped into the background, that is to say, into the unconscious in great part. Therefore, today man believes neither in the one nor in the other. Consequently, the Forian school is accused of an impure fantasy, and yet one might convince oneself very easily with a rather fleeting glance at the history of ancient religions and morals as to what kind of demons are harbored in the human soul. With this disbelief in the crudeness of human nature is bound up the disbelief in the power of religion. The phenomenon well known to every psychoanalyst of the unconscious transformation of an erotic conflict into religious activity is something ethically wholly worthless and nothing but an hysterical production. Whoever, on the other hand, to his conscious sin, just as consciously places religion in opposition, does something the greatness of which cannot be denied. This can be verified by a backward glance over history. Such a procedure is sound religion. The unconscious recasting of the erotic into something religious lays itself open to the reproach of a sentimental and ethically worthless pose by means of the secular practice of the naive projection, which is, as we have seen, nothing else than a veiled or indirect real transference through the spiritual, through the Logos.

Christian training has produced a widespread weakening of the animal nature, so that a great part of the strength of the impulses could be set free for the work of social preservation and fruitfulness. This abundance of libido, to make use of this singular expression, pursues with a budding renaissance. For example, Petrarch, a course which outgoing antiquity had already sketched out as religious, viz., the way of the transference to nature. The transformation of this libidinous interest is in great part due to the Mithraic worship, which was a nature religion in the best sense of the word. While the primitive Christians exhibited throughout an antagonistic attitude to the beauties of this world, I recall the passage of St. Augustine mentioned by J. Burckhardt: "Men draw thither to admire the heights of the mountains and the powerful ways of the sea and to turn away from themselves." The foremost authority on the Mithraic cult, Franz Cumont, says as follows: "The gods were everywhere and mingled in all the events of daily life. The fire which cooked the means of nourishment for the believers and which warmed them, the water which quenched their thirst and cleansed them, also the air which they breathed, and the day which shone for them were the objects of their homage. Perhaps no religion has given to its adherents in so large a degree as Mithraism, opportunity for prayer, and motive for devotion. When the initiated betook himself in the evening to the sacred grotto concealed in the solitude of the forest, at every step new sensations awakened in his heart some mystical emotion. The stars that shone in the sky, the wind that whispered in the foliage, the spring of brook which hastened murmuring to the valley, even the earth which he trod under his feet were in his eyes divine, and all surrounding nature a worshipful fear of the infinite forces that swayed the universe."

These fundamental thoughts of Mithraism, which like so much else of the ancient spiritual life, arose again from the grave during the Renaissance, are to be found in the beautiful words of Seneca. "When you enter a grove people with ancient trees higher than the ordinary, and whose bounds were so closely interwoven that the sky cannot be seen, the stately shadows of the wood, the privacy of the place, and the awful gloom cannot but strike you as with the presence of a deity. For when we see some cave at the foot of a mountain penetrating the rocks, not laid by human hands, but hollowed out to great depths by nature, it fills the mind with a religious fear. We venerate the fountain heads of great rivers; the sudden eruption of a vast body of water from the secret places of the earth obtains an altar. We adore likewise the springs of warm baths, and either the opaque quality or immense depths have made some lakes sacred." All this disappeared in the transitory world of the Christian, only to break forth much later when the thought of mankind had achieved that independence of the idea which could resist the aesthetic impression, so that thought was no longer fettered by the emotional effects of the impression, but could rise to reflective observation. Thus, man entered into a new and independent relation to nature, whereby the foundation was laid for natural science and technique. With that, however, there entered in for the first time a displacement of the weight of interest. There arose again real transference, which has reached its greatest development in our time. Materialistic interest has everywhere become paramount. Therefore, the realms of the spirit where earlier the greatest conflicts and developments took place lie deserted and follow. The world has not only lost its god, as the sentimentalists of the 19th century bewail, but also to some extent has lost its soul as well. One therefore cannot wonder that the discoveries and doctrines of the Freudian school, with their holy psychologic views, meet with an almost universal disapproval. Through the change of the center of interest from the inner to the outer world, the knowledge of nature has increased enormously in comparison with that of earlier times. By this, the anthropomorphic conception of the religious dogmas has been definitely thrown open to question. Therefore, the present-day religions can only with the greatest difficulty close their eyes to this fact. For not only has the intense interest been diverted from the Christian religion, but criticism and the necessary correction have increased correspondingly. The Christian religion seems to have fulfilled its great biological purpose, in so far as we are able to judge. It has led human thought to independence and has lost its significance therefore to a yet undetermined extent. In any case, its dogmatic contents have become related to Mithraism. In consideration of the fact that this religion has rendered nevertheless inconceivable service to education, one cannot reject it apo today. It seems to me that we might still make use in some way of its form of thought, and especially of its great wisdom of life, which for 2,000 years has been proven to be particularly efficacious. The stumbling block is the unhappy combination of religion and morality. That must be overcome. There still remain traces of this strife in the soul, the lack of which in a human being is reluctantly felt. It is hard to say in what such things consist, for this ideas as well as words are lacking. If in spite of that I attempt to say something about it, I do it parabolically, using Seneca's words.

"Nothing can be more commendable and beneficial if you persevere in the pursuit of wisdom. It is what would be ridiculous to wish for when it is in your power to attain it. There is no need to lift up your hands to heaven or to pray the servant of the temple to admit you to the ear of the idol that your prayers may be heard the better. God is near thee. He is with thee. Yes, Lucilius, a holy spirit resides within us, the observer of good and evil and our constant guardian. And as we treat him, he treats us. No good man is without a god. Could anyone ever rise above the power of fortune without his assistance? It is he that inspires us with thoughts upright, just, and pure. We do not indeed pretend to say what God, but that a god dwells in the breast of every good man is certain."

End of Section 8.

Section Nine of Psychology of the Unconscious by Carl Jung. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.

Section Nine.

Chapter 4: The Song of the Moth.

A little later, Miss Miller traveled from Geneva to Paris. She says, "My weariness on the railway was so great that I could hardly sleep an hour. It was terrifically hot in the lady's carriage. At 4:00 in the morning, she noticed a moth that flew against the light in her compartment. She then tried to go to sleep again. Suddenly the following poem took possession of her mind."

The Moth to the Sun.

"I longed for thee when first I crawled to consciousness.

My dreams were all of thee when in the chrysalis I lay.

Oftriths of my kind beat out their lives against some feeble spark once caught from thee.

And one hour more, and my poor life is gone.

Yet my last effort, as my first desire shall be,

But to approach thy glory, then having gained one raptured glance, I'll die content.

For I, the source of beauty, warmth, and life,

Have in his perfect splendor once beheld."

Before we go into the material which Miss Miller offers us for the understanding of the poem, we will again cast a glance over the psychologic situation in which the poem originated. Some months or weeks appear to have elapsed since the last direct manifestation of the unconscious that Miss Miller reported to us. About this period we have had no information. We learn nothing about the moods and fantasies of this time. If one might draw a conclusion from this silence, it would be presumably that in the time which elapsed between the two poems, really nothing of importance had happened, and that therefore this poem is again but a voiced fragment of the unconscious working of the complex stretching out over months and years.

It is highly probable that it is concerned with the same complex as before. The earlier product, a hymn of creation full of hope, has however but little similarity to the present poem. The poem lying before us has a truly hopeless, melancholy character.

Moth and sun, two things which never meet. One must in fairness ask, is a moth really expected to rise to the sun? We know indeed the proverbial saying about the moth that flew into the light and singed its wings, but not the legend of the moth that strove towards the sun. Plainly, here two things are connected in her thoughts that do not belong together. First, the moth which fluttered around the light so long that it burnt itself; and then the idea of a small, ephemeral being, something like the dayfly, which in lamentable contrast to the eternity of the stars longs for an imperishable daylight.

This idea reminds one of Mark: "How beneath the evening sunlight glow. The green embosomed houses glitter. The glow retreats. Done is the day of toil. It yonder haste. New fields of life exploring. Ah, that no wing can lift me from the soil upon its track to follow. Follow soaring. Then would I see eternal evening gild the silent world beneath me glowing. Yet finally the weary god is sinking. The newborn impulse fires my mind. I hasten on his beams eternal drinking. The day before me and the night behind, above me heaven unfurled, the floor of waves beneath me. A glorious dream, though now the glorious fade. Alas, the wings that lift the mind. No aid of wings to lift the body can bequeath me."

Not long afterwards, Faust sees the black dog roving there through cornfields and stubble, the dog who is the same as the devil, the tempter, in whose hellish fires Faust has singed his wings, when he believed that he was expressing his great longing for the beauty of the sun and the earth. He went to stray there, and fell into the hands of the evil one. "Yes, resolute to reach some brighter distance on Earth's fairest sun, I turned my back." This is what Faust had said shortly before.

In true recognition of the state of affairs, the honoring of the beauty of nature led the Christian of the Middle Ages to pagan thoughts which lay in an antagonistic relation to his conscious religion. Just as once Mithraism was in threatening competition with Christianity, for Satan often disguises himself as an angel of light. The longing of Faust became his ruin. The longing for the beyond had brought as a consequence a loathing for life. And he stood on the brink of self-destruction. The longing for the beauty of this world led him a new to ruin, into doubt and pain, even to Margarite's tragic death. His mistake was that he followed after both worlds with no check to the driving force of his libido. Like a man of violent passion, Faust portrays once more the folk-psychologic conflict of the beginning of the Christian era.

But what is noteworthy in a reversed order against what fearful powers of seduction Christ had to defend himself by means of his hope of the absolute world beyond, may be seen in the example of Olympius in Augustine. If any of us had been living in that period of antiquity, he would have seen clearly that that culture must inevitably collapse because humanity revolted against it. It is well known that even before the spread of Christianity, a remarkable expectation of redemption had taken possession of mankind. The following eclogue of Virgil might well be a result of this mood: "The last age of Cuman prophecy has come already over again. The great series of the ages commences. Now too returns the Virgin, return the Saturnian kingdoms. Now at length a new progeny is sent down from high heaven. Only chase Luna to the boy at his birth be propitious. In whose time first the age of iron shall discontinue and in the whole world a golden age arise. Now rules thy Apollo. Under thy guidance, if any traces of our guilt continue, rendered harmless, they shall set the earth free from fear forever. He shall partake of the life of the gods, and he shall see heroes mingled with gods, and he too shall be seen by them, and he shall rule a peaceful world with his father's virtues."

The turning to asceticism resulting from the general expansion of Christianity brought about a new misfortune to many: monasticism and the life of the anchorite. Faust takes the reverse course. For him, the aesthetic ideal means death. He struggles for freedom and wins life at the same time, giving himself over to the evil one. But through this, he becomes the bringer of death to her whom he loves most: Margarite. He tears himself away from pain and sacrifices his life in unceasing useful work through which he saves many lives. His double mission as savior and destroyer has already been hinted at in a preliminary manner.

Wagner: "With what feeling thou great man must thou receive the people's honest veneration?"

Faust: "Thus we our hellish boluses compounding among these veils and hills surrounding. Worse than that pestilence have passed. Thousands were done to death from poison of my giving. And I must hear by all the living. The shameless murderers praised at last."

A parallel to this double role is that text in the Gospel of Matthew which has become historically significant: "I came not to send peace but a sword." (Matthew 10:34). Just this constitutes the deep significance of Goethe's Faust, that he clothes in words a problem of modern man which has been turning in restless slumber since the Renaissance, just as was done by the drama of Oedipus for the Hellenic sphere of culture. What is to be the way out between the Scylla of renunciation of the world and the Charybdis of the acceptance of the world?

The hopeful tone voiced in the hymn to the God of creation cannot continue very long with our author. The pose simply promises but does not fulfill. The old longing will come again, for it is a peculiarity of all complexes worked over merely in the unconscious that they lose nothing of their original amount of effect. Meanwhile, their outward manifestations can change almost endlessly. One might therefore consider the first poem as an unconscious longing to solve the conflict through positive religiousness, somewhat in the same manner as they of the earlier centuries decided their conscious conflicts by opposing to them the religious standpoint. This wish does not succeed. Now, with the second poem, there follows a second attempt which turns out in a decidedly more material way. Its thought is unequivocal: only having gained one raptured glance and then to die from the realms of the religious world. The attention, just as in Faust, turns towards the sun of this world, and already there is something mingled with it which has another sense.