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PSYCHOLOGICAL TYPES |
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CHAPTER 1: THE PROBLEM OF TYPES IN THE HISTORY OF CLASSICAL AND MEDIEVAL THOUGHT 1. Psychology in the Classical Age: The Gnostics, Tertullian, and Origen So long as the historical world has existed there has always been psychology; objective psychology, however, is of only recent growth. We might affirm of the science of former times that the lack of objective psychology corresponds with a proportionate yield of the subjective element. Hence the works of the ancients are full of psychology, but only little of it can be described as objective psychology. This may be conditioned in no small measure by the peculiarity of human relationship in classic and in medieval times. The ancients had, if one may so express it, an almost exclusively biological appreciation of their fellow-men; this is everywhere apparent in the habits of life and legal conditions of antiquity. In so far as a judgment of value found any general expression, the medieval world had a metaphysical valuation of its fellow-men; this had its source in the idea of the imperishable value of the human soul. This metaphysical valuation, which may be regarded as a compensation to the standpoint of antiquity, is just as unfavourable as the biological valuation, so far as that personal appraisement is concerned, which can alone be the groundwork of an objective psychology. There are indeed not a few who hold that a psychology can be written ex cathedra. Nowadays, however, most of us are convinced that an objective psychology must above all be grounded upon observation and experience. This foundation would be ideal, if only it were possible. But the ideal and the purpose of science do not consist in giving the most exact possible description of facts -- science cannot yet compete with kinematographic and phonographic records -- it can fulfil its aim and purpose only in the establishment of law, which is merely an abbreviated expression for manifold and yet correlated processes. This purpose transcends the purely experimental by means of the concept, which, in spite of general and proved validity, will always be a product of the subjective psychological constellation of the investigator. In the making of scientific theory and concept much that is personal and incidental is involved. There is also a psychological personal equation, not merely a psycho-physical. We can see colours, but not wave-lengths. This well-known fact must nowhere be more seriously held in view than in psychology. The operation of the personal equation has already begun in the act of observation. One sees what one can best see from oneself. Thus, first and foremost, one sees the mote in one's brother's eye. No doubt the mote is there, but the beam sits in one's own, and -- may somewhat hinder the act of seeing. I misdoubt the principle of 'pure observation' in so-called objective psychology, unless one confines oneself to the eye-pieces of the chronoscope, or to the ergograph and such-like "psychological" apparatus. With such methods one also ensures oneself against too great a yield of experimental psychological facts. But the personal psychological equation becomes even more important in the presentation or the communication of observations, to say nothing of the interpretation and abstraction of the experimental material! Nowhere, as in psychology, is the basic requirement so indispensable that the observer and investigator should be adequate to his object, in the sense that he should be able to see not the subject only but also the object. The demand that he should see only objectively is quite out of the question, for it is impossible. We may well be satisfied if we do not see too subjectively. That the subjective observation and interpretation agrees with the objective facts of the psychological object is evidence for the interpretation only in so far as the latter makes no pretence to be universal, but intends to be valid only for that field of the object that is under consideration. To this extent it is just the beam in one's own eye that enables one to detect the mote in the brother's eye. The beam in one's own eye, in this case, does not prove (as already said) that the brother has no mote in his. But the impairment of vision might easily give rise to a general theory that all motes are beams. The recognition and taking to heart of the subjective limitation of knowledge in general, and of psychological knowledge in particular, is a basic condition for the scientific and accurate estimation of a psyche differing from that of the observing subject. This condition is fulfilled only when the observer is adequately informed concerning the compass and nature of his own personality. He can, however, be sufficiently informed only when he has in great measure freed himself from the compromising influence of collective opinion and feeling, and has thereby reached a clear conception of his own individuality. The further we go back into history the more we see personality disappearing beneath the wrappings of collectivity. And, if we go right down to primitive psychology, we find absolutely no trace of the idea of the individual. In place of individuality we find only collective relationship, or "participation mystique" (Levy-Bruhl). But the collective attitude prevents the understanding and estimation of a psychology which differs from that of the subject, because the mind that is collectively orientated is quite incapable of thinking and feeling in any other way than by projection. What we understand by the concept 'individual' is a relatively recent acquisition in the history of the human mind and human culture. It is no wonder, therefore, that the earlier all-powerful collective attitude almost entirely prevented an objective psychological estimation of individual differences, and forbade any general scientific objectification of individual psychological processes. It was owing to this very lack of psychological thinking that knowledge became 'psychologized', i.e. crowded with projected psychology. Striking instances of this are to be seen in the first attempts at a philosophical explanation of the universe. The development of individuality, with the resulting psychological differentiation of man, goes hand in hand with a de-psychologizing of objective science. These reflections may explain why the springs of objective psychology have such a niggardly flow in the material handed down to us from antiquity. The description of the four temperaments gathered from antiquity is hardly a psychological typification, since the temperaments are scarcely more than psycho-physiological complexions. But this lack of information does not mean that we possess no trace in classical literature of the reality of the psychological antitheses in question. Thus Gnostic philosophy established three types, corresponding perhaps with the three basic psychological functions: thinking, feeling, and sensation. The Pneumatici might correspond with thinking, the Psychici with feeling and the Hylici with sensation. The inferior estimation of the Psychici accorded with the spirit of the Gnosis, which. in contrast with Christianity insisted upon the value of knowledge. But the Christian principle of love and faith did not favour knowledge. The Pneumaticist would accordingly suffer a decline in value within the Christian sphere, in so far as he distinguished himself merely by the possession of the Gnosis, i.e. knowledge. Differences in type should also be remembered when we are considering the long and somewhat dangerous fight which from its earliest beginnings the Church conducted against the Gnosticism. In the practical tendency that undoubtedly prevailed in early Christianity, the intellectual, when, in obedience to his fighting' instinct he did not lose himself in apologetic polemics, scarcely came into his own. The 'regula fidei' was too narrow and permitted no independent movement. Moreover, it was poor in positive intellectual content. It contained a few ideas, which, although of enormous practical value, were a definite obstacle to thought. The intellectual was much more hardly hit by the 'sacrificium intellectus' than the man of feeling. Hence it is easy to understand that the vastly superior intellectual content of the Gnosis, which in the light of our present intellectual development has not only not lost but has indeed considerably gained in value, must have made the greatest possible appeal to the intellectual within the Church. For him it was in very sooth the enticement of the world. Docetism, in particular, caused grave trouble to the Church, with its contention that Christ possessed only an apparent body and that his whole earthly existence and passion had been merely a semblance. In this contention the purely intellectual was given too prominent a part at the expense of human feeling. Perhaps the battle with the Gnosis is most clearly presented to us in two figures who were extremely influential, not only as Fathers of the Church but also as personalities. These are Tertullian and Origen, who lived about the end of the second century. Schultz says of them:
Tertullian was born in Carthage somewhere about 160 A.D. He was a pagan, and yielded himself to the lascivious life of his city until about his thirty-fifth year, when he became a Christian. He was the author of numerous writings, wherein his character, which is our especial interest, unmistakably shows itself. Clear and distinct are his unexampled, noble-hearted zeal, his fire, his passionate temperament, and the profound inwardness of his religious understanding. He is fanatical, ingeniously one-sided for the sake of an accepted truth, impatient, an incomparable fighting spirit, a merciless opponent, who sees victory only in the total annihilation of his adversary, and his speech is like a flashing steel wielded with inhuman mastery. He is the creator of the Church Latin which lasted for more than a thousand years. He it was who coined the terminology of the Early Church. "Had he seized upon a point of view, then must he follow it through to its every conclusion as though lashed by legions from hell, even when right had long since ceased to be on his side and all reasonable order lay mutilated before him." The passion of his thinking was so inexorable that again and again. he alienated himself from the very thing for which he would have given his heart's blood. Accordingly his ethical code is bitter in its severity. Martyrdom he commanded to be sought and not shunned; he permitted no second marriage, and required the permanent veiling of persons of the female sex. The Gnosis, which in reality is a passion for thought and cognition, he attacked with unrelenting fanaticism; including both philosophy and science, which are so closely linked up with it. To him is ascribed the sublime confession: Credo quia absurdum est (I believe because it is against reason). This, however, does not altogeiher accord with historical fact; he merely said (De Carne Christi, 5): "Et mortuus est dei filius, prorsus credibile est, quia ineptum est. Et sepultus resurrexit; certum est quia impossibile est." ("And the Son of God died; this is therefore credible, just because it is absurd. And He rose again from the tomb; this is certain, because it is impossible".) By virtue of the acuteness of his mind he saw through the poverty of philosophic and of Gnostic learning, and contemptuously rejected it. He invoked against it the testimony of his own inner world, his own inner realities, which were one with his faith. In the shaping and development of these realities he became the creator of those abstract conceptions which still underlie the Catholic system of to-day. The irrational inner reality had for him an essentially dynamic nature; it was his principle, his consolidated position in face of the world and the collectively valid or rational science and philosophy. I translate his own words:
The self-mutilation achieved by Tertullian in the sacrificium intellectus led him to the unreserved recognition of the irrational inner reality, the real ground of his faith. That necessity of the religious process which he sensed in himself he seized in the incomparable formula "anima naturaliter Christiana" ("the soul is naturally Christian"). With the sacrificium intellectus philosophy and science, hence the Gnosis also, had no more meaning for him. In the further course of his life the qualities I have depicted stood out in bolder relief. While the Church was driven to compromise more and more with the masses, he revolted against it and became a follower of that Phrygian prophet Montanus, an ecstatic, who represented the principle of absolute denial of the world and complete spiritualization. In violent pamphlets he now began to assail the policy of Pope Calixtus I, and thus, together with Montanism, fell more or less extra ecclesiam. According to a statement of St Augustine he must later even have rejected Montanism and founded a sect of his own. Tertullian is a classical representative of the introverted thinking type. His very considerable and keenly developed intellect is flanked by unmistakable sensuality. That psychological process of development which we term the Christian led him to the sacrifice, the amputation, of the most valuable function, a mythical idea which is also contained in the great and exemplary symbol of the sacrifice of the Son of God. His most valuable organ was the intellect, including that clear discernment of which it was the instrument. Through the sacrificium intelledus, the way of purely intellectual development was forbidden him; it forced him to recognize the irrational dynamis of his soul as the foundation of his being. The intellectuality of the Gnosis, its specifically rational coinage of the dynamic phenomena of the soul, must necessarily have been odious to him, for that was just the way he had to forsake, in order to recognize the principle of feeling. In Origen we may recognize the absolute opposite of Tertullian. Origen was born in Alexandria about 185. His father was a Christian martyr. He himself grew up in that quite unique mental atmosphere wherein the ideas of East and West mingled. With an intense yearning for knowledge he eagerly absorbed all that was worth knowing, and accepted everything, whether Christian, Jewish, Grecian, or Egyptian, which at that time the teeming intellectual world of Alexandria offered him. He distinguished himself as a teacher in a school of catechists. The pagan philosopher Porphyrius, a pupil of Plotinus, said of him: "His outer life was that of a Christian and against the Law; but in his view of things phenomenal and divine he was a Hellenist, and substituted the conception of the Greeks for the foreign myths." Already before A.D. 211 his self-castration had taken place; his inner motives for this may indeed be guessed, but historically they are not known to us. Personally he was of great influence, and had a winning speech. He was constantly surrounded by pupils and a whole host of stenographers who gathered up the precious words that fell from the revered master's lips. As an author he was extraordinarily fertile and he developed an amazing academic activity. In Antioch he even delivered lectures on theology to the Emperor's mother Mammaea. In Caesarea he was the head of a school. His teaching activities were considerably interrupted by his extensive journeyings. He possessed extraordinary scholarship and had an astounding capacity for the investigation of things in general. He hunted up old Bible manuscripts and earned special merit for his textual criticism. "He was a great scholar, indeed the only true scholar the ancient Church possessed", says Harnack. In complete contrast to Tertullian, Origen did not bar the door against the influence of GJ.1osticism; in fact he even transferred it, in attenuated form, into, the bosom of the Church; such at least was his aim. Indeed, judging by his thought and fundamental views, he was himself almost a Christian Gnostic. His position in regard to faith and knowledge is portrayed by Harnack in the following psychologically significant words:
His theology as distinguished from Tertullian's was essentially philosophical; it was thoroughly pressed, so to speak, into the frame of a neo-Platonic philosophy. In Origen the two spheres of Grecian philosophy and the Gnosis on the one hand, and the world of Christian ideas on the other, peacefully and harmoniously intermingle. But this daring, intelligent tolerance and sense of justice also led Origen to the fate of condemnation by the Church. The final condemnation, to be sure, only took place posthumously, when Origen as an old man had been tortured in the persecution of the Christians by Decius, and had died not long after from the effects of the torture. In 399 Pope Anastasias I pronounced the condemnation, and in 543 his heresy was anathematized by a synod convoked by Justinian, which judgment was upheld by later Councils. Origen is a classical example of the extraverted type. His basic orientation is towards the object; this shows itself in his conscientious consideration of objective facts and their conditions; it is also revealed in the formulation of that supreme. principle: amor et visio Dei. The Christian process of development encountered in Origen a type whose bed-rock foundation is the relation to the object; a type that has ever symbolically expressed itself in sexuality; which also accounts for the fact that there even exist to-day certain theories which reduce every essential function of the soul down to sexuality. Castration is therefore the adequate expression of the sacrifice of the most valuable function. It is entirely characteristic that Tertullian should perform the sacrificium intellectus, whereas Origen is led to the sacrificium phalli, since the Christian process demands a complete abolition of the sensual hold upon the object, in other words: it demands the sacrifice of the hitherto most valued function, the dearest possession, the strongest instinct. Considered biologically, the sacrifice is brought into the service of domestication, but psychologically it opens a door for new possibilities of development to be inaugurated through the liberation from old ties. Tertullian sacrificed the intellect, because it was that which most strongly bound him to worldliness. He battled with the Gnosis because for him it represented the side-track into the intellectual, which at the same time involves also sensuality. Parallel with this fact we find that in reality Gnosticism was also divided into two schools: one school striving after a spirituality that exceeded all bounds, the other losing itself in an ethical anarchism, an absolute libertinism that shrank from no lechery however atrocious and perverse. One must definitely distinguish between the Encratites (continent) and the Antitactes or Antinomians (opposed to order and law), who in obedience to certain doctrines sinned on principle and purposefully gave themselves to unbridled debauchery. To the latter school belong the Nicolaitans, the Archontici, etc., and the aptly named Borborites. How closely the apparent antitheses lay side by side is shewn by the example of the Archontici, for this same sect divided into an Encratitic and an Antinomian school, both of which remained logical and consistent. If anyone wants to know what are the ethical results of a bold intellectualism carried out on a large scale, let him study the history of Gnostic morals. He will thoroughly understand the sacrificium intellectus. These people were also practically consistent and lived what they had conceived, even to absurd lengths. But Origen, in the mutilation of himself, sacrificed the sensual hold upon the world. For him, evidently, the intellect was not so much a specific danger as feeling and sensation with their enchainment to the object. Through castration he freed himself from the sensuality that was coupled with Gnosticism; he could then yield himself unafraid to the riches of Gnostic thought, while Tertullian through his sacrifice of intellect turned away from the Gnosis, but thereby reached a depth of religious feeling that we miss in Origen. "In one way he was superior to Origen", says Schultz, "because in his deepest soul he lived everyone of his words; it was not reason that carried him away, like the other, but the heart. But in another respect he stands far behind him, inasmuch as he, the most passionate of all thinkers, was on the verge of rejecting knowledge altogether, for his battle against the Gnosis was tantamount to a complete denial of human thought." We see here how, in the Christian process, the original type has actually become reversed: Tertullian, the acute thinker, becomes the man of feeling, while Origen becomes the scholar and loses himself in the intellect. Logically, of course, it is quite easy to reverse the state of affairs and to say that Tertullian had always been the 'man of feeling and Origen the intellectual. Disregarding the fact that the difference of type is not done away with by this procedure, but exists as before, the reversed point of view has still to be explained; how comes it that Tertullian saw his most dangerous enemy in the intellect, while Origen in sexuality? One could say they were both deceived, and one could advance the fatal result of both lives by way of argument. One must assume, if that were the case, that both had sacrificed the less important thing, and thus to a certain extent both had made a bargain with fate. That is also a view which contains a principle of recognizable validity. Are there not just such sly-boots among the primitives who approach their fetish with a black hen under the arm, saying: "See, here is thy sacrifice, a beautiful black pig." I am, however, of opinion that the depreciatory method of explanation, notwithstanding the unmistakable relief which the ordinary human being feels in dragging down something great, is not under all circumstances the correct one, even though it may appear to be very 'biological.' But from what we can personally know of these two great ones in the realm of the mind, we must say that their whole nature and quality had such sincerity that their Christian conversion was neither a fraudulent enterprise nor mere deceit, but had both reality and truthfulness. We shall not lose ourselves upon a by-path if we take this opportunity of trying to grasp what is the psychological meaning of this breaking of the natural instinctive course (which is what the Christian process of sacrifice seems to be). From what has been said above it follows that conversion signifies also a transition to another attitude. It is further clear whence the impelling motive towards , conversion arises, and how far Tertullian was right in conceiving the soul as "naturaliter Christiana." The natural, instinctive course, like everything in nature, follows the principle of least resistance. One man is rather more gifted here, another there; or, again, adaptation to the early environment of childhood may demand either relatively more restraint and reflection or relatively more sympathy and participation, according to the nature of the parents and other circumstances. Thereby a certain preferential attitude is automatically moulded, which results in different types. In so far then as every man, as a relatively stable being, possesses all the basic psychological functions, it would be a psychological necessity with a view to perfect adaptation that he should also employ them in equal measure. For there must be a reason why there are different ways of psychological adaptation: evidently one alone is not sufficient, since the object seems to be only partially comprehended when, for example, it is either merely thought or merely felt. Through a one-sided (typical) attitude there remains a deficit in the resulting psychological adaptation, which accumulates during the course of life; from this deficiency a derangement of adaptation develops, which forces the subject towards a compensation. But the compensation can be obtained only by means of amputation (sacrifice) of the hitherto one-sided attitude. Thereby a temporary heaping up of energy results and an overflow into channels hitherto not consciously used though already existing unconsciously. The adaptation deficit, which is the causa efficiens of the process of conversion, becomes subjectively perceived as a vague sense of dissatisfaction. Such an atmosphere prevailed at the turning-point of our era. A quite astonishing need of redemption came over mankind, and brought about that unheard-of efflorescence of every sort of possible and impossible cult in ancient Rome. Moreover, representatives of the (living the. full life,' theory were not wanting, who, albeit innocent of 'biology,' operated with similar arguments founded on the science of that day. They, too, could never be done with speculations as to why it is that mankind is in such a poor way; only the causalism of that day, as compared with the science of ours, was somewhat less restricted; their 'harking back' reached far beyond childhood to cosmogony, and many systems were devised that pointed to all sorts of events in remote antiquity as being the source of insufferable consequences for mankind. The sacrifice that Tertullian and Origen carried out is drastic -- too drastic for our taste -- but it corresponded with the spirit of that time, which was thoroughly concretistic. In harmony with this spirit the Gnosis simply took its visions as real, or at least as bearing directly upon reality; hence for Tertullian there was an objective validity in the realities of his feeling. Gnosticism projected the subjective inner perception of the attitude-changing process into the form of a cosmogonic system, and believed in the reality of its psychological figures. In my book Psychology of the Unconscious [1] I left the whole question open as to the origin of the libido course peculiar to the Christian process. I spoke of a splitting of the libido into halves, each directed against the other. The explanation for this is to be found in the one-sidedness of the psychological attitude growing so extreme that the need for compensation became urgent on the side of the unconscious. It is precisely the Gnostic movement in the early Christian centuries which most clearly demonstrates the outbreak of unconscious contents in the moment of compensation. Christianity itself signified the demolition and sacrifice of the cultural values of antiquity, i.e. of the classical attitude. As regards the problem of the present, it need hardly be said that it is quite indifferent whether we speak of to-day or of that age two thousand years ago. 2. The Theological Disputes of the Ancient Church It is more than probable that the
contrast of types would also appear in the history of those schisms and heresies so frequent in the disputes of the early Christian Church. The Ebionites or Jewish Christians, who in this respect were probably identical with the primitive Christians generally, believed in the exclusive humanity of Christ and held him to be the son of Mary and Joseph, only subsequently receiving his consecration through the Holy Ghost. The Ebionites are, therefore, upon this point diametrically opposed to the Docetists. The effects of this opposition endured long after. The conflict came to light again in an altered form -- which, though essentially attenuated, had in reality an even graver effect upon Church politics -- about the year 320 in the heresy of Arius. Arius denied the formula propounded by the orthodox church
Another aspect of the type-antithesis appears on the scene in the Pelagian controversy in the beginning of the fifth century. The experience so profoundly sensed by Tertullian, that man cannot avoid sin even after baptism, grew with St. Augustine -- who in many respects is not unlike Tertullian -- into that thoroughly characteristic pessimistical doctrine of original sin, whose essence consists in the concupiscentia [2] inherited from Adam. Over against the fact of original sin there stood, according to St Augustine, the redeeming grace of God, with the institution of the church ordained by His grace to administer the means of salvation. In this conception the value of man stands very low. He is really nothing but a miserable rejected creature, who is delivered over to the devil under all circumstances, unless through the medium of the church, the sole means of salvation, he is made a participator of the divine grace. Therewith, to a greater or less degree, not only man's value but also his moral freedom and self-government crumbled away; as a result, the value and importance of the church as an idea was so much the more enhanced, corresponding to the expressed programme in the Augustinian civitas Dei. Against such a stifling conception,
springing ever anew, rises the feeling of the freedom and moral value of
man; it is a feeling that will not long endure suppression whether by
inspection however searching, or logic however keen. The justice of the
feeling of human value found its advocates in Pelagius, a British monk,
and Celestius, his pupil. Their teaching was grounded upon the moral freedom of, man as a given fact. It is significant of the psychological kinship existing between the Pelagian standpoint and the Dyophysitic view that the persecuted Pelagians found asylum with Nestorius, the Metropolitan of Constantinople. Nestorius emphasized the separation of the two natures of Christ in contrast to the Cyrillian doctrine of the
3. The Problem of Transubstantiation With those immense political upheavals, the collapse of the Roman Empire and the sinking of antique civilization, these controversies lapsed likewise into oblivion. But, as in the course of many centuries a certain stability was again reached, psychological differences also reappeared, tentatively at first but becoming ever more intense with advancing civilisation. No longer indeed was it those problems which had brought the ancient church into confusion; new forms had come to light, under which however the same psychology was concealed. About the middle of the ninth century the Abbot Paschasius Radbertus appeared with a writing upon the Holy Communion, in which he advanced the doctrine of transubstantiation, i.e. the view that the wine and holy wafer become transformed in the Communion into the actual blood and body of Christ. As is well-known, this conception became a dogma, according to which the transformation is accomplished "vere, realiter, substantialiter" ("in truth, in reality, in substance"); although the 'accidentals' preserve their outer aspect of bread and wine, they are substantially the flesh and the blood of Christ. Against this extreme concretization of a symbol Ratramnus, a monk of the same monastery in which Radbertus was abbot, dared to raise a certain opposition. Radbertus, however, found a more resolute adversary in Scolus Erigena, one of the great philosophers and daring thinkers of the early Middle Ages; who, as Hase says in his History if the Church, stood so high and solitary above his time that the anathema of the Church reached him only after centuries. As Abbot of Malmesbury, he was butchered by his own monks about the year 889. Scot us Erigena, to whom true philosophy was also true religion, was no blind follower of authority and the 'once accepted'; because, unlike the majority of his age, he could himself think. He set reason above authority, very unseasonably perhaps but in a way that assured him of the recognition of the later centuries. Even the Fathers of the Church, who were considered to be above discussion, he held as authorities only in so far as their writings contained treasures of human reason. Thus he also held that the Communion is merely a commemoration of that Last Supper which Jesus celebrated with his disciples; a view in which the reasonable man of every age will, moreover, participate. But Scotus Erigena, although clear and humanly simple in his thoughts and little disposed to detract from the meaning and value of the sacred ceremony, was not at one with the spirit of his time and the desires of the world around him; a fact that might, indeed, be inferred from his betrayal and assassination by his own comrades of the cloister. Because he could think reasonably and consistently success did not come to him; instead, it fell to Radbertus, who assuredly could not think, but who 'transubstantiated' the symbolical and meaningful, making it coarse and sensuous: in so doing he clearly chimed in with the spirit of his time, which craved for the concretizing of religious occurrences. Again, in this controversy one can easily recognise those basic elements which we have already met with in the disputes commented upon earlier, namely, the abstract standpoint that is averse from any intercourse with the concrete object and the concretistic, that is, turned to the object. Far be it from us to pronounce, from the intellectual view-point, a one-sided, depreciatory judgment upon Radbertus and his achievement. Although to the modern mind this dogma must appear simply absurd, we must not be misled on that account into regarding it as historically worthless. It is, indeed, a showpiece for every collection of human errors, but its worthlessness is not therefore eo ipso established; before passing judgment, we must minutely investigate what this dogma effected in the religious life of those centuries, and what our age still indirectly owes to its operation. It must, for instance not be overlooked, that it is precisely the belief in the reality of this miracle that demanded a release of the psychic process from the purely sensuous; and this cannot remain without influence upon the nature of the psychic process. The process of directed thinking, for instance, becomes absolutely impossible when the sensuous holds too high a threshold value. By virtue of too high a value it constantly invades the psyche, where it disintegrates and destroys the function of directed thinking based as this is precisely upon the exclusion of the unsuitable. From this elementary consideration there immediately follows the practical importance of those rites and dogmas which hold their ground both from this standpoint as well as from a purely opportunist, biological way of thinking; to say nothing of the direct specific religious impressions which came to individuals from belief in this dogma. Highly as we esteem Scotus Erigena, the less is it permitted to despise the achievement of Radbertus. We may, however, learn from this example, that the thought of the introvert is incommensurable with the thought of the extravert, since the two thought-forms, as regards their determinants, are wholly and fundamentally different. One might perhaps say: the thinking of the introvert is rational, while that of the extravert is programmatical. These arguments -- and this I wish particularly to emphasize -- do not pretend to be in any way decisive with regard to the individual psychology of the two authors. What we know of Scotus Erigena personally -- it is little enough -- is not sufficient to enable us to make any sure diagnosis of his type. What we do know speaks in favour of the introversion type. Of Radbertus we know next to nothing. We know only that he said something that ran counter to common human thought, but with surer feeling-logic he divined what his age was prepared to accept as suitable. This fact would speak in favour of the extraversion type. We must, however, through our insufficient knowledge, suspend judgment upon both personalities, since, especially with Radbertus, the matter might quite well be decided differently. Equally might he have been an introvert, but with a level of intelligence that altogether failed to rise above the conceptions of his milieu, and with a logic so lacking in originality that it merely sufficed to draw an obvious conclusion from already prepared premises in the writings of the Fathers. And, vice versa, Scotus Erigena might as well have been an extravert, if it could be shown that he was carried by a milieu which in any case was distinguished by common sense and which felt a corresponding expression to be suitable and desirable. The latter is in no sort of way proved concerning Scotus Erigena. But on the other hand we do know how great was the yearning of that time for the reality of the' religious miracle. To this character of that age the view of Scotus Erigena must have seemed cold and deadening, whilst the assertion of Radbertus must have been alive with a sense of promise, since it concretized what every man desired. The Holy Communion controversy of the ninth century was merely the anacrusis of a much greater strife that for centuries severed the minds of men and embraced immeasurable consequences. This was the opposition between nominalism and realism. By nominalism one understands that school which asserted that the so-called universalia, namely the generic or universal concepts, such as beauty, goodness, animal, man, etc., are nothing but nomina (names) or words, derisively called "flatus vocis". Anatole France says: "Et qu'est-ce que penser? Et comment pense-t-on? Nous pen sons avec des mots -- songez-y, un metaphysicien n'a, pour constituer le systeme du monde, que le cri perfectionne des singes et des chiens." This is extreme nominalism; so with Nietzsche when he conceives reason as" speech metaphysics". Realism, on the contrary, affirms the existence of the universalia ante rem, namely, that the universal concepts have existence in themselves after the manner of the Platonic ideas. Despite its ecclesiastical association, nominalism is a sceptical current which denies that separate existence which is characteristic of the abstract. It is a kind of scientific scepticism within a quite rigid dogmatism. Its concept of reality necessarily coincides with the sensuous reality of things; it is the individuality of things which represents the real as opposed to the abstract idea. Strict realism, on the contrary, transfers the accent of reality to the abstract, the idea, the universal, which it places ante rem (before the thing). (a) The Problem of the Universalia in the Classical Age As is shown by the reference to the
Platonic ideology, we are discussing a conflict that reaches very far back. Certain venomous remarks in Plato concerning "greybeards and belated scholars" and "the poor in spirit" hint at the representatives of two allied schools of philosophy which agreed ill with the Platonic spirit, namely the Cynics and the Megarians. Antisthenes, the representative of the former school, although by no means remote from the Socratic mental atmosphere and even a friend of Xenophon, was nevertheless avowedly illdisposed to Plato's beautiful world of ideas. He even wrote a pamphlet against Plato, in which he offensively converted Plato's name to
A prominent representative of this school
was Stilpon of Megara, about whom the following characteristic anecdote is related: Stilpon came one day to Athens and saw upon the Acropolis the wondrous statue of Pallas Athene made by Phidias. A true Megarian, he observed, it is not the daughter of Zeus, but of Phidias. In this jest the whole of the Megarian thought is expressed, for Stilpon taught that generic concepts are without reality or objective validity; who, therefore, speaks of man speaks of nobody, because he designates " This manifest and fundamental opposition was lucidly apprehended by Gomperz as the problem of inherency and predication. When, for instance, we speak of 'warm' and 'cold' we speak of 'warm' and 'cold' things, to which 'warm' and 'cold' as attributes, predicates, or assertions respectively belong. The statement refers to something perceived and actually existing, namely to a warm or a cold body. From a plurality of similar cases we abstract the concepts of 'warmth' and 'coldness', with which also we immediately connect or associate something concrete. Thus 'warmth' and 'coldness', etc., are to us something real, because of the perseveration of perception in the abstraction. It is extremely difficult for us to strip off that which pertains to things from the abstraction, since there naturally clings to every abstraction its corresponding derivation. In this sense the 'thing-ness' of the predicate is essentially a priori. If now, we pass over to a higher grade generic concept 'temperature' its 'thingness' (das Dinghafte) is still readily perceptible to us, so that, in spite of a certain diminution in its sensuous definiteness, it has renounced none of its representability. But representability also adheres closely to sensual perception. If we further ascend to a still higher generic concept, viz. energy, the character of 'thingness' quite disappears, and with it, to a certain degree, goes the quality of representability. At this point the conflict about the "nature" of energy appears: whether energy is purely conceptual and abstract, or whether something real. Assuredly the learned nominalist of our day is quite convinced that 'energy' is merely a nomen, a 'counter' of our mental calcule; yet, in spite of this, our every-day speech refers to 'energy' as though it were something quite tangible; thus constantly sowing among devoted heads the greatest confusion from the standpoint of the theory of cognition. The reality of the purely conceptual, which thus naturally creeps into our process of abstraction, and evokes the" reality" either of the predicate or the abstract idea, is no artificial product, no arbitrary hypostasizing of a concept, but necessary by nature. For it is not the case that the abstract idea is arbitrarily hypostasized and transplanted into another world of equally artificial origin: the actual historical process is just the reverse. With the primitive, for instance, the imago, the psychic reverberation of the sense-impression, is so strong and so avowedly sensuous in hue and texture, that, when it appears reproduced, i.e. as a spontaneous memory-image, it sometimes even has the quality of hallucination. Thus when the memory-image of his dead mother suddenly reappears to a primitive, it is as if it were her ghost that he sees and hears. We only 'think' of the dead, the primitive perceives them, just because of the extraordinary sensuousness of his mental images. Hence arises the primitive belief in ghosts. The ghosts are what we quite simply call 'thoughts '. When the primitive 'thinks', he literally has visions, whose reality is so great that he is constantly mistaking the psychic for the real. Powell says: "La confusion des confusions dans la pensee des non-civilises est: la confusion de l'objectif et du subjectif." Spencer and Gillen observe: "What a savage experiences during a dream is just as real to him as what he sees when he is awake." What I myself have seen of the psychology of the negro completely endorses that finding. From this basic fact of the sensuous realism of the image, in presence of the autonomy of the sense impression, springs the belief in spirits, and not from any need of explanation on the part of the savage, which is merely a European imputation. For the primitive, thought is visionary and auditory -- hence it also has the character of revelation. Thus the magician, i.e. the visionary, is always the thinker of the tribe who brings to pass the manifestation of spirits or gods. This is the source of the magical effect of thought; it is as good as action, just because it is real. In the same way the word, the outer covering of thought, has 'real' effect, because the word calls up 'real' memory images. Primitive superstition surprises us only because we have very largely succeeded in de-sensualizing the psychic image, i.e. we have learnt to think 'abstractly', always, of course, with the above-mentioned limitations. Whoever is engaged in the practice of analytical psychology grows constantly more aware of the fact that a frequent reminder is necessary, even for his' educated' European patients, that 'thinking' is not 'action'; this one needs it, may be, because he believes that to think something is enough, and that one, because he feels he must not think something, else must he go and do it. The dream of the normal individual, and the hallucination that accompanies mental disorientation, show how easily the primitive reality of the psychic image once more emerges. Mystical practice endeavours, even by use of artificial introversion, to re-establish the primitive reality of the imago, in order to increase the counter-weight against extraversion. We find a speaking example of this in the initiation of the Mohammedan mystic, Tewekkul-Beg, by Molla-Shah [4]. Tewekkul-Beg relates:
The Master explained this to him as the first phenomena of his initiation. Other visions soon followed, when once the way to the primitive real images had been opened up. The reality of the predicate is granted a priori, since it has always existed in the human mind. Only by subsequent criticism is the abstraction deprived of the character of reality: Even in the time of Plato the belief in' the magical reality of the word-idea was so great that it was actually worth the philosopher's while to devise traps or fallacies by which he was able, with the aid of the absolute verbal significance, to extort an absurd reply. A simple example is the Enkekalymmenos (the veiled man) fallacy, called after the Megarian Eubulides. It is worded as follows: "Canst thou recognize thy father? Yes. Canst thou recognise this veiled man? No. Thou contradictest thyself; for this veiled man is thy father. Thus thou canst recognize thy father and yet at the same time not recognize him." The fallacy lies merely in this, that the one questioned naively assumes that the word 'recognize' designates in all cases one and the same objective matter of fact, while in reality its validity is limited only to certain definite cases, The fallacy of the Keratines (the horned one) rests upon the same principle: it runs as follows: "What thou hast not lost, thou still hast; thou hast not lost horns, therefore thou hast horns." Here also the fallacy lies in the naivete of the questioned one, who accepts in the premise a definite matter of fact. It could be convincingly proved by this method that absolute verbal significance was a delusion. As a consequence, the reality of the generic concept, which in the form of the Platonic idea [5] had a metaphysical existence and exclusive validity, was also in jeopardy. Gomperz says: "Men were not yet filled with that distrust of speech which inspires us and makes us perceive in words a frequently quite inadequate expression of the actual facts. Instead, there prevailed the naive belief that the orbit of the meaning and the orbit of application of the word on the whole corresponding with it must in every respect coincide." In presence of this absolute magical verbal significance, which pre-supposes that in the word there is also given the objective behaviour of things, the Sophist criticism is thoroughly in place. It convincingly proves the impotence of language. In so far as ideas are only nomina -- a supposition that has to be proved -- the attack upon Plato is justified. But generic concepts cease to be merely nomina when similarities or conformities of things are designated by them. Then the question at issue is, whether or not these conformities are objective realities. Such conformities actually exist, hence the generic concept also corresponds with reality. As a container of the reality of a thing, it is as good as the exact description of a thing. The generic concept is distinguished from the latter only in the fact that it is the description or designation of the conformities of things. The discrepancy, therefore, lies neither in the concept nor in the idea but in its verbal expression, which obviously under no circumstances renders either the thing adequately or the conformity of things. The nominalist attack upon the doctrine of ideas is therefore, in principle, an encroachment without justification. Thus Plato's irritated parry was altogether justified. According to Antisthenes, the inherency-principle consists in this, that not only not many predicates. but that no predicate at all, can be affirmed of a subject which differs from it. Antisthenes granted as valid only those predicates that were identical with the subject. Apart from the circumstance that such statements of identity (as 'the sweet is sweet') affirm nothing at all and are, therefore. without meaning, the weakness of the inherency principle lies in this: that a judgment of identity has also nothing to do with the thing; the word' grass' has literally nothing to do with the thing 'grass.' The principle of inherency suffers then in much the same degree as the ancient word-fetichism, which naively assumes that the word coincides also with the thing. When, therefore, the nominalist calls to the realist: "You are dreaming -- you think you are dealing with things, but in reality you are only fighting verbal chimeras", the realist can answer the nominalist in precisely the same words; for neither is the nominalist concerned with things in themselves but with words, which he sets in the place of things. Even when for every separate thing he sets a separate word, yet they are always only words and not things themselves. Although indeed, the idea of "energy" is admittedly a verbal concept, it is nevertheless so extraordinarily real that the electrical Company pays dividends out of it. The board of directors would certainly allow no metaphysical argument to convince them of the unreality of energy. 'Energy' simply designates the undeniable conformity of the phenomena of force, which in the most telling ways daily proves its existence. In so far as the thing is real, and a word conventionally designates the thing, the word also receives 'reality-significance'. In so far as the conformity of things is real, the generic concept designating the conformity of things also receives 'reality-significance'; furthermore, it is a significance that is neither greater nor less than that of the word which designates the individual thing. The shifting of the accent of value from one side to the other is a matter of individual attitude and contemporary psychology. Gomperz also felt this psychological foundation in Antisthenes, and brings out the following points: ... "a sturdy commonsense, a resistance to all enthusiasm, perchance also a strength of individual feeling, which stamp the personality and therefore the whole individual character as a type of complete reality." We might further add, the envy of a man without the full rights of citizenship, a proletarian, a man whom fate had sparingly endowed with beauty, and who could at the best, only climb to the heights by demolishing the values of others. Especially was this characteristic of the Cynic, who must ever be carping at others, and to whom nothing was sacred when it chanced to belong to another; he even made no scruples at destroying the peace of the home, if he might thereby seize an occasion to impose upon mankind his invaluable counsel. To this essentially critical attitude of mind Plato's world of ideas with its eternal reality stands diametrically opposed. It is plain that the psychology of the man who fashioned that world had an orientation that was altogether foreign to the critical, disintegrating judgments portrayed above. Plato's thinking, abstracted and created from the plurality of things synthetic constructive concepts, which designate and express the universal conformities of things as the essentially existing. Their invisible and suprahuman quality is directly opposed to the concretism of the inherency principle, which would reduce the material of thought to the category of the unique, individual, and objective. This attempt is, however, just as impossible as the exclusive acceptance of the principle of predication, which would exalt what has been affirmed concerning many isolated things to an eternally existing substance above all decay. Both .forms of judgment are justifiable, as both are also naturally present in every man. This is best seen, according to my view, in the fact that the very founder of the Megarian school, Euclid of Megara, established an "All-unity" principle that stands immeasurably above the individual and casuistic. For he linked together the Eleatic principle [6] of the "existing" with the "good", so that for him the "existing" and the "good" were identical. Against which there stood only the "non-existing evil". This optimistic 'all-oneness' is, of course, nothing but a generic concept of the highest order, one that directly embraces the existing, but at the same time contravenes all evidence, and this in a much higher degree than the Platonic ideas. With this concept Euclid created a compensation to the critical disintegration of the constructive judgment into mere word things. This all-in-one principle is so remote and so vague that it utterly fails to express the conformity of things; it is no type at all, but rather the product of a desire for a unity that shall comprehend the disordered multitude of individual things. The desire for such a unity urges itself upon all who pay allegiance to an extreme nominalism, in so far as there is an effort to emerge from the negatively critical attitude. Hence, not at all infrequently we find in people of this sort an idea of fundamental homogeneity that is manifestly improbable and arbitrary. For the inherency principle as an exclusive basis is an impossibility. Gomperz pertinently observes:
Constructive judgment -- which, as opposed to inherency, is based upon the conformity of things -- has created universal ideas which belong to the greatest values of civilization. Even if these ideas belong only to the dead, yet threads, still bind us to them, which, as Gomperz says, have gained an almost unbreakable strength. He continues: "The inanimate thing can merit a claim to honour, consideration, and even self-sacrificing devotion, in the same way as the human dead; one need only mention the statues, graves, and colours of the soldier. But, though I do violence to myself and succeed in my efforts to tear down those threads, I will assuredly relapse into brutality; for I suffer grave damage to all those feelings that clothe the hard rock-bottom of naked reality as with a rich covering of living bloom. Upon the high valuation of this covering growth, upon the estimation of all that one might call inherited values, depends every refinement, every grace and delicacy of life, every cultivation of animal instinct, as well as every enjoyment and pursuit of art -- in fact, all those things which the Cynics without scruple or compassion would have striven to uproot. Certainly -- and one may readily concede this to them and their not inconsiderable modern following -- there is a limit beyond which we may not suffer the sway of the principle of association to extend, without ourselves being equally guilty of that same folly and superstition which quite certainly grew out of the unlimited sway of that principle." We have entered thus minutely into the problem of inherency and predication, not merely because this problem was revived once more in the nominalism and realism of the scholastics, but because it has never yet been finally set at rest, and, presumably, it never will. For here again the question at issue is the typical opposition between the abstract standpoint -- in which the decisive value lies in the thought process itself -- and the specific thinking and feeling upon which, whether consciously or unconsciously, the objective orientation is based. In the latter case, the mental process is a means which has the development of the personality for its end. It is little wonder that it was precisely the proletarian philosophy that adopted the inherency principle. Wherever sufficient reasons exist for the shifting of emphasis upon individual feeling, thinking and feeling become negatively critical, through a poverty of positive creative energy (which is diverted to personal ends); thinking declines to a mere analytical organ that reduces down to the concrete and the singular. Over the resulting accumulation of disordered individual things a vague all-in-oneness whose wish character is more or less transparent will, at best, supervene. But when the emphasis is laid upon the mental processes, the result of the mental activity is super-ordinated over the multiplicity as idea. The idea is as far as possible de-personalized; but the personal apprehension goes over almost completely into the mental process which it hypostasizes. Before passing on we might perhaps enquire whether the psychology of the Platonic ideology justifies us in the supposition that Plato may personally belong to the introverted type, and whether the psychology of the Cynics and the Megarians allows us to reckon such figures as Antisthenes, Diogenes, or Stilpon as extraverted? A decision of the question put in this form is quite impossible. A really careful and minute examination of Plato's authentic writings considered as his 'documents humains' might possibly allow one to conclude to which type he personally belonged. For my own part, I would not venture to pronounce any positive judgment. If someone were to furnish evidence that Plato belonged to the extraverted type, it would not surprise me. What has been transmitted concerning the others is so very fragmentary that a decision is, in my opinion, an impossibility. Since the two kinds of thinking under review depend upon a displacement of the accent of value, it is of course equally possible in the case of the introvert that personal apprehension may, for various reasons, be pushed into the foreground and will supersede thinking, so that his thinking becomes negatively critical. For the extravert, the accent of value is laid upon the relation to the object simply, and not necessarily upon his personal relationship to it. If the relation to the object stands in the foreground, the mental process is already subordinate; but, in so far as it is exclusively occupied with the nature of the object and avoids the admixture of personal apprehension, it does not possess a destructive character. We have, therefore, to note the particular conflict between the principles of inherency and of predication as a special case, which in the further course of our investigation will be given a more thorough examination. The special nature of this case lies in the positive and negative parts played by personal apprehension. When the type (generic concept) suppresses the individual thing to a shadow, then the type, the idea, has won to reality. When the value of the individual thing abolishes the type (generic concept), anarchic disintegration is at work. Both positions are extreme and unfair, but they make a contrasting picture whose clear outlines leave nothing to be desired, and whose very exaggeration brings into relief certain traits, which, albeit in milder and therefore more concealed forms, also adhere to the nature of the introverted and extraverted type, even when personalities are concerned in whom personal apprehension is not pushed into the foreground. It makes, for instance, a considerable difference whether the intellectual function is master or servant. The master thinks and feels differently from the servant. Even the most far-reaching abstraction of the personal in favour of the general value never renders a complete elimination of personal admixture possible. Yet, in so far as this exists, thought and feeling contain also those destructive tendencies which proceed from the self-assertion of the person in face of the inclemency of social conditions. But it would surely be a great folly if, for the sake of personal tendencies, we were to reduce values of universal reality down to mere personal undercurrents. That would be pseudo-psychology. Such, however, exists. (b) The Universalia Problem in Scholasticism The problem of the two forms of judgment
remained unsolved because -- tertium non datur. Porphyrius handed down the problem to the Middle Ages thus: "Mox de generibus et speciebus illud quidem sive subsistant sive in nudis intellectibus posita sint, sive subsistentia corporalia sint an incorporalia, et utrum seperata a sensibilibus an in sensibilibus posita et circa haec consistentia, dicere recusabo." ("As regards the universal and generic concepts, the real question is whether they are substantial or merely intellectual, whether material or immaterial, whether apart from things perceived or in and around them"). Somewhat in this form the Middle Ages resumed the discussion: they distinguished the Platonic view, the universalia ante rem, the universal or the idea as a standard or example above all individual things and altogether detached from them, existing
The Platonic form, as we saw, stood opposed to the critical assumption that generic concepts are merely words. In this case the real is prius, the ideal posterius. To this view the label was attached: universalia post rem. Between both conceptions stands the
temperate realistic conception of Aristotle, which can be called the "universalia in re", namely, that form ( These three forms also show the structure of medieval opinions in the great universalia dispute, which was the real essence of the scholastic controversy. It cannot be my task -- even were I competent -- to probe deeply into the particular points of the great controversy. I must content myself with a mere survey of the orientating allusions. The dispute began with the views of Johannes Roscellinus about the end of the eleventh century. The univer salia were for him nothing but nomina rerum, names of things, or, as tradition says "flatus vocis". For him there were only individual things. He was, as Taylor aptly observes, "strongly held by the reality of individuals". To think of God also as only individual was the next obvious conclusion, thereby dissolving the Trinity into three persons; so that Roscellinus actually arrived at tritheism. That, the prevailing realism of that time, could not stand; in 1092 the views of Roscellinus were anathematized by a synod at Soissons. Upon the other side stood Guillaume von Champeaux, the teacher of Abelard, an extreme realist but of Aristotelian complexion. According to Abelard, he taught that one and the same thing existed both in its totality and in different individual things at the same time. There were no essential differences at all between individual things, but merely a multiplicity of 'accidentals'. In the latter concept the actual differences of things are explained as fortuitous, just as in the dogma of transubstantiation, bread and wine, as such, are only "accidentals". Upon the side of realism also stood Anselm of Canterbury, the father of the Scholastics. A genuine Platonist, the universalia were for him part of the divine Logos. From this position, the psychologically important proof of God which Anselm established, and which is called the ontological proof, can also be understood. This proof demonstrates the existence of God as contingent upon the idea of God. Fichte (Psychologic, ii, 120) formulated this proof concisely as follows: "The existence of the idea of an absolute in our consciousness proves the real existence of this absolute." Anselm's view is that the concept of a Supreme Being present in the intellect involves also the quality of existence (non potest esse in intellectu solo). He continues thus: "Vero ergo est aliquid, quo majus cogitari non potest, ut nec cogitari posset non esse, et hoc es tu, Deus noster." ("In sooth there exists something than which nothing greater can be thought, as also it cannot be thought that it exists not, and this, our God, art Thou"). The logical weakness of the ontological argument is so obvious that it even requires psychological explanation to show how a mind like Anselm's could advance such an argument. The immediate ground can be sought in the general psychological disposition of realism, namely in the fact that there were not only a class of men, but, in keeping with the current of the age, also certain groups of men who laid their accent of value upon the idea, so that the idea represented for them a higher reality or life-value than the reality of individual things. Hence it seemed simply impossible to concede that what to them was most valuable and significant should not also really exist. Indeed, they had the most striking proof of its efficacy to their very hands, since it is evident that their lives, thoughts, and feelings were wholly orientated to this point of view. The invisibility of the idea matters little by the side of its extraordinary efficacy, which in fact is a reality. They had an ideal and not a sensational concept of reality. A contemporary opponent of Anselm, Gaunilo, objected, it is true, that the oft-recurring idea of the Islands of the Blessed (after the manner of Phaeacia; Homer, Od. viii) does not necessarily prove their actual existence. This objection is palpably reasonable. Not a few objections of this nature were raised in the course of centuries, which, however, in no way hindered the survival of the ontological argument even down to quite recent times; for if still found representatives in the nineteenth century in Hegel, Fichte, and Lotze. Contradictions of this kind are not to be ascribed to some peculiar defect in logic or to an even greater infatuation for one side or the other. That would be absurd. Rather is it a matter of deep-seated psychological differences, which must be recognized and upheld. The assumption that there exists only one psychology or only one fundamental psychological principle is an intolerable tyranny, belonging to the pseudoscientific prejudice of the normal man. People are always speaking of the man and of his 'psychology', which is invariably traced back to the' nothing else but'. In the same way one always talks of the reality, as though there were only one. Reality is that which works in a human soul and not that which certain people assume to be operative, and about which prejudiced generalizations are wont to be made. Moreover, however scientifically such generalizations may be advanced, it must not be forgotten that science is not the summa of life, that it is indeed only one of the psychological attitudes, only one of the forms of human thought. The ontological argument is neither argument nor proof, but merely the psychological verification of the fact that there is a class of men for whom a definite idea has efficacy and reality -- a reality which practically rivals the world of perception. The sensationalist relies upon the certainty of his 'reality', and the man of the idea adheres to his psychological reality. Psychology has to recognize the existence of these two (or more) types, and must under all circumstances avoid thinking of one as a misconception of the other; and it should never seriously try to reduce one type to the other, as though everything essentially 'other' were only a function of the one. This does not mean that the trustworthy scientific principle -- principia explicandi praeter necessitatem non sunt multiplicanda -- should be abrogated. But the necessity for' a plurality of psychological principles still remains. But, quite apart from the foregoing arguments in favour of this assumption, our eyes should be opened by the remarkable fact that, notwithstanding the apparently final despatch of the ontological argument by Kant, there are still not a few post-Kantian philosophers who have again resumed it. And we are to-day just as far or perhaps even further from an understanding of the pairs of opposites-idealism: realism, spiritualism: materialism, and all the subsidiary questions involved therein-than were the men of the early Middle Ages, who at least had a common world-philosophy. In favour of the ontological proof there is surely no logical argument that appeals to the modern intellect. The ontological argument in itself had really nothing to do with logic, but in the form in which Anselm bequeathed it to history there arises a supplementary intellectualized or rationalized psychological fact, which, naturally, without petitio principii or other sophistries could never have occurred. But it is just in this that the unassailable validity of the argument reveals itself; namely, that it exists, and that the consensus gentium proves it to be universally existing. It is the fact that has to be reckoned with, not the sophistry of its proof; for the impotence of the ontological argument consists simply and solely in this: that it will argue logically, while in reality it is much more than a purely logical proof. For the real issue is a psychological fact whose occurrence and effectiveness are so overwhelmingly clear that no sort of argumentation is needed. The consensus gentium proves that, in the statement "God is, because he is thought", Anselm is right. It is an obvious truth, indeed nothing but a statement of identity. The 'logical' argumentation about it is quite superfluous, and is moreover wrong, inasmuch as Anselm wished to establish his idea of God as a concrete reality. He says: "Existit ergo procul dubio aliquid, quo majus cogitari non volet, et in intellectu et in re." Beyond all doubt there exists something than which nothing greater can be thought, and moreover it exists as much in the intellect as in the thing (Dinglichkeit, 'reality'). The concept "res" was, however, to the Scholastics something that stood upon the same level as thought. Thus Dionysius the Areopagite, whose writings exercised a considerable influence upon early medieval philosophy,. distinguishes in neighbouring categories "entia rationalia, intel1ectualia, sensibilia, simpliciter existentia" (rational, intellectual, perceptible, simply existing things). Thomas Aquinas calls that which is in the soul "res" (quod est in anima), as also that which is outside the soul (quod est extra animam). This noteworthy juxtaposition stilt enables us to discern the primitive objectivity of the idea in the thought of that time. From this mental attitude the psychology of the ontological proof becomes easily intelligible. The hypostasizing of the idea was not at all an essential step; but, rather, as an echo of the primitive concreteness of thought, it was taken for granted. The counter-argument of Gaunilo is psychologically insufficient, for although, as the consensus gentium proves, the idea of an Island of the Blessed frequently occurs, yet it is. indubitably less effective than the idea of God, which consequently receives a higher "reality-value". Later writers who resumed the ontological argument all fell, at least in principle, into Anselm's error. Kant's reasoning should be final. We will therefore briefly outline it. He says:
Immediately prior to this Kant gives, as an example of a necessary judgment, that a triangle must have three angles. He is referring to this statement when he continues:
The power of illusion to which Kant here alludes, is nothing else but the primitive magical power of the word, which likewise mysteriously inhabits the idea. It needed a long process of development before man once fundamentally realized that the word, the flatus vocis, does not in every case also signify or effect a reality. But that certain men have understood this, has not by any means sufficed to uproot from every mind that superstitious power which dwells within the formulated concept. There is evidently something in this 'instinctive' superstition that will not be uprooted: it exhibits, therefore, some right to existence, which till now has not been sufficiently appreciated. The paralogism (false conclusion) is in like manner introduced into the ontological argument, namely through an illusion which Kant elucidates as follows. He is now speaking of the assertion of "absolutely necessary subjects" the conception of which is simply inherent in the idea of existence, and, therefore, without intrinsic contradiction cannot be dismissed. This conception would be that of the "most real being for all".
This detailed reminder of the fundamental exposition of Kant seems to me necessary, since it is precisely here that we find the sharpest division between the esse in intellectu and the esse in re. Hegel cast the reproach at Kant that one could not compare the idea of God with the phantasy of a hundred dollars. But, as Kant rightly pointed out, logic must be abstracted from all content; there would certainly be no more logic if content were to prevail. Seen from the standpoint of logic, there exists, as ever, no third -- between the logical "either ... or." But between "intellectus" and "res" there is still "anima," and this "esse in anima" makes the entire ontological argument superfluous. Kant himself in his Critique of Practical Reason (Eng. transl., p. 298) attempted on a large scale to make a philosophical estimate of the "esse in anima". There he introduces God as a postulate of practical reasoning proceeding from the a priori recognition of "respect for moral law necessarily directed towards the highest good, and the supposition or inference therefrom of the objective reality of the same." The "esse in anima" then is a matter of
psychological fact, concerning which it is only necessary to decide whether it appears once, often, or universally in human psychology. The fact which is called God and is formulated as "the highest good" signifies, as the term already reveals, the supreme psychic value, or in other words the idea which either confers or actually receives the highest and most general significance in respect of the determination of our action and thought. In the language of analytical psychology the concept of God coincides with that complex which, in accordance with the foregoing definition, combines within itself the highest sum of libido (psychic energy). Accordingly the actual God-concept of the anima differs completely in different men -- a fact which also corresponds with experience. Even in the idea, God is not one constant Being, still less is He so in reality. For, as we well know, the highest operative value of a human soul is variously located. There are men
(c) Abelard's Attempt at Conciliation It is not without interest to investigate how Scholasticism itself attempted to settle the universalia dispute, how it tried to create an equipoise between the typical opposites which the tertium non datur divided. This attempt at settlement was the work of Abelard, that unhappy man who burned with love for Heloise and who paid for his passion with the loss of his manhood. Whoever is acquainted with the life of Abelard will know how intensely his own soul housed those severed opposites whose philosophical reconciliation was for him such a vital issue. De Remusat [7] characterizes Abelard as an eclectic, who criticized and rejected every accepted theory concerning the universalia, but who none the less freely borrowed from them what was true and tenable. Abelard's writings, so far as they relate to the universalia dispute, are confusing and difficult, because the author is constantly engaged in weighing every argument and aspect of the case. It is precisely because he acknowledged no truth in the avowed standpoint, but always sought to comprehend and reconcile the contrary view, which is responsible for the fact that he was never once thoroughly understood even by his own pupils. Some understood him as a nominalist, others as a realist. This misunderstanding is characteristic: it is much easier to think from one definite type -- for within it one can remain logical and consistent-than it is to remain consistent with both types, since the intermediate standpoint is lacking. Realism as well as nominalism if pursued consistently leads to finality, clarity, and uniformity. But the weighing and adjustment of the opposites leads to confusion and to an unsatisfactory issue for the types, since to neither is the solution completely satisfying. De Remusat has collected from Abelard's writings a whole series of almost contradictory assertions relating to our subject. He exclaims: "Faut-il admettre en effet, ce vaste et incoherent ensemble de'doctrines dans la tete d'un seul homme et la philosophie d'Abelard est elle le chaos?" From nominalism Abelara takes the truth that the universalia are words, in the sense that they are intellectual conventions expressed by language; furthermore, he takes from it the truth that a thing in reality is not universal but always something particular, and that substance in reality is never a universal but an individual fact. From Realism Abelard takes the truth that 'genera' and 'species' are combinations of individual facts and things on the ground of their indubitable similarity. Conceptualism is for him the mediatory standpoint; this is to be understood as a function which comprises the individual objects perceived, classifies them into genera and species upon the basis of their similarity, and thus reduces their absolute multiplicity to a relative unity. However unquestionable multiplicity and diversity may be, the existence of similarities, which by means of the concept makes fusion possible, is equally beyond dispute. For whoever is psychologically so adapted as to perceive mainly the similarity of things the collective or constellating concept is, so to speak, taken for granted, i e. it frankly obtrudes itself with the undeniable actuality of the sense-perception. But, for the man who is psychologically so adjusted as to perceive mainly the diversity of things, the similarity of things is not exclusively assumed; what he sees is their difference, which indeed forces itself upon him with just as much actuality as similarity does to the other. It seems as though "feeling-into" (Einfuhlung) the object were the psychological process which brought the distinctiveness of the object into an especially bright light, and as though abstraction from the object were the process most calculated to blind one's eyes to the actual distinctiveness of individual things in favour of their general similarity, which is the very foundation of the idea. Feeling-into and abstraction combined produce that function which underlies the idea of conceptualism. It is founded, therefore, upon the only psychological function which has any real possibility of uniting the divergence between nominalism and realism and bringing them upon a common way. Although the Middle Ages knew how to speak great words of the soul, psychology they had none, which is one of the youngest of all sciences. If at that time a psychology had existed, Abelard would have framed the esse in anima as his mediatory formula. De Remusat clearly discerned this, for he says:
The universalia ante rem and post rem have remained a matter of dispute for every ensuing century, even though they cast aside their scholastic robe and appeared under a new disguise. Fundamentally it was the old problem. At one time the attempt at solution inclined towards the realistic side, at another towards the nominalistic. The scientific character of the nineteenth century gave the problem a push once more towards the side of nominalism, after the philosophy of the beginning of the nineteenth century had first done full justice to realism. But the opposites are no longer so widely sundered as in Abelard's time. We have a psychology, a mediatory science; which alone is capable of uniting idea and thing, without doing violence either to the one or to the other. This capacity abides in the very nature of psychology, but no one could contend that psychology has hitherto accomplished this task. One must, in this connection, acquiesce in the words of De Remusat:
If one overlooks the existence of psychological types, as also the contingent circumstance that the truth of the one is the error of the other, then Abelard's labour will mean nothing but one Scholastic sophistry the more. But in so far as we recognize the existence of the two types, the effort of Abelard must appear to us of the greatest importance. He seeks the mediatory standpoint in the "sermo," by which he understood not so much a "discourse" as a formed sentence joined to a definite meaning; a definition, in fact, only requiring additional words for the consolidation of its meaning. He does not speak of "verbum," for to nominalism this is nothing more than a "vox," a "flatus votis." Indeed, it is the great psychological achievement of both the classic and medieval nominalism that it completely abolished the primitive, magical, or mystical identity of the word with the objective matter of fact; too completely, indeed, for the type of man who has his foundation not in the foothold offered by things but in the abstraction of the idea from things. Abelard was too wide in his outlook to have been able to overlook this value of nominalism. For him the word was indeed a "vox," but the statement (or in his language the "sermo") was something more, for it -carried with it solid meaning, it described the common factor, the idea, what in fact has been thought and understood about things. In the senno the universale lived, and there alone. It is, therefore, intelligible that Abelard was also counted among the nominalists; incorrectly however, for the universale was to him a greater reality than a vox. The expression of his Conceptualism must have been difficult enough for Al1elard, for he had necessarily to construct it out of contradictions. An epitaph contained in an Oxford manuscript gives us, I think, a searching insight into the paradox of his teaching:
In so far as an expression is striven for, that is based in principle upon one standpoint, viz. the intellectual in the case in point, the antagonism can hardly be bridged except by paradox. We must not forget that the radical difference between nominalism and realism is not purely a logical and intellectual distinction but also a psychological one, which in the last resort amounts to a typical difference of psychological attitude to the object as well as to the idea. Whoever is orientated to the idea, appre hends and reacts from the angle of vision governed by the idea. But the man who is orientated to the object; apprehends and reacts from the standpoint of his sensation. For him the abstract is of secondary importance, since what must be thought about things seems to him relatively inessential, while with the former it is just the reverse. The man who is orientated to the object is naturally nominalistic: "the name is sound and smoke" (Goethe's Faust) in so far as he has not yet learnt to compensate his objective attitude. Should this latter event take place, he will become, if he has the necessary ability, an overnice logician, one who is constantly on the lookout for a meticulousness, a method and a dullness that can equal his own. The man who is orientated to the idea is naturally logical; that is why, when all is said and done, he can neither understand nor appreciate text-book logic. The development towards a compensation of his type makes him, as we saw in Tertullian, a man of passionate feeling, whose feelings, however, remain within the magic circle of his ideas. But the man who is a logician by compensation remains with his world of ideas within the magic circle of his object. With these reflections we come to the shaded side of Abelard's thought. His attempt at solution is one-sided. If in the opposition between nominalism and realism it were merely a question of logical-intellectual arrangement, it would be incomprehensible why no terminal conclusion other than a paradox is possible. But since it is a question of a psychological opposition, a one-sided intellectual formulation must end in paradox. "Sic et homo et nullus homo species vocitatur". ("Thus both man and not-man are called species"). The logico-intellectual expression is absolutely incapable, even in the form of the sermo, of providing that mediatory formula which can do justice to the real natures of the two opposing psychological attitudes, for it is wholly derived from the side of the abstract and is completely lacking in the recognition of concrete reality. Every logico-intellectual formulation, however embracing it may be, divests the objective impression of its living and immediate quality. It must do this in order to reach any formulation whatsoever. But, in so doing, just that is lost which to the extraverted attitude seems absolutely essential, namely the relationship to the real object. No possibility exists, therefore, that we shall find upon the line of either attitude any satisfactory and reconciling formula. And yet man cannot remain in this division -- even if his mind could -- for this discussion is not merely a matter of remote philosophy; it is the daily repeated problem of the relations of man to himself and to the world. And, because this at bottom is the problem at issue, the division cannot be resolved by a discussion of nominalist and realist arguments. For its solution a third intermediate standpoint is needed. To the "esse in intellectu" tangible reality is lacking; to the "esse in re" the mind. Idea and thing come together, however, in the psyche of man which holds the balance between them. What would the idea amount to if the psyche did not provide its living value? What would the objective thing be worth if the psyche withheld from it the determining force. of the sense impression? What indeed is reality if it is not a reality in ourselves, an "esse in anima"? Living reality is the exclusive product neither of the actual, objective behaviour of things, nor of the formulated idea; rather does it come through the gathering up of both in the living psychological process, through the "esse in anima." Only through the specific vital activity of the psyche does the sense-perception attain that intensity, and the idea that effective force, which are the two indispensable constituents of living reality. This peculiar activity of the psyche, which can be explained neither as a reflexive reaction to sense-stimuli nor as an executive organ of eternal ideas is, like every vital process, a perpetually creative act. Each new day reality is created by the psyche. The only expression I can use for this activity is phantasy. Phantasy is just as much feeling as thought; it is intuitive just as much as sensational. There are no psychic functions which in phantasy are not inextricably inter-related with the other psychic functions. At one time it appears primordial, at another as the latest and most daring product of gathered knowledge. Phantasy, therefore, appears to me as the dearest expression of the specific psychic activity. Before everything it is the creative activity whence issue the solutions to all answerable questions; it is the mother of all possibilities, in which too the inner and the outer worlds, like all psychological antitheses, are joined in living union. Phantasy it was and ever is which fashions the bridge between the irreconcilable claims of object and subject, of extraversion and introversion. In phantasy alone are both mechanisms united. If Abelard had gone deep enough to recognize the psychological difference between the two standpoints, he would logically have had to enlist phantasy for the formulation of the reconciling expression. But in the world of science phantasy is just as much taboo as is feeling. If, however, we appreciate the underlying opposition as a psychological one, it will be seen that psychology is not only obliged to recognize the standpoint of feeling; it must also acknowledge tile intermediate standpoint of phantasy. Here, however, comes the great difficulty: phantasy for the most part is a product of the unconscious. It doubtless includes conscious elements, but none the less it is an especial characteristic of phantasy that it is essentially involuntary and stands inherently opposed to conscious contents. It has this quality in common with the dream, though the latter has of course strangeness and spontaneity in a much higher degree. The relation of the individual to his phantasy is very largely conditioned by his relation to the unconscious in general, and this in its turn is peculiarly influenced by the spirit of the age. In inverse ratio to the degree of prevailing rationalism will the individual be more or less disposed to have dealings with the .unconscious and its products. The Christian sphere, like every completed religious form, undoubtedly tends to suppress the unconscious in the individual to .the fullest limit, thus paralysing his phantasy activity. In its stead, religion offers stereotyped symbolical ideas which replace the individual unconscious. The symbolical presentations of all religions are stages of unconscious processes in a typical and universally binding form. Religious teaching gives, as it were, conclusive information concerning the 'Last Things' and the 'other world' of human consciousness. Wherever we can observe a religion at its birth, we see how even the figures of his doctrine flow into the founder as revelations, i.e. as concretizations of his unconscious phantasy. The forms arising out of his unconscious are interpreted as universally valid and thus in a measure replace the individual phantasies of others. The evangelist Matthew has preserved for us a fragment of this process from the life of Christ: in the story of the Temptations we see how the idea of kingship emerges from the Founder's unconscious in the form of the devil who offers him power over the kingdoms of the earth. Had Christ misunderstood the phantasy and taken it concretely, there would have been one madman the more in the world. But he refused the concretism of his phantasy and entered the world as a King, unto whom the Kingdoms of Heaven are subject. He was therefore no paranoiac, as indeed the result also proved. The views advanced from time to time from the psychiatric side concerning the morbidity of Christ's psychology are nothing but ludicrous rationalistic twaddle, altogether remote from any sort of comprehension of the meaning of such processes in the history of man. The forms in which Christ presented the content of his unconscious to the world became accepted and interpreted as universally binding. Therewith all individual phantasy lapsed; it became not only invalid and worthless but it was actually persecuted as heretical, as the fate of the Gnostic movement, and of all later heresies testifies. The prophet Jeremiah speaks in a similar sense when he says (Jeremiah, xxiii):
We see also in early Christianity how, for example, the Bishops zealously strove to root out the efficacy of the individual unconscious among the monks. The Archbishop Athanasius of Alexandria in his biography of St. Anthony offers us a particularly valuable insight into this activity [8]. In this document he describes, by way of instruction to his monks, the apparitions and visions, the perils of the soul, which befall those that pray and fast in solitude. He warns them how cleverly the devil disguises himself in order to bring saintly men to their fall. The devil is, of course, the voice of the anchorite's own unconscious, which revolts against the violent suppression of the individual nature. I give a group of exact quotations from this rather inaccessible book. Very clearly they show how the unconscious was systematically suppressed and depreciated.
St. Anthony relates: "Once there appeared unto me a devil of an exceedingly haughty and insolent appearance, and he stood up before me with the tumultuous noise of many people, and he dared to say unto me: 'I, even I, am the power of God', and 'I, even I, am the Lord of the worlds.' And he said unto me: 'What dost thou wish me to give thee? Ask, and thou shalt receive.' Then I blew a puff of wind at him, and I rebuked him in the name of Christ ....
These quotations show how, with the aid of the universal belief, the unconscious of the individual was rejected notwithstanding the fact that it transparently spoke the truth. There are in the history of the mind especial reasons for this rejection. It does not behove us at this point to elucidate these reasons further. We must content ourselves with the actual fact that it was suppressed. Speaking psychologically, this suppression consists in a withdrawal of libido (psychic energy). The libido thus acquired, promotes the synthesis and development of the conscious attitude, whereby a new conception of the world is gradually built up. The undoubted advantages gained by this process naturally consolidate this attitude. It is, therefore, not surprising that the psychology of our time is characterized by a prevailingly unfavourable attitude towards the unconscious. It is not only intelligible, but absolutely necessary, that all sciences have excluded both the standpoints of feeling and of phantasy. They are sciences for that very reason. But how does it stand with psychology? If it is to be regarded as a science, it must do the same. But will it then do justice to its material? Every science ultimately seeks to formulate and express its material in abstractions; thus psychology could, and indeed does, lay hold of the processes of feeling, sensation, and phantasy in the form of intellectual abstractions. This treatment certainly establishes the right of the intellectual-abstract standpoint, but not the claims of other quite possible psychological points of view. These other possible standpoints can obtain only a bare mention in a scientific psychology; they cannot emerge as the independent principles of a science. Science, under all circumstances, is an affair of the intellect, and the other psychological functions are submitted to it in the form of objects. The intellect is sovereign of the scientific realm. But it is another matter when science steps across into the realm of practical application. The intellect, which was formerly king, is now merely a resource, a scientifically perfected instrument it is true, but still only an implement -- no more the aim itself, but merely a condition. The intellect, and with it science, is now placed at the service of creative power and purpose. Yet this is still "psychology" although no longer science: it is a psychology in a wider meaning of the word, a psychological activity of a creative nature, in which creative phantasy is given priority. Instead of using the term "creative phantasy", it would be just as true to say that in a practical psychology of this kind the leading role is given to life, for on the one hand, it is undoubtedly phantasy, procreating and productive, which uses science as a resource, but on the other, it is the manifold demands of external reality which prompt the activity of creative phantasy. Science as an end in itself is assuredly a high ideal, but its accomplishment brings about as many "ends in themselves" as there are sciences and arts. Naturally this leads to a high differentiation and specialization of the particular functions concerned, but it also leads to their aloofness from the world and from life, and an inevitable multiplication of specialized terrains, which gradually lose all connection with each other. The result of this is an impoverishment and stagnation that is not merely confined to the specialized terrains, but also invades the psyche of the man, who is thus differentiated up or reduced down to the specialist level. By this token must science prove her value to life; it is not enough that she be mistress -- she must also be the maid. By so doing she in no way dishonours herself. Although science has already led us to recognize the disproportions and disorders of the psyche, thus deserving our profound respect for her intrinsic intellectual gifts, it is nevertheless a grave mistake to concede her an absolute aim which would incapacitate her for her metier as an instrument of life. For when we approach the province of actual living with the intellect and its science, we realize at once we are in a confined space that shuts us out from other, equally real provinces of life. We are, therefore, compelled to acknowledge the universality of our ideal as a limitation, and to look around us for a spiritus rector which from the standpoint and claims of a complete life, can offer us a greater guarantee of psychological universality than the intellect alone can compass. When Faust exclaims "feeling is everything", he is expressing merely the antithesis to the intellect, and therefore only reaches the other extreme; he does not achieve that totality of life and of his own psyche in which feeling and thought are joined in a third and higher principle. This higher third, as I have already indicated, can be understood either as a practical goal or as the phantasy which creates the goal. This aim of totality can be recognized neither by the science, whose end is in itself, nor by feeling, which lacks the faculty of vision belonging to thought. The one must lend itself as auxiliary to the other, yet the contrast between them is so great that we need a bridge. This bridge is already given us in creative phantasy. It is not born of either, for it is the mother of both -- nay, further, it is pregnant with the child, that final aim which reconciles the opposites. If psychology remains only a science, we do not reach life -- we merely serve the absolute aim of science. It leads us, certainly, to a knowledge of the actual state of affairs, but it always resists every other aim but its own. The intellect remains imprisoned in itself just so long as it does not willingly sacrifice its supremacy through its recognition of the value of other aims: It recoils from the step which takes it out of itself, and which denies its universal validity; since from the standpoint of intellect everything else is nothing but phantasy. But what great thing ever came into existence that was not first phantasy? Just in so far as the intellect rigidly adheres to the absolute aim of science is it insulated from the springs of life. It interprets phantasy as nothing but a wish-dream, wherein is expressed that depreciation of phantasy which for science is both welcome and necessary. It is inevitable that science should be regarded as an absolute aim so long as the development of science is the sole question at issue. But this at once becomes an evil when it is a question of life itself demanding development. Thus it was an historical necessity in the Christian process of culture that unfettered phantasy activity should be kept under; and, similarly, though for different reasons, it was also a necessity that phantasy should be suppressed in our age of natural science. It must not be forgotten that creative phantasy, if not restrained within just bounds, can also degenerate into a most pernicious luxuriance. But these bounds are never those artificial limitations set by the intellect or by reasonable feeling; they are boundaries governed by necessity and incontestable reality. The tasks of every age differ, and it is only in retrospect that we can discern with certainty what had to be and what should not have been. In the momentary present the conflict of convictions always predominates, for "war is the father of all". History alone decides. Truth is not eternal -- it is a programme. The more "eternal" a truth, the more is it lifeless and worthless; it tells us nothing more, because it is self-evident. How phantasy is assessed by psychology, so long as this remains merely a science, is beautifully exemplified in the well-known views of Freud and of Adler. The Freudian interpretation reduces it to causal, primitive, instinctive processes. Adler's conception reduces it to the final, elementary aims of the self. The former is an instinctive psychology, the latter an ego-psychology. Instinct is an impersonal biological phenomenon. A psychology which is founded upon instinct must by its nature neglect the ego, since the ego owes its existence to the principium individuation is, i.e. to individual differentiation whose sporadic and individual character at once removes it from the category of general biological phenomena. Although general biological instinct-forces make the moulding of personality possible, individuality is nevertheless essentially different from general instincts; indeed, it stands in the most direct opposition to them, just as the individual is as a personality always distinct from the collective. Its essence consists precisely in this distinction. What every ego-psychology must therefore exclude and ignore is just the collective element that is essential to instinct-psychology, for it is describing that very ego-process which is differentiated from collective instincts. The characteristic animosity between the representatives of the two standpoints arises from the fact that either standpoint necessarily involves a depreciation and lowering of the other. For so long as the radical difference between instinct and ego-psychology is not realized, either side must naturally hold its respective theory to be universally valid. This does not mean to say that instinct-psychology, for example, could not put up a theory of the ego-process. It can do so very ably, but in a form and manner which to the ego-psychologist looks too much like the negative of his theory. Hence we find that with Freud the "ego-instincts" do indeed occasionally emerge, but in the main they support a very modest existence. With Adler, on the other hand, it would seem as though sexuality were the merest vehicle, which in one way or another serves the elementary aims of power. The Adlerian principle is the safe-guarding of personal power, which is superimposed upon the general instincts. With Freud it is instinct that makes the ego serve its purposes, so that the ego appears as a mere function of instinct. Within both types the scientific tendency prevails to reduce everything to its own principle; from which their deductions again proceed. With phantasies this operation is accomplished with particular ease; since these, unlike the functions of consciousness, which are adapted to reality and have therefore an objectively orientated character, express both instinctive as well as ego-tendencies. It is not difficult for the man who adopts the standpoint of instinct to discover in them the "wish-fulfilment", the "infantile wish", and "repressed sexuality". But the man who judges from the standpoint of the ego can just as easily discover those elementary aims concerned with the safeguarding and differentiation of the ego, since phantasies are intermediary products between the ego and the general instinct. They accordingly contain elements of both sides. Interpretation from either side is always, therefore, somewhat forced and arbitrary, because one character is always suppressed. Nevertheless, a demonstrable truth does on the whole appear; but it is only a partial truth, which can make no claim to general validity. Its validity extends just so far as the range of its principle. But in the province of other principles it is invalid. The Freudian psychology is characterized by one central idea, namely the repression of incompatible wish-tendencies. Man appears as a bundle of wishes which are only partially adaptable to the object. His neurotic difficulties consist in the fact that milieu-influences, educational and objective conditions, are a considerable check upon a free expression of instinct. Influences are derived from father and mother, either morally hindering or infantile, which tend to produce fixations that compromise later life. The original instinctive constitution is an unalterable quantity which suffers disturbing modifications mainly through objective influences; hence the most untrammeled possible expression of instinct towards the suitably chosen object would appear to be the needful remedy. Conversely, Adler's psychology is characterized by the central idea of ego-superiority. The individual appears pre-eminently as an ego-point which must under no circumstances be subjected to the object. While with Freud the craving for the object, the fixation to the object, and the impossible nature of certain desires towards the object play an important role, with Adler everything aims at the superiority of the subject. Freud's repression of instinct towards the object becomes with Adler the safe-guarding of the subject. With him the healing remedy is the removal of the isolating safe-guard; with Freud it is the removal of the repression that renders the object inaccessible. Hence with Freud the basic formula is sexuality, which expresses the strongest relation between subject and object; with Adler it is that power of the subject which most effectively ensures him against the object, and gives to the subject an unassailable isolation which amputates every relation. Freud would vouchsafe the instincts an unfettered excursion towards their objects. But Adler would break through the inimicable spell of the object, in order to deliver the ego from suffocation in its own defensive armour. The former view must therefore be essentially extraverted, while the latter is introverted. The extraverted theory holds good for the extraverted type, while the introverted theory is valid only for the introverted type. In so far as the pure type is a quite one-sided product of development, it is also necessarily unbalanced. Over-emphasis upon the one function is synonymous with repression of the other. Psycho-analysis fails to resolve this repression just in so far as the particular method applied is orientated according to the theory of its own type. Thus the extravert, in accordance with his theory, will reduce his phantasies, as they emerge from the unconscious, to their instinct content. But the introvert will reduce them to his power-tendency. The gain accruing from such analysis goes to the already existing predominance. This kind of analysis, therefore, merely intensifies the already existing type, and by such means no mutual understanding or mediation between the types is made possible. On the contrary, the gap is widened, both without and within. An inner dissociation arises, because fragments of other functions, occasionally arising to the surface in unconscious phantasies (dreams, etc.) are depreciated and again repressed. On these grounds a certain critic was in a measure justified when he described Freud's as a neurotic theory; but the truth of the statement cannot justify a certain malevolence in expression which only serves to absolve one from the duty of serious concentration upon the problems raised. The standpoints both of Freud and of Adler are equally one-sided and are, therefore, characteristic of only one type. Both theories reject the principle of imagination, since they reduce phantasies and treat them as a merely semiotic [9] expression. But in reality phantasies mean more than that, for they represent also the other mechanism. Thus with the introverted type they represent repressed extraversion, and with the extraverted repressed introversion. But the repressed function is unconscious, hence, undeveloped, embryonic, and archaic. In this condition it is not to be reconciled with the higher niveau of the conscious function. The inacceptable nature of phantasy is principally derived from this peculiarity of the unrecognised function-root. Imagination, for everyone to whom adaptation to external reality is the leading principle, is for these reasons something objectionable and useless. And yet we know that every good idea and all creative work is the offspring of the imagination, and has its source in what one is pleased to term infantile phantasy. It is not the artist alone, but every creative individual whatsoever who owes all that is greatest in his life to phantasy. The dynamic principle of phantasy is 'play,' which belongs also to the child, and as such it appears to be inconsistent with the principle of serious work. But without this playing with phantasy no creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable. It is therefore short-sighted to treat phantasy, on account of its daring or inacceptable character, as of small account. It must not be forgotten that it is just in the imagination that the most valuable promise of a man may lie. I say may advisedly, because on the other hand phantasies are also valueless, since in the form of raw material they possess no sort of realizable worth. In order to unearth the valuable treasure they contain, a development is needed. But this development is not achieved by a simple analysis of the phantasy material; a synthetic treatment is also needed by means of a constructive method [10]. It remains an open question whether the opposition between the two standpoints can ever be satisfactorily adjusted intellectually. Although in one sense Abelard's attempt must be profoundly respected, yet practically no consequences worth mentioning have matured from it; for he was able to establish no mediatory psychological function beyond conceptualism or sermonism, which is merely a revised edition, altogether one-sided and intellectual, of the ancient Logos conception. The Logos, as a mediator, had of course this advantage over the sermo, inasmuch as in His [11] human manifestation He also did justice to non-intellectual aspirations. I cannot, however, rid myself of the impression that Abelard's brilliant mind, which so fully grasped the great Yea and Nay, would never have remained satisfied with his paradoxical conceptualism, thus renouncing all claim to creative effort, if the impelling force of passion had not been lost to him through the tragedy of fate. In confirmation of this idea we need only compare conceptualism with the way in which the great Chinese philosophers Lao-Tse and Tschuang-Tse, as also the poet Schiller, confronted this problem. 5. The Holy Communion Controversy between Luther and Zwingli Of the later antagonisms which stirred men's minds Protestantism and the Reformation movement should really receive our first consideration. Only this phenomenon is of such complexity that it must first be resolved into many separate psychological processes before it can become an object for analytical elucidation. But that lies outside my province. I must therefore content myself by selecting a single case from that great arena, namely the Holy Communion controversy between Luther and Zwingli. The transubstantiation dogma, already mentioned, was sanctioned by the Lateran Council of 1215, and from that time formed an established article of faith; in which form Luther himself grew up. Although the notion that a ceremony and its concrete practice can have an objective redeeming value is really quite unevangelical, since the evangelical movement was actually directed against Catholic institutions, Luther was nevertheless unable to free himself from the immediately effective sensuous impression in the taking of bread and wine. He perceived in it not merely a token, but the actual sensuous reality with its contingent and immediate experience; these were for him an indispensable religious necessity. He therefore claimed the actual presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Communion. "In and beneath" bread and wine he received the body and the blood of Christ. For him the religious meaning of the immediate objective experience was so great that his imagination was spell-bound by the concretism of the material presence of the sacred body. All his attempts at explanation are, therefore, under the spell of this fact: the body of Christ is present, albeit 'non-spatially'. According to the so-called doctrine of consubstantiation the actual substance of the sacred body was also really present beside the substance of the bread and wine. The ubiquity of Christ's body, which this assumption postulated, an idea involving considerable distress to human intelligence, was indeed substituted by the concept of volipresence, which means that God is everywhere present, where He wills to be. But Luther, untroubled by all these difficulties, held unflinchingly to the immediate experience of the sensuous impression and preferred to assuage all the scruples of human reason with explanations which were either absurd or at the best quite unsatisfying. It is hardly credible that it was merely the power of tradition which determined Luther to cling to this dogma, for he assuredly gave abundant proof of his ability to throw aside traditional forms of belief. Indeed we should not go far wrong in assuming that it was rather the actual contact with the 'real' and material in the Communion, and the feeling-significance of this contact for Luther himself, that prevailed over the evangelical principle, which maintained that the word was the sole vehicle of grace and not the ceremony. With Luther the word certainly had redeeming power, but the partaking of the Communion was also a transmitter of grace. This, I repeat, must have been only an apparent concession to the institutions of the Catholic Church; for in reality it was the acknowledgment, demanded by Luther's psychology, of the fact of feeling, grounded upon the immediate sense-experience. As against the Lutheran standpoint Zwingli represented the purely symbolic conception. What really concerned him was a 'spiritual' partaking of the body and blood of Christ. This standpoint has the character of reason; it is a conceptual attitude to the ceremony. It has the merit that it offers no violence to the evangelical principle, and at the same time it avoids all hypotheses that run counter to reason. This conception, however, does little justice to the thing which Luther wished to preserve, namely the reality of the sense-impression and its peculiar feeling-value. Zwingli, it is true, also administered the Communion, and with Luther also partook of bread and wine -- nevertheless his conception contained no formula which could have adequately rendered the unique sensational and feeling value of the object. Luther gave a formula for this, but it was opposed to reason and the evangelical principle. To the standpoint of sensation and feeling this matters little, and indeed rightly, for the idea, the 'principle', is just as little concerned about the sensation of the object. Both points of view are in the last resort mutually exclusive. The Lutheran formulation favours the extraverted conception of things, while Zwingli has. the conceptual standpoint. Although Zwingli's formula does no violence to feeling and sensation, but merely gives a conceptual formulation, and appears furthermore to have left room for the efficacy of the object, yet it seems as though the extraverted standpoint is not content with an open space, but demands also a formulation in which the conceptual. follows the sensuous value, exactly as the conceptual formulation requires the subservience of feeling and sensation. At this point, with the consciousness of having given merely a statement of the problem, I close this chapter on the principle of types in the history of classic and medieval thought. I am not sufficiently competent to be able to treat so difficult and voluminous a problem in any way exhaustively. If I have been successful in conveying to the reader an impression of the existence of typical differences of standpoint, my purpose has been achieved. I need scarcely add that I am aware that none of the material here touched upon has been conclusively dealt with. I must bequeath this task to those who command a fuller knowledge of this province than myself. _______________ Notes: 1. Translated by Dr. B. M. Hinkle (London: Kegan Paul & Co. 1919; new edn. 1921). 2. Cupidity. We would rather say: untamed
libido, which as
3. Thyestes, son of Pelops, in the course of a struggle for the kingdom with his brother Atreus, was given -- unknown to himself -- the flesh of his own children to eat. [Translator] 4. Buber, Ekstatische Konfessionen, 1909, p. 31 ff. 5. The unities which lie at the basis of the visible and changeable, and which can be reached only by pure thinking, were ideas in Plato's sense. He included under the term everything stable amidst changing phenomena, e.g. the Ideas of genus, species, and the laws and ends of Nature. [Translator] 6. The Eleatic was a Greek school of philosophy founded by Xenophanes of Elea about 460 B.C. Its fundamental doctrine was that the One, Absolute, pure Being is the only real existence; that the world of phenomena, or the many, is merely an appearance. All attempts to explain it, therefore, are useless. [Translator] 7. Charles de Remusat, Abelard (Paris 1845) 8. Lady Meux' Manuscript, no. 6: The Book of Paradise, by Palladius, Hieronymus, etc., edited by E. A. Wallis Budge (London 1904) 9. I say "semiotic" in contradistinction to "symbolic". What Freud terms symbols are no more than signs for elementary instinctive processes. But a symbol is the best possible expression for an actual matter of fact, which nevertheless cannot be expressed except by a more or less close analogy. 10. Cf. Jung, Collected Papers: Content of the Psychoses. Idem, Psychology of Unconscious Processes. 11. Logos appearing in human form as Christ the Son of God.
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