Part I

Introduction

Any one who can read Freud’s “Interpretation of the
Dream” without scientific rebellion at the newness and
apparently unjustified daring of its analytical presentation,
and without moral indignation at the astonishing
nudity of the dream interpretation, and who can allow
this unusual array of facts to influence his mind calmly
and without prejudice, will surely be deeply impressed at
that place where Freud calls to mind the fact that
an individual psychologic conflict, namely, the Incest
Phantasy, is the essential root of that powerful ancient
dramatic material, the Oedipus legend. The impression
made by this simple reference may be likened to that
wholly peculiar feeling which arises in us if, for example,
in the noise and tumult of a modern street we should
come across an ancient relic—the Corinthian capital of a
walled-in column, or a fragment of inscription. Just a
moment ago we were given over to the noisy ephemeral
life of the present, when something very far away and
strange appears to us, which turns our attention to things
of another order; a glimpse away from the incoherent
multiplicity of the present to a higher coherence in history.
Very likely it would suddenly occur to us that on
this spot where we now run busily to and fro a similar
life and activity prevailed two thousand years ago in
4somewhat other forms; similar passions moved mankind,
and man was likewise convinced of the uniqueness of his
existence. I would liken the impression which the first
acquaintance with the monuments of antiquity so easily
leaves behind to that impression which Freud’s reference
to the Oedipus legend makes—for while we are still engaged
with the confusing impressions of the variability of
the Individual Soul, suddenly there is opened a revelation
of the simple greatness of the Oedipus tragedy—that
never extinguished light of the Grecian theatre.

This breadth of outlook carries in itself something of
revelation. For us, the ancient psychology has long since
been buried among the shadows of the past; in the schoolroom
one could scarcely repress a sceptical smile when
one indiscreetly reckoned the comfortable matronly age
of Penelope and the age of Jocasta, and comically compared
the result of the reckoning with the tragic-erotic
struggles in the legend and drama. We did not know at
that time (and who knows even to-day?) that the mother
can be the all-consuming passion of the son, which perhaps
undermines his whole life and tragically destroys
it, so that not even the magnitude of the Oedipus Fate
seems one jot overdrawn. Rare and pathologically understood
cases like Ninon de Lenclos and her son^[4] lie too
far removed from most of us to give a living impression.
But when we follow the paths traced out by Freud, we
arrive at a recognition of the present existence of such
possibilities, which, although they are too weak to enforce
incest, are still strong enough to cause disturbances
of considerable magnitude in the soul. The admission
5of such possibilities to one’s self does not occur without a
great burst of moral revulsion. Resistances arise which
only too easily dazzle the intellect, and, through that,
make knowledge of self impossible. Whenever we succeed,
however, in stripping feelings from more scientific
knowledge, then that abyss which separates our age from
the antique is bridged, and, with astonishment, we see
that Oedipus is still a living thing for us. The importance
of such an impression should not be undervalued. We
are taught by this insight that there is an identity of
elementary human conflicts existing independent of time
and place. That which affected the Greeks with horror
still remains true, but it is true for us only when we give
up a vain illusion that we are different—that is to say,
more moral, than the ancients. We of the present day
have nearly succeeded in forgetting that an indissoluble
common bond binds us to the people of antiquity. With
this truth a path is opened to the understanding of the
ancient mind; an understanding which so far has not
existed, and, on one side, leads to an inner sympathy, and,
on the other side, to an intellectual comprehension.
Through buried strata of the individual soul we come
indirectly into possession of the living mind of the ancient
culture, and, just precisely through that, do we win that
stable point of view outside our own culture, from which,
for the first time, an objective understanding of their
mechanisms would be possible. At least that is the hope
which we get from the rediscovery of the Oedipus
problem.

The enquiry made possible by Freud’s work has already
6resulted fruitfully; we are indebted to this stimulation
for some bold attacks upon the territory of the
history of the human mind. There are the works of
Riklin,^[5] Abraham,^[6] Rank,^[7] Maeder,^[8] Jones,^[9]—recently
Silberer has joined their ranks with a beautiful investigation
entitled “Phantasie und Mythus.”^[10] We are indebted
to Pfister^[11] for a comprehensive work which
cannot be overlooked here, and which is of much importance
for Christian religious psychology. The leading
purpose of these works is the unlocking of historical
problems through the application of psychoanalytic
knowledge; that is to say, knowledge drawn from the
activity of the modern unconscious mind concerning specific
historical material.

I must refer the reader entirely to the specified works,
in order that he may gain information concerning the
extent and the kind of insight which has already been
obtained. The explanations are in many cases dubious
in particulars; nevertheless, this detracts in no way from
the total result. It would be significant enough if only
the far-reaching analogy between the psychologic structure
of the historical relics and the structure of the recent
individual psychologic products alone were demonstrated.
This proof is possible of attainment for every intelligent
person through the work done up to this time. The
analogy prevails especially in symbolism, as Riklin, Rank,
Maeder, and Abraham have pointed out with illuminating
examples; it is also shown in the individual mechanisms
of unconscious work, that is to say in repression,
condensation, etc., as Abraham explicitly shows.

7Up to the present time the psychoanalytic investigator
has turned his interest chiefly to the analysis of the individual
psychologic problems. It seems to me, however,
that in the present state of affairs there is a more or less
imperative demand for the psychoanalyst to broaden
the analysis of the individual problems by a comparative
study of historical material relating to them, just as
Freud has already done in a masterly manner in his book
on “Leonardo da Vinci.”^[12] For, just as the psychoanalytic
conceptions promote understanding of the historic
psychologic creations, so reversedly historical materials
can shed new light upon individual psychologic
problems. These and similar considerations have caused
me to turn my attention somewhat more to the historical,
in the hope that, out of this, new insight into the foundations
of individual psychology might be won.

8

CHAPTER I
CONCERNING THE TWO KINDS OF THINKING

It is a well-known fact that one of the principles of
analytic psychology is that the dream images are to be
understood symbolically; that is to say, that they are not
to be taken literally just as they are presented in sleep,
but that behind them a hidden meaning has to be surmised.
It is this ancient idea of a dream symbolism which
has challenged not only criticism, but, in addition to that,
the strongest opposition. That dreams may be full of
import, and, therefore, something to be interpreted, is certainly
neither a strange nor an extraordinary idea. This
has been familiar to mankind for thousands of years, and,
therefore, seems much like a banal truth. The dream
interpretations of the Egyptians and Chaldeans, and the
story of Joseph who interpreted Pharaoh’s dreams, are
known to every one, and the dream book of Artemidorus
is also familiar. From countless inscribed monuments of
all times and peoples we learn of foreboding dreams, of
significant, of prophetic and also of curative dreams
which the Deity sent to the sick, sleeping in the temple.
We know the dream of the mother of Augustus, who
dreamt she was to be with child by the Deity transformed
into a snake. We will not heap up references
and examples to bear witness to the existence of a belief
9in the symbolism of dreams. When an idea is so old,
and is so generally believed, it is probably true in some
way, and, indeed, as is mostly the case, is not literally
true, but is true psychologically. In this distinction lies
the reason why the old fogies of science have from time
to time thrown away an inherited piece of ancient truth;
because it was not literal but psychologic truth. For such
discrimination this type of person has at no time had any
comprehension.

From our experience, it is hardly conceivable that a
God existing outside of ourselves causes dreams, or that
the dream, eo ipso, foresees the future prophetically.
When we translate this into the psychologic, however,
then the ancient theories sound much more reconcilable,
namely, the dream arises from a part of the mind unknown
to us, but none the less important, and is concerned
with the desires for the approaching day. This psychologic
formula derived from the ancient superstitious conception
of dreams, is, so to speak, exactly identified
with the Freudian psychology, which assumes a rising
wish from the unconscious to be the source of the
dream.

As the old belief teaches, the Deity or the Demon
speaks in symbolic speech to the sleeper, and the dream
interpreter has the riddle to solve. In modern speech we
say this means that the dream is a series of images, which
are apparently contradictory and nonsensical, but arise in
reality from psychologic material which yields a clear
meaning.

Were I to suppose among my readers a far-reaching
10ignorance of dream analysis, then I should be obliged to
illustrate this statement with numerous examples.
To-day, however, these things are quite well known, so
that one must proceed carefully with every-day dream
material, out of consideration for a public educated in
these matters. It is a special inconvenience that no dream
can be recounted without being obliged to add to it half
a life’s history which affords the individual foundations
of the dream, but there are some few typical dreams
which can be told without too great a ballast. One of
these is the dream of the sexual assault, which is especially
prevalent among women. A girl sleeping after an evening
happily spent in dancing, dreams that a robber breaks
open her door noisily and stabs through her body
with a lance. This theme, which explains itself, has
countless variations, some simple, some complicated.
Instead of the lance it is a sword, a dagger, a revolver,
a gun, a cannon, a hydrant, a watering pot; or the assault
is a burglary, a pursuit, a robbery, or it is some one
hidden in the closet or under the bed. Or the danger
may be illustrated by wild animals; for instance, a horse
which throws the dreamer to the ground and kicks her in
the body with his hind foot; lions, tigers, elephants with
threatening trunks, and finally snakes in endless variety.
Sometimes the snake creeps into the mouth, sometimes
it bites the breast like Cleopatra’s legendary asp, sometimes
it comes in the rôle of the paradisical snake, or in
the variations of Franz Stuck, whose pictures of snakes
bear the significant titles “Vice,” “Sin,” “Lust.” The
mixture of lust and anxiety is expressed incomparably in
11the very atmosphere of these pictures, and far more
brutally, indeed, than in Mörike’s charming poem.

The Maiden’s First Love Song

What’s in the net?
Behold,
But I am afraid,
Do I grasp a sweet eel,
Do I seize a snake?
Love is a blind
Fisherwoman;
Tell the child
Where to seize.
Already it leaps in my hands.

Oh, Pity, or delight!
With nestlings and turnings
It coils on my breast,
It bites me, oh, wonder!
Boldly through the skin,
It darts under my heart.
Oh, Love, I shudder!

What can I do, what can I begin?
That shuddering thing;
There it crackles within
And coils in a ring.
It must be poisoned.
Here it crawls around.
Blissfully I feel as it worms
Itself into my soul
And kills me finally.

All these things are simple, and need no explanation
to be intelligible. Somewhat more complicated, but still
12unmistakable, is the dream of a woman; she sees the
triumphal arch of Constantine. A cannon stands before
it, to the right of it a bird, to the left a man. A shot
flashes out of the tube; the projectile hits her; it goes
into her pocket, into her purse. There it remains, and
she holds her purse as if something very precious were
in it. The image disappears, and she continues to see
only the stock of the cannon, and over that Constantine’s
motto, “In hoc signo vinces.”

These few references to the symbolic nature of dreams
are perhaps sufficient. For whomsoever the proof may
appear insufficient, and it is certainly insufficient for a
beginner, further evidence may be found in the fundamental
work of Freud, and in the works of Stekel and
Rank which are fuller in certain particulars. We must
assume here that the dream symbolism is an established
fact, in order to bring to our study a mind suitably prepared
for an appreciation of this work. We would not
be successful if we, on the contrary, were to be astonished
at the idea that an intellectual image can be projected
into our conscious psychic activity; an image which apparently
obeys such wholly other laws and purposes than
those governing the conscious psychic product.

Why are dreams symbolic? Every “why” in psychology
is divided into two separate questions: first, for what
purpose are dreams symbolic? We will answer this
question only to abandon it at once. Dreams are symbolic
in order that they can not be understood; in order that
the wish, which is the source of the dream, may remain
unknown. The question why this is so and not otherwise,
13leads us out into the far-reaching experiences and trains
of thought of the Freudian psychology.

Here the second question interests us, viz., How is it
that dreams are symbolic? That is to say, from where
does this capacity for symbolic representation come, of
which we, in our conscious daily life, can discover apparently
no traces?

Let us examine this more closely. Can we really discover
nothing symbolic in our every-day thought? Let
us follow our trains of thought; let us take an example.
We think of the war of 1870 and 1871. We think about
a series of bloody battles, the siege of Strassburg, Belfort,
Paris, the Treaty of Peace, the foundation of the
German Empire, and so on. How have we been thinking?
We start with an idea, or super-idea, as it is also
called, and without thinking of it, but each time merely
guided by a feeling of direction, we think about individual
reminiscences of the war. In this we can find nothing
symbolic, and our whole conscious thinking proceeds according
to this type.^[13]

If we observe our thinking very narrowly, and follow
an intensive train of thought, as, for example, the solution
of a difficult problem, then suddenly we notice that
we are thinking in words, that in wholly intensive thinking
we begin to speak to ourselves, or that we occasionally
write down the problem, or make a drawing of it so as to
be absolutely clear. It must certainly have happened
to any one who has lived for some time in a foreign
country, that after a certain period he has begun to think
in the language of the country. A very intensive train
14of thinking works itself out more or less in word form;
that is, if one wants to express it, to teach it, or to convince
any one of it. Evidently it directs itself wholly to
the outside world. To this extent, this directed or logical
thinking is a reality thinking,^[14] having a real existence for
us; that is to say, a thinking which adjusts itself to actual
conditions,^[15] where we, expressed in other words, imitate
the succession of objectively real things, so that the
images in our mind follow after each other in the same
strictly causal succession as the historical events outside
of our mind.^[16]

We call this thinking, thinking with directed attention.
It has, in addition, the peculiarity that one is tired by it,
and that, on this account, it is set into action only for a
time. Our whole vital accomplishment, which is so expensive,
is adaptation to environment; a part of it is the
directed thinking, which, biologically expressed, is nothing
but a process of psychic assimilation, which, as in
every vital accomplishment, leaves behind a corresponding
exhaustion.

The material with which we think is language and
speech concept, a thing which has been used from time
immemorial as something external, a bridge for thought,
and which has a single purpose—that of communication.
As long as we think directedly, we think for others and
speak to others.^[17]

Speech is originally a system of emotional and imitative
sounds—sounds which express terror, fear, anger,
love; and sounds which imitate the noises of the elements,
the rushing and gurgling of water, the rolling of thunder,
15the tumults of the winds, the tones of the animal world,
and so on; and, finally, those which represent a combination
of the sounds of perception and of affective reaction.^[18]
Likewise in the more or less modern languages, large
quantities of onomatopoetic relics are retained; for example,
sounds for the movement of water,—

Rauschen, risseln, rûschen, rinnen, rennen, to rush, ruscello,
ruisseau, river, Rhein.

Wasser, wissen, wissern, pissen, piscis, fisch.

Thus language is originally and essentially nothing but
a system of signs or symbols, which denote real occurrences,
or their echo in the human soul.

Therefore one must decidedly agree with Anatole
France,^[19] when he says,

“What is thought, and how do we think? We think with
words; that alone is sensual and brings us back to nature. Think
of it! The metaphysician has only the perfected cry of monkeys
and dogs with which to construct the system of the world. That
which he calls profound speculation and transcendent method is
to put end to end in an arbitrary order the natural sounds which
cry out hunger, fear, and love in the primitive forests, and to
which were attached little by little the meanings which one believed
to be abstract, when they were only crude.

“Do not fear that the succession of small cries, feeble and
stifled, which compose a book of philosophy, will teach us so
much regarding the universe, that we can live in it no longer.”

Thus is our directed thinking, and even if we were the
loneliest and furthest removed from our fellows, this
thinking is nothing but the first notes of a long-drawn-out
call to our companions that water had been found,
16that we had killed the bear, that a storm was approaching,
or that wolves were prowling around the camp. A
striking paradox of Abélard’s which expresses in a very
intuitive way the whole human limitation of our complicated
thinking process, reads,—“Sermo generatur ab
intellectu et generat intellectum.”^[20]

Any system of philosophy, no matter how abstract,
represents in means and purpose nothing more than an
extremely cleverly developed combination of original
nature sounds.^[21] Hence arises the desire of a Schopenhauer
or a Nietzsche for recognition and understanding,
and the despair and bitterness of their loneliness. One
might expect, perhaps, that a man full of genius could
pasture in the greatness of his own thoughts, and renounce
the cheap approbation of the crowd which he
despises; yet he succumbs to the more powerful impulse
of the herd instinct. His searching and his finding, his
call, belong to the herd.

When I said just now that directed thinking is properly
a thinking with words, and quoted that clever testimony
of Anatole France as drastic proof of it, a misunderstanding
might easily arise, namely, that directed thinking
is really only “word.” That certainly would go too far.
Language should, however, be comprehended in a wider
sense than that of speech, which is in itself only the expression
of the formulated thought which is capable of
being communicated in the widest sense. Otherwise, the
deaf mute would be limited to the utmost in his capacity
for thinking, which is not the case in reality. Without
17any knowledge of the spoken word, he has his
“language.” This language, considered from the standpoint
of history, or in other words, directed thinking,
is here a descendant of the primitive words, as, for instance,
Wundt^[22] expresses it.

“A further important result of that co-operation of sound and
sign interchange consists in the fact that very many words gradually
lose altogether their original concrete thought meaning, and
turn into signs for general ideas and for the expression of the
apperceptive functions of relation and comparison and their
products. In this manner abstract thought develops, which, because
it would not be possible without the change of meaning lying at
the root of it, is indeed a production of that psychic and psychophysical
reciprocal action out of which the development of language
takes place.”

Jodl^[23] denies the identity of language and thought,
because, for one reason, one and the same psychic fact
might be expressed in different languages in different
ways. From that he draws the conclusion that a “super-language
thinking” exists. Certainly there is such a thing,
whether with Erdmann one considers it “hypologisch,”
or with Jodl as “super-language.” Only this is not
logical thinking. My conception of it agrees with the
noteworthy contribution made by Baldwin, which I will
quote here word for word.^[24]

“The transmission from pre-judgmental to judgmental meaning
is just that from knowledge which has social confirmation
to that which gets along without it. The meanings utilized for
judgment are those already developed in their presuppositions
and applications through the confirmation of social intercourse.
Thus, the personal judgment, trained in the methods of social
18rendering, and disciplined by the interaction of its social world,
projects its content into that world again. In other words, the
platform for all movement into the assertion of individual judgment—the
level from which new experience is utilized—is already
and always socialized; and it is just this movement that we find
reflected in the actual results as the sense of the ‘appropriateness’
or synomic character of the meaning rendered.

“Now the development of thought, as we are to see in more
detail, is by a method essentially of trial and error, of experimentation,
of the use of meanings as worth more than they are as
yet recognized to be worth. The individual must use his own
thoughts, his established knowledges, his grounded judgments, for
the embodiment of his new inventive constructions. He erects
his thought as we say ‘schematically’—in logic terms, ‘problematically,’
conditionally, disjunctively; projecting into the
world an opinion still peculiar to himself, as if it were true. Thus
all discovery proceeds. But this is, from the linguistic point of
view, still to use the current language, still to work by meanings
already embodied in social and conventional usage.

“Language grows, therefore, just as thought does, by never
losing its synomic or dual reference; its meaning is both personal
and social.

“It is the register of tradition, the record of racial conquest,
the deposit of all the gains made by the genius of individuals….
The social copy-system, thus established, reflects the
judgmental processes of the race, and in turn becomes the
training school of the judgment of new generations.

“Most of the training of the self, whereby the vagaries of
personal reaction to fact and image are reduced to the basis of
sound judgment, comes through the use of speech. When the
child speaks, he lays before the world his suggestion for a general
or common meaning. The reception he gets confirms or refutes
him. In either case he is instructed. His next venture is now
from a platform of knowledge on which the newer item is more
nearly convertible into the common coin of effective intercourse.
The point to notice here is not so much the exact mechanism of
the exchange—secondary conversion—by which this gain is made,
19as the training in judgment that the constant use of it affords.
In each case, effective judgment is the common judgment.

“Here the object is to point out that it is secured by the
development of a function whose rise is directly ad hoc, directly
for the social experimentation by which growth in personal competence
is advanced as well—the function of speech.

“In language, therefore, to sum up the foregoing, we have the
tangible—the actual—the historical—instrument of the development
and conservation of psychic meaning. It is the material
evidence and proof of the concurrence of social and personal judgment.
In it synomic meaning, judged as ‘appropriate,’ becomes
‘social’ meaning, held as socially generalized and acknowledged.”

These arguments of Baldwin abundantly emphasize
the wide-reaching limitations of thinking caused by
language.^[25] These limitations are of the greatest significance,
both subjectively and objectively; at least their
meaning is great enough to force one to ask one’s self if,
after all, in regard to independence of thought, Franz
Mauthner, thoroughly sceptical, is not really correct in
his view that thinking is speech and nothing more.
Baldwin expresses himself more cautiously and reservedly;
nevertheless, his inner meaning is plainly in favor
of the primacy of speech (naturally not in the sense of
the spoken word); the directed thinking, or as we might
perhaps call it, the thinking in internal speech, is the
manifest instrument of culture, and we do not go astray
when we say that the powerful work of education which
the centuries have given to directed thinking has produced,
just through the peculiar development of thinking
from the individual subjective into the social objective, a
practical application of the human mind to which we owe
20modern empiricism and technic, and which occurs for absolutely
the first time in the history of the world. Inquisitive
minds have often tormented themselves with the
question why the undoubtedly extraordinary knowledge
of mathematics and principles and material facts
united with the unexampled art of the human hand in
antiquity never arrived at the point of developing those
known technical statements of fact, for instance, the
principles of simple machines, beyond the realm of the
amusing and curious to a real technic in the modern sense.
There is necessarily only one answer to this; the ancients
almost entirely, with the exception of a few extraordinary
minds, lacked the capacity to allow their interest to
follow the transformations of inanimate matter to the
extent necessary for them to be able to reproduce the
process of nature, creatively and through their own art,
by means of which alone they could have succeeded in
putting themselves in possession of the force of nature.
That which they lacked was training in directed thinking,
or, to express it psychoanalytically, the ancients did not
succeed in tearing loose the libido which might be sublimated,
from the other natural relations, and did not
turn voluntarily to anthropomorphism. The secret of
the development of culture lies in the mobility of the
libido, and in its capacity for transference. It is, therefore,
to be assumed that the directed thinking of our time
is a more or less modern acquisition, which was lacking
in earlier times.

But with that we come to a further question, viz., what
happens if we do not think directedly? Then our thinking
21lacks the major idea, and the feeling of direction which
emanates from that.^[26] We no longer compel our
thoughts along a definite track, but let them float, sink
and mount according to their own gravity. According
to Kulpe^[27] thinking is a kind of inner will action, the
absence of which necessarily leads to an automatic play
of ideas. James understands the non-directed thinking,
or “merely associative” thinking, as the ordinary one.
He expresses himself about that in the following
manner:

“Our thought consists for the great part of a series of images,
one of which produces the other; a sort of passive dream-state of
which the higher animals are also capable. This sort of thinking
leads, nevertheless, to reasonable conclusions of a practical as well
as of a theoretical nature.

“As a rule, the links of this sort of irresponsible thinking,
which are accidentally bound together, are empirically concrete
things, not abstractions.”

We can, in the following manner, complete these definitions
of William James. This sort of thinking does
not tire us; it quickly leads us away from reality into
phantasies of the past and future. Here, thinking in the
form of speech ceases, image crowds upon image, feeling
upon feeling; more and more clearly one sees a
tendency which creates and makes believe, not as it truly
is, but as one indeed might wish it to be.^[28] The material
of these thoughts which turns away from reality, can
naturally be only the past with its thousand memory pictures.
The customary speech calls this kind of thinking
“dreaming.”

22Whoever attentively observes himself will find the
general custom of speech very striking, for almost every
day we can see for ourselves how, when falling asleep,
phantasies are woven into our dreams, so that between
the dreams of day and night there is not so great a
difference. Thus we have two forms of thinking—directed
thinking and dream or phantasy thinking. The
first, working for communication with speech elements,
is troublesome and exhausting; the latter, on the contrary,
goes on without trouble, working spontaneously, so to
speak, with reminiscences. The first creates innovations,
adaptations, imitates reality and seeks to act upon it.
The latter, on the contrary, turns away from reality, sets
free subjective wishes, and is, in regard to adaptation,
wholly unproductive.^[29]

Let us leave aside the query as to why we possess these
two different ways of thinking, and turn back to the
second proposition, namely, how comes it that we have
two different ways of thinking? I have intimated above
that history shows us that directed thinking was not
always as developed as it is at present. In this age the
most beautiful expression of directed thinking is science,
and the technic fostered by it. Both things are indebted
for their existence simply to an energetic education in
directed thinking. At the time, however, when a few
forerunners of the present culture, like the poet Petrarch,
first began to appreciate Nature understandingly^[30] there
was already in existence an equivalent for our science, to
wit, scholasticism.^[31] This took its objects from the phantasies
of the past, and it gave to the mind a dialectic
23training in directed thinking. The only success which
beckoned the thinker was rhetorical victory in disputation,
and not a visible transformation of reality.

The subjects of thinking were often astonishingly
phantastical; for example, questions were discussed, such
as how many angels could have a place on the point of
a needle? Whether Christ could have done his work
of redemption equally well if he had come into the
world as a pea? The possibility of such problems, to
which belong the metaphysical problems in general, viz.,
to be able to know the unknowable, shows us of what
peculiar kind that mind must have been which created
such things which to us are the height of absurdity.
Nietzsche had guessed, however, at the biological background
of this phenomenon when he spoke of the “beautiful
tension” of the Germanic mind which the Middle
Ages created. Taken historically, scholasticism, in the
spirit of which persons of towering intellectual powers,
such as Thomas of Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Abélard, William
of Occam and others, have labored, is the mother of
the modern scientific attitude, and a later time will see
clearly how and in what scholasticism still furnishes
living undercurrents to the science of to-day. Its whole
nature lies in dialectic gymnastics which have raised the
symbol of speech, the word, to an almost absolute meaning,
so that it finally attained to that substantiality which
expiring antiquity could lend to its logos only temporarily,
through attributes of mystical valuation. The great
work of scholasticism, however, appears to be the foundation
of firmly knitted intellectual sublimation, the conditio
24sine qua non of the modern scientific and technical
spirit.

Should we go further back into history, we shall find
that which to-day we call science, dissolved into an indistinct
cloud. The modern culture-creating mind is incessantly
occupied in stripping off all subjectivity from experience,
and in finding those formulas which bring
Nature and her forces to the best and most fitting expression.
It would be an absurd and entirely unjustified self-glorification
if we were to assume that we are more
energetic or more intelligent than the ancients—our
materials for knowledge have increased, but not our intellectual
capacity. For this reason, we become immediately
as obstinate and insusceptible in regard to new
ideas as people in the darkest times of antiquity. Our
knowledge has increased but not our wisdom. The main
point of our interest is displaced wholly into material
reality; antiquity preferred a mode of thought which was
more closely related to a phantastic type. Except for a
sensitive perspicuity towards works of art, not attained
since then, we seek in vain in antiquity for that precise
and concrete manner of thinking characteristic of modern
science. We see the antique spirit create not science but
mythology. Unfortunately, we acquire in school only
a very paltry conception of the richness and immense
power of life of Grecian mythology.

Therefore, at first glance, it does not seem possible for
us to assume that that energy and interest which to-day
we put into science and technic, the man of antiquity gave
in great part to his mythology. That, nevertheless, gives
25the explanation for the bewildering changes, the kaleidoscopic
transformations and new syncretistic groupings,
and the continued rejuvenation of the myths in the
Grecian sphere of culture. Here, we move in a world
of phantasies, which, little concerned with the outer
course of things, flows from an inner source, and, constantly
changing, creates now plastic, now shadowy
shapes. This phantastical activity of the ancient mind
created artistically par excellence. The object of the interest
does not seem to have been to grasp hold of the
“how” of the real world as objectively and exactly as
possibly, but to æsthetically adapt subjective phantasies
and expectations. There was very little place among
ancient people for the coldness and disillusion which
Giordano Bruno’s thoughts on eternity and Kepler’s discoveries
brought to modern humanity. The naïve man
of antiquity saw in the sun the great Father of the heaven
and the earth, and in the moon the fruitful good Mother.
Everything had its demons; they animated equally a
human being and his brother, the animal. Everything
was considered according to its anthropomorphic or
theriomorphic attributes, as human being or animal.
Even the disc of the sun was given wings or four feet,
in order to illustrate its movement. Thus arose an idea
of the universe which was not only very far from reality,
but was one which corresponded wholly to subjective
phantasies.

We know, from our own experience, this state of mind.
It is an infantile stage. To a child the moon is a man or
a face or a shepherd of the stars. The clouds in the sky
26seem like little sheep; the dolls drink, eat and sleep; the
child places a letter at the window for the Christ-child;
he calls to the stork to bring him a little brother or
sister; the cow is the wife of the horse, and the dog the
husband of the cat. We know, too, that lower races, like
the negroes, look upon the locomotive as an animal, and
call the drawers of the table the child of the table.

As we learn through Freud, the dream shows a similar
type. Since the dream is unconcerned with the real condition
of things, it brings the most heterogeneous matter
together, and a world of impossibilities takes the place
of realities. Freud finds progression characteristic of
thinking when awake; that is to say, the advancement of
the thought excitation from the system of the inner or
outer perception through the “endopsychic” work of
association, conscious and unconscious, to the motor end;
that is to say, towards innervation. In the dream he finds
the reverse, namely, regression of the thought excitation
from the preconscious or unconscious to the system of
perception, by the means of which the dream receives
its ordinary impression of sensuous distinctness, which
can rise to an almost hallucinating clearness. The dream
thinking moves in a retrograde manner towards the raw
material of memory. “The structure of the dream
thoughts is dissolved during the progress of regression
into its raw material.” The reanimation of the original
perception is, however, only one side of regression. The
other side is regression to the infantile memory material,
which might also be understood as regression to the
original perception, but which deserves especial mention
27on account of its independent importance. This regression
might, indeed, be considered as “historical.” The
dream, according to this conception, might also be described
as the substitute of the infantile scene, changed
through transference into the recent scene.

The infantile scene cannot carry through its revival;
it must be satisfied with its return as a dream. From
this conception of the historical side of regression, it follows
consequently that the modes of conclusion of the
dream, in so far as one may speak of them, must show
at the same time an analogous and infantile character.
This is truly the case, as experience has abundantly
shown, so that to-day every one who is familiar with the
subject of dream analysis confirms Freud’s proposition
that dreams are a piece of the conquered life of the
childish soul. Inasmuch as the childish psychic life is
undeniably of an archaic type, this characteristic belongs
to the dream in quite an unusual degree. Freud calls our
attention to this especially.

“The dream, which fulfils its wishes by a short, regressive
path, affords us only an example of the primary method of working
of the psychic apparatus, which has been abandoned by us as
unsuitable. That which once ruled in the waking state, when the
psychical life was still young and impotent, appears to be banished
to the dream life, in somewhat the same way as the bow and
arrow, those discarded, primitive weapons of adult humanity, have
been relegated to the nursery.”^[32]

All this experience suggests to us that we draw a
parallel between the phantastical, mythological thinking
of antiquity and the similar thinking of children, between
28the lower human races and dreams.^[33] This train of
thought is not a strange one for us, but quite familiar
through our knowledge of comparative anatomy and the
history of development, which show us how the structure
and function of the human body are the results of a series
of embryonic changes which correspond to similar
changes in the history of the race. Therefore, the supposition
is justified that ontogenesis corresponds in
psychology to phylogenesis. Consequently, it would
be true, as well, that the state of infantile thinking in the
child’s psychic life, as well as in dreams, is nothing but a
re-echo of the prehistoric and the ancient.^[34]

In regard to this, Nietzsche takes a very broad and remarkable
standpoint.^[35]

“In our sleep and in our dreams we pass through the whole
thought of earlier humanity. I mean, in the same way that man
reasons in his dreams, he reasoned when in the waking state many
thousands of years. The first causa which occurred to his mind in
reference to anything that needed explanation, satisfied him and
passed for truth. In the dream this atavistic relic of humanity
manifests its existence within us, for it is the foundation upon
which the higher rational faculty developed, and which is still
developing in every individual. The dream carries us back into
earlier states of human culture, and affords us a means of understanding
it better. The dream thought is so easy to us now,
because we are so thoroughly trained to it through the interminable
stages of evolution during which this phantastic and facile form
of theorizing has prevailed. To a certain extent the dream is
a restorative for the brain, which during the day is called upon
to meet the severe demands for trained thought, made by the
conditions of a higher civilization.

“From these facts, we can understand how lately more acute
logical thinking, the taking seriously of cause and effect, has been
29developed; when our functions of reason and intelligence still reach
back involuntarily to those primitive forms of conclusion, and we
live about half our lives in this condition.”

We have already seen that Freud, independently of
Nietzsche, has reached a similar standpoint from the
basis of dream analysis. The step from this established
proposition to the perception of the myths as familiar
dream images is no longer a great one. Freud has formulated
this conclusion himself.^[36]

“The investigation of this folk-psychologic formation, myths,
etc., is by no means finished at present. To take an example of
this, however, it is probable that the myths correspond to the
distorted residue of wish phantasies of whole nations, the secularized
dreams of young humanity.”

Rank^[37] understands the myths in a similar manner, as
a mass dream of the people.^[38] Riklin^[39] has insisted
rightly upon the dream mechanism of the fables, and
Abraham^[40] has done the same for the myths. He says:

“The myth is a fragment of the infantile soul-life of the people.”

and

“Thus the myth is a sustained, still remaining fragment from
the infantile soul-life of the people, and the dream is the myth
of the individual.”

An unprejudiced reading of the above-mentioned
authors will certainly allay all doubts concerning the
intimate connection between dream psychology and myth
psychology. The conclusion results almost from itself,
that the age which created the myths thought childishly—that
30is to say, phantastically, as in our age is still done,
to a very great extent (associatively or analogically) in
dreams. The beginnings of myth formations (in the
child), the taking of phantasies for realities, which is
partly in accord with the historical, may easily be discovered
among children.

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

Let us again take up our earlier train of thought.

We spoke of the ontogenetic re-echo of the phylogenetic
31psychology among children, we saw that phantastic
thinking is a characteristic of antiquity, of the child,
and of the lower races; but now we know also that our
modern and adult man is given over in large part to
this same phantastic thinking, which enters as soon as the
directed thinking ceases. A lessening of the interest, a
slight fatigue, is sufficient to put an end to the directed
thinking, the exact psychological adaptation to the real
world, and to replace it with phantasies. We digress
from the theme and give way to our own trains of
thought; if the slackening of the attention increases, then
we lose by degrees the consciousness of the present, and
the phantasy enters into possession of the field.

Here the important question obtrudes itself: How are
phantasies created? From the poets we learn much about
it; from science we learn little. The psychoanalytic
method, presented to science by Freud, shed light upon
this for the first time. It showed us that there are
typical cycles. The stutterer imagines he is a great
orator. The truth of this, Demosthenes, thanks to his
energy, has proven. The poor man imagines himself to
be a millionaire, the child an adult. The conquered fight
out victorious battles with the conquerer; the unfit torments
or delights himself with ambitious plans. We
imagine that which we lack. The interesting question of
the “why” of all this we must here leave unanswered,
while we return to the historic problem: From what
source do the phantasies draw their materials?^[41] We
chose, as an example, a typical phantasy of puberty. A
child in that stage before whom the whole frightening
32uncertainty of the future fate opens, puts back the uncertainty
into the past, through his phantasy, and says, “If
only I were not the child of my ordinary parents, but
the child of a rich and fashionable count, and had been
merely passed over to my parents, then some day a golden
coach would come, and the count would take his child
back with him to his wonderful castle,” and so it goes
on, as in Grimm’s Fairy Tales which the mother tells to
her children.^[42] With a normal child, it stops with the
fugitive, quickly-passing idea which is soon covered over
and forgotten. However, at one time, and that was in
the ancient world of culture, the phantasy was an openly
acknowledged institution. The heroes,—I recall Romulus
and Remus, Semiramis, Moses and many others,—have
been separated from their real parents.^[43] Others
are directly sons of gods, and the noble races derive their
family trees from heroes and gods. As one sees by this
example, the phantasy of modern humanity is nothing but
a re-echo of an old-folk-belief, which was very widespread
originally.^[44] The ambitious phantasy chooses,
among others, a form which is classic, and which once
had a true meaning. The same thing holds good in
regard to the sexual phantasy. In the preamble we have
spoken of dreams of sexual assault: the robber who
breaks into the house and commits a dangerous act.
That, too, is a mythological theme, and in the prehistoric
era was certainly a reality too.^[45] Wholly apart from the
fact that the capture of women was something general
in the lawless prehistoric times, it was also a subject of
mythology in cultivated epochs. I recall the capture of
33Proserpina, Deianira, Europa, the Sabine women, etc.
We must not forget that, even to-day, marriage customs
exist in various regions which recall the ancient custom
of marriage by capture.

The symbolism of the instrument of coitus was an inexhaustible
material for ancient phantasy. It furnished
a widespread cult that was designated phallic, the object
of reverence of which was the phallus. The companion
of Dionysus was Phales, a personification of the phallus
proceeding from the phallic Herme of Dionysus. The
phallic symbols were countless. Among the Sabines, the
custom existed for the bridegroom to part the bride’s
hair with a lance. The bird, the fish and the snake were
phallic symbols. In addition, there existed in enormous
quantities theriomorphic representations of the sexual
instinct, in connection with which the bull, the he-goat,
the ram, the boar and the ass were frequently used. An
undercurrent to this choice of symbol was furnished by
the sodomitic inclination of humanity. When in the
dream phantasy of modern man, the feared man is replaced
by an animal, there is recurring in the ontogenetic
re-echo the same thing which was openly represented by
the ancients countless times. There were he-goats which
pursued nymphs, satyrs with she-goats; in still older times
in Egypt there even existed a shrine of a goat god, which
the Greeks called Pan, where the Hierodules prostituted
themselves with goats.^[46] It is well known that this worship
has not died out, but continues to live as a special
custom in South Italy and Greece.^[47]

To-day we feel for such a thing nothing but the deepest
34abhorrence, and never would admit it still slumbered in
our souls. Nevertheless, just as truly as the idea of the
sexual assault is there, so are these things there too; which
we should contemplate still more closely,—not through
moral eye-glasses, with horror, but with interest as a
natural science, since these things are venerable relics of
past culture periods. We have, even to-day, a clause in
our penal code against sodomy. But that which was once
so strong as to give rise to a worship among a highly
developed people has probably not wholly disappeared
from the human soul during the course of a few generations.
We may not forget that since the symposium of
Plato, in which homo-sexuality faces us on the same level
with the so-called “normal sexuality,” only eighty generations
have passed. And what are eighty generations?
They shrink to an imperceptible period of time when
compared with the space of time which separates us from
the homo-Neandertalensis or Heidelbergensis. I might
call to mind, in this connection, some choice thoughts of
the great historian Guglielmo Ferrero:^[48]

“It is a very common belief that the further man is separated
from the present by time, the more does he differ from us in his
thoughts and feelings; that the psychology of humanity changes
from century to century, like fashions of literature. Therefore, no
sooner do we find in past history an institution, a custom, a law
or a belief a little different from those with which we are familiar,
than we immediately search for some complex meanings, which
frequently resolve themselves into phrases of doubtful significance.

“Indeed, man does not change so quickly; his psychology at
bottom remains the same, and even if his culture varies much from
one epoch to another, it does not change the functioning of his
mind. The fundamental laws of the mind remain the same, at
35least during the short historical period of which we have knowledge,
and all phenomena, even the most strange, must be capable
of explanation by those common laws of the mind which we can
recognize in ourselves.”

The psychologist should accept this viewpoint without
reservation as peculiarly applicable to himself. To-day,
indeed, in our civilization the phallic processions, the
Dionysian mysteries of classical Athens, the barefaced
Phallic emblems, have disappeared from our coins,
houses, temples and streets; so also have the theriomorphic
representations of the Deity been reduced to small
remnants, like the Dove of the Holy Ghost, the Lamb of
God and the Cock of Peter adorning our church towers.
In the same way, the capture and violation of women
have shrunken away to crimes. Yet all of this does not
affect the fact that we, in childhood, go through a period
in which the impulses toward these archaic inclinations
appear again and again, and that through all our life we
possess, side by side with the newly recruited, directed
and adapted thought, a phantastic thought which corresponds
to the thought of the centuries of antiquity and
barbarism. Just as our bodies still keep the reminders
of old functions and conditions in many old-fashioned
organs, so our minds, too, which apparently have outgrown
those archaic tendencies, nevertheless bear the
marks of the evolution passed through, and the very
ancient re-echoes, at least dreamily, in phantasies.

The symbolism which Freud has discovered, is revealed
as an expression of a thinking and of an impulse
limited to the dream, to wrong conduct, and to derangements
36of the mind, which form of thinking and impulse at
one time ruled as the mightiest influence in past culture
epochs.

The question of whence comes the inclination and
ability which enables the mind to express itself
symbolically, brings us to the distinction between the
two kinds of thinking—the directed and adapted on
one hand, and the subjective, fed by our own egotistic
wishes, on the other. The latter form of thinking,
presupposing that it were not constantly corrected
by the adapted thinking, must necessarily produce an
overwhelmingly subjectively distorted idea of the world.
We regard this state of mind as infantile. It lies in our
individual past, and in the past of mankind.

With this we affirm the important fact that man in his
phantastic thinking has kept a condensation of the psychic
history of his development. An extraordinarily important
task, which even to-day is hardly possible, is to give a
systematic description of phantastic thinking. One may,
at the most, sketch it. While directed thinking is a phenomenon
conscious throughout,^[49] the same cannot be asserted
of phantastic thinking. Doubtless, a great part of
it still falls entirely in the realm of the conscious, but,
at least, just as much goes along in half shadows, and
generally an undetermined amount in the unconscious;
and this can, therefore, be disclosed only indirectly.^[50] By
means of phantastic thinking, directed thinking is connected
with the oldest foundations of the human mind,
which have been for a long time beneath the threshold
of the consciousness. The products of this phantastic
37thinking arising directly from the consciousness are,
first, waking dreams, or day-dreams, to which Freud,
Flournoy, Pick and others have given special attention;
then the dreams which offer to the consciousness, at first,
a mysterious exterior, and win meaning only through the
indirectly inferred unconscious contents. Lastly, there is
a so-called wholly unconscious phantasy system in the
split-off complex, which exhibits a pronounced tendency
towards the production of a dissociated personality.^[51]

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

This problem deserves to be more thoroughly discussed.
As a concrete example, let us take the history of
the pious Abbé Oegger which Anatole France has communicated
to us.^[52] This priest was a hypercritical man,
and much given to phantasies, especially in regard to
one question, viz., the fate of Judas; whether he was
38really damned, as the teaching of the church asserts, to
everlasting punishment, or whether God had pardoned
him after all. Oegger sided with the intelligent point of
view that God, in his all-wisdom, had chosen Judas as
an instrument, in order to bring about the highest point
of the work of redemption by Christ.^[53] This necessary
instrument, without the help of which the human race
would not have been a sharer in salvation, could not
possibly be damned by the all-good God. In order to
put an end to his doubts, Oegger went one night to the
church, and made supplication for a sign that Judas was
saved. Then he felt a heavenly touch upon his shoulder.
Following this, Oegger told the Archbishop of his resolution
to go out into the world to preach God’s unending
mercy.

Here we have a richly developed phantasy system before
us. It is concerned with the subtle and perpetually
undecided question as to whether the legendary figure of
Judas is damned or not. The Judas legend is, in itself,
mythical material, viz., the malicious betrayal of a hero.
I recall Siegfried and Hagen, Balder and Loki. Siegfried
and Balder were murdered by a faithless traitor from
among their closest associates. This myth is moving and
tragic—it is not honorable battle which kills the noble,
but evil treachery. It is, too, an occurrence which is historical
over and over again. One thinks of Cæsar and
Brutus. Since the myth of such a deed is very old, and
still the subject of teaching and repetition, it is the
expression of a psychological fact, that envy does not
allow humanity to sleep, and that all of us carry, in a
39hidden recess of our heart, a deadly wish towards the
hero. This rule can be applied generally to mythical
tradition. It does not set forth any account of the old
events, but rather acts in such a way that it always reveals
a thought common to humanity, and once more rejuvenated.
Thus, for example, the lives and deeds of the
founders of old religions are the purest condensations
of typical, contemporaneous myths, behind which the
individual figure entirely disappears.^[54]

But why does our pious Abbé torment himself with the
old Judas legend? He first went into the world to preach
the gospel of mercy, and then, after some time, he
separated from the Catholic church and became a Swedenborgian.
Now we understand his Judas phantasy. He
was the Judas who betrayed his Lord. Therefore, first
of all, he had to make sure of the divine mercy, in order
to be Judas in peace.

This case throws a light upon the mechanism of the
phantasies in general. The known, conscious phantasy
may be of mythical or other material; it is not to be taken
seriously as such, for it has an indirect meaning. If we
take it, however, as important per se, then the thing is
not understandable, and makes one despair of the efficiency
of the mind. But we saw, in the case of Abbé
Oegger, that his doubts and his hopes did not turn upon
the historical problem of Judas, but upon his own personality,
which wished to win a way to freedom for itself
through the solution of the Judas problem.

The conscious phantasies tell us of mythical or other
material of undeveloped or no longer recognized wish
40tendencies in the soul. As is easily to be understood, an
innate tendency, an acknowledgment of which one refuses
to make, and which one treats as non-existent, can
hardly contain a thing that may be in accord with our
conscious character. It concerns the tendencies which are
considered immoral, and as generally impossible, and the
strongest resentment is felt towards bringing them into
the consciousness. What would Oegger have said had
he been told confidentially that he was preparing himself
for the Judas rôle? And what in ourselves do we consider
immoral and non-existent, or which we at least wish
were non-existent? It is that which in antiquity lay widespread
on the surface, viz., sexuality in all its various
manifestations. Therefore, we need not wonder in the
least when we find this at the base of most of our phantasies,
even if the phantasies have a different appearance.
Because Oegger found the damnation of Judas incompatible
with God’s goodness, he thought about the conflict
in that way; that is the conscious sequence. Along
with this is the unconscious sequence; because Oegger
himself wished to be a Judas, he first made sure of the
goodness of God. To Oegger, Judas was the symbol
of his own unconscious tendency, and he made use of this
symbol in order to be able to meditate over his unconscious
wish. The direct coming into consciousness of the
Judas wish would have been too painful for him. Thus,
there must be typical myths which are really the instruments
of a folk-psychological complex treatment. Jacob
Burckhardt seems to have suspected this when he once
said that every Greek of the classical era carried in himself
41a fragment of the Oedipus, just as every German
carries a fragment of Faust.^[55]

The problem which the simple story of the Abbé
Oegger has brought clearly before us confronts us again
when we prepare to examine phantasies which owe their
existence this time to an exclusively unconscious work.
We are indebted for the material which we will use in
the following chapters to the useful publication of an
American woman, Miss Frank Miller, who has given to
the world some poetical unconsciously formed phantasies
under the title, “Quelque faits d’imagination créatrice
subconsciente.”—Vol. V., Archives de Psychologie,
1906.^[56]

42

CHAPTER II
THE MILLER PHANTASIES

We know, from much psychoanalytic experience, that
whenever one recounts his phantasies or his dreams, he
deals not only with the most important and intimate of
his problems, but with the one the most painful at that
moment.^[57]

Since in the case of Miss Miller we have to do with a
complicated system, we must give our attention carefully
to the particulars which I will discuss, following as best
I can Miss Miller’s presentation.

In the first chapter, “Phénomènes de suggestion passagère
ou d’autosuggestion instantanée,” Miss Miller
gives a list of examples of her unusual suggestibility,
which she herself considers as a symptom of her nervous
temperament; for example, she is excessively fond of
caviar, whereas some of her relatives loathe it. However,
as soon as any one expresses his loathing, she herself
feels momentarily the same loathing. I do not need
to emphasize especially the fact that such examples are
very important in individual psychology; that caviar is
a food for which nervous women frequently have an
especial predilection, is a fact well known to the psychoanalyst.

Miss Miller has an extraordinary faculty for taking
43other people’s feelings upon herself, and of identification;
for example, she identifies herself to such a degree
in “Cyrano” with the wounded Christian de Neuvillette,
that she feels in her own breast a truly piercing pain at
that place where Christian received the deadly blow.

From the viewpoint of analytic psychology, the theatre,
aside from any esthetic value, may be considered as an
institution for the treatment of the mass complex. The
enjoyment of the comedy, or of the dramatic plot ending
happily is produced by an unreserved identification of
one’s own complexes with the play. The enjoyment of
tragedy lies in the thrilling yet satisfactory feeling that
something which might occur to one’s self is happening
to another. The sympathy of our author with the dying
Christian means that there is in her a complex awaiting
a similar solution, which whispers softly to her “hodie
tibi, cras mihi,” and that one may know exactly what is
considered the effectual moment Miss Miller adds that
she felt a pain in her breast, “Lorsque Sarah Bernhardt
se précipite sur lui pour étancher le sang de sa blessure.”
Therefore the effectual moment is when the love between
Christian and Roxane comes to a sudden end.

If we glance over the whole of Rostand’s play, we
come upon certain moments, the effect of which one cannot
easily escape and which we will emphasize here because
they have meaning for all that follows. Cyrano de
Bergerac, with the long ugly nose, on account of which
he undertakes countless duels, loves Roxane, who, for
her part unaware of it, loves Christian, because of the
beautiful verses which really originate from Cyrano’s
44pen, but which apparently come from Christian. Cyrano
is the misunderstood one, whose passionate love and
noble soul no one suspects; the hero who sacrifices himself
for others, and, dying, just in the evening of life,
reads to her once more Christian’s last letter, the verses
which he himself had composed.

“Roxane, adieu, je vais mourir!
C’est pour ce soir, je crois, ma bien-aimée!
J’ai l’âme lourde encore d’amour inexprimé.
Et je meurs! Jamais plus, jamais mes yeux grisés,
Mes regards dont c’était les frémissantes fêtes,
Ne baiseront au vol les gestes que vous faites;
J’en revois un petit qui vous est familier
Pour toucher votre front et je voudrais crier—.
Et je crie:
Adieu!—Ma chère, ma chérie,
Mon trésor—mon amour!
Mon coeur ne vous quitta jamais une seconde,
Et je suis et je serai jusque dans l’autre monde
Celui qui vous aime sans mesure, celui—”

Whereupon Roxane recognizes in him the real loved
one. It is already too late; death comes; and in agonized
delirium, Cyrano raises himself, and draws his sword:

“Je crois, qu’elle regarde….
Qu’elle ose regarder mon nez, la camarde!

(Il lève son épée.)

Que dites-vous?… C’est inutile!
Je le sais!
Mais on ne se bat pas dans l’espoir du succès!
Non! Non! C’est bien plus beau, lorsque c’est inutile!
—Qu’est-ce que c’est que tous ceux-là?—Vous êtes mille?
Ah! je vous reconnais, tous mes vieux ennemis!
Le mensonge!

(Il frappe de son épée le vide.)

45Tiens, tiens, ha! ha! les Compromis,
Les Préjugés, les Lâchetés!…

(Il frappe.)

Que je pactise?
Jamais, jamais!—Ah, te voilà, toi, la Sottise!
—Je sais bien qu’à la fin vous me mettrez à bas;
N’importe: je me bats! je me bats! je me bats!
Oui, vous m’arrachez tout, le laurier et la rose!
Arrachez! Il y a malgré vous quelque chose
Que j’emporte, et ce soir, quand j’entrerai chez Dieu,
Mon salut balaiera largement le seuil bleu.
Quelque chose que sans un pli, sans une tache,
J’emporte malgré vous, et c’est—mon panache.”

Cyrano, who under the hateful exterior of his body
hid a soul so much more beautiful, is a yearner and one
misunderstood, and his last triumph is that he departs,
at least, with a clean shield—“Sans un pli et sans une
tache.” The identification of the author with the dying
Christian, who in himself is a figure but little impressive
and sympathetic, expresses clearly that a sudden end is
destined for her love just as for Christian’s love. The
tragic intermezzo with Christian, however, is played as
we have seen upon a background of much wider significance,
viz., the misunderstood love of Cyrano for
Roxane. Therefore, the identification with Christian
has only the significance of a substitute memory (“deckerinnerung”),
and is really intended for Cyrano. That
this is just what we might expect will be seen in the
further course of our analysis.

Besides this story of identification with Christian, there
follows as a further example an extraordinarily plastic
46memory of the sea, evoked by the sight of a photograph of
a steamboat on the high seas. (“Je sentis les pulsations
des machines, le soulèvement des vagues, le balancement
du navire.”)

We may mention here the supposition that there are
connected with sea journeys particularly impressive and
strong memories which penetrate deeply into the soul
and give an especially strong character to the surface
memories through unconscious harmony. To what extent
the memories assumed here agree with the above mentioned
problem we shall see in the following pages.

This example, following at this time, is singular: Once,
while in bathing, Miss Miller wound a towel around her
hair, in order to protect it from a wetting. At the same
moment she had the following strong impression:

“Il me sembla que j’étais sur un piédestal, une véritable statue
égyptienne, avec tous ses détails: membres raides, un pied en
avant, la main tenant des insignes,” and so on.

Miss Miller identified herself, therefore, with an Egyptian
statue, and naturally the foundation for this was
a subjective pretension. That is to say, “I am like an
Egyptian statue, just as stiff, wooden, sublime and impassive,”
qualities for which the Egyptian statue is proverbial.
One does not make such an assertion to one’s
self without an inner compulsion, and the correct formula
might just as well be, “as stiff, wooden, etc., as an Egyptian
statue I might indeed be.” The sight of one’s own
unclothed body in a bath has undeniable effects for the
phantasy, which can be set at rest by the above formula.^[58]

47The example which follows this, emphasizes the
author’s personal influence upon an artist:

“J’ai réussi à lui faire rendre des paysages, comme ceux du
lac Léman, où il n’a jamais été, et il prétendait que je pouvais
lui faire rendre des choses qu’il n’avait jamais vues, et lui donner
la sensation d’une atmosphère ambiante qu’il n’avait jamais sentie;
bref que je me servais de lui comme lui-même se servait de son
crayon, c’est à dire comme d’un simple instrument.”

This observation stands in abrupt contrast to the phantasy
of the Egyptian statue. Miss Miller had here the
unspoken need of emphasizing her almost magic effect
upon another person. This could not have happened,
either, without an unconscious need, which is particularly
felt by one who does not often succeed in making an
emotional impression upon a fellow being.

With that, the list of examples which are to picture
Miss Miller’s autosuggestibility and suggestive effect, is
exhausted. In this respect, the examples are neither
especially striking nor interesting. From an analytical
viewpoint, on the contrary, they are much more important,
since they afford us a glance into the soul of the
writer. Ferenczi^[59] has taught us in an excellent work
what is to be thought about suggestibility, that is to say,
that these phenomena win new aspects in the light of the
Freudian libido theory, in so much as their effects become
clear through “Libido-besetzungen.” This was already
indicated above in the discussion of the examples,
and in the greatest detail regarding the identification
with Christian. The identification becomes effective by
its receiving an influx of energy from the strongly accentuated
48thought and emotional feeling underlying the
Christian motif. Just the reverse is the suggestive effect
of the individual in an especial capacity for concentrating
interest (that is to say, libido) upon another person, by
which the other is unconsciously compelled to reaction
(the same or opposed). The majority of the examples
concern cases where Miss Miller is put under the effects
of suggestion; that is to say, when the libido has spontaneously
gained possession of certain impressions, and
this is impossible if the libido is dammed up to an unusual
degree by the lack of application to reality. Miss
Miller’s observations about suggestibility inform us,
therefore, of the fact that the author is pleased to tell
us in her following phantasies something of the history
of her love.

49

CHAPTER III
THE HYMN OF CREATION

The second chapter in Miss Miller’s work is entitled,
“Gloire à Dieu. Poème onirique.”

When twenty years of age, Miss Miller took a long
journey through Europe. We leave the description of it
to her:

“After a long and rough journey from New York to Stockholm,
from there to Petersburg and Odessa, I found it a true
pleasure^[60] to leave the world of inhabited cities—and to enter
the world of waves, sky and silence—I stayed hours long on deck
to dream, stretched out in a reclining chair. The histories, legends
and myths of the different countries which I saw in the distance,
came back to me indistinctly blended together in a sort of
luminous mist, in which things lost their reality, while the dreams
and thoughts alone took on somewhat the appearance of reality.
At first, I even avoided all company and kept to myself, lost
wholly in my dreams, where all that I knew of great, beautiful
and good came back into my consciousness with new strength and
new life. I also employed a great part of my time writing to my
distant friends, reading and sketching out short poems about the
regions visited. Some of these poems were of a very serious
character.”

It may seem superfluous, perhaps, to enter intimately
into all these details. If we recall, however, the remark
made above,—that when people let their unconscious
speak, they always tell us the most important things of
50their intimate selves—then even the smallest detail appears
to have meaning. Valuable personalities invariably
tell us, through their unconscious, things that are generally
valuable, so that patient interest is rewarded.

Miss Miller describes here a state of “introversion.”
After the life of the cities with their many impressions
had been absorbing her interest (with that already discussed
strength of suggestion which powerfully enforced
the impression) she breathed freely upon the ocean, and
after so many external impressions, became engrossed
wholly in the internal with intentional abstraction from
the surroundings, so that things lost their reality and
dreams became truth. We know from psychopathology
that certain mental disturbances^[61] exist which are first
manifested by the individuals shutting themselves off
slowly, more and more, from reality and sinking into
their phantasies, during which process, in proportion as
the reality loses its hold, the inner world gains in reality
and determining power.^[62] This process leads to a certain
point (which varies with the individual) when the patients
suddenly become more or less conscious of their
separation from reality. The event which then enters
is the pathological excitation: that is to say, the patients
begin to turn towards the environment, with diseased
views (to be sure) which, however, still represent the
compensating, although unsuccessful, attempt at transference.^[63]
The methods of reaction are, naturally, very
different. I will not concern myself more closely about
this here.

This type appears to be generally a psychological rule
51which holds good for all neuroses and, therefore, also
for the normal in a much less degree. We might, therefore,
expect that Miss Miller, after this energetic and persevering
introversion, which had even encroached for a
time upon the feeling of reality, would succumb anew to
an impression of the real world and also to just as suggestive
and energetic an influence as that of her dreams.
Let us proceed with the narrative:

“But as the journey drew to an end, the ship’s officers outdid
themselves in kindness (tout ce qu’il y a de plus empressé et de plus
aimable) and I passed many amusing hours teaching them English.
On the Sicilian coast, in the harbor of Catania, I wrote a sailor’s
song which was very similar to a song well known on the sea,
(Brine, wine and damsels fine). The Italians in general all sing
very well, and one of the officers who sang on deck during night
watch, had made a great impression upon me and had given me
the idea of writing some words adapted to his melody. Soon
after that, I was very nearly obliged to reverse the well-known
saying, ‘Veder Napoli e poi morir,’—that is to say, suddenly I
became very ill, although not dangerously so. I recovered to
such an extent, however, that I could go on land to visit the
sights of the city in a carriage. This day tired me very much,
and since we had planned to see Pisa the following day, I went
on board early in the evening and soon lay down to sleep without
thinking of anything more serious than the beauty of the officers
and the ugliness of the Italian beggars.”

One is somewhat disappointed at meeting here, instead
of the expected impression of reality, rather a small intermezzo,
a flirtation. Nevertheless, one of the officers,
the singer, had made a great impression (il m’avait fait
beaucoup d’impression). The remark at the close of the
description, “sans songer à rien de plus sérieux qu’à la
52beauté des officiers,” and so on, diminishes the seriousness
of the impression, it is true. The assumption, however,
that the impression openly influenced the mood very
much, is supported by the fact that a poem upon a subject
of such an erotic character came forth immediately,
“Brine, wine and damsels fine,” and in the singer’s honor.
One is only too easily inclined to take such an impression
lightly, and one admits so gladly the statements of the
participators when they represent everything as simple
and not at all serious. I dwell upon this impression at
length, because it is important to know that an erotic impression
after such an introversion, has a deep effect and
is undervalued, possibly, by Miss Miller. The suddenly
passing sickness is obscure and needs a psychologic interpretation
which cannot be touched upon here because of
lack of data. The phenomena now to be described can
only be explained as arising from a disturbance which
reaches to the very depths of her being.

“From Naples to Livorno, the ship travelled for a night,
during which I slept more or less well,—my sleep, however, is
seldom deep or dreamless. It seemed to me as if my mother’s
voice wakened me, just at the end of the following dream. At
first I had a vague conception of the words, ‘When the morning
stars sang together,’ which were the praeludium of a certain confused
representation of creation and of the mighty chorals resounding
through the universe. In spite of the strange, contradictory
and confused character which is peculiar to the dream,
there was mingled in it the chorus of an oratorio which has been
given by one of the foremost musical societies of New York, and
with that were also memories of Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost.’ Then
from out of this whirl, there slowly emerged certain words, which
arranged themselves into three strophes and, indeed, they seemed
53to be in my own handwriting on ordinary blue-lined writing paper
on a page of my old poetry book which I always carried around with
me; in short, they appeared to me exactly as some minutes later
they were in reality in my book.”

Miss Miller now wrote down the following poem,
which she rearranged somewhat a few months later, to
make it more nearly, in her opinion, like the dream
original.

“When the Eternal first made Sound
A myriad ears sprang out to hear,
And throughout all the Universe
There rolled an echo deep and clear:
All glory to the God of Sound!

“When the Eternal first made Light
A myriad eyes sprang out to look,
And hearing ears and seeing eyes
Once more a mighty choral took:
All glory to the God of Light!

“When the Eternal first gave Love
A myriad hearts sprang into life;
Ears filled with music, eyes with light;
Pealed forth with hearts with love all rife:
All glory to the God of Love!”

Before we enter upon Miss Miller’s attempt to bring
to light through her suppositions^[64] the root of this subliminal
creation, we will attempt a short analytic survey
of the material already in our possession. The impression
on the ship has already been properly emphasized,
so that we need have no further difficulty in gaining possession
of the dynamic process which brought about this
poetical revelation. It was made clear in the preceding
54paragraphs that Miss Miller possibly had not inconsiderably
undervalued the importance of the erotic impression.
This assumption gains in probability through experience,
which shows that, very generally, relatively
weak erotic impressions are greatly undervalued. One
can see this best in cases where those concerned, either
from social or moral grounds, consider an erotic relation
as something quite impossible; for example, parents and
children, brothers and sisters, relations (homosexual)
between older and younger men, and so on. If the impression
is relatively slight, then it does not exist at all
for the participators; if the impression is strong, then a
tragic dependence arises, which may result in some great
nonsense, or be carried to any extent. This lack of understanding
can go unbelievably far; mothers, who see the
first erections of the small son in their own bed, a sister
who half-playfully embraces her brother, a twenty-year-old
daughter who still seats herself on her father’s lap,
and then has “strange” sensations in her “abdomen.”
They are all morally indignant to the highest degree if
one speaks of “sexuality.” Finally, our whole education
is carried on with the tacit agreement to know as little
as possible of the erotic, and to spread abroad the deepest
ignorance in regard to it. It is no wonder, therefore,
that the judgment, in puncto, of the importance of an
erotic impression is generally unsafe and inadequate.

Miss Miller was under the influence of a deep erotic
impression, as we have seen. Because of the sum-total
of the feelings aroused by this, it does not seem that this
impression was more than dimly realized, for the dream
55had to contain a powerful repetition. From analytic experience,
one knows that the early dreams which patients
bring for analysis are none the less of especial interest,
because of the fact that they bring out criticisms and
valuations of the physician’s personality, which previously,
would have been asked for directly in vain. They
enrich the conscious impression which the patient had of
his physician, and often concerning very important points.
They are naturally erotic observations which the unconscious
was forced to make, just because of the quite universal
undervaluation and uncertain judgment of the
relatively weak erotic impression. In the drastic and
hyperbolic manner of expression of the dream, the impression
often appears in almost unintelligible form on account
of the immeasurable dimension of the symbol. A further
peculiarity which seems to rest upon the historic strata of
the unconscious, is this—that an erotic impression, to
which conscious acknowledgment is denied, usurps an
earlier and discarded transference and expresses itself
in that. Therefore, it frequently happens, for example,
that among young girls at the time of their first love,
remarkable difficulties develop in the capacity for erotic
expression, which may be reduced analytically to disturbances
through a regressive attempt at resuscitation of
the father image, or the “Father-Imago.”^[65]

Indeed, one might presume something similar in Miss
Miller’s case, for the idea of the masculine creative deity
is a derivation, analytically and historically psychologic,
of the “Father-Imago,”^[66] and aims, above all, to replace
the discarded infantile father transference in such a way
56that for the individual the passing from the narrow circle
of the family into the wider circle of human society may
be simpler or made easier.

In the light of this reflection, we can see, in the poem
and its “Praeludium,” the religious, poetically formed
product of an introversion depending upon the surrogate
of the “Father-Imago.” In spite of the incomplete apperception
of the effectual impression, essential component
parts of this are included in the idea of compensation,
as marks, so to speak, of its origin. (Pfister has
coined for this the striking expression, “Law of the Return
of the Complex.”) The effectual impression was
that of the officer singing in the night watch, “When the
morning stars sang together.” The idea of this opened
a new world to the girl. (Creation.)

This creator has created tone, then light, and then
love. That the first to be created should have been tone,
can be made clear only individually, for there is no cosmogony
except the Gnosis of Hermes, a generally quite
unknown system, which would have such tendencies. But
now we might venture a conjecture, which is already apparent,
and which soon will be proven thoroughly, viz.,
the following chain of associations: the singer—the singing
morning stars—the God of tone—the Creator—the
God of Light—(of the sun)—(of the fire)—and of Love.

The links of this chain are proven by the material, with
the exception of sun and fire, which I put in parentheses,
but which, however, will be proven through what follows
in the further course of the analysis. All of these expressions,
with one exception, belong to erotic speech. (“My
57God, star, light; my sun, fire of love, fiery love,” etc.)
“Creator” appears indistinct at first, but becomes understandable
through the reference to the undertone of Eros,
to the vibrating chord of Nature, which attempts to renew
itself in every pair of lovers, and awaits the wonder of
creation.

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

Now follows an explanation, theoretically constructed
and correct ad hoc, the hollowness of which is, however,
characteristic of all similar attempts at explanation. She
says:

“It is perhaps interesting to recall that Anaxagoras also had
the Cosmos arise out of chaos through a sort of whirlwind, which
does not happen usually without producing sound.^[67] But at this
time I had studied no philosophy, and knew nothing either of
Anaxagoras or of his theories about the ‘νοῦς,’ which I, unconsciously,
was openly following. At that time, also, I was equally
58in complete ignorance of Leibnitz, and, therefore, knew nothing
of his doctrine ‘dum Deus calculat, fit mundus.’”

Miss Miller’s references to Anaxagoras and to Leibnitz
both refer to creation by means of thought; that is
to say, that divine thought alone could bring forth a new
material reality, a reference at first not intelligible, but
which will soon, however, be more easily understood.

We now come to those fancies from which Miss Miller
principally drew her unconscious creation.

“In the first place, there is the ‘Paradise Lost’ by Milton,
which we had at home in the edition illustrated by Doré, and
which had often delighted me from childhood. Then the ‘Book
of Job,’ which had been read aloud to me since the time of my
earliest recollection. Moreover, if one compares the first words
of ‘Paradise Lost’ with my first verse, one notices that there
is the same verse measure.

“‘Of man’s first disobedience …

“‘When the Eternal first made sound.’

“My poem also recalls various passages in Job, and one or two
places in Handel’s Oratorio ‘The Creation,’ which came out
very indistinctly in the first part of the dream.”^[68]

The “Lost Paradise” which, as is well known, is so
closely connected with the beginning of the world, is
made more clearly evident by the verse—

“Of man’s first disobedience”

which is concerned evidently with the fall, the meaning
of which need not be shown any further. I know the
objection which every one unacquainted with psychoanalysis
will raise, viz., that Miss Miller might just as
well have chosen any other verse as an example, and that,
accidentally, she had taken the first one that happened
59to appear which had this content, also accidentally. As
is well known, the criticism which we hear equally from
our medical colleagues, and from our patients, is generally
based on such arguments. This misunderstanding
arises from the fact that the law of causation in the
psychical sphere is not taken seriously enough; that is to
say, there are no accidents, no “just as wells.” It is so,
and there is, therefore, a sufficient reason at hand why
it is so. It is moreover true that Miss Miller’s poem is
connected with the fall, wherein just that erotic component
comes forth, the existence of which we have surmised
above.

Miss Miller neglects to tell which passages in Job
occurred to her mind. These, unfortunately, are therefore
only general suppositions. Take first, the analogy
to the Lost Paradise. Job lost all that he had, and this
was due to an act of Satan, who wished to incite him
against God. In the same way mankind, through the
temptation of the serpent, lost Paradise, and was plunged
into earth’s torments. The idea, or rather the mood
which is expressed by the reference to the Lost Paradise,
is Miss Miller’s feeling that she had lost something
which was connected with satanic temptation. To her it
happened, just as to Job, that she suffered innocently, for
she did not fall a victim to temptation. Job’s sufferings
are not understood by his friends;^[69] no one knows that
Satan has taken a hand in the game, and that Job is truly
innocent. Job never tires of avowing his innocence. Is
there a hint in that? We know that certain neurotic and
especially mentally diseased people continually defend
60their innocence against non-existent attacks; however, one
discovers at a closer examination that the patient, while
he apparently defends his innocence without reason, fulfils
with that a “Deckhandlung,” the energy for which arises
from just those impulses, whose sinful character is revealed
by the contents of the pretended reproach and
calumny.^[70]

Job suffered doubly, on one side through the loss of his
fortune, on the other through the lack of understanding
in his friends; the latter can be seen throughout the book.
The suffering of the misunderstood recalls the figure of
Cyrano de Bergerac—he too suffered doubly, on one side
through hopeless love, on the other side through misunderstanding.
He falls, as we have seen, in the last hopeless
battle against “Le Mensonge, les Compromis, les
Préjugés, les Lâchetés et la Sottise.—Oui, Vous m’arrachez
tout le laurier et la rose!”

Job laments

“God delivereth me to the ungodly,
And casteth me into the hands of the wicked,
I was at ease, and he brake me asunder;
Yea, he hath taken me by the neck, and dashed me to pieces:

“He hath also set me up for his mark.
His archers compass me round about;
He cleaveth my reins asunder, and doth not spare;
He poureth out my gall upon the ground.
He breaketh me with breach upon breach;
He runneth upon me like a giant.”—Job xvi: 11–15.

The analogy of feeling lies in the suffering of the hopeless
struggle against the more powerful. It is as if this
conflict were accompanied from afar by the sounds of
61“creation,” which brings up a beautiful and mysterious
image belonging to the unconscious, and which has not
yet forced its way up to the light of the upper world.
We surmise, rather than know, that this battle has really
something to do with creation, with the struggles between
negations and affirmations. The references to Rostand’s
“Cyrano” through the identification with Christian, to
Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” to the sorrows of Job, misunderstood
by his friends, betray plainly that in the soul
of the poet something was identified with these ideas. She
also has suffered like Cyrano and Job, has lost paradise,
and dreams of “creation,”—creation by means of thought—fruition
through the whirlwind of Anaxagoras.^[71]

We once more submit ourselves to Miss Miller’s
guidance:

“I remember that when fifteen years old, I was once very
much stirred up over an article, read aloud to me by my mother,
concerning the idea which spontaneously produced its object. I
was so excited that I could not sleep all night because of thinking
over and over again what that could mean.

“From the age of nine to sixteen, I went every Sunday to a
Presbyterian Church, in charge of which, at that time, was a very
cultured minister. In one of the earliest memories which I have
retained of him, I see myself as a very small girl sitting in a
very large pew, continually endeavoring to keep myself awake and
pay attention, without in the least being able to understand
what he meant when he spoke to us of Chaos, Cosmos and the
Gift of Love (don d’amour).”

There are also rather early memories of the awakening
of puberty (nine to sixteen) which have connected
the idea of the cosmos springing from chaos with the
62“don d’amour.” The medium in which these associations
occur is the memory of a certain very much honored
ecclesiastic who spoke those dark words. From the same
period of time comes the remembrance of that excitement
about the idea of the “creative thought” which from
itself “produced its object.” Here are two ways of creation
intimated: the creative thought, and the mysterious
reference to the “don d’amour.”

At the time when I had not yet understood the nature
of psychoanalysis, I had a fortunate opportunity of winning
through continual observation a deep insight into
the soul of a fifteen-year-old girl. Then I discovered,
with astonishment, what the contents of the unconscious
phantasies are, and how far removed they are from those
which a girl of that age shows outwardly. There are
wide-reaching phantasies of truly mythical fruitfulness.
The girl was, in the split-off phantasy, the race-mother
of uncounted peoples.^[72] If we deduct the poetically
spoken phantasy of the girl, elements are left which at
that age are common to all girls, for the unconscious content
is to an infinitely greater degree common to all mankind
than the content of the individual consciousness.
For it is the condensation of that which is historically the
average and ordinary.

Miss Miller’s problem at this age was the common
human problem: “How am I to be creative?” Nature
knows but one answer to that: “Through the child (don
d’amour!).” “But how is the child attained?” Here
the terrifying problem emerges, which, as our analytic
experience shows, is connected with the father,^[73] where
63it cannot be solved; because the original sin of incest
weighs heavily for all time upon the human race. The
strong and natural love which binds the child to the
father, turns away in those years during which the
humanity of the father would be all too plainly recognized,
to the higher forms of the father, to the “Fathers”
of the church, and to the Father God,^[74] visibly represented
by them, and in that there lies still less possibility
of solving the problem. However, mythology is not lacking
in consolations. Has not the logos become flesh
too? Has not the divine pneuma, even the logos, entered
the Virgin’s womb and lived among us as the son
of man? That whirlwind of Anaxagoras was precisely
the divine νοῦς which from out of itself has become
the world. Why do we cherish the image of the Virgin
Mother even to this day? Because it is always comforting
and says without speech or noisy sermon to the one
seeking comfort, “I too have become a mother,”—through
the “idea which spontaneously produces its
object.”

I believe that there is foundation enough at hand for a
sleepless night, if those phantasies peculiar to the age of
puberty were to become possessed of this idea—the results
would be immeasurable! All that is psychologic has an
under and an over meaning, as is expressed in the profound
remark of the old mystic: οὐρανὸς ἄνο, οὐρανὸς
κάτο, αἰθέρα ἄνο, αἰθέρα κάτο, πᾶν τοῦτο ἄνο, πᾶν
τοῦτο κάτο, τοῦτο λαβὲ καὶ εὐτυχει^[75]—

64We would show but slight justice, however, to the intellectual
originality of our author, if we were satisfied
to trace back the commotion of that sleepless night absolutely
and entirely to the sexual problem in a narrow
sense. That would be but one-half, and truly, to make
use of the mystic’s expression, only the under half. The
other half is the intellectual sublimation, which strives
to make true in its own way the ambiguous expression of
“the idea which produces its object spontaneously,”—ideal
creation in place of the real.

In such an intellectual accomplishment of an evidently
very capable personality, the prospect of a spiritual fruitfulness
is something which is worthy of the highest aspiration,
since for many it will become a necessity of life.
Also this side of the phantasy explains, to a great extent,
the excitement, for it is a thought with a presentiment
of the future; one of those thoughts which arise,
to use one of Maeterlinck’s expressions,^[76] from the “inconscient
supérieur,” that “prospective potency” of subliminal
combinations.^[77]

I have had the opportunity of observing certain cases
of neuroses of years’ duration, in which, at the time of
the beginning of the illness or shortly before, a dream
occurred, often of visionary clarity. This impressed
itself inextinguishably upon the memory, and in analysis
revealed a hidden meaning to the patient which anticipated
the subsequent events of life; that is to say, their
psychologic meaning.^[78] I am inclined to grant this meaning
to the commotion of that restless night, because the
resulting events of life, in so far as Miss Miller consciously
65and unconsciously unveils them to us, are entirely
of a nature to confirm the supposition that that moment
is to be considered as the inception and presentiment of
a sublimated aim in life.

Miss Miller concludes the list of her fancies with the
following remarks:

“The dream seemed to me to come from a mixture of the
representation of ‘Paradise Lost,’ ‘Job,’ and ‘Creation,’ with
ideas such as ‘thought which spontaneously produces its object’:
‘the gift of love,’ ‘chaos, and cosmos.’”

In the same way as colored splinters of glass are combined
in a kaleidoscope, in her mind fragments of philosophy,
æsthetics and religion would seem to be combined—

“under the stimulating influence of the journey, and the countries
hurriedly seen, combined with the great silence and the indescribable
charm of the sea. ‘Ce ne fut que cela et rien de plus.’
‘Only this, and nothing more!’”

With these words, Miss Miller shows us out, politely
and energetically. Her parting words in her negation,
confirmed over again in English, leave behind a curiosity;
viz., what position is to be negated by these words? “Ce
ne fut que cela et rien de plus”—that is to say, really,
only “le charme impalpable de la mer”—and the young
man who sang melodiously during the night watch is long
since forgotten, and no one is to know, least of all the
dreamer, that he was a morning star, who came before
the creation of a new day.^[79] One should take care lest
he satisfy himself and the reader with a sentence such as
“ce ne fut que cela.” Otherwise, it might immediately
66happen that one would become disturbed again. This
occurs to Miss Miller too, since she allowed an English
quotation to follow,—“Only this, and nothing more,”
without giving the source, it is true. The quotation comes
from an unusually effective poem, “The Raven” by Poe.
The line referred to occurs in the following:

“While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door—
‘’Tis some visitor.’ I muttered, ‘tapping at my chamber door’—
Only this, and nothing more.”

The spectral raven knocks nightly at his door and
reminds the poet of his irrevocably lost “Lenore.” The
raven’s name is “Nevermore,” and as a refrain to every
verse he croaks his horrible “Nevermore.” Old memories
come back tormentingly, and the spectre repeats inexorably
“Nevermore.” The poet seeks in vain to
frighten away the dismal guest; he calls to the raven:

“‘Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend,’ I shrieked, upstarting—
‘Get thee back into the tempest and the night’s Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken, quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!’
Quoth the raven, ‘Nevermore.’”

That quotation, which, apparently, skips lightly over
the situation, “Only this, and nothing more,” comes from
a text which depicts in an affecting manner the despair
over the lost Lenore. That quotation also misleads our
poet in the most striking manner. Therefore, she undervalues
67the erotic impression and the wide-reaching effect
of the commotion caused by it. It is this undervaluation,
which Freud has formulated more precisely as “repression,”
which is the reason why the erotic problem does
not attain directly conscious treatment, and from this
there arise “these psychologic riddles.” The erotic impression
works in the unconscious, and, in its stead, pushes
symbols forth into consciousness. Thus, one plays hide-and-seek
with one’s self. First, it is “the morning stars
which sing together”; then “Paradise Lost”; then the
erotic yearning clothes itself in an ecclesiastical dress and
utters dark words about “World Creation” and finally
rises into a religious hymn to find there, at last, a way out
into freedom, a way against which the censor of the moral
personality can oppose nothing more. The hymn contains
in its own peculiar character the marks of its origin.
It thus has fulfilled itself—the “Law of the Return of
the Complex.” The night singer, in this circuitous manner
of the old transference to the Father-Priest, has become
the “Eternal,” the “Creator,” the God of Tone,
of Light, of Love.

The indirect course of the libido seems to be a way
of sorrow; at least “Paradise Lost” and the parallel
reference to Job lead one to that conclusion. If we take,
in addition to this, the introductory intimation of the
identification with Christian, which we see concludes with
Cyrano, then we are furnished with material which pictures
the indirect course of the libido as truly a way of
sorrow. It is the same as when mankind, after the sinful
fall, had the burden of the earthly life to bear, or like
68the tortures of Job, who suffered under the power of
Satan and of God, and who himself, without suspecting it,
became a plaything of the superhuman forces which we
no longer consider as metaphysical, but as metapsychological.
Faust also offers us the same exhibition of
God’s wager.

Mephistopheles:

What will you bet? There’s still a chance to gain him
If unto me full leave you give
Gently upon my road to train him!

Satan:

But put forth thine hand now, and touch all that he hath,
and he will curse thee to thy face.—Job i: 11.

While in Job the two great tendencies are characterized
simply as good and bad, the problem in Faust is a
pronouncedly erotic one; viz., the battle between sublimation
and eros, in which the Devil is strikingly characterized
through the fitting rôle of the erotic tempter. The
erotic is lacking in Job; at the same time Job is not conscious
of the conflict within his own soul; he even continuously
disputes the arguments of his friends who wish
to convince him of evil in his own heart. To this extent,
one might say that Faust is considerably more honorable
since he openly confesses to the torments of his
soul.

Miss Miller acts like Job; she says nothing, and lets
the evil and the good come from the other world, from
the metapsychologic. Therefore, the identification with
Job is also significant in this respect. A wider, and, indeed,
69a very important analogy remains to be mentioned.
The creative power, which love really is, rightly considered
from the natural standpoint, remains as the real
attribute of the Divinity, sublimated from the erotic impression;
therefore, in the poem God is praised throughout
as Creator.

Job offers the same illustration. Satan is the destroyer
of Job’s fruitfulness. God is the fruitful one himself,
therefore, at the end of the book, he gives forth, as an
expression of his own creative power, this hymn, filled
with lofty poetic beauty. In this hymn, strangely enough,
two unsympathetic representatives of the animal kingdom,
behemoth and the leviathan, both expressive of the
crudest force conceivable in nature, are given chief consideration;
the behemoth being really the phallic attribute
of the God of Creation.

“Behold now behemoth, which I made as well as thee;
He eateth grass as an ox.
Lo, now; his strength is in his loins,
And his force is in the muscles of his belly.
He moveth his tail like a cedar:
The sinews of his thighs are knit together.
His bones are as tubes of brass;
His limbs are like bars of iron.
He is the chief of the ways of God:
He only that made him giveth him his sword….
Behold, if a river overflow, he trembleth not;
He is confident though a Jordan swell even to his mouth.
Shall any take him when he is on the watch.
Or pierce through his nose with a snare?
Canst thou draw leviathan with a fish-hook?
Or press down his tongue with a cord?…
70Lay thy hand upon him;
Remember the battle and do no more.
None is so fierce that dare stir him up:
Who then is he that can stand before me?
Who hath first given unto me, that I should repay him?
Whatsoever is under the whole heaven is mine.”
—Job xl: 15–20, 23–24; xli: 1, 8, 10–11.

God says this in order to bring his power and omnipotence
impressively before Job’s eyes. God is like the
behemoth and the leviathan; the fruitful nature giving
forth abundance,—the untamable wildness and boundlessness
of nature,—and the overwhelming danger of the
unchained power.^[80]

But what has destroyed Job’s earthly paradise? The
unchained power of nature. As the poet lets it be seen
here, God has simply turned his other side outwards for
once; the side which man calls the devil, and which lets
loose all the torments of nature on Job, naturally for the
purpose of discipline and training. The God who created
such monstrosities, before whom the poor weak man
stiffens with anxiety, truly must hide qualities within himself
which are food for thought. This God lives in the
heart, in the unconscious, in the realm of metapsychology.
There is the source of the anxiety before the unspeakably
horrible, and of the strength to withstand the horrors.
The person, that is to say his conscious “I,” is like a plaything,
like a feather which is whirled around by different
currents of air; sometimes the sacrifice and sometimes the
sacrificer, and he cannot hinder either. The Book of Job
shows us God at work both as creator and destroyer.
Who is this God? A thought which humanity in every
71part of the world and in all ages has brought forth from
itself and always again anew in similar forms; a power in
the other world to which man gives praise, a power which
creates as well as destroys, an idea necessary to life.
Since, psychologically understood, the divinity is nothing
else than a projected complex of representation which is
accentuated in feeling according to the degree of religiousness
of the individual, so God is to be considered as the
representative of a certain sum of energy (libido).
This energy, therefore, appears projected (metaphysically)
because it works from the unconscious outwards,
when it is dislodged from there, as psychoanalysis shows.
As I have earlier made apparent in the “Bedeutung des
Vaters,” the religious instinct feeds upon the incestuous
libido of the infantile period. In the principal forms
of religion which now exist, the father transference seems
to be at least the moulding influence; in older religions,
it seems to be the influence of the mother transference
which creates the attributes of the divinity. The attributes
of the divinity are omnipotence, a sternly persecuting
paternalism ruling through fear (Old Testament)
and a loving paternalism (New Testament). These are
the attributes of the libido in that wide sense in which
Freud has conceived this idea empirically. In certain
pagan and also in certain Christian attributes of divinity
the maternal stands out strongly, and in the former the
animal also comes into the greatest prominence.^[81] Likewise,
the infantile, so closely interwoven with religious
phantasies, and from time to time breaking forth so violently,
is nowhere lacking.^[82] All this points to the sources
72of the dynamic states of religious activity. These are
those impulses which in childhood are withdrawn from
incestuous application through the intervention of the
incest barrier and which, especially at the time of puberty,
as a result of affluxes of libido coming from the still incompletely
employed sexuality, are aroused to their own
peculiar activity. As is easily understood, that which is
valuable in the God-creating idea is not the form but
the power, the libido. The primitive power which Job’s
Hymn of Creation vindicates, the unconditional and inexorable,
the unjust and the superhuman, are truly and
rightly attributes of libido, which “lead us unto life,”
which “let the poor be guilty,” and against which struggle
is in vain. Nothing remains for mankind but to work
in harmony with this will. Nietzsche’s “Zarathustra”
teaches us this impressively.

We see that in Miss Miller the religious hymn arising
from the unconscious is the compensating amend for the
erotic; it takes a great part of its materials from the
infantile reminiscences which she reawakened into life
by the introversion of the libido. Had this religious creation
not succeeded (and also had another sublimated
application been eliminated) then Miss Miller would
have yielded to the erotic impression, either to its natural
consequence or to a negative issue, which would have
replaced the lost success in love by a correspondingly
strong sorrow. It is well known that opinions are much
divided concerning the worth of this issue of an erotic
conflict, such as Miss Miller has presented to us. It is
thought to be much more beautiful to solve unnoticed an
73erotic tension, in the elevated feelings of religious poetry,
in which perhaps many other people can find joy and
consolation. One is wrong to storm against this conception
from the radical standpoint of fanaticism for
truth.

I think that one should view with philosophic admiration
the strange paths of the libido and should investigate
the purposes of its circuitous ways.

It is not too much to say that we have herewith dug up
the erotic root, and yet the problem remains unsolved.
Were there not bound up with that a mysterious purpose,
probably of the greatest biological meaning, then certainly
twenty centuries would not have yearned for it
with such intense longing. Doubtless, this sort of libidian
current moves in the same direction as, taken in the widest
sense, did that ecstatic ideal of the Middle Ages and of
the ancient mystery cults, one of which became the later
Christianity. There is to be seen biologically in this
ideal an exercise of psychologic projection (of the paranoidian
mechanism, as Freud would express it).^[83] The
projection consists in the repressing of the conflict into
the unconscious and the setting forth of the repressed
contents into seeming objectivity, which is also the formula
of paranoia. The repression serves, as is well
known, for the freeing from a painful complex from
which one must escape by all means because its compelling
and oppressing power is feared. The repression can lead
to an apparent complete suppression which corresponds
to a strong self-control. Unfortunately, however, self-control
has limits which are only too narrowly drawn.
74Closer observation of people shows, it is true, that calm
is maintained at the critical moment, but certain results
occur which fall into two categories.

First, the suppressed effect comes to the surface immediately
afterwards; seldom directly, it is true, but ordinarily
in the form of a displacement to another object
(e. g. a person is, in official relations, polite, submissive,
patient, and so on, and turns his whole anger loose upon
his wife or his subordinates).

Second, the suppressed effect creates compensations
elsewhere. For example, people who strive for excessive
ethics, who try always to think, feel, and act altruistically
and ideally, avenge themselves, because of the impossibility
of carrying out their ideals, by subtle maliciousness,
which naturally does not come into their own consciousness
as such, but which leads to misunderstandings and
unhappy situations. Apparently, then, all of these are
only “especially unfortunate circumstances,” or they are
the guilt and malice of other people, or they are tragic
complications.

One is, indeed, freed of the conscious conflict, nevertheless
it lies invisible at one’s feet, and is stumbled over
at every step. The technic of the apparent suppressing
and forgetting is inadequate because it is not possible of
achievement in the last analysis—it is in reality a mere
makeshift. The religious projection offers a much more
effectual help. In this one keeps the conflict in sight
(care, pain, anxiety, and so on) and gives it over to a
personality standing outside of one’s self, the Divinity.
The evangelical command teaches us this:

75“Cast all your anxiety upon him, because he careth for
you.”—I Peter v: 7.

“In nothing be anxious; but in every thing by prayer and supplication … let your requests be made known unto God.”—Phil.
iv: 6.

One must give the burdening complex of the soul consciously
over to the Deity; that is to say, associate it with
a definite representation complex which is set up as objectively
real, as a person who answers those questions,
for us unanswerable. To this inner demand belongs the
candid avowal of sin and the Christian humility presuming
such an avowal. Both are for the purpose of making
it possible for one to examine one’s self and to know one’s
self.^[84] One may consider the mutual avowal of sins as
the most powerful support to this work of education
(“Confess, therefore, your sins one to another.”—James
v: 16). These measures aim at a conscious recognition
of the conflicts, thoroughly psychoanalytic, which is also
a conditio sine qua non of the psychoanalytic condition
of recovery. Just as psychoanalysis in the hands of the
physician, a secular method, sets up the real object of
transference as the one to take over the conflicts of the
oppressed and to solve them, so the Christian religion sets
up the Saviour, considered as real; “In whom we have
redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of
sins….” (Eph. i: 7 and Col. i: 14.)^[85] He is the
deliverer and redeemer of our guilt, a God who stands
above sin, “who did no sin, neither was guile found in
his mouth” (Pet. ii: 22). “Who his own self bare our
sins in his body upon the tree” (Pet. ii: 24). “Therefore
76Christ has been sacrificed once to take away the
sins of many” (Heb. ix: 28). The God, thus thought
of, is distinguished as innocent in himself and as the
self-sacrificer. (These qualities are true also for that
amount of energy—libido—which belongs to the representation
complex designated the Redeemer.) The
conscious projection towards which the Christian education
aims, offers, therefore, a double benefit: first, one is
kept conscious of the conflict (sins) of two opposing
tendencies mutually resistant, and through this one prevents
a known trouble from becoming, by means of repressing
and forgetting, an unknown and therefore so
much more tormenting sorrow. Secondly, one lightens
one’s burden by surrendering it to him to whom all solutions
are known. One must not forget that the individual
psychologic roots of the Deity, set up as real by the pious,
are concealed from him, and that he, although unaware
of this, still bears the burden alone and is still alone with
his conflict. This delusion would lead infallibly to the
speedy breaking up of the system, for Nature cannot indefinitely
be deceived, but the powerful institution of
Christianity meets this situation. The command in the
book of James is the best expression of the psychologic
significance of this: “Bear ye one another’s burdens.”^[86]

This is emphasized as especially important in order
to preserve society upright through mutual love (Transference);
the Pauline writings leave no doubt about this:

“Through love be servants one to another.”—Gal. v: 13.

“Let love of the brethren continue.”—Heb. xiii: 1.

“And let us consider one another to provoke unto love and
77good works. Not forgetting our own assembling together as
is the custom of some, but exhorting one another.”—Heb. x: 24–25.

We might say that the real transference taught in the
Christian community is the condition absolutely necessary
for the efficacy of the miracle of redemption; the first
letter of John comes out frankly with this:

“He that loveth his brother abideth in the light.”—I John
ii: 10.

“If we love one another, God abideth in us.”—I John iv: 12.

The Deity continues to be efficacious in the Christian
religion only upon the foundation of brotherly love.
Consequently, here too the mystery of redemption is the
unresisting real transference.^[87] One may properly ask
one’s self, for what then is the Deity useful, if his efficacy
consists only in the real transference? To this also the
evangelical message has a striking answer:

“Men are all brothers in Christ.”

“So Christ also, having been once offered to bear the sins
of many, shall appear a second time apart from sin to them
that wait for him unto salvation.”—Heb. ix: 28.

The condition of transference among brothers is to be
such as between man and Christ, a spiritual one. As the
history of ancient cults and certain Christian sects shows,
this explanation of the Christian religion is an especially
important one biologically, for the psychologic intimacy
creates certain shortened ways between men which lead
only too easily to that from which Christianity seeks to
release them, namely to the sexual relation with all those
78consequences and necessities under which the really already
highly civilized man had to suffer at the beginning
of our Christian era. For just as the ancient religious
experience was regarded distinctly as a bodily union with
the Deity,^[88] just so was worship permeated with sexuality
of every kind. Sexuality lay only too close to the
relations of people with each other. The moral degeneracy
of the first Christian century produced a moral reaction
arising out of the darkness of the lowest strata of
society which was expressed in the second and third centuries
at its purest in the two antagonistic religions, Christianity
on the one side, and Mithracism on the other.
These religions strove after precisely that higher form
of social intercourse symbolic of a projected “become
flesh” idea (logos), whereby all those strongest impulsive
energies of the archaic man, formerly plunging him
from one passion into another,^[89] and which seemed to the
ancients like the compulsion of the evil constellations, as
εἱμαρμένη,^[90] and which in the sense of later ages might
be translated as the driving force of the libido,^[91] the
δύναμις κινητική^[92] of Zeno, could be made use of for
social preservation.^[93]

It may be assumed most certainly that the domestication
of humanity has cost the greatest sacrifices. An age
which produced the stoical ideal must certainly have
known why and against what it was created. The age
of Nero serves to set off effectually the famous extracts
from the forty-first letter of Seneca to Lucilius:

79“One drags the other into error, and how can we attain to
salvation when no one bids us halt, when all the world drives
us in deeper?”

“Do you ever come across a man unafraid in danger, untouched
by desires, happy in misfortune, peaceful in the midst
of a storm, elevated above ordinary mortals, on the same plane
as the gods, does not reverence seize you? Are you not compelled
to say, ‘Such an exalted being is certainly something different
from the miserable body which he inhabits?’ A divine strength
rules there, such an excellent mind, full of moderation, raised above
all trivialities, which smiles at that which we others fear or strive
after: a heavenly power animates such a person, a thing of this
kind does not exist without the coöperation of a deity. The
largest part of such a being belongs to the region from which he
came. Just as the sun’s rays touch the earth in reality and yet
are at home only there from whence they come, so an eminent
holy man associates with us. He is sent to us that we may
learn to know the divine better, and although with us, still really
belongs to his original home. He looks thither and reaches towards
it; among us he walks as an exalted being.”

The people of this age had grown ripe for identification
with the λόγος (word) “become flesh,” for the
founding of a new fellowship, united by one idea,^[94] in the
name of which people could love each other and call
each other brothers.^[95] The old vague idea of a μεσίτης
(Messiah), of a mediator in whose name new ways of
love would be created, became a fact, and with that humanity
made an immense step forward. This had not
been brought about by a speculative, completely sophisticated
philosophy, but by an elementary need in the mass of
people vegetating in spiritual darkness. The profoundest
necessities had evidently driven them towards that, since
humanity did not thrive in a state of dissoluteness.^[96] The
80meaning of those cults—I speak of Christianity and
Mithracism—is clear; it is a moral restraint of animal
impulses.^[97] The dynamic appearance of both religions
betrays something of that enormous feeling of redemption
which animated the first disciples and which we to-day
scarcely know how to appreciate, for these old truths
are empty to us. Most certainly we should still understand
it, had our customs even a breath of ancient brutality,
for we can hardly realize in this day the whirlwinds
of the unchained libido which roared through the ancient
Rome of the Cæsars. The civilized man of the present
day seems very far removed from that. He has become
merely neurotic. So for us the necessities which brought
forth Christianity have actually been lost, since we no
longer understand their meaning. We do not know
against what it had to protect us.^[98] For enlightened people,
the so-called religiousness has already approached
very close to a neurosis. In the past two thousand years
Christianity has done its work and has erected barriers
of repression, which protect us from the sight of our
own “sinfulness.” The elementary emotions of the
libido have come to be unknown to us, for they are carried
on in the unconscious; therefore, the belief which
combats them has become hollow and empty. Let whoever
does not believe that a mask covers our religion, obtain
an impression for himself from the appearance of
our modern churches, from which style and art have long
since fled.

With this we turn back to the question from which we
digressed, namely, whether or not Miss Miller has created
81something valuable with her poem. If we bear in
mind under what psychologic or moral conditions Christianity
came into existence; that is to say, at a time when
fierce brutality was an every-day spectacle, then we understand
the religious seizure of the whole personality and
the worth of that religion which defended the people of
the Roman culture against the visible storms of wickedness.
It was not difficult for those people to remain conscious
of sin, for they saw it every day spread out before
their eyes. The religious product was at that time the
accomplishment of the total personality. Miss Miller not
only undervalues her “sins,” but the connection between
the “depressing and unrelenting need” and her religious
product has even escaped her. Thus her poetical creation
completely loses the living value of a religious
product. It is not much more than a sentimental transformation
of the erotic which is secretly carried out close
to consciousness and principally possesses the same worth
as the manifest content of the dream^[99] with its uncertain
and delusive perishableness. Thus the poem is properly
only a dream become audible.

To the degree that the modern consciousness is eagerly
busied with things of a wholly other sort than religion,
religion and its object, original sin, have stepped into the
background; that is to say, into the unconscious in great
part. Therefore, to-day man believes neither in the one
nor in the other. Consequently the Freudian school is accused
of an impure phantasy, and yet one might convince
one’s self very easily with a rather fleeting glance at the
history of ancient religions and morals as to what kind
82of demons are harbored in the human soul. With this
disbelief in the crudeness of human nature is bound up
the disbelief in the power of religion. The phenomenon,
well known to every psychoanalyst, of the unconscious
transformation of an erotic conflict into religious activity
is something ethically wholly worthless and nothing but
an hysterical production. Whoever, on the other hand,
to his conscious sin just as consciously places religion in
opposition, does something the greatness of which cannot
be denied. This can be verified by a backward glance
over history. Such a procedure is sound religion. The
unconscious recasting of the erotic into something religious
lays itself open to the reproach of a sentimental
and ethically worthless pose.

By means of the secular practice of the naïve projection
which is, as we have seen, nothing else than a veiled or
indirect real-transference (through the spiritual, through
the logos), Christian training has produced a widespread
weakening of the animal nature so that a great part of
the strength of the impulses could be set free for the
work of social preservation and fruitfulness.^[100] This
abundance of libido, to make use of this singular expression,
pursues with a budding renaissance (for example
Petrarch) a course which outgoing antiquity had
already sketched out as religious; viz., the way of the
transference to nature.^[101] The transformation of this
libidinous interest is in great part due to the Mithraic
worship, which was a nature religion in the best sense of
the word;^[102] while the primitive Christians exhibited
throughout an antagonistic attitude to the beauties of this
83world.^[103] I remember the passage of St. Augustine mentioned
by J. Burckhardt:

“Men draw thither to admire the heights of the mountains
and the powerful waves of the sea—and to turn away from
themselves.”

The foremost authority on the Mithraic cult, Franz
Cumont,^[104] says as follows:

“The gods were everywhere and mingled in all the events of
daily life. The fire which cooked the means of nourishment for
the believers and which warmed them; the water which quenched
their thirst and cleansed them; also the air which they breathed,
and the day which shone for them, were the objects of their
homage. Perhaps no religion has given to its adherents in so
large a degree as Mithracism opportunity for prayer and motive
for devotion. When the initiated betook himself in the evening
to the sacred grotto concealed in the solitude of the forest, at
every step new sensations awakened in his heart some mystical
emotion. The stars that shone in the sky, the wind that whispered
in the foliage, the spring or brook which hastened murmuring to
the valley, even the earth which he trod under his feet, were in
his eyes divine; and all surrounding nature a worshipful fear of
the infinite forces that swayed the universe.”

These fundamental thoughts of Mithracism, which,
like so much else of the ancient spiritual life, arose again
from their grave during the renaissance are to be found
in the beautiful words of Seneca:^[105]

“When you enter a grove peopled with ancient trees, higher
than the ordinary, and whose boughs are so closely interwoven
that the sky cannot be seen, the stately shadows of the wood, the
privacy of the place, and the awful gloom cannot but strike you,
as with the presence of a deity, or when we see some cave at
the foot of a mountain penetrating the rocks, not made by human
84hands, but hollowed out to great depths by nature; it fills the
mind with a religious fear; we venerate the fountain-heads of
great rivers; the sudden eruption of a vast body of water from
the secret places of the earth, obtains an altar: we adore likewise
the springs of warm baths, and either the opaque quality or
immense depths, hath made some lakes sacred.”

All this disappeared in the transitory world of the
Christian, only to break forth much later when the
thought of mankind had achieved that independence of
the idea which could resist the æsthetic impression, so that
thought was no longer fettered by the emotional effects
of the impression, but could rise to reflective observation.
Thus man entered into a new and independent relation to
nature whereby the foundation was laid for natural science
and technique. With that, however, there entered in for
the first time a displacement of the weight of interest;
there arose again real-transference which has reached its
greatest development in our time. Materialistic interest
has everywhere become paramount. Therefore, the
realms of the spirit, where earlier the greatest conflicts
and developments took place, lie deserted and fallow; the
world has not only lost its God as the sentimentalists of
the nineteenth century bewail, but also to some extent has
lost its soul as well. One, therefore, cannot wonder that
the discoveries and doctrines of the Freudian school, with
their wholly psychologic views, meet with an almost universal
disapproval. Through the change of the centre of
interest from the inner to the outer world, the knowledge
of nature has increased enormously in comparison with
that of earlier times. By this the anthropomorphic conception
of the religious dogmas has been definitely thrown
85open to question; therefore, the present-day religions
can only with the greatest difficulty close their eyes to this
fact; for not only has the intense interest been diverted
from the Christian religion, but criticism and the necessary
correction have increased correspondingly. The
Christian religion seems to have fulfilled its great biological
purpose, in so far as we are able to judge. It has
led human thought to independence, and has lost its significance,
therefore, to a yet undetermined extent; in any
case its dogmatic contents have become related to Mithracism.
In consideration of the fact that this religion
has rendered, nevertheless, inconceivable service to education,
one cannot reject it “eo ipso” to-day. It seems
to me that we might still make use in some way of its
form of thought, and especially of its great wisdom of
life, which for two thousand years has been proven to
be particularly efficacious. The stumbling block is the
unhappy combination of religion and morality. That
must be overcome. There still remain traces of this strife
in the soul, the lack of which in a human being is reluctantly
felt. It is hard to say in what such things consist;
for this, ideas as well as words are lacking. If, in
spite of that, I attempt to say something about it, I do
it parabolically, using Seneca’s words:^[106]

“Nothing can be more commendable and beneficial if you persevere
in the pursuit of wisdom. It is what would be ridiculous
to wish for when it is in your power to attain it. There is no
need to lift up your hands to Heaven, or to pray the servant of
the temple to admit you to the ear of the idol that your prayers
may be heard the better. God is near thee; he is with thee.
Yes, Lucilius, a holy spirit resides within us, the observer of
86good and evil, and our constant guardian. And as we treat
him, he treats us; no good man is without a God. Could any one
ever rise above the power of fortune without his assistance? It
is he that inspires us with thoughts, upright, just and pure. We
do not, indeed, pretend to say what God; but that a God dwells
in the breast of every good man is certain.”

87

CHAPTER IV
THE SONG OF THE MOTH

A little later Miss Miller travelled from Geneva to
Paris. She says:

“My weariness on the railway was so great that I could
hardly sleep an hour. It was terrifically hot in the ladies’
carriage.”

At four o’clock in the morning she noticed a moth that
flew against the light in her compartment. She then tried
to go to sleep again. Suddenly the following poem took
possession of her mind.

The Moth to the Sun

“I longed for thee when first I crawled to consciousness.
My dreams were all of thee when in the chrysalis I lay.
Oft myriads of my kind beat out their lives
Against some feeble spark once caught from thee.
And one hour more—and my poor life is gone;
Yet my last effort, as my first desire, shall be
But to approach thy glory; then, having gained
One raptured glance, I’ll die content.
For I, the source of beauty, warmth and life
Have in his perfect splendor once beheld.”

Before we go into the material which Miss Miller
offers us for the understanding of the poem, we will
again cast a glance over the psychologic situation in which
the poem originated. Some months or weeks appear to
88have elapsed since the last direct manifestation of the
unconscious that Miss Miller reported to us; about this
period we have had no information. We learn nothing
about the moods and phantasies of this time. If one
might draw a conclusion from this silence it would be
presumably that in the time which elapsed between the
two poems, really nothing of importance had happened,
and that, therefore, this poem is again but a voiced fragment
of the unconscious working of the complex stretching
out over months and years. It is highly probable that
it is concerned with the same complex as before.^[107] The
earlier product, a hymn of creation full of hope, has,
however, but little similarity to the present poem. The
poem lying before us has a truly hopeless, melancholy
character; moth and sun, two things which never meet.
One must in fairness ask, is a moth really expected to
rise to the sun? We know indeed the proverbial saying
about the moth that flew into the light and singed its
wings, but not the legend of the moth that strove towards
the sun. Plainly, here, two things are connected in her
thoughts that do not belong together; first, the moth
which fluttered around the light so long that it burnt
itself; and then, the idea of a small ephemeral being,
something like the day fly, which, in lamentable contrast
to the eternity of the stars, longs for an imperishable
daylight. This idea reminds one of Faust:

“Mark how, beneath the evening sunlight’s glow
The green-embosomed houses glitter;
The glow retreats, done is the day of toil,
It yonder hastes, new fields of life exploring;
89Ah, that no wing can lift me from the soil
Upon its track to follow, follow soaring!
Then would I see eternal Evening gild
The silent world beneath me glowing….
Yet, finally, the weary god is sinking;
The new-born impulse fires my mind,—
I hasten on, his beams eternal drinking,
The day before me and the night behind,
Above me heaven unfurled, the floor of waves beneath me,—
A glorious dream! though now the glories fade.
Alas! the wings that lift the mind no aid
Of wings to lift the body can bequeath me.”

Not long afterwards, Faust sees “the black dog roving
there through cornfields and stubble,” the dog who is the
same as the devil, the tempter, in whose hellish fires
Faust has singed his wings. When he believed that he
was expressing his great longing for the beauty of the
sun and the earth, “he went astray thereover” and fell
into the hands of “the Evil One.”

“Yes, resolute to reach some brighter distance,
On earth’s fair sun I turn my back.”

This is what Faust had said shortly before, in true
recognition of the state of affairs. The honoring of the
beauty of nature led the Christian of the Middle Ages to
pagan thoughts which lay in an antagonistic relation to
his conscious religion, just as once Mithracism was in
threatening competition with Christianity, for Satan often
disguises himself as an angel of light.^[108]

The longing of Faust became his ruin. The longing
for the Beyond had brought as a consequence a loathing
for life, and he stood on the brink of self-destruction.^[109]
90The longing for the beauty of this world led him anew
to ruin, into doubt and pain, even to Marguerite’s tragic
death. His mistake was that he followed after both
worlds with no check to the driving force of his libido,
like a man of violent passion. Faust portrays once more
the folk-psychologic conflict of the beginning of the
Christian era, but what is noteworthy, in a reversed
order.

Against what fearful powers of seduction Christ had
to defend himself by means of his hope of the absolute
world beyond, may be seen in the example of Alypius in
Augustine. If any of us had been living in that period
of antiquity, he would have seen clearly that that culture
must inevitably collapse because humanity revolted
against it. It is well known that even before the spread
of Christianity a remarkable expectation of redemption
had taken possession of mankind. The following
eclogue of Virgil might well be a result of this mood:

“Ultima Cumæi venit jam carminis ætas;^[110]
Magnus ab integro Sæclorum nascitur ordo,
Jam redit et Virgo,^[111] redeunt Saturnia regna;
91Jam nova progenies cælo demittitur alto.
Tu modo nascenti puero, quo ferrea primum
Desinet ac toto surget gens aurea mundo,
Casta fave Lucina: tuus jam regnat Apollo.

“Te duce, si qua manent sceleris vestigia nostri,
Inrita perpetua solvent formidine terras.
Ille deum vitam accipiet divisque videbit
Permixtos heroas et ipse videbitur illis,
Pacatumque reget patriis virtutibus orbem.”^[112]

The turning to asceticism resulting from the general
expansion of Christianity brought about a new misfortune
to many: monasticism and the life of the anchorite.^[113]

Faust takes the reverse course; for him the ascetic
ideal means death. He struggles for freedom and wins
life, at the same time giving himself over to the Evil One;
but through this he becomes the bringer of death to her
whom he loves most, Marguerite. He tears himself
away from pain and sacrifices his life in unceasing useful
work, through which he saves many lives.^[114] His double
mission as saviour and destroyer has already been hinted
in a preliminary manner:

Wagner:

With what a feeling, thou great man, must thou
Receive the people’s honest veneration!

Faust:

Thus we, our hellish boluses compounding,
Among these vales and hills surrounding,
Worse than the pestilence, have passed.
Thousands were done to death from poison of my giving;
And I must hear, by all the living,
The shameless murderers praised at last!

92A parallel to this double rôle is that text in the Gospel
of Matthew which has become historically significant:

“I came not to send peace, but a sword.”—Matt. x: 34.

Just this constitutes the deep significance of Goethe’s
Faust, that he clothes in words a problem of modern
man which has been turning in restless slumber since the
Renaissance, just as was done by the drama of Oedipus
for the Hellenic sphere of culture. What is to be the way
out between the Scylla of renunciation of the world and
the Charybdis of the acceptance of the world?

The hopeful tone, voiced in the “Hymn to the God
of Creation,” cannot continue very long with our author.
The pose simply promises, but does not fulfil. The old
longing will come again, for it is a peculiarity of all complexes
worked over merely in the unconscious^[115] that they
lose nothing of their original amount of affect. Meanwhile,
their outward manifestations can change almost
endlessly. One might therefore consider the first poem
as an unconscious longing to solve the conflict through
positive religiousness, somewhat in the same manner as
they of the earlier centuries decided their conscious conflicts
by opposing to them the religious standpoint. This
wish does not succeed. Now with the second poem there
follows a second attempt which turns out in a decidedly
more material way; its thought is unequivocal. Only
once “having gained one raptured glance …” and
then—to die.

From the realms of the religious world, the attention,
just as in Faust,^[116] turns towards the sun of this world,
93and already there is something mingled with it which
has another sense, that is to say, the moth which fluttered
so long around the light that it burnt its wings.

We now pass to that which Miss Miller offers for the
better understanding of the poem. She says:

“This small poem made a profound impression upon me. I
could not, of course, find immediately a sufficiently clear and direct
explanation for it. However, a few days later when I once
more read a certain philosophical work, which I had read in
Berlin the previous winter, and which I had enjoyed very much,
(I was reading it aloud to a friend), I came across the following
words: ‘La même aspiration passionnée de la mite vers l’étoile,
de l’homme vers Dieu.’ (The same passionate longing of the
moth for the star, of man for God.) I had forgotten this sentence
entirely, but it seemed very clear to me that precisely these words
had reappeared in my hypnagogic poem. In addition to that it
occurred to me that a play seen some years previously, ‘La Mite
et La Flamme,’ was a further possible cause of the poem. It is
easy to see how often the word ‘moth’ had been impressed upon
me.”

The deep impression made by the poem upon the
author shows that she put into it a large amount of love.
In the expression “aspiration passionnée” we meet the
passionate longing of the moth for the star, of man for
God, and indeed, the moth is Miss Miller herself. Her
last observation that the word “moth” was often impressed
upon her shows how often she had noticed the
word “moth” as applicable to herself. Her longing for
God resembles the longing of the moth for the “star.”
The reader will recall that this expression has already had
a place in the earlier material, “when the morning stars
sang together,” that is to say, the ship’s officer who sings
94on deck in the night watch. The passionate longing for
God is the same as that longing for the singing morning
stars. It was pointed out at great length in the foregoing
chapter that this analogy is to be expected: “Sic
parvis componere magna solebam.”

It is shameful or exalted just as one chooses, that the
divine longing of humanity, which is really the first thing
to make it human, should be brought into connection with
an erotic phantasy. Such a comparison jars upon the finer
feelings. Therefore, one is inclined in spite of the undeniable
facts to dispute the connection. An Italian
steersman with brown hair and black moustache, and the
loftiest, dearest conception of humanity! These two
things cannot be brought together; against this not only
our religious feelings revolt, but our taste also rebels.

It would certainly be unjust to make a comparison of
the two objects as concrete things since they are so heterogeneous.
One loves a Beethoven sonata but one loves
caviar also. It would not occur to any one to liken the
sonata to caviar. It is a common error for one to judge
the longing according to the quality of the object. The
appetite of the gourmand which is only satisfied with
goose liver and quail is no more distinguished than the
appetite of the laboring man for corned beef and cabbage.
The longing is the same; the object changes. Nature is
beautiful only by virtue of the longing and love given
her by man. The æsthetic attributes emanating from
that has influence primarily on the libido, which alone
constitutes the beauty of nature. The dream recognizes
this well when it depicts a strong and beautiful feeling by
95means of a representation of a beautiful landscape.
Whenever one moves in the territory of the erotic it
becomes altogether clear how little the object and how
much the love means. The “sexual object” is as a rule
overrated far too much and that only on account of the
extreme degree to which libido is devoted to the object.

Apparently Miss Miller had but little left over for
the officer, which is humanly very intelligible. But in
spite of that a deep and lasting effect emanates from
this connection which places divinity on a par with the
erotic object. The moods which apparently are produced
by these objects do not, however, spring from them, but
are manifestations of her strong love. When Miss
Miller praises either God or the sun she means her love,
that deepest and strongest impulse of the human and
animal being.

The reader will recall that in the preceding chapter the
following chain of synonyms was adduced: the singer—God
of sound—singing morning star—creator—God of
Light—sun—fire—God of Love.

At that time we had placed sun and fire in parentheses.
Now they are entitled to their right place in the chain of
synonyms. With the changing of the erotic impression
from the affirmative to the negative the symbols of light
occur as the paramount object. In the second poem where
the longing is clearly exposed it is by no means the terrestrial
sun. Since the longing has been turned away from
the real object, its object has become, first of all, a subjective
one, namely, God. Psychologically, however, God
is the name of a representation-complex which is grouped
96around a strong feeling (the sum of libido). Properly,
the feeling is what gives character and reality to the complex.^[117]
The attributes and symbols of the divinity must
belong in a consistent manner to the feeling (longing, love,
libido, and so on). If one honors God, the sun or the
fire, then one honors one’s own vital force, the libido.
It is as Seneca says: “God is near you, he is with you, in
you.” God is our own longing to which we pay divine
honors.^[118] If it were not known how tremendously significant
religion was, and is, this marvellous play with
one’s self would appear absurd. There must be something
more than this, however, because, notwithstanding its
absurdity, it is, in a certain sense, conformable to the
purpose in the highest degree. To bear a God within
one’s self signifies a great deal; it is a guarantee of happiness,
of power, indeed even of omnipotence, as far as
these attributes belong to the Deity. To bear a God
within one’s self signifies just as much as to be God one’s
self. In Christianity, where, it is true, the grossly sensual
representations and symbols are weeded out as carefully
as possible, which seems to be a continuation of the poverty
of symbols of the Jewish cult, there are to be found
plain traces of this psychology. There are even plainer
traces, to be sure, in the “becoming-one with God” in
those mysteries closely related to the Christian, where the
mystic himself is lifted up to divine adoration through
initiatory rites. At the close of the consecration into the
Isis mysteries the mystic was crowned with the palm
crown,^[119] he was placed on a pedestal and worshipped as
Helios.^[120] In the magic papyrus of the Mithraic liturgy
97published by Dieterich there is the ἱερός λόγος^[121] of the
consecrated one:

Ἐγώ εἰμι σύμπλανος ὑμῖν ἀστὴρ καὶ ἐκ τοῦ βάθους
ἀναλάμπων.^[122]

The mystic in religious ecstasies put himself on a plane
with the stars, just as a saint of the Middle Ages put
himself by means of the stigmata on a level with Christ.
St. Francis of Assisi expressed this in a truly pagan manner,^[123]
even as far as a close relationship with the brother
sun and the sister moon. These representations of “becoming-one
with God” are very ancient. The old belief
removed the becoming-one with God until the time after
death; the mysteries, however, suggest this as taking
place already in this world. A very old text brings most
beautifully before one this unity with God; it is the song
of triumph of the ascending soul.^[124]

“I am the God Atum, I who alone was.
I am the God Rê at his first splendor.
I am the great God, self-created, God of Gods,
To whom no other God compares.”

“I was yesterday and know to-morrow; the battle-ground of
Gods was made when I spoke. I know the name of that
great God who tarries therein.

“I am that great Phoenix who is in Heliopolis, who there
keeps account of all there is, of all that exists.

“I am the God Min, at his coming forth, who placed the
feathers upon my head.^[125]

“I am in my country, I come into my city. Daily I am together
with my father Atum.^[126]

98“My impurity is driven away, and the sin which was in me
is overcome. I washed myself in those two great pools of water
which are in Heracleopolis, in which is purified the sacrifice of
mankind for that great God who abideth there.

“I go on my way to where I wash my head in the sea of the
righteous. I arrive at this land of the glorified, and enter
through the splendid portal.

“Thou, who standest before me, stretch out to me thy hands,
it is I, I am become one of thee. Daily am I together with my
Father Atum.”

The identification with God necessarily has as a result
the enhancing of the meaning and power of the individual.^[127]
That seems, first of all, to have been really its
purpose: a strengthening of the individual against his
all too great weakness and insecurity in real life. This
great megalomania thus has a genuinely pitiable background.
The strengthening of the consciousness of
power is, however, only an external result of the “becoming-one
with God.” Of much more significance are the
deeper-lying disturbances in the realm of feeling. Whoever
introverts libido—that is to say, whoever takes it
away from a real object without putting in its place a real
compensation—is overtaken by the inevitable results of
introversion. The libido, which is turned inward into the
subject, awakens again from among the sleeping remembrances
one which contains the path upon which earlier
the libido once had come to the real object. At the
very first and in foremost position it was father and
mother who were the objects of the childish love. They
are unequalled and imperishable. Not many difficulties
are needed in an adult’s life to cause those memories to
99reawaken and to become effectual. In religion the regressive
reanimation of the father-and-mother imago is
organized into a system. The benefits of religion are the
benefits of parental hands; its protection and its peace
are the results of parental care upon the child; its mystic
feelings are the unconscious memories of the tender
emotions of the first childhood, just as the hymn expresses
it:

“I am in my country, I come into my city. Daily am I together
with my father Atum.”^[128]

The visible father of the world is, however, the sun,
the heavenly fire; therefore, Father, God, Sun, Fire are
mythologically synonymous. The well-known fact that
in the sun’s strength the great generative power of nature
is honored shows plainly, very plainly, to any one to whom
as yet it may not be clear that in the Deity man honors
his own libido, and naturally in the form of the image or
symbol of the present object of transference. This
symbol faces us in an especially marked manner in the
third Logos of the Dieterich papyrus. After the second
prayer^[129] stars come from the disc of the sun to the mystic,
“five-pointed, in quantities, filling the whole air. If the
sun’s disc has expanded, you will see an immeasurable
circle, and fiery gates which are shut off.” The mystic
utters the following prayer:

Ἐπακουσόν μου, ἀκουσόν μου—ὁ συνδήσας πνεύματι
τὰ πύρινα κλεῖθρα τοῦ οὐρανοῦ, δισώματος πυρίπολε,
φωτὸς κτίστα—πυρίπνοε, πυρίθυμε, πνευματόφως, πυριχαρῆ,
καλλίφως, φωτοκράτωρ, πυρισώματε, φωτοδότα,
πυρισπόρε, πυρικλόνε, φωτόβιε, πυριδῖνα, φωτοκινῆτα,
100κεραυνοκλόνε, φωτὸς κλέος, αὐξησίφως, ἐνπυρισχησίφως,
ἀστροδάμα.^[130]

The invocation is, as one sees, almost inexhaustible in
light and fire attributes, and can be likened in its extravagance
only to the synonymous attributes of love of the
mystic of the Middle Ages. Among the innumerable
texts which might be used as an illustration of this, I
select a passage from the writings of Mechthild von
Magdeburg (1212–1277):

“O Lord, love me excessively and love me often and long;
the oftener you love me, so much the purer do I become; the
more excessively you love me, the more beautiful I become;
the longer you love me, the more holy will I become here upon
earth.”

God answered: “That I love you often, that I have from my
nature, for I myself am love. That I love you excessively, that
I have from my desire, for I too desire that men love me excessively.
That I love you long, that I have from my everlastingness,
for I am without end.”^[131]

The religious regression makes use indeed of the
parent image without, however, consciously making it an
object of transference, for the incest horror^[132] forbids
that. It remains rather as a synonym, for example, of the
father or of God, or of the more or less personified
symbol of the sun and fire.^[133] Sun and fire—that is to say,
101the fructifying strength and heat—are attributes of the
libido. In Mysticism the inwardly perceived, divine
vision is often merely sun or light, and is very little, or
not at all, personified. In the Mithraic liturgy there is
found, for example, a significant quotation:

Ἡ δὲ πορεία τῶν ὁρωμένων θεῶν διὰ τοῦ δίσκου, πατρός
μου, θεοῦ φανήσεται.^[134]

Hildegarde von Bingen (1100–1178) expresses herself
in the following manner:^[135]

“But the light I see is not local, but far off, and brighter than
the cloud which supports the sun. I can in no way know the
form of this light since I cannot entirely see the sun’s disc. But
within this light I see at times, and infrequently, another light
which is called by me the living light, but when and in what
manner I see this I do not know how to say, and when I see it
all weariness and need is lifted from me, then too, I feel like a
simple girl and not like an old woman.”

Symeon, the New Theologian (970–1040), says the
following:

“My tongue lacks words, and what happens in me my spirit
sees clearly but does not explain. It sees the invisible, that
emptiness of all forms, simple throughout, not complex, and in
extent infinite. For it sees no beginning, and it sees no end. It
is entirely unconscious of the meanings, and does not know what
to call that which it sees. Something complete appears, it seems
to me, not indeed through the being itself, but through a participation.
For you enkindle fire from fire, and you receive the whole
fire; but this remains undiminished and undivided, as before.
Similarly, that which is divided separates itself from the first; and
like something corporeal spreads itself into several lights. This,
102however, is something spiritual, immeasurable, indivisible, and inexhaustible.
For it is not separated when it becomes many, but
remains undivided and is in me, and enters within my poor heart
like a sun or circular disc of the sun, similar to the light,
for it is a light.”^[136]

That that thing, perceived as inner light, as the sun of
the other world, is longing, is clearly shown by Symeon’s
words:^[137]

“And following It my spirit demanded to embrace the splendor
beheld, but it found It not as creature and did not succeed in
coming out from among created beings, so that it might embrace
that uncreated and uncomprehended splendor. Nevertheless it
wandered everywhere, and strove to behold It. It penetrated the
air, it wandered over the Heavens, it crossed over the abysses, it
searched, as it seemed to it, the ends of the world.^[138] But in all
of that it found nothing, for all was created. And I lamented
and was sorrowful, and my breast burned, and I lived as one
distraught in mind. But It came, as It would, and descending
like a luminous mystic cloud, It seemed to envelop my whole head so
that dismayed I cried out. But flying away again It left me alone.
And when I, troubled, sought for It, I realized suddenly that It
was in me, myself, and in the midst of my heart It appeared as
the light of a spherical sun.”

In Nietzsche’s “Glory and Eternity” we meet with an
essentially similar symbol:

“Hush! I see vastness!—and of vasty things
Shall man be done, unless he can enshrine
Them with his words? Then take the night which brings
The heart upon thy tongue, charmed wisdom mine!

“I look above, there rolls the star-strewn sea.
O night, mute silence, voiceless cry of stars!
And lo! A sign! The heaven its verge unbars—
A shining constellation falls towards me.”^[139]

103It is not astonishing if Nietzsche’s great inner loneliness
calls again into existence certain forms of thought
which the mystic ecstasy of the old cults has elevated to
ritual representation. In the visions of the Mithraic
liturgy we have to deal with many similar representations
which we can now understand without difficulty as the
ecstatic symbol of the libido:

Μετὰ δὲ τὸ ειπεῖν σε τὸν δεύτερον λόγον, ὅπου σιγὴ
δὶς καὶ τὰ ἀκόλουθα, σύρισον δὶς καὶ πόππυσον δὶς καὶ
εὐθέως ὄψει ἀπὸ τοῦ δίσκου ἀστέρας προσερχομένους πενταδακτυλιαίους
πλείστους καὶ πιπλῶντας ὅλον τὸν αέρα.
Σὺ δὲ πάλιν λέγε: σιγή, σιγή. Καὶ τοῦ δίσκου ἀνοιγέντος
ὄψει ἄπειρον κύκλωμα καὶ θύρας πυρίνας ἀποκεκλεισμένας.^[140]

Silence is commanded, then the vision of light is revealed.
The similarity of the mystic’s condition and
Nietzsche’s poetical vision is surprising. Nietzsche says
“constellation.” It is well known that constellations are
chiefly therio- or anthropo-morphic symbols.

The papyrus says, ἀστέρας πενταδακτυλιαίους^[141] (similar
to the “rosy-fingered” Eos), which is nothing else
than an anthropomorphic image. Accordingly, one may
expect from that, that by long gazing a living being
would be formed out of the “flame image,” a “star
constellation” of therio- or anthropo-morphic nature, for
the symbolism of the libido does not end with sun, light
104and fire, but makes use of wholly other means of expression.
I yield precedence to Nietzsche:

The Beacon^[142]

“Here, where the island grew amid the seas,
A sacrificial rock high-towering,
Here under darkling heavens,
Zarathustra lights his mountain-fires.

“These flames with grey-white belly,
In cold distances sparkle their desire,
Stretches its neck towards ever purer heights—
A snake upreared in impatience:

“This signal I set up there before me.
This flame is mine own soul,
Insatiable for new distances,
Speeding upward, upward its silent heat.

“At all lonely ones I now throw my fishing rod.
Give answer to the flame’s impatience,
Let me, the fisher on high mountains,
Catch my seventh, last solitude!”

Here libido becomes fire, flame and snake. The
Egyptian symbol of the “living disc of the sun,” the disc
with the two entwining snakes, contains the combination
of both the libido analogies. The disc of the sun with
its fructifying warmth is analogous to the fructifying
warmth of love. The comparison of the libido with sun
and fire is in reality analogous.

There is also a “causative” element in it, for sun and
fire as beneficent powers are objects of human love; for
example, the sun-hero Mithra is called the “well-beloved.”
105In Nietzsche’s poem the comparison is also a
causative one, but this time in a reversed sense. The
comparison with the snake is unequivocally phallic, corresponding
completely with the tendency in antiquity,
which was to see in the symbol of the phallus the quintessence
of life and fruitfulness. The phallus is the source
of life and libido, the great creator and worker of
miracles, and as such it received reverence everywhere.
We have, therefore, three designating symbols of the
libido: First, the comparison by analogy, as sun and
fire. Second, the comparisons based on causative relations,
as A: Object comparison. The libido is designated
by its object, for example, the beneficent sun. B: The subject
comparison, in which the libido is designated by its
place of origin or by analogies of this, for example, by
phallus or (analogous) snake.

To these two fundamental forms of comparison still a
third is added, in which the “tertium comparationis” is
the activity; for example, the libido is dangerous when
fecundating like the bull—through the power of its passion—like
the lion, like the raging boar when in heat, like
the ever-rutting ass, and so on.

This activity comparison can belong equally well to the
category of the analogous or to the category of the causative
comparisons. The possibilities of comparison mean
just as many possibilities for symbolic expression, and
from this basis all the infinitely varied symbols, so far
as they are libido images, may properly be reduced to a
very simple root, that is, just to libido and its fixed
primitive qualities. This psychologic reduction and simplification
106is in accordance with the historic efforts of civilization
to unify and simplify, to syncretize, the endless
number of the gods. We come across this desire as far
back as the old Egyptians, where the unlimited polytheism
as exemplified in the numerous demons of places finally
necessitated simplification. All the various local gods,
Amon of Thebes, Horus of Edfu, Horus of the East,
Chnum of Elephantine, Atum of Heliopolis, and others,^[143]
became identified with the sun God Rê. In the hymns to
the sun the composite being Amon-Rê-Harmachis-Atum
was invoked as “the only god which truly lives.”^[144]

Amenhotep IV (XVIII dynasty) went the furthest
in this direction. He replaced all former gods by the
“living great disc of the sun,” the official title reading:

“The sun ruling both horizons, triumphant in the horizon in
his name; the glittering splendor which is in the sun’s disc.”

“And, indeed,” Erman adds,^[145] “the sun, as a God,
should not be honored, but the sun itself as a planet which
imparts through its rays^[146] the infinite life which is in it
to all living creatures.”

Amenhotep IV by his reform completed a work which
is psychologically important. He united all the bull,^[147]
ram,^[148] crocodile^[149] and pile-dwelling^[150] gods into the disc
of the sun, and made it clear that their various attributes
were compatible with the sun’s attributes.^[151] A similar
fate overtook the Hellenic and Roman polytheism
through the syncretistic efforts of later centuries. The
beautiful prayer of Lucius^[152] to the queen of the Heavens
furnishes an important proof of this:

107“Queen of Heaven, whether thou art the genial Ceres, the
prime parent of fruits;—or whether thou art celestial Venus;—or
whether thou art the sister of Phœbus;—or whether thou art Proserpina,
terrific with midnight howlings—with that feminine
brightness of thine illuminating the walls of every city.”^[153]

This attempt to gather again into a few units the religious
thoughts which were divided into countless variations
and personified in individual gods according to
their polytheistic distribution and separation makes clear
the fact that already at an earlier time analogies had
formally arisen. Herodotus is rich in just such references,
not to mention the systems of the Hellenic-Roman
world. Opposed to the endeavor to form a unity there
stands a still stronger endeavor to create again and again
a multiplicity, so that even in the so-called severe monotheistic
religions, as Christianity, for example, the polytheistic
tendency is irrepressible. The Deity is divided into
three parts at least, to which is added the feminine Deity
of Mary and the numerous company of the lesser gods,
the angels and saints, respectively. These two tendencies
are in constant warfare. There is only one God with
countless attributes, or else there are many gods who are
then simply known differently, according to locality, and
personify sometimes this, sometimes that attribute of the
fundamental thought, an example of which we have seen
above in the Egyptian gods.

With this we turn once more to Nietzsche’s poem,
“The Beacon.” We found the flame there used as an
image of the libido, theriomorphically represented as a
snake (also as an image of the soul:^[154] “This flame is
108mine own soul”). We saw that the snake is to be taken
as a phallic image of the libido (upreared in impatience),
and that this image, also an attribute of the conception of
the sun (the Egyptian sun idol), is an image of the
libido in the combination of sun and phallus. It is not
a wholly strange conception, therefore, that the sun’s
disc is represented with a penis, as well as with hands and
feet. We find proof for this idea in a peculiar part of
the Mithraic liturgy: ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ ὁ καλούμενος αὐλός,
ἡ ἀρχὴ τοῦ λειτουργοῦντος ἀνέμου. Ὄψει γὰρ ἀπὸ τοῦ
δίσκου ὡς αὐλὸν κρεμάμενον.^[155]

This extremely important vision of a tube hanging
down from the sun would produce in a religious text, such
as that of the Mithraic liturgy, a strange and at the same
time meaningless effect if it did not have the phallic meaning.
The tube is the place of origin of the wind. The
phallic meaning seems very faint in this idea, but one
must remember that the wind, as well as the sun, is a
fructifier and creator. This has already been pointed out
in a footnote.^[156] There is a picture by a Germanic painter
of the Middle Ages of the “conceptio immaculata”
which deserves mention here. The conception is represented
by a tube or pipe coming down from heaven and
passing beneath the skirt of Mary. Into this flies the
Holy Ghost in the form of a dove for the impregnation
of the Mother of God.^[157]

Honegger discovered the following hallucination in an
insane man (paranoid dement): The patient sees in the
109sun an “upright tail” similar to an erected penis. When
he moves his head back and forth, then, too, the sun’s
penis sways back and forth in a like manner, and out of
that the wind arises. This strange hallucination remained
unintelligible to us for a long time until I became acquainted
with the Mithraic liturgy and its visions. This
hallucination threw an illuminating light, as it appears to
me, upon a very obscure place in the text which immediately
follows the passage previously cited:

εἰς δὲ τὰ μέρη τὰ πρὸς λίβα ἀπέραντον οἷον ἀπηλιώτην.
Ἐὰν ᾖ κεκληρώμενος εἰς δὲ τὰ μέρη τοῦ ἀπηλιώτου ὁ
ἕτερος, ὁμοίως εἰς τὰ μέρη τὰ ἐκείνου ὄψει τὴν ἀποφορὰν
τοῦ ὁρμάτος.

Mead translates this very clearly:^[158]

“And towards the regions westward, as though it were an
infinite Eastwind. But if the other wind, towards the regions
of the East, should be in service, in the like fashion shalt thou
see towards the regions of that side the converse of the sight.”

In the original ὅραμα is the vision, the thing seen.
ἀποφορά means properly the carrying away. The
sense of the text, according to this, might be: the thing
seen may be carried or turned sometimes here, sometimes
there, according to the direction of the wind. The
ὅραμα is the tube, “the place of origin of the wind,”
which turns sometimes to the east, sometimes to the west,
and, one might add, generates the corresponding wind.
The vision of the insane man coincides astonishingly with
this description of the movement of the tube.^[159]

110The various attributes of the sun, separated into a
series, appear one after the other in the Mithraic
liturgy. According to the vision of Helios, seven
maidens appear with the heads of snakes, and seven gods
with the heads of black bulls.

It is easy to understand the maiden as a symbol of the
libido used in the sense of causative comparison. The
snake in Paradise is usually considered as feminine, as the
seductive principle in woman, and is represented as feminine
by the old artists, although properly the snake has a
phallic meaning. Through a similar change of meaning
the snake in antiquity becomes the symbol of the earth,
which on its side is always considered feminine. The bull
is the well-known symbol for the fruitfulness of the
sun. The bull gods in the Mithraic liturgy were called
κνωθακοφύλακες, “guardians of the axis of the earth,”
by whom the axle of the orb of the heavens was turned.
The divine man, Mithra, also had the same attributes;
he is sometimes called the “Sol invictus” itself, sometimes
the mighty companion and ruler of Helios; he holds
in his right hand the “bear constellation, which moves
and turns the heavens.” The bull-headed gods, equally
ἱεροὶ καὶ ἄλκιμοι νεανίαι with Mithra himself, to
whom the attribute νεώτερος, “young one,” “the newcomer,”
is given, are merely attributive components of
the same divinity. The chief god of the Mithraic liturgy
is himself subdivided into Mithra and Helios; the attributes
of each of these are closely related to the other.
Of Helios it is said: ὄψει θεὸν νεώτερον εὐειδῆ πυρινότριχα
111ἐν χιτῶνι λευκῷ καὶ χλαμύδι κοκκίνῃ, ἔχοντα
πύρινον στέφανον.^[160]

Of Mithra it is said: ὄψει θεὸν ὑπερμεγέθη, φωτινὴν
ἔχοντα τὴν ὄψιν, νεώτερον, χρυσοκόμαν, ἐν χιτῶνι λευκῳ
καὶ χρυσῳ στεφάνῳ καὶ ἀναξυρίσι, κατέχοντα τῇ δεξιᾷ
χειρὶ μόσχου ὦμόν χρύσεον, ὅς ἐστιν ἄρκτος ἡ κινοῦσα
καὶ ἀντιστρέφουσα τὸν οὐρανόν, κατὰ ὥραν ἀναπολεύουσα
καὶ καταπολεύουσα. ἔπειτα ὄψει αὐτοῦ ἐκ τῶν
ὀμμάτων ἀστραπὰς καὶ ἐκ τοῦ σώματος ἀστέρας ἁλλομένους.^[161]

If we place fire and gold as essentially similar, then a
great accord is found in the attributes of the two gods.
To these mystical pagan ideas there deserve to be added
the probably almost contemporaneous vision of Revelation:

“And being turned, I saw seven golden candlesticks. And
in the midst of the candlesticks^[162] one like unto the son of man,
clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about at the
breasts with a golden girdle. And his head and his hair were
white as white wool, white as snow, and his eyes were as a flame
of fire. And his feet like unto burnished brass, as if it had been
refined in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters.
And he had in his right hand seven stars,^[163] and out of his mouth
proceeded a sharp two-edged sword,^[164] and his countenance was
as the sun shineth in his strength.”—Rev. i: 12 ff.

“And I looked, and beheld a white cloud, and upon the cloud
112I saw one sitting like unto the son of man, having on his head a
golden crown, and in his hand a sharp sickle.”^[165]—Rev. xiv: 14.

“And his eyes were as a flame of fire, and upon his head were
many diadems. And he was arrayed in a garment^[166] sprinkled
with blood…. And the armies which were in heaven followed
him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen,^[167] white and pure.
And out of his mouth proceeded a sharp sword.”—Rev. xix:
12–15.

One need not assume that there is a direct dependency
between the Apocalypse and the Mithraic liturgy. The
visionary images of both texts are developed from a
source, not limited to one place, but found in the soul
of many divers people, because the symbols which arise
from it are too typical for it to belong to one individual
only. I put these images here to show how the primitive
symbolism of light gradually developed, with the increasing
depth of the vision, into the idea of the sun-hero, the
“well-beloved.”^[168] The development of the symbol of
light is thoroughly typical. In addition to this, perhaps
I might call to mind the fact that I have previously
pointed out this course with numerous examples,^[169] and,
therefore, I can spare myself the trouble of returning to
this subject.^[170] These visionary occurrences are the psychological
roots of the sun-coronations in the mysteries.
Its rite is religious hallucination congealed into liturgical
form, which, on account of its great regularity, could become
a generally accepted outer form. After all this, it
is easily understood how the ancient Christian Church, on
one side, stood in an especial bond to Christ as “sol
novus,” and, on the other side, had a certain difficulty in
freeing itself from the earthly symbols of Christ. Indeed
113Philo of Alexandria saw in the sun the image of the divine
logos or of the Deity especially (“De Somniis,” 1:85).
In an Ambrosian hymn Christ is invoked by “O sol
salutis,” and so on. At the time of Marcus Aurelius,
Meliton, in his work,^[171] περὶ λούτρου, called Christ the
Ἥλιος ἀνατολης … μόνος ἥλιος οὗτος ἀνέτειλεν ἀπ’
οὐρανοῦ.^[172]

Still more important is a passage from Pseudo-Cyprian:^[173]

“O quam præclara providentia ut illo die quo factus est sol,
in ipso die nasceretur Christus, v. Kal. Apr. feria IV, et ideo
de ipso ad plebem dicebat Malachias propheta: ‘Orietur vobis
sol iustitiæ et curatio est in pennis ejus,’ hic est sol iustitiæ cuius
in pennis curatio præostendebatur.”^[174][175]

In a work nominally attributed to John Chrysostomus,
“De Solstitiis et Aequinoctiis,”^[176] occurs this passage:

“Sed et dominus nascitur mense Decembri hiemis tempore,
VIII. Kal. Januarias, quando oleæ maturæ præmuntur ut unctio,
id est Chrisma, nascatur—sed et Invicti natalem appellant. Quis
utique tam invictus nisi dominus noster qui mortem subactam
devicit? Vel quod dicant Solis esse natalem, ipse est sol iustitiæ,
de quo Malachias propheta dixit: ‘Dominus lucis ac noctis conditor
et discretor qui a propheta Sol iustitiæ cognominatus est.’”^[177]

114According to the testimony of Eusebius of Alexandria,
the Christians also shared in the worship of the rising
sun, which lasted into the fifth century:

οὐαῖ τοῖς προσκυνοῦσι τὸν ἥλιον καὶ τὴν σελήνην καὶ
τοὺς ἀστέρας. Πολλοὺς γὰρ οἶδα τοὺς προσκυνοῦντας καὶ
εὐχομένους εἰς τὸν ἥλιον. Ἤδη γὰρ ἀνατείλαντος τοῦ
ἡλίου, προσεύχονται καὶ λέγουσιν “Ἐλέησον ἡμᾶς” καὶ οὐ
μόνον Ἡλιογνώσται καὶ αἱρετικοὶ τοῦτο ποιοῦσιν ἀλλὰ
καὶ χριστιανοὶ καὶ ἀφέντες τὴν πίστιν τοῖς αἱρετικοῖς
συναμίγνυνται.^[178]

Augustine preached emphatically to the Christians:

“Non est Dominus Sol factus sed per quem Sol factus est—ne
quis carnaliter sapiens Solem istum (Christum) intelligendum
putaret.”

Art has preserved much of the remnants of sun-worship,^[179]
thus the nimbus around the head of Christ and
the halo of the saints in general. The Christian legends
also attribute many fire and light symbols to the saints.^[180]
The twelve apostles, for example, are likened to the
twelve signs of the zodiac, and are represented, therefore,
with a star over the head.^[181]

It is not to be wondered at that the heathen, as Tertullian
avows, considered the sun as the Christian God.
115Among the Manichaeans God was really the sun. One
of the most remarkable works extant, where the Pagan,
Asiatic, Hellenic and Christian intermingle, is the
Ἐξήγησις περὶ των ἐν Περσίδι πραχθέντων, edited by
Wirth.^[182] This is a book of fables, but, nevertheless, a
mine for near-Christian phantasies, which gives a profound
insight into Christian symbolism. In this is found
the following magical dedication: Διὶ Ἡλίῳ θεῳ μεγάλῳ
βασιλεῖ Ἰησοῦ—.^[183] In certain parts of Armenia the
rising sun is still worshipped by Christians, that “it
may let its foot rest upon the faces of the worshippers.”^[184]
The foot occurs as an anthropomorphic attribute,
and we have already met the theriomorphic
attribute in the feathers and the sun phallus. Other comparisons
of the sun’s ray, as knife, sword, arrow, and so
on, have also, as we have learned from the psychology
of the dream, a phallic meaning at bottom. This meaning
is attached to the foot as I here point out,^[185] and also
to the feathers, or hair, of the sun, which signify the
power or strength of the sun. I refer to the story of
Samson, and to that of the Apocalypse of Baruch, concerning
the phœnix bird, which, flying before the sun, loses
its feathers, and, exhausted, is strengthened again in an
ocean bath at evening.

Under the symbol of “moth and sun” we have dug
down into the historic depths of the soul, and in doing
this we have uncovered an old buried idol, the youthful,
beautiful, fire-encircled and halo-crowned sun-hero, who,
forever unattainable to the mortal, wanders upon the
116earth, causing night to follow day; winter, summer; death,
life; and who returns again in rejuvenated splendor and
gives light to new generations. The longing of the
dreamer concealed behind the moth stands for him.

The ancient pre-Asiatic civilizations were acquainted
with a sun-worship having the idea of a God dying and
rising again (Osiris, Tammuz, Attis-Adonis),^[186] Christ,
Mithra and his bull,^[187] Phœnix and so on. The beneficent
power as well as the destroying power was worshipped in
fire. The forces of nature always have two sides, as we
have already seen in the God of Job. This reciprocal
bond brings us back once more to Miss Miller’s poem.
Her reminiscences support our previous supposition, that
the symbol of moth and sun is a condensation of two
ideas, about one of which we have just spoken; the other
is the moth and the flame. As the title of a play, about
the contents of which the author tells us absolutely nothing,
“Moth and Flame” may easily have the well-known
erotic meaning of flying around the flame of passion until
one’s wings are burned. The passionate longing, that is
to say, the libido, has its two sides; it is power which
beautifies everything, and which under other circumstances
destroys everything. It often appears as if one
could not accurately understand in what the destroying
quality of the creative power consists. A woman who
gives herself up to passion, particularly under the present-day
condition of culture, experiences the destructive side
only too soon. One has only to imagine one’s self a little
away from the every-day moral conditions in order to
understand what feelings of extreme insecurity overwhelm
117the individual who gives himself unconditionally over to
Fate.

To be fruitful means, indeed, to destroy one’s self, because
with the rise of the succeeding generation the previous
one has passed beyond its highest point; thus our
descendants are our most dangerous enemies, whom we
cannot overcome, for they will outlive us, and, therefore,
without fail, will take the power from our enfeebled
hands. The anxiety in the face of the erotic fate
is wholly understandable, for there is something immeasurable
therein. Fate usually hides unknown dangers, and
the perpetual hesitation of the neurotic to venture upon
life is easily explained by his desire to be allowed to stand
still, so as not to take part in the dangerous battle of life.^[188]
Whoever renounces the chance to experience must stifle
in himself the wish for it, and, therefore, commits a sort
of self-murder. From this the death phantasies which
readily accompany the renunciation of the erotic wish
are made clear. In the poem Miss Miller has voiced
these phantasies.

She adds further to the material with the following:

“I had been reading a selection from one of Byron’s poems
which pleased me very much and made a deep and lasting impression.
Moreover, the rhythm of my last two verses, ‘For I
the source, etc.,’ and the two lines of Byron’s are very similar.

‘Now let me die as I have lived in faith,
Nor tremble though the universe should quake.’”

This reminiscence with which the series of ideas is
closed confirms the death phantasies which follow from
118renunciation of the erotic wish. The quotation comes—which
Miss Miller did not mention—from an uncompleted
poem of Byron’s called “Heaven and Earth.”^[189] The
whole verse follows:

“Still blessed be the Lord,
For what is passed,
For that which is;
For all are His,
From first to last—
Time—Space—Eternity—Life—Death—
The vast known and immeasurable unknown
He made and can unmake,
And shall I for a little gasp of breath
Blaspheme and groan?
No, let me die as I have lived in faith,
Nor quiver though the universe may quake!”

The words are included in a kind of praise or prayer,
spoken by a “mortal” who is in hopeless flight before
the mounting deluge. Miss Miller puts herself in the
same situation in her quotation; that is to say, she readily
lets it be seen that her feeling is similar to the despondency
of the unhappy ones who find themselves hard
pressed by the threatening mounting waters of the deluge.
With this the writer allows us a deep look into the dark
abyss of her longing for the sun-hero. We see that her
longing is in vain; she is a mortal, only for a short time
borne upwards into the light by means of the highest
longing, and then sinking to death, or, much more, urged
upwards by the fear of death, like the people before the
deluge, and in spite of the desperate conflict, irretrievably
given over to destruction. This is a mood which recalls
119vividly the closing scene in “Cyrano de Bergerac”:^[190]

Cyrano:

Oh, mais … puisqu’elle est en chemin,
Je l’attendrai debout … et l’épée à la main.

Que dites-vous?… C’est inutile? Je le sais.
Mais on ne se bat pas dans l’espoir du succès.
Non, non. C’est bien plus beau lorsque c’est inutile.

Je sais bien qu’à la fin vous me mettrez à bas….

We already know sufficiently well what longing and
what impulse it is that attempts to clear a way for itself
to the light, but that it may be realized quite clearly and
irrevocably, it is shown plainly in the quotation “No, let
me die,” which confirms and completes all earlier remarks.
The divine, the “much-beloved,” who is honored in the
image of the sun, is also the goal of the longing of our
poet.

Byron’s “Heaven and Earth” is a mystery founded on
the following passage from Genesis, chapter vi:2:
“And it came to pass … that the sons of God saw the
daughters of men that they were fair, and they took
them wives of all that they chose.” Byron offers as a
further motif for his poem the following passage from
Coleridge: “And woman wailing for her Demon lover.”
Byron’s poem is concerned with two great events, one
psychologic and one telluric; the passion which throws
down all barriers; and all the terrors of the unchained
powers of nature: a parallel which has already been introduced
into our earlier discussion. The angels Samiasa
120and Azaziel burn with sinful love for the beautiful
daughters of Cain, Anah and Aholibama, and force a
way through the barrier which is placed between mortal
and immortal. They revolt as Lucifer once did against
God, and the archangel Raphael raises his voice warningly:

“But man hath listened to his voice
And ye to woman’s—beautiful she is,
The serpent’s voice less subtle than her kiss.
The snake but vanquished dust; but she will draw
A second host from heaven to break heaven’s law.”

The power of God is threatened by the seduction of
passion; a second fall of angels menaces heaven. Let us
translate this mythologic projection back into the psychologic,
from whence it originated. Then it would read:
the power of the good and reasonable ruling the world
wisely is threatened by the chaotic primitive power of passion;
therefore passion must be exterminated; that is to
say, projected into mythology. The race of Cain and
the whole sinful world must be destroyed from the roots
by the deluge. It is the inevitable result of that sinful
passion which has broken through all barriers. Its counterpart
is the sea and the waters of the deep and the
floods of rain,^[191] the generating, fructifying and “maternal
waters,” as the Indian mythology refers to them.
Now they leave their natural bounds and surge over the
mountain tops, engulfing all living things; for passion destroys
itself. The libido is God and Devil. With the
destruction of the sinfulness of the libido an essential
121portion of the libido would be destroyed. Through the
loss of the Devil, God himself suffered a considerable loss,
somewhat like an amputation upon the body of the
Divinity. The mysterious hint in Raphael’s lament concerning
the two rebels, Samiasa and Azaziel, suggests
this.

“… Why,
Cannot this earth be made, or be destroyed,
Without involving ever some vast void
In the immortal ranks?…”

Love raises man, not only above himself, but also
above the bounds of his mortality and earthliness, up to
divinity itself, and in the very act of raising him it destroys
him. Mythologically, this self-presumption finds
its striking expression in the building of the heaven-high
tower of Babel, which brings confusion to mankind.^[192]
In Byron’s poem it is the sinful ambition of the race of
Cain, for love of which it makes even the stars subservient
and leads away the sons of God themselves. If,
indeed, longing for the highest things—if I may speak
so—is legitimate, then it lies in the circumstances that it
leaves its human boundaries, that of sinfulness, and,
therefore, destruction. The longing of the moth for the
star is not absolutely pure and transparent, but glows in
sultry mist, for man continues to be man. Through the
excess of his longing he draws down the divine into the
corruption of his passion;^[193] therefore, he seems to raise
himself to the Divine; but with that his humanity is destroyed.
Thus the love of Anah and Aholibama for their
angels becomes the ruin of gods and men. The invocation
122with which Cain’s daughters implore their angels is
psychologically an exact parallel to Miss Miller’s poem.

Anah:^[194]

Seraph!
From thy sphere!
Whatever star^[195] contains thy glory.

In the eternal depths of heaven
Albeit thou watchest with the ‘seven,’
Though through space infinite and hoary
Before thy bright wings worlds will be driven,

Yet hear!
Oh! think of her who holds thee dear!

And though she nothing is to thee,
Yet think that thou art all to her.

       ·       ·       ·       ·       ·

Eternity is in thy years,
Unborn, undying beauty in thine eyes;
With me thou canst not sympathize,
Except in love, and there thou must
Acknowledge that more loving dust
Ne’er wept beneath the skies.
Thou walkest thy many worlds,^[196] thou seest
The face of him who made thee great,
As he hath made of me the least
Of those cast out from Eden’s gate;

Yet, Seraph, dear!
Oh hear!
For thou hast loved me, and I would not die
Until I know what I must die in knowing,
That thou forgettest in thine eternity
Her whose heart death could not keep from o’erflowing
For thee, immortal essence as thou art,^[197]
Great is their love who love in sin and fear;
And such, I feel, are waging in my heart
A war unworthy: to an Adamite
123Forgive, my Seraph! that such thoughts appear.
For sorrow is our element….

       ·       ·       ·       ·       ·

The hour is near
Which tells me we are not abandoned quite.
Appear! Appear!
Seraph!
My own Azaziel! be but here,
And leave the stars to their own light.

Aholibama:

I call thee, I await thee and I love thee.

       ·       ·       ·       ·       ·

Though I be formed of clay,
And thou of beams^[198]
More bright than those of day on Eden’s streams,
Thine immortality cannot repay
With love more warm than mine
My love. There is a ray^[199]
In me, which though forbidden yet to shine,
I feel was lighted at thy God’s and mine.^[200]
It may be hidden long: death and decay
Our mother Eve bequeathed us—but my heart
Defies it: though this life must pass away,
Is that a cause for thee and me to part?

       ·       ·       ·       ·       ·

I can share all things, even immortal sorrow;
For thou hast ventured to share life with me,
And shall I shrink from thine eternity?
No, though the serpent’s sting^[201] should pierce me through,
And thou thyself wert like the serpent, coil
Around me still.^[202] And I will smile
And curse thee not, but hold
Thee in as warm a fold
As—but descend and prove
A mortal’s love
For an immortal….

124The apparition of both angels which follows the invocation
is, as always, a shining vision of light.

Aholibama:

The clouds from off their pinions flinging
As though they bore to-morrow’s light.

Anah:

But if our father see the sight!

Aholibama:

He would but deem it was the moon
Rising unto some sorcerer’s tune
An hour too soon.

       ·       ·       ·       ·       ·

Anah:

Lo! They have kindled all the west,
Like a returning sunset….
On Ararat’s late secret crest
A wild and many colored bow,
The remnant of their flashing path,
Now shines!…

At the sight of this many-colored vision of light, where
both women are entirely filled with desire and expectation,
Anah makes use of a simile full of presentiment,
which suddenly allows us to look down once more into
the dismal dark depths, out of which for a moment the
terrible animal nature of the mild god of light emerges.

“… and now, behold! it hath
Returned to night, as rippling foam,
Which the leviathan hath lashed
From his unfathomable home,
When sporting on the face of the calm deep,
Subsides soon after he again hath dash’d
Down, down to where the ocean’s fountains sleep.”

125Thus like the leviathan! We recall this overpowering
weight in the scale of God’s justice in regard to the man
Job. There, where the deep sources of the ocean are, the
leviathan lives; from there the all-destroying flood
ascends, the all-engulfing flood of animal passion. That
stifling, compressing feeling^[203] of the onward-surging impulse
is projected mythologically as a flood which, rising
up and over all, destroys all that exists, in order to allow
a new and better creation to come forth from this destruction.

Japhet:

The eternal will
Shall deign to expound this dream
Of good and evil; and redeem
Unto himself all times, all things;

And, gather’d under his almighty wings,
Abolish hell!
And to the expiated Earth
Restore the beauty of her birth.

Spirits:

And when shall take effect this wondrous spell?

Japhet:

When the Redeemer cometh; first in pain
And then in glory.

Spirits:

New times, new climes, new arts, new men, but still
The same old tears, old crimes, and oldest ill,
Shall be amongst your race in different forms;
But the same mortal storms
Shall oversweep the future, as the waves
In a few hours the glorious giants’ graves.

126The prophetic visions of Japhet have almost prophetic
meaning for our poetess; with the death of the moth in
the light, evil is once more laid aside; the complex has
once again, even if in a censored form, expressed itself.
With that, however, the problem is not solved; all sorrow
and every longing begins again from the beginning,
but there is “Promise in the Air”—the premonition of
the Redeemer, of the “Well-beloved,” of the Sun-hero,
who again mounts to the height of the sun and again
descends to the coldness of the winter, who is the light of
hope from race to race, the image of the libido.

127