by C. G. Jung
“Spirit,” of course, meant for me something ineffable, but at bottom I did not regard it as essentially different from very rarefied air. What the roots absorbed and transmitted to the copper trunk was a kind of spiritual essence which became visible down in the cellar as finished gold coins. This was certainly no mere conjuring trick, but a venerable and vitally important secret of nature which had come to me I know not how and which I had to conceal not only from the council of elders but, in a sense, also from myself.
My long, boring walk to and from school began to shorten most delightfully. Scarcely was I out of the schoolhouse than I was already in the castle, where structural alterations were in progress, council sessions were being held, evildoers sentenced, disputes arbitrated, cannon fired. The schooner’s decks were cleared, the sails rigged, and the vessel steered carefully out of the harbor before a gentle breeze, and then, as it emerged from behind the rock, tacked into a stiff nor’wester. Suddenly I found myself on my doorstep, as though only a few minutes had passed. I stepped out of my fantasy as out of a carriage which had effortlessly driven me home. This highly enjoyable occupation lasted for several months before I got sick of it. Then I found the fantasy silly and ridiculous. Instead of daydreaming I began building castles and artfully fortified emplacements out of small stones, using mud as mortar—the fortress of Hüningen, which at that time was still intact, serving me as a model. I studied all the available fortification plans of Vauban, and was soon familiar with all the technicalities. From Vauban I turned to modern methods of fortification, and tried with my limited means to build models of all the different types. This preoccupied me in my leisure hours for more than two years, during which time my leanings toward nature study and concrete things steadily increased, at the cost of No. 2.
As long as I knew so little about real things, there was no point, I thought, in thinking about them. Anyone could have fantasies, but real knowledge was another matter. My parents allowed me to take out a subscription for a scientific periodical, which I read with passionate interest. I hunted and collected all the fossils to be found in our Jura mountains, and all the obtainable minerals, also insects and the bones of mammoths and men—mammoth bones from gravel pits in the Rhineland plain, human bones from a mass grave near Hüningen, dating from 1811. Plants interested me too, but not in a scientific sense. I was attracted to them for a reason I could not understand, and with a strong feeling that they ought not to be pulled up and dried. They were living beings which had meaning only so long as they were growing and flowering—a hidden, secret meaning, one of God’s thoughts. They were to be regarded with awe and contemplated with philosophical wonderment. What the biologist had to say about them was interesting, but it was not the essential thing. Yet I could not explain to myself what this essential thing was. How were plants related to the Christian religion or to the negation of the Will, for example? This was something I could not fathom. They obviously partook of the divine state of innocence which it was better not to disturb. By way of contrast, insects were denatured plants—flowers and fruits which had presumed to crawl about on legs or stilts and to fly around with wings like the petals of blossoms, and busied themselves preying on plants. Because of this unlawful activity they were condemned to mass executions, June bugs and caterpillars being the especial targets of such punitive expeditions. My “sympathy with all creatures” was strictly limited to warm-blooded animals. The only exceptions among the cold-blooded vertebrates were frogs and toads, because of their resemblance to human beings.
1 In regard to the legend, twice alluded to in this book, that Jung was a descendant of Goethe, he related: “The wife of my great-grandfather (Franz Ignaz Jung, d. 1831), Sophie Ziegler, and her sister were associated with the Mannheim Theater and were friends of many writers. The story goes that Sophie Ziegler had an illegitimate child by Goethe, and that this child was my grandfather, Carl Gustav Jung. This was considered virtually an established fact. My grandfather says not a word about it in his diaries, however. He mentions only that he once saw Goethe in Weimar, and then merely from behind! Sophie Ziegler Jung was later friendly with Lotte Kestner, a niece of Goethe’s “Lottchen.” This Lotte frequently came to see my grandfather—as, incidentally, did Franz Liszt. In later years Lotte Kestner settled in Basel, no doubt because of these close ties with the Jung family.”
No proof of this item of family tradition has been found in the available sources, the archives of the Goethehaus in Frankfurt am Main and the baptismal register in the Jesuitenkirche in Mannheim. Goethe was not in Mannheim at the period in question, and there is no record of Sophie Ziegler’s staying in Weimar or anywhere in Goethe’s vicinity.
Jung used to speak of this stubbornly persistent legend with a certain gratified amusement, for it might serve to explain one subtle aspect of his fascination with Goethe’s Faust; it belonged to an inner reality, as it were. On the other hand he would also call the story “annoying.” He thought it “in bad taste” and maintained that the world was already full of “too many fools who tell such tales of the ‘unknown father.’ ” Above all, he felt that the legitimate line of descent, in particular from the learned Catholic doctor and jurist Carl Jung (d. 1645)—discussed at the end of Chapter VIII—was equally significant.—A. J.
2 Slip of the tongue for erwünscht (longed for).
3 The “natural mind” is the “mind which says absolutely straight and ruthless things.” (Seminar on Interpretation of Visions [Zürich, privately printed, 1940], V, p. iv.) “That is the sort of mind which springs from natural sources, and not from opinions taken from books; it wells up from the earth like a natural spring, and brings with it the peculiar wisdom of nature.” (Ibid., VI, p. 34.)
4 Johann Heinrich Daniel Zschokke (1771-1848), Swiss author of historical novels and studies in Swiss and Bavarian history. Cf. Civilization in Transition (CW 10, par. 850).
5 Faust, Part Two, trans. by Philip Wayne (Harmondsworth, England, Penguin Books Ltd, 1959), pp. 76 ff.
6 Wilhelm Busch, Die Jobsiade.
7 Faust, Part Two, p. 76.
• III •
Student Years
IN SPITE OF my growing scientific interests, I turned back from time to time to my philosophical books. The question of my choice of a profession was drawing alarmingly close. I looked forward with longing to the end of my school days. Then I would go to the university and study—natural science, of course. Then I would know something real. But no sooner had I made myself this promise than my doubts began. Was not my bent rather toward history and philosophy? Then again, I was intensely interested in everything Egyptian and Babylonian, and would have liked best to be an archaeologist. But I had no money to study anywhere except in Basel, and in Basel there was no teacher for this subject. So this plan very soon came to an end. For a long time I could not make up my mind and constantly postponed the decision. My father was very worried. He said once, “The boy is interested in everything imaginable, but he does not know what he wants.” I could only admit that he was right. As matriculation approached and we had to decide what faculty to register for, I abruptly decided on science, but I left my schoolfellows in doubt as to whether I intended to go in definitely for science or the humanities.
This apparently sudden decision had a background of its own. Some weeks previously, just at the time when No. 1 and No. 2 were wrestling for a decision, I had two dreams. In the first dream I was in a dark wood that stretched along the Rhine. I came to a little hill, a burial mound, and began to dig. After a while I turned up, to my astonishment, some bones of prehistoric animals. This interested me enormously, and at that moment I knew: I must get to know nature, the world in which we live, and the things around us.
Then came a second dream. Again I was in a wood; it was threaded with watercourses, and in the darkest place I saw a circular pool, surrounded by dense undergrowth. Half immersed in the water lay the strangest and most wonderful creature: a round animal, shimmering in opalescent hues, and consisting of innumer
able little cells, or of organs shaped like tentacles. It was a giant radiolarian, measuring about three feet across. It seemed to me indescribably wonderful that this magnificent creature should be lying there undisturbed, in the hidden place, in the clear, deep water. It aroused in me an intense desire for knowledge, so that I awoke with a beating heart. These two dreams decided me overwhelmingly in favor of science, and removed all my doubts.
It became clear to me that I was living in a time and a place where a person had to earn his living. To do so, one had to be this or that, and it made a deep impression on me that all my schoolfellows were imbued with this necessity and thought about nothing else. I felt I was in some way odd. Why could I not make up my mind and commit myself to something definite? Even that plodding fellow D. who had been held up to me by my German teacher as a model of diligence and conscientiousness was certain that he would study theology. I saw that I would have to settle down and think the matter through. If I took up zoology, for instance, I could be only a schoolmaster, or at best an employee in a zoological garden. There was no future in that, even if one’s demands were modest—though I would certainly have preferred working in a zoo to the life of a schoolteacher.
In this blind alley the inspiration suddenly came to me that I could study medicine. Strangely enough, this had never occurred to me before, although my paternal grandfather, of whom I had heard so much, had been a doctor. Indeed, for that very reason I had a certain resistance to this profession. “Only don’t imitate,” was my motto. But now I told myself that the study of medicine at least began with scientific subjects. To that extent I would be doing what I wanted. Moreover, the field of medicine was so broad that there was always the possibility of specializing later. I had definitely opted for science, and the only question was: How? I had to earn my living, and as I had no money I could not attend a university abroad and obtain the kind of training that would give me hopes of a scientific career. At best I could become only a dilettante in science. Nor, since I possessed a personality that made me disliked by many of my schoolfellows and of the people who counted (i.e., the teachers), was there any hope of finding a patron who would support my wish. When, therefore, I finally decided on medicine, it was with the rather disagreeable feeling that it was not a good thing to start life with such a compromise. Nevertheless, I felt considerably relieved now that this irrevocable decision had been made.
The painful question then presented itself: Where was the money to come from? My father could raise only part of it. He applied to the University of Basel for a stipend for me, and to my shame it was granted. I was ashamed, not so much because our poverty was laid bare for all the world to see, but because I had secretly been convinced that all the “top” people, the people who “counted,” were ill disposed toward me. I had never expected any such kindness from them. I had obviously profited by the reputation of my father, who was a good and uncomplicated person. Yet I felt myself totally different from him. I had, in fact, two different conceptions of myself. Through No. 1’s eyes I saw myself as a rather disagreeable and moderately gifted young man with vaulting ambitions, an undisciplined temperament, and dubious manners, alternating between naïve enthusiasm and fits of childish disappointment, in his innnermost essence a hermit and obscurantist. On the other hand, No. 2 regarded No. 1 as a difficult and thankless moral task, a lesson that had to be got through somehow, complicated by a variety of faults such as spells of laziness, despondency, depression, inept enthusiasm for ideas and things that nobody valued, liable to imaginary friendships, limited, prejudiced, stupid (mathematics!), with a lack of understanding for other people, vague and confused in philosophical matters, neither an honest Christian nor anything else. No. 2 had no definable character at all; he was a vita peracta, born, living, dead, everything in one; a total vision of life. Though pitilessly clear about himself, he was unable to express himself through the dense, dark medium of No. 1, though he longed to do so. When No. 2 predominated, No. 1 was contained and obliterated in him, just as, conversely, No. 1 regarded No. 2 as a region of inner darkness. No. 2 felt that any conceivable expression of himself would be like a stone thrown over the edge of the world, dropping soundlessly into infinite night. But in him (No. 2) light reigned, as in the spacious halls of a royal palace whose high casements open upon a landscape flooded with sunlight. Here were meaning and historical continuity, in strong contrast to the incoherent fortuitousness of No. 1’s life, which had no real points of contact with its environment. No. 2, on the other hand, felt himself in secret accord with the Middle Ages, as personified by Faust, with the legacy of a past which had obviously stirred Goethe to the depths. For Goethe too, therefore—and this was my great consolation—No. 2 was a reality. Faust, as I now realized with something of a shock, meant more to me than my beloved Gospel according to St. John. There was something in Faust that worked directly on my feelings. John’s Christ was strange to me, but still stranger was the Savior of the other gospels. Faust, on the other hand, was the living equivalent of No. 2, and I was convinced that he was the answer which Goethe had given to his times. This insight was not only comforting to me, it also gave me an increased feeling of inner security and a sense of belonging to the human community. I was no longer isolated and a mere curiosity, a sport of cruel nature. My godfather and authority was the great Goethe himself.
About this time I had a dream which both frightened and encouraged me. It was night in some unknown place, and I was making slow and painful headway against a mighty wind. Dense fog was flying along everywhere. I had my hands cupped around a tiny light which threatened to go out at any moment. Everything depended on my keeping this little light alive. Suddenly I had the feeling that something was coming up behind me. I looked back, and saw a gigantic black figure following me. But at the same moment I was conscious, in spite of my terror, that I must keep my little light going through night and wind, regardless of all dangers. When I awoke I realized at once that the figure was a “specter of the Brocken,” my own shadow on the swirling mists, brought into being by the little light I was carrying. I knew, too, that this little light was my consciousness, the only light I have. My own understanding is the sole treasure I possess, and the greatest. Though infinitely small and fragile in comparison with the powers of darkness, it is still a light, my only light.
This dream was a great illumination for me. Now I knew that No. 1 was the bearer of the light, and that No. 2 followed him like a shadow. My task was to shield the light and not look back at the vita peracta; this was evidently a forbidden realm of light of a different sort. I must go forward against the storm, which sought to thrust me back into the immeasurable darkness of a world where one is aware of nothing except the surfaces of things in the background. In the role of No. 1, I had to go forward—into study, moneymaking, responsibilities, entanglements, confusions, errors, submissions, defeats. The storm pushing against me was time, ceaselessly flowing into the past, which just as ceaselessly dogs our heels. It exerts a mighty suction which greedily draws everything living into itself; we can only escape from it—for a while—by pressing forward. The past is terribly real and present, and it catches everyone who cannot save his skin with a satisfactory answer.
My view of the world spun around another ninety degrees; I recognized clearly that my path led irrevocably outward, into the limitations and darkness of three-dimensionality. It seemed to me that Adam must once have left Paradise in this manner; Eden had become a specter for him, and light was where a stony field had to be tilled in the sweat of his brow.
I asked myself: “Whence comes such a dream?” Till then I had taken it for granted that such dreams were sent directly by God. But now I had imbibed so much epistemology that doubts assailed me. One might say, for instance, that my insight had been slowly ripening for a long time and had then suddenly broken through in a dream. And that, indeed, is what had happened. But this explanation is merely a description. The real question was why this process took place and why it broke through into co
nsciousness. Consciously I had done nothing to promote any such development; on the contrary, my sympathies were on the other side. Something must therefore have been at work behind the scenes, some intelligence, at any rate something more intelligent than myself. For the extraordinary idea that in the light of consciousness the inner realm of light appears as a gigantic shadow was not something I would have hit on of my own accord. Now all at once I understood many things that had been inexplicable to me before—in particular that cold shadow of embarrassment and estrangement which passed over people’s faces whenever I alluded to anything reminiscent of the inner realm.
I must leave No. 2 behind me, that was clear. But under no circumstances ought I to deny him to myself or declare him invalid. That would have been a self-mutilation, and would moreover have deprived me of any possibility of explaining the origin of the dreams. For there was no doubt in my mind that No. 2 had something to do with the creation of dreams, and I could easily credit him with the necessary superior intelligence. But I felt myself to be increasingly identical with No. 1, and this state proved in turn to be merely a part of the far more comprehensive No. 2, with whom for that very reason I could no longer feel myself identical. He was indeed a specter, a spirit who could hold his own against the world of darkness. This was something I had not known before the dream, and even at the time—I am sure of this in retrospect—I was conscious of it only vaguely, although I knew it emotionally beyond a doubt.