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more than an amplificatory tendency peculiar to the archetypea mythological statement inseparably bound up with numinous experiences which expresses these occurrences and also seeks to explain them. By reducing them to something empirically knowable, we do not in any way prejudice their transcendence. When, for example, someone was struck by lightning, the man of antiquity believed that Zeus had hurled a thunderbolt at him. Instead of this mythical dramatization we content ourselves with the more modest explanation that a, sudden discharge of electrical tension happened to take place just at the spot where this unlucky man stood under a tree. The weak point in this argument, of course, is the so-called "accident," about which several things could be said. On the primitive level there are no accidents of this sort, but only intentional designs. 
	849 	The reduction of the act of conscience to a collision with 
the archetype is, by and large, a tenable explanation. On the other hand we must admit that the psychoid archetype, that is, its irrepresentable and unconscious essence, is not just a postulate only, but possesses qualities of a parapsychological nature which I have grouped together under the term "synchronicity." I use this term to indicate the fact that, in cases of telepathy, precognition, and similar inexplicable phenomena, one can very frequently observe an archetypal situation. This may be connected with the collective nature of the archetype, for the collective unconscious, unlike the personal unconscious, is one and the same everywhere, in all individuals, just as all biological functions and all instincts are the same in members of the same species. Apart from the more subtle synchronicity) we can also observe in the instincts, for instance in the migratory instinct, a distinct synchronism. And since the parapsychological phenomena associated with the unconscious psyche show a peculiar tendency to relativize the categories of time and space, the collective unconscious must have a spaceless and timeless quality. Consequently, there is some probability that an archetypal situation will be accompanied by synchronistic phenomena, as in the case of death, in whose vicinity such phenomena are relatively frequent. 
	850 	As with all archetypal phenomena, the synchronicity factor 
must be taken into account in considering conscience. For although the voice of genuine conscience (and not just the recol- 
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- 
lection of the moral code) may make itself heard in the context 
of an archetypal situation, it is by no means certain that the reason for this is always a subjective moral reaction. It sometimes happens that a person suffers from a decidedly bad conscience for no demonstrable reason. Naturally there are any number of cases where ignorance and self-deception offer a sufficient explanation. But this does not alter the fact that one can suddenly have a bad conscience when one is conversing with an unknown person who would have every reason to feel a bad conscience but is unconscious of it. The same is true of fear and other emotions arising from a collision with an archetype. When one is talking with somebody whose unconscious contents are "constellated," a parallel constellation arises in one's own unconscious. The same or a similar archetype is activated, and since one is less unconscious than the other person and has no reason for repression, one becomes increasingly aware of its feeling-tone in the form of a growing uneasiness of conscience. When this happens, we naturally tend to ascribe the moral reaction to ourselves, the more easily since no one, actually, has reason to enjoy a perfectly good conscience. But in the case we are discussing the self-criticism, laudable in itself, goes too far. We discover that, as soon as the conversation is ended, the bad conscience stops as suddenly as it began, and after a while it turns out that it is the other person who should take note of his bad conscience. By way of example, one thinks of cases like the one described by Heinrich Zschokke.3 While in Brugg, he visited an inn, where he ate lunch. Opposite him sat a young man. Suddenly Zschokke saw in his mind's eye this young man standing at a desk, breaking it open, and pocketing the money he found. Zschokke even knew the exact amount and was so sure of it that he took the young man to task. The latter was so flabbergasted by Zschokke's knowledge that he made a confession on the spot. 
	851 	This spontaneous reconstruction of an unknown fact can 
also be expressed in a dream, or give rise to a disagreeable feeling that cannot be; put into words, or cause one to guess a situation without knowing to whom it refers. The psychoid archetype has a tendency to behave as though it were not local- 
3 Eine Selbstschau (1843). 
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ized in one person but were active in the whole environment. The fact or situation is transmitted in most cases through a subliminal perception of the affect it produces. Animals and primitives have a particularly fine nose for these things. This explanation, however, does not cover parapsychological events. 
	852 	Experiences of this kind are the common lot of the psycho- 
therapist, or of anybody who has frequent occasion to talk professionally, about their intimate affairs, with people with whom he has no personal relationship. One should not conclude from this that every subjective pang of conscience which seems unfounded is caused by the person one is conversing with. Such a conclusion is justified only when the ever-present guilt component in oneself proves, after mature reflection, to be an inadequate explanation of the reaction. The distinction is often a very delicate matter because, in therapy, ethical values must not be injured on either side if the treatment is to be successful. Yet what happens in the therapeutic process is only a special instance of human relationships in general. As soon as the dialogue between two people touches on something fundamental, essential, and numinous, and a certain rapport is felt, it gives rise to a phenomenon which Levy-Bruhl fittingly called participation mystique. It is an unconscious identity in which two individual psychic spheres interpenetrate to such a degree that it is impossible to say what belongs to whom. If the problem is one of conscience, the guilt of the one partner is the guilt of the other, and at first there is no possibility of breaking this emotional identity. For this a special act of reflection is required. I have dwelt at some length on this problem because I wanted to show that by the concept of the archetype nothing final is meant, and that it would be wrong to suppose that the essence of conscience could be reduced to nothing but the archetype. The psychoid nature of the archetype contains very much more than can be included in a psychological explanation. It points to the sphere of the unus mundus) the unitary world, towards which the psychologist and the atomic physicist are converging along separate paths, producing independently of one another certain analogous auxiliary concepts. Although the first step in the cognitive process is to discriminate and divide, at the second step it will unite what has been divided, and an explanation will be satisfactory only when it achieves a synthesis. 
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	853 	For this reason I have not been able to confine myself ex- 
clusively to the psychological nature of conscience, but have had to consider its theological aspect. From this point of view it cannot be presupposed that the act of conscience is something that, of its own nature, can be treated exhaustively by means of a rational psychology. We have, rather, to give priority to the assertion which conscience itself makes-that it is a voice of God. This view is not a contrivance of the intellect, it is a primary assertion of the phenomenon itself: a numinous imperative which from ancient times has been accorded a far higher authority than the human intellect. The daemon of Socrates was not the empirical person of Socrates. Conscience as such, if regarded objectively, without rationalistic assumptions, behaves like a God so far as its demands and authority are concerned, and asserts that it is God's voice. This assertion cannot be overlooked by an objective psychology, which must also include the irrational. Nor can it be pinned down to the question of truth, for this is unanswerable anyway and for epistemological reasons has long since become obsolete. Human knowledge has to be content with constructing models which are "probable"-it would be thoughtless presumption to demand more. For just as knowledge is not faith, so faith is not knowledge. We are concerned here with things that can be disputed, that is, with knowledge, but not with indisputable faith, which precludes critical discussion at the outset. The oft-repeated paradox "knowledge through faith" seeks in vain to bridge the gulf that separates the two. 
	854 	When, therefore, the psychologist explains genuine con- 
science as a collision of consciousness with a numinous archetype, he may be right. But he will have to add at once that the archetype per se) its psychoid essence, cannot be comprehended, that it possesses a transcendence which it shares with the unknown substance of the psyche in general. The mythical assertion of conscience that it is the voice of God is an inalienable part of its nature, the foundation of its numen. It is as much a phenomenon as conscience itself. 
	855 	In conclusion I would like to say that conscience is a psychic 
reaction which one can call moral because it always appears when the conscious mind leaves the path 'of custom, of the mores) or suddenly recollects it. Hence in the great majority of 
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cases conscience signifies primarily the reaction to a real or supposed deviation from the moral code, and is for the most part identical with the primitive fear of anything unusual, not customary, and hence "immoral." As this behaviour is instinctive and, at best, only partly the result of reflection, it may be "moral" but can raise no claim to being ethical. It deserves this qualification only when it is reflective, when it is subjected to conscious scrutiny. And this happens only when a fundamental doubt arises as between two possible modes of moral behaviour, that is to say in a conflict of duty. A situation like this can be "solved" only by suppressing one moral reaction, upon which one has not reflected till now, in favour of another. In this case the moral code will be invoked in vain, and the judging intellect finds itself in the position of Buridan's ass between two bundles of hay. Only the creative power of the ethos that expresses the whole man can pronounce the final judgment. Like all the creative faculties in man, his ethos flows empirically from two sources: from rational consciousness and from the irrational unconscious. It is a special instance of what I have called the transcendent function, which is the discursive co-operation of conscious and unconscious factors or, in theological language, of reason and grace. 
	856 	It is not the task of psychological understanding to broaden 
or to narrow the concept of conscience. "Conscience," in ordinary usage, means the consciousness of a factor which in the case of a "good conscience" affirms that a decision or an act accords with morality and, if it does not, condemns it as "immoral." This view, deriving as it does from the mores) from what is customary, can properly be called "moral." Distinct from this is the ethical form of conscience, which appears when two decisions or ways of acting, both affirmed to be moral and therefore regarded as "duties," collide with one another. In these cases, not foreseen by the moral code because they are mostly very individual, a judgment is required which cannot properly be called "moral" or in accord with custom. Here the decision has no custom at its disposal on which it could rely. The deciding factor appears to be something else: it proceeds not from the traditional moral code but from the unconscious foundation of the personality. The decision is drawn from dark and deep waters. It is true that these conflicts of duty are solved very 
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often and very conveniently by a decision in accordance with custom, that is, by suppressing one of the opposites. But this is not always so. If one is sufficiently conscientious the conflict is endured to the end, and a creative s.olution emerges which is produced by the constellated archetype and possesses that compelling authority not unjustly characterized as the voice of God. The nature of the solution is in accord with the deepest foundations of the personality as well as with its wholeness; it embraces conscious and unconscious and therefore transcends the ego. 
	857 	The concept and phenomenon of conscience thus contains, 
when seen in a psychological light, two different factors: on the one hand a recollection of, and admonition by, the mores)' on the other, a conflict of duty and its solution through the creation of a third standpoint. The first is the moral, and the second the ethical, aspect of conscience. 
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	858 	I would like to express my warmest thanks to Professor 
Seifert 2 for all he has said to us concerning the problem of the shadow. If I comply with yol)r wish to add a few words, it will be about the purely empirical aspect of good and evil which the therapist has to deal with as a concrete fact. I must confess that I always experience difficulties when discussing the problem of good and evil with philosophers or theologians. I have the impression that they are not talking about the thing itself, but only about words, about the concepts which denote or refer to it. We allow ourselves so easily to be deluded by words, we substitute words for the whole of reality. People talk to me about evil, or about good, and presume that I know what it is. But I don't. When someone speaks of good or evil, it is of what he calls good or evil, or what he feels as good or evil. Then he speaks about it with great assurance, not knowing whether it really is so or whether what he calls good or evil really corresponds to the facts. Perhaps the speaker's view of the world is not in keeping with the real facts at all, so that an inner, subjective picture is substituted for objectivity. 
	B59 	If we wish to come to an understanding about so complex a 
question as good and evil, we must start with the following proposition: good and evil are in themselves princiPles) and we must bear in mind that a principle exists long before us and extends far beyond us. 
1 [An extemporaneous address to the Stuttgarter Gemeinschaft "Arzt und See!· sorger," whose members travelled to Zurich to conduct the eighth annual meeting, upon which occasion Professor Jung met the group. A transcript prepared by Gebhard Frei was approved, with corrections, by the author and was first published in Gut und Base in der Psychotherapie (ed. by Wilhelm Bitter, Stuttgart, 1959), a report of the meeting. The present translation (here revised) appeared first in the Journal of Analytical Psychology (London), V (1960), 91-99·-EDlTORS.] 2 [Fried rich Seifert, of Munich, a participant in the meeting.] 
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	860 	When we speak of good and evil we are speaking concretely 
, of something whose deepest qualities are in reality unknown to us. Whether it is experienced as evil and sinful depends, furthermore, on our subjective judgment, as also does the extent and gravity of the sin. 
	861 	You probably know the joke about the father confessor in 
Texas, to whom a young man comes with an awfully long face. "What's the matter?" he inquires. "Something terrible has happened." "But what has happened?" "I've committed murder." "How many?" This shows how differently two people can experience the same fact, the same reality. I call a certain fact bad, often without being sure that it really is so. Some things seem to me bad, though in reality they are not. For instance, after dismissing a patient I have often wanted to kick myself because I thought I had done him an injustice. Perhaps I had been too brutal or did not tell him the right thing. Next time he comes he tells me: "That was a wonderful session-just what I needed to be told." The exact opposite can also happen: I think what an excellent session it has been, what a successful dream-interpretation-and then it turns out to be all wrong. 
	862 	Where do we get this belief, this apparent certainty, that we 
know what is good and what is bad? "Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and eviL" Only the gods know, not us. This is profoundly true in psychology. If you take the attitude: "This thing may be very bad-but on the other hand it may not," then you have a chance of doing the right thing. But if you already know in advance you are behaving as if you were a god. We are all only limited human beings and we do not know in any fundamental sense what is good and bad in a given case. We know it only abstractly. To see through a concrete situation to the bottom is God's affair alone. We may perhaps form an opinion about it but we do not know whether it is finally valid. At most we can say cautiously: judged by such and such a standard such and such a thing is good or evil. Something that appears evil to one nation may be regarded as good by another nation. This relativity of values applies also in the realm of aesthetics: a modern work of art is for one person of supreme value, for which he is ready to layout a large sum of money, whereas another person can make neither head nor tail of it. 
	863 	In spite of all this we cannot simply abstain from judgment. 
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865 
CiVILIZATION IN TRANSITION 
If we call good something that seems to us bad, we have in effect told a lie. If I tell someone, "What you have written is a masterpiece," thinking on the quiet that it is worth nothing, that is a lie. Maybe the lie has a positive effect on him for the moment, so that he feels flattered. But a really constructive effect is produced only when I give him the best, a positive recognition that springs from conviction, and give it moreover at the right moment. When we pass emphatic judgments we are in an emotional state of mind and are then least able to apply valid criteria. 
	864 	My attitude to this problem is empirical, not theoretical or 
aprioristic. When a patient comes to the therapist he has a conflict, and the question is then how to uncover this conflict situation, which very often is unconscious, and above all to find a way out of the conflict. Probably the only thing I can do is to tell myself cautiously: we don't know exactly what's up. It seems to be such and such-but may not another interpretation be given with equal right? The situation may seem rather negative at first, but then one comes to see that this is just what the patient was fated to run into. So I say at most: I hope to God I'm doing the right thing. It may perhaps be an emotionally excessive situation, when the patient, as Albertus Magnus says, is "in an excess of affect." If we look closely we shall see that good and evil are, as I said, princiPles. The word "principle" comes from prius, that which is "first" or "in the beginning." The ultimate principle we can conceive of is God. Principles, when reduced to their ultimates, are simply aspects of God. Good and evil are principles of our ethical judgment, but, reduced to their ontological roots, they are "beginnings," aspects of God, names for God. Whenever, therefore, in an excess of affect, in an emotionally excessive situation, I come up against a paradoxical fact or happening, I am in the last resort encountering an aspect of God, which I cannot judge logically and cannot conquer because it is stronger than me--because, in other words, it has a numinous quality and I am face to face with what Rudolf Otto calls the tremendum and fascinosum. I cannot "conquer" a numinosum, I can only open myself to it, let myself be overpow"ered by it, trusting in its meaning. A principle is always a supraordinate thing, mightier than I am. I cannot even "conquer" the ultimate principles of physics, they simply confront 
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me, loom over me, as sheer facts, as laws that "prevail." Here there is something that we cannot conquer. 
If I say in an excess of affect, "This is a rotten wine" or 
"This fellow is a dirty dog," I shall hardly be in a position to know whether these judgments are right. Another person might judge the same wine and the same man quite differently. We know only the surfaces of things, only how they appear to us,and so we must be very modest. How often have I wished to get rid-so it seemed to me-of some absolutely harmful tendency in a patient, and yet in a deeper sense he was perfectly right to follow it. I want, for instance, to warn somebody of the deadly danger he is running into. If I am successful I think it was a fine therapeutic achievement. Afterwards I see-if he did not take my advice-that it was just the right thing for him to run into this danger. And this raises the question: did he not have to be in danger of death? If he had dared nothing, if he had not risked his life, perhaps he would have been poorer by a supremely important experience. He would never have risked his 
life and therefore would never have gained it. 
So in the matter of good and evil, one can, as a therapist, only hope that one is getting the facts straight, though one can never be sure. As a therapist I cannot, in any given case, deal with the problem of good and evil philosophically but can only approach it empirically. But because I take an empirical attitude it does not mean that I relativize good and evil as such. I see very clearly: this is evil, but the paradox is just that for this particular person in this particular situation at this particular stage of development it may be good. Contrariwise, good at the wrong moment in the wrong place may be the worst thing possible. If it were not like this everything would be so simpletoo simple. If I make no a priori judgments and listen to the facts as they are, then I do not always know beforehand what is good for the patient and what is bad. So many factors are involved, but we cannot yet see their meaning, they appear to us veiled in the shadow, and only afterwards does light penetrate the veil. What appears "in the shadow" of the Old Testament is revealed in the New Testament in the light of truth. 
	867 	So it is in psychology. It is presumptuous to think we can 
always say what is good or bad for the patient. Perhaps he knows something is really bad and does it anyway and then gets a bad 
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conscience. From the therapeutic, that is to say the empirical, point of view, this may be very good indeed for him. Perhaps he has to experience the power of evil and suffer accordingly, because only in that way can he give up his Pharisaic attitude to other people. Perhaps fate or the unconscious or God-call it what you will-had to give him a hard knock and roll him in the dirt, because only such a drastic experience could strike home, pull him out of his infantilism, and make him more mature. How can anyone find out how much he needs to be saved if he is quite sure that there is nothing he needs saving from? He sees his own shadow, his crookedness, but he turns his eyes away, does not confront himself, does not come to terms with himself, risks nothing-and then boasts before God and his fellows of his spotless white garment, which in reality he owes only to his cowardice, his regression, his super-angelic perfectionism. And instead of being ashamed, he stands in the front row of the temple and thanks God he is not as other men. 
	~68 	Such a person thinks he is justified because he knows what 
wrong is and avoids it. Consequently it never becomes a content of his actual life and he does not know from what he needs to be saved. Even the apocryphal saying: "Man, if thou knowest what thou dost, thou art blessed, but if thou knowest not, thou art accursed and a transgressor of the law," only gives us half a chance. A man who knows what he is doing when he commits evil may have a chance of being blessed, but in the meantime he is in hell. For the evil you do, even when you do it knowingly, is still evil and works accordingly. Yet if you had not taken this step, if you had not trodden this path, perhaps it would have been a psychic regression, a retrograde step in your inner development, a piece of infantile cowardice. Whoever thinks that by "knowing what you do" you guard against sin or save yourself from sin is wrong; on the contrary, you have steeped yourself in sin. But this saying is so paradoxical that it is terribly shocking to our ordinary feelings. The Church, however, knows of this paradox when she speaks of the felix culPa of our first parents (in the Liturgy for Easter Eve). If they had not sinned there would have been no felix culPa to bring after it the still greater miracle of the redemption. Nevertheless, evil remains evil. There is nothing for it but to accustom ourselves to thinking in paradoxes. 
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	869 	Without wishing it, we human beings are placed in situa- 
tions in which the great "principles" entangle us in something, in which God leaves it to us to find a way out. Sometimes a clear path is opened with his help, but when it really comes to the point one has the feeling of having been abandoned by every good spirit. In critical situations the hero always mislays his weapon, and at such moments, as before death, we are confronted with the nakedness of this fact. And one does not know how one got there. A thousand twists of fate all of a sudden land you in such a situation. This is symbolically represented by ]acob's fight with the angel at the ford. Here a man can do nothing but stand his ground. It is a situation that challenges him to react as a whole man. Then it may turn out that he can no longer keep to the letter of the moral law. That is where his most personal ethics begin: in grim confrontation with the Absolute, in striking out on a path condemned by current morality and the guardians of the law. And yet he may feel that he has never been truer to his innermost nature and vocation, and hence never nearer to the Absolute, because he alone and the Omniscient have seen the actual situation as it were from inside, whereas the judges and condemners see it only from outside. 
	870 	There is a well-known story of the young man who attained 
his majority. His father said to him: "Now you are twenty. Ordinary people stick to the Bible and what the parson says. The more intelligent mind the penal code." In other words: you are caught between "official" religion and civic morality. When your own conscience collides with them your most personal ethical decisions begin, in full consciousness of your creative freedom either to observe the moral code or not. I may, for instance, get into a situation where, in order to keep a professional secret, I have to lie. It would be futile to shrink from this with the excuse that I am a "moral" man. To the devil with such self-respect! 
	871 	I am telling you all this in order to make my attitude in 
practice clear. I do not see it is my job to discuss these things philosophically. For me they are practical matters. Of course I am also interested in their philosophical aspect, but philosophy bUtters no parsnips. The reality of good and evil consists in things and situations that happen to you, that are too big for 
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you, where you are always as if facing death. Anything that comes upon me with this intensity I experience as numinous, no matter whether I call it divine or devilish or just "fate." Something stronger than oneself, invincible, is at work and one is up against it. The trouble is that we are so accustomed to thinking these problems out until everything is as clear as twice two makes four. But in practice it does not work like that, we do not reach a solution in principle as to how we should always act. To want one is wrong. It is the same here as with the laws of nature, which we also think of as valid everywhere. Conventional morality is exactly like classical physics: a statistical truth, a statistical wisdom. The modern physicist knows that causality is a statistical truth, but in practice he will always ask what law is valid in this particular case. So it is in the realm of morality. We should not be misled into thinking we have said something absolutely valid when we pass judgment on a particular case: this is bad, this is good. Often we have to pass judgments, we can't get out of it. Perhaps we may even say the truth, hit the mark. But to regard our judgments as absolutely valid would be nonsensical; it would mean wanting to be like God. Often even the person doing the action does not discern its inner moral quality, the sum of all the conscious and unconscious motives underlying it, and how much less those who judge the action but see it only from the outside, only its appearance, not its deepest essence. Kant rightly requires the individual and society to advance from an "ethic of action" to an "ethic of conviction." But to see into the ultimate depths of the conviction behind the action is possible only to God. Our judgment, therefore, as to what is good or evil in practice will have to be very cautious and modest, not so apodictic, as though we could see into all the darkest corners. Ideas of morality are often as widely divergent as are views on what constitutes a delicacy for the Eskimo and for ourselves. 
	872 	My attitude, it may be objected, is empirical in the extreme, 
but we need such an attitude in order to find a solution. When we observe how people behave when they are faced with a situation that has to be evaluated ethically, we become aware of a strange double effect: suddenly they see both sides. They become aware not only of their moral inferiorities but also, automatically, of their good qualities. They rightly say, "I can't be as 
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bad as all that." To confront a person with his shadow is to show him his own light. Once one has experienced a few times what it is like to stand judgingly between the opposites, one begins to understand what is meant by the self. Anyone who perceives his shadow and his light simultaneously sees himself from two sides and thus gets in the middle. 
	873 	That is the secret of the Eastern attitude: observing the 
opposites teaches the Easterner the character of Maya. It gives reality the glint of illusion. Behind the opposites and in the opposites is true reality, which sees and comprehends the whole. The Indian calls this Atman. Reflecting on ourselves we can say, "I am he who speaks good and evil," or better, "I am he through whom good and evil are spoken. The one who is in me, who voices the principles, uses me as a means of expression. He speaks through me." This corresponds to what the Indian calls Atman-that which, figuratively speaking, "breathes through" me. Not through me alone, but through all; for it is not only the individual Atman but Atman-Purusha, the universal Atman, the pneuma, who breathes through all. We use the word "self" for this, contrasting it with the little ego. From what I have said it will be clear that this self is not just a rather more conscious or intensified ego, as the words "self-conscious," "self-satisfied," etc. might lead one to suppose. What is meant by the self is not only in me but in all beings, like the Atman, like Tao. It is psychic totality. 
	874 	It is a misunderstanding to accuse me of having made out 
of this an "immanent God" or a "God-substitute." I am an empiricist and as such I can demonstrate empirically the existence of a totality supraordinate to consciousness. Consciousness experiences this supraordinate totality as something numinous, as a tremendum or jascinosum. As an empiricist I am interested only in the experiential character of this totality, which in itself, ontologically considered, is indescribable. This "self" never at any time takes the place of God, though it may perhaps be a vessel for divine grace. Such misunderstandings arise from the assumption that I am an irreligious man who does not believe in God and just needs to be shown the way to belief. 
	875 	In the history of Indian philosophy, too, there have been 
constant attempts not to identify the Atman with the monistically conceived Brahman (the Absolute Ground of all being), 
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for instance in Ramanuja as opposed to Shankara, or in BhaktiYoga; and Aurobindo thinks that the Indian of today has advanced so far from the level of unconsciousness to conscious realization that his Absolute can no longer have the character of a merely unconscious, impersonal cosmic force. But these are no longer questions for the pure empiricist. As an empiricist I can at least establish that the Easterner like the Westerner is lifted out of the play of Maya, or the play of the opposites, through the experience of the Atman, the "self," the higher totality. He knows that the world consists of darkness and light. I can master their polarity only by freeing myself from them by contemplating both, and so reaching a middle position. Only there am I no longer at the mercy of the opposites. 
[lung's talk appears to have ended here. Then followed an un· recorded question, evidently concerning the East.-EDITORS.] 
	876 	We have a false picture of the East. From the East comes the 
humorous question: Who takes longer to be saved, the man who loves God or the man who hates him? Naturally we expect that the man who hates God takes much longer. But the Indian says: 
If he loves God, it takes seven years, but if he hates him only three. For the man who hates God thinks much more about him. What ruthless subtlety! But the question is absolutely right the way it is meant. It is a sort of quiz question which may be put to the educated public but not to a peasant. 
	877 	This story reminds me of something I saw in Ceylon. Two 
peasants had got their carts stuck in a narrow street. One can imagine what a flood of vituperation this would have let loose here in Switzerland. But what actually happened there was this: 
They bowed to each other and said: "Passing disturbance, no soul." That is to say the disturbance takes place only outwardly, in the realm of Maya, and not in the realm of true reality, where it neither happened nor left a mark. One might think this almost unbelievable in such simple people. One stands amazed. But this attitude is so ingrained in them that they take it for granted. Richard Wilhelm witnessed much the same thing. Two rickshaw boys were having a fearful argument. Wilhelm thought they were going to let fly with their fists at any moment, and that blood would flow. Just then one of them rushed at the other- 
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but rushed past him and aimed a mighty kick at the wheel of his rickshaw, and that was the end of the argument. I myself saw two boys quarrelling and fighting with their fists, but the fists always stopped in the air, a few centimetres from the face, and no harm was done. That comes from the way these boys were brought up: it was Ceylon, where the old Buddhism still rules. It is a moral education that has become a habit, and there is nothing especially meritorious about it. 
	878 	Now, ladies and gentlemen, have you any further questions? 
[A question was asked about the devil and his special reality today, since every epoch has its own peculiar devil.] 
	879 	The devil nowadays is something quite frightful! If you look 
at our situation you just cannot see where it will end. Things will go on like this as if by force. All the divine powers in creation are gradually being placed in man's hands. Through nuclear fission something tremendous has happened, tremendous power has been given to man. When Oppenheimer saw the first test of an atomic bomb the words of the Bhagavad Gita flashed into his mind: "Brighter than a thousand suns." The forces that hold the fabric of the world together have got into the hands of man, so that he even has the idea of making an artificial sun. God's powers have passed into our hands, our fallible human hands. The consequences are inconceivable. The powers themselves are not evil, but in the hands of man they are an appalling danger-in evil hands. Who says that the evil in the world we live in, that is right in front of us, is not real! Evil is terribly real, for each and every individual. If you regard the principle of evil as a reality you can just as well call it the devil. I personally find it hard to believe that the idea of the privatio boni still holds water. 
[What should the psychotherapist do? Should he give the patient a hint of how to deal with evil, or should he urge the patient to find out for himself?] 
	880 	You are tempting me to lay down a rule. But I would rather 
advise: do the one thing or do the other according to circumStances, and in your therapeutic work do not act on any a priori, 
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but in each case listen to what the concrete situation demands. Let that be your only a priori. For instance, a patient is still so unconscious that you simply cannot take up an attitude towards his problems. He identifies himself, like a psychotic, with his unconscious and would rather regard the analyst as crazy than understand his own inner situation. Try telling a completely unconscious mother, a sort of Kali Durga, who considers herself the best mother in the world, that she is to blame for the neurosis of her elder daughter and the unhappy marriage of her younger daughter-then you will hear something! And above all: the patient is not helped. Something must grow from inside her. Another patient has reached a certain level of consciousness and expects orientation from you. It would then be a great mistake not to make your attitude clear. The right thing must be said at the right time in the right place. 
	881 	A patient should not be regarded as an inferior being whom 
one lays on a couch while one sits behind him like a god, letting a word drop now and then. Everything suggestive of illness should be avoided. The patient is tending in this direction anyway and would like nothing better than to take refuge in illness: " ... now I can give up, now I must just lie there, now I am good and sick." Illness too is a solution of sorts, a way of disposing of life's problems: "I am ill, now the doctor must help!" As a therapist I mustn't be naive. Unless the patient should really be in bed he should be treated like a normal person, indeed like a partner. That provides a sound basis for the treatment. People often come to me expecting me to let loose some medical magic. Then they are disappointed when I treat them as normal people and myself act like a normal man. One patient had experienced only the strong silent god sitting behind the couch. As soon as I began to talk to her she said astonished, almost horrified: "But you're expressing your affects, you're even telling me what you think!" Naturally I have affects and show them. Nothing is more important than this: every human being should be taken as a real human being and treated according to his peculiarities. 
	882 	Therefore I say to the young psychotherapist: Learn the 
best, know the best-and then forget everything when you face the patient. No one has yet become a good surgeon by learnin.g the text-book~ off by heart. Yet the danger that faces us today IS 
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'that the whole of reality will be replaced by words. This accounts for that terrible lack of instinct in modern man, particularly the city-dweller. He lacks all contact with the life and breath of nature. He knows a rabbit or a cow only from the illustrated paper, the dictionary, or the movies, and thinks he knows what it is really like-and is then amazed that cowsheds "smell," because the dictionary didn't say so. It is the same with the danger of making a diagnosis. One knows that this disease is treated by So-and-so in chapter seventeen, and one thinks that this is the important thing. But the poor patient goes on suffering. 
	883 	People speak sometimes of "overcoming" evil. But have we 
the power to overcome it? It should be remembered, first, that "good" and "evil" are only our judgment in a given situation, or, to put it differently, that certain "principles" have taken possession of our judgment. Secondly, it is often impossible to speak of overcoming evil, because at such times we are in a "closed" situation, in an aporia, where whatever we choose is not good. The important thing is to be aware that we are then in a numinous situation, surrounded on all sides by God, who can bring about either the one or the other and often does. There are plenty of examples of this in the Old Testament. Or think of Teresa of Avila when she had a mishap on a journey: the coach broke down while crossing a small river and she fell into the icy water. "Lord, how can you permit such things?" "Well, that's how I treat my friends." "Aha, that's why you have so few!" Teresa had got into a situation where evil-in this case physical evil-was done to her; she did not know how to integrate it, but nevertheless felt God's immediate presence. That is how the "principles," the "primordial powers," approach a person-they put him in a numinous situation where there is no rational solution, where he does not feel himself the maker and master of the situation, but rather that it is God. No one can then foresee what will happen. Often we cannot say in such situations how the problem of good and evil will work out. We 
8 have to put our trust in the higher powers. 
	84 	If I am faced with this problem in analysis I may say: "Well, 
let's wait and see what the dreams turn up, or whether higher powers will intervene, perhaps through illness or death. In any case don't decide. You and I are not God." 
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In making the shadow conscious we must be very careful that the unconscious does not play yet another trick and prevent a real confrontation with the shadow. A patient may see the darkness in himself for a moment, but the next moment he tells himself that it is not so bad after all, a mere bagatelle. Or else h~ exaggerates his remorse, because it is so nice to have such a wonderful remorseful feeling, to enjoy it like a warm eiderdown on a cold winter's morning when one should be getting up. This dishonesty, this refusal to see, ensures that there will be no confrontation with the shadow. Yet if there were a confrontation, then with increasing consciousness the good and the positive features would come to light tbo. We must therefore beware of the danger of wallowing in affects-remorse, melancholy, etc.-because they are seductive. It is easy enough to pride oneself on being able to feel such beautiful_ regrets. That is why people love plays, films, or preachers that move them to tears, because they can then enjoy their own emotions. 
In the course of our discussion we heard the word "esoteric." 3 It is said, for instance, that the psychology of the unconscious leads to an esoteric form of ethics. But we have to be careful in using such a word. Esotericism means mystification. Yet we never know the real secrets, even the so-called esotericists do not know them. Esotericists-at least earlier-were supposed not to reveal their secrets. But the real secrets cannot be revealed. Nor is it possible to make an "esoteric" science out of them, for the simple reason that they are not known. What are called esoteric secrets are mostly artificial secrets, not real ones. Man needs to have secrets, and since he has no notion of the real ones he fakes them. But the real ones come to him out of the depths of the unconscious, and then he may reveal things which he ought really to have kept secret. Here again we see the numinous character of the reality in the background. It is not we who have secrets, it is the real secrets that have us. 
8 [Presumably in one of the other talks in this symposium.-EDIToRS.] 
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INTRODUCTION TO TONI WOLFF'S "STUDIES IN JUNGIAN PSYCHOLOGY" 1 
In writing this introduction I am discharging a debt of 
thanks: the author of the essays printed in this volume was my friend and collaborator for more than forty years, until her untimely death in 1953, at the age of sixty-five. She took an active part in all phases of the development of analytical psychology, and to her we owe the expression "complex psychology" as a designation for this field of research. Her collaboration was not confined to working out practical methods of analysis and to the task of theoretical formulation, both of which have found visible expression in the published material. She also helped me to carry out, over a period of forty years, a "silent experiment" in group psychology, an experiment which constitutes the life of the Psychological Club in Zurich. 
This small group of thirty to seventy members was founded in 1916, and it owes its existence to the realization that analytical treatment (including the "psychoanalytic" method) is a dialectical process between two individuals, and therefore gives results which are necessarily onesided from the collective and social point of view. The individual ,personality of the analyst represents only one of the infinite possibilities of adaptation which life offers as well as demands. This should not be taken to mean that analysis is a discussion between two individuals who are, at bottom, hopelessly incommensurable, or is nothing more than an approximation between them. Human personality is certainly not individual only, it is also collective, and to such a degree that the individual is rather like an underprivileged minority. Every so-called normal person represents the species Homo saPiens and can therefore be regarded as the measure of things human, or as a general example of human 
1 [Translated from the Vorrede to Toni Wolff, Studien Ztt C. G. lungs Psychologie (Zurich, 1959), pp. 7-14.-EDITORS.] 
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behaviour. For this reason, a large part of the analytical work takes place on levels which are common to all, or at any rate most, individuals, and which do not require the discussion of individual differences. The longer the discussion is intentionally restricted to what is common, collective, and average-that is, to theoretical suppositions-the closer it comes to the dangerpoint where the specifically individual features of the patient are suppressed. 
	889 	Thanks to her high natural intelligence and quite excep- 
tional psychological insight, the author was one of the first to recognize the extraordinary importance of this psychotherapeutic problem, and devoted herself to it with particular zeal. For many years she was president of the Club and so had a unique opportunity to collect observations on group psychology. For in a group we see operating all those psychic events which are never constellated by an individual, or may even be unintentionally suppressed. A male analyst, for example, can never constellate the reactions which a woman would release if she were in his place. These modes of behaviour therefore remain latent; or if they appear at all, there is no critical eye to separate the wheat from the chaff. At best they remain hanging in mid-air as theoretical speculations; they are not experienced as realities and so cannot be recognized for what they are. Only what the analyst has become conscious of through his own experience can become an object for psychological discussion. Other objects, which may be put up for discussion by the patient should they reach his consciousness, come to grief on the unconsciousness of the analyst at this particular point. If he can divest himself of his authority, he may be able to compensate for his own defective experience by the experience of another. But there is always a danger that he will counter the psychological reality by some schematic theorem, because his fear of feeling inferior prevents him from admitting his defect. This danger is particularly great for the analyst, who is always expected to show authority. As a result, it happens all too easily that the balance between theoretical prejudice and uncritical acceptance can no longer be preserved, so that the analyst is unable to distinguish between justified and unjustified resistances on the part of his patient. 
	890 	This problem, a very important one in practice, led the 
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INTRODUCTION TO WOLFF'S "STUDIES" 
author to pay particular attention to the typical modes of behaviour, especially of women. As every intelligent person knows, a typology of this sort does not aim in the least at a statistical classification; its purpose is to afford insight into the structure of normal modes of behaviour. These are typical forms of reaction whose existence is quite justified, and which should not be regarded as pathological merely because the analyst belongs to a different type. A typology is therefore designed, first and foremost, as an aid to a psychological critique of knowledge. Empirical psychology is so rich that one can set up hundreds of typological criteria without necessarily endowing anyone of them with special significance, unless it happened to be a particularly common and instructive criterion. The valuable thing here is the critical attempt to prevent oneself from taking one's own prejudices as the criterion of normality. Unfortunately, this happens only too easily; for instance, extraversion is "norma!," but introversion is pathological auto-eroticism. 
	891 	Her study of the difficulties that arise in a group provided 
the author with a mass of empirical material of which she made valuable use. Like the individual, a group is influenced by numerous typical factors, such as the family milieu, society, politics, outlook on life, religion. The bigger the group, the more the individuals composing it function as a collective entity, which is so powerful that it can reduce individual consciousness to the point of extinction, and it does this the more easily if the individual lacks spiritual possessions of his own with an individual stamp. The group and what belongs to it cover up the lack of genuine individuality, just as parents act as substitutes for everything lacking in their children. In this respect the group exerts a seductive influence, for nothing is easier than a perseveration of infantile ways or a return to them. Only the man who knows how to acquire spiritual possessions of his own is proof against this danger. 
	892 	Group observations have confirmed over and over again that 
the group subtly entices its members into mutual imitation and dependence, thereby holding out the promise of sparing them a painful confrontation with themselves. People still do not :ealize that fate will reach them all the same, if not directly then Indirectly. A State that protects us from everything also takes aWay from us everything that makes life worth living. We need 
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897 
896 
893 
894 
895 

CIVILIZATION IN TRANSITION 
not stress the social advantages of living in a group, let alone the necessary and vital protection afforded by society. They are known to everyone. On the other hand, nobody likes or dares to mention in so many words the negative effects of group-existence, because this might bring up the frightening problem of self-knowledge and individuation. In any analytical treatment that seeks to be a psychological process of dialectic between two individuals the odious question is bound to arise: What is mine and what is thine? 
The answer to this question necessitates a thorough examina- 
tion of psychic contents, of meanings and values, on a plane beyond the collective "should" and "must." A much needed consideration of what is essential to the individual proves to be the first task, for no one can get anywhere near independence unless he is conscious of his own singularity. Belief in general rules and precepts will never make a man anything more than a collective being, whereas in reality he is an individual different from others and should therefore be in possession of his own individual consciousness. Without the physical and spiritual possessions that go with this he is in danger of being submerged in the collective. As this runs counter to the specific, biological urge of man to develop an individually differentiated consciousness, a great variety of injurious effects may be produced. 
The more "scientific" our education attempts to be, the more it orients itself by general precepts and thus suppresses the individual development of the child. One of these general precepts states: "The individuality of the child should be taken into account and protected." 
This principle, praiseworthy in itself, is reduced to absurdity 
in practice if the numerous peculiarities of the child are not adjusted to the values of the collectivity. One is then protecting and developing merely the peculiarities, without considering whether they will be useful or harmful to the child later on in social life. He is being robbed of the important experience that peculiarities are not admissible just because he has them. Their differentiation and evaluation demand so much tact, experience, and sense of values on the part of the educator that the above precept cannot be realized without danger to the pupil. It is very likely that too general an application of the principle will produce unadapted individualists rather than individuals 
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capable of adaptation. The former are ruled by a ruthless ego, but the latter recognize the existence of factors which are equal if not superior to their own will. 
The possession of individual peculiarities is neither a merit 
nor, in itself, a valuable gift of nature. It is "just one of those things," and it becomes significant only to the degree that consciousness reflects upon it, evaluates it, and subjects it to ethical decision. The authority needed for this is represented by the educator. It has to be supposed that he himself really is such an authority. But he can become so only when he has accomplished the act of self-knowledge on himself. Otherwise children are the first to find out that he merely talks) but is not. He has a right to peculiarities only if he has earned them, and only by earning them does he possess authority, in other words, self-reliance and individuality. These can never be obtained by mollycoddling one's own desires. 
These educational commonplaces seem to have been gener- 
ally forgotten today. Ignorance of them is one of the chief causes of the terrifying increase in juvenile delinquency. Since nobody is educated by general precepts and by giving peculiarities free rein, the young person loses all sense for authority and thus falls a victim to his inner chaos of undifferentiated values. The development of his personality comes to a standstill, he feels himself to be suppressed, robbed of his individual nature. That is why, paradoxically, the juvenile delinquent struggles to regain his birthright, and even goes to the length of committing a crime in order to take by force something that shall be irrevocably "his." It is a collective protest against the levelling platitudes of the so-called scientific view of the world, and against the destruction of the instinctual and emotional forces which 
results from it. 
The spiritual and moral value of a group is measured by the average value of its individual members. If they are without value, then no group ideal can help. Group experiences therefore always lead back to the question of the value of the individual and his development. 
	899 	The author of these essays accordingly turned her attention 
to the psychic contents of the individuals composing a group, and to the discussion of them for the purpose of intensifying 
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CIVILIZATION IN TRANSITION 
consciousness. The peculiar nature of discussions of this kind, which the layman often finds very puzzling, is due to the fact that they are not philosophical in the conventional sense, but are psychological. That is to say, they are concerned with the affects, emotions, and values of individuals, and their subjectmatter is taken not from the abstract world of concepts but from everyday life, from the experiences, dreams, and fantasies of individual human beings. The discussion tries to bring order into this chaos of disconnected and uncomprehended details by examining their unknown connections with the human mind in general in the light of consciousness, so far as this is possible with the help of understanding and of our present means of communication. This therapeutic activity is naturally not philosophy in the current sense of the word, even though those who are not familiar with the psychological material always make the mistake of confusing purely empirical and pragmatic terms with philosophical concepts, or of taking them as metaphysical assertions. 
	900 	For anyone who knows the material these essays are uncom- 
monly instructive and stimulating. They will tell the educated layman many things about which the learned specialists have little to say. They are answers to questions which affect the psyche of our contemporaries far more closely than those given by the academic specialist. Though the latter would certainly do well, in the interests of scientific objectivity, to exclude from his work all feeling-values, and, in particular, all subjective reactions and excursions into neighbouring territories in which he himself is a layman, the psychologist is ill-advised to disregard the emotional connections and analogies which are the essence of psychic life. In order to sketch an adequate picture of psychic events, and of the manifold connections between them, he must stress just those aspects which the specialist anxiously excludes from his field of study. An empirical psychology of complex phenomena therefore occupies a difficult position in the world of specialism. Whereas the specialist, guided by general principles, pushes forward to an ever more exact understanding of the smallest details, the empirical psychologist has to start from a very limited field in which he himself is the only expert-an expert, that is to say, in his personal knowledge of himself. But 
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INTRODUCTION TO WOLFF'S "STUDIES" 
- 
even here he will find it exceedingly difficult to rid himself of 
the prejudice that what he is practising is some kind of "objective psychology." If he really has any talent in this respect, he will soon discover that he is surrounded by a number of similar experts who all have assumptions of their own and, like him, are inclined to regard their personal prejudices as generally valid psychological knowledge. Empirical knowledge, however, is composed of numerous individual observations by numerous individual observers, who have previously assured themselves of the identity of their methods of observation as well as of the objects observed. Because complex psychic phenomena are amenable to experimental methods only in minimal degree, we have to depend on descriptions of them, and can attempt to interpret them only by means of amplification and comparison. This procedure is the exact opposite of what the specialist is at pains to achieve. He wants to know the object in its truest essence and in all its peculiarity; whereas the comparative psychologist, in order to understand its irrational and apparently accidental details, must not fight shy even of the most obvious and superficial analogies, however fortuitous they may seem, because they serve as bridges for psychic associations. Just as he horrifies the philosopher who has no interest in psychology by what must seem to him a special brand of inferior philosophy, so he annoys the scientific specialist unacquainted with psychotherapeutic problems by the inexactitude and superficiality of his "fantastic" analogies. vVhat then must he expect of the theologian, whose propositions he blasphemously regards as "statements" of the psyche, i.e., as psychic products, reducing them to the same level as the statements of other religions, 
which are one and all erroneous? 
Psychological treatment, taken in its widest sense, seeks the values that satisfy the psychic needs of contemporary man, so that he shall not fall victim to the destructive influence of mass psychology. Words like "should" and "must" are useless remedies that have long since lost their efficacy. In order to find a proper remedy we need a knowledge of the real and whole man, and this is not possible without taking account of all those spheres of knowledge which immediately affect him and his conduct of life. 
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	902 	Several of the essays in this volume bear witness to the efforts 
which the author has made in this regard. They are visible examples of the endeavour of complex psychology to fill the gap which the invasion of the natural sciences has created in the higher education of man. 
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VII 
REVIEWS AND SHORT ARTICLES 

THE SvVISS LINE IN THE EUROPEAN SPECTRUM 1 
	gO!} 	Count Keyserling is a phenomenon that needs to be judged 
with extreme caution. On no account should one think the judgment final; the phenomenon is far too complex. There is no merit in stressing its darker aspects, for they fairly leap to the eye. Moreover, so much light emanates from Keyserling that one wonders whether these shadows are not an integTal part of him-not just a physical concomitant, so to speak, but the necessary condition for his peculiar intuitive capacity. Light presupposes darkness. Darkness fosters vision, obscurity demands clarification, diversity calls for unity and discord for harmony. 
	g04 	It is easy to poke fun at Keyserling as an aristocrat who peers 
at the world through a monocle. Keyserling is not to be taken as a joke, though he himself suffers from the delusion that his book was written with a sense of humour. I do not find his book humorous; his style is mordant, and often one hears the crack of a whip. Instead of evoking hearty laughter it makes one think. What Keyserling calls humour is a light, jesting, sometimes brilliant manner, but cold to the touch and lacking in geniality, a cavalier wit-in short, a mock-humour. His humour is put on; it is one of the many ways of lending wings to his intuition and keeping it soaring high above the weltering darkness; a pardonable attempt to lighten what is, at bottom, an extremely difficult task. The thoughtful reader will not misunderstand this alleged joker, for he will guess that the book is Keyserling himself, in the act of approaching the earth from afar, and Europe in particular. 
1 [First published as "Die Bedeutung der schweizerischen Linie im Spektrum Europas," Neue Schweizer Rundschau (Zurich), XXIV (21st year), (1928), 6, I-H, 469-'79. The article is in effect a review of Count Hennann Keyserling's Das Spektrum Europas [The Spectrum of Europe] (Heidelberg, 1928), trans. by Maurice Samuel as Europe (New York and London, 1928). The quotations in the present version are trans. from the original.-EDITORS.] 
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What! Take Keyserling seriously? Regardless of his own different personal opinion, I think we should be well advised not to treat him with levity and shrug off his book as a "humorous one." His attempt to get a bird's-eye view of Europe is no mean achievement. The chief value and meaning of the book, as I see it, is that it gives clear expression to the need for the intellectual today to wean himself from the purely rational point of view. It bears witness to a psychological reality which has vanished from sight ever since the days of a common Latin language, the one universal Christian Church, and a universal Gothic style, so completely that one never even thinks of it. Keyserling advocates a return to a psychological view of the world, where nations are seen as functions, as the various activities and expressions of the one, great, indivisible man. This view is tremendously idealistic, not to say "metaphysical," and is indisputable proof of Keyserling's remoteness from the earth. The stand he has taken has the undeniable character of spirituality, with all the advantages and disadvantages this entails. 
In order to proclaim these welcome tidings, Keyserling needs his world-scorning, aristocratic stance, as it gives him the necessary elevation, distance, and solitude. If he should need a monocle as well, I would not hold it against him, for I know what ulterior purpose it serves. Even the "megalomania" of which he has so often been accused (though in this book of Keyserling's it expresses itself in much milder form than in his other writings) is an excusable adjunct, being nothing other than a somewhat too convulsive effort to hold his own against the whole world. It is a declaration flung in the face of nothingness, incomprehensible only to those who have never lost their foothold on the earth. Megalomania simply keeps one's courage up; otherwise it signifies nothing. 
Keyserling hails from the far-away regions of the spirit, hence he has trouble in understanding what he sees on earth. He talks such a lot about "meaning" only because he is looking for it. And one certainly has to look for it, for at first one sees only nonsense, especially in our present-day world. It is, indeed, extremely difficult to glimpse a meaning anywhere. And the search for it is hopelessly complicated by the fact that there are far too many "meanings" already-millions of short-lived, short-sighted, short-winded ad hoc meanings which seem uncommonly sensible 
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to all who are struck with them, the more so the more senseless they are. This dreary spectacle becomes quite dismaying when we turn our gaze from the limited and less lugubrious sphere of the individual and see it parading as the alleged "soul of the nation." Keyserling is condemned to begin at the most senseless and hopeless end-with an attempt to understand the national psyche. Every harsh word, every crack of the whip, every distortion of judgment becomes fully understandable as an involuntary expression of his irritation and impatience with this thankless, tightly knotted, refractory material. Keyserling has to boast of being a Russian, a German, a Frenchman as well as a BaIt; he has to name himself in one breath with Napoleon, Socrates, and Genghis Khan in order to escape the thousand tentacles of the national psyche and be able to think and judge. He cannot allow himself to belong to any nation, not even to the human race. He is neither "human" nor "inhuman," he is a unique phenomenon. Unfortunately, psychology has no acceptable name for this quality, but at any rate it is one which enables Keyserling to see humanity from the outside. 
This cosmic view of humanity-to use a term that suits his comet-like psychology-comprehensive though it is, is limited by the earth's visibility. It is confined to daylight, and takes no account of things that are under the earth. Whatever may be perceived on the broad surface, Keyserling sees brilliantly. The chapters on Italy and Holland are superb. With regard to France, he has hit the nail on its head (which is Paris), but the Frenchman buried in the countryside remains invisible, essential though he is to the picture. In Spain Keyserling saw, no doubt correctly, the still surviving Gothic man, without naming him as such. That part of the Englishman which is hidden in the earth and sea has received the name of the "beast-man"not very complimentary, but objectively correct. Somehow I am not satisfied with his Germany, but I know of no one who could have made a better job of it. Austria has planted her cosy culture very evidently in Vienna; as an Alpine country she is stuck in the earth and for Keyserling invisible. Russia, Rumania, Hungary, Greece, and Turkey I know nothing of from personal experience. 
And now for Switzerland, which concerns us so closely and so painfully! Undeniably, Switzerland comes off worst. Keyser481 

CIVILIZATION IN TRANSITION 
ling has named me, together with Herr Badrutt of St. Moritz, the model Swiss, which must have astonished and delighted Herr Badrutt even more than it did me. However, I deserve this elevation in status probably less than he does, seeing that I have been Swiss for some five hundred years only on my mother's side, but on my father's side only for one hundred and six years (as C. A. Bernoulli pointed out in the Easier N achrichten when my familytree was questioned). I must therefore beg the reader to see my "relatively Swiss" attitude as the result of my little more than hundred-year-old Swiss nationality. 
	10 	I admit unblushingly that Keyserling's criticism of the 
visible Swiss character, however harsh and fault-finding, is absolutely true. The fewer illusions we have in this respect the better for us. We ought to know how we look from the outside, and we should be grateful that he has been so unsparing. It is unfortunately impossible to deny that to every unpleasant sentence he has written about us, we could add at least half a dozen highly illustrative examples from our daily experience.2 It is indeed an unedifying picture which he has painted of our Switzerland. The good things he mentions pale into insignificance beside the bad. I must own that I felt insulted and irritated by some of them. This is because willy-nilly we identify ourselves with the nation, chalking up its supposed good qualities to our own account, and attributing our own bad qualities to others. This unconscious symbiosis is practically unavoidable, but it has the disadvantage that the more we hide behind the nation the less conscious we are of ourselves. As soon, therefore, as I became aware of my ruffled national pride, I read the chapter on Switzerland as though Keyserling had been writing about me personally, and behold! my irritation vanished. 
	,ll 	It became clear to me that when I took his criticism person- 
ally, I found I was being judged only from the outside. We have to put up with such criticism, of course; but the essential thing is that we should be able to stand up to our criticism of ourselves. From outside this attitude looks like self-righteousness, but it is so only if we are incapable of criticizing ourselves. If 
2 At a family gathering someone noticed that a certain l'elative was cut by everyone. Wondering what the reason might be for this behaviour, he asked the lady of the house. "He does terrible things, he's a dreadful person."-Well, what's he done?-"He's living on his capitall" 
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we can exercise self-criticism, criticism from outside will affect us only on the outside and not pierce to the heart, for we feel that we have a sterner critic within us than any who could judge us from without. And anyway, there are as many opinions as there are heads to think them. We come to realize that our own judgment has as much value as the judgment of others. One cannot please everybody, therefore it is better to be at peace with oneself. "One claps his eyes on it, another a price on it, a third man despises it-what does it matter?" 3 Keyserling pitches on this genuine piece of Swiss wisdom and exclaims indignantly: 
"For any cultured person or someone in a higher social position this way of thinking, inimical to all values, is merely irresponsible and unprincipled." 
	912 	Herein lies the most glaring difference between the man of 
the Keyserling breed and the Swiss. The judgment of others is not in itself a standard of value, it may be no more than a useful piece of information. The individual has a right, indeed it is his duty, to set up and apply his own standard of value. In the last resort ethics are the concern of the individual, as Albert Schweitzer has pointed out so forcefully. And for that matter, what is the attitude of the aristocrat? Does he bother about the judgment of others? Sitting on his peak he can look down superciliously on the multitude, unmoved by the hubbub of opinion. ("The dogs bark, but the caravan passes on.") Why shouldn't the least aristocratic of nations do the same? Or is it a case of "quod licet Jovi, non licet bovi"? But this would be to forget that the word "subject" (Untertan) has not existed in Switzerland for a very long time and that, historically, the psychological attitude of the Swiss, including the one-time "subject lands," was moulded not by the latter but by the thirteen members of the old Confederation. The fact remains that the typical Swiss attitude of not bothering about the opinions of others bears a curious resemblance to the attitude of the aristocrat. I admire that blunt Swiss who sits in his modest house and lets the world know that he has his own sense of values and can let the opinions of others roll off him. He is an "aristocrat" in his way, not "audessus de la melee," like the feudal lord of the manor, butcaptious as this sounds-"au-dessous de la melee." I am not just 
3 "Der eine betracht's, der andere acht's, der dritte veracht's, was machtsl" 
483 

CIVILIZATION IN TRANSITION 
playing with words: the tumult and the shouting are always found where the opposites clash, and that is always midway between above and below. Above is aristocratic, below unaristocratic. The aristocrat, so long as he remains above, is outside the melee; the non-aristocrat, so long as he remains below, equally so. Above and below have always been brothers, as we learn from the wise saying in the Tabula smaragdina: "Heaven above, heaven below." 
	913 	"Aristocratic" and "unaristocratic" are value-judgments, sub- 
jective and arbitrary, and are therefore best left out of the discussion. The very word "aristocrat" is a value-judgment. Let us speak rather of the "man of the spirit" and the "man of earth." The spirit, as we know, is always above, a shining, fiery, aerial being, a mighty rushing wind, while the earth lies below, solid and dark and cold. This perennial image is expressed in the yang and yin of classical Chinese philosophy. The "man of the spirit" represents the yang principle; his chief characteristic is an attitude conditioned by ideas, often called "idealistic" or "spiritual." The "man of earth" represents yin) and he is characterized by an earth-bound attitude. Yang and yin are deadly enemies who need one another. The man whose attitude is permeated by the earth under his feet is the exponent of a principle that leaves nothing to be desired in the way of aristocratic panache, for it is the eternal adversary and partner of the spirit. Keyserling's man is the aristocrat of yang) the Swiss the aristocrat of yin. So at least does Keyserling conceive him, when he calls him the non-aristocrat par excellence. I fully agree, but with the proviso that this judgment includes all those nations and parts of nations upon whom nature has set her mighty seal. 
	914 	Our loveliest mountain, which dominates Switzerland far 
and wide, is called the Jungfrau-the "Virgin." The Virgin Mary is the female patron saint of the Swiss. Of her Tertullian says: " ... that virgin earth, not yet watered by the rains," and Augustine: "Truth has arisen from the earth, because Christ is born of a virgin." These are living reminders that the virgin mother is the earth. From olden times the astrological sign for. Switzerland was either Virgo or Taurus; both are earth-signs, a sure indication that the earthy character of the Swiss had not escaped the old astrologers. From the earth-boundness of the Swiss come all their bad as well as their good qualities: their 
484 

THE SWISS LINE IN THE EUROPEAN SPECTRUM 
-- 
down-to-earth ness, their limited outlook, their non-spirituality, 
their parsimony, stolidity, stubbornness, dislike of foreigners, mistrustfulness, as well as that awful Schwizerdiitsch and their refusal to be bothered, or to put it in political terms, their neutrality. Switzerland consists of numerous valleys, depressions in the earth's crust, in which the settlements of man are embedded. Nowhere are there measureless plains, where it is a matter of indifference where a man lives; nowhere is there a coast against which the ocean beats with its lore of distant lands. Buried deep in the backbone of the continent, sunk in the earth, the Alpine dweller lives like a troglodyte, surrounded by more powerful nations that are linked with the wide world, that expand into colonies or can grow rich on the treasures of their soil. The Swiss cling to what they have, for the others, the more powerful ones, have grabbed everything else. Under no circumstances will the Swiss be robbed of their own. Their country is small, their possessions limited. If they lose what they have, what is going to replace it? 
	915 	From this comes their national resentment, which, as Keyser- 
ling rightly remarks, is not unlike that of the Jews. This is understandable enough, since the Jews as a people are in the same precarious situation and are forced to develop the same defence-mechanisms. Resentment is a defence reaction against the threat of interference. 
	9,6 	There are two kinds of interference which cause the hackles 
of the Swiss to rise: political and spiritual. Everyone can understand why they should defend themselves to the utmost against political interference, and this utmost is the art of neutrality born of necessity. But why they should defend themselves against spiritual interference is rather more mysterious. It is, however, a fact, as I can confirm from my own experience. Eng~ish, American, and German patients are far more open to new ldeas than the Swiss. A new idea for the Swiss is always something of a risk; it is like an unknown, dangerous animal, which mUst if possible be circumvented or else approached with extreme caution. (This, I may add, accounts for the remarkably 
1 poor intuitive capacity of the Swiss.) 
	9 7 	Thus far, I find everything quite as it should be. I believe 
that the spirit is a dangerous thing and I do not believe in its paramountcy. I believe only in the Word become flesh, in the 
485 

CIVILIZATION IN TRANSITION 
spirit-filled body, where yang and yin are wedded into a living form. 
	918 	The danger inherent in the spirit is that it will uproot man, 
bear him away from the earth and inspire him to Icarian flights, only to let him plunge into the bottomless sea. The chthonic man is rightly afraid of this and instinctively defends himself against it, but in the most unpleasant way-by his "resentment." Conversely, the man of the spirit fears and loathes the prison of the earth. It is, at bottom, the same kind of prejudice which the intuitive type has in regard to the sensation type: he confuses the latter with his own inferior sensation function. Naturally the sensation type has the same prejudice against the intuitive. When the two clash, both are aggrieved, because they feel that their most essential values have been misunderstood. The "other" in us always seems alien and unacceptable; but if we let ourselves be aggrieved the feeling sinks in, and we are the richer for this little bit of self-knowledge. 
	919 	The unpleasant reaction Keyserling has evoked in Switzer- 
land is not a sign of repudiation-it merely proves that the cap fits. Everybody reads him, and his book is discussed at every social gathering. An influence like this is usually not unilateral. Something emanating from Switzerland has had its effect on Keyserling, as every attentive reader will have observed; and this something is indigenous to Switzerland. 
	920 	If it be true that we are the most backward, conservative, 
stiff-necked, self-righteous, smug, and churlish of all European nations, this would mean that in Switzerland the European is truly at home in his geographical and psychological centre. There he is attached to the earth, unconcerned, self-reliant, conservative, and backward-in other words, still intimately connected with the past, occupying a neutral position between the fluctuating and contradictory aspirations and opinions of the other nations or functions. That wouldn't be a bad role for the Swiss: to act as Europe's centre of gravity. 
	921 	I do not wish to evoke the impression that I am trying to 
turn our national vices into a virtue. I do not deny the ugly side of the earthbound character, but I take it as a given fact and am merely trying to discover what its meaning might be for Europe. We need not be ashamed of ourselves as a nation, nor can we alter its character. Only the individual can alter or improve him- 
486 

THE SWISS LINE IN THE EUROPEAN SPECTRUM 
self, provided he can outgrow his national prejudices in the course of his psychic development. The national character is imprinted on a man as a fate he has not chosen-like a beautiful or an ugly body. It is not the will of individuals that moulds the destinies of nations, but suprapersonal factors, the spirit and the earth, which work in mysterious ways and in unfathomable darkness. It is useless to attack or to praise nations since no one can alter them. Moreover the "nation" (like the "state") is a personified concept that corresponds in reality only to a specific nuance of the individual psyche. The nation has no life of its own apart from the individual, and is therefore not an end in itself. It is nothing but an inborn character, and this may be a handicap or an advantage, and is at best only a means to an end. Thus in many ways it is an advantage to have been imprinted with the English national character in one's cradle. You can then travel in the most god-forsaken countries and when anybody asks, "Are you a foreigner?" you can answer, "No, I am English" (as Schmitz tells in his autobiography).4 This blissful self-assurance is enviable, but not in itself a merit. 
	922 	By logically transforming nations into functions, Keyserling 
destroys their fictitious substance, though Europe would still continue to exist as a substantial unity. With the help of this conception he breaks through our nationalistic limitations: responsibility to the nation is legitimate only in so far as it answers to the needs of Europe as a whole. A nation can no longer be its own fulfilment; it can fulfil itself only as one function within a functional system. Does neutral Switzerland, with its backward, earthy nature, fulfil any meaningful function in the European system? I think we must answer this question affirmatively. The answer to political or cultural questions need not be only: 
Progress and Change, but also: Stand still! Hold fast! These days one can doubt in good faith whether the condition of Europe shows any change for the better since the war. Opinions, as We know, are very divided, and we have just heard Spengler's lamentations on the decline of the ""Vest. Progress can occasionally go down-hill, and in the face of a dangerously rapid tempo standing still can be a life-saver. Nations, too, get tired and long for political and social stabilization. The Pax Romana meant a good deal to the Roman Empire. 
4 [See bibliography.) 
487 

CIVILIZATION IN TRANSITION 
	923 	All life is individual life, in which alone the ultimate mean- 
ing is to be found. Here I would like to quote the deepest thought in Keyserling's book: "If we now lift ourselves to the highest point of view attainable by earthbound man, we must say: The ultimate goal does not lie in the fulfilment of nations as such; how could it ever have been thought otherwise? Their life is only a means to a higher end; were it not so, no pessimism would be black enough." From this point of view, of course, the nation as an outward characteristic of a human society is a negligible factor. What would it then matter to the individual whether his "nation" lay peacefully ruminating in a lush meadow or not? But wasn't it the highest ambition of some of the wisest rulers to achieve precisely this? Is it so certain, then, that this state of stagnation is absolutely worthless? One of the most fundamental characteristics of every civilization is the quality of permanence, something created by man and wrested from the meaningless flux of nature. Every house, every bridge, every street, is a witness to the value of duration in the midst of change. 
	924 	The neutral stability of Switzerland, despite all the disad- 
vantages of our national character, seems to me to mean more for the European psyche than Keyserling is willing to admit. From his lofty point of view Switzerland must appear just as he describes it. And so indeed it is, seen from the outside. It is the diametrical opposite of Keyserling's nature, its earthiness contradicts his intuitive temperament, for which mere existence is an abomination. That is why he waxes so indignant about people who have money and do not spend it. Why should they spend it, if saving it gives them more pleasure? For other people, spending is a pleasure. But saving is the standstill that Keyserling dreads, and spending the liberating movement for which every intuitive longs. 'What Keyserling holds against Switzerland is, in the last analysis, its whole raison d' etre. The Swiss national character that has been built up over the centuries was not formed by chance; it is a meaningful response to the dangerously undermining influence of the environment. We Swiss should certainly understand why a mind like Keyserling's judges us so harshly, but he should also understand that the very things he taxes us with belong to our most necessary possessions. 
488 

THE RISE OF A NEW WORLD 1 
	925 	"The Rise of a New 'World" is the subtitle of the German 
edition of Keyserling's America Set Free) and is in every respect the most succinct resume of the theme of the book. For this book is not purely and simply about America, any more than The Spectrum of Europe was purely and simply about Europe. It presents an extremely variegated picture that glitters in all the colours of the rainbow, sombre and gay, pessimistic and optimistic-a veritable spectrum, which is often more like a spectre, of America. The immediate cause of its birth is the abrasive surface of the transatlantic continent, across which Keyserling's aerial and procreative spirit flew, crackling and striking sparks as it went. The book is like an independent organism that exhibits as many characteristic features of its mother as of its father. This is particularly evident in the fact that America has become for the author a symbol of the rise of a new world. At first it looks as if this "new world" was America, but at the end of the book it becomes clear that the new world includes old Europe-that is, ourselves. "The Rise of a New World" is as much concerned with Europe as with America, for the book is the product of the mutual impact of Keyserling and the United States. (Another book of his will deal with South America.2) One must bear this fact in mind, because it provides a clue to a correct understanding of the book's subjectivity. It is not unintentionally subjective, as if by regrettable accident, but is meant to be so. To this it owes its dual aspect: America seen through 
1 [First published as "Der Aufgang einer neuen Welt," Neue Zilrcher Zeitung (Zurich), no. 2378, iv (Dec. 7, 1930): a review of Count Hermann Keyserling's Amerika; Der Aufgang einer Neuen Welt (Stuttgart, 1930), trans. anon. as America Set Free (New York and London, 1930). This translation of lung's article is new, but the Keyserling quotations are from the English edition.-EDlTORs.] 
2 [South-American Meditations (1932).] 
489 

926 
927 

CIVILIZATION IN TRANSITION 
European eyes. Unavoidably, European psychology is translated into American terms that sound foreign to our ears, and this gives rise to a disconcerting and fascinating play of light and shadow, through which two fundamentally incommensurable worlds are alternately compared and contrasted. 
N ever before have I realized more clearly how difficult, if not impossible, it is fully to understand anything foreign, and to give an exhaustive account of it. A purely objective comparison would remain stuck in superficialities. Hence anyone who undertakes a comparison must call upon all his subjectivity for assistance if he is to produce a picture that will really tell us something about the foreigner. One should never read Keyserling in the belief that what he says about something is really so-or even that he thinks it is. Temperamental and downright as his utterances are, they are never hypostatizations. He simply expresses his opinion, and for this we can only be grateful. This book contains a wealth of the most deliberate, serious, and trenchant opinions, and there is every advantage to be gained from reflecting on them, even if one does not agree with them at first, if at all. Judging by my own experience of life in America, I have no fundamental objection to make against Keyserling's views. I begin to have misgivings only when he sets foot on that most hazardous territory of all, namely that of prognosis. But apart from that, his picture of America is splendidly compendious. The most striking thing is the fact that-very much in contrast with his standpoint in The Spectrum of Europe-he lets the American earth have its say. The immensity and massiveness of the continent must have done something to him. He feels its primeval, not yet "humanized" character. He misses the "psychic atmosphere" in the North American landscape. "No gods have yet sprung from its union with man," America has "no soul yet," because the conquerors of a foreign land "may take their bodies with them, but not their souls." 
This categorical judgment certainly sounds rather bleak, but Keyserling has said something very true which offers a key to the locked recesses of American psychology. His analysis does not, to be sure, penetrate to these depths, but it does move within the wide field of American phenomenology, which, from the psychological point of view, offers material that is well-nigh inexhaustible. The vastness of the continental land-mass, the pre- 
49° 

THE RISE OF A NEW WORLD 
--- 
ponderance of immense open spaces, produce, so the author 
thinks, an atmosphere which resembles that of Russia and Central Asia. This bold comparison is a leitmotif of the book, and it comes up again and again in his discussion of the contrasting parallel between American private enterprise and Russian Bolshevism. "[America's] very spirit is one of width and vastness. This spirit of width and vastness is similar to that of Russia and Central Asia, and entirely different from that of Europe" (p. 70). That is why America might be compared, not with Europe, but with China (p. 73). For this reason America should not be ashamed of her Babbitts. "Babbitt ... is today the soundest and most reliable representative of the entire continent" (p. 75), precisely because he is the type who is closest to the earth. This type will survive and, in time, will cause all European, and particularly all Anglo-Saxon, influences to disappear. 
	928 	Keyserling regards the philosophers Emerson and William 
James as "contrasting ideologists" (p. 100). Dewey, on the other hand, he regards as the "most representative American" (p. 112), and the reasons he gives for this are not bad. He has an equally convincing view of the founder of Behaviourism, John B. Watson, as the American psychologist, and adds that his "psychology" means as little to the European as does Dewey's "philosophy." To make up for this, Dewey means all the more to the Asiatic (i.e., Russia and China), because his philosophy is really "psychology bent on education" (p. 113). The fact that Dewey's importance extends even to Asia (an example being the educational reforms in China) proves the curious similarity of their respective psychic situations despite all the differences. Here again Keyserling, it seems to me, hits the mark, for in Asia as well as in the chaotic mixture of races and cultures in America there is a social and educational problem of first rank to be faced. The European emigrant is rejuvenated on American soil; in that primitive atmosphere he can revert to the psychological patterns of his youth-hence his adolescent psychology with all the educational problems this entails. As a matter of fact, the moral condition of post-war youth in America presents the country with an immense educational task, compared with which other cultural tasks that seem of more importance to the European must inevitably take second place. 
491 

929 
93° 
931 
932 

CIVILlZA nON IN TRANSITION 
Keyserling considers that the ideal of a high living standard is the mainspring of American morality. It expresses itself in the idea of "social service," and also in the idea of social welfare. Keyserling calls this the "animal ideal" (p. 158). "What animal, if it could think, would not enlist under the banner of the highest possible standard of living?" exclaims Keyserling (p. 164). And it is this ideal that constitutes the essential core of the typically American outlook on life: behaviourism. Watson is therefore "one of the foremost representatives of what the United States stood for in the twentieth century" (p. 167). At the same time, behaviourism provides the intellectual link with Bolshevist psychology. For this reason the American, for all his hustling, is mentally the most passive of men (p. 271), and "American civilization is the most uniform that has ever existed." "The ideal of health, then, contributes in its turn to the animalization of the American. But the same is true of education as it is generally understood. It is becoming more and more a form of training such as animals can be submitted to." 
This mental condition goes hand in hand with the lack of authority in the States. "The State and the Government are not considered as institutions ranging above the private individual. On the contrary, they are supposed to be mere executives of his will" (p. 235). "Every American citizen rejoices in [American political institutions] and will do his utmost to uphold their prestige in foreign countries. But as regards his own person he views them in a totally different light. At home he is, first and last, a private entrepreneur" (p. 236). "The United States are one gigantic Canton Appenzell-the most provincial province in Switzerland" (pp. 237-38). 
There is no lack of bans mats in this book, for instance the club-woman as the "aunt of the nation," who does her best to deprive her naughty little nephew of alcohol, on the ground that it is injurious to health. There is also the crack about the "kindergarten" (p. 271) psychology of adult Americans, and many other entertainingly apt drolleries. 
The chapter on "The Overrated Child" seems to me the best in the book. "America," we are told, "is fundamentally the land of the overrated child" (p. 267)-an expression of the nation's youthfulness and at the same time an attempt to perpetuate it. What Keyserling has to say about the relation of the sexes and 
492 

933 

THE RISE OF A NEW WORLD 
of members of the family to one another, and about parents, husbands and wives, marriage, the upbringing of children, the demasculinization of men and the masculinization of women is very well worth reading, not merely because it concerns America but because we Europeans can learn something from it of value to ourselves. Anyone who still does not know how much the American way of life is infecting Europe's upper classes, just as Asiatic Bolshevism is seeping into European Communism, should take this opportunity to find out. Europe is dangerously close to becoming a mere hyphen between America and Asia. It cannot yet be said that the European has "only the fearful choice" between Americanization and Bolshevism. Europe, thank God, still exists in her own right. But we should realize all the more clearly how far the Americanization of the social upper crust has advanced. That is why I wish Keyserling as devoted a public in Europe as in America. Above all, one should not let oneself be irritated, even when it sometimes looks as if a nasty-tempered dog were mercilessly shaking its victim, or as if a universal schoolmaster were giving the boys good advice for their journey through life. One should never get annoyed with Keyserling, for at bottom he means it well. And how often he hits the mark! Everything he says about America from the European point of view may be arbitrary, cock-eyed, or just plain wrong, and yet the thoughtful European can derive plenty of stimulation from this book, not only for himself as a European, collective being, but for himself as an individual. After all, the American is a human being like ourselves, and his ideals and moral motives belong to the same Christian era as ours. Hence any criticism of him affects us as well. The reader will be particularly impressed by this in the final chapter, on "Spirituality." Here Keyserling seems to be talking about America, but in reality he is making a profession of faith, and expressing a hope for the future, which apply to Europe in a higher sense than to America, although they are also of profound significance for any American living in a Christian era. 
It had never struck me so clearly before how much Keyserling is the mouthpiece of the collective spirit, until I read this chapter. One might easily expect from Keyserling, the "intellectual aristocrat," lofty pronouncements borne along on the rarefied breezes that blow from the differentiated academic 
493 

CIVILIZATION IN TRANSITION 
mind. But nothing of the sort happens here. On the contrary, he speaks of things that are not only remote from the academic mind, but are unknown to it and are even regarded with contempt. They are things which really do concern the psyche of modern man, which do not appear on the surface, but which become visible to anyone who is interested in the background and who has occasion to speak with people who usually do not talk very loudly. But the "silent ones in the land" are greater in number than the makers of noise. In this chapter, Keyserling speaks from the background, and to those who dwell in the background. Here he is no longer the enfant terrible) no longer the brilliant talker; here he grips you. We hear a Keyserling who commands attention, one who speaks with the voice of many, and so gives expression to a great time of change. The man of this age undoubtedly speaks through him when he rates understanding above faith and experience above a credo. The individual, "master of himself and freed from the shackles of tradition, is beginning to understand the old truths, in so far as they are truths which in earlier times were simply accepted on authority, in a new and personal way. At the very time when the old forms are disintegrating, advanced minorities are beginning to experience their essential meaning, their living and immortal substance, more profoundly than at any time since the golden age of Christianity, when Greek thinkers were giving shape to the Christian view of the world. This means nothing less than that the age of the Holy Ghost is now at hand" (p. 464). 
	'34 	Who would have thought that? Or rather, who actually 
thinks like that? Who are these "advanced minorities"? Where are they? I will tell you: your next-door neighbours, the Meiers and the M lillers, of whom you would never have expected it, think like that. Sometimes they know it and sometimes they don't. If they do, they conceal this knowledge more carefully than the worst scandal. Nowadays it is no longer the oldfashioned objects of modesty that are guarded by a feeling of shame, but a secret spirituality. There are millions of people today who make "spiritual" experiments on themselves, and who are so shamefully conscious of their incompetent and illegimate behaviour that more often than not they close their eyes to what they are doing. Their numbers justify Keyserling in speaking out so confidently, in saying something so unprece- 
494 

THE RISE OF A NEW WORLD 
dented and so unbelievable that he should know that all Churches, all academies, all governments, and all joint-stock companies will shake their wise and venerable heads at it. How many of these "silent ones in the land" would dare to shake the good Count democratically by the hand on the strength of this confession? 
495 

LA REVOLUTION MONDIALE 1 
	935 	It is perhaps a sign of the times that in his new book, La 
Revolution mondiale et la responsabilite de I' Esprit) Keyserling addresses his public in French. One feels oneself transported back to the eighteenth century in Germany, when not only statesmen but philosophers and scholars preferred a more refined, cultured, and elegant language like French to their complicated and clumsy German, politely dressing up their subject in a courtly Sunday suit. La Revolution mondiale is certainly not a subject that calls for any such old-fashioned allurements, so it must be quite other reasons that impelled the author to write in French. I wish the book had been written in German, for, in my unqualified opinion, its spirit is as un-French as it could possibly be. Even the words "la responsabilite de l'esprit" expresses a kind of "spirit" (Geist) that can hardly be imputed to the French "esprit." Keyserling looks foreign and odd in French dress. German or perhaps Russian expresses the peculiar nature of his spirituality much better. If his public had been Chinese, or people who could read Chinese, both they and he would have benefited had he written in Chinese characters. 
	)36 	Every Chinese character is a complicated structure of mean- 
ing, in which sometimes whole families of ideas are gathered under one roof. Characters such as these are admirably suited to reproduce the infinite, protean diversity of Keyserling's ideas, and at the same time vague enough to convey to the reader all those flashes of intuition that are so typical of Keyserling's mind. They would also give the reader the great satisfaction of thinking that he had perceived all this for himself. But in French it sounds as if Keyserling alone had perceived everything. 
1 [First published as "Ein neues Buch von Keyserling," Basler Nachrichten, Sonntagsblatt [Sunday Supplement], XXVIII: '9 (May '3, '934), 78-79. The article is a review of Keyserling's La Revolution mondiale et la responsabilitt! de l'Esprit (Paris, '934), quotations of which have been translated from the French.-EDITORS.] 
496 

LA REVOLUTION MONDIALE 
	937 	The book shows Keyserling's reaction to what is going on 
in the world today, just as his earlier book, South-American Meditations) describes the impact which South America, a continent that is not controllable by the spirit, made upon him. It is no doubt from this book that the "telluric powers" are derived, whose revolt the author feels to be the cause and content of the present European crisis. They seem to him-no doubt again in recollection of the South American gana-world-to be essentially passive, not only in need of direction by the spirit, but capable of being so directed. The spiritual and the telluric are the contrapuntal poles of this book and also of the world crisis. N ietzsche's "slave-insurrection in morals" changes here into a mass-insurrection against the spirit. Keyserling is clearsighted enough to see that this revolt is not just a negative phenomenon but that it also has its positive side; it turns out that the revolt of the "telluric" man brings with it an efflorescence of "faith and courage." "The primordial expressions of the spirit are courage and faith, and its eternal prototype is the religious spirit." A certain amount of barbarization is inevitable, but "the rebirth of blind faith ... is simply a sign of the renewal of youth, and thus of increased vitality." 
	938 	In order to find the criterion for contemporary events, 
Keyserling harks back to the rise of Islam and, even more, to that of Christianity. For him we are in the midst of a "world change," and it is no longer a question of social or political happenings, of "repentance," and certainly not of leadership, planned economy, and the like. He has set his picture of our contemporary world in the widest possible framework, filling it with a multitude of aspects and cross-relationships which are all, at bottom, products of his own congenitally mixed nature. His heritage, stemming from a diversity of widely separated races and peoples as well as from all sorts of different cultural levels, produces in Keyserling an enormous range of reactions and points of view which give this book, like all his others, its glitter and variety. He is no doubt speaking from his own most personal experience when he says: "Consequently, there is only one attitude which is appropriate: to take human nature as it is, in all the diversity of its strata and all its queer disequilibrium." 
	939 	This sentence holds good for the author but not for the 
masses, for in the latter case we should have no substitute 
497 

943 
CIVILIZATION IN TRANSITION 
"uniformity" for "diversity" and "hopeless balance" for "disequilibrium." The masses as we know follow the law of their own inertia and seek, if disturbed, to restore the state of balance as speedily as possible, no matter how uncomfortable it may be. In this respect the masses are uncommonly "telluric." No wonder these "telluric powers" seem to Keyserling the most unspiritual thing imaginable. For him the "spirit" is its polar opposite. This is a genuinely \Vestern point of view, and in this matter, therefore, Keyserling feels himself at odds with classical philosophy, which, he says, makes this Western antithesis unreal. One can only ask oneself whether such an opposition between heaven and earth has always existed, and whether the I ehing may not be right after all, when it says that heaven and earth only occasionally draw apart and come into conflict with one another. Chinese wisdom regards this state merely as a passing one that contradicts the ordinances of heaven. Heaven and earth belong together, yang and yin give birth to one another and devour one another in a way that accords with the heavenly order of things. Europeans take it for granted that crocodiles are wicked, man-eating monsters, but the primitive takes just the opposite view, for to his way of thinking crocodiles eat people only in exceptional circumstances, and then only when they have been put up to it by a hostile medicine-man. If one is the crocodile's brother, then there is no danger at all. So, too, we in the West have perpetuated the purely exceptional opposition between heaven and earth, and, as a result, find ourselves in a perpetual state of ethical conflict. The Chinese believe in what Nietzsche called the "spirit of gravity," and the dragon, which we like to think lives in gloomy caverns, sparkles for them in the heavens as a merry firework, and drives away the magic wrought by evil spirits. For the Chinese, "spirit" does not signify order, meaning, and everything that is good; on the contrary, it is a fiery and sometimes dangerous power. 
	940 	It might therefore be objected that the "telluric powers" are 
not at all unspiritual, but are, on the contrary, endowed with a dangerous spirit, a spirit so powerful that the spirit of the West must indeed reflect with all its might on its "responsibility," compiling, as in Keyserling's book, a list of "should"s and "must"s, though "with how little success," as the author resignedly remarks. 
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LA REVOLUTION MONDIALE 
	941 	I fear Keyserling makes rather too much use of a spirit which 
in the past found itself in hopeless opposition to the earth. "Accepting human nature as it is" means nothing less than swallowing the "telluric essence"-which constitutes "eighty per cent of man's nature"-as a bitter medicine, however unspiritual it may be. It almost seems as if this time earth might have something to say to heaven, and that, consequently, the aerial spirit had better pay attention. When Keyserling hopes to save the "spirit" by appealing to "creative understanding," he seems to me to be entrapped in the idea-so typical of the age of enlightenment and progress-that in the end everything can be understood. But the earth will show us clearly enough that there are some things man will never understand, that there are times when the spirit is completely darkened because it needs to be reborn. We should not try to escape this night by "understanding," nor shall we ever succeed in soaring above the chaos by adopting a positive attitude to everything. ("What is needed today is an absolutely positive attitude towards everything that, on the empirical level, is different from oneself.") The "telluric powers" will do their utmost to convince us that we are neither reasonable, nor spiritual, nor capable of understanding, nor positive, nor God knows what, for the essence of the old spirit consisted precisely in the conceit that we were all these things. Keyserling brands American pragmatism as "profoundly unspiritual" (I hope, by the way, he doesn't mean William James!), but by his "positive attitude" he runs the risk of succumbing to Schiller's brand of pragmatism-anything rather than capitulate. 
	942 	How can that religious renewal, predicted by Keyserling as 
necessary and imminent, come about at all unless our muchvaunted spirit-which wants to understand everything and take a positive attitude to everything, and, above all, feels responsible for our ethical behaviour-can gracefully die? It has indeed become a human spirit, fallible and limited; it "needs a death" in order to be renewed, and it cannot do this by itself. What does the supremacy of the "telluric powers" mean, except that the 
"spirit" has once again grown weak with age, because it has been too much humanized? 
Keyserling takes up Nietzsche's idea of a "cultural monastery," stimulated thereto by the "Entretiens sur 1'avenir de l' esprit europeen" organized by the French under the presidency 
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