Psychology of the Unconscious · Part III

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Men are all brothers in Christ.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER IV THE SONG OF THE MOTH

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

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

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

The Moth to the Sun

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wagner:

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

Faust:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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