three children, the eldest a boy of about my own age, and two younger sisters. They were city folk who, especially on Sundays, dressed their children in a manner that seemed ridiculous to me — patent-leather shoes, white frills, little white gloves. Even on week-days the children were scrubbed and combed. They had fancy manners and anxiously kept their distance from the tough, rude boy with tattered trousers, holes in his shoes, and dirty hands. My mother annoyed me no end with her comparisons and admonishments: “Now look at those nice children, so well brought up and polite, but you behave like a little lout.” Such exhortations humiliated me, and I decided to give the boy a hiding — which I did. His mother was furious, hastened to mine and made a great to-do over my act of violence. My mother was properly horrified and gave me a lecture, spiced with tears, longer and more passionate than anything I had ever heard from her before. I had not been conscious of any fault; on the contrary, I was feeling pretty pleased with myself, for it seemed to me that I had somehow made amends for the incongruous presence of this stranger in our village. Deeply awed by my mother’s excitement, I withdrew penitently to my table behind our old spinet and began playing with my bricks. For some time there was silence in the room. My mother had taken her usual seat by the window, and was knitting. Then I heard her muttering to herself, and from occasional words that I picked up I gathered that she was thinking about the incident, but was now taking another view of it. Suddenly she said aloud, “Of course, one should never have kept a litter like that!” I realised at once that she was talking about those “dressed-up monkeys.” Her favourite brother was a hunter who kept dogs and was always talking about dog breeding, mongrels, purebreds, and litters. To my relief I realised that she too regarded those odious children as inferior whelps, and that her scolding therefore need not be taken at face value. But I also knew, even at that age, that I must keep perfectly still and not come out triumphantly with: “You see, you think as I do!” She would have repudiated the idea indignantly: “You horrid boy, how dare you pretend such a thing about your mother!” I conclude from this that I must already have had earlier experiences of a similar nature which I have forgotten.
I tell this story because at the time of my growing religious scepticism there was another instance which threw light on my mother’s twofold nature. At table one day the talk turned on the dullness of the tunes of certain hymns. A possible revision of the hymnal was mentioned. At that my mother murmured, “O du Liebe meiner Liebe, du verwünschte2 Seligkeit” (O thou love of my love, thou accursed bliss). As in the past I pretended that I had not heard and was careful not to cry out in glee, in spite of my feeling of triumph.
There was an enormous difference between my mother’s two personalities. That was why as a child I often had anxiety dreams about her. By day she was a loving mother, but at night she seemed uncanny. Then she was like one of those seers who is at the same time a strange animal, like a priestess in a bear’s cave. Archaic and ruthless; ruthless as truth and nature. At such moments she was the embodiment of what I have called the “natural mind.”3
I too have this archaic nature, and in me it is linked with the gift — not always pleasant — of seeing people and things as they are. I can let myself be deceived from here to Tipperary when I don’t want to recognise something, and yet at bottom I know quite well how matters really stand. In this I am like a dog — he can be tricked, but he always smells it out in the end. This “insight” is based on instinct, or on a “participation mystique” with others. It is as if the “eyes of the background” do the seeing in an impersonal act of perception.
This was something I did not realise until much later, when some very strange things happened to me. For instance, there was the time when I recounted the life story of a man without knowing him. It was at the wedding of a friend of my wife’s; the bride and her family were all entirely unknown to me. During the meal I was sitting opposite a middle-aged gentleman with a long, handsome beard, who had been introduced to me as a barrister. We were having an animated conversation about criminal psychology. In order to answer a particular question of his, I made up a story to illustrate it, embellishing it with all sorts of details. While I was telling my story, I noticed that a quite different expression came over the man’s face, and a silence fell on the table. Very much abashed, I stopped speaking. Thank heavens we were already at the dessert, so I soon stood up and went into the lounge of the hotel. There I withdrew into a corner, lit a cigar, and tried to think over the situation. At this moment one of the other guests who had been sitting at my table came over and asked reproachfully, “How did you ever come to commit such a frightful indiscretion?” “Indiscretion?” “Why yes, that story you told.” “But I made it all up!”
To my amazement and horror it turned out that I had told the story of the man opposite me, exactly and in all its details. I also discovered, at this moment, that I could no longer remember a single word of the story — even to this day I have been unable to recall it. In his Selbstschau Zschokke4 describes a similar incident: how once, in an inn, he was able to unmask an unknown young man as a thief, because he had seen the theft being committed before his inner eye.
In the course of my life it has often happened to me that I suddenly knew something which I really could not know at all. The knowledge came to me as though it were my own idea. It was the same with my mother. She did not know what she was saying; it was like a voice wielding absolute authority, which said exactly what fitted the situation.
My mother usually assumed that I was mentally far beyond my age, and she would talk to me as to a grown-up. It was plain that she was telling me everything she could not say to my father, for she early made me her confidant and confided her troubles to me. Thus, I was about eleven years old when she informed me of a matter that concerned my father and alarmed me greatly. I racked my brains, and at last came to the conclusion that I must consult a certain friend of my father’s whom I knew by hearsay to be an influential person. Without saying a word to my mother, I went into town one afternoon after school and called at this man’s house. The maid who opened the door told me that he was out. Depressed and disappointed, I returned home. But it was by the mercy of providence that he was not there. Soon afterwards my mother again referred to this matter, and this time gave me a very different and far milder picture of the situation, so that the whole thing went up in smoke. That struck me to the quick, and I thought: “What an ass you were to believe it, and you nearly caused a disaster with your stupid seriousness.” From then on I decided to divide everything my mother said by two. My confidence in her was strictly limited, and that was what prevented me from ever telling her about my deeper preoccupations.
But then came the moments when her second personality burst forth, and what she said on those occasions was so true and to the point that I trembled before it. If my mother could then have been pinned down, I would have had a wonderful interlocutor.
With my father it was quite different. I would have liked to lay my religious difficulties before him and ask him for advice, but I did not do so because it seemed to me that I knew in advance what he would be obliged to reply out of respect for his office. How right I was in this assumption was demonstrated to me soon afterwards. My father personally gave me my instruction for confirmation. It bored me to death. One day I was leafing through the catechism, hoping to find something besides the sentimental-sounding and usually incomprehensible as well as uninteresting expatiations on Lord Jesus. I came across the paragraph on the Trinity. Here was something that challenged my interest: a oneness which was simultaneously a threeness. This was a problem that fascinated me because of its inner contradiction. I waited longingly for the moment when we would reach this question. But when we got that far, my father said, “We now come to the Trinity, but we’ll skip that, for I really understand nothing of it myself.” I admired my father’s honesty, but on the other hand I was profoundly disappointed and said to myself, “There we have it; they know nothing about it and don’t give it a thought. Then how can I talk about my secret?”
I made vain, tentative attempts with certain of my schoolfellows who struck me as reflective. I awakened no response, but, on the contrary, a stupefaction that warned me off.
In spite
