first to speak of the suffering of the world, which visibly and glaringly surrounds us, and of confusion, passion, evil — all those things which the others hardly seemed to notice and always tried to resolve into all-embracing harmony and comprehensibility. Here at last was a philosopher who had the courage to see that all was not for the best in the fundaments of the universe. He spoke neither of the all-good and all-wise providence of a Creator, nor of the harmony of the cosmos, but stated bluntly that a fundamental flaw underlay the sorrowful course of human history and the cruelty of nature: the blindness of the world-creating Will. This was confirmed not only by the early observations I had made of diseased and dying fishes, of mangy foxes, frozen or starved birds, of the pitiless tragedies concealed in a flowery meadow: earthworms tormented to death by ants, insects that tore each other apart piece by piece, and so on. My experiences with human beings, too, had taught me anything rather than a belief in man’s original goodness and decency. I knew myself well enough to know that I was only gradually, as it were, distinguishing myself from an animal.
Schopenhauer’s sombre picture of the world had my undivided approval, but not his solution of the problem. I felt sure that by “Will” he really meant God, the Creator, and that he was saying that God was blind. Since I knew from experience that God was not offended by any blasphemy, that on the contrary He could even encourage it because He wished to evoke not only man’s bright and positive side but also his darkness and ungodliness, Schopenhauer’s view did not distress me. I considered it a verdict justified by the facts. But I was all the more disappointed by his theory that the intellect need only confront the blind Will with its image in order to cause it to reverse itself. How could the Will see this image at all, since it was blind? And why should it, even if it could see, thereby be persuaded to reverse itself, since the image would show it precisely what it willed? And what was the intellect? It was a function of the human soul, not a mirror but an infinitesimal fragment of a mirror such as a child might hold up to the sun, expecting the sun to be dazzled by it. I was puzzled that Schopenhauer should ever have been satisfied with such an inadequate answer.
Because of this I was impelled to study him more thoroughly, and I became increasingly impressed by his relation to Kant. I therefore began reading the works of this philosopher, above all his Critique of Pure Reason, which put me to some hard thinking. My efforts were rewarded, for I discovered the fundamental flaw, so I thought, in Schopenhauer’s system. He had committed the deadly sin of hypostatising a metaphysical assertion, and of endowing a mere noumenon, a Ding an sich, with special qualities. I got this from Kant’s theory of knowledge, and it afforded me an even greater illumination, if that were possible, than Schopenhauer’s “pessimistic” view of the world.
This philosophical development extended from my seventeenth year until well into the period of my medical studies. It brought about a revolutionary alteration of my attitude to the world and to life. Whereas formerly I had been shy, timid, mistrustful, pallid, thin, and apparently unstable in health, I now began to display a tremendous appetite on all fronts, I knew what I wanted and went after it. I also became noticeably more accessible and more communicative. I discovered that poverty was no handicap and was far from being the principal reason for suffering; that the sons of the rich really did not enjoy any advantages over the poor and ill-clad boys. There were far deeper reasons for happiness and unhappiness than one’s allotment of pocket money. I made more and better friends than before. I felt firmer ground under my feet and even summoned up courage to speak openly of my ideas. But that, as I discovered all too soon, was a misunderstanding which I had cause to regret. For I met not only with embarrassment or mockery, but with hostile rejection. To my consternation and discomfiture, I found that certain people considered me a braggart, a poseur, and a humbug. The old charge of cheat was revived, even though in a somewhat milder form. Once again it had to do with a subject for composition that had aroused my interest. I had worked out my paper with particular care, taking the greatest pains to polish my style. The result was crushing. “Here is an essay by Jung,” said the teacher. “It is downright brilliant, but tossed off so carelessly that it is easy to see how little serious effort went into it. I can tell you this, Jung, you won’t get through life with that slap-dash attitude. Life calls for earnestness and conscientiousness, work and effort. Look at D.’s paper. He has none of your brilliance, but he is honest, conscientious, and hardworking. That is the way to success in life.”
My feelings were not as hurt as on the first occasion, for in spite of himself the teacher had been impressed by my essay, and had at least not accused me of stealing it. I protested against his reproaches, but was dismissed with the comment: “The Ars Poetica maintains that the best poem is the one which conceals the effort of creation. But you cannot make me believe that about your essay, for it was tossed off frivolously and without any effort.” There were, I knew, a few good ideas in it, but the teacher did not even bother to discuss them.
I felt some bitterness over this incident, but the suspicions of my schoolmates were a far more serious matter, for they threatened to throw me back into my former isolation and depression. I racked my brains, trying to understand what I could have done to deserve their slanders. By cautious inquiries I discovered that they looked askance at me because I often made remarks, or dropped hints, about things which I could not possibly know. For instance, I pretended to know something about Kant and Schopenhauer, or about palæontology, which we had not even had in school as yet. These astonishing discoveries showed me that practically all the burning questions had nothing to do with everyday life, but belonged, like my ultimate secret, to “God’s world,” which it was better not to speak of.
Henceforth I took care not to mention those esoteric matters among my schoolmates, and among the adults of my acquaintance I knew no one with whom I might have talked without risk of being thought a boaster and impostor. The most painful thing of all was the frustration of my attempts to overcome the inner split in myself, my division into two worlds. Again and again events occurred which forced me out of my ordinary, everyday existence into the boundlessness of “God’s world.”
This expression, “God’s world,” may sound sentimental to some ears. For me it did not have this character at all. To “God’s world” belonged everything superhuman — dazzling light, the darkness of the abyss, the cold impassivity of infinite space and time, and the uncanny grotesqueness of the irrational world of chance. “God,” for me, was everything — and anything but “edifying.”
The older I grew, the more frequently I was asked by my parents and others what I wanted to be. I had no clear notions on that score. My interests drew me in different directions. On the one hand I was powerfully attracted by science, with its truths based on facts; on the other hand I was fascinated by everything to do with comparative religion. In the sciences I was drawn principally to zoology, palæontology, and geology; in the humanities to Greco-Roman, Egyptian, and prehistoric archaeology. At that time, of course, I did not realise how very much this choice of the most varied subjects corresponded to the nature of my inner dichotomy. What appealed to me in science were the concrete facts and their historical background, and in comparative religion the spiritual problems, into which philosophy also entered. In science I missed the factor of meaning; and in religion, that of empiricism. Science met, to a very large extent, the needs of No. 1 personality, whereas the humane or historical studies provided beneficial instruction for No. 2.
Torn between these two poles, I was for a long time unable to settle on anything. I noticed that my uncle, the head of my mother’s family, who was pastor of St. Alban’s in Basel, was gently pushing me in the direction of theology. The unusual attentiveness with which I had followed a conversation at table, when he was discussing a point of religion with one of his sons, all of whom were theologians, had not escaped him. I wondered whether there might possibly be theologians who were in close touch with the dizzy heights of the university and therefore knew more than my father. Such conversations never gave me the impression that they were concerned with real experiences, and certainly not with experiences like mine. They dealt exclusively with doctrinal opinions on the Biblical narratives, all of which made me feel distinctly uncomfortable, because of the numerous and barely credible accounts of miracles.
While
