Psychology of the Unconscious A Study of the...

107. Complexes are apt to be of the greatest stability, although their outward forms of manifestation change kaleidoscopically. A large number of experimental studies have entirely convinced me of this fact.

108. Julian the Apostate made the last, unsuccessful attempt to cause the triumph of Mithracism over Christianity.

109. This solution of the libido problem was brought about in a similar manner by the flight from the world during the first Christian century. (The cities of the Anchorites in the deserts of the Orient.) People mortified themselves in order to become spiritual and thus escape the extreme brutality of the decadent Roman civilization. Asceticism is forced sublimation, and is always to be found where the animal impulses are still so strong that they must be violently exterminated. The masked self-murder of the ascetic needs no further biologic proof.

Chamberlain (“Foundations of the Nineteenth Century”) sees in the problem a biologic suicide because of the enormous amount of illegitimacy among Mediterranean peoples at that time. I believe that illegitimacy tends rather to mediocrity and to living for pleasure. It appears after all that there were, at that time, fine and noble people who, disgusted with the frightful chaos of that period which was merely an expression of the disruption of the individual, put an end to their lives, and thus caused the death of the old civilization with its endless wickedness.

110. .sp 1

“The last age of Cumean prophecy has come already!

Over again the great series of the ages commences:

Now too returns the Virgin, return the Saturnian kingdoms;

Now at length a new progeny is sent down from high Heaven.

Only, chaste Lucina, to the boy at his birth be propitious,

In whose time first the age of iron shall discontinue,

And in the whole world a golden age arise: now rules thy Apollo.

“Under thy guidance, if any traces of our guilt continue,

Rendered harmless, they shall set the earth free from fear forever,

He shall partake of the life of the gods, and he shall see

Heroes mingled with gods, and he too shall be seen by them.

And he shall rule a peaceful world with his father’s virtues.”

111. Δίκη (Justice), daughter of Zeus and Themis, who, after the Golden Age, forsook the degenerate earth.

112. Thanks to this eclogue, Virgil later attained the honor of being a semi-Christian poet. To this he owes his position as guide to Dante.

113. Both are represented not only as Christian, but also as Pagan. Essener and Therapeuten were quasi orders of the Anchorites living in the desert. Probably, as, for instance, may be learned from Apuleius (“Metamorphoses,” lib. XI), there existed small settlements of mystics or consecrated ones around the sacred shrines of Isis and Mithra. Sexual abstinence and celibacy were also known.

114. .sp 1

“Below the hills, a marshy plain

Infects what I so long have been retrieving:

This stagnant pool likewise to drain

Were now my latest and my best achieving.

To many millions following let me furnish soil.”

The analogy of this expression with the quotation above is striking.

115. Compare Breuer and Freud: “Studien über Hysterie”; also Bleuler: “Die Psychoanalyse Freuds,” Jahrbuch, 1910, Vol. II, 2nd half.

116. Faust (in suicide monologue):

“Out on the open ocean speeds my dreaming!

The glassy flood before my feet is gleaming!

A new day beckons to a newer shore!

A fiery chariot, borne on buoyant pinions,

Sweeps near me now; I soon shall ready be

To pierce the ether’s high, unknown dominions,

To reach new spheres of pure activity!

This godlike rapture, this supreme existence

Do I, but now a worm, deserve to track?

Yes, resolute to reach some brighter distance;

On Earth’s fair sun I turn my back!