Carl Jung: Thanks for your beautiful essay in Corona.
To Heinrich Zimmer
Dear Professor Zimmer, 21 November 1932
First of all, best thanks for your beautiful essay in Corona.
Also please give your wife my best thanks for her kindness in sending me Andreas.
I must now tell you about a special project which got under way during my last visit in Vienna.
A wealthy publisher has invited me to edit, or to be the nominal editor of, a magazine which might appear under the title of “Weltanschauung” or something like that.
He has been discussing this subject with me for a long time and our discussions have led to the conclusion that we must first see who would be willing to collaborate on such a magazine.
Since I also mentioned your name, I am taking the liberty of writing to you about this matter.
I have been thinking that in view of the tremendous fragmentation of the sciences today we might well have an organ that could fish out from the ocean of specialist science all the facts and knowledge that are of general interest and make them available to the educated public.
Everyone who wants to find his way about nowadays has to rummage through dozens of periodicals he can’t subscribe to, and thousands of books, wasting a vast amount of time until he comes to what he thinks might be helpful to him.
We have therefore concluded that for every specialist field under consideration we should seek out one or two suitable spokesmen who would be willing to act as a centre for information and advice, or even become members of a many-headed editorial committee.
In practice the duty of the person concerned would be to use this magazine as a forum for all data of general interest from his specialist field, or at least to indicate what authors might be approached by the editors for a suitable contribution.
What I myself would like best would be a series of short papers dealing with eschatological ideas, doctrines of redemption, fundamental concepts of God, cosmogonic theories, initiation rites, and so on.
Special weight would have to be laid on the communication of facts, considerably less weight on the originality of the contributions, since the magazine would be aimed not at any particular group of specialists but at the educated public in general.
The fact that I am supposed to head such a project will show you in what sort of spirit it ought to be conducted.
It should be an instrument of synopsis and synthesis-an antidote against the atomizing tendency of specialism which is one of the greatest obstacles to spiritual development.
I now want to ask you whether you would be willing to assist us and to take on the duty of serving as a centre for information and advice.
It wouldn’t be any particular burden on your time.
I should be grateful for an affirmative answer.
Yours sincerely,
C.G. Jung ~Carl Jung, Letters Vol. 1, Pages 106-107
