The Zofingia Lectures – Quotations
The Zofingia Club was a discussion group to which C.G. Jung belonged as a medical student: in 1897 he became Chairman, and gave five lectures. These have survived and are published here in a supplementary volume to the Collected Works.
The lectures are of great interest to anyone concerned with Jung’s early ideas, as a young medical student from a strongly Swiss Protestant background.
The Lectures are:
The Border Zones of Exact Science (November 1896)
Some Thoughts on Psychology (May 1897)
An Inaugural Address on Becoming Chairman of the Zofingia Club
Thoughts on the Nature and Value of Speculative Inquiry (Summer 1898)
Thoughts on the Interpretation of Christianity with Reference to the Theory of Albrecht Ritschl (January 1899)
As many good citizens of Basel here present will gladly testify, my family, on both sides, have always been peculiarly given to offending well-meaning citizens because it is not our custom to mince words and, wearing an amiable smirk, to wheedle our honorable, highly estimable uncles, aunties, and cousins with flattering ways. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 3
The Middle Ages saw the flowering of the idea of the theocratic state, and thousands of cloisters and churches testified to the fact that the focal point of existence lay not in external phenomena but in the inner life of each individual human being. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 168.
How could the earth have conceived life if it was not fitted out as a bride by the forces of activity? ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 216
As we all know, the principle of inertia is not confined to the field of physical phenomena but also represents a fundamental law of human thought. As such it is an even more powerful factor in the development of world history than stupidity. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 13
But why does death occur? Why should an organism constructed with infinite care and efficiency, whose innermost purpose it is to live, come to an end, wither and decay? Why is the purposeful drive to live cut off with such contempt? ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 85
- The soul must be intelligent. The criterion of intelligence is the purposefulness of its acts. Undeniably our bodies impress us as highly purposeful, and thus we postulate the intelligence of the soul. If the law of causality did not possess an a priori status, this postulate would be proven. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 97
“If a head bumps into a book and the result is a hollow sound, is that always the fault of the head?” ~Carl Jung citing Lichtenberg, Zofingia Lectures, Para 109
This principle of inertia, innate to humankind, permits us to comprehend why nowadays, in the age of the hypercritical mind, we still see educated people in every walk of life-and not least among them physicians and natural scientists-who are not ashamed to proclaim their adherence to materialism, thus bearing witness to their own intellectual poverty. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 14
I consider it disgraceful for an educated man to accept the idea of the preeminent power of money. It is even more disgraceful if he tips his hat and shows his reverence to a sack of gold. But it is most disgraceful of all if he uses-or rather abuses-his knowledge and skills to gain bliss from the one thing that can give it, the personal possession of Mammon. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 25
Ought I to tell you about all those who engage in scholarly pursuits merely in order to fill up as quickly as possible the moneybag that they have invested with the sacred aura of scientific knowledge? Shall I tell you of those savants whom others regard as having attained the pinnacle in human perfection, but who sell their science and their knowledge for thirty pieces of silver? ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 26
We must rest content with this circular argument: Matter exerts gravitational force because it is a property of matter to exert gravitational force. Once again we confront a collision between reason and reality. Reason demands an equivalent force, reality has none. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 50
We imagine matter to be composed of atoms. The atom is, by definition, a body that cannot be subdivided further, that is, a body without extension and thus a mathematical point. Here we see a patent contradiction: Matter has extension, and thus it can never be composed of parts without extension. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 53
If we trace back to its beginnings the course of the evolution of organic life, we arrive at the first cell, rocked by the warm waves of the primordial sea and dimly sensing an unknown world to come. The cell is there, and with the cell there is life. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 56
But what existed before the cell, when the hot vapors had not yet condensed around the edges of the glowing, molten ball of the earth? What was there before? Has organic life been there from the beginning, as matter is said to have always existed? But then how could it have survived amid the flaming chaos, the white-hot vapors of iron and platinum? Or is life perhaps a function of matter? ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 56
For reasons already enumerated, it is impossible that this preexistent life was linked to matter, and thus it must have existed independently of matter, i.e., immaterially. Isn’t this strange? The critical examination of rational scientific claims leads us into an immaterial or metaphysical realm. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 57
Why do we long to exhaust the ocean of infinity when we do not yet even know the banks of the pond where our materialist-minded savants are croaking away like frogs? ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 64
“Morality is always paramount. It is the holy and inviolable thing which we must protect, and it is also the reason and purpose of all our speculations and inquiries. All metaphysical speculations are directed to this end. God and the other world are the sole goal of all our philosophical investigations, and if the concepts of God and the other world had nothing to do with morality, they would be worthless.” ~Carl Jung, Citing Kant, Zofingia Lectures, Para 68
The third ally I will cite is our great master Immanuel Kant, the sage and prophet of Konigsberg who has, not unjustly, been called the last philosopher. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 77
One hundred years ago, Kant in his lectures on metaphysics, in Part Two of the rational psychology, stated: “We can conceive of spirits only as problematic entities, i.e., we can cite no a priori cause to reject their existence.” ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 78
“I confess that I am strongly inclined to assert the existence of immaterial natures in the world, and to class my own soul among these beings.” ~Carl Jung Citing Kant, Zofingia Lectures, Para 79
Kant says: “It appears that an intellectual being is intimately present with the matter to which it is joined, and that it does not act upon those forces by which the elements relate to each other but rather upon the inner principle of their state.” ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 86
Burdach states: “The matter of our bodies continually changes, whereas our life remains the same, remains one. Corporeal life is embraced in the continual, simultaneous destruction and formation of organic matter. Thus life is something higher, which dominates matter. … “ ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 90
It is becoming increasingly apparent that a chemical phenomenon can never be explained in terms of a mechanical phenomenon, nor· the organic in terms of the chemical or electrical. Those who today are nevertheless striking out once more on this old false trail, will soon creep back, quiet and crestfallen, like all their predecessors.” ~Carl Jung citing Schopenhauer, Zofingia Lectures, Para 92
The vital principle extends far beyond our consciousness in that it also maintains the vegetative functions of the body which, as we know, are not under our conscious control. Our consciousness is dependent on the functions of the brain, but these are in turn dependent on the vital principle, and accordingly the vital principle represents a substance, whereas consciousness represents a contingent phenomenon. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 96
“Consciousness is the object of a transcendental idea.” Thus we see that animal and vegetative functions are embraced in a common root, the actual subject. Let us boldly assign to this transcendental subject the name of “soul.” What do we mean by “soul”? The soul is an intelligence independent of space and time. ~Carl Jung citing Schopenhauer, Zofingia Lectures, Para 96
“Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why, long after nature has emancipated them from the governance of others, such a large proportion of people are quite content never to grow up all their lives.” ~Carl Jung citing Kant, Zofingia Lectures, Para 110
In research we are completely dependent on the empirical method, just as we are in our practical everyday lives .Intuition does not have the power to convince the critical mind, any more than theoretical considerations can show us how to deal with practical situations. ~Carl Jung citing Kant, Zofingia Lectures, Para 113
One of the principal tasks of empirical psychology is to provide detailed authentication of the definition of the soul laid down by rational psychology. We have already noted that the soul is an intelligence independent of space and time. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 115
- The soul is intelligent. The principal proof in support of this principle is the purposeful activity of the soul, its power of organization. Its organizational activity is manifested in the phenomenon of materialization. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 116
The soul is imperceptible to the senses because it exists outside space. It would have to assume a spatial, i.e., a material form in order to become perceptible to the senses. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 117
Every representation of the soul that is perceptible to the senses is a materialization. The most wondrous and incredible materialization which has ever occurred is man himself. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 117
But most people are incapable of marveling at their own existence and thus cannot properly appreciate the notion of man as a materialization of soul, and thus we must look about for other phenomena whose spontaneous and instantaneous manifestation compels us to deduce an intelligent being as their spiritus rector. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 117
The soul is independent of space and time. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 119
Gravitation is purely transcendental. Its successful emancipation from space and time is achieved, above all, by virtue of the fact that it does not conform to the law of the conservation of energy as an elementary force; secondly, because by virtue of gravitation, corpus ibi agere non potest, ubi non est (a body does not exert effects in a place where the body itself is not); and thirdly, because it does not require time for its deployment, for it is absolutely constant. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 121
The soul, as the metaphysical presupposition of the phenomenon of organic life, likewise transcends space and time, and for this reason its emancipation from sensory manifestation must be expressed in the fact that the soul appears as the basic force of actiones in distans. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 122
Also to be classed among telekinetic phenomena are all those material effects produced, for example, by dying people in order to communicate to faraway relatives or friends the knowledge of their death. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 128
A classic example of clairvoyance, which has been authenticated by reliable historical sources, is cited by Kant in his letter about Swedenborg, to Fraulein Charlotte von Knobloch. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 129
I will merely recall the famous tale of the Cossack who predicted the downfall of Poland many years beforehand, and the case of Cazotte, who in the year 1788, according to the account of a witness, Francois de la Harpe of the Academy, prophesied the terrors of the French Revolution, telling each person present the manner of his death in every detail. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 133
I learned from a thoroughly reliable source, namely the attending physician, that a female patient suffering from hysteria prophesied, in obscure words, the disaster of Miinchenstein, several months before it occurred. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 133
Prophetic dreams, which represent a lower level of conscious clairvoyance, also belong in this category. One special form is the “second sight” of the Scots, a gift that actually afflicts vast numbers of people on the solitary isles of northern Scotland. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 134
The Old Testament prophets may also be described as clairvoyants, despite the fact that in recent times strenuous efforts have been made to reduce to a minimum all the miraculous elements of the Bible, and to divest its mystical protagonists of their characteristic nimbus. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 134
Hegel was accused of having paralyzed young people’s minds, castrated their intellect, dislocated their heads, and disordered their brains. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 137
In institutions that offer training in physiology, the moral judgment of students is deliberately impaired by their involvement in disgraceful, barbarous experiments, by a cruel torture of animals which is a mockery of all human decency. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 138
Nowadays the masses no longer want to believe. (They picked up this little trick from the upper crust.) They want to know, like the scholars who are also immoral unbelievers. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 138
Religions are created by men who have demonstrated with deeds the reality of mystery and of the “extrasensory realm.” The dry postulates of reason and mere religious feelings cannot redress the ravages of our age; the only thing that can do that are facts that directly establish the validity of something beyond the senses. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 138
Of course we must never fall prey to the illusion that the majority of men will ever be capable of appreciating the value of a fact. For deep inside human beings is a sediment of passivity, a tenacious, primordial slime out of which an act of first creation daily generates an infernal mental indolence. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 139
Nowhere do we feel as keenly as here that we are living at the boundary between two worlds. Our body formed from matter, our soul gazing toward the heights, are joined into a single living organism. We see our lives coming in contact with a higher order of being. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 142
Man lives at the boundary between two worlds. He steps forth from the darkness of metaphysical being, shoots like a blazing meteor through the phenomenal world, and then leaves it again to pursue his course into infinity. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 142
As for drinking, that much-maligned and misconstrued pastime which has become the hallmark of the university student, can we not ennoble our drinking bouts and turn them into a real symposium? ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 160
The uncivilized peoples of the world all testify to the fact that man can survive perfectly well without science. Science is not useful until it abandons its exalted status as a goal in itself and sinks to the level of an industry. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 166
Every industrialist, whether he is a businessman or a factory owner, a chemist or a physician judges all endeavors that do not produce tangible results, as useless-and because they are useless, as downright injurious. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 166
Human beings, intoxicated by the pleasures of material success, are throwing themselves into the bustle and tumult of existence. They hope that material success will give them everything. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 166
In the churches people pray for the welfare of the fatherland, but apparently remain oblivious of the fact that every social benefit must necessarily be compensated by some social misfortune. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 166
Material success has not always been man’s sole aim. The Middle Ages saw the flowering of the idea of the theocratic state, and thousands of cloisters and churches testified to the fact that the focal point of existence lay not in external phenomena but in the inner life of each individual human being. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 168
In other words, medieval man regarded material success as of little or no importance. For him development represented an internal, not an external problem. He knew nothing of the concept of common welfare, of social prosperity. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 168
Medieval man was characterized by a transcendental egotism. Modern man is characterized by an immanent egotism. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 168
Modern man shifts responsibility for the creation of individual happiness from himself to the state, i.e., .to the legally regulated relations between himself and his fellow men. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 168
Nowadays, it is not true that each man is the architect of his own fortune; instead the state creates his fortune for the individual. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 168
The absolute secularization of all concerns is the characteristic that distinguishes modern from medieval man. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 169
What help, then, is the whole civilized world, what use is the magnificent future one’s grandchildren have to look forward to in which, thanks to our technological progress, they will travel in airships and eat synthetic protein? ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 170
There is no pleasure in having things, but only in obtaining them. Never has anyone achieved such success that he did not want more. The reason for this is simply that man strives for happiness, which remains happiness only for the moment he achieves it, but which afterwards reverts to the same old insipid round he knew before. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 170
Material success is the cause of all joy and must, under all circumstances, make people happy. Success is not necessarily organically linked to joy. In itself it is totally neutral. Everything depends on the individual. If he is already happy, success will increase his happiness. If he is unhappy, even the most spectacular success may often awaken feelings of great bitterness. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 170
Happiness is purely subjective and bears no necessary relationship to anything external. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 170
Thus the road to happiness does not lead through the theaters and concert halls, or through honor and glory, but rather up or down into the unfathomable depths of our own being. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 171
A man can survive all his friends and relatives, bury what he loves most and lead a lonely existence as a stranger in an alien time; but he cannot survive himself and the inner factors of his life, and cannot bury them, for they are his very self, and thus are inalienable. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 172
The most magnificent landscape, the most divine music, are nothing but a wisp of smoke if a man is suffering from toothache. There is an inner disposition suitable to every external pleasure, whether that disposition is health or peace of mind. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 173
It is in order to gratify this desire that men invented the state, the mechanism that absorbs the successes of the individual and then redistributes them, in a diluted form, to all the members of the confederation 1~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 74
All philosophy must have an empirical foundation. The only true basis for philosophy is what we experience of ourselves and, through ourselves, of the world around us. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 175
Our philosophy should consist in drawing inferences about the unknown, in accordance with the principle of sufficient reason, on the basis of real experience, and not in drawing inferences about the inner world on the basis of the outer, or denying external reality by affirming only the inner world. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 175
Apart from the eight a priori categories of time, space, and causality, there is none that is not based on experience. Thus judgments about purpose are not a priori judgments, for the objectivity of a priori judgments cannot be demonstrated. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 175
Instinct is an agent which, without being subject to our will, influences our actions, or rather modifies them in a direction of which we are not consciously aware, and which is only recognized a posteriori. By this definition the category of causality can be designated an instinct. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 178
In every healthy, reflective person the simple need to satisfy the principle of causality develops into a metaphysical longing, into religion. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 181
Every genuine philosophy, as the complete expression of metaphysical desire, is religion. Religion is the mother who receives her children with loving arms when they flee to her terrified by the confusion and the “merciless tumult of nature stripped of its gods,” and driven to despair by the shattering enigma of existence. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para181
“The manifestations of animal instinct are among the most impressive known to any thoughtful man, and are the true touchstone of genuine philosophy.” ~Carl Jung citing Schelling, Zofingia Lectures, Para 182
Absolute purposefulness is the hallmark of all instinctive actions. As we have demonstrated, the category of causality should be regarded as an instinct. Thus the instinct to satisfy causality is also absolutely purposeful. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 183
If we backtrack along a chain of cause and effect, we soon arrive at a limit where our understanding-i.e., our ability to tabulate ideas of tangible causes—ceases to function. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 184
Causality leads us to a Ding an sich for which we cannot account further, to a cause whose nature is transcendental. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 184
The purpose underlying causality points far beyond our present existence, and justifies the hopes we cherish, of producing an infinite chain of effects attended by infinite success. But be that as it may, causality has purpose, and thus science, philosophy, and religion also have a use-a transcendental use. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 185
Hence the whole pack of those who disparage the gratification of the need for causal thinking on the grounds that it is useless, are completely wrong. Let them bark away! ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 185
“A winter day is upon us, and we live in poverty and danger on high mountains. Brief is every joy and pale every gleam of sunlight which steals down to us on the white mountains.” ~Carl Jung citing Nietzsche, Zofingia Lectures, Para 186
The need to satisfy the law of causality accompanies us everywhere like a faithful shepherd, and we never cease to hear its voice. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 187
We place too much trust in this world, we believe too firmly in the happiness to be derived from success, despite the fact that the greatest of all men, Christ and the sages of all ages, teach and demonstrate that we should do just the opposite. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 189
All external success and external prestige can and one day will crumble away. But no one can take from us our inward achievements, for they stand and fall with our own being. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 190
People can lock a Socrates in an underground prison, blind him, cut out his tongue, but he remains Socrates, and the wealth and abundance of his mind belongs to him and will remain his, inalienable and unfading, for as long as he exists. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 190
The instinctive need to satisfy causality, as an a priori reference to transcendental causes, constitutes religion. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 191
It is the infinitely subtle agent that frees man from his animal nature, raises him to the plane of science and philosophy, and thence carries him off into infinity. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 191
Man is a Prometheus who steals lightning from heaven in order to bring light into the pervasive darkness of the great riddle. He knows that there is a meaning in nature, that the world conceals a mystery which it is the purpose of his life to discover. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 194
After Plato’s problem-the eternal ideas-had fallen, like Sleeping Beauty, into a sleep that lasted two thousand years, philosophy, in its manifold transmutations, prepared the way for the coming of the philosopher of Konigsberg, who with a bold flourish awakened the ancient problem from its deathlike slumber and introduced it, dressed in new garb, to an awestruck world. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 195
Jesus Sirach says:
Opposite evil stands good,
opposite death, life;
so too, opposite the devout man stands the sinner. This is the way to view all the works of the Most High; they go in pairs, by opposites. -Ecclesiasticus 33: 15-162 ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 201
Jakob Boehme says: “Without opposition no thing can become apparent to itself; for if there is nothing in it which resists it, it goes forever outward and does not enter again into itself: But if it does not enter again into itself, as into that whence it originally went out, it knows nothing of its first condition.” ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 202
For now let us confine ourselves to inorganic nature. The principles of all inorganic phenomena are gravitation, cohesion, adhesion, capillarity, absorption, elasticity, affinity, inertia, magnetism, electricity, heat, light, and motion. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 208
Thus, for example, motion takes place only if a body is inert. Potential can turn to kinetic energy only in the presence of gravitational attraction, and a chemical discharge only in the presence of affinity. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 209
Who, confronted with such a picture, would not recall the words of Moses: “And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep” (Gen. 1 :2). How could the earth have conceived life if it was not fitted out as a bride by the forces of activity? ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 216
“And God said, Let there be light” (Gen. 1:3). When a creative act illuminated the dark chaos, the redemption of the world began, even before any organic being experienced the kindness of the all-merciful light. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 217
“Thus we see,” says Hartmann, “the divergence into a polarized dualism as the principle which generates the material world.” ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 219
Wundt expresses this dualism in a genuinely classical form in his first two axioms of physics: “1) All causes in nature are causes of motion. 2) Every cause of motion exists outside that which is moved.” ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 220
Nor can Schelling avoid the principle of dualism on which all nature is grounded. Thus he says: “But if the absolute is to be evident to itself, it must, in accordance with its objective, appear dependent on something else, something alien to itself.” ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 221
And what do we hear from the much-despised Jakob Boehme? “No thing can become apparent to itself without opposition.” ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 222
The living organism is, quite simply, a miracle, in that it lifts itself above all those laws of physics that approach absolute reliability. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 223
To regard life merely as a complex physical structure is a sign of great confusion. The organism is involved in a never-ending struggle with the environment; this.is the ultimate dualism of the organic phenomenon. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 223
In every self-conscious being, dualism appears in a dual form. Every conscious being has an external and an internal image of itself. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 223
Man’s inner dualism is the direct continuation of the dualism of inorganic nature. Life is the highest activity we know, and thus everything that is less active will attempt to block its way. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 224
It is from the dualism grounded in the depths of nature that we derive justification for giving precedence, above all the other instincts, to the causal instinct, for this instinct alone points to the true root of our nature: unconditional activity. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 225
The pure contemplation of nature supplies us with unconditional affirmation of the causal instinct. Here we also have the objective reason for the subjective appearance of the source of greatest happiness, which is attained through gratification of the need for causality. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 225
No man feels well and happy until he finds others of his own kind. The closer we approach to the roots of our own being, the more unalloyed and the more enduring our happiness becomes. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 225
Finally, I would like to quote a fine passage from Nietzsche: “I say to you, one must yet have chaos in himself in order to give birth to a dancing star.” ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 235
Human beings have never possessed yardsticks with which to measure great minds. For centuries they have debated whether Christ was a god, a god-man, or a man. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 245
“A single spark of the fire of justice, fallen into the soul of a learned man, is enough to irradiate, purify, and consume his life and endeavors, so that he no longer has any peace and is forced to abandon forever that tepid or cold frame of mind in which run-of-the-mill savants carry out their chores.” ~Carl Jung citing Nietzsche, Zofingia Lectures, Page 293
The image in memory consists of two distinct objects. The first is the image of the original event, and the second is the image of the feeling aroused in us by the original event. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 253
One hears the Gospel, but one lacks the faith! Faith is the dearest child of miracle!’° ~Carl Jung citing anonymous source, Zofingia Lectures, Para 265
- The soul must be independent of space and time. The concepts of space and time are categories of the understanding and for this reason are not compelling with regard to the Ding an sick. The soul The vital principle, which as long as life lasts confers on the body its power of resistance, is the enduring factor in the phenomenal realm. As we know, all the molecules in the body are renewed approximately every seven years. Thus the substance of the body is continually changing. If the life-organizing, life-shaping force resided in matter, nothing would be more natural than a continual transformation of the appearance of the body. But this does not actually occur, for the external traits of a man remain the same. All down to the smallest details are preserved. All the images in his memory remain constant, and his intellectual faculties maintain eludes all sense perception and thus cannot constitute any form of material force. Only forces in a material form constitute objects of perception. But within the categories of space and time, judgment is based on sense perceptions. Accordingly only forces in a material form can serve as objects of judgment, i.e., only forces in a material form move within the boundaries of space and time. For example, let us consider the concept of velocity, which is equivalent to the space-time quotient. Or think of any of the basic mechanical laws of physics. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 98
The soul does not represent a force in a material form, and thus there can be no judgment concerning it. But everything that cannot be judged subsists outside the concepts of space and time. Accordingly the soul is independent of space and time. Thus sufficient reason exists for us to postulate the immortality of the soul. approximately the same level. In short, despite the change in his substance the individual remains the same. Thus it appears that the principium vitae constitutes, so to speak, the scaffolding on which matter is built up. ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 99
And people do show what fools they are when they use Kant’s ideas to attack the spiritualists, when Kant himself said: “It will be demonstrated in the future, I know not where or when-that even in this life the human soul dwells in an indissoluble communion with all the immaterial natures of the spirit world, alternately affecting these natures and receiving impressions from them …. “! ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 106-107
Elsewhere Kant states: “All these immaterial natures, I say, regardless of whether or not they exercise their influence in the corporeal world; all rational beings which happen to exist in an animal state, whether here on earth or on other heavenly bodies, regardless of whether they animate the raw stuff of matter now, will do so in the future, or have done so in the past, would, by these terms, exist in a communion suitable to their nature, not determined by those conditions which limit the relations of corporeal entities, and in which the distances separating places and times, that in the visible world create a vast gulf abolishing all communion, simply disappear. Accordingly it would be necessary to regard the human soul as already, in this present life, linked with two worlds of which, it being joined in personal union with a body, it clearly perceives only the material; whereas on the other hand, as a member of the spirit world, it receives the pure influences of immaterial natures and distributes these influences in turn, so that as soon as its union with the body has ended, nothing remains but the communion in which it continually dwells with spiritual natures, and which must reveal itself to consciousness as an object of clear contemplation.” Finally, in a third passage, casting his prophetic gaze far beyond his own age, Kant states: “Accordingly it has in effect been demonstrated, or could easily be demonstrated if we took a broad view or better yet, it will be demonstrated in the future, I know not where or when-that even in this life the human soul dwells in an indissoluble communion with all the immaterial natures of the spirit world, alternately affecting these natures and receiving from them impressions of which, in its human nature, it is not conscious as long as all goes well.” ~Carl Jung, Zofingia Lectures, Para 80-81
…the best monument that can be raised to Jung’s memory is to make use of and develop his work rather than let it be passively accepted and sterilised. ~Michael Fordham, Obituary The Independent, Tuesday 25 April 1995
001 Although I believe that Jung himself would not have cared to publish these juvenilia, they are highly interesting, readable, and important.
They are lectures he gave to his fellow students at Basel University when he was between twenty-one and twenty-three years of age. ~Marie-Louise von Franz, Zofingia Lectures Introduction, Page xiii
002 The lectures were supposed to meet a high scientific standard and at the same time to express political and other opinions in an outspoken manner befitting a closed circle whose members felt free of academic and social conventions.
The reader has to bear this in mind when reading the often sarcastic and strong language that the young medical candidate, C. G. Jung, used in expressing his convictions. ~Marie-Louise von Franz, Zofingia Lectures Introduction, Page xiii
003 Jung, seeing that catastrophe, the First World War, coming, was impelled to warn them urgently.
It disappointed him how little his companions reacted to it.
As a whole, however, the Zofingia was for Jung a positive experience. ~Marie-Louise von Franz, Zofingia Lectures Introduction, Page xiv
004 He [Jung] was a cheerful comrade, “always prepared to revolt against the ‘League of Virtue.’ ”
He later discovered that he could dance quite well without having learned to.
His student name, incidentally, was Walze (barrel). ~Marie-Louise von Franz, Zofingia Lectures Introduction, Page xiv
005 His little dachshund would look at me so earnestly, just as though he understood every word, and Jung did not fail to tell me how the sensitive animal would sometimes whimper piteously when occult forces were active.” ~Marie-Louise von Franz, Zofingia Lectures Introduction, Page xiv
006 Often they sat until late in the night at the pub called “Breo.”
Jung did not like to walk home alone through the Nightingale Wood, so he told his friend such interesting stories that he came along with him without noticing it.
When he stayed out until it was already morning, Jung picked some flowers to soften his mother’s anger. ~Marie-Louise von Franz, Zofingia Lectures Introduction, Page xv
007 Although the views of physics that he criticizes are naturally outdated, it is
fascinating to see how Jung attacks just the weak points.
First he shows the absurdity of the concept of ether, which was generally believed.in then, until Albert Einstein showed, through his theory of relativity, that it is an unnecessary hypothesis. ~Marie-Louise von Franz, Zofingia Lectures Introduction, Page xvi
008 This life-principle, i.e., the soul, he says, “extends far beyond our consciousness”-here Jung first mentions indirectly the idea of an unconscious psyche.
This soul is intelligent (purposeful in its acts) and independent of space-time.
These three aspects of the psyche are concepts that Jung retained throughout his life. ~Marie-Louise von Franz, Zofingia Lectures Introduction, Page xviii
008 Then Jung adds to these quotations the idea of the existence of a non-physiological “intellectual being” or “life force” which some contemporary vitalistic physiologists also postulated.
This life-principle, i.e., the soul, he says, “extends far beyond our consciousness”-here Jung first mentions indirectly the idea of an unconscious psyche.
This soul is intelligent (purposeful in its acts) and independent of space-time.
These three aspects of the psyche are concepts that Jung retained throughout his life. ~Marie-Louise von Franz, Zofingia Lectures Introduction, Page xviii
009 Then follows, in Jung’s lecture, an attack against the representatives of religion and their ineffectualness, because they deny themselves what for Jung is the very essence of religion: the reality of mystery and of the “extrasensory realm.”
Here again we meet a point of view that Jung never gave up and that-so it seems to me-will be a problem for future generations. ~Marie-Louise von Franz, Zofingia Lectures Introduction, Page xviii – xvix
010 Jung remained all his lifetime a “liberal” (in a nonpolitical sense) and voted seldom for the conservative Freisinnige Partei in Zurich, but rather for the Landesring der Unabhangigen (which since his time has changed in its policies). ~Marie-Louise von Franz, Zofingia Lectures Introduction, Page xvix
011 It was probably the Siegfried image in Jung’s psyche that Freud sensed when he wanted to make him his crown prince and leader of the psychoanalytic movement, and that induced the later Jung to take steps to save the International General Medical Society of Psychotherapy, only leading him into trouble. ~Marie-Louise von Franz, Zofingia Lectures Introduction, Page xix
012 An archetypal symbol, according to the later Jung, is dead and obsolete as soon as its content is known and can be intellectually formulated.
Otherwise it contains a wealth of unknown aspects. ~Marie-Louise von Franz, Zofingia Lectures Introduction, Page xxii
013 We know that Jung’s own father’s religious convictions were in his later life undermined by contemporary materialistic doubts, a fact that led to many fruitless discussions between father and son. ~Marie-Louise von Franz, Zofingia Lectures Introduction, Page xxiii
014 It is noteworthy that Jung speaks here in the plural, that Christ for him was not the only god-man as Christian doctrine maintains.
We know from his later writings that the Buddha was for him also such a god-man. ~Marie-Louise von Franz, Zofingia Lectures Introduction, Page xxiii
015 But Jung goes on to say that it does not seem right on this account to throw away our whole Christian tradition.
We “must accept the supramundane nature of Christ, no more and no less,” and even more we must accept the “mystery,” the world of metaphysical ideas to which Christ belongs and from which springs all religious life. ~Marie-Louise von Franz, Zofingia Lectures Introduction, Page xxiv
016 In 1912 he came to the conclusion that he personally could not return to the medieval or original Christian myth and set his foot on the path of finding his own myth by a form of meditation that he later called “active imagination.” ~Marie-Louise von Franz, Zofingia Lectures Introduction, Page xxv
