THE SEQUENCE OF the development of psychology that we have been following took us to the British Isles last time. Today we will turn to France, where the first psychologists appear at the rise of the Enlightenment in the early eighteenth century. This was the age of the Encyclopedists; knowledge was being accumulated, and the ideas of philosophers, such as Voltaire and Diderot, were being spread abroad. France was a very Catholic country at the time, and when such a country is being enlightened, then it is thoroughly enlightened indeed, that is to say, matters move from one extreme to another.
The first psychologist whom we encounter in France is probably Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709–1759), 107 a physician and an outstanding man of his time. In 1748, Frederick the Great called him to Berlin, 108 where he died eleven years later. In one sense, his mind was quite modern; he was a true materialist and empiricist. His chief claim was that all life arises from dead matter, that the organic springs from the inorganic. The soul is thus an adjunct of the organic as it were. The discovery of the relations between the psyche and the brain bears fruit in that the psychic becomes dependent on the brain. La Mettrie says: “The brain has muscles to think, just as the legs have muscles to walk.” 109 La Mettrie conceives the living being as a machine, a machine that he likened to a clock mechanism consisting of various mainsprings. 110 In his famous book, L’Homme Machine (1748), he unabashedly holds the view that the soul is nothing other than a sensitive, material part of the brain. 111 This is a view that has persisted to this day.
Etienne Bonnot de Condillac (1715–1780), 112 who took holy orders and later became an abbé, was La Mettrie’s contemporary, but survived him by many years. From his love affair with one Mademoiselle Ferrand, Condillac learned that all psychic life originates in sensation. He was ingenious enough to develop this insight into a philosophy. His principal work, Traité des Sensations, first appeared in 1754. 113 It was reprinted as late as. . . . 114 Significantly, it was not translated into German until 1870, 115 that is to say, until the golden age of materialism. Contrary to the general belief at that time that certain ideas are a priori innate in man, Condillac argued that the whole of the soul is empty. The mind would be an absolute tabula rasa. If we lived in isolation and spoke to no one, then nothing at all would come into being.
In working out their theories, philosophers have often sought a point de repère, that is, a point of reference, an idea, a metaphor, or even a material object, on which to develop them. Of Kant it is said that he had a listener who faithfully followed his lectures, year after year, always occupying the same place in the auditorium. In order to aid his concentration, and as a point de repère, Kant used to focus his vision on the top button of this gentleman’s waistcoat. And on one occasion, when the young man did not appear, the great philosopher found himself unable to proceed with his lecture! 116
Condillac’s point de repère was his image of a man who is in fact not a real man, but a large dead statue that was endowed, however, with a sensory faculty. 117 Gradually, all the statue’s senses awaken, first of all its sense of smell. Condillac sought to reconstruct the whole of the human psyche from this statue and its sensations, without the help of any other hypotheses. This procedure is characteristic of the psychological attitude of this researcher. He was anxious to annihilate the extremely living, intangible, iridescent quality of the human soul, this absolutely ungraspable being, to turn it into stone, that is to say, into a kind of specimen, and to then probe it at a single, specific point. He kills the psychic matter, as it were, in order to able to dissect and study it. 118
Occasionally, this is how reason deals with the psyche—namely, by killing it in order to bring it to life, as it were. This is the result of a particular mental attitude, which prevailed until the end of the nineteenth century. Condillac considered any possible content of the soul to be a “transformed sensation” [sensation transformée]. 119 Here, a little bit of metaphysics enters into the equation because, according to Condillac, the soul is a sentient substance, but at the same time an immaterial substance—though this is difficult to imagine—that is to say, a subjectless sensation that wanders about aimlessly in the universe.
Perhaps you have heard of Rudolf Steiner. 120 In one of his books, he writes that before the planet Earth came into existence, a whole array of worlds existed, including gas-filled ones inhabited entirely by ethereal beings. He observed further that the existence of sensations of taste has also been substantiated in this gas-filled sphere. 121 I refer here also to Christian Morgenstern’s poem “The Knee,” wherein “On earth there roams a lonely knee. It’s just a knee, that’s all.” 122
It is worth noting that the absoluteness of eighteenth-century French psychology rests firmly upon the Latin tradition. One early example for Condillac was Arnobius Africanus (350 CE), 123 a Latin Church father, who argued that the human soul is empty and of a material nature. Everything that enters it is based on sensory experience. His belief, which is shared by Christianity in general, is that the soul is either non-existent prior to baptism and enters the body over time or, should it exist, then solely in an utterly deplorable condition, that of original sin, necessitating divine enlightenment. The human soul does indeed require enlightenment in great measure, but it is doubtful whether it is so empty—it could be full of ideas after all! It is this view of Arnobius that Condillac takes up in concurring that the soul needs to be filled from without.
This primordial image or myth that the soul is empty and must therefore be filled from without is still widely, and alarmingly, prevalent nowadays. That is why people are still convinced of their own complete harmlessness, although this couldn’t be further from the truth. This idea of being harmless has to do with the idea of the alleged emptiness of the soul: If anything evil can be found in it, it must have entered it from the outside! Therefore, someone else must be immediately held responsible for this, be it their father, mother, or schoolteacher. But the soul is not a tabula rasa, it is already filled with good and evil when we come into the world. As a matter of fact, there are all kinds of things in it, though we may remain unconscious of this. How else can we account for the fact that the child’s mind is full of mythological ideas?
The notion that the soul enters man exclusively through baptism is the Christian concept upon which the rite of baptism is founded. Anatole France’s book, L’Île des Pingouins [Penguin Island], rests upon the same faith. In it, the old abbot St. Maël, half-blinded by the reflection from the polar ice, baptized a school of penguins, thereby causing an enormous dogmatic problem in heavenly circles as to whether it was not a blasphemous act, for only human beings have immortal souls. A council was held in Heaven, but feeling ran high, and no decision was reached. Eventually, Saint Catherine was called upon, and woman’s wisdom solved the question with a Solomonic judgement: both parties would be right. Penguins, being birds, cannot have immortal souls; yet it was also true that through baptism immortality is attained. Therefore, she asked the Good Lord to give them a soul, but merely a small one—Donnez-leur une âme, mais une petite! 124
La Mettrie and his Man a Machine, and the works of Condillac, gave rise to a reaction against materialist psychology. Among the first to take issue with materialism were, in Switzerland, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), 125 and also Charles Bonnet (1720–1782) in Geneva. 126 In his principal work, Essai analytique sur les facultés de l’âme [Analytical essay on the faculties of the soul] (1760), Bonnet took a strange point of view, namely a psychophysical approach to the soul. He held that it was neither purely spiritual nor purely corporeal, but stands oddly in between. To characterize this peculiar intermediate position, he resorted to an image, namely the concept of ether, that is to say, matter that is not matter and yet fills space. Consequently, he conceived of the psychophysical soul as having an ethereal body, in which memories are stored. 127
Rudolf Steiner, as you know, attributes to all people an ethereal, and also an astral body. 128 Steiner discovered this concept in Indian philosophy, but not so Bonnet. Indian philosophy was unknown at the time, for it is was only later, in the early nineteenth century, that Anquetil Duperron brought the first translations of the Upanishads to Europe, thus opening a new world to the West. 129 Bonnet’s concept of the ethereal body can be traced to medieval philosophy, specifically to its primitive idea of the subtle body, 130 something similar to smoke or air, the vital spirit 131 that dwells in us. Within the material body, it claims, there exists another, resembling breath, filling the former, and bringing it to life. This is said to be the breath of life of the heavenly messenger. In the last breath of the dying person, this breath leaves the body. Hence the Indian custom that the eldest son must bend over his dying father to inhale this last breath.
Probably, this idea also informs cannibalism. Ladies and gentlemen, cannibalism, however, is not practiced just for the fun of it! Nor is it due to a lack of meat, nor the cultivation of cuisine. In actual fact it is magic. Through its practice, one gains prāna, 132 that is to say, the vital energy of the dying person. I thus confer upon myself the intelligence of the enemy, by spooning out the brain, or his courage, by eating the heart. There was not the slightest doubt among American Indians that one had to swallow the heart of a courageous enemy while it was still twitching.
These ideas had a profound influence also on philosophy. Thus Bonnet, as I have pointed out, made use of the concept of the “subtle body,” and also claimed that memory images are stored in the ethereal body. There is an Indian concept that is quite similar, namely an ether known as akasha. 133 The term designates a general world ether in which the experiences of all humanity are stored and that are now so material that theosophy claims that they can perhaps even be photographed. Indian philosophy speaks of the “Akashic Records.” 134
Such an autonomous revival of the Indian imagery in Bonnet is an example of palingenesis. 135 Something quite similar can be found in the work of the French philosopher Henri Bergson: the idea of the durée creatrice. 136 This idea apparently derives from the material of philosophical deliberation and experience. In reality, however, it constitutes the revival of an ancient idea common among Neoplatonic thinkers. One of them, Proclus, thus asserted: “Wherever there is creation, there is time.” 137 But there is no reason to find Bergson guilty of plagiarism. The idea simply resurfaced in him.
In contrast to palingenesis, the autonomous revival of an idea in another epoch, cryptomnesia 138 is a hidden memory, the revival of something that we once knew, but then completely forgot consciously. An example of this is Benoit’s novel, L’Atlantide. 139 Its entire concept had appeared long before in a book of an Englishman, in Rider Haggard’s novel She. 140 Benoit was subsequently accused of plagiarism but pledged that he had never read She—which is quite possible in the case of a Frenchman. 141
I myself have discovered such a passage in Nietzsche. Upon making enquiries with his sister, Mrs. Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche, I learned that the young Nietzsche had read this book when he was eleven years old and later repeated a passage from it verbatim. 142
After Bonnet, the development of French philosophy was interrupted by the French Revolution. 143 This momentous event was not a sudden eruption in the external world, but had long been prepared for by philosophers and psychologists. For the great upheavals make their first appearance in the realm of the mind. The idea comes first, and reality follows. For instance, it took Ludwig Büchner’s 144 Force and Matter twenty years to achieve its breakthrough. It first appeared in the 1870s, and in the 1890s it became the most widely read book in the German lending libraries for workmen. 145 Thus, twenty years lapsed from the birth of an idea to its widespread impact. This shows that it is by no means immaterial which thoughts a university or a schoolteacher hatches, for history might well seize upon this idea. In the case of the French Revolution, this fact was self-evident.
107. Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709–1751), French physician and philosopher; a radical, early materialist of the Enlightenment.
108. In fact, La Mettrie’s materialistic, atheistic, and anticlerical principles—which made him a pariah even among his fellow philosophers of the Enlightenment—caused such an outrage that he had to exile himself to the Netherlands. But even in that relatively tolerant state, his views, and the publication of his book, L’homme machine (1748), raised such a storm of protest that he was forced to leave again. (Even the publisher of this book felt compelled to preface it with a statement, in which he tried to justify publishing such a livre hardi [impertinent book].) In Berlin, La Mettrie enjoyed the tolerance of Frederick II (the “Great”), was allowed to practise as a physician, and was even appointed court reader.
109. Le Cerveau a ses muscles pour penser, comme les jambes pour marcher (La Mettrie, 1748, pp. 77–78).
110. Le corps n’est qu’une horloge [The body is nothing but a clock]; and: Je ne me trompe point, le corps humain est une horloge, mais immense, & construite avec . . . d’Artifice & d’Habilité [I am definitely not mistaken, the human body is a clock, but an immense one, artfully and ably constructed] (ibid., pp. 85, 93).
111. L’Ame . . . existe, & il a son siège dans le cerveau à l’origine des nerfs, par lesquels il exerce son empire, sur tout le reste du corps. Par là s’explique tout ce qui peut s’expliquer, jusqu’aux effets surprenants des maladies de l’Imagination [The soul exists, and it has its seat in the brain at the origin of the nerves, through which it exercises its reign on the whole rest of the body. This explains everything that can be explained, even the surprising effects of the diseases of the imagination] (ibid., p. 78).
112. Étienne Bonnot de Condillac (1715–1780), French philosopher, epistemologist, and economist. He systematically established the principles of Locke in France. He was an advocate of sensualism, or empirical sensationism, holding that all human faculty and knowledge are transformed sensation only.
113. There Condillac expressly states: Ce traité n’est . . . que le résultat des conversations que j’ai eues avec elle [i.e., Mlle. Ferrand] [This treatise is nothing but the result of the conversations I had with Ms. Ferrand] (1754 [1798], p. 53).
114. Here the lecture notes differ. Hannah has 1885, Kluger-Schärf 1785, Schmid both 1785 and 1885, Sidler 1794 and 1885. In any case, the book appeared in at least three reprints in 1788, 1792 and 1798 (see Bibliography).
115. A first German translation appeared as early as in 1791, however (see Bibliography).
116. “He usually chose a listener who sat near him and read in his face whether he was being understood or not. Once he had begun to unfold his thought, the slightest disturbance in the auditorium could interrupt his train of thought. He was once distracted by a student who sat right in front of him with a button missing on his coat” (Gulyga, 1987, p. 79).
117. Condillac imagines a statue organized inwardly like a man, animated by a soul that has never received an idea, into which no sense-impression has yet penetrated. He then unlocks its senses one by one.
118. In his inaugural lecture at the ETH on 5 May 1934 (that is, a few months after the start of his regular lectures), Jung again referred to Condillac, criticizing him for his view that it would be “possible to investigate isolated psychic processes. There are no isolated psychic processes, just as there are no isolated life-processes” (1934a, § 197).
119. For example: Le desir . . . , les passions, l’amour, la haine, l’espérance, la crainte, la volonté. Tout cela n’est donc encore que la sensation transformée [Desire, the passions, love, hate, hope, anxiety, the will. All this is also nothing but transformed sensation] (Condillac, 1754 [1798], p. 21).
120. Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925), the well-known and influential Austrian esotericist and philosopher, founder of anthroposophy. On Jung and Steiner, see Wehr, 1972.
121. According to Steiner, there are actually seven major embodiments or planetary conditions of the earth system: Saturn, Sun, Moon, Earth, Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan. During the so-called Sun Evolution, beings called the “Spirits of Wisdom” or “Kyriotetes” began to pour into humanity’s body etheric substance, and thus humanity received life, i.e., the “etheric body.” Further, the planetary substance condensed to a gaseous state, which emanated light into the cosmos.
122. From Morgenstern’s Galgenlieder [Gallow’s songs] (1905): Ein Knie geht einsam durch die Welt. / Es ist ein Knie sonst nichts! / Es ist kein Baum! Es ist kein Zelt! / Es ist ein Knie, sonst nichts. // Im Kriege ward einmal ein Mann / erschossen um und um. / Das Knie allein blieb unverletzt—/ als wärs ein Heiligtum. // Seitdem gehts einsam durch die Welt. / Es ist ein Knie, sonst nichts. / Es ist kein Baum, es ist kein Zelt. / Es ist ein Knie, sonst nichts. [On earth there roams a lonely knee. It’s just a knee, that’s all. It’s not a tent, it’s not a tree, it’s just a knee, that’s all. In battle, long ago, a man was riddled through and through. The knee alone escaped unhurt as if it were taboo. Since then there roams a lonely knee, it’s just a knee, that’s all. It’s not a tent, it’s not a tree, it’s just a knee, that’s all.]—Christian Morgenstern (1871–1914), famous German poet, writer, and translator (among others, of Strindberg, Hamsun, and Ibsen), best known for his deceptively humorous poetry; incidentally, a friend and adherent of Rudolf Steiner.
123. Arnobius from Africa (Africanus), around 300 CE. In his psychology and theory of knowledge, he maintained that all knowledge is based upon experience and sensation. Initially the soul is empty, only the idea of God is inborn. The soul itself is of a bodily nature, and achieves immortality only through the grace of God. God Himself, however, is immaterial and eternal. Cf. Francke, 1878; Röhricht, 1893.
124. In the original: [J]e vous supplie, Seigneur, . . . de leur accorder une âme immortelle, mais une petite [Lord, I entreat you to grant them an immortal soul—but a little one] (France, 1908, p. 39). This satirical book by Nobel Prize–winning French author Anatole France (1844–1924) describes the further history of this colony of great auks, mirroring the history of France and Western Europe. Jung also quotes this passage in his commentary to the Tibetan Book of the Dead (1935b, § 835) and in Mysterium Coniunctionis (1955/1956, § 227).
125. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), the philosopher, writer, and composer from Geneva. His views were condensed, not quite exactly, in the clichés of “Back to Nature!” and the “Noble Savage.” His pedagogical, as well as his political thoughts had a wide impact. See Rousseau, 1755 [1754], 1761, 1762a, 1762b, and his autobiography (1782–1789). There are various references to Rousseau in Jung’s works, e.g., on the conflict between the individual and the social function (cf. Types, §§ 120–123, 133–134).
126. It was only in 1815 that the city and canton of Geneva became part of the Swiss Federation.
127. Charles Bonnet (1720–1793), Swiss natural scientist and philosopher; an empiricist, early adherent of evolution theory, and discoverer of parthogenesis in aphids or tree lice. In the Essai analytique, he developed his views regarding the physiological conditions of mental activity, writing, for example: Nous ne conoissons pas de Matiere plus mobile, plus subtile, que celle du Feu, ou de l’Ether des Philosophes modernes. C’est donc une Conjecture qui n’est pas dépurvue de probabilité, que l’Organe immédiat des Opérations de nôtre Ame, est un Composé de Matiere analogue à celle du Feu ou de l’Ether [We do not know of a more mobile, more subtle matter than that of fire, or of the ether of the modern philosophers. Thus, it is a not improbable conjecture that the immediate organ of the operations of our soul is a compound of matter, analogous to that of fire or of ether] (1760, p. 236).
128. Steiner spoke of three “births” of humans that succeeded one another in cycles of seven years. Up to the age of seven the child is woven within the ethereal and astral cover. After the child’s second dentition, the ethereal body is born; at the age of fourteen the astral body, or the body of sensation, is revealed; and at the age of twenty-one the “body of I” is set into spiritual life.
129. Abraham Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron (1731–1805), French traveler, orientalist, and translator; pioneer of Avesta studies, but above all, translator (into Latin, from Persian) of a collection of the Upanishads, together with lengthy commentaries (1801, 1802), eliciting widespread interest. Arthur Schopenhauer, who played an important role in the kindling of this interest, called it “the production of the highest human wisdom” and “the most satisfying and elevating reading . . . which is possible in the world: it has been the solace of my life, and it will be the solace of my dying” [die belohnendeste und erhebendeste Lektüre, die . . . auf der Welt möglich ist: sie ist der Trost meines Lebens gewesen und wird der meines Sterbens sein] (1851, vol. 2, § 184).
130. This expression in English in the lecture notes: “[T]he philosophers . . . took their prima materia to be a part of the original chaos pregnant with spirit. By ‘spirit’ they understood a semimaterial pneuma, a sort of ‘subtle body’ ” (Jung, 1939 [1937], § 160, pp. 98–99). Jung detailed his views on the concept of the subtle body one and a half years later in the Zarathustra seminar (1988, pp. 441–446, 449–450). Cf. Mead, 1919.
131. Lebenshauch, literally breath of life. The usual expression in Latin texts of the era is spiritus vitalis, which was used as a model for this translation.
132. Prāṇa, Sanskrit for “vital life,” the notion of a vital, life-sustaining force of living beings and vital energy. Its most subtle material form is the breath.
133. Akasha, Sanskrit for ether (also space or sky); the basis and essence of all things in the material world, the first material element created from the astral world.
134. The Akashic records, a Hindu concept, are described as containing all knowledge of human experience and the history of the cosmos, as a universal “library” in a nonphysical plane of existence. The concept was popularized in the West by theosophy and anthroposophy.
135. From Greek palin = again, and génesis = birth, creation.
136. Jung repeatedly referred to the French philosopher Henri Bergson (1859–1941), and his notions of the élan vital and the durée créatrice [creative duration], the latter being “really the Neoplatonic idea of Chronos as a god of energy, light, fire, phallic power, and time” (1984, p. 428), thus “an example of the revival of a primordial image,” which can be found already “in Proclus and . . . Heraclitus” (1919, § 278).
137. Proclus (ca. 412–485), head of the Platonic Academy in Athens, leading Neoplatonist. In his system, the first principle is “The One,” which produces all Being, but is itself beyond being. The divine intellect, the second principle, is outside of time, and produces the soul, which in turn produces Body, the material world. That which is—perpetual being—is “remote from all temporal mutation,” but that which is generated (corporeal formed nature, body), “is either always generated, or at a certain time” (Proclus, Book 2, 1234).
138. A term coined by the Genevan psychologist Théodore Flournoy (1854–1920): “by cryptomnesia I understand the fact that certain forgotten memories reappear without being recognized by the subject, who believes to see in them something new” (Planet Mars, p. 8). Flournoy’s work had a great impact on Jung; see the chapter on him in Memories (only in German edition, and translated in the 1994 edition of Flournoy’s book), and Jung’s detailed discussion of Flournoy’s book, Des Indes à la Planète Mars, later in these lectures (pp. 99 ff.). Both Bergson and Flournoy were friends of William James, another important source for Jung (see ibid.)
139. Pierre Benoit (1886–1962), French novelist. In L’Atlandide (1919), two French officers are captured by the monstrous Queen Antinea. She has a cave wall with 120 niches in it, each of them destined for one of her lovers. When all 120 have been filled, Antinea will sit atop a throne in the center of the cave and rest forever. One of the officers is unable to resist her charms, and kills his comrade at her request. Ultimately, he is able to escape.
140. Sir Henry Rider Haggard (1856–1925), English writer of adventure novels. His She (1886–1887) is one of the best-selling novels of all time. It describes the journey of Horace Holly and his ward Leo Vincey to a lost kingdom in Africa. There, they encounter a mysterious white queen, Ayesha, who reigns as the all-powerful “She,” or “She-who-must-be-obeyed.”—Jung frequently cited She and L’Atlantide as classical descriptions of the anima figure (see the General Index to the CW).
141. After having been accused of plagiarism, Benoit sued for libel, claiming, among other things, that She had not been translated into French, and that he did not read English—which would rule out cryptomnesia, as also alleged by Jung elsewhere (e.g., 1939a, § 516; 1964 [1961], § 457). He lost the lawsuit just the same (New York Times, 24 July 1921).
142. See Lecture 6 of 24 November 1933, in which Jung treats this incidence in detail.—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) was enormously important to Jung; see, e.g., Memories, pp. 123–124, and the seminar on “Nietzsche’s Zarathustra” that he started in the summer semester of the following year (1988 [1934–1939]).
143. In 1789.
144. (Friedrich Karl Christian) Ludwig (Louis) Büchner (1824–1899), German philosopher, physiologist, and physician; exponent of nineteenth-century scientific Materialism, and founder of the German Freethinkers League.
145. In fact, Büchner’s book, Kraft und Stoff, first appeared in 1855, not in the 1870s. With its unabashedly materialistic views on the indestructibility of matter and force, and the finality of physical force, it immediately raised a storm of criticism in the German press, and caused the loss of his teaching post in Tubingen, but was an instant bestseller, and was translated into many languages (e.g., sixth German edition 1859; English translation 1864; 21 German reprints within 50 years).