This engraving analysed in detail by Pauli 's friend, the art historian Erwin Panofsky,was discussed in their mutual correspondence: "Nun zu Dürers Melancholie. Natürlichkommt es sehr darauf an, ob Dürer mit Alchemisten verkehrt hat, welche Quellen ihmzugänglich waren, welches sein inneres Erlebnis bei seinem Bild war, und vieles andere.Das Bild allein genügt offenbar nicht, um sich für die eine oder die andere Deutung zu
entscheiden ." (Letter from Pauli to Erwin Panofsky, March 13, 1952)
* First pub1ishedin M. Göhring, ed., Europa - Erbe und Auftrag. Internationaler Gelehrtenkongreß, Mainz 1955. Wiesbaden, 1956, pp. 71-79 .
Wissen Sie etwas von einem "Institut fiir europäische Geschichte" in Mainz? - Dieses hat mich angefragt (es unterzeichnet ein Professor Dr. Martin Göhring), ob ich imRahmen einer Arbeitstagung desselben im Oktober einenVortrag über das Thema "Die Wissenschaft und das abendländische Weltbild" halten könnte. (N.B. Das Wort "Weltbild" würde ich lieber durch "Denken" ersetzen . - Offenbar ist Herr von Weizsäcker von meinem Aufsatz über KepIer, den Sie kennen, und einem Brief, den ich ihm darübergeschrieben habe, so beeindruckt, daß er mich in Deutschland überall als Redner und Artikelschreiber empfiehlt.)
Das Thema lockt mich. Denn es ist die Wissenschaft(und nicht die christliche Religion), die mich geistig ansAbendland fesselt. Sowohl für indische Mystik wie fürLaotse habe ich gefühlsmäßig viel übrig, aber das wissenschaftliche Denken wird bei mir eine etwaige Konversionzum Osten (wie beim Deutschen R. Wilhelm und beim Engländer A. Huxley) mit Sicherheit verhindern.
Die Abgrenzung und Begrenzung der Wissenschaft gegenüber der Mystik - ich glaube, daß sie dem modernenAbendländer als "Ost-West-Problem" erscheint - ist alsoein Thema, das mich sehr lockt ; es würde zugleich implizitedie Frage beantworten, inwiefern ichselbst ein Abendländerbin.
Letter from Pauli to Pascual Jordan, May 19, 1954
It is certainly a rash undertaking to speak in so short a time on a topic like"Science and Western Thought", which could easily occupy a whole courseof lectures.
Western thought as a whole has always been influenced by the near andfar Asiatic East. It seems to be agreed, however, that science, more than anything else, is really characteristic of western civilisation. Mathematics andnatural science are specially distinguished from man's other intellectual activities by being teachable and verifiable. Both qualities demand a lengthyand in part critical elucidation. By teachability I mean communicability toothers of trains of thought and of results, made possible by a progressivetradition, in which the learning of what is already known requires an intellectual effort of quite a different kind from that required for the discoveryof something new. In the latter process the creative irrational element findsmore essential expression than in the former. In science there is no generalrule for passing from the empirical material to new concepts and theoriescapable of mathematical formulation. On one hand empirical results provide stimulus for trains ofthought; on the other hand thoughts and ideas arethemselves phenomena, which often arise spontaneously, to undergo subse-
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quent modification when brought face to face with the observational data.It is not always possible to check by experiment every separate assertionof a scientific theory, although the system of thought as a whole must, if itdeserves the name of a scientific theory, contain possibilities of acheck byempirical methods. This is what constitutes its verifiability.
Teachability is common to exact science and to logically provable mathematics. The possibility ofmathematical proof, and the possibility ofapplyingmathematics to nature, are fundamental experiences ofhumanity, which firstarose in antiquity. These experiences were at once regarded as enigmatical,superhuman and divine, and contact was made with the religious atmosphere.
It is here that we meet the fundamental problem 0/ the relation betweenknowledge 0/salvation and scientific knowledge . Periods of dispassionate research on criticallines are often succeeded by others in which the aim is to tryto include science in a more comprehensive spiritualism involving mysticalelements. In contrast to science, the mystical attitude is not characteristic ofthe occident (Abendland); in spite of differences in detail it is common tooccident and orient. In this connection I may at this point refer the reader toan excellent book by R. Otto, "West-östliche Mystik" (Gotha, 1926) whichmakes a comparison between the mysticism of Meister Eckhart (1250-1327)and that of the Indian Shankara (about 800), the founder of the Vedantaphilosophy. Mysticism seeks the unity of all external things and the unityof the inner man with them; this it does by seeking to see through the multiplicity of things as illusory and unreal. Thus there comes about, stage bystage, man's unity with the Godhead - Tao in China, Samadhi in India orNirvana in Buddhism. The last-named states are likely to be equivalent fromthe western point ofview to the extinction of ego-consciousness. Thoroughgoing mysticism does not ask "why?" It asks "How can man escape the evil,the suffering, of this terrible, menacing universe? How can it be recognisedas appearance, how can the ultimate reality, the Brahman, the One, the Godhead (no longer personal for Eckhart) be seen?" It is however in keeping withthe spirit ofwestern science - in a certain sense one might say with the Greekspirit - to ask, for instance, "Why is the One mirrored in the Many? What isit that mirrors, and what is mirrored? Why has the One not remained alone?What originates the so-called illusion?" In his book, mentioned above, OUopertinently speaks (on p. 126) ofthe "concern with salvation, which startingfrom certain situations of calamity, found given beforehand, seeks to alleviate them, not however to solve theoretically the problem of whence theycome; and which is content to let insoluble problems lie, or cobbles them upas best it can with scanty auxiliary theories". I believe that it is the destinyofthe occident continually to keep bringing into connection with each otherthese two fundamental attitudes, on the one hand the rational-critical, whichseeks to understand, and on the other the mystic-irrational, which looks forthe redeeming experience of oneness. Both attitudes will always reside in the
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human soul, and each will always carry the other already within itse1f asthe germ of its contrary. Thus there arises a sort of dialectical process, ofwhich we do not know whither it is leading us, I believe that as occidentals(Abendländer) we have to commit ourselves to this process, and recognisethe pair of opposites as complementary. We cannot and will not complete1ysacrifice the ego-consciousness which observes the universe, but we can alsoaccept intellectually the experience of oneness as a kind of limiting case orideallimiting conception. While allowing the tension of opposites to remain,we must also recognise that on any path to knowledge or to salvation we aredependent on factors beyond our control, which religious language has always designated as Grace.
Among the attempts that have occurred in the course of history to effect a synthesis of the basic attitudes of science and of mysticism there aretwo which I should like particularly to stress. One of these originates withPythagoras in the sixth century B. C , is then carried on by his disciples anddeveloped further by Plato, appearing in late antiquity as Neo-Platonismand Neo-Pythagoreanism. Since much of this philosophy was taken overinto early Christian theology, it continues thereafter in persevering association with Christianity, to blossom anew in the Renaissance. It was throughthe rejection of the anima mundi, the world-soul, and areturn to Plato'sdoctrine of knowledge in Galileo's work , and through a partial revival ofPythagorean elements in that of Kepler, that the science ofmodernity, whichwe now call classical science, arises in the seventeenth century. After Newtonit rapidly separates itself on rational-criticallines from its original mysticalelements. The second attempt is that of alchemy and hermetic philosophy,which has lapsed since the seventeenth century.
Out of the long process of development in the history of thought, inwhich this problem of relations keeps coming up in new guise, I can selectfor the sake of example only a few features , which are significant for our owntime as weIl.Recent researches have revealed the powerful influence ofBabylonian mathematics and astronomy on the beginnings of science in Greece.The critical scientific spirit however reached its first culmination in classical Hellas. It was there that those contrasts and paradoxes were formulatedwhich also concern us as problems, though in altered form: appearance andreality, being and becoming, the one and the many, sense experience and purethought, the continuum and the integer, the rational ratio and the irrationalnumber, necessity and purposefulness, causality and chance. It was there toothat speculation about a way out of the difficulties of the relation betweenunity and multiplicity led, as a triumph of the rational mode of thought, tothe idea of the atom of Leucippus (about 440 B. C) and Democritus (about420 B. C). It would not be correct to designate these thinkers as materialistsin the modern sense. Spiritual and material were not then separated to thesame extent as in later ages; thus Democritus assumed atoms of the soul as
16. Science and Western Though t 141
weIlas ofmaterial bodies, between which fire represented a connecting link.In the century-long dispute over the question whether space devoid ofmattercould exist, the atomists belong to the side which admits this possibility, inthat space between the atoms is supposed to be empty. Democritus denieschance and finalistic causes; atoms fall in empty space according to the lawsof necessity. If I have understood correctly, however, an initial "swerve" ofthe atoms from rectilinear motion is sometimes supposed to take place, inthe sense of an incipient circular motion, and only the latter can lead to thecosmogonic (world-generating) vortex. This ancient form of atomism doesnot contain the element of empirical verifiability, so it is not yet a scientifictheory in the modern sense but , as aprecursor of such a theory, yet only aphilosophical speculation.
Prior to Democritus with his rational approach, Pythagoras, who hasbeen mentioned above, was already at work (about 530 B. C.). He and hisdisciples founded an expressly mystical doctrine of salvation, which was mostintimately tied up with mathematical thought, and was based on the earlierBabylonian number-mysticism. For hirn, and for the Pythagoreans, wherever number is, there also is soul, the expression of the unity which is God.Whole-number relationships, as they occur in the proportions of the frequencies of the simple musical intervals, are harmony, that is to say, theyare what brings unity into contrasts. As part of mathematics number alsobelongs to an abstract supersensuous eternal world which can be apprehended not by the senses but only in contemplation by the intellect. Thus forthe Pythagoreans mathematics and contemplative meditation (the originalmeaning of "theoria") are very closely connected; for them mathematicalknowledge and wisdom (sophia) are inseparable. Special significance wasattached to the tetraktys , fourfoldness, and there is a traditional oath ofthePythagoreans: "by hirn who has committed to our soul the tetraktys , originalsource and the root of eternal Nature."
As areaction against the rationalism of the atomists , Plato (428-348B.C.) took over into his doctrine of ideas many of the mystical elements ofthe Pythagoreans. He shares with them his higher valuation ofcontemplationas compared with ordinary senseexperience, and his passionate participationin mathematics, especially in geometry, with its ideal objects. The discoveriesof his friend Theaetetus on incommensurable intervals (proportions whichcannot be represented by rational fractions) made a profound impression onhirn. Indeed, we have here to do with a fundamental question, which cannotbe decided by sensuous apprehension but only by thought.
It is just the distinction between ideal geometric objects and the bodies apprehended by the senses that determines Plato's conception of whatnowadays we call matter. For him this distinction lies in a wholly passivesomething, difticult to grasp by thought, which he denotes by various feminine words, as for example receptacle or nurse for the ideas. Mention must
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also be made here ofthe term xropa for space occupied by matter. Aristotle attempted to conceive ofthis undetermined feminine Xin a more positive way.He called it hyle, and emphasised, in contrast with the Eleatics, that it is not amere privatio, that is, it is not a mere lack of something, but is at least "beingas potentiality". Here "being" was, since Parmenides, to be understood as"comprehensible by conceptual thought" in contrast to "not-being", whichdid not mean simply not present, but "inaccessible to the thinking mind".Cicero translated the later Aristotelian word hyle into Latin as "materia",which then became the designation ofthe concept with which we are familiar.
So much has been written about Plato's doctrine of ideas, and his theory of knowledge as recollection (anamnesis) by the soul of a previous state,that I shall here be very brief. These theories have had a lasting influence onwestern thoughts as hardly anything else has ever done. Modern man, seeking a middle position in the evaluation of sense-impression and thought,can, following Plato, interpret the process ofunderstanding nature as a correspondence, that is, as a coming into congruence (zur Deckung kommen)of pre-existing internal images of the human psyche with external objectsand their behaviour. Modern man, of course, unlike Plato, looks on thepre-existent original images also as not invariable, but as relative to the development ofthe conscious point ofview, so that the word "dialectic" whichPlato is fond ofusing may be applied to the process ofdevelopment ofhumanknowledge.
As a further development ofPythagorean teachings Plato's mysticism is alucid mysticism, in which understanding, in its various degrees, from opinion(ö6~a) through geometric knowledge (Survotu) to the highest knowledge ofgeneral and necessary truths (emcrnun) has found its place. So lucid is thismysticism that it overlooks many obscurities, which we oftoday neither maynor can do. This comes out, for example, in Plato's conception ofthe Good asidentical with the highest "reality" that can be known in meditation. Socrates'thesis of the teachability ofvirtue, and of ignorance as the sole cause of evilactions, becomes Plato's doctrine ofthe identity ofthe idea ofthe Good withthe cause of knowledge of truth and of science.
While science was developing rationally into the axiomatic system of geometry in Euc!id's elements (about 300 B.C.), which withstood all criticismfor so long, and underwent substantial extension only in the nineteenth century, the mystical side of Plato 's work gradually gave rise to Neo-Platonism,which achieves more or less systematic formulation in Plotinus (204 to 270A. D.). Here we find the identity of the Good with the comprehensible carried to an extreme, as compared with Plato's own view, and coarsened bythe doctrine that matter (hyle) is a simple lack (privatio) of ideas, that it ismoreover the embodiment ofEvil and that this is therefore a simple privatioboni, a lack of Good, which cannot be the object of conceptual thought.Thus there arose an intermixture, which appears most bizarre, of the pair
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of opposites "good-evil" of ethics with the naturalistic or logical "being-notbeing", which we can best render as "rational-irrational" .
It was Neo-Platonism more than other currents ofphilosophical thoughtin late antiquity that proved suitable for absorption into early Christian theology. Augustine was in fact, before his conversion to Christianity, a NeoPlatonist, and subsequently there were always theologians and philosophersamong Christian thinkers who were more or less Platonic in outlook.
At this point I propose to make a jump, historically speaking, and to passon to the Renaissance, mentioning that the Middle Ages are representedin this review both by Eckhart, the master of the Gothic age, and also byalchemy, which continues through the whole of the middle ages.
The Renaissance was an epoch ofextraordinary passion, oifuror , whichin 15th and 16th century Italy broke through the barriers between different human activities, and brought into the most intimate connection thingsformerly separated, such as empirical observation and mathematics, manualtechniques and thought, art and science. The governing philosophy of thisage is a resurrected, though of course altered, Neo-Platonism of mysticalstamp, represented by Marsilio Ficino (1443-1499). Under the protectorateofLorenzo di M edici he founded the Platonic Academy in Florence, the mostimportant member ofwhich, besides himself, was Pico della Mirandola. Thisacademy was at the same time a sort of mystical sect, which cultivated acontemplative life and divine metaphysical inspiration as the highest values.Unlike Plato hirnself, ofwhose works Ficino made a Latin translation, whichremained authoritative for a long time, this circle had no connection withmathematics. Its principles were to some extent in opposition to the scientifictendency with its positive orientation towards mathematics, as represented,for instance, by Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519). Ficino's principal work, theTheologia Platonica, is an attempt, planned on grand lines, to effect a synthesis between Christian theology and the ancient pagan philosophy. To itbelongs the idea ofAphrodite Uranie (Venuscoelestis), the spiritualisation ofEros or Amor, which also appears in the ecstatic states of religious prophetssuch as Moses and Paul, and which, as amor intellectualis Dei , correspondsroughly to our will-to -knowledge, Discussions on astrology and magic basedon the old idea, due to Plotinus, of sympatheia were more to the liking ofthe members of the Platonic Academy than scientific debate, Agrippa 0/Nettesheim as well as Paracelsus were strong1y influenced by this mode ofthought.
Everything that formerly stood firm seems to be stirred up in this uniqueperiod: Sides were taken for or against Aristotle, for or against the vacuum,for or against the heliocentric system re-discovered by Copernicus (14731543). At first all this was not dispassionate science but religious mysticism,arising from a new cosmic feeling, and expressing itself in particular in adeification of space. Thus Francesco Patrizzi (1529-1597) maintained the
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equivalence of all points of autonomous space. The fact that from the timeof Nicolas 0/ Cusa, space lost its boundaries, and was thought of as infinite, made possible the pantheism of Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) with itsleaning towards knowledge ofthe world, as a further development ofthe philosophy of the early Platonists of the Renaissance. From this point onwardsthe later more dispassionate seventeenth-century way of looking at thingsled to Descartes' analytical geometry and to the absolute space of Newton'smechanics.
In order that the darker side to the extraordinary enlargement ofhumanconsciousness through the opening up of entirely new realms of what is understandable in nature may not be forgotten, I now wish to mention a somewhat superficial precursor of modern science - Francis Bacon (1561-1626).Without having any particular skill in mathematics, he advocated empiricism and the inductive method, then an innovation. His practical object wasavowedly to master the forces ofnature by scientific discovery and invention.In this connection he used the slogan "Knowledge is power" as propaganda.I believe that this proud will to dominate nature does in fact underlie modernscience, and that even the adherent of pure knowledge cannot entirely denythis motivation. We moderns are once again becoming "afraid of our likeness to God". To use a well-known phrase of the historian Schlosser,* theanxious question presents itself to us whether this power too, our westernpower over nature, is evil.
In the first place this attitude of man, desirous of understanding andthereby dominating nature, in which, in conflict with the unity of nature, hetakes up an external position, observing and reflecting, was destined to celebrate its great triumphs in the rise ofmodern science in the "grand siecle",namely in the seventeenth century. For the world-soul it substituted the abstract mathematicallaw of nature. The Copernican system led on one handto Kepler's astronomy, still on a religious basis, although already becomingempirical; and on the other to quite dispassionate questions which Copernicus could not answer, such as the following : "Why is there not always astrong wind as the earth rotates, why does the atmosphere participate in thisrotation? Why does a cannon shoot as far to the west as to the east?" It wasnot until the formulation of Galileo's law of inertia that a meaningful answercould be given to these questions. I cannot here go into the development ofmechanics which concluded with Newton's "Principia" (1687); it has undergone substantial evolution in Einstein's theory of relativity, which belongs tomodern physics.
Among the general characteristic manifestations ofthe seventeenth century is the re-establishment of new boundaries between single disciplinesand faculties, and the splitting of the world-picture into the rational and the
* Friedrich Schlosser (1776-1861) .
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re1igious side. This dissociation was inevitable, and is reflected particularlyc1early in Descartes' philosophy and in Newton's theological writings.
At about the same time a similar fate overtook the second attempt ata synthesis of a way of salvation having gnostic-mystical elements with seientific knowledge - that of alchemy and hermetic philosophy. Beginning inancient times, this philosophy becomes very widespread in late antiquity sincethe appearance of Hermes Trismegistus; thereafter it continues throughoutthe whole of the middle ages, initially nourished by Arabic sources and Latintranslations from them. Finally, after aperiod offlorescence in the sixteenthcentury, it fell into decay towards the elose of the seventeenth, simultaneously with the beginning of modern science. In this case too the basis ofthe synthesis proved too narrow, and the pair of opposites fell apart oncemore: into scientific chemistry on one hand, and on the other, religious mysticism, again divorced from material happenings, as represented for exampleby Jakob Böhme.
The assumptions of alchemist philosophy, while seeming very strange tous at first sight, establish a certain symmetry between matter and spirit. Thisacts to counterbalance the one-sided tendency towards spiritualisation whichwas considerably intensified in Neo-Platonism as compared with Plato's ownteaching and which was taken over by Christianity. In contrast to the NeoPlatonic identification of matter with evil, there resides in matter, accordingto the alchemist conception, a spirit which awaits deliverance. The practitioner in alchemy is always involved in the course of nature in such a waythat the actual or suppositious chemical processes in the retort are mystically identified with psychic processes in hirnself, and are designated by thesame words. There is something strange to us nowadays in the identification of each of the seven planets with one of the seven metals, inc1uding theidentity of Hermes both with the planet Mercury and with argentum vivum,quicksilver, which has also retained its name mercury. A relic ofthe identification of easily evaporating, volatile substances with Spirit has remained inthe names spirit for alcohol, and essence (essential nature) for the materialresult of distillation. The way of deliverance, itself again also symbolised byHermes, is an opus (work) beginning with blackness (nigredo or melancholia)and ending with the production of the lapis sapientium, the philosophers'stone, which, asfilius philosophorum andfilius macrocosmi, is set in parallelwith Christ, thefilius microcosmi. According to the alchemist conception, thedeliverance of substance by the man who transforms it, which culminates inthe production of the stone, is, in consequence of a mystic correspondencebetween macrocosm and microcosm, identical with the redeeming transformation (Wandlung) of the man through the opus, which comes about only"Deo concedente".
In alchemy we have to do with a psycho-physical monism expressed in aunified language which appears strange to us, and which remains entangled in
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the concrete and visible.But the general attitude ofman towards nature whichalchemy expresses, directed as it is towards the experience of unity, shouldnot simply be equated to its outgrowths, among which was the familiar everfruitless and often fraudulent fabrication of gold .
Goethe's scientific conceptions, which were so often in opposition toofficial science, become more comprehensible in the light of their alchemicalsources, the terminology of which comes to light quite plainly, especiallyin "Faust". Goethe was an emotional type and hence more susceptible tothe experience of unity - "nichts ist drinnen, nichts ist draußen, denn wasinnen, das ist außen" (nothing inside, nothing outside, for what's inside thatis outside) - than to critical science. In this regard it was alchemy alone thatsuited his emotional attitude. This is the background of Goethe's antagonismto Newton, a topic upon which much has been written. Less weIl-known arethe earlier polemies between Kepler, representing the science which was justdeveloping, and the English physician Robert Fludd, who belonged to theorder of Rosicrucians and represented the Hermetic tradition. I believe thatone is justified in applying to Kepler-Fludd and Newton- Goethe the oldsaying "Was die Alten sungen, das zwitschern die Jungen" (the young twitteras the old folk sang).
C. G. Jung has recently begun, starting from the psychology ofthe unconscious, to uncover the psychological content of the old alchemical texts andto disclose its secret for our own time. I hope that some further valuable material will be brought to light in the process, particularly with reference to therole ofpairs ofopposites in the alchemical opus. For the psychology ofthe unconscious too, alchemy constitutes a counterweight to over-spiritualisation,having the significance of an encounter of psychology with matter and withthe rest of science.
At this point a question presents itself which is vital for contemporaryscience. "Shall we be able to realise, on a higher plane, alchemy's old dreamof psycho-physical unity, by the creation of a unified conceptual foundationfor the scientific comprehension of the physical as weIlas the psychical?" Wedo not yet know the answer. Many fundamental questions ofbiology, in particular the relation between the causal and the finalistic, and the associatedpsycho-physical connections, have in my view not as yet been answered orclarified in a really satisfactory way.
Modern quantum physics also has, however, according to Niels Bohr'sformulation, encountered complementary pairs of opposites in its atomicobjects, such as particle - wave or position - momentum, and has to takeaccount of the freedom of the observer to make a choice between mutuallyexclusive experimental arrangements, which interfere with the course of nature in a way not calculable beforehand. Even for the observer in modernphysics the objective result of the observation is no longer subject to his influence once the experimental arrangement has been chosen. This situation,
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which is not easy for the layman to understand, has often been expoundedelsewhere by various physicists, and I can refer to it only briefly:
The old question whether under some conditions the psychic state oftheobserver can affect the external material course of nature has no place incontemporary physics. For the ancient alchemists the answer was quite naturally in the affirmative. Last century so critical a thinker as the philosopherArthur Schopenhauer, a leading expert on and admirer of Kant, maintained,in his essay "Animal Magnetism and Magie" that so-called magical effectswere to a large extent possible. He interpreted these in his particular terminology as "direct influences ofthe will, breaking through the bounds ofspaceand time." In regard to this it is probably not possible to say that aprioriphilosophical reasons are sufficient to dispose of such possibilities from theoutset. We have in recent times an empirical para-psychology, c1aimingexactscientific methodology, and operating with modern experimental methodson one hand, and with modern mathematieal statistics on the other. Shouldthe positive results in the still controversial fie1d of extra-sensory perception(ESP) definitively prove to be true, this might lead to developments that arequite unforeseeable at present.
In the light of our historical survey, which for external reasons has beencondensed into excessivelyshort compass, we can say that at the present timea point has again been reached at which the rationalist outlook has passed itszenith, and is found to be too narrow. Externally all contrasts appear to beextraordinarily accentuated. On one hand the rational way of thought leadsto the assumption of a reality whieh cannot be directly apprehended by thesenses, but which is comprehensible by means ofmathematical or other symbols, as for instance the atom or the unconscious. But on the other hand thevisible effects ofthis abstract reality are as concrete as atomic explosions, andare by no means necessarily good, indeed sometimes the extreme opposite. Aflight from the merely rational, in which the will to power is never quite absent as a background, to its opposite, for example to a Christian or Buddhistmysticism is obvious and is emotionally understandable. Yet I believe thatthere is no other course for anyone for whom narrow rationalism has lostits force of conviction, and for whom also the magie of a mystical attitude,experiencing the external world in its crowding multiplicity as illusory, is noteffective enough, than to expose hirnself in one way or another to these accentuated contrasts and their conflicts. It is precise1y by this means that thescientist can more or less consciously tread a path of inner salvation. Slowlythen develop inner images, fantasies or ideas, compensatory to the externalsituation, which indieate the possibility of a mutual approach of poles in thepairs of opposites. Taking a warning from the failure throughout the historyof thought of all premature endeavours to achieve a unity I shall not ventureto make predictions about the future. As against the strict division of the activities of the human spirit into separate departments since the seventeenth
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century, I still regard the conceptual aim ofovercoming the contrasts, an aimwhich includes a synthesis embracing the rational understanding as weIl asthe mystic experience of one-ness, as the expressed or unspoken mythos ofour own present age.
