The Starry Vault Of Heaven Is In

The Sad Truth Is That Man's Real Life Consists Of A Complex Of Inexorable Opposites - Day And Night, Birth And Death, Happiness And Misery, Good And Evil. We Are Not Even Sure That One Will Prevail Against The Other, That Good Will Overcome Evil, Or Joy Defeat Pain. Life Is A Battleground. It Always Has Been And Always Will Be; And If It Were Not So, Existence Would Come To An End.

How Else Could It Have Occurred To Man To Divide The Cosmos, On The Analogy Of Day And Night, Summer And Winter, Into A Bright Day-world And A Dark Night-world Peopled With Fabulous Monsters, Unless He Had The Prototype Of Such A Division In Himself, In The Polarity Between The Conscious And The Invisible And Unknowable Unconscious?

I Know That Previously I Would Not Have Dared To Express Myself So Explicitly About So Uncertain A Matter. I Can Take This Risk Because I Am Now In My Eighth Decade, And The Changing Opinions Of Men Scarcely Impress Me Any More; The Thoughts Of The Old Masters Are Of Greater Value To Me Than The Philosophical Prejudices Of The Western Mind.

All My Writings May Be Considered Tasks Imposed From Within, Their Source Was A Fateful Compulsion. What I Wrote Were Things That Assailed Me From Within Myself. I Permitted The Spirit That Moved Me To Speak Out.

Psychoanalysis Cannot Be Considered A Method Of Education If By Education We Mean The Topiary Art Of Clipping A Tree Into A Beautiful Artificial Shape. But Those Who Have A Higher Conception Of Education Will Prize Most The Method Of Cultivating A Tree So That It Fulfils To Perfection Its Own Natural Conditions Of Growth.