In somewhat free-handed fashion the last two lines of Goethe's stanza are often quoted: “The Highest bliss on earth shall be, The joys of personality!”:
This gives expression to the view that the ultimate aim and strongest desire of all mankind is to develop that fulness of life which is called personality
CW17 ¶ 284`PERSONALITY TRAINING' AS
AN EDUCATIONAL IDEAL
Nowadays, “personality training” has become an educational ideal that turns its back upon the standardized, mass-produced, “normal” human being demanded by the machine age. It thus pays tribute to the historical fact that the great liberating deeds of world history have sprung from leading personalities and never from the inert mass, which is at all times secondary and can only be prodded into activity by the demagogue
CW17 ¶ 284EDUCATING THE PERSONALITY
AS AN ADULT IDEAL
The fact is that the high ideal of educating the personality is not for children: for what is usually meant by personalitya well-rounded psychic whole that is capable of resistance and abounding in energyis an adult ideal
CW17 ¶ 286PARENTS INTENTION TO SPARE THEIR CHILDREN
THE PARENT'S UNHAPPY EXPERIENCES
How many parents have come to me with the laudable intention of sparing their children the unhappy experiences they had to go through in their own childhood! And when I ask, “Are you quite sure you have overcome these mistakes yourself?” they are firmly convinced that the damage has long since been repaired. In actual fact it has not. If as children they were brought up too strictly, then they spoil their own children with a tolerance bordering on bad taste; if certain matters were painfully concealed from them in childhood, these are revealed with a lack of reticence that is just as painful. They have merely gone to the opposite extreme, the strongest evidence for the tragic survival of the old sina fact which has altogether escaped them
CW17 ¶ 286PERSONALITY NEEDS QUALITIES OF
DEFINITENESS, WHOLENESS, RIPENESS
There is no personality without definiteness, wholeness, and ripeness. These three qualities cannot and should not be expected of the child, as they would rob it of childhood. It would be nothing but an abortion, a premature pseudo-adult; yet our modern education has already given birth to such monsters, particularly in those cases where parents set themselves the fanatical task of always “doing their best” for the children and “living only for them.” This clamant ideal effectively prevents the parents from doing anything about their own development and allows them to thrust their “best” down their children's throats. This so-called “best” turns out to be the very things the parents have most badly neglected in themselves. In this way the children are goaded on to achieve their parents' most dismal failures, and are loaded with ambitions that are never fulfilled. Such methods and ideals only engender educational monstrosities
CW17 ¶ 288CAUSAL NECESSITY IS THE ONLY
THING THAT MOVES NATURE
Clearly, no one develops his personality because somebody tells him that it would be useful or advisable to do so. Nature has never yet been taken in by well-meaning advice. The only thing that moves nature is causal necessity, and that goes for human nature too. Without necessity nothing budges, the human personality least of all. It is tremendously conservative, not to say torpid. Only acute necessity is able to rouse it. The developing personality obeys no caprice, no command, no insight, only brute necessity; it needs the motivating force of inner or outer fatalities. Any other development would be no better than individualism. That is why the cry of “individualism” is a cheap insult when flung at the natural development of personality
CW17 ¶ 293DEVELOPMENT OF PERSONALITY AS
BOTH A CHARISMA AND A CURSE
The words “many are called, but few are chosen” are singularly appropriate here, for the development of personality from the germ-state to full consciousness is at once a charisma and a curse, because its first fruit is the conscious and unavoidable segregation of the single individual from the undifferentiated and unconscious herd. This means isolation, and there is no more comforting word for it. Neither family nor society nor position can save him from this fate, nor yet the most successful adaptation to his environment, however smoothly he fits in. The development of personality is a favour that must be paid for dearly. But the people who talk most loudly about developing their personalities are the very ones who are least mindful of the results, which are such as to frighten away all weaker spirits
CW17 ¶ 294DEVELOPMENT OF PERSONALITY MEANS
FIDELITY TO LAW OF ONE'S BEING
Yet the development of personality means more than just the fear of hatching forth monsters, or of isolation. It also means fidelity to the law of one's own being
CW17 ¶ 295PISTIS MEANS `TRUST'
For the word “fidelity” I should prefer, in this context, the Greek word used in the New Testament, pistis, which is erroneously translated “faith.” It really means “trust,” “trustful loyalty.” Fidelity to the law of one's own being is a trust in this law, a loyal perseverance and confident hope; in short, an attitude such as a religious man should have towards God
CW17 ¶ 296PERSONALITY CANNOT DEVELOP UNLESS
INDIVIDUAL CHOOSES HIS OWN WAY
It can now be seen how portentous is the dilemma that emerges from behind our problem: personality can never develop unless the individual chooses his own way, consciously and with moral deliberation. Not only the causal motivenecessitybut conscious moral decision must lend its strength to the process of building the personality. If the first is lacking, then the alleged development is a mere acrobatics of the will; if the second, it will get stuck in unconscious automatism
CW17 ¶ 296MAN CAN MAKE A MORAL DECISION
TO GO HIS OWN WAY
But a man can make a moral decision to go his own way only if he holds that way to be the best. If any other way were held to be better, then he would live and develop that other personality instead of his own. The other ways are conventionalities of a moral, social, political, philosophical, or religious nature. The fact that the conventions always flourish in one form or another only proves that the vast majority of mankind do not choose their own way, but convention, and consequently develop not themselves but a method and a collective mode of life at the cost of their own wholeness
CW17 ¶ 296CONVENTION IS A COLLECTIVE NECESSITY
Just as the psychic and social life of mankind at the primitive level is exclusively a group life with a high degree of unconsciousness among the individuals composing it, so the historical process of development that comes afterwards is in the main collective and will doubtless remain so. That is why I believe convention to be a collective necessity. It is a stopgap and not an ideal, either in the moral or in the religious sense, for submission to it always means renouncing one's wholeness and running away from the final consequences of one's own being
CW17 ¶ 297MAN'S ABILITY TO ACT OTHERWISE
THAN HUMANITY HAS ACTED
To the man in the street it has always seemed miraculous that anyone should turn aside from the beaten track with its known destinations, and strike out on the steep and narrow path leading into the unknown. Hence it was always believed that such a man, if not actually crazy, was possessed by a daemon or a god; for the miracle of a man being able to act otherwise than as humanity has always acted could only be explained by the gift of daemonic power or divine spirit. How could anyone but a god counterbalance the dead weight of humanity in the mass, with its everlasting convention and habit? From the beginning, therefore, the heroes were endowed with godlike attributes. According to the Nordic view they had snake's eyes, and there was something peculiar about their birth or descent; certain heroes of ancient Greece were snake-souled, others had a personal daemon, were magicians or the elect of God. All these attributes, which could be multiplied at will, show that for the ordinary man the outstanding personality is something supernatural, a phenomenon that can only be explained by the intervention of some daemonic factor
CW17 ¶ 298WHAT INDUCES MAN TO
GO HIS OWN WAY?
What is it, in the end, that induces a man to go his own way and to rise out of unconscious identity with the mass as out of a swathing mist? Not necessity, for necessity comes to many, and they all take refuge in convention. Not moral decision, for nine times out of ten we decide for convention likewise. What is it, then, that inexorably tips the scales in favour of the extra-ordinary?
CW17 ¶ 299VOCATION EMANCIPATES MAN FROM
WELL-WORN PATHS OF THE HERD
It is what is commonly called vocation: an irrational factor that destines a man to emancipate himself from the herd and from its well-worn paths. True personality is always a vocation and puts its trust in it as in God, despite its being, as the ordinary man would say, only a personal feeling. But vocation acts like a law of God from which there is no escape. The fact that many a man who goes his own way ends in ruin means nothing to one who has a vocation. He must obey his own law, as if it were a daemon whispering to him of new and wonderful paths. Anyone with a vocation hears the voice of the inner man: he is called. That is why the legends say that he possesses a private daemon who counsels him and whose mandates he must obey. The best known example of this is Faust, and an historical instance is provided by the daemon of Socrates. Primitive medicine-men have their snake spirits, and Aesculapius, the tutelary patron of physicians, has for his emblem the Serpent of Epidaurus. He also had, as his private daemon, the Cabir Telesphoros, who is said to have dictated or inspired his medical prescriptions
CW17 ¶ 300“TO HAVE A VOCATION” IS
“TO BE ADDRESSED BY A VOICE”
The original meaning of “to have a vocation” is “to be addressed by a voice.” The clearest examples of this are to be found in the avowals of the Old Testament prophets. That it is not just a quaint old-fashioned way of speaking is proved by the confessions of historical personalities such as Goethe and Napoleon, to mention only two familiar examples, who made no secret of their feeling of vocation
CW17 ¶ 301VOCATION IS APPROPRIATE TO BOTH
GREAT AND SMALL PERSONALITIES
Vocation, or the feeling of it, is not, however, the prerogative of great personalities; it is also appropriate to the small ones all the way down to the “midget” personalities, but as the size decreases the voice becomes more and more muffled and unconscious. It is as if the voice of the daemon within were moving further and further off, and spoke more rarely and more indistinctly. The smaller the personality, the dimmer and more unconscious it becomes, until finally it merges indistinguishably with the surrounding society, thus surrendering its own wholeness and dissolving into the wholeness of the group. In the place of the inner voice there is the voice of the group with its conventions, and vocation is replaced by collective necessities
CW17 ¶ 302WHAT HAS PERSONALITY TO DO WITH
THE PLIGHT OF THE MANY?
But what has the individual personality to do with the plight of the many? In the first place he is part of the people as a whole, and is as much at the mercy of the power that moves the whole as anybody else. The only thing that distinguishes him from all the others is his vocation. He has been called by that all-powerful, all-tyrannizing psychic necessity that is his own and his people's affliction. If he hearkens to the voice, he is at once set apart and isolated, as he has resolved to obey the law that commands him from within. “His own law!” everybody will cry. But he knows better: it is the law, the vocation for which he is destined, no more “his own” than the lion that fells him, although it is undoubtedly this particular lion that kills him and not any other lion. Only in this sense is he entitled to speak of “his” vocation, “his” law
CW17 ¶ 304MAN MAY BE A GENIUS
WITHOUT BEING A PERSONALITY
To become a personality is not the absolute prerogative of the genius, for a man may be a genius without being a personality. In so far as every individual has the law of his life inborn in him, it is theoretically possible for any man to follow this law and so become a personality, that is, to achieve wholeness. But since life only exists in the form of living units, i.e., individuals, the law of life always tends towards a life individually lived. So although the objective psyche can only be conceived as a universal and uniform datum, which means that all men share the same primary, psychic condition, this objective psyche must nevertheless individuate itself if it is to become actualized, for there is no other way in which it could express itself except through the individual human being
CW17 ¶ 307ONLY THE MAN WHO ASSENTS TO THE
INNER VOICE BECOMES A PERSONALITY
Only the man who can consciously assent to the power of the inner voice becomes a personality; but if he succumbs to it he will be swept away by the blind flux of psychic events and destroyed. That is the great and liberating thing about any genuine personality: he voluntarily sacrifices himself to his vocation, and consciously translates into his own individual reality what would only lead to ruin if it were lived unconsciously by the group
CW17 ¶ 308CHRIST EXEMPLIFIES THE
MEANING OF PERSONALITY
One of the most shining examples of the meaning of personality that history has preserved for us is the life of Christ. In Christianity, which, be it mentioned in passing, was the only religion really persecuted by the Romans, there rose up a direct opponent of the Caesarean madness that afflicted not only the emperor, but every Roman as well: civis Romanus sum. The opposition showed itself wherever the worship of Caesar clashed with Christianity. But, as we know from what the evangelists tell us about the psychic development of Christ's personality, this opposition was fought out just as decisively in the soul of its founder
CW17 ¶ 309STORY OF THE TEMPTATION
The story of the Temptation clearly reveals the nature of the psychic power with which Jesus came into collision: it was the power-intoxicated devil of the prevailing Caesarean psychology that led him into dire temptation in the wilderness. This devil was the objective psyche that held all the peoples of the Roman Empire under its sway, and that is why it promised Jesus all the kingdoms of the earth, as if it were trying to make a Caesar of him
CW17 ¶ 309JESUS OBEYED THE INNER CALL
OF HIS VOCATION
Obeying the inner call of his vocation, Jesus voluntarily exposed himself to the assaults of the imperialistic madness that filled everyone, conqueror and conquered alike. In this way he recognized the nature of the objective psyche which had plunged the whole world into misery and had begotten a yearning for salvation that found expression even in the pagan poets. Far from suppressing or allowing himself to be suppressed by this psychic onslaught, he let it act on him consciously, and assimilated it
CW17 ¶ 309WORLD-CONQUERING CAESARISM TRANSFORMED
INTO SPIRITUAL KINGSHIP
Thus was world-conquering Caesarism transformed into spiritual kingship, and the Roman Empire into the universal kingdom of God that was not of this world. While the whole Jewish nation was expecting an imperialistically minded and politically active hero as a Messiah, Jesus fulfilled the Messianic mission not so much for his own nation as for the whole Roman world, and pointed out to humanity the old truth that where force rules there is no love, and where love reigns force does not count. The religion of love was the exact psychological counterpart to the Roman devil-worship of power
CW17 ¶ 309IS WHAT APPEARS TO BE THE
OBJECTIVE PSYCHE REALLY OBJECTIVE?
Hence the eternal doubt whether what appears to be the objective psyche is really objective, or whether it might not be imagination after all. But then the question at once arises: have I imagined such and such a thing on purpose, or has it been imagined by something in me? It is a similar problem to that of the neurotic who suffers from an imaginary carcinoma. He knows, and has been told a hundred times before, that it is all imagination, and yet he asks me brokenly, “But why do I imagine such a thing? I don't want to do it!” To which the answer is: the idea of the carcinoma has imagined itself in him without his knowledge and without his consent. The reason is that a psychic growth, a “proliferation,” is taking place in his unconscious without his being able to make it conscious. In the face of this interior activity he feels afraid. But since he is entirely persuaded that there can be nothing in his own soul that he does not know about, he must relate his fear to a physical carcinoma which he knows does not exist. And if he should still be afraid of it, there are a hundred doctors to convince him that his fear is entirely groundless. The neurosis is thus a defense against the objective, inner activity of the psyche, or an attempt, somewhat dearly paid for, to escape from the inner voice and hence from the vocation
CW17 ¶ 313For this “growth” is the objective activity of the psyche, which, independently of conscious volition, is trying to speak to the conscious mind through the inner voice and lead him towards wholeness. Behind the neurotic perversion is concealed his vocation, his destiny: the growth of personality, the full realization of the life-will that is born with the individual. It is the man without amor fati who is the neurotic; he, truly, has missed his vocation, and never will he be able to say with Cromwell, “None climbeth so high as he who knoweth not whither his destiny leadeth him”
CW17 ¶ 313BIRTH OF PERSONALITY IN ONESELF
HAS A THERAPEUTIC EFFECT
Just as the great personality acts upon society to liberate, to redeem, to transform, and to heal, so the birth of personality in oneself has a therapeutic effect. It is as if a river that had run to waste in sluggish side-streams and marshes suddenly found its way back to its proper bed, or as if a stone lying on a germinating seed were lifted away so that the shoot could begin its natural growth
CW17 ¶ 317INNER VOICE IS VOICE
OF A FULLER LIFE
The inner voice is the voice of a fuller life, of a wider, more comprehensive consciousness. That is why, in mythology, the birth of the hero or the symbolic rebirth coincides with sunrise, for the growth of personality is synonymous with an increase of self-consciousness. For the same reason most heroes are characterized by solar attributes, and the moment of birth of their greater personality is known as illumination
CW17 ¶ 318MOST PEOPLE HAVE A NATURAL
FEAR OF THE INNER VOICE
The fear that most people naturally have of the inner voice is not so childish as might be supposed. The contents that rise up and confront a limited consciousness are far from harmless, as is shown by the classic example of the temptation of Christ, or the equally significant Mara episode in the Buddha legend. As a rule, they signify the specific danger to which the person concerned is liable to succumb. What the inner voice whispers to us is generally something negative, if not actually evil. This must be so, first of all because we are usually not as unconscious of our virtues as of our vices, and then because we suffer less from the good than from the bad in us. The inner voice, as I have explained above, makes us conscious of the evil from which the whole community is suffering, whether it be the nation or the whole human race. But it presents this evil in an individual form, so that one might at first suppose it to be only an individual characteristic
CW17 ¶ 319INNER VOICE BRINGS EVIL IN
A TEMPTING AND CONVINCING WAY
The inner voice brings the evil before us in a very tempting and convincing way in order to make us succumb. If we do not partially succumb, nothing of this apparent evil enters into us, and no regeneration or healing can take place. (I say “apparent, ” though this may sound too optimistic.) If we succumb completely, then the contents expressed by the inner voice act as so many devils, and a catastrophe ensues. But if we can succumb only in part, and if by self-assertion the ego can save itself from being completely swallowed, then it can assimilate the voice, and we realize that the evil was, after all, only a semblance of evil, but in reality a bringer of healing and illumination
CW17 ¶ 319INNER VOICE IS A “LUCIFER”
In fact, the inner voice is a “Lucifer” in the strictest and most unequivocal sense of the word, and it faces people with ultimate moral decisions without which they can never achieve full consciousness and become personalities. The highest and the lowest, the best and the vilest, the truest and the most deceptive things are often blended together in the inner voice in the most baffling way, thus opening up in us an abyss of confusion, falsehood, and despair
CW17 ¶ 319ABSURD FOR PEOPLE TO ACCUSE
THE VOICE OF NATURE
It is naturally absurd for people to accuse the voice of Nature, the all-sustainer and all-destroyer of evil. If she appears inveterately evil to us, this is mainly due to the old truth that the good is always the enemy of the better. We would be foolish indeed if we did not cling to the traditional good for as long as possible. But as Faust says: Whenever in this world we reach the good, We call the better all a lie, a sham!
CW17 ¶ 320A good thing is unfortunately not a good forever, for otherwise there would be nothing better. If better is to come, good must stand aside. Therefore Meister Eckhart says, “God is not good, or else he could be better”
CW17 ¶ 320ANYTHING DESTINED TO BE BETTER
FIRST APPEARS IN EVIL FORM
There are times in the world's historyand our own time may be one of themwhen good must stand aside, so that anything destined to be better first appears in evil form. This shows how extremely dangerous it is even to touch these problems, for evil can so easily slip in on the plea that it is potentially the better! The problems of the inner voice are full of pitfalls and hidden snares. Treacherous, slippery ground, as dangerous and pathless as life itself once one lets go of the railings. But he who cannot lose his life, neither shall he save it. The hero's birth and the heroic life are always threatened. The serpents sent by Hera to destroy the infant Hercules, the python that tries to strangle Apollo at birth, the massacre of the innocentsall these tell the same story. To develop the personality is a gamble, and the tragedy is that the daemon of the inner voice is at once our greatest danger and an indispensable help. It is tragic, but logical, for it is the nature of things to be so
CW17 ¶ 321