Use, value, and science: the spirit of our time. Is there another spirit at work?
If I speak in the spirit of this time, I must say: no one and nothing can justify what I must proclaim to you. Justification is superfluous to me, since I have no choice, but I must. I have learned that in addition to the spirit of this time there is another spirit at work, namely that which rules the depths of everything contemporary. The spirit of this time would like to hear of use and value. I also thought this way, and my humanity still thinks this way. But that other spirit forces me nevertheless to speak, beyond justification, use and logic. Filled with human pride and blinded by the presumptuous spirit of the times, I long sought to hold that other spirit away from me. But I did not consider that the spirit of the depths from time immemorial and for all the future possesses a greater power than the spirit of this time, who changes with the generations. The spirit of the depths has subjugated all pride and arrogance to the power of judgment. He took away my belief in science, he robbed me of the joy of explaining and ordering things, and he let the devotion to the ideals of this time expire in me. He forced me down to the last and simplest things.
The spirit of the depths took my understanding and all my knowledge and placed them in the service of the inexplicable and illogical. He robbed me of my speech and writing for everything that was not in service of this one thing, namely the melting together of logic and illogic, which brings forth the meaning beyond all meaning.
C.J. Jung, The Red Book, 1915, trans. M. Kyburz, J. Peck, and S. Shamdasani (revised)
h/t Rick Love
For other posts relating to Jung, see here
Nice excerpt…as I read it I heard echos of St. Paul’s 1 Corinthians 13 passage on the incompleteness of wisdom, knowledge, and prophecy. Maybe Jung’s reference to the “spirit of the depths” is akin to St. Paul’s “For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end.” I also hear a veiled reference to the Grail in Jung’s statement, “He robbed me of my speech and writing for everything that was not in service of this one thing…” It took a lifetime of wandering before Perceval was ready to ask the required question, “Whom does the Grail serve?” One would certainly imagine Jung was living in and through the beauty and richness of this realization. We certainly could use more of this it seems.