Philosophy of the Unconscious

by Eduard Von Hartmann

  Having got so far in this way as to see in perceptions external objects, the next point to be considered is the elaboration of the perceptions, e.g., in vision the sight of distance reckoned from the eye, single vision with two eyes, sight of the third dimension in bodies, &c., and what corresponds thereto in other senses, as is discussed at length in so many manuals of physiology, psychology, &c. The processes which bring about this closer understanding, belong partly, indeed, to consciousness; in greater part, however, they fall into the domain of the Unconscious (comp. Wundt “Beiträge zur Theorie der Sinneswahrnehmung,” as well as the passages cited above, p. 39). “As the formation of perception by the single eye depends upon a series of psychical processes of an unconscious kind, so also the formation of binocular perception is nothing but an unconscious process of inference. … Thus it is not merely the special perception of depth to which the binocular act of vision necessarily leads, but it is, in addition, the representation of reflection and lustre, which arises therefrom in an altogether corresponding uniform manner” (Wundt, pp. 373, 374). “They (the unconscious psychical processes) are not merely those which form perceptions out of the unrelated sensations, but those also which bind the more immediate and simple perceptions themselves again into more compound ones, and thus bring order and system into the possession of our mind, before with consciousness that light is brought into this possession, which first teaches us ourselves to know it” (ibid. 375).

  We might easily deceive ourselves concerning this relation, if we only reflected on the tardiness with which the human child attains to the full mastery of sense-perception. But if more exact investigation enables us here to perceive without difficulty, how small the elaboration of conscious thought is with children at the time, when they already possess this understanding of perception in full measure, the unconsciousness of all the needful processes among animals is evident at the first glance. The certainty with which these move soon after their birth, the propriety with which they comport themselves with respect to the outer world, would be impossible, if they did not instinctively possess this understanding of their sense-perceptions. If, as should properly be done, we include under sensuous perception in the wider sense this full comprehension of the sense-impressions, we see that the coming to pass of sensuous perception, which forms the foundation of all conscious mental activity, is dependent on a whole series of unconscious processes, without which aids on the part of instinct Man and Animal would perish helplessly, since they would lack the means of perceiving and of making use of the outer world.

  IX.

  THE UNCONSCIOUS IN MYSTICISM.

  THE word “mystical” is in everybody’s mouth; everybody knows the names of celebrated mystics, everybody knows examples of the mystical. And yet how few understand the word, whose signification itself is mystical, and therefore can only be rightly comprehended by him who has within him a mystical vein, however weak it be. Let us try to get at the essence of the matter, by reviewing the various leading phenomena presented in the mysticism of different times and individuals.

  We find among the largest number of mystics a turning away from active life and a falling back upon quietistic contemplation, even a striving after mental and bodily annihilation. This cannot, however, express the essence of mysticism; for the world’s greatest mystic, Jacob Böhme, managed his household affairs in a methodical fashion, worked hard, and educated his children. Other mystics plunged so deeply into practical affairs as to come forward in the character of world - reformers; others professed theurgy and magic, or practical medicine, and undertook journeys for scientific purposes.—Another series of phenomena, with higher degrees of mysticism, are bodily fits, as convulsions, epilepsies, ecstasies, imaginations and fixed ideas of hysterical women and hypochondriacal men, visions of ecstatic or spontaneously-somnambulistic persons. All these wear so much the character of bodily disease, that the essence of mysticism certainly cannot be looked for in them, although they are for the most part intentionally produced by voluntary fasting, asceticism, and continued concentration of the fancy on one point. Those, who in the history of mysticism evoked such repulsive phenomena, we should at the present day commiserate in mad-houses, but in their own time they were adored as prophets and persecuted and slain as martyrs; such unfortunates, e.g., as took themselves to be Christ (Isaiah Stiefel, 1600) or God the Father himself. Nevertheless, it might be said the visions and ecstasies pass gradually into those purer and higher forms to which history owes so much; granted, certainly,—only this variable element must not be claimed as the essence of mysticism.—A third form is asceticism. It is a mad frenzy or a morbid delight when it is not embraced as an ethical system, which, however, is the case with Indian, Neo-Persian, and Christian penitents. Even then this is not necessarily mysticism, since, on the one hand, Schopenhauer has given us the proof that a person may be a clear thinker and yet regard asceticism as the only correct system; and, on the other hand, mysticism is just as compatible with the most unbridled, inordinate longing after enjoyments as with the strictest asceticism. A fourth series of phenomena in the history of mysticism are the wonders of the prophets, saints, and magicians occurring in every age. All that remains after tolerably strict criticism of these reports reduces itself to operations of healing, which may be comprehended partly as simply therapeutic, partly as conscious or unconscious magnetism, partly as sympathetic action, and admitted into the series of natural laws, if the magical-sympathetic action of mere will be allowed to pass as natural law. As long as this is refused, the latter certainly remains intrinsically mystical; but as soon as one gets accustomed to the phenomenon, it is not more mystical than the operation of any other natural law, of which we can make nothing at all, and yet do not on that account call mystical.

  Hitherto we have spoken of how mystics have acted and lived, we have still to mention in what way they have spoken and written. In the first place, we are struck by the prevailingly figurative mode of expression, sometimes plain and simple, but more often high-sounding rant, not seldom accompanied by an equal extravagance in the matter as in the form. This depends partly on the nations and times to which the particular mystics belong; but, as we meet with the same phenomenon among poets and other writers, we cannot find therein the sure mark of the mystic. Further, we see in mystical writings, on the one hand, an exuberance of allegory, a love of far-fetched exegesis (as of the Bible, the Koran, and other writings or legends), or a mass of formularies (drawn from the Jewish, Mohammedan, and Christian cultus); on the other side, a schematism of an unscientific philosophy of Nature, full of fantastic and fanciful analogies (Albertus Magnus, Parcelesus, and others in the Middle Ages; Schelling, Oken, Steffens, Hegel, in more recent times). In these two phenomena likewise, essentially alike, and only different in their subject, we cannot find the character of the mystical. We see therein only the characteristic tendency of the human mind to systematise its conceptions, led astray by ignorance or disregard of the material and the principles of the natural sciences—playing at building card-houses, which the after-comer, who builds other card-houses, often does not give himself the trouble of blowing over, but which rather collapse of themselves, although not without having previously imposed on many another child. A characteristic, too, to which it has been often believed one may hold, is incomprehensibility and obscurity of style, because it is tolerably common to all mystical writings. However, it is not to be forgotten, firstly, that very few mystics have reduced their thoughts to writing, many have not even spoken, or done nothing more than narrate their visions; and secondly, that very many other writings are incomprehensible and obscure, to which neither their authors nor other people would apply the epithet mystical, for obscurity of expression may arise from obscurity of thought, deficient mastery of the material, awkwardness of style, and many other causes.

  Consequently, none of the phenomena hitherto considered are fitted to reveal the nature of the mystical; but any one of them may, perhaps, serve to set off a mystical backgr
ound, but is then only a dress casually put on by mysticism, and may just as well at another time have nothing at all to do with mysticism. The question now, then, is with respect to the common core and centre of all these phenomena in the cases in which we regard them as drapery of a mystical background. Any one would go quite astray who should regard Religion, as this common kernel. Religion, as naive belief in revelation, is not in the least mystical, for what has become manifest to me through an authority recognised by me as perfectly valid, what can there be at all mystical in that, so long as I am absolutely content with this external revelation? And no religion asks more. But, further, it is also easy to see that there is a mysticism of irreligious superstition (e.g. black magic), or a mysticism of self-deification, which sets all good and bad gods at defiance, or a mysticism of irreligious philosophy, although experience shows that the latter, at any rate, prefers to make an external alliance with positive religion (e.g. Neoplatonism). In all this we should not fail to perceive that Religion is the ground and soil on which mysticism springs up most easily and luxuriantly; but it is by no means its only hotbed. Mysticism is rather a creeping plant, which grows up exuberantly on any support, and can agree equally well with the extremest opposites. Arrogance and humility, love of power and endurance, egoism and self-renunciation, continence and sensual excess, self-castigation and inordinate love of enjoyments, solitude and sociality, contempt for the world and vanity, quietism and active life, nihilism and world-reformation, piety and impiety, illumination and superstition, originality and brutal stupidity,—all are equally compatible with mysticism.

  Accordingly we have got so far as to see in all such extremes, in all the above-mentioned phenomena historically presented among the mystics, not the essence of mysticism, but excrescences, which have been produced partly by the spirit of the times and national character; partly by individual morbid disposition, partly by perverted religious, moral, and practical principles; partly by the infectious example of mental derangement; partly through dissatisfaction with the pressure of rude times, which, in secular life, had nothing at all enticing to offer, but could only deter the aspirant; partly by the danger subsequently to be mentioned of soaring too high inherent in the final goal of mysticism itself; partly by a concatenation of all sorts of causes resulting from the foregoing and other circumstances.

  This negative examination appeared to me indispensable in order to clear up the notion of the mystical, which for most people is compounded of a total of these morbid outgrowths of mysticism, and thereby prevents the recognition of mysticism in its purer forms of manifestation. If now we once more return to consider the core of all these phenomena of genuine mysticism, this much will be evident, that it must be deeply founded in the inmost nature of man (if, like artistic tendencies, it is not developed in every one, at any rate uniformly in every one, or in the same directions); for with more or less diffusion it has accompanied the history of civilisation from early prehistoric times to the present day. It has doubtless changed its character with the spirit of the times, but no advance of civilisation has ever been able to repress it; it has maintained itself just as unconquerable in presence of the infidelity of materialism as against the terrors of the Inquisition. But mysticism has also performed priceless civilising services for the human race. Without the mysticism of Neo-pythagoreanism, the Johannean Christianity would never have arisen; without the mysticism of the Middle Ages, the spirit of Christianity would have been submerged in Catholic idolatry and scholastic formalism; without the mysticism of the persecuted heretical communities from the beginning of the eleventh century, which, in spite of all suppressions, ever sprang up again with renewed energy under another name, the blessings of the Reformation would never have dispelled the darker shades of the Middle Age and opened the portals of the new era. Without mysticism in the mind of the German people, and among the heroes of modern German poetry and philosophy, we should have been so completely inundated by the shallow drifting sand of the French materialism in the last century, that we might not have got our heads free again for who knows how long. As for the human race as a whole, so also for the individual. So long as it keeps free from sickly and rank outgrowths, mysticism is of inestimable worth. For we, in fact, see that all mystics have felt exceedingly happy in developing their mystical tendencies, and have cheerfully endured all sorts of privation and sacrifice in order to remain faithful to their bent. One has only to think of Jacob Böhme and the inexpressible cheerfulness which accompanied him through all his trials, which yet certainly arose from a pure source, and neither withdrew him from his civil duties nor was troubled by foolish self-tormentings. Think of the mystical saints of antiquity, as Pythagoras, Plotinus, Porphyry, &c., who certainly practised extreme moderation and restraint, but no self-tormentings. Genuine mysticism is then something deeply founded in the inmost essence of man, in itself healthy, if also easily inclining to morbid growths, and of high value both for the individual and for humanity at large.

  But what is it in fine? If we think away all that is worthless in the phenomenon, there will remain feeling, thought, and will, and indeed the content of each of the three will also be able to occur non-mystically, namely, of thought and feeling in philosophy and religion, of will as conscious magical will-action (only one single content of feeling making an exception, because it can ever be only mystically produced, as we shall immediately see). But if now in all other cases it is not the matter which contains the specifically mystical element, it must be the special way in which the matter comes into consciousness and is in consciousness; and upon this we will first hear some mystics, when, after the previous explanations, we shall not be surprised to find names which are not usually reckoned among the mystics, just because these represent mysticism most free from disturbing accessories.

  All founder of religion, and prophets, have declared that they have either received their wisdom personally from God, or, in composing their works, delivering their speeches, and doing their wonders, have been inspired by the Divine Spirit, which most of the higher religions have made an article of faith. It has also been believed of the later saints who have introduced any new doctrine or mode of life and repentance, that not the human but the Divine Spirit taught them, and they themselves believed it. Fuller information is given us by Jacob Böhme:—“I say before God … that I do not myself know how it happens to me that, without having the impelling will, I do not even know what I should write. For when I write the Spirit dictates it to me in great, wonderful knowledge, that I often do not know whether I am in my spirit in this world, and rejoice exceedingly, since then the constant and certain knowledge is given to me, and the more I seek the more I find, and always more deeply, that I also often think my sinful person too small and unworthy to teach such secrets, when the Spirit spreads my banner and says, ‘See, thou shalt live for ever therein and be crowned, why art thou afraid?’” In the same way, in the “Aurora,” he gives his reader the advice “that he should ask of God His Holy Spirit. For without the illumination of the same thou wilt not understand these secrets, for the mind of man is a fast lock, that must first be opened; and that no man can do, for the Holy Spirit is the only key to it.” As little as he holds it possible for another reader, could he himself understand his own writings if the Spirit should abandon him.—We go further and find that the Quakers set up the principle of subordinating the institution of the school, human wisdom, and the written word, and trusting solely to an inner light.—Bernhard of Clairvaux says: “Faith is a sure fore-feeling of a not yet wholly unveiled truth grasped by the will, and is based on authority or revelation; the (inner) intuition (contemplatio), on the contrary, is the certain and at the same time manifest cognition of the invisible.” This is carried further by his school (Richard and Hugo of St. Victor), by which inner revelation is designated the deeper mystical knowledge, which becomes the portion only of the elect, as illumination of reason by the Spirit, as supernatural power of knowledge, as inner immediate intuition, which is e
xalted above reason.—