ABSTRACT
Ever since the early days of science, it has been a notable endeav our of the reflect ive intel lect to inter pose grad a tions between the two poles of the abso lute simil ar ity and dissim il ar ity of human beings. This resul ted in a number of types, or “tempera ments” as they were then called, which clas sified simil ar it ies and dissim il ar it ies into regular categor ies. The Greek philosopher Empedocles attemp ted to impose order on the chaos of natural phenom ena by divid ing them into the four elements: earth, water, air, and fire. It was above all the phys i cians of ancient times who applied this principle of order, in conjunc tion with the related doctrine of the four qual it ies, dry, moist, cold, warm, to human beings, and thus tried to reduce the bewilder ing diversity of mankind to orderly groups. Of these phys i cians one of the most import ant was Galen, whose use of these teach ings influ enced medical science and the treat ment of the sick for nearly seven teen hundred years. The very names of the Galenic tempera ments betray their origin in the patho logy of the four “humours.” Melancholic denotes a prepon der ance of black bile, phleg matic a prepon der ance of phlegm or mucus (the Greek word phlegma means fire, and phlegm was regarded as the end-product of
inflam ma tion), sanguine a prepon der ance of blood, and choleric a prepon derance of choler, or yellow bile. Our modern concep tion of “tempera ment” has certainly become much
more psycho lo gical, since in the course of man’s devel op ment over the last two thou sand years the “soul” has freed itself from any conceiv able connection with cold agues and fevers, or secre tions of mucus and bile. Not even the doctors of today would equate a tempera ment, that is, a certain kind of emotional state or excit ab il ity, directly with the consti tu tion of the blood or lymph, although their profes sion and their exclus ive approach to human beings from the side of phys ical illness tempt them, more often than the layman, to regard the psyche as an end-product depend ent on the physiology of the glands. The “humours” of present-day medi cine are no longer the old body-secre tions, but the more subtle hormones, which influ ence “tempera ment” to an outstand ing degree, if we define this as the sum-total of emotional reac tions. The whole make-up of the body, its consti tu tion in the broad est sense, has in fact a very great deal to do with the psycho lo gical tempera ment, so much that we cannot blame the doctors if they regard psychic phenom ena as largely depend ent on the body. Somewhere the psyche is living body, and the living body is anim ated matter; somehow and some where there is an undis cov er able unity of psyche and body which would need invest ig at ing psych ic ally as well as phys ic ally; in other words, this unity must be as depend ent on the body as it is on the psyche so far as the invest ig ator is concerned. The mater i al ism of the nine teenth century gave the body first place and releg ated the psyche to the rank of some thing second ary and derived, allow ing it no more substan ti al ity than that of a so-called “epiphen omenon.” What proved to be a good working hypothesis, namely, that psychic phenom ena are condi tioned by phys ical processes, became a philo soph ical presump tion with the advent of mater ial ism. Any serious science of the living organ ism will reject this presumption; for on the one hand it will constantly bear in mind that living matter is an as yet unsolved mystery, and on the other hand it will be object ive enough to recog nize that for us there is a completely unbridge able gulf between phys ical and psychic phenom ena, so that the psychic realm is no less myster i ous than the phys ical. The mater i al istic presump tion became possible only in recent times, after
man’s concep tion of the psyche had, in the course of many centur ies, ingly
an undi vided unity, because they were closer to that prim it ive world where no moral rift yet ran through the person al ity, and the pagan could still feel himself indi vis ibly one, child ishly inno cent and unburdened by respons ibil ity. The ancient Egyptians could still enjoy the naïve luxury of a negat ive confes sion of sin: “I have not let any man go hungry. I have not made anyone weep. I have not commit ted murder,” and so on. The Homeric heroes wept, laughed, raged, outwit ted and killed each other in a world where these things were taken as natural and self-evident by men and gods alike, and the Olympians amused them selves by passing their days in a state of amar anth ine irre spons ib il ity. It was on this archaic level that pre-philo soph ical man lived and exper i-
enced the world. He was entirely in the grip of his emotions. All passions that made his blood boil and his heart pound, that accel er ated his breath ing or took his breath away, that “turned his bowels to water”—all this was a mani fest a tion of the “soul.” Therefore he local ized the soul in the region of the diaphragm (in Greek phren, which also means mind)2 and the heart. It was only with the first philo soph ers that the seat of reason began to be assigned to the head. There are still Negroes today whose “thoughts” are local ized prin cip ally in the belly, and the Pueblo Indians “think” with their hearts-“only madmen think with their heads,” they say.3 On this level conscious ness is essen tially passion and the exper i ence of oneness. Yet, serene and tragic at once, it was just this archaic man who, having started to think, inven ted that dicho tomy which Nietzsche laid at the door of Zarathustra: the discov ery of pairs of oppos ites, the divi sion into odd and even, above and below, good and evil. It was the work of the old Pythagoreans, and it was their doctrine of moral respons ib il ity and the grave meta phys ical consequences of sin that gradu ally, in the course of the centur ies, percol ated through to all strata of the popu la tion, chiefly owing to the spread of the Orphic and Pythagorean myster ies. Plato even used the parable of the white and black horses4 to illus trate the intract ab il ity and polar ity of the human psyche, and, still earlier, the myster ies proclaimed the doctrine of the good rewar ded in the Hereafter and of the wicked punished in hell. These teach ings cannot be dismissed as the mystical humbug of “back woods” philo soph ers, as Nietzsche claimed, or as so
much sectarian cant, for already in the sixth century B.C. Pythagoreanism was some thing like a state reli gion through out Graecia Magna. Also, the ideas under ly ing its myster ies never died out, but under went a philo sophical renais sance in the second century B.C., when they exer cised the strongest influ ence on the Alexandrian world of thought. Their colli sion with Old Testament proph ecy then led to what one can call the begin nings of Christianity as a world reli gion. From Hellenistic syncret ism there now arose a clas si fic a tion of man into
types which was entirely alien to the “humoral” psycho logy of Greek medicine. In the philo soph ical sense, it estab lished grad a tions between the Parmenidean poles of light and dark ness, of above and below. It clas si fied men into hylikoi, psychikoi, and pneu matikoi-mater ial, psychic, and spir itual beings. This clas si fic a tion is not, of course, a scientific formu la tion of similar it ies and dissim il ar it ies; it is a crit ical system of values based not on the beha viour and outward appear ance of man as a phen o type, but on defin itions of an ethical, mystical, and philo sophic kind. Although it is not exactly a “Christian” concep tion it never the less forms an integ ral part of early Christianity at the time of St. Paul. Its very exist ence is incon tro vert ible proof of the split that had occurred in the original unity of man as a being entirely in the grip of his emotions. Before this, he was merely alive and there, the plaything of exper i ence, incap able of any reflect ive analysis concern ing his origins and his destin a tion. Now, suddenly, he found himself confron ted by three fateful factors and endowed with body, soul, and spirit, to each of which he had moral oblig a tions. Presumably it was already decided at birth whether he would pass his life in the hylic or the pneu matic state, or in the inde term in ate centre between the two. The ingrained dicho tomy of the Greek mind had now become acute, with the result that the accent shifted signi fic antly to the psychic and spir itual, which was unavoid ably split off from the hylic realm of the body. All the highest and ulti mate goals lay in man’s moral destin a tion, in a spir itual, supra mundane end-state, and the separ a tion of the hylic realm broadened into a cleav age between world and spirit. Thus the original, suave wisdom expressed in the Pythagorean pairs of oppos ites became a passion ate moral conflict. Nothing, however, is so apt to chal lenge our self-aware ness and alert ness as being at war with oneself. One can hardly think of any other or more effect ive means of waking human ity out of the irre spons ible and
This process is called cultural devel op ment. It is, at any rate, a devel opment of man’s powers of discrim in a tion and capa city for judg ment, and of conscious ness in general. With the increase of know ledge and enhanced crit ical faculties the found a tions were laid for the whole subsequent develop ment of the human mind in terms of intel lec tual achieve ment. The partic u lar mental product that far surpassed all the achieve ments of the ancient world was science. It closed the rift between man and nature in the sense that, although he was separ ated from nature, science enabled him to find his right ful place again in the natural order. His special meta phys ical posi tion, however, had to be jettisoned-so far as it was not secured by belief in the tradi tional reli gion-whence arose the notori ous conflict between “faith and know ledge.” At all events, science brought about a splen did rehab il it a tion of matter, and in this respect mater i al ism may even be regarded as an act of histor ical justice. But one abso lutely essen tial field of exper i ence, the human psyche itself,
remained for a very long time the preserve of meta phys ics, although increas ingly serious attempts were made after the Enlightment to open it up to scientific invest ig a tion. They began, tent at ively, with the sense perceptions, and gradu ally ventured into the domain of asso ci ations. This line of research paved the way for exper i mental psycho logy, and it culmin ated in the “physiolo gical psycho logy” of Wundt. A more descript ive kind of psycho logy, with which the medical men soon made contact, developed in France. Its chief expo nents were Taine, Ribot, and Janet. It was char ac teristic of this scientific approach that it broke down the psyche into partic u lar mech an isms or processes. In face of these attempts, there were some who advoc ated what we today would call a “holistic” approach-the system atic obser va tion of the psyche as a whole. It seems as if this trend origin ated in a certain type of biography, more partic u larly the kind that an earlier age, which also had its good points, used to describe as “curious lives.” In this connec tion I think of Justinus Kerner and his Seeress of Prevorst, and the case of the elder Blumhardt and his medium Gottliebin Dittus.5 To be histor ic ally fair, however, I should not forget the medi eval Acta Sanctorum.6
