THE PROBLEM OF TYPES IN THE HISTORY OF CLASSICAL AND MEDIEVAL THOUGHT

1. PSYCHOLOGY IN THE CLASSICAL AGE: THE GNOSTICS, TERTULLIAN, ORIGEN

8 So long as the historical world has existed there has always been psychology, but an objective psychology is only of recent growth. We could say of the science of former times that in proportion to the lack of objective psychology there is an increase in the rate of subjectivity. Hence, though the works of the ancients are full of psychology, only little of it can be described as objective psychology. This may be due in no small measure to the peculiar character of human relationships in classical and medieval times. The ancients had, so to speak, an almost entirely biological valuation of their fellow-men; this is everywhere apparent in their habits of life and in the legislation of antiquity. The medieval man, in so far as his value judgments found any expression at all, had on the contrary a metaphysical valuation of his fellows, and this had its source in the idea of the imperishable value of the human soul. This metaphysical valuation, which may be regarded as compensatory to the standpoint of antiquity, is just as unfavourable as the biological one so far as a personal valuation is concerned, which alone can form the basis of an objective psychology.

9 Although not a few people think that a psychology can be written ex cathedra, nowadays most of us are convinced that an objective psychology must be founded above all on observation and experience. This foundation would be ideal if only it were possible. The ideal and aim of science do not consist in giving the most exact possible description of the facts—science cannot compete as a recording instrument with the camera and the gramophone—but in establishing certain laws, which are merely abbreviated expressions for many diverse processes that are yet conceived to be somehow correlated. This aim goes beyond the purely empirical by means of the concept, which, though it may have general and proved validity, will always be a product of the subjective psychological constellation of the investigator. In the making of scientific theories and concepts many personal and accidental factors are involved. There is also a personal equation that is psychological and not merely psychophysical. We see colours but not wave-lengths. This well-known fact must nowhere be taken to heart more seriously than in psychology. The effect of the personal equation begins already in the act of observation. One sees what one can best see oneself. Thus, first and foremost, one sees the mote in one's brother's eye. No doubt the mote is there, but the beam sits in one's own eye—and may considerably hamper the act of seeing. I mistrust the principle of "pure observation" in so-called objective psychology unless one confines oneself to the eye-pieces of chronoscopes and tachistoscopes and suchlike "psychological" apparatus. With such methods one also guards against too embarrassing a yield of empirical psychological facts.

10 But the personal equation asserts itself even more in the presentation and communication of one's own observations, to say nothing of the interpretation and abstract exposition of the empirical material. Nowhere is the basic requirement so indispensable as in psychology that the observer should be adequate to his object, in the sense of being able to see not only subjectively but also objectively. The demand that he should see only objectively is quite out of the question, for it is impossible. We must be satisfied if he does not see too subjectively. That the subjective observation and interpretation accord with the objective facts proves the truth of the interpretation only in so far as the latter makes no pretence to be generally valid, but valid only for that area of the object which is being considered. To this extent it is just the beam in one's own eye that enables one to detect the mote in one's brother's eye. The beam in one's own eye, as we have said, does not prove that one's brother has no mote in his. But the impairment of one's own vision might easily give rise to a general theory that all motes are beams.

11 The recognition and taking to heart of the subjective determination of knowledge in general, and of psychological knowledge in particular, are basic conditions for the scientific and impartial evaluation of a psyche different from that of the observing subject. These conditions are fulfilled only when the observer is sufficiently informed about the nature and scope of his own personality. He can, however, be sufficiently informed only when he has in large measure freed himself from the levelling influence of collective opinions and thereby arrived at a clear conception of his own individuality.

12 The further we go back into history, the more we see personality disappearing beneath the wrappings of collectivity. And if we go right back to primitive psychology, we find absolutely no trace of the concept of an individual. Instead of individuality we find only collective relationship or what Lévy-Bruhl calls participation mystique. The collective attitude hinders the recognition and evaluation of a psychology different from the subject's, because the mind that is collectively oriented is quite incapable of thinking and feeling in any other way than by projection. What we understand by the concept "individual" is a relatively recent acquisition in the history of the human mind and human culture. It is no wonder, therefore, that the earlier all-powerful collective attitude prevented almost completely an objective psychological evaluation of individual differences, or any scientific objectification of individual psychological processes. It was owing to this very lack of psychological thinking that knowledge became "psychologized," i.e., filled with projected psychology. We find striking examples of this in man's first attempts at a philosophical explanation of the cosmos. The development of individuality, with the consequent psychological differentiation of man, goes hand in hand with the de-psychologizing work of objective science.

13 These reflections may explain why objective psychology has such a meagre source in the material handed down to us from antiquity. The differentiation of the four temperaments, which we took over from the ancients, hardly rates as a psychological typology since the temperaments are scarcely more than psychophysical colourings. But this lack of information does not mean that we can find no trace in classical literature of the effects of the psychological pairs of opposites we are discussing.

14 Gnostic philosophy established three types, corresponding perhaps to three of the basic psychological functions: thinking, feeling, and sensation. The pneumatikoi could be correlated with thinking, the psychikoi with feeling, and the hylikoi with sensation. The inferior rating of the psychikoi was in accord with the spirit of Gnosticism, which, unlike Christianity, insisted on the value of knowledge. The Christian principles of love and faith kept knowledge at a distance. In the Christian sphere the pneumatikoi would accordingly get the lower rating, since they were distinguished merely by the possession of Gnosis, i.e., knowledge.

15 Type differences should also be borne in mind when we consider the long and perilous struggle which the Church from its earliest beginnings waged against Gnosticism. Owing to the predominantly practical trend of early Christianity the intellectual hardly came into his own, except when he followed his fighting instincts by indulging in polemical apologetics. The rule of faith was too strict and allowed no freedom of movement. Moreover, it was poor in positive intellectual content. It boasted of few ideas, and though these were of immense practical value they were a definite obstacle to thought. The intellectual was much worse hit by the sacrificium intellectus than the feeling type. It is therefore understandable that the vastly superior intellectual content of Gnosis, which in the light of our present mental development has not lost but has considerably gained in value, must have made the greatest possible appeal to the intellectual within the Church. For him it held out in very truth all the temptations of this world. Docetism in particular caused grave trouble to the Church with its contention that Christ possessed only an apparent body and that his whole earthly existence and passion had been merely a semblance. In this contention the purely intellectual element predominates at the expense of human feeling.

16 Perhaps the struggle with Gnosis is most vividly presented to us in two figures who were of the utmost significance not only as Church Fathers but as personalities. These are Tertullian and Origen, who lived towards the end of the second century. Schultz says of them:

One organism is able to take in nourishment and assimilate it almost completely into its own nature; another with equal persistence eliminates it with every sign of passionate resistance. Thus Origen on one side, and Tertullian on the other, reacted in diametrically opposite ways to Gnosis. Their reaction is not only characteristic of the two personalities and their philosophical outlook; it is of fundamental significance with regard to the position of Gnosis in the spiritual life and religious currents of that age.

17 Tertullian was born in Carthage somewhere about A.D. 160. He was a pagan, and he abandoned himself to the lascivious life of his city until about his thirty-fifth year, when he became a Christian. He was the author of numerous writings wherein his character, which is our especial interest, is unmistakably displayed. Most clearly of all we see his unparalleled noble-hearted zeal, his fire, his passionate temperament, and the profundity of his religious understanding. He was a fanatic, brilliantly one-sided in his defence of a recognized truth, possessed of a matchless fighting spirit, a merciless opponent who saw victory only in the total annihilation of his adversary, his language a flashing blade wielded with ferocious mastery. He was the creator of the Church Latin that lasted for more than a thousand years. It was he who coined the terminology of the early Church. "Once he had seized upon a point of view, he had to follow it through to its ultimate conclusion as though lashed by the legions of hell, even when right had long since ceased to be on his side and all reasonable order lay in shreds before him." His impassioned thinking was so inexorable that again and again he alienated himself from the very thing for which he had given his heart's blood. Accordingly his ethical code was bitterly severe. Martyrdom he commanded to be sought and not shunned; he permitted no second marriage, and required the permanent veiling of persons of the female sex. Gnosis, which in reality is a passion for thinking and knowing, he attacked with unrelenting fanaticism, together with philosophy and science which differed from it so little. To him is ascribed the sublime confession: Credo quia absurdum est (I believe because it is absurd). This does not altogether accord with historical fact, for he merely said: "And the Son of God died, which is immediately credible because it is absurd. And buried he rose again, which is certain because it is impossible."

18 Thanks to the acuteness of his mind, he saw through the poverty of philosophical and Gnostic knowledge, and contemptuously rejected it. He invoked against it the testimony of his own inner world, his own inner realities, which were one with his faith. In shaping and developing these realities he became the creator of those abstract conceptions which still underlie the Catholic system of today. The irrational inner reality had for him an essentially dynamic nature; it was his principle, his foundation in face of the world and of all collectively valid and rational science and philosophy. I quote his own words:

I summon a new witness, or rather a witness more known than any written monument, more debated than any system of life, more published abroad than any promulgation, greater than the whole of man, yea that which constitutes the whole of man. Approach then, O my soul, whether you be something divine and eternal, as many philosophers believe—the less then will you lie—or not wholly divine, because mortal, as Epicurus alone contends—the less then ought you to lie—whether you come from heaven or are born of earth, whether compounded of numbers or of atoms, whether you have your beginning with the body or are later joined to it; what matter indeed whence you come and how you make man to be what he is, a reasonable being, capable of perception and of knowledge. But I summon you not, O soul, as proclaiming wisdom, trained in the schools, conversant with libraries, fed and nourished in the academies and pillared halls of Athens. No, I would speak with you, O soul, as wondrous simple and unlearned, awkward and inexperienced, such as you are for those who possess nothing else but you, even as you come from the alleys, from the street-corners, and from the workshops. It is just your unknowingness that I need.

19 The self-mutilation performed by Tertullian in the sacrificium intellectus led him to an unqualified recognition of the irrational inner reality, the true rock of his faith. The necessity of the religious process which he sensed in himself he crystallized in the incomparable formula anima naturaliter Christiana (the soul is by nature Christian). With the sacrificium intellectus philosophy and science, and hence also Gnosis, fell to the ground. In the further course of his life the qualities I have described became exacerbated. When the Church was driven to compromise more and more with the masses, he revolted against it and became a follower of the Phrygian prophet Montanus, an ecstatic, who stood for the principle of absolute denial of the world and complete spiritualization. In violent pamphlets he now began to assail the policy of Pope Calixtus I, and this together with his Montanism put him more or less outside the pale of the Church. According to a report of Augustine, he even quarrelled with Montanism later and founded a sect of his own.

20 Tertullian is a classic example of introverted thinking. His very considerable and keenly developed intellect was flanked by an unmistakable sensuality. The psychological process of development which we call specifically Christian led him to the sacrifice, the amputation, of the most valuable function—a mythical idea that is also found in the great and exemplary symbol of the sacrifice of the Son of God. His most valuable organ was the intellect and the clarity of knowledge it made possible. Through the sacrificium intellectus the way of purely intellectual development was closed to him; it forced him to recognize the irrational dynamism of his soul as the foundation of his being. The intellectuality of Gnosis, the specifically rational stamp it gave to the dynamic phenomena of the soul, must have been odious to him, for that was just the way he had to forsake in order to acknowledge the principle of feeling.

21 In Origen we may recognize the absolute opposite of Tertullian. He was born in Alexandria about A.D. 185. His father was a Christian martyr. He himself grew up in that quite unique mental atmosphere where the ideas of East and West mingled. With an intense yearning for knowledge he eagerly absorbed all that was worth knowing, and accepted everything, whether Christian, Jewish, Hellenistic, or Egyptian, that the teeming intellectual world of Alexandria offered him. The pagan philosopher Porphyry, a pupil of Plotinus, said of him: "His outward life was that of a Christian and against the law; but in his opinions about material things and the Deity he thought like a Greek, and introduced Greek ideas into foreign fables."

22 His self-castration had taken place sometime before A.D. 211; his inner motives for this may be guessed, but historically they are not known to us. Personally he was of great influence, and had a winning speech. He was constantly surrounded by pupils and a whole host of amanuenses who gathered up the precious words that fell from the revered master's lips. As an author he was extraordinarily prolific and he developed into a great teacher. In Antioch he even delivered lectures on theology to the Emperor's mother Mammaea. In Caesarea he was the head of a school. His teaching activities were frequently interrupted by his extensive journeyings. He possessed an extraordinary erudition and had an astounding capacity for careful investigation. He hunted up old biblical manuscripts and earned special merit for his textual criticism. "He was a great scholar, indeed the only true scholar the early Church possessed," says Harnack. In complete contrast to Tertullian, Origen did not cut himself off from the influence of Gnosticism; on the contrary, he even channelled it, in attenuated form, into the bosom of the Church, or such at least was his aim. Indeed, judging by his thought and fundamental views, he was himself almost a Christian Gnostic. His position in regard to faith and knowledge is described by Harnack in the following psychologically significant words:

The Bible is equally needful to both: the believers receive from it the facts and commandments they need, while the Gnostics decipher thoughts in it and gather from it the powers which guide them to the contemplation and love of God—whereby all material things, through spiritual interpretation (allegorical exegesis, hermeneutics), seem to be melted into a cosmos of ideas, until at last everything is surmounted and left behind as a stepping-stone, while only this remains: the blessed and abiding relationship of the God-created creaturely soul to God (amor et visio).