37 Compare Freud: "The Interpretation of the Dream."
38 Compare Freud: "Sublimation," in "Three Contributions to the Sexual Theory."
39 In a manner which is closely related to my thought, Kalthoff ("Entstehung des Christentums") understands the secularizing of the religious interest as a new incarnation of the λόγος (word). He says: "The profound grasp of the soul of nature evidenced in modern painting and poetry, the living intuitive feeling which even science in its most austere works can no longer do without, enables us easily to understand how the Logos of Greek philosophy which assigned its place in the world to the old Christ type, clothed in its world-to-come significance celebrated a new incarnation."
40 It seems, on account of the isolation of the cult, that this fact was the cause of its ruin as well, because the eyes of that time were blinded to the beauty of nature. Augustine (Bk. X, Ch. 6) very justly remarks: "But they [men] were themselves undone through love for her [creation]."
41 Augustine (ibid.): "But what do I love when I love Thee, Oh God? Not the bodily form, nor the earthly sweetness, nor the splendor of the light, so dear to these eyes; nor the sweet melodies of the richly varied songs; not the flowers and the sweet scented ointments and spices of lovely fragrance; not manna and honey; not the limbs of the body whose embraces are pleasant to the flesh. I do not love these when I love my God, and yet the light, the voice, the fragrance, the food, the embrace of my inner man; when these shine into my soul, which no space contains, which no time takes away, where there is a fragrance which the wind does not blow away, where there is a taste which no gluttony diminishes and where harmony abides which no satiety can remove—that is what I love, when I love my God." (Perhaps a model for Zarathustra: "Die sieben Siegel," Nietzsche’s works, VI, p. 33 ff.)
42 Cumont: "Die Mysterien des Mithra. Ein Beitrag zur Religions-geschichte der romischen Kaiserzeit." Übersetzt von Gehrich, Leipzig 1903, p. 109.
43 41st Letter to Lucilius.
44 Ibid.
CHAPTER IV
1 Complexes are apt to be of the greatest stability, although their outward forms of manifestation change kaleidoscopically. A large number of experimental studies have entirely convinced me of this fact.
2 Julian the Apostate made the last, unsuccessful attempt to cause the triumph of Mithracism over Christianity.
3 This solution of the libido problem was brought about in a similar manner by the flight from the world during the first Christian century. (The cities of the Anchorites in the deserts of the Orient.) People mortified themselves in order to become spiritual and thus escape the extreme brutality of the decadent Roman civilization. Asceticism is forced sublimation, and is always to be found where the animal impulses are still so strong that they must be violently exterminated. The masked self-murder of the ascetic needs no further biologic proof.
