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fashioned seems to emerge so inevitably from the external facts that they actually prove its
validity.
But just as little as it is given to extraverted thinking to wrest a really sound inductive idea from
concrete facts or ever to create new ones, does it lie in the power of introverted thinking to
translate its original image into an idea adequately adapted to the facts. For, as in the former case
the purely empirical heaping together of facts paralyses thought and smothers their meaning, so
in the latter case introverted thinking shows a dangerous tendency [p. 482] to coerce facts into
the shape of its image, or by ignoring them altogether, to unfold its phantasy image in freedom.
In such a case, it will be impossible for the presented idea to deny its origin from the dim archaic
image. There will cling to it a certain mythological character that we are prone to interpret as
'originality', or in more pronounced cases' as mere whimsicality; since its archaic character is not
transparent as such to specialists unfamiliar with mythological motives. The subjective force of
conviction inherent in such an idea is usually very great; its power too is the more convincing,
the less it is influenced by contact with outer facts. Although to the man who advocates the idea,
it may well seem that his scanty store of facts were the actual ground and source of the truth and
validity of his idea, yet such is not the case, for the idea derives its convincing power from its
unconscious archetype, which, as such, has universal validity and everlasting truth. Its truth,
however, is so universal and symbolic, that it must first enter into the recognized and
recognizable knowledge of the time, before it can become a practical truth of any real value to
life. What sort of a causality would it be, for instance, that never became perceptible in practical
causes and practical results?
This thinking easily loses itself in the immense truth of the subjective factor. It creates theories
for the sake of theories, apparently with a view to real or at least possible facts, yet always with a
distinct tendency to go over from the world of ideas into mere imagery. Accordingly many
intuitions of possibilities appear on the scene, none of which however achieve any reality, until
finally images are produced which no longer express anything externally real, being 'merely'
symbols of the simply unknowable. It is now merely a mystical thinking and quite as unfruitful
as that empirical thinking whose sole operation is within the framework of objective facts. [p.
483]
Whereas the latter sinks to the level of a mere presentation of facts, the former evaporates into a
representation of the unknowable, which is even beyond everything that could be expressed in an
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PSYCHOLOGICAL TYPES
37
image. The presentation of facts has a certain incontestable truth, because the subjective factor is
excluded and the facts speak for themselves. Similarly, the representing of the unknowable has
also an immediate, subjective, and convincing power, because it is demonstrable from its own
existence. The former says 'Est, ergo est' ('It is ; therefore it is') ; while the latter says 'Cogito,
ergo cogito' (' I think ; therefore I think'). In the last analysis, introverted thinking arrives at the
evidence of its own subjective being, while extraverted thinking is driven to the evidence of its
complete identity with the objective fact. For, while the extravert really denies himself in his
complete dispersion among objects, the introvert, by ridding himself of each and every content,
has to content himself with his mere existence. In both cases the further development of life is
crowded out of the domain of thought into the region of other psychic functions which had
hitherto existed in relative unconsciousness. The extraordinary impoverishment of introverted
thinking in relation to objective facts finds compensation in an abundance of unconscious facts. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]