Sigmund Freud (1932)

Lecture XXXV
A Philosophy of Life

Source: New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-analysis (1933)

publ. Hogarth Press. Last lecture reproduced here.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN – In the last lecture we were occupied with

trivial everyday affairs, with putting, as it were, our modest house in
order. We will now take a bold step, and risk an answer to a question
which has repeatedly been raised in non-analytic quarters, namely, the
question whether psychoanalysis leads to any particular Weltanschauung,
and if so, to what.

‘Weltanschauung’ is, I am afraid, a specifically German notion, which

it would be difficult to translate into a foreign language. If I attempt to
give you a definition of the word, it can hardly fail to strike you as inept.
By Weltanschauung, then, I mean an intellectual construction which gives
a unified solution of all the problems of our existence in virtue of a
comprehensive hypothesis, a construction, therefore, in which no question
is left open and in which everything in which we are interested finds a
place. It is easy to see that the possession of such a Weltanschauung is one
of the ideal wishes of mankind. When one believes in such a thing, one
feels secure in life, one knows what one ought to strive after, and how one
ought to organise one’s emotions and interests to the best purpose.

If that is what is meant by a Weltanschauung, then the question is an

easy one for psychoanalysis to answer. As a specialised science, a branch
of psychology – ‘depth-psychology’ or psychology of the unconscious – it
is quite unsuited to form a Weltanschauung of its own; it must accept that
of science in general. The scientific Weltanschauung is, however,
markedly at variance with our definition. The unified nature of the
explanation of the universe is, it is true, accepted by science, but only as a
programme whose fulfilment is postponed to the future. Otherwise it is
distinguished by negative characteristics, by a limitation to what is, at any
given time, knowable, and a categorical rejection of certain elements
which are alien to it. It asserts that there is no other source of knowledge
of the universe but the intellectual manipulation of carefully verified
observations, in fact, what is called research, and that no knowledge can
be obtained from revelation, intuition or inspiration. It appears that this
way of looking at things came very near to receiving general acceptance
during the last century or two. It has been reserved for the present century
to raise the objection that such a Weltanschauung is both empty and
unsatisfying, that it overlooks all the spiritual demands of man, and all the
needs of the human mind.

This objection cannot be too strongly repudiated. It cannot be supported

for a moment, for the spirit and the mind are the subject of scientific
investigation in exactly the same way as any non-human entities. Psycho-
analysis has a peculiar right to speak on behalf of the scientific
Weltanschauung in this connection, because it cannot be accused of
neglecting the part occupied by the mind in the universe. The contribution
of psychoanalysis to science consists precisely in having extended
research to the region of the mind. Certainly without such a psychology
science would be very incomplete. But if we add to science the
investigation of the intellectual and emotional functions of men (and
animals), we find that nothing has been altered as regards the general
position of science, that there are no new sources of knowledge or
methods of research. Intuition and inspiration would be such, if they
existed; but they can safely be counted as illusions, as fulfilments of
wishes. It is easy to see, moreover, that the qualities which, as we have
shown, are expected of a Weltanschauung have a purely emotional basis.
Science takes account of the fact that the mind of man creates such
demands and is ready to trace their source, but it has not the slightest
ground for thinking them justified. On the contrary, it does well to
distinguish carefully between illusion (the results of emotional demands
of that kind) and knowledge.

This does not at all imply that we need push these wishes
contemptuously aside, or under-estimate their value in the lives of human
beings. We are prepared to take notice of the fulfilments they have
achieved for themselves in the creations of art and in the systems of
religion and philosophy; but we cannot overlook the fact that it would be
wrong and highly inexpedient to allow such things to be carried over into
the domain of knowledge. For in that way one would open the door which
gives access to the region of the psychoses, whether individual or group
psychoses, and one would drain off from these tendencies valuable energy
which is directed towards reality and which seeks by means of reality to
satisfy wishes and needs as far as this is possible.

From the point of view of science we must necessarily make use of our
critical powers in this direction, and not be afraid to reject and deny. It is
inadmissible to declare that science is one field of human intellectual
activity, and that religion and philosophy are others, at least as valuable,
and that science has no business to interfere with the other two, that they
all have an equal claim to truth, and that everyone is free to choose
whence he shall draw his convictions and in what he shall place his belief.
Such an attitude is considered particularly respectable, tolerant, broad-
minded and free from narrow prejudices. Unfortunately it is not tenable; it
shares all the pernicious qualities of an entirely unscientific
Weltanschauung and in practice comes to much the same thing. The bare
fact is that truth cannot be tolerant and cannot admit compromise or
limitations, that scientific research looks on the whole field of human
activity as its own, and must adopt an uncompromisingly critical attitude
towards any other power that seeks to usurp any part of its province.

Of the three forces which can dispute the position of science, religion
alone is a really serious enemy. Art is almost always harmless and
beneficent, it does not seek to be anything else but an illusion. Save in the
case of a few people who are, one might say, obsessed by art, it never
dares to make any attacks on the realm of reality. Philosophy is not
opposed to science, it behaves itself as if it were a science, and to a certain
extent it makes use of the same methods; but it parts company with
science, in that it clings to the illusion that it can produce a complete and
coherent picture of the universe, though in fact that picture must needs fall
to pieces with every new advance in our knowledge. Its methodological
error lies in the fact that it over-estimates the epistemological value of our
logical operations, and to a certain extent admits the validity of other
sources of knowledge, such as intuition. And often enough one feels that
the poet Heine is not unjustified when he says of the philosopher:

‘With his night-cap and his night-shirt tatters,

He botches up the loop-holes in the structure of the world.’

But philosophy has no immediate influence on the great majority of

mankind; it interests only a small number even of the thin upper stratum
of intellectuals, while all the rest find it beyond them. In contradistinction
to philosophy, religion is a tremendous force, which exerts its power over
the strongest emotions of human beings. As we know, at one time it
included everything that played any part in the mental life of mankind,
that it took the place of science, when as yet science hardly existed, and
that it built up a Weltanschauung of incomparable consistency and
coherence which, although it has been severely shaken, has lasted to this
day.
 If one wishes to form a true estimate of the full grandeur of religion,
one must keep in mind what it undertakes to do for men. It gives them
information about the source and origin of the universe it assures them of
protection and final happiness amid the changing vicissitudes of life, and
it guides their thoughts and actions by means of precepts which are
backed by the whole force of its authority. It fulfils, therefore, three
functions. In the first place, it satisfies man’s desire for knowledge; it is
here doing the same thing that science attempts to accomplish by its own
methods, and here, therefore, enters into rivalry with it. It is to the second
function that it performs that religion no doubt owes the greater part of its
influence. In so far as religion brushes away men’s fear of the dangers and
vicissitudes of life, in so far as it assures them of a happy ending, and
comforts them in their misfortunes, science cannot compete with it.
Science, it is true, teaches how one can avoid certain dangers and how one
can combat many sufferings with success; it would be quite untrue to deny
that science is a powerful aid to human beings, but in many cases it has to
leave them to their suffering, and can only advise them to submit to the
inevitable. In the performance of its third function, the provision of
precepts, prohibitions and restrictions, religion is furthest removed from
science. For science is content with discovering and stating the facts. It is
true that from the applications of science rules and recommendations for
behaviour may be deduced. In certain circumstances they may be the same
as those which are laid down by religion, but even so the reasons for them
will be different.

It is not quite clear why religion should combine these three functions.
What has the explanation of the origin of the universe to do with the
inculcation of certain ethical precepts? Its assurances of protection and
happiness are more closely connected with these precepts. They are the
reward for the fulfilment of the commands; only he who obeys them can
count on receiving these benefits, while punishment awaits the
disobedient. For the matter of that something of the same kind applies to
science; for it declares that anyone who disregards its inferences is liable
to suffer for it.

One can only understand this remarkable combination of teaching,

consolation and precept in religion if one subjects it to genetic analysis.
We may begin with the most remarkable item of the three, the teaching
about the origin of the universe for why should a cosmogony be a regular
element of religious systems? The doctrine is that the universe was
created by a being similar to man, but greater in every respect, in power,
wisdom and strength of passion, in fact by an idealised superman. Where
you have animals as creators of the universe, you have indications of the
influence of totemism, which I shall touch on later, at any rate with a brief
remark. It is interesting to notice that this creator of the universe is always
a single god, even when many gods are believed in. Equally interesting is
the fact that the creator is nearly always a male, although there is no lack
of indication of the existence of female deities, and many mythologies
make the creation of the world begin precisely with a male god
triumphing over a female goddess, who is degraded into a monster. This
raises the most fascinating minor problems, but we must hurry on. The
rest of our enquiry is made easy because this God-Creator is openly called
Father. Psycho-analysis concludes that he really is the father, clothed in
the grandeur in which he once appeared to the small child. The religious
man’s picture of the creation of the universe is the same as his picture of
his own creation.

If this is so, then it is easy to understand how it is that the comforting

promises of protection and the severe ethical commands are found
together with the cosmogony. For the same individual to whom the child
owes its own existence, the father (or, more correctly, the parental
function which is composed of the father and the mother), has protected
and watched over the weak and helpless child, exposed as it is to all the
dangers which threaten in the external world; in its father’s care it has felt
itself safe. Even the grown man, though he may know that he possesses
greater strength, and though he has greater insight into the dangers of life,
rightly feels that fundamentally he is just as helpless and unprotected as he
was in childhood and that in relation to the external world he is still a
child. Even now, therefore, he cannot give up the protection which he has
enjoyed as a child. But he has long ago realised that his father is a being
with strictly limited powers and by no means endowed with every
desirable attribute. He therefore looks back to the memory-image of the
overrated father of his childhood, exalts it into a Deity, and brings it into
the present and into reality. The emotional strength of this memory-image
and the lasting nature of his need for protection are the two supports of his
belief in God.

The third main point of the religious programme, its ethical precepts,
can also be related without any difficulty to the situation of childhood. In
a famous passage, which I have already quoted in an earlier lecture, the
philosopher Kant speaks of the starry heaven above us and the moral law
within us as the strongest evidence for the greatness of God. However odd
it may sound to put these two side by side – for what can the heavenly
bodies have to do with the question whether one man loves another or
kills him? – nevertheless it touches on a great psychological truth. The
same father (the parental function) who gave the child his life, and
preserved it from the dangers which that life involves, also taught it what
it may or may not do, made it accept certain limitations of its instinctual
wishes, and told it what consideration it would be expected to show
towards its parents and brothers and sisters, if it wanted to be tolerated and
liked as a member of the family circle, and later on of more extensive
groups. The child is brought up to know its social duties by means of a
system of love-rewards and punishments, and in this way it is taught that
its security in life depends on its parents (and, subsequently, other people)
loving it and being able to believe in its love for them. This whole state of
affairs is carried over by the grown man unaltered into his religion. The
prohibitions and commands of his parents live on in his breast as his
moral conscience; God rules the world of men with the help of the same
system of rewards and punishments, and the degree of protection and
happiness which each individual enjoys depends on his fulfilment of the
demands of morality; the feeling of security, with which he fortifies
himself against the dangers both of the external world and of his human
environment, is founded on his love of God and the consciousness of
God’s love for him. Finally, he has in prayer a direct influence on the
divine will, and in that way insures for himself a share in the divine
omnipotence.

I am sure that while you have been listening to me a whole host of

questions must have come into your minds which you would like to have
answered. I cannot undertake to do so here and now, but I am perfectly
certain that none of these questions of detail would shake our thesis that
the religious Weltanschauung is determined by the situation that subsisted
in our childhood. It is therefore all the more remarkable that, in spite of its
infantile character, it nevertheless has a forerunner. There was, without
doubt, a time when there was no religion and no gods. It is known as the
age of animism. Even at that time the world was full of spirits in the
semblance of men (demons, as we call them), and all the objects in the
external world were their dwelling-place or perhaps identical with them;
but there was no supreme power which had created them all which
controlled them, and to which it was possible to turn for protection and
aid. The demons of animism were usually hostile to man, but it seems as
though man had more confidence in himself in those days than later on.
He was no doubt in constant terror of these evil spirits, but he defended
himself against them by means of certain actions to which he ascribed the
power to drive them away. Nor did he think himself entirely powerless in
other ways. If he wanted something from nature – rain, for instance – he
did not direct a prayer to the Weather-god, but used a spell, by means of
which he expected to exert a direct influence over nature; he himself made
something which resembled rain. In his fight against the powers of the
surrounding world his first weapon was magic, the first forerunner of our
modern technology. We suppose that this confidence in magic is derived
from the over-estimation of the individual’s own intellectual operations,
from the belief in the ‘omnipotence of thoughts’, which, incidentally, we
come across again in our obsessional neurotics. We may imagine that the
men of that time were particularly proud of their acquisition of speech,
which must have been accompanied by a great facilitation of thought.
They attributed magic power to the spoken word. This feature was later on
taken over by religion. ‘And God said: Let there be light, and there was
light.’ But the fact of magic actions shows that animistic man did not rely
entirely on the force of his own wishes. On the contrary, he depended for
success upon the performance of an action which would cause Nature to
imitate it. If he wanted it to rain, he himself poured out water; if he
wanted to stimulate the soil to fertility, he offered it a performance of
sexual intercourse in the fields.

You know how tenaciously anything that has once found psychological
expression persists. You will therefore not be surprised to hear that a great
many manifestations of animism have lasted up to the present day, mostly
as what are called superstitions, side by side with and behind religion. But
more than that, you can hardly avoid coming to the conclusion that our
philosophy has preserved essential traits of animistic modes of thought
such as the over-estimation of the magic of words and the belief that real
processes in the external world follow the lines laid down by our thoughts.
It is, to be sure, an animism without magical practices. On the other hand,
we should expect to find that in the age of animism there must already
have been some kind of morality, some rules governing the intercourse of
men with one another. But there is no evidence that they were closely
bound up with animistic beliefs. Probably they were the immediate
expression of the distribution of power and of practical necessities.

It would be very interesting to know what determined the transition

from animism to religion; but you may imagine in what darkness this
earliest epoch in the evolution of the human mind is still shrouded. It
seems to be a fact that the earliest form in which religion appeared was the
remarkable one of totemism, the worship of animals, in the train of which
followed the first ethical commands, the taboos. In a book called Totem
and Taboo, I once worked out a suggestion in accordance with which this
change is to be traced back to an upheaval in the relationships in the
human family. The main achievement of religion, as compared with
animism, lies in the psychic binding of the fear of demons. Nevertheless,
the evil spirit still has a place in the religious system as a relic of the
previous age.

So much for the pre-history of the religious Weltanschauung. Let us

now turn to consider what has happened since, and what is still going on
under our own eyes. The scientific spirit, strengthened by the observation
of natural processes, began in the course of time to treat religion as a
human matter, and to subject it to a critical examination. This test it failed
to pass. In the first place, the accounts of miracles roused a feeling of
surprise and disbelief, since they contradicted everything that sober
observation had taught, and betrayed all too clearly the influence of
human imagination. In the next place, its account of the nature of the
universe had to be rejected, because it showed evidence of a lack of
knowledge which bore the stamp of earlier days, and because, owing to
increasing familiarity with the laws of nature, it had lost its authority. The
idea that the universe came into being through an act of generation or
creation, analogous to that which produces an individual human being, no
longer seemed to be the most obvious and self-evident hypothesis; for the
distinction between living and sentient beings and inanimate nature had
become apparent to the human mind, and had made it impossible to retain
the original animistic theory. Besides this, one must not overlook the
influence of the comparative study of different religious systems, and the
impression they give of mutual exclusiveness and intolerance.

Fortified by these preliminary efforts, the scientific spirit at last

summoned up courage to put to the test the most important and the most
emotionally significant elements of the religious Weltanschauung. The
truth could have been seen at any time, but it was long before anyone
dared to say it aloud: the assertions made by religion that it could give
protection and happiness to men, if they would only fulfil certain ethical
obligations, were unworthy of belief. It seems not to be true that there is a
power in the universe which watches over the well-being of every
individual with parental care and brings all his concerns to a happy
ending. On the contrary, the destinies of man are incompatible with a
universal principle of benevolence or with – what is to some degree
contradictory – a universal principle of justice. Earthquakes, floods and
fires do not differentiate between the good and devout man and the sinner
and unbeliever. And, even if we leave inanimate nature out of account and
consider the destinies of individual men in so far as they depend on their
relations with others of their own kind, it is by no means the rule that
virtue is rewarded and wickedness punished, but it happens often enough
that the violent, the crafty and the unprincipled seize the desirable goods
of the earth for themselves, while the pious go empty away. Dark,
unfeeling and unloving powers determine human destiny; the system of
rewards and punishments, which, according to religion, governs the
world, seems to have no existence. This is another occasion for
abandoning a portion of the animism which has found refuge in religion.

The last contribution to the criticism of the religious Weltanschauung

has been made by psychoanalysis, which has traced the origin of religion
to the helplessness of childhood, and its content to the persistence of the
wishes and needs of childhood into maturity. This does not precisely
imply a refutation of religion, but it is a necessary rounding off of our
knowledge about it, and, at least on one point, it actually contradicts it, for
religion lays claim to a divine origin. This claim, to be sure, is not false, if
our interpretation of God is accepted.

The final judgment of science on the religious Weltanschauung, then,

runs as follows. While the different religions wrangle with one another as
to which of them is in possession of the truth, in our view the truth of
religion may be altogether disregarded. Religion is an attempt to get
control over the sensory world, in which we are placed, by means of the
wish-world, which we have developed inside us as a result of biological
and psychological necessities. But it cannot achieve its end. Its doctrines
carry with them the stamp of the times in which they originated, the
ignorant childhood days of the human race. Its consolations deserve no
trust. Experience teaches us that the world is not a nursery. The ethical
commands, to which religion seeks to lend its weight, require some other
foundation instead, for human society cannot do without them, and it is
dangerous to link up obedience to them with religious belief. If one
attempts to assign to religion its place in man’s evolution, it seems not so
much to be a lasting acquisition as a parallel to the neurosis which the
civilised individual must pass through on his way from childhood to
maturity.

You are, of course, perfectly free to criticise this account of mine, and I
am prepared to meet you half-way. What I have said about the gradual
crumbling of the religious Weltanschauung was no doubt an incomplete
abridgment of the whole story; the order of the separate events was not
quite correctly given, and the co-operation of various forces towards the
awakening of the scientific spirit was not traced. I have also left out of
account the alterations which occurred in the religious Weltanschauung
itself, both during the period of its unchallenged authority and afterwards
under the influence of awakening criticism. Finally I have, strictly
speaking, limited my remarks to one single form of religion, that of the
Western peoples. I have, as it were, constructed a lay-figure for the
purposes of a demonstration which I desired to be as rapid and as
impressive as possible. Let us leave on one side the question of whether
my knowledge would in any case have been sufficient to enable me to do
it better or more completely. I am aware that you can find all that I have
said elsewhere, and find it better said; none of it is new. But I am firmly
convinced that the most careful elaboration of the material upon which the
problems of religion are based would not shake these conclusions.

As you know, the struggle between the scientific spirit and the religious
Weltanschauung is not yet at an end; it is still going on under our very
eyes to-day. However little psychoanalysis may make use as a rule of
polemical weapons, we will not deny ourselves the pleasure of looking
into this conflict. Incidentally, we may perhaps arrive at a clearer
understanding of our attitude towards the Weltanschauung. You will see
how easily some of the arguments which are brought forward by the
supporters of religion can be disproved; though others may succeed in
escaping refutation.

The first objection that one hears is to the effect that it is an

impertinence on the part of science to take religion as a subject for its
investigations, since religion is something supreme, something superior to
the capacities of the human understanding, something which must not be
approached with the sophistries of criticism. In other words, science is not
competent to sit in judgment on religion. No doubt it is quite useful and
valuable, so long as it is restricted to its own province; but religion does
not lie in that province, and with religion it can have nothing to do. If we
are not deterred by this brusque dismissal, but enquire on what grounds
religion bases its claim to an exceptional position among human concerns,
the answer we receive, if indeed we are honoured with an answer at all, is
that religion cannot be measured by human standards, since it is of divine
origin, and has been revealed to us by a spirit which the human mind
cannot grasp. It might surely be thought that nothing could be more easily
refuted than this argument; it is an obvious petitio principii, a ‘begging of
the question’. The point which is being called in question is whether there
is a divine spirit and a revelation; and it surely cannot be a conclusive
reply to say that the question be asked, because the Deity cannot be called
in question. What is happening here is the same kind of thing as we meet
with occasionally in our analytic work. If an otherwise intelligent patient
denies a suggestion on particularly stupid grounds, his imperfect logic is
evidence for the existence of a particularly strong motive for his making
the denial, a motive which can only be of an affective nature and serve to
bind an emotion.

Another sort of answer may be given, in which a motive of this kind is

openly admitted. Religion must not be critically examined, because it is
the highest, most precious and noblest thing that the mind of man has
brought forth, because it gives expression to the deepest feelings, and is
the only thing that makes the world bearable and life worthy of humanity.
To this we need not reply by disputing this estimate of religion, but rather
by drawing attention to another aspect of the matter. We should point out
that it is not a question of the scientific spirit encroaching upon the sphere
of religion, but of religion encroaching upon the sphere of scientific
thought. Whatever value and importance religion may have, it has no right
to set any limits to thought, and therefore has no right to except itself from
the application of thought.

Scientific thought is, in its essence, no different from the normal

process of thinking, which we all, believers and unbelievers alike, make
use of when we are going about our business in everyday life. It has
merely taken a special form in certain respects: it extends its interest to
things which have no immediately obvious utility, it endeavours to
eliminate personal factors and emotional influences, it carefully examines
the trustworthiness of the sense perceptions on which it bases its
conclusions, it provides itself with new perceptions which are not
obtainable by everyday means, and isolates the determinants of these new
experiences by purposely varied experimentation. Its aim is to arrive at
correspondence with reality, that is to say with what exists outside us and
independently of us, and, as experience has taught us, is decisive for the
fulfilment or frustration of our desires. This correspondence with the real
external world we call truth. It is the aim of scientific work, even when the
practical value of that work does not interest us. When, therefore, religion
claims that it can take the place of science and that, because it is
beneficent and ennobling, it must therefore be true, that claim is, in fact,
an encroachment, which, in the interests of everyone, should be resisted. It
is asking a great deal of a man, who has learnt to regulate his everyday
affairs in accordance with the rules of experience and with due regard to
reality, that he should entrust precisely what affects him most nearly to the
care of an authority which claims as its prerogative freedom from all the
rules of rational thought. And as for the protection that religion promises
its believers, I hardly think that any of us would be willing even to enter a
motorcar if the driver informed us that he drove without allowing himself
to be distracted by traffic regulations, but in accordance with the impulses
of an exalted imagination.

And indeed the ban which religion has imposed upon thought in the
interests of its own preservation is by no means without danger both for
the individual and for society. Analytic experience has taught us that such
prohibitions, even though they were originally confined to some particular
field, have a tendency to spread, and then become the cause of severe
inhibitions in people’s lives. In women a process of this sort can be
observed to follow from the prohibition against their occupying
themselves, even in thought, with the sexual side of their nature. The
biographies of almost all the eminent people of past times show the
disastrous results of the inhibition of thought by religion. Intellect, on the
other hand, – or rather, to call it by a more familiar name, reason – is
among the forces which may be expected to exert a unifying influence
upon men – creatures who can be held together only with the greatest
difficulty, and whom it is therefore scarcely possible to control. Think
how impossible human society would be if everyone had his own
particular multiplication table and his own private units of weight and
length. Our best hope for the future is that the intellect – the scientific
spirit, – reason – should in time establish a dictatorship over the human
mind. The very nature of reason is a guarantee that it would not fail to
concede to human emotions and to all that is determined by them the
position to which they are entitled. But the common pressure exercised by
such a domination of reason would prove to be the strongest unifying
force among men, and would prepare the way for further unifications.
Whatever, like the ban laid upon thought by religion, opposes such a
development is a danger for the future of mankind.

The question may now be asked why religion does not put an end to
this losing fight by openly declaring: ‘It is a fact that I cannot give you
what men commonly call truth; to obtain that, you must go to science. But
what I have to give you is incomparably more beautiful, more comforting
and more ennobling than anything that you could ever get from science.
And I therefore say to you that it is true in a different and higher sense.’
The answer is easy to find. Religion cannot make this admission, because
if it did it would lose all influence over the mass of mankind. The ordinary
man knows only one ‘truth’ – truth in the ordinary sense of the word.
What may be meant by a higher, or a highest, truth, he cannot imagine.
Truth seems to him as little capable of having degrees as death, and the
necessary leap from the beautiful to the true is one that he cannot make.
Perhaps you will agree with me in thinking that he is right in this.

The struggle, therefore, is not yet at an end. The followers of the

religious Weltanschauung act in accordance with the old maxim: the best
defence is attack. ‘What’, they ask, ‘is this science that presumes to
depreciate our religion, which has brought salvation and comfort to
millions of men for many thousands of years? What has science for its
part so far accomplished? What more can be expected of it? On its own
admission, it is incapable of comforting or ennobling us. We will leave
that on one side, therefore, though it is by no means easy to give up such
benefits. But what of its teaching? Can it tell us how the world began, and
what fate is in store for it? Can it even paint for us a coherent picture of
the universe, and show us where the unexplained phenomena of life fit in,
and how spiritual forces are able to operate on inert matter? If it could do
that we should not refuse it our respect. But it has done nothing of the
sort, not one single problem of this kind has it solved. It gives us
fragments of alleged knowledge, which it cannot harmonise with one
another, it collects observations of uniformities from the totality of events,
and dignifies them with the name of laws and subjects them to its
hazardous interpretations. And with what a small degree of certitude does
it establish its conclusions! All that it teaches is only provisionally true;
what is prized to-day as the highest wisdom is overthrown tomorrow and
experimentally replaced by something else. The latest error is then given
the name of truth. And to this truth we are asked to sacrifice our highest
good!’

Ladies and Gentlemen – In so far as you yourselves are supporters of

the scientific Weltanschauung I do not think you will be very profoundly
shaken by this critic’s attack. In Imperial Austria an anecdote was once
current which I should like to call to mind in this connection. On one
occasion the old Emperor was receiving a deputation from a political
party which he disliked: ‘This is no longer ordinary opposition’, he burst
out, ‘this is factious opposition.’ In just the same way you will find that
the reproaches made against science for not having solved the riddle of the
universe are unfairly and spitefully exaggerated. Science has had too little
time for such a tremendous achievement. It is still very young, a recently
developed human activity. Let us bear in mind, to mention only a few
dates, that only about three hundred years have passed since Kepler
discovered the laws of planetary movement; the life of Newton, who split
up light into the colours of the spectrum, and put forward the theory of
gravitation, came to an end in 1727, that is to say a little more than two
hundred years ago; and Lavoisier discovered oxygen shortly before the
French Revolution. I may be a very old man to-day, but the life of an
individual man is very short in comparison with the duration of human
development, and it is a fact that I was alive when Charles Darwin
published his work on the origin of species. In the same year, 1859, Pierre
Curie, the discoverer of radium, was born. And if you go back to the
beginnings of exact natural science among the Greeks, to Archimedes, or
to Aristarchus of Samos (circa 250 B.C.), the forerunner of Copernicus, or
even to the tentative origins of astronomy among the Babylonians, you
will only be covering a very small portion of the period which
anthropology requires for the evolution of man from his original ape-like
form, a period which certainly embraces more than a hundred thousand
years. And it must not be forgotten that the last century has brought with it
such a quantity of new discoveries and such a great acceleration of
scientific progress that we have every reason to look forward with
confidence to the future of science.

It has to be admitted that the other objections are valid within certain
limits. Thus it is true that the path of science is slow, tentative and
laborious. That cannot be denied or altered. No wonder that the gentlemen
of the opposition are dissatisfied; they are spoilt, they have had an easier
time of it with their revelation. Progress in scientific work is made in just
the same way as in an analysis. The analyst brings expectations with him
to his work, but he must keep them in the background. He discovers
something new by observation, now here and now there, and at first the
bits do not fit together. He puts forward suppositions, he brings up
provisional constructions, and abandons them if they are not confirmed;
he must have a great deal of patience, must be prepared for all
possibilities, and must not jump at conclusions for fear of their leading
him to overlook new and unexpected factors. And in the end the whole
expenditure of effort is rewarded, the scattered discoveries fall into place
and he obtains an understanding of a whole chain of mental events; he has
finished one piece of work and is ready for the next. But the analyst is
unlike other scientific workers in this one respect, that he has to do
without the help which experiment can bring to research.

But the criticism of science which I have quoted also contains a great
deal of exaggeration. It is not true to say that it swings blindly from one
attempt to another, and exchanges one error for the next. As a rule the
man of science works like a sculptor with a clay model, who persistently
alters the first rough sketch, adds to it and takes away from it, until he has
obtained a satisfactory degree of similarity to some object, whether seen
or imagined. And, moreover, at least in the older and more mature
sciences, there is already a solid foundation of knowledge, which is now
only modified and elaborated and no longer demolished. The outlook, in
fact, is not so bad in the world of science.

And finally, what is the purpose of all these passionate disparagements

of science? In spite of its present incompleteness and its inherent
difficulties, we could not do without it and could not put anything else in
its place. There is no limit to the improvement of which it is capable, and
this can certainly not be said of the religious Weltanschauung. The latter
is complete in its essentials; if it is an error, it must remain one for ever.
No attempt to minimise the importance of science can alter the fact that it
attempts to take into account our dependence on the real external world,
while religion is illusion and derives its strength from the fact that it falls
in with our instinctual desires.

I must now go on to mention some other types of Weltanschauung

which are in opposition to the scientific one; I do so, however,
unwillingly, because I know that I am not competent to form a judgment
upon them. I hope, therefore, that you will bear this confession in mind in
listening to what I have to say, and that if your interest is aroused you will
go elsewhere for more trustworthy information.

In the first place I ought at this point to name the various philosophical
systems which have ventured to draw a picture of the world, as it is
reflected in the minds of thinkers whose eyes are as a rule turned away
from it. But I have already attempted to give a general characterisation of
philosophy and its methods, and I believe I am more unfitted than almost
anyone to pass the individual systems under review. I shall ask you,
therefore, instead to turn your attention to two other phenomena which,
particularly in these days, cannot be ignored.

The Weltanschauung to which I shall first refer is, as it were, a

counterpart of political anarchism, and may perhaps have emanated from
it. No doubt there have been intellectual nihilists of this kind before, but at
the present day the theory of relativity of modern physics seems to have
gone to their heads. It is true that they start out from science, but they
succeed in forcing it to cut the ground from under its own feet, to commit
suicide, as it were; they make it dispose of itself by getting it to refute its
own premises. One often has an impression that this nihilism is only a
temporary attitude, which will only be kept up until this task has been
completed. When once science has been got rid of, some kind of
mysticism, or, indeed, the old religious Weltanschauung, can spring up in
the space that has been left vacant. According to this anarchistic doctrine,
there is no such thing as truth, no assured knowledge of the external
world. What we give out as scientific truth is only the product of our own
needs and desires, as they are formulated under varying external
conditions; that is to say, it is illusion once more. Ultimately we find only
what we need to find, and see only what we desire to see. We can do
nothing else. And since the criterion of truth, correspondence with an
external world, disappears, it is absolutely immaterial what views we
accept. All of them are equally true and false. And no one has a right to
accuse anyone else of error.

For a mind which is interested in epistemology, it would be tempting to

enquire into the contrivances and sophistries by means of which the
anarchists manage to elicit a final product of this kind from science. One
would no doubt be brought up against situations like the one involved in
the familiar example of the Cretan who says that all Cretans are liars. But
I am not desirous, nor am I capable, of going deeper into this. I will
merely remark that the anarchistic theory only retains its remarkable air of
superiority so long as it is concerned with opinions about abstract things;
it breaks down the moment it comes in contact with practical life. Now the
behaviour of men is guided by their opinions and knowledge, and the
same scientific spirit which speculates about the structure of the atom or
the origin of man is concerned in the building of a bridge that will bear its
load. If it were really a matter of indifference what we believed, if there
were no knowledge which was distinguished from among our opinions by
the fact that it corresponds with reality, then we might just as well build
our bridges of cardboard as of stone, or inject a tenth of a gram of morphia
into a patient instead of a hundredth, or take tear-gas as a narcotic instead
of ether. But the intellectual anarchists themselves would strongly
repudiate such practical applications of their theory.

The other opposing Weltanschauung is to be taken far more seriously,

and in this case I very deeply regret the insufficiency of my knowledge. I
dare say that you know more about this subject than I do and that you
have long ago taken up your position for or against Marxism. The
investigations of Karl Marx into the economic structure of society and
into the influence of various forms of economic organisation upon all
departments of human life have in our day acquired an authority that
cannot be denied. How far they are right or wrong in detail, I naturally do
not know. I gather that it is not easy even for better informed people to
decide. Some of the propositions in Marx’s theory seem strange to me,
such as that the evolution of forms of society is a process of natural
history, or that the changes in social stratification proceed from one
another in the manner of a dialectical process. I am by no means certain
that I understand these statements rightly; moreover, they do not sound
‘materialistic’ but like traces of the obscure Hegelian philosophy under
the influence of which Marx at one time passed. I do not know how I can
throw off the view which I share with other laymen, who are inclined to
trace back the formation of classes in society to the struggles which went
on from the beginning of history between various human hordes. These
hordes differed to a slight degree from one another; and it is my view that
social differences go back to these original differences of tribe or race.
Psychological factors, such as the amount of constitutional aggressiveness
and also the degree of cohesion within the horde, and material factors,
such as the possession of better weapons, decided the victory. When they
came to live together in the same territory, the victors became the masters
and the conquered the slaves. There is no sign in all this of natural laws or
conceptual modifications; on the other hand, we cannot fail to recognise
the influence which the progressive control over natural forces exerts on
the social relationships between men, since men always place their newly
won powers at the service of their aggressiveness, and use them against
one another. The introduction of metals, of bronze and iron, put an end to
whole cultural epochs and their social institutions. I really believe that
gunpowder and fire-arms overthrew chivalry and the domination of the
aristocracy, and that the Russian despotism was already doomed before
the war was lost, since no amount of in-breeding among the ruling
families of Europe could have produced a race of Tsars capable of
withstanding the explosive force of dynamite.

It may be, indeed, that with the present economic crisis which followed
upon the Great War we are merely paying the price of our latest triumph
over Nature, the conquest of the air. This does not sound very convincing,
but at least the first links in the chain of argument are clearly recognisable.
The policy of England was based on the security guaranteed by the seas
which encircle her coasts. The moment Blériot flew over the Channel in
his aeroplane this protective isolation was broken through; and on the
night on which, in a time of peace, a German Zeppelin made an
experimental cruise over London, war against Germany became a
certainty. Nor must the threat of submarines be forgotten in this
connection.

I am almost ashamed of treating a theme of such importance and

complexity in such a slight and inadequate manner, and I am also aware
that I have not said anything that is new to you. I only wanted to call your
attention to the fact that the factor of man’s control over Nature, from
which he obtains his weapons for his struggle with his fellow-men, must
of necessity also affect his economic arrangements. We seem to have
travelled a long way from the problems of a Weltanschauung, but we shall
soon come back to the point. The strength of Marxism obviously does not
lie in its view of history or in the prophecies about the future which it
bases upon that view, but in its clear insight into the determining influence
which is exerted by the economic conditions of man upon his intellectual,
ethical and artistic reactions. A whole collection of correlations and causal
sequences were thus discovered, which had hitherto been almost
completely disregarded. But it cannot be assumed that economic motives
are the only ones which determine the behaviour of men in society. The
unquestionable fact that different individuals, races and nations behave
differently under the same economic conditions in itself proves that the
economic factor cannot be the sole determinant. It is quite impossible to
understand how psychological factors can be overlooked where the
reactions of living human beings are involved; for not only were such
factors already concerned in the establishment of these economic
conditions but even in obeying these conditions, men can do no more than
set their original instinctual impulses in motion – their self-preservative
instinct, their love of aggression, their need for love and their impulse to
attain pleasure and avoid pain. In an earlier lecture we have emphasised
the importance of the part played by the super-ego, which represents
tradition and the ideals of the past, and which will resist for some time the
pressure exerted by new economic situations. And, finally, we must not
forget that the mass of mankind, subjected though they are to economic
necessities, are borne on by a process of cultural development – some call
it civilisation – which is no doubt influenced by all the other factors, but is
equally certainly independent of them in its origin; it is comparable to an
organic process, and is quite capable of itself having an effect upon the
other factors. It displaces the aims of the instincts, and causes men to rebel
against what has hitherto been tolerable; and, moreover, the progressive
strengthening of the scientific spirit seems to be an essential part of it. If
anyone were in a position to show in detail how these different factors –
the general human instinctual disposition, its racial variations and its
cultural modifications – behave under the influence of varying social
organisation, professional activities and methods of subsistence, how
these factors inhibit or aid one another – if, I say, anyone could show this,
then he would not only have improved Marxism but would have made it
into a true social science. For sociology, which deals with the behaviour
of man in society, can be nothing other than applied psychology. Strictly
speaking, indeed, there are only two sciences – psychology, pure and
applied, and natural science.

When at last the far-reaching importance of economic conditions began

to be realised, the temptation arose to bring about an alteration in them by
means of revolutionary interference, instead of leaving the change to the
course of historical development. Theoretical Marxism, as put into effect
in Russian Bolshevism, has acquired the energy, the comprehensiveness
and the exclusiveness of a Weltanschauung, but at the same time it has
acquired an almost uncanny resemblance to what it is opposing.
Originally it was itself a part of science, and, in its realisation, was built
up on science and technology, but it has nevertheless established a ban
upon thought which is as inexorable as was formerly that of religion. All
critical examination of the Marxist theory is forbidden, doubts of its
validity are as vindictively punished as heresy once was by the Catholic
Church. The works of Marx, as the source of revelation, have taken the
place of the Bible and the Koran, although they are no freer from
contradictions and obscurities than those earlier holy books.

And although practical Marxism has remorselessly swept away all

idealistic systems and illusions, it has nevertheless developed illusions
itself, which are no less dubious and unverifiable than their predecessors.
It hopes, in the course of a few generations, so to alter men that they will
be able to live together in the new order of society almost without friction,
and that they will do their work voluntarily. In the meantime it moves
elsewhere the instinctual barriers which are essential in any society, it
directs outwards the aggressive tendencies which threaten every human
community, and finds its support in the hostility of the poor against the
rich, and of the hitherto powerless against the former holders of power.
But such an alteration in human nature is very improbable. The
enthusiasm with which the mob follow the Bolshevist lead at present, so
long as the new order is incomplete and threatened from outside, gives no
guarantee for the future, when it will be fully established and no longer in
danger. In exactly the same way as religion, Bolshevism is obliged to
compensate its believers for the sufferings and deprivations of the present
life by promising them a better life hereafter, in which there will be no
unsatisfied needs. It is true that this paradise is to be in this world; it will
be established on earth, and will be inaugurated within a measurable time.
But let us remember that the Jews, whose religion knows nothing of a life
beyond the grave, also expected the coming of the Messiah here on earth,
and that the Christian Middle Ages constantly believed that the Kingdom
of God was at hand.

There is no doubt what the answer of Bolshevism to these criticisms

will be. ‘Until men have changed their nature’, it will say, ‘one must
employ the methods which are effective with them today. One cannot do
without compulsion in their education or a ban upon thinking or the
application of force, even the spilling of blood; and if one did not awake
in them the illusions you speak of, one would not be able to bring them to
submit to this compulsion.’ And it might politely ask us to say how else it
could be done. At this point we should be defeated. I should know of no
advice to give. I should admit that the conditions of this experiment would
have restrained me, and people like me, from undertaking it; but we are
not the only ones concerned. There are also men of action, unshakeable in
their convictions, impervious to doubt, and insensitive to the sufferings of
anyone who stands between them and their goal. It is owing to such men
that the tremendous attempt to institute a new order of society of this kind
is actually being carried out in Russia now. At a time when great nations
are declaring that they expect to find their salvation solely from a steadfast
adherence to Christian piety, the upheaval in Russia – in spite of all its
distressing features – seems to bring a promise of a better future.
Unfortunately, neither our own misgivings nor the fanatical belief of the
other side give us any hint of how the experiment will turn out. The future
will teach us. Perhaps it will show that the attempt has been made
prematurely and that a fundamental alteration of the social order will have
little hope of success until new discoveries are made that will increase our
control over the forces of Nature, and so make easier the satisfaction of
our needs. It may be that only then will it be possible for a new order of
society to emerge which will not only banish the material want of the
masses, but at the same time meet the cultural requirements of individual
men. But even so we shall still have to struggle for an indefinite length of
time with the difficulties which the intractable nature of man puts in the
way of every kind of social community.

Ladies and Gentlemen – Let me in conclusion sum up what I had to say

about the relation of psychoanalysis to the question of a Weltanschauung.
Psychoanalysis is not, in my opinion, in a position to create a
Weltanschauung of its own. It has no need to do so, for it is a branch of
science, and can subscribe to the scientific Weltanschauung. The latter,
however, hardly merits such a high-sounding name, for it does not take
everything into its scope, it is incomplete and it makes no claim to being
comprehensive or to constituting a system. Scientific thought is still in its
infancy; there are very many of the great problems with which it has as
yet been unable to cope. A Weltanschauung based upon science has, apart
from the emphasis it lays upon the real world, essentially negative
characteristics, such as that it limits itself to truth and rejects illusions.
Those of our fellowmen who are dissatisfied with this state of things and
who desire something more for their momentary peace of mind may look
for it where they can find it. We shall not blame them for doing so; but we
cannot help them and cannot change our own way of thinking on their
account.

Further Reading:
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