To Michael Fordham

Dear Fordham, 14 June 1958

I don’t flatter myself on having a theory of heredity.

I share the ordinary views about it.

I am convinced that individual acquisitions under experimental conditions are not inherited.

I don’t believe that this statement could be generalized, since changes in individual cases must have been inherited, otherwise no change would have come about in phylogenesis; or we would be forced to assume that a new variety, or a new species, was shaped by the creator on the spot without inheritance.

Concerning archetypes, migration and verbal transmission are self-evident, except in those cases where individuals reproduce archetypal forms outside of all possible external influences (good examples in childhood dreams!).

Since archetypes are instinctual forms, they follow a universal pattern, as do the functions of the body.

It would be highly miraculous if that were not so.

Why should the psyche be the…