To Father Victor White

My dear Victor, 25 March 1960

Since you are very much in the situation of the suffering Job.

I shall not play the role of his friends, not even that of the wise Elihu.

I humbly submit the suggestion that you might apply your Personalistic point of view to your own person and to your own case instead of to the unknown person of the individual Job.

You can see then what it does to yourself as well as to myself-if I may introduce myself as an individual.

Job is very much the respectable Hebrew of his time.

He observes the law and-by force of the covenant-his God ought to do the same.

Now let us assume that Job is neurotic, as one can easily Make out from the textual allusions: he suffers from a regrettable lack of insight into his own dissociation.

He undergoes an…

To Eugen Bohler

Dear Dr. Bohler, Bollingen, 1 January 1960

My first letter in this New Year, which opens a new decade, shall be to you, dear friend.

It brings you my very cordial wishes not only for the corning year but also for this dawning decade 1960-70, in whose lap the black and white cards of our uncertain fate await us.

The past decade dealt me heavy blows-the death of dear friends and the even more painful loss of my wife, the end of my scientific activity and the burdens of old age, but also all sorts of honours and above all your friendship, which I value the more highly because it appears that men cannot stand me in the long run.

Since I do not deem myself god-almighty enough to have made them other than they are, I must put it down entirely to my own account and…

1. So f.i. “God,” then “magic,” “religious,” etc. I would propose the term “numinous” instead of “magic” or “religious,” which are prejudiced in a very definite way.

2. Any convinced Christian of today would contest your assumption that his religion is not dynamic.

Though I think that such a statement, namely the feebleness of our religion, is not unfair.

3. ·It is rather conspicuous that the creators of modern art are unconscious about the meaning of their creations.

4. What modern art-forms represent is questionable.

It is certainly something which transcends any hitherto valid form of understanding.

Your general conclusion that contemporary Western artists unconsciously depict God’s image is questionable, as it is by no means certain that any inconceivability could be called “God,” unless one calls everything “God,” as everything ends in inconceivability.

But wh en one calls everything which is inconceivable “God,” then the term “God” loses all…