It would be a ridiculous and unwarranted presumption on our part if we imagined that we were more energetic or more intelligent than the men of the past- our material knowledge has increased, but not our intelligence. This means that we are just as bigoted in regard to new ideas, and just as impervious to them, as people were in the darkest days of antiquity. We have become rich in knowledge, but poor in wisdom. The center of gravity of our interest has switched over to the materialistic side, whereas the ancients preferred a mode of thought nearer to the fantastic type. To the classical mind everything was still saturated with mythology, even though classical philosophy and the beginning of natural science undeniably prepared the way for the work of ‘enlightenment.’
~Carl Gustav Jung, Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido, 1912 Symbols of Transformation, 1956
Pretty scary, that.
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He’s right, very right.
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