gree connected with physics and cosmology), a fact hardly requiring
proof. The alchemistic chemistry was not, to be sure, scientific in the
strict modern sense. In comparison with our modern attitudes it had so
much mythical blood in it that I could call it a mythologically
apperceiving science, wherein I go a little beyond the very clearly
developed conception of Wilhelm Wundt (Volkerps. Myth. u. Rel.) regarding
mythological apperception, from a desire for a more rigid formulation, but
without losing the peculiar concept of the mythical or giving it the
extension it has acquired with G. F. Lipps. Alchemy's myth-like point of
view and manner of thinking is paralleled by the fact that it was
dominated by symbolic representation and the peculiarities that go with
it. [The concept of the symbol is here to be taken, of course, in the
wider sense, as in my papers on Symbolbildung (Jb. ps. F., II-IV).]

The choice of a symbol is strongly influenced by what strongly impresses
the mind, what moves the soul, whether joyful or painful, what is of vital
interest, in short, whatever touches us nearly, whether consciously or
unconsciously. This influence is shown even in the commonplace instances,
where the professional or the amateur is betrayed by the manner of
apperceiving one and the same object. Thus the landscape painter sees in a
lake a fine subject, the angler an opportunity to fish, the business man a
chance to establish a sanitarium or a steamboat line, the yachtsman a
place for his pleasure trips, the heat tormented person a chance for a
bath, and the suicide, death. In the symbolic conception of an object,
moreover (which is much more dependent on the unconscious or uncontrolled
stimulation of the phantasy that shapes the symbol), the choice from among
the many possibilities can surely not fall upon such images as are
unsympathetic or uninteresting to the mind. Even if we consciously make
comparisons we think of an example mostly from a favorite and familiar
sphere; when something "occurs" to us there is already evidenced some part
of an unconscious complex. This will become elaborated in the degree that
the phantasy is given free play.

The raw product then, of the symbol-choosing phantasy of the individual
("raw," i.e., not covered for publicity with a premeditated varnish) bears
traces of the things that closely concern the person in question. ("Out of
the fulness of the heart the mouth speaketh"--even without premedit