As understanding deepens, the further removed it becomes from knowledge.
How can I be substantial if I do not cast a shadow? I must have a dark side also If I am to be whole.
As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being.
Mistakes are, after all, the foundations of truth, and if a man does not know what a thing is, it is at least an increase in knowledge if he knows what it is not.
Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.
But it seems to me to be an imperfection in things of beauty, and a weakness in man, if an explanation from the shallow-side has a destructive effect. The horror which we feel for Freudian interpretations is entirely due to our own barbaric or childish naivete, which believes that there can be heights without corresponding depths, and which blinds us to the really final truth that, when carried to extremes, opposites meet.
I shall not commit the fashionable stupidity of regarding everything I cannot explain as a fraud.—address to the Society for Psychical Research in England