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Berggasse 19,
Vienna IX,
9.10.1918
Dear Dr Pfister,
I have now read through your little book1 and I can well believe the pleasure with which you wrote it. It has a gladdening warmth and demonstrates all the fine qualities which we so value in you; your enthusiasm, your integrity, and love of humanity, your courage and candour, your understanding and also—your optimism.
It will undoubtedly render us good service, if we are to mention such practical considerations; as you know, we generally pay little regard to them.
Well, praise can always be brief, but criticism has to be more long-winded. One thing I dislike is your objection to my ‘sexual theory and my ethics’. The latter I grant you; ethics are remote from me, and you are a minister of religion. I do not break my head very much about good and evil, but I have found little that is ‘good’ about human beings on the whole. In my experience most of them are trash, no matter