Zürich,
8.10.1925

… Your tendency to resignation distresses me. If I took you literally, I should object that you had handed over to your id full power over life and death, good fortune and ill fortune; and, in the name of your charming daughter, your delightful wife, your whole family, science, and the whole pantheon of supreme powers, I should protest. Two years ago, on the occasion of my fiftieth birthday, you wrote to me humorously that I was paying for it with a stiff leg. From that moment onwards the trouble rapidly receded-the masseuse would claim that she had something to do with it. More than ten years ago you wrote to me dolefully that you feared the time when your powers would decline, and since then you have demonstrated unprecedented productivity and greatness. In these circumstances I am not sure whether it is more wickedness or love that makes me unable at present to work up a proper veneration for the age which you emphasise….