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Göttingen, 26 Dec. 1920
Dear Professor,
Since sending you my very provisional expression of thanks on a postcard, my desire to write to you at length has increased each day, in proportion as I have become more and more absorbed in Beyond the Pleasure Principle. You can easily imagine what pleasure this book has given me, since I was plagued by the worry (which I expressed even in my letters) that you were not in agreement with me on the matter of the ‘passive instinct’;137 and yet it is only from this standpoint that Adler can be conclusively disproved, as I told him in Vienna.† It is true that you do not wish this new book to be regarded as basic and definitive, but from this one point—of this I am convinced—you will never diverge. To me this is vital.
Of the thoughts on life and death, which are developed from this, I can say, strangely enough, both that I agree with them, and contrariwise that I go in the opposite direction. For in so far as ‘death’ and the state of becoming inorganic can in the last resort