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8 October 1936
Vienna IX, Berggasse 19
185F
Prof. Dr. Freud
Dear Friend,
What a pleasant surprise your lecture was!1 Those who heard it and told me about it were evidently unmoved; it must have been too difficult for them. Reading it, I was delighted by your elegant language, your erudition, the breadth of your outlook, your tact in contradiction.
As is well known, one can put up with any amount of praise.
Of course, I still do not believe you. I have never ventured beyond the ground floor and basement of the building. - You maintain that if one changes one's point of view one can also see a higher floor, in which there live such distinguished guests as religion, art, etc. You are not alone in this; most cultivated specimens of homo natura2 think likewise. You are the conservative in this respect, and I the revolutionary. If I still had a lifetime of work ahead of me, I should dare to assign a home in my lowly little house to those highborn personages. I have already done so for religion since coming across the category ‘neurosis of mankind’3 But we are probably speaking at cross purposes and it will take centuries before our differences are settled.
In cordial friendship and with kind regards to your wife,
Yours, Freud
Freud had not been able to attend the official birthday celebrations because he was unwell and so met the lecture for the first time in its written form.