Swiss Religious Essayist, Hilty of 'Happiness' and Focusing
What I have finally come to realize clearly myself recently is,
the obvious fact that if you 'immerse yourself in one subject for too long,' your energy will easily become depleted.
that is, the obvious fact.
'It is better to diversify your work subjects, and do them little by little, alternating between them, rather than all at once.'
This was something that the Swiss religious thinker Carl Hilty also discussed in his 'Happiness' (Part 1), in the first volume of 'Happiness,'
in a section called 'The Art of Working,' which is so famous even within 'Happiness' that it has been used as a German textbook.
Hilty was a leading Swiss jurist who passed away just before World War I, and a 'practitioner' who even served as the first judge of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, but he had a deep Christian faith and is known today as a religious writer.
'For Sleepless Nights' is also famous.
Hilty is someone I encountered during my junior high school years, and he had a tremendous influence on me.
While Hilty basically stood from the perspective of Protestantism, his relationship with 'God' is extremely personal.
Although 'Happiness' becomes more religious from the second volume onwards, the first volume is highly recommended as an essay written by a first-class scholar of the German-speaking world at the end of the 19th century. Even compared to Alain and Russell, who are called the 'Three Great Happiness Theories,' I undoubtedly like it the best.
He was my 'spiritual mentor' until I encountered Gendlin and Focusing.
The reason why my 'scope of expertise' appears so broad at first glance is partly because I am a history lover at heart, but I believe it is largely due to the fact that I was exposed to the essence of European culture from ancient times to the early modern period—which Hilty repeatedly introduces in this book—at the unreasonably early age of junior high school.
Since I introduced him as a 'religious writer,' you might imagine someone like a hermit, but it is the exact opposite.
He lived through about two-thirds of the latter half of the 19th century and died just before World War I. He was a professor of international law at the University of Bern in Switzerland, a member of parliament, and eventually the first judge of the international arbitration court established in The Hague (which, if I may say, makes him a great senior to 'Owa-chan's' father, the wife of 'Naru-chan,' who is the origin of my name 'Koichiro'?!), and he was a leading legal expert representing Switzerland.
There is a liquor called Absinthe. This liquor became a huge craze at the time and was even used as a subject for Impressionist paintings, but it became a social problem as a large number of people developed mental symptoms and even turned to crime when they became addicted.
#アブサント はかつて深刻な中毒症状を生み出した。#ヴィクトル・オリヴァ。アブシンザ・ドリンカーポスター ポスター https://t.co/dtIbalJItR @zazzleより
— 阿世賀浩一郎@メンタルヘルス相談スポット西鉄久留米駅東口で随時開催 (@kasega1960) June 1, 2026
The country that created this Absinthe was Switzerland. It seems that international regulations began after the 'Absinthe Prohibition Act' was enacted in Switzerland in 1907, and the key figure who worked hard for the enactment of this law seems to have been Hilty, who was a member of parliament at the time.
As a master of international law in the permanently neutral country of Switzerland, Hilty also worked hard on how to maintain international peace. In short, he was also a pioneer like Bertrand Russell. That is precisely why he would go on to become the first judge of the court in The Hague.
In other words, he was an amazing 'practitioner' and an incredibly diligent person. He worked completely regularly for 10 hours a day. The anecdote that when the university tried to hold a 75th birthday celebration, he replied, 'The most convenient time is 7:00 AM,' was apparently famous at the time.
However, he was also a formidable reader who was well-versed in books from all times and places. Of course, he ultimately valued the Bible above all else, but he was a person like the 'Hisao Nakai' of the Swiss legal world, who read everything from the Quran, medieval mystics, and Greco-Roman classics to the 'modern' thinkers of his time like Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, and even Marx's 'Das Kapital'.
(I think the reason I so easily fell in love with Dr. Nakai's books was because I had the foundation of Hilty.)
It is a pity that he missed Freud, but he also wrote quite a few psychological essays.
And,
We can be certain that a time will come when the working class will become the ruling class. However, if they become idlers who clip coupons from the labor of others, they will inevitably perish in the end.
For example, the Gospels, the Quran (!!!), and 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' will likely continue to be read even if 'Das Kapital' is no longer read.
He left behind such perfectly forward-looking words.
(Both are from Volume 1 of 'Happiness'.)
******
So, what is the connection between Hilty and Gendlin?
I now think it is because Hilty held a religious view that thoroughly valued
spirituality as one's own personal experiencerather than
religiousness of following the rituals of established religion
which is what Hinterkopf refers to in 'Spirituality and Focusing'.
In this respect, he is similar to Jung, who was from the same Switzerland and just a generation later, but Hilty, well, values the framework of orthodox faith more than Jung does (my sympathy for Jung likely also stems from this shared background with Hilty).
For example, the following words:
One must be able to hear God's answer to prayer. To do this, it is important to have ears that are much sharper than those of ordinary 'people who pray' and to have less self-interest. A prayer that neither expects an answer nor receives one is merely a useless formality, and there is no harm in stopping it.
True prayer contains within itself the 'being heard,' but it is an act of will in which the human heart once again seeks to surrender itself completely to God (omitted). Such prayer has the two greatest powers on earth on its side from the beginning, and that is precisely why it carries the guarantee of realization within itself.
The true proof of God's existence is (omitted) that God's power can often liberate a person in just a single moment, and yet for eternity. In this case, the person feels this as an event, and as something completely different from the resolutions for self-improvement that they have often attempted in the past to no avail. There is never any mistake about this.
This is so similar to what is called a 'felt shift' (a true experience of 'insight' accompanied by a change in bodily sensation) in Focusing.
No matter how you look at it, Hilty was effectively 'doing' Focusing!!
Perhaps Gendlin is 'only' the one who pointed out the path of a concrete method to what I had potentially learned from Hilty.
*****
As a bonus, here are some of Hilty's maxims that come to mind.
As I wrote before, from the first chapter of the first volume of 'Happiness,' which was often used as a German textbook in Japan in the past, 'The Proper Way to Work':
It is better to distribute the objects of your work and do them little by little, alternating between them, rather than all at once.
The joy of work can only be born from thinking for yourself and experiencing it in practice.
My beautiful Swiss valleys have become nothing but hospitals, and these hospitals will soon be open all year round for the many people who do not know this peace. They move about here and there seeking rest, but they find it nowhere... because they do not seek rest within their work.
To work well, it is important not to force yourself to continue working once your energy and enthusiasm are gone.
Tomorrow will come on its own. And with it, the strength for tomorrow will also come.
And, the ultimate one!!
True diligence is not just working without rest, but immersing yourself in your work with a burning desire to perfectly express the archetype in your mind into a visible form.
Turning that wordless 'something,' that vague fuzziness, little by little into 'your own' words, is,
the very 'essence of Focusing'.