"The Real and the Surreal"

I know nothing of a "super-reality." Reality contains everything I can know, for everything that acts upon me is real and actual. If it does not act upon me, then I notice nothing and can, therefore, know nothing about it. Hence I can make statements only about real things, but not about things that are unreal, or surreal, or subreal. Unless, of course, it should occur to someone to limit the concept of reality in such a way that the attribute "real" applied only to a particular segment of the world's reality. This restriction to the so-called material or concrete reality of objects perceived by the senses is a product of a particular way of thinking-the thinking that underlies "sound common sense" and our ordinary use of language. It operates on the celebrated principle "Nihil est in intellectu quod non antea fuerit in sensu," regardless of the fact that there are very many things in the mind which did not derive from the data of the senses. According to this view, everything is "real" which comes, or seems to come, directly or indirectly from the world revealed by the senses. This limited picture of the world is a reflection of the one-sidedness of Western man.

- "The Real and the Surreal" (1933). In CW 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche. P.745