“If one only knew what exists!”

As a footnote to his translation of Charcot’s Tuesday Lectures, commenting on Charcot’s famous statement that “la théorie, c’est bon; mais ça n’empêche pas d’exister”, Freud writes: “If one only knew what exists!”—and he emphasized “what” (Freud, 1892–94, p. 139). ¹