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THE EGO AND HIS OWN

recedes into contemptible remoteness; for the stand-
point is--the heavenly.

The attitude is now altogether reversed; the youth

takes up an intellectual position, while the boy, who
did not yet feel himself as mind, grew up in mindless
learning. The former does not try to get hold of
things (e. g. to get into his head the data of history),
but of the thoughts that lie hidden in things, and so,
e. g., of the spirit of history. On the other hand, the
boy understands connections no doubt, but not ideas,
the spirit; therefore he strings together whatever can
be learned, without proceeding a priori and theoretic-
ally, i. e. without looking for ideas.

As in childhood one had to overcome the resistance

of the laws of the world, so now in everything that he
proposes he is met by an objection of the mind, of
reason, of his own conscience. " That is unreasonable,
unchristian, unpatriotic," and the like, cries conscience
to us, and--frightens us away from it. Not the might
of the avenging Eumenides, not Poseidon's wrath, not
God, far as he sees the hidden, not the father's rod of
punishment, do we fear, but--conscience.

We " run after our thoughts " now, and follow

their commands just as before we followed parental,
human ones. Our course of action is determined by
our thoughts (ideas, conceptions, faith) as it is in
childhood by the commands of our parents.

For all that, we were already thinking when we

were children, only our thoughts were not fleshless,
abstract, absolute, i. e. NOTHING BUT THOUGHTS, a
heaven in themselves, a pure world of thought, logical
thoughts.

A HUMAN LIFE

On the contrary, they had been only thoughts that

we had about a thing; we thought of the thing so or
so. Thus we may have thought " God made the
world that we see there," but we did not think of
(" search ") the " depths of the Godhead itself " ; we
may have thought " that is the truth about the mat-
ter," but we did not think of Truth itself, nor unite
into one sentence " God is truth." The " depths of
the Godhead, who is truth," we did not touch. Over
such purely logical, i. e. theological questions, " What
is truth?" Pilate does not stop, though he does not
therefore hesitate to ascertain in an individual case
" what truth there is in the thing," i. e. whether the
thing is true.

Any thought bound to a thing is not yet nothing

but a thought, absolute thought.

To bring to light the pure thought, or to be of its

party, is the delight of youth; and all the shapes of
light in the world of thought, like truth, freedom,
humanity, Man, etc., illumine and inspire the youth-
ful soul.

But, when the spirit is recognized as the essential

thing, it still makes a difference whether the spirit is
poor or rich, and therefore one seeks to become rich
in spirit; the spirit wants to spread out so as to found
its empire--an empire that is not of this world, the
world just conquered. Thus, then, it longs to become
all in all to itself;

i. e.,

although I am spirit, I am not

yet

perfected

spirit, and must first seek the complete

spirit.

But with that I, who had just now found myself as

spirit, lose myself again at once, bowing before the