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THE EGO AND HIS OWN

complete spirit as one not my own but supernal, and
feeling my emptiness.

Spirit is the essential point for everything, to be

sure; but then is every spirit the " right" spirit ?
The right and true spirit is the ideal of spirit, the
" Holy Spirit." It is not my or your spirit, but just
--an ideal, supernal one, it is " God." " God is
spirit." And this supernal " Father in heaven gives
it to those that pray to him." *

The man is distinguished from the youth by the

fact that he takes the world as it is, instead of every-
where fancying it amiss and wanting to improve it,
i. e. model it after his ideal; in him the view that
one must deal with the world according to his interest,
not according to his ideals, becomes confirmed.

So long as one knows himself only as spirit, and

feels that all the value of his existence consists in be-
ing spirit (it becomes easy for the youth to give his
life, the " bodily life," for a nothing, for the silliest
point of honor), so long it is only thoughts that one
has, ideas that he hopes to be able to realize some day
when he has found a sphere of action; thus one has
meanwhile only ideals, unexecuted ideas or thoughts.

Not till one has fallen in love with his corporeal

self, and takes a pleasure in himself as a living flesh-
and-blood person,--but it is in mature years, in the
man, that we find it so,--not till then has one a
personal or egoistic interest, i. e. an interest not only
of our spirit, for instance, but of total satisfaction,
satisfaction of the whole chap, a selfish interest. Just

* Luke 11 13.

A HUMAN LIFE

compare a man with a youth, and see if he will not
appear to you harder, less magnanimous, more selfish.
Is he therefore worse ? No, you say; he has only be-
come more definite, or, as you also call it, more " prac-
tical." But the main point is this, that he makes
himself more the centre than does the youth, who is
infatuated about other things, e. g. God, fatherland,
and so on.

Therefore the man shows a second self-discovery.

The youth found himself as spirit and lost himself
again in the general spirit,the complete, holy spirit,
Man, mankind,--in short, all ideals; the man finds
himself as embodied spirit.

Boys had only unintellectual interests (i. e. interests

devoid of thoughts and ideas), youths only intellectual
ones; the man has bodily, personal, egoistic interests.

If the child has not an object that it can occupy

itself with, it feels ennui; for it does not yet know how
to occupy itself with itself. The youth, on the con-
trary, throws the object aside, because for him thoughts
arose out of the object; he occupies himself with his
thoughts, his dreams, occupies himself intellectually, or
" his mind is occupied."

The young man includes everything not intellectual

under the contemptuous name of " externalities." If
he nevertheless sticks to the most trivial externalities
(e. g. the customs of students' clubs and other formali-
ties), it is because, and when, he discovers mind in
them, i. e. when they are symbols to him.

As I find myself back of things, and that as mind,

so I must later find myself also back of thoughts,--to
wit, as their creator and owner. In the time of spirits