Page 33

THE EGO AND HIS OWN

body of a spirit, it is a spook. What else should a
ghost be, then, than an apparent body, but real
spirit ? Well, the world is " empty," is " naught," is
only glamorous " semblance " ; its truth is the spirit
alone; it is the seeming-body of a spirit.

Look out near or far, a ghostly world surrounds

you everywhere; you are always having "appari-
tions " or visions. Everything that appears to you is
only the phantasm of an indwelling spirit, is a ghostly
" apparition " ; the world is to you only a " world of
appearances," behind which the spirit walks. You
" see spirits."

Are you perchance thinking of comparing yourself

with the ancients, who saw gods everywhere ? Gods,
my dear modern, are not spirits; gods do not degrade
the world to a semblance, and do not spiritualize it.

But to you the whole world is spiritualized, and has

become an enigmatical ghost; therefore do not wonder
if you likewise find in yourself nothing but a spook.
Is not your body haunted by your spirit, and is not
the latter alone the true and real, the former only the
" transitory, naught " or a " semblance "? Are we
not all ghosts, uncanny beings that wait for " deliver-
ance,"--to wit, "spirits"?

Since the spirit appeared in the world, since " the

Word became flesh," since then the world has been
spiritualized, enchanted, a spook.

You have spirit, for you have thoughts. What are

your thoughts ? " Spiritual entities." Not things,
then ? " No, but the spirit of things, the main point
in all things, the inmost in them, their--idea." Con-
sequently what you think is not only your thought ?

MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 45

" On the contrary, it is that in the world which is
most real, that which is properly to be called true; it
is the truth itself; if I only think truly, I think the
truth. I may, to be sure, err with regard to the truth,
and fail to recognize it; but, if I recognize truly,
the object of my cognition is the truth." So, I sup-
pose, you strive at all times to recognize the truth ?
" To me the truth is sacred. It may well happen that
I find a truth incomplete and replace it with a better,
but the truth I cannot abrogate. I believe in the
truth, therefore I search in it; nothing transcends it, it
is eternal."

Sacred, eternal is the truth; it is the Sacred, the

Eternal. But you, who let yourself be filled and led
by this sacred thing, are yourself hallowed. Further,
the sacred is not for your senses,--and you never as a
sensual man discover its trace,--but for your faith, or,
more definitely still, for your spirit ; for it itself, you
know, is a spiritual thing, a spirit,--is spirit for the
spirit.

The sacred is by no means so easily to be set aside

as many at present affirm, who no longer take this
" unsuitable " word into their mouths. If even in a
single respect I am still upbraided as an " egoist,"
there is left the thought of something else which I
should serve more than myself, and which must be to
me more important than everything; in short, some-
what in which I should have to seek my true welfare,*
something--" sacred." However human this sacred
thing may look, though it be the Human itself, that

*[Heil]

[heiling]