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THE EGO AND HIS OWN

the contradiction of two natures, the divine and
human, i. e. the ghostly and sensual; there remained
the most wondrous spook, a thing that was not a
thing. Never yet was a ghost more soul-torturing,
and no shaman, who pricks himself to raving fury and
nerve-lacerating cramps to conjure a ghost, can endure
such soul-torment as Christians suffered from that most
incomprehensible ghost.

But through Christ the truth of the matter had at

the same time come to light, that the veritable spirit
or ghost is--man. The corporeal or embodied spirit
is just man; he himself is the ghastly being and at the
same time the being's appearance and existence.
Henceforth man no longer, in typical cases, shudders
at ghosts outside him, but at himself; he is terrified at
himself. In the depth of his breast dwells the spirit
of sin; even the faintest thought (and this is itself a
spirit, you know) may be a devil, etc.--The ghost has
put on a body, God has become man, but now man is
himself the gruesome spook which he seeks to get back
of, to exorcise, to fathom, to bring to reality and to
speech; man is--spirit. What matter if the body
wither, if only the spirit is saved ? everything rests on
the spirit, and the spirit's or " soul's " welfare becomes
the exclusive goal. Man has become to himself a
ghost, an uncanny spook, to which there is even as-
signed a distinct seat in the body (dispute over the
seat of the soul, whether in the head, etc.).

You are not to me, and I am not to you, a higher

essence. Nevertheless a higher essence may be hidden
in each of us, and call forth a mutual reverence. To
take at once the most general, Man lives in you and

MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 53

me. If I did not see Man in you, what occasion
should I have to respect you ? To be sure, you are
not Man and his true and adequate form, but only a
mortal veil of his, from which he can withdraw with-
out himself ceasing ; but yet for the present this gen-
eral and higher essence is housed in you, and you pre-
sent before me (because an imperishable spirit has in
you assumed a perishable body, so that really your
form is only an " assumed " one) a spirit that appears,
appears in you, without being bound to your body
and to this particular mode of appearance,--therefore,
a spook. Hence I do not regard you as a higher
essence, but only respect that higher essence which
" walks " in you; I " respect Man in you." The
ancients did not observe anything of this sort in their
slaves, and the higher essence " Man " found as yet
little response. ' To make up for this, they saw in each
other ghosts of another sort. The People is a higher
essence than an individual, and, like Man or the Spirit
of Man, a spirit haunting the individual,--the Spirit
of the People. For this reason they revered this
spirit, and only so far as he served this or else a spirit
related to it (e. g. the Spirit of the Family, etc.)
could the individual appear significant; only for the
sake of the higher essence, the People, was considera-
tion allowed to the " member of the people." As you
are hallowed to us by " Man " who haunts you, so at
every time men have been hallowed by some higher
essence or other, like People, Family, and such.
Only for the sake of a higher essence has any one been
honored from of old, only as a ghost has he been re-
garded in the light of a hallowed, i. e., protected and