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80
THE EGO AND HIS OWN
growing pale in the--chlorosis of your heavenliness.
The soul is saved, the body may perish ! O Lais, O
Ninon, how well you did to scorn this pale virtue !
One free grisette against a thousand virgins grown
gray in virtue !
The fixed idea may also be perceived as " maxim,"
" principle," " standpoint," and the like. Archi-
medes, to move the earth, asked for a standpoint out-
side it. Men sought continually for this standpoint,
and every one seized upon it as well as he was able.
This foreign standpoint is the world of mind, of ideas,
thoughts, concepts, essences, etc.; it is heaven.
Heaven is the " standpoint" from which the earth is
moved, earthly doings surveyed and--despised. To
assure to themselves heaven, to occupy the heavenly
standpoint firmly and for ever,--how painfully and
tirelessly humanity struggled for this !
Christianity has aimed to deliver us from a life de-
termined by nature, from the appetites as actuating
us, and so has meant that man should not let himself
be determined by his appetites. This does not in-
volve the idea that he was not to have appetites, but
that the appetites were not to have him, that they
were not to become fixed, uncontrollable, indissoluble.
Now, could not what Christianity (religion) contrived
against the appetites be applied by us to its own pre-
cept that mind (thought, conceptions, ideas, faith,
etc.) must determine us; could we not ask that neither
should mind, or the conception, the idea, be allowed
to determine us, to become fixed and inviolable or
" sacred " ? Then it would end in the dissolution of
mind, the dissolution of all thoughts, of all concep-
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 81
tions. As we there had to say " We are indeed to
have appetites, but the appetites are not to have us,"
so we should now say " We are indeed to have mind,
but mind is not to have us." If the latter seems lack-
ing in sense, think e. g. of the fact that with so many
a man a thought becomes a " maxim," whereby he
himself is made prisoner to it, so that it is not he that
has the maxim, but rather it that has him. And with
the maxim he has a " permanent standpoint " again.
The doctrines of the catechism become our principles
before we find it out, and no longer brook rejection.
Their thought, or--mind, has the sole power, and no
protest of the " flesh " is further listened to. Never-
theless it is only through the " flesh " that I can break
the tyranny of mind; for it is only when a man hears
his flesh along with the rest of him that he hears him-
self wholly, and it is only when he wholly hears him-
self that he is a hearing or rational* being. The
Christian does not hear the agony of his enthralled
nature, but lives in "humility"; therefore does not
grumble at the wrong which befalls his person ; he
thinks himself satisfied with the," freedom of the
spirit." But, if the flesh once takes the floor, and its
tone is " passionate," " indecorous," " not well-dis-
posed," " spiteful," etc. (as it cannot be otherwise),
then he thinks he hears voices of devils, voices against
the spirit (for decorum, passionlessness, kindly disposi-
tion, and the like, is--spirit), and is justly zealous
against them. He could not be a Christian if he were
willing to endure them. He listens only to morality,
* [vernuenftig, derived from vernehmen, to hear.]