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THE EGO AND HIS OWN

it is free enjoyment. There man no longer denies
himself anything, because nothing is any longer alien
and hostile to him. But now habit is a " second
nature," which detaches and frees man from his first
and original natural condition, in securing him
against every casualty of it. The fully elaborated
habit of the Chinese has provided for all emergencies,
and everything is " looked out for " ; whatever may
come, the Chinaman always knows how he has to be-
have, and does not need to decide first according to
the circumstances; no unforeseen case throws him
down from the heaven of his rest. The morally habit-
uated and inured Chinaman is not surprised and taken
off his guard; he behaves with equanimity (i. e. with
equal spirit or temper) toward everything, because his
temper, protected by the precaution of his traditional
usage, does not lose its balance. Hence, on the ladder
of culture or civilization humanity mounts the first
round through habit; and, as it conceives that, in
climbing to culture, it is at the same time climbing to
heaven, the realm of culture or second nature, it really
mounts the first round of the--ladder to heaven.

If Mongoldom has settled the existence of spiritual

beings,--if it has created a world of spirits, a heaven,
--the Caucasians have wrestled for thousands of years
with these spiritual beings, to get to the bottom of
them. What were they doing, then, but building on
Mongolian ground ? They have not built on sand,
but in the air; they have wrestled with Mongolism,
stormed the Mongolian heaven, Tien. When will
they at last annihilate this heaven ? When will they
at last become really Caucasians, and find themselves?

MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 89

When will the " immortality of the soul," which in
these latter days thought it was giving itself still more
security if it presented itself as " immortality of
mind," at last change to the mortality of mind?
It was when, in the industrious struggle of the
Mongolian race, men had built a heaven, that those of
the Caucasian race, since in their Mongolian com-
plexion they have to do with heaven, took upon them-
selves the opposite task, the task of storming that
heaven of custom, heaven-storming* activity. To dig
under all human ordinance, in order to set up a new
and--better one on the cleared site, to wreck all
customs in order to put new and--better customs in
their place, etc.,---their act is limited to this. But is
it thus already purely and really what it aspires to be,
and does it reach its final aim ? No, in this creation
of a " better " it is tainted with Mongolism. It storms
heaven only to make a heaven again, it overthrows an
old power only to legitimate a new power, it only--
improves. Nevertheless the point aimed at, often as it
may vanish from the eyes at every new attempt, is the
real, complete downfall of heaven, customs, etc.,--in
short, of man secured only against the world, of the
isolation or inwardness of man. Through the heaven
of culture man seeks to isolate himself from the world,
to break its hostile power. But this isolation of
heaven must likewise be broken, and the true end of
heaven-storming is the--downfall of heaven, the anni-
hilation of heaven. Improving and reforming is the
Mongolism of the Caucasian, because thereby he is al-

*[A German idiom for destructive radicalism.]