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104
THE EGO AND HIS OWN
son seems to them too small, too insignificant,--and is
so in fact,--to lay claim to everything and be able to
put itself completely in force. There is a sure sign of
this in their dividing themselves into two persons, an
eternal and a temporal, and always caring either only
for the one or only for the other, on Sunday for the
eternal, on the work-day for the temporal, in prayer
for the former, in work for the latter. They have the
priest in themselves, therefore they do not get rid of
him, but hear themselves lectured inwardly every
Sunday.
How men have struggled and calculated to get at a
solution regarding these dualistic essences ! Idea fol-
lowed upon idea, principle upon principle, system up-
on system, and none knew how to keep down perma-
nently the contradiction of the " worldly " man, the
so-called " egoist." Does not this prove that all those
ideas were too feeble to take up my whole will into
themselves and satisfy it ? They were and remained
hostile to me, even if the hostility lay concealed for a
considerable time. Will it be the same with self-
ownership ? Is it too only an attempt at mediation ?
Whatever principle I turned to, it might be to that of
reason, I always had to turn away from it again. Or
can I always be rational, arrange my life according to
reason in everything ? I can, no doubt, strive after
rationality, I can love it, just as I can also love God
and every other idea. I can be a philosopher, a lover
of wisdom, as I love God. But what I love, what I
strive for, is only in my idea, my conception, my
thoughts; it is in my heart, my head, it is in me like
the heart, but it is not I, I am not it.
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 105
To the activity of priestly minds belongs especially
what one often hears called " moral influence."
Moral influence takes its start where humiliation be-
gins; yes, it is nothing else than this humiliation it-
self, the breaking and bending of the temper * down
to humility. If I call to some one to run away when
a rock is to be blasted, I exert no moral influence by
this demand; if I say to a child " You will go hungry
if you will not eat what is put on the table," this is
not moral influence. But, if I say to it " You will
pray, honor your parents, respect the crucifix, speak
the truth, etc., for this belongs to man and is man's
calling," or even " this is God's will," then moral in-
fluence is complete; then a man is to bend before the
calling of man, be tractable, become humble, give up
his will for an alien one which is set up as rule and
law; he is to abase himself before something higher:
self-abasement. " He that abaseth himself shall be
exalted." Yes, yes, children must early be made to
practise piety, godliness, and propriety; a person of
good breeding is one into whom " good maxims " have
been instilled and impressed, poured in through a fun-
nel, thrashed in and preached in.
If one shrugs his shoulders at this, at once the good
wring their hands despairingly, and cry : " But, for
heaven's sake, if one is to give children no good in-
struction, why, theft they will run straight into the
jaws of sin, and become good-for-nothing hoodlums ! "
Gently, you prophets of evil. Good-for-nothing in
your sense they certainly will become; but your sense
* [Muth]
[Demuth]