With him a
new type had made its entrance into the world's History; he was the calm
thinker, looking down from above on this earthly life, reminding one, by
the purity and strength of his character, of Jesus, but a contrast to
Jesus, inasmuch as he was a worshipper of Nature and Necessity, and a
Pantheist. His teaching was the basis of the faith of the new age. He
was a Saint and a Heathen, seditious and pious, at the same time.
XVI.
Still, while I was in this way making a purely mental endeavour to
penetrate into as many intellectual domains as I could, and to become
master of one subject after another, I was very far from being at peace
with regard to my intellectual acquisitions, or from feeling myself in
incontestable possession of them. While I was satisfying my desire for
insight or knowledge and, by glimpses, felt my supremest happiness in
the delight of comprehension, an ever more violent struggle was going on
in my emotions.
As my being grew and developed within me and I slowly emerged from the
double state of which I had been conscious, in other words, the more I
became one and individual and strove to be honest and true, the less I
felt myself to be a mere individual, the more I realised that I was
bound up with humanity, one link in the chain, one organ belonging to
the Universe.
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