Only the parsons instead of flinging their hats
upon the floor, beat their hands against the pulpit.
But what surprised me, a literary beginner, still more, was the gift I
discovered in myself of hypnotising, by my mere existence, an ever-
increasing number of my contemporaries till they became as though
possessed by a hatred which lasted, sometimes a number of years,
sometimes a whole life long, and was the essential determining factor in
their careers and actions. By degrees, in this negative manner, I
succeeded in engaging the attentions of more than a score of persons.
For the time being, I encountered the phenomenon in the person of one
solitary genius-mad individual. For a failure of a poet and philosopher,
with whom I had nothing to do, and who did not interest me in the least,
I became the one enemy it was his business to attack.
Rudolf Schmidt, who was a passionate admirer of Rasmus Nielsen, in whose
examination lectures he coached freshmen, was enraged beyond measure by
the objections, perfectly respectful, for that matter, in form, which I
had raised against one of the main points in Nielsen's philosophy. In
1866 he published a pamphlet on the subject; in 1867 a second, which, so
possessed was he by his fury against his opponent, he signed with the
latter's own initials, Gb.
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