With
this renunciation of the earthly, the belief in the eternal first
enters our soul and stands isolated there, as the only stay by which
we can still sustain ourselves when we have relinquished everything
else, as the only animating principle that still uplifts our hearts
and still inspires our life. Well was it said, in the metaphors of
a sacred doctrine, that man must first die to the world and be born
again, in order to enter into the kingdom of God.
I see, oh, I see now, clear before mine eyes, the cause of my former
heedlessness and blindness concerning spiritual things! Filled with
earthly aims, and lost in them with all my scheming and striving; put
in motion and impelled only by the idea of a result, which is to be
actualized without us, by the desire of such a result and pleasure in
it--insensible and dead to the pure impulse of that Reason which gives
the law to itself, which sets before us a purely spiritual aim, the
immortal Psyche remains chained to the earth; her wings are bound. Our
philosophy becomes the history of our own heart and life. As we find
ourselves, so we imagine man in general and his destination. Never
impelled by any other motive than the desire of that which can be
realized in this world, there is no true liberty for us, no liberty
which has the reason for its destination absolutely and entirely in
itself. Our liberty, at the utmost, is that of the self-forming
plant, no higher in its essence, only more curious in its result, not
producing a form of matter with roots, leaves and blossoms, but a form
of mind with impulses, thoughts, actions.
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