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. Of the true liberty we
are positively unable to comprehend anything, because we are not in
possession of it. Whenever we hear it spoken of, we draw the words
down to our own meaning, or briefly dismiss it with a sneer, as
nonsense. With the knowledge of liberty, the sense of another world
is also lost to us. Everything of this sort floats by like words which
are not addressed to us; like an ash-gray shadow without color or
meaning, which we cannot by any end take hold of and retain. Without
the least interest, we let everything go as it is stated. Or if ever
a robuster zeal impels us to consider it seriously, we see clearly and
can demonstrate that all those ideas are untenable, hollow visions,
which a man of sense casts from him. And, according to the premises
from which we set out and which are taken from our own innermost
experience, we are quite right, and are alike unanswerable and
unteachable, so long as we remain what we are. The excellent doctrines
which are current among the people, fortified with special authority,
concerning freedom, duty and eternal life, change themselves for us
into grotesque fables, like those of Tartarus and the Elysian fields,
although we do not disclose the true opinion of our hearts, because we
think it more advisable to keep the people in outward decency by means
of these images. Or if we are less reflective, and ourselves fettered
by the bands of authority, then we sink, ourselves, to the true
plebeian level, by believing that which, so understood, would be
foolish fable; and by finding, in those purely spiritual indications,
nothing but the promise of a continuance, to all eternity, of the same
miserable existence which we lead here below.

To say all in a word: Only through a radical reformation of m