y-five and later. It is the great trial balance
of life, which one would rather defer as long as is expedient than make
prematurely.

It was in such a crisis that Goethe went on his Italian journey, that
Luther nailed his ninety-five theses to the church door in Wittenberg,
that Ignatius Loyola hung his weapons in front of an image of the Virgin,
never to take them down again, and that Jesus was nailed to the cross. As
for the young physician, Frederick von Kammacher, he was neither a Goethe
nor a Luther nor a Loyola; but he was akin to them not only in culture,
but also in many a trait of genius.

It is impossible to express in words the extent in which his whole
previous existence passed in review before Frederick's mental vision as
the little tender sped beyond the harbour lights of Southampton, carrying
him away from Europe and his home. He seemed to be parting with a whole
continent in his soul, upon which he would never set foot again. It was a
farewell forever. No wonder if in that moment his whole being was shaken
and could not regain its balance.

Loyola had not been a good soldier. Else, how could he have discarded his
arms? Luther had not been a good Dominican. Else, how could he have
discarded his monk's robes? Goethe had not been a good barrister or
bureaucrat. A mighty, irresistible wave had swept over those three men
and also, for all the disparity between them, over Frederick von
Kammacher, washing the uniform away from their souls.

Frederick was not one of those who enter this crisis unconsciously. He
had been feeling its approach for years, and it was characteristic of him
that he reflected upon its nature. Sometimes he was of the opinion that
it marked the termination of youth and the beginning, therefore, of real
maturity. It seemed to him as if hitherto he had worked with other
people's hands, according to other people's will, guided rather than
guiding. His thinking appeared to him to have been no thinking, but an
operating with transmitted ideas. He put it to himself that he had been
standing in a hothouse, and his head, like the top of a young tree
reaching upward to the light, had broken through the glass roof and made
its way into the open.

"Now I will walk with my own feet, look with my own eyes, think my own
thoughts, and act from the plenary power of my own will."

In his valise, Frederick carried Stirner's "The Individual and his Own."

Man living in society is never wholly indepen