fterwards devoured everything he had written which the library
contained. And at that time I was grateful to my friend the geographer
for his advice. True, Feuerbach seemed to me to shatter many things
which from a child I had held sacred; yet I thought I discovered behind
the falling masonry the image of eternal truth.

The veil which I afterwards saw spread over so many things in
Feuerbach's writings at that time produced the same influence upon me
as the mist whence rise here the towers, yonder the battlements of a
castle. It might be large or small; the grey mist which forbids the eye
from definitely measuring its height and width by no means prevents the
traveller, who knows that a powerful lord possesses the citadel, from
believing it to be as large and well guarded as the power of its ruler
would imply.

True, I was not sufficiently mature for the study of this great thinker,
whom I afterwards saw endanger other unripe minds. As a disciple of this
master there were many things to be destroyed which from childhood
had become interlaced by a thousand roots and fibres with my whole
intellectual organism, and such operations are not effected without
pain.

What I learned while seeking after truth during those night hours ought
to have taught me the connection between mind and body; yet I was never
farther from perceiving it. A sharp division had taken place in my
nature. By night, in arduous conflict, I led a strange mental life,
known to myself alone; by day all this was forgotten, unless--and how
rarely this happened--some conversation recalled it.

From my first step out of doors I belonged to life, to the corps, to
pleasure. What was individual existence, mortality, or the eternal life
of the soul! Minerva's bird is an owl. Like it, these learned questions
belonged to the night. They should cast no shadow on the brightness of
my day. When I met the first friend in the blue cap no one need have
sung our corps song, "Away with cares and crotchets!"

At no time had the exuberant joy in mere existence stirred more strongly
within me. My whole nature was filled with the longing to utilize and
enjoy this brief earthly life which Feuerbach had proved was to end with
death.

Better an hour's mad revel,
E'en a kiss from a Moenad's lip,
Than a year of timid doubting,
Daring only to taste and sip,

were the closing lines of a song which I composed at this time.

So my old w