Demian Quotes

If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.

I have been and still am a seeker, but I have ceased to question stars and books; I have begun to listen to the teaching my blood whispers to me.

Love must not entreat,' she added, 'or demand. Love must have the strength to become certain within itself. Then it ceases merely to be attracted and begins to attract.

I live in my dreams — that's what you sense. Other people live in dreams, but not in their own. That's the difference.

The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Who would be born must first destroy a world. The bird flies to God. That God's name is Abraxas.

One never reaches home,' she said. 'But where paths that have an affinity for each other intersect, the whole world looks like home, for a time.

Those who are too lazy and comfortable to think for themselves and be their own judges obey the laws. Others sense their own laws within them.

I wanted only to live in accord with the promptings which came from my true self. Why was that so very difficult?

Gaze into the fire, into the clouds, and as soon as the inner voices begin to speak... surrender to them. Don't ask first whether it's permitted, or would please your teachers or father or some god. You will ruin yourself if you do that.

You've never lived what you are thinking, and that isn't good. Only the ideas we actually live are of any value.

I realize today that nothing in the world is more distasteful to a man than to take the path that leads to himself.

Good that you ask -- you should always ask, always have doubts.

I have no right to call myself one who knows. I was one who seeks, and I still am, but I no longer seek in the stars or in books; I'm beginning to hear the teachings of my blood pulsing within me. My story isn't pleasant, it's not sweet and harmonious like the invented stories; it tastes of folly and bewilderment, of madness and dream, like the life of all people who no longer want to lie to themselves.

You should never be afraid of people... such fear can destroy us completely. You've simply got to get rid of it, if you want to turn into someone decent. You understand that, don't you?

Every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world's phenomena intersect, only once in this way, and never again. That is why every man's story is important, eternal, sacred; that is why every man, as long as he lives and fulfills the will of nature, is wondrous, and worthy of consideration. In each individual the spirit has become flesh, in each man the creation suffers, within each one a redeemer is nailed to the cross.

I am fond of music I think because it is so amoral. Everything else is moral and I am after something that isn't. I have always found moralizing intolerable.

The things we see are the same things that are within us. There is no reality except the one contained within us. That is why so many people live such an unreal life. They take the images outside them for reality and never allow the world within to assert itself.

For the first time in my life I tasted death, and death tasted bitter, for death is birth, is fear and dread of some terrible renewal.

An enlightened man had but one duty - to seek the way to himself, to reach inner certainty, to grope his way forward, no matter where it led.

Each of us has to find out for himself what is permitted and what is forbidden.. forbidden for him. It's possible for one never to transgress a single law and still be a bastard. And vice versa.

If you need something desperately and find it, this is not an accident; your own craving and compulsion leads you to it.

Our god's name is Abraxas and he is God and Satan and he contains both the luminous and the dark world.

She stood before him and surrendered herself to him and sky, forest, and brook all came toward him in new and resplendent colors, belonged to him, and spoke to him in his own language. And instead of merely winning a woman he embraced the entire world and every star in heaven glowed within him and sparkled with joy in his soul. He had loved and had found himself. But most people love to lose themselves.

Der Vogel kämpft sich aus dem Ei. Das Ei ist die Welt. Wer geboren werden will, muss eine Welt zerstören.

At one time I had given much thought to why men were so very rarely capable of living for an ideal. Now I saw that many, no, all men were capable of dying for one.

You knew all along that your sanctioned world was only half the world, and you tried to suppress the other half the same way the priests and teachers do. You won't succeed. No one succeeds in this once he has begun to think.

There are numerous ways in which God can make us lonely and lead us back to ourselves. This is the way He dealt with me at the time. It was like a bad dream.

Wenn wir einen Menschen hassen, so hassen wir in seinem Bild etwas, was in uns selber sitzt. Was nicht in uns selber ist, das regt uns nicht auf.

The realms of day and night. Two different worlds coming from two opposite poles mingled during this time.

I will not make a gift of myself, I must be won

Examine a person closely enough and you know more about him than he does himself.

كنت أشتاق شوقاً حقيقياً لأن أعيش بشكل حقيقي و لو لمره واحده, أن أعطي شيئاً من نفسي للعالم, أن أدخل في علاقه و معركه معه

(We) consist of everything the world consists of, each of us, and just as our body contains the genealogical table of evolution as far back as the fish and even much further, so we bear everything in our soul that once was alive in the soul of men. Every god and devil that ever existed, be it among the Greeks, Chinese, or Zulus, are within us, exist as latent possibilities, as wishes, as alternatives. If the human race were to vanish from the face of the earth save for one halfway talented child that had received no education, this child would rediscover the entire course of evolution, it would be capable of producing everything once more, gods and demons, paradises, commandments, the Old and New Testament.

One cannot apologize for something fundamental, and a child feels and knows this as well and as deeply as any sage.

I have no idea whether parents can be of help, and I do not blame mine. It was my own affair to come to terms with myself and to find my own way, and like most well-brought-up children, I managed it badly. Everyone goes through this crisis. For the average person this is the point when the demands of his own life come into the sharpest conflict with his environment, when the way forward has to be sought with the bitterest means at his command. Many people experience the dying and rebirth - which is our fate - only this once during their entire life. Their childhood becomes hollow and gradually collapses, everything they love abandons them and they suddenly feel surrounded by the loneliness and mortal cold of the universe. Very many are caught forever in this impasse, and for the rest of their lives cling painfully to an irrevocable past, the dream of the lost paradise - which is the worst and most ruthless of dreams.

People like you and me are quite lonely really but we still have each other, we have the secret satisfaction of being different, of rebelling, of desiring the unusual.

We who bore the mark might well be considered by the rest of the world as strange, even as insane and dangerous. We had awoken, or were awakening, and we were striving for an ever perfect state of wakefulness, whereas the ambition and quest for happiness of the others consisted of linking their opinions, ideals, and duties, their life and happiness, ever more closely with those of the herd. They, too, strove; they, too showed signs of strength and greatness. But as we saw it, whereas we marked men represented Nature's determination to create something new, individual, and forward-looking, the others lived in the determination to stay the same. For them mankind--which they loved as much as we did--was a fully formed entity that had to be preserved and protected. For us mankind was a distant future toward which we were all journeying, whose aspect no one knew, whose laws weren't written down anywhere.

Sinclair, your love is attracted to me. Once it begins to attract me, i will come. I will not make a gift of myself, I must be won.

Only when I found myself sitting in front of you did I realize that my wish was only half fulfilled and that my sole aim was to sit next to you.

That is the way leaves fall around a tree in autumn, a tree unaware of the rain running down its sides, of the sun or the frost, and of life gradually retreating inward. The tree does not die. It waits.

I realize that some people will not believe that a child of little more than ten years is capable of having such feelings. My story is not intended for them. I am telling it to those who have a better knowledge of man. The adult who has learned to translate a part of his feelings into thoughts notices the absence of these thoughts in a child, and therefore comes to believe that the child lacks these experiences, too. Yet rarely in my life have I felt and suffered as deeply as at that time.

The things we see," Pistorius said softly, "are the same things that are within us. There is no reality except the one contained within us. That is why so many people live such an unreal life. They take the images outside them for reality and never allow the world within to assert itself. You can be happy that way. But once you know the other interpretation you no longer have the choice of following the crowd. Sinclair, the majority's path is an easy one, ours is difficult.

But I need to feel beautiful and holy things around me, always: music, mystery cults, symbols, myths. I need it, and I refuse to give it up... That’s my fatal flaw.

There's something to walking with autumnal thoughts through the evening fog. One likes to compose poems at a time like that.

I like listening to music, but only the kind you play, absolute music, the kind that makes you feel that someone is rattling at the doors if heaven and hell. I like music very much, I think, because it's so unconcerned with morality.

الأفكار التي نعيشها هي وحدها التي لها قيمة.

Ah, das weiß ich heute: nichts auf der Welt ist dem Menschen mehr zuwider, als den Weg zu gehen, der ihn zu sich selber führt!

It was the first rent in the holy image of my father, it was the first fissure in the columns that had upheld my childhood, which every individual must destroy before he can become himself.

All I really wanted was to try and live the life that was spontaneously welling up within me. Why was that so very difficult?

Fate and character are different names for the same idea.

إنهم يعرفون كم غراماً من البارود تحتاج لقتل إنسان لكنهم لا يغرفون كيف تصلي إلى الله, لا يعرفون حتى كيف تكون سعيداً و لو لمدة ساعه من الرضا

بیش از یک قرن اروپا کاری جز ساختن ماشین نکرد. اکنون، مقدار دقیق باروتی که برای کشتن آدمی لازم است را می داند، اما نمی داند چطور یک ساعت خوشبخت باشد.

Every natural form is latent within us, originates in the soul whose essence is eternity, whose essence we cannot know but which most often intimates itself to us as the power to love and create.

We can understand one another; but each one is able to explain only himself.

All I wanted to do was live the life that was inside me, trying to get out. Why was that so hard?

على المرء أن يكون قادرًا على التسلسل إلى داخل نفسه تمامًا مثل السلحفاة.

حين تحتاج إلى شيئ ما حاجه ماسه ثم تجده, فهذه لسيت مصادفه, إنها رغبتك الملحه و اندفاعك الحار هما اللذان يقودانك إليه

كانت تستطيع أن تحول نفسها إلى كل فكرة من أفكاري, و كل فكرة من أفكاري كانت تتجسد في هيئتها.

If the chick is not able to break the shell of his egg, he will die without being born. We are - chick. The world - is our egg. If we do not break the shell of the world, then we will die without being born

إذا كرهت شخصاً فإنك تكره شيئاً فيه هو جزء منك أنت, و ما ليس جزءاً منا لا يزعجنا

Ich wollte ja nichts als das zu leben versuchen, was von selber aus mir heraus wollte. Warum war das so sehr schwer?

الولادة صعبة دائمًا. أنت تعرف أن الفرخ لا يخرج من البيضة بسهولة؟ تذكر واسأل نفسك: أكان الطريق صعبًا؟ ألم يكن جميلًا أيضًا؟ وهل تستطيع أن تفكر في طريق أجمل وأسهل؟

و لكن كما هو الحال دائماً, ما أن أتعود على ظروفي و ما أن يبدأ الحلم بمنحى الأمل حتى يذوي و يذبل و يصبح بلا فائده

لا يصل المرء إلى بيته أبداً. و لكن حيث الطرق المتآلفه تتقاطع مع العالم كله يبدو كأنه البيت و لو لفتره قصيره

No soy un hombre que sabe. He sido un hombre que busca y lo soy aún, pero no busco ya en las estrellas ni en los libros: comienzo a escuchar las enseñanzas que mi sangre murmura en mí.

All over, people were seeking “freedom” and “happiness” somewhere behind themselves, out of the sheer fear of being reminded of their own responsibilities and being admonished to travel their own path.

The realization that my problem was one that concerned all men, a problem of living and thinking, suddenly swept over me and I was overwhelmed by fear and respect as I suddenly saw and felt how deeply my own personal life and opinions were immersed in the eternal stream of great ideas. Though it offered some confirmation and gratification, the realization was not really a joyful one. It was hard and had a harsh taste because it implied responsibility and no longer being allowed to be a child; it meant standing on one’s own feet.

Es ist so gut, das zu wissen: daß in uns drinnen einer ist, der alles weiß, alles will, alles besser macht als wir selber.

Ja, man muß seinen Traum finden, dann wird der Weg leicht. Aber es gibt keinen immerwährenden Traum, jeden löst ein neuer ab, und keinen darf man festhalten wollen.

أنا أعيش في أحلامي. إن الآخرين يعيشون في الأحلام و لكن ليس في أحلامهم. و هذ هو الفارق

A person is afraid only when he isn’t at one with himself.

There are many ways in which the god can make us lonely and lead us to ourselves.

When someone who badly needs something finds it, it isn’t an accident that brings it his way, but he himself, his own desire and necessity lead him to it.

If a person were to concentrate all his will power on a certain end, then he would achieve it. That's all.

الطاقة التي تجعلك تطير هي من ممتلكاتنا الانسانية العظيمة، كل إنسان لديه هذه الطاقة، إنه الشعور بجذور الطاقة، لكن الانسان سرعان مايخاف من هذا الشعور، وهذا في غاية الخطورة. وهذا مايجعل الناس يطوون أجنحتهم ويفضلون المشي وينصاعون للقانون".

Nur das Denken, das wir leben, hat einen Wert.

إنهم يتطلعون إلا المُثل التي لم تعد مُثلاً, و لكنهم سوف يطاردون حتى الموت من يطرح مُثلاً جديده

Clever talk is absolutely worthless. All you do in the process is lose yourself. And to lose yourself is a sin. One has to be able to crawl completely inside oneself, like a tortoise.

But every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world's phenomena intersect, only once in this way and never again. That is why every man's story is important, eternal, sacred; that is why every man, as long as he lives and fulfills the will of nature, is wondrous, and worthy of every consideration. In each individual, the spirit has become flesh, in each man the creation suffers, within each one a redeemer is nailed to the cross.

I lived in those dreams—I was always a heavy dreamer—more than in real life; those shadows consumed my strength and life.

كنت قد تعودت على القيام ببعض النزهات التأملية القصيرة على قدمي أيًا كان الطقس, فأستمتع فيها بنوع من النشوة الممزوجة بالسوداوية و احتقار العالم و كره الذات.

Mancher wird niemals Mensch, bleibt Frosch, bleibt Eidechse, bleibt Ameise. Mancher ist oben Mensch und unten Fisch. Aber jeder ist ein Wurf der Natur nach dem Menschen hin. Und allen sind die Herkünfte gemeinsam, die Mütter, wir alle kommen aus demselben Schlunde; aber jeder strebt, ein Versuch und Wurf aus den Tiefen, seinem eigenen Ziel zu. Wir können einander verstehen; aber deuten kann jeder nur sich selbst.

إنك لا تخاف الا حينما لا تكون منسجما مع نفسك و الناس خائفون لانه لم يسبق لهم ان كانوا مسيطرين على انفسهم. مجتمع باكمله مؤلف من أناس خائفين من المجهول الذي فيهم. و كلهم يحسون ان الأ سس التي يعيشون وفقها لم تعد صالحة، و انهم يعيشون وفق قوانين باليه- لا دينهم ولا اخلاقهم في تلاؤم مع حاجات الحاضر

الحديقة ينقصها الشذا و الغابة تفقد جاذبيتها. و بدا العالم من حولي كبيع التصفيه لبضائع مستعمله من العام الماضي. باهتاً خالياً من أي فتنه, الكتب ركام من الورق, و الموسيقى صخب من الصرير. هكذا تتساقط الأوراق عن الشجره في الخريف, الشجره لا تشعر بالمطر المتساقط على جوانبها و لا بالشمس أو الصقيع و لا بالحياه المتسربه تدريجياً إلى داخلها, الشجره لا تموت, إنها تنتظر

I had grown accustomed to living within myself. I was resigned to the knowledge that I had lost all appreciation of the outside world, that the loss of its bright colors was an inseparable part of the loss of my childhood, and that, in a certain sense, one had to pay for freedom and maturity of the soul with the renunciation of this cherished aura. But now, overjoyed, I saw that all this had only been buried or clouded over and that it was still possible—even if you had become liberated and had renounced your childhood happiness—to see the world shine and to savor the delicious thrill of the child’s vision.

At the end of that class Demian said to me thoughtfully: "There’s something I don’t like about this story, Sinclair. Why don’t you read it once more and give it the acid test? There’s something about it that doesn’t taste right. I mean the business with the two thieves. The three crosses standing next to each other on the hill are almost impressive, to be sure. But now comes this sentimental little treatise about the good thief. At first he was a thorough scoundrel, had committed all those awful things and God knows what else, and now he dissolves in tears and celebrates such a tearful feast of self-improvement and remorse! What’s the sense of repenting if you’re two steps from the grave? I ask you. Once again, it’s nothing but a priest’s fairy tale, saccharine and dishonest, touched up with sentimentality and given a high edifying background. If you had to pick a friend from between the two thieves or decide which one you’d rather trust, you most certainly wouldn’t choose the sniveling convert. No, the other fellow, he’s a man of character. He doesn’t give a hoot for ‘conversion’, which to a man in his position can’t be anything but a pretty speech. He follows his destiny to it’s appointed end and does not turn coward and forswear the devil, who has aided and abetted him until then. He has character, and people with character tend to receive the short end of the stick in biblical stories. Perhaps he’s even a descendant of Cain. Don’t you agree?" I was dismayed. Until now I had felt completely at home in the story of the Crucifixion. Now I saw for the first time with how little individuality, with how little power of imagination I had listened to it and read it. Still, Demian’s new concept seemed vaguely sinister and threatened to topple beliefs on whose continued existence I felt I simply had to insist. No, one could not make light of everything, especially not of the most Sacred matters. As usual he noticed my resistance even before I had said anything. "I know," he said in a resigned tone of voice, "it’s the same old story: don’t take these stories seriously! But I have to tell you something: this is one of the very places that reveals the poverty of this religion most distinctly. The point is that this God of both Old and New Testaments is certainly an extraordinary figure but not what he purports to represent. He is all that is good, noble, fatherly, beautiful, elevated, sentimental—true! But the world consists of something else besides. And what is left over is ascribed to the devil, this entire slice of world, this entire half is hushed up. In exactly the same way they praise God as the father of all life but simply refuse to say a word about our sexual life on which it’s all based, describing it whenever possible as sinful, the work of the devil. I have no objection to worshiping this God Jehovah, far from it. But I mean we ought to consider everything sacred, the entire world, not merely this artificially separated half! Thus alongside the divine service we should also have a service for the devil. I feel that would be right. Otherwise you must create for yourself a God that contains the devil too and in front of which you needn’t close your eyes when the most natural things in the world take place.

And occasionally I became very sad over that happiness, because I was well aware it couldn’t last. I wasn’t meant to exist in the lap of plenty and ease; I needed torment and persecution. I felt that some day I would awaken from those beautiful images of love and once be alone, in the cold world of the others, where there was only solitude or struggle for me, not peace or participation.

No person has ever been completely himself, but each one strives to become so, some gropingly, others more lucidly, according to his abilities. Each one carries with him to the end traces of his birth, the slime and eggshells of a primordial world. Many a one never becomes a human being, but remains a frog, lizard, or ant.

Earlier I had thought a lot about why it was so extremely unusual for a person to be able to live for an ideal. Now I saw that many people, all in fact, are capable of dying for an ideal. Only, it mustn't be a personal, freely chosen ideal, but one held in common and taken over from other people.

I had often marked the contrast between their almost ludicrous gaiety and my lonely existence, sometimes with scorn, sometimes with a feeling of deprivation. But never until today had I felt with as much calm and secret strength how little it mattered to me, how remote and dead this world was for me.

At this point a sharp realization burned within me: each man has his “function” but none which he can choose himself, define, or perform as he pleases. It was wrong to desire new gods, completely wrong to want to provide the world with something. An enlightened man had but one duty—to seek the way to himself, to reach inner certainty, to grope his way forward, no matter where it led.

Las cosas que vemos – dijo Pistorious con voz apagada – son las mismas cosas que llevamos en nosotros. No hay más realidad que la que tenemos dentro. Por eso la mayoría de los seres humanos vive tan irrealmente, porque cree que las imágenes exteriores son la realidad y no permiten a su propio mundo interior manifestarse. Se puede ser muy feliz así, desde luego. Pero cuando se conoce lo otro, ya no se puede elegir el camino de la mayoría. Sinclair, el camino de la mayoría es fácil, el nuestro, difícil. Caminemos.

There is much that I could say about the happy and tender incidents in my childhood days, the sense of security which I enjoyed with my parents, my childish affections and carefree, irresponsible existence in a gentle and affectionate ambience. But my interest is reserved for the steps that I took in my life towards self-realization. All the pleasant points of repose, islands of happiness, paradises whose magic was not unknown to me can remain, as far as I am concerned, in the enchanted distance; for it is not a world that I have any particular desire to re-enter.

An enlightened man had but one duty--to seek the way to himself, to reach inner certainty, to grope his way forward, no matter where it led. The realization shook me profoundly, it was the fruit of this experience. I had often speculated with images of the future, dreamed of roles that I might be assigned, perhaps as poet or prophet or painter, or something similar. All that was futile. I did not exist to write poems, to preach or to paint, neither I nor anyone else. All of that was incidental. Each man had only one genuine vocation--to find the way to himself. He might end up as poet or madman, as prophet or criminal--that was not his affair, ultimately it was of no concern. His task was to discover his own destiny--not an arbitrary one--and live it out wholly and resolutely within himself. Everything else was only a would-be existence, an attempt at evasion, a flight back to the ideals of the masses, conformity and fear of one's own inwardness.

لقد نسيت أن العالم مازال في وسعه أن يكون ودوداً و لطيفاً. كبرت و أنا أتعود العيش مع داخلي. و لقد استرخيت أمام معرفتي بأنني قد فقدت كل تقويم للعالم الخارجي, أن ضياع ألوانه البراقه جزء لا تجزأ من ضياع طفولتي, و أنه بمعنى من المعاني على المرء أن بتخلى عن هذه الهاله المغريه ثمناً لحريته و لنضج روحه. أما الآن, و الغبطه تغمرني, فقد رأيت أن هذا كله كان مدفوناً أو مستتراً و أنه مازال من الممكن -حتى لو تحررت و فقدت سعادة طفولتك- أن ترى العالم يشع و أن تنقذ الرعشه اللذيذه التي كانت في رؤيا الطفل

Novelists when they write novels tend to take an almost godlike attitude toward their subject, pretending to a total comprehension of the story, a man's life, which they can therefore recount as God Himself might, nothing standing between them and the naked truth, the entire story meaningful in every detail. I am as little able to do this as the novelist is, even though my story is more important to me than any novelist's is to him - for this is my story; it is the story of a man, not of an invented, or possible, or idealized, or otherwise absent figure, but of a unique being of flesh and blood, Yet, what a real living human being is made of seems to be less understood today than at any time before, and men - each one of whom represents a unique and valuable experiment on the part of nature - are therefore shot wholesale nowadays. If we were not something more than unique human beings, if each one of us could really be done away with once and for all by a single bullet, storytelling would lose all purpose. But every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world's phenomena intersect, only once in this way and never again. That is why every man's story is important, eternal, sacred; that is why every man, as long as he lives and fulfills the will of nature, is wondrous, and worthy of every consideration. In each individual the spirit has become flesh, in each man the creation suffers, within each one a redeemer is nailed to the cross.

En estos momentos tuve una certeza fulminante: cada uno tenía una “misión”, pero ésta no podía ser elegida, definida, administrada a voluntad. Era un error desear nuevos dioses, y completamente falso querer dar algo al mundo. No existía ningún deber, ninguno, para el hombre consciente, excepto el de buscarse a sí mismo, afirmarse en su interior, tantear un camino hacia adelante sin preocuparse de la meta a que pudiera conducir. Aquel descubrimiento me conmovió profundamente, este fue el fruto de aquella experiencia. Yo había jugado a menudo con imágenes del futuro y soñado con papeles que pudieran estar destinados de poeta quizás, de profeta, de pintor o de cualquier otra cosa. Aquellas imágenes no valían nada. Yo no estaba en el mundo para escribir, predicar o pintar; ni yo ni nadie estaba para eso. Tales cosas sólo podían surgir marginalmente. La misión verdadera de cada uno era llegar a sí mismo. Se podía llegar a poeta o a loco, a profeta o a criminal; ese no es asunto de uno: a fin de cuentas, carecía de toda importancia. Lo que importaba era encontrar su propio destino, no un destino cualquiera, y vivirlo por completo. Todo lo demás eran medianías, un intento de evasión, de buscar refugio en el ideal de la masa, era amoldarse; era miedo ante la propia individualidad. La nueva imagen surgió terrible y sagrada ante mis ojos, presentido múltiples veces, quizás pronunciada ya otras tantas, pero nunca vivida hasta ahora. Yo era un proyecto de la naturaleza, un proyecto hacia lo desconocido, quizá hacia lo nuevo, quizá hacia la nada; y mi misión, mi única misión, era dejar realizarse este proyecto que brotaba de las profundidades. Sentir en mí su voluntad e identificarme con él por completo.

No matter how inflexibly the world was clamoring for war and heroism, honor and other outmoded ideals, no matter how remote and unlikely every voice that apparently spoke up for humanity sounded, all of that was merely superficial, just as the question of the external and political aims of the war remained superficial. Deep down, something was evolving. Something like a new humanity. Because I could see people, and a number of them died alongside me, who had gained the new emotional insight that hatred and rage, killing and destroying, were not linked to the specific objects if that rage. No, the objects, just like the aims, were completely accidental. Those primal feelings, even the wildest of them, weren't directed against the enemy; their bloody results were merely an outward materialization of people's inner life, the split within their souls, which desired to rage and kill, destroy and die, so that they could be reborn.

There’s a big difference between merely carrying the world inside you and knowing that you do! A madman can produce ideas that resemble Plato’s, and a pious little schoolboy in a Herrnhut institute can creatively reconstruct profound mythological associations in his mind, ideas to be found in the Gnostics or Zoroaster. But he doesn’t know he’s doing it! He’s a tree or a stone, at best an animal, just as long as he doesn’t know that. But when the first spark of that knowledge glimmers, he becomes a human being. You certainly don’t consider all the bipeds running around the street to be human beings merely because they walk upright and carry their young for nine months? After all, you see how many of them are fish or sheep, worms or leeches, how many are ants, how many are bees! Now, each one of them has the potentiality of becoming a human being, but only when he senses that potential, when he even learns to be conscious of it to some degree, does that potential belong to him.

I can see that your thoughts are deeper than you yourself are able to express. But since this is so, you know, don't you, that you've never lived what you are thinking and that isn't good. Only the ideas that we actually live are of any value. You knew all along that your sanctioned world was only half the world and you tried to suppress the second half the same way the priests and teachers do. You won't succeed. No one succeeds in this once he has begun to think." This went straight to my heart. "But there are forbidden and ugly things in the world!" I almost shouted. "You can't deny that. And they are forbidden, and we must renounce them. Of course I know that murder and all kinds of vices exist in the world but should I become a criminal just because they exist?" "We won't be able to find all the answers today," Max soothed me. "Certainly you shouldn't go kill somebody or rape a girl, no! But you haven't reached the point where you can understand the actual meaning of 'permitted' and 'forbidden.' You've only sensed part of the truth. You will feel the other part, too, you can depend on it. For instance, for about a year you have had to struggle with a drive that is stronger than any other and which is considered 'forbidden.' The Greeks and many other peoples, on the other hand, elevated this drive, made it divine and celebrated it in great feasts. What is forbidden, in other words, is not something eternal; it can change. Anyone can sleep with a woman as soon as he's been to a pastor with her and has married her, yet other races do it differently, even nowadays. That is why each of us has to find out for himself what is permitted and what is forbidden -forbidden for him. It's possible for one never to transgress a single law and still be a bastard. And vice versa. Actually it's only a question of convenience. Those who are too lazy and comfortable to think for themselves and be their own judges obey the laws. Others sense their own laws within them; things are forbidden to them that every honorable man will do any day in the year and other things are allowed to them that are generally despised. Each person must stand on his own feet.