Page:Egotism in German Philosophy (1916).djvu/52

 first verse of Saint John—that being the Gospel that impresses him most favourably. The point is not prosaically to discover what the Evangelist meant, but rather what he must and shall have meant. The Word will never do; the Sense would be somewhat better; but In the beginning was Force would have even more to recommend it. Suddenly, however, what absolute Will demands flashes upon him, and he writes down contentedly: In the beginning was the Deed:

Und schreibe getrost: Im Anfang war die That!
 * Auf einmal seh’ ich Rat

Yet even in this exciting form, the life of thought cannot hold him long. He aches to escape from it; not that his knowledge of the sciences, as well as his magic, will not accompany him through life; he will not lose his acquired art nor his habit of reflection, and in this sense his career is really a progress, in that his experience accumulates; but the living interest is always something new. He turns to miscellaneous adventures, not excluding love; from that he passes to imperial politics, a sad mess, thence to sentimental classicism, rather an unreality, and finally to war, to public works, to trade, to piracy, to colonisation, and to clearing his acquired estates of tiresome old natives, who insist on ringing church bells and are impervious to the new Kultur. These public