Page:Essence of Christianity (1854).djvu/101

 objective to himself, the original reflection of God, the other God, is the principle of Creation. The truth which lies at the foundation of this is the nature of man: the identity of his self-consciousness with his consciousness of another who is identical with himself, and of another who is not identical with himself. And the second, the other who is of like nature, is necessarily the middle term between the first and third. The idea of another in general, of one who is essentially different from me arises to me first through the idea of one who is essentially like me.

Consciousness of the world is the consciousness of my limitation; if I knew nothing of a world, I should know nothing of limits: but the consciousness of my limitation stands in contradiction with the impulse of my egoism towards unlimitedness. Thus from egoism conceived as absolute (God is the absolute Self) I cannot pass immediately to its opposite; I must introduce, prelude, moderate this contradiction by the consciousness of a being who is indeed another, and in so far gives me the perception of my limitation, but in such a way as at the same time to affirm my own nature, make my nature objective to me. The consciousness of the world is a humiliating consciousness; the Creation was an “act of humility;” but the first stone against which the pride of egoism stumbles, is the thou, the alter ego. The ego first steels its glance in the eye of a thou, before it endures the contemplation of a being which does not reflect its own image. My fellow-man is the bond between me and the world. I am, and I feel myself, dependent on the world, because I first feel myself dependent on other men. If I did not need man, I should not need the world. I reconcile myself with the world only through my fellow-man. Without other men, the world would be for me not only dead and empty, but meaningless. Only through his fellow does man become clear to himself and self-conscious; but only when I am clear to myself, does the world become clear to me. A man existing absolutely alone, would lose himself without any sense of his individuality in the ocean of Nature; he would neither comprehend himself as man, nor Nature as Nature. The first object of man is man. The sense of Nature, which opens to us the consciousness of the world as a world, is a later product; for it first arises through the distinction of man from himself. The natural philosophers of Greece were preceded by the so-called seven Sages, whose wisdom had immediate reference to human life only.