This is just the case in the modern period. It only changes existing objects, the actual ruler and so on, to an imagined one, that is, into ideas for which the old respect not only has not been lost but has increased in intensity. If a piece was taken off the idea of God and the devil in their former gross realism, nevertheless only so much the more attention has been devoted to our conceptions of them. "They are free from devils, but evil has remained." To revolutionise the existing State, to upset the existing laws, was once thought little of, when it had once been determined to allow oneself to be no longer imposed upon by what was tangible and existing; but to sin against the conception of the State and not to submit to the conception of law--who has ventured to do that? So men remained "citizens" and "law-abiding, loyal men"; indeed, men thought themselves all the more law-abiding in proportion as they more rationalistically did away with the previous faulty law in order to do homage to the spirit of law. In all this it is only the objects that have changed but which have remained in their supremacy and authority; in short, men still followed obedience, lived in reflection, and had an object upon which they reflected, which they respected, and for which they felt awe and fear. Men have done nothing else but changed things into ideas of things, into thoughts and conceptions, and thus their dependence became all the more innate and irrevocable. It is, for example, not difficult to emancipate oneself from the commands of one's parents, or to pay no heed to the warnings of an uncle or an aunt, or to refuse the request of a brother or a sister; but the obedience thus given up lies easily upon one's conscience, and the less one gives way to individual sentiments, because one recognises them from a rational point of view, and from our own reason to be unreasonable, the more firmly does one cleave conscientiously to piety and family love, and with greater difficulty does one forgive an offence against the idea which one has conceived of family love and the duty of piety. Released from our dependence upon the existing family life, we fall into the more binding submission to the idea of the family; we are governed by family spirit. And the family, thus raised up to an idea or conception, is now regarded as something "sacred," and its despotism is ten times worse, because its power lies in my conscience. This despotism is only broken when even the ideal conception of the family becomes nothing to me. And as it is with the family, so it is with morality. Many people free themselves from customs, but with difficulty do they get free from the idea of morality. Morality is the "idea" of custom, its spiritual power, its power over the conscience; on the other hand, custom is something too material to have power over the spirit, and does not fetter a man who is independent, a "free spirit."