So much for the outward correlation of events. But inwardly it was like this: I had been freed from the hands of Kromer and the devil, but not through my own strength and effort. I had ventured a footing on the paths of the world, and they had been too slippery for me. Now that the grasp of a friendly hand had saved me, I ran back, without another glance round, to mother’s lap, to the protecting, godly and tender security of childhood. I made myself younger, more dependent on others, more childlike than I really was. I had to replace my dependence on Kromer by a new one, since I was powerless to strike out for myself. So I chose, in the blindness of my heart, the dependence on father and mother, on the old, beloved, “bright world,” on this world which I knew already was not the sole one. Had I not done this, I should have had to hold to Demian, to entrust myself to him. The fact that I did not, appeared to me then to be due to justifiable distrust of his strange ideas; in reality it was due to nothing else than fear. For Demian would have required more of me than did my parents, much more. By stimulation and exhortation, by scorn and irony he would have tried to make me more independent. Alas, I know that to-day: nothing in the world is so distasteful to man as to go the way which leads him to himself! And yet, about half a year later, I could not resist the temptation to ask my father while we were out for a walk, what was to be made of the fact that many people declared Cain to be better than Abel. He was much surprised, and explained to me that this was a conception by no means novel. It had even emerged in the early Christian era, and had been professed by sects, one of which was called the “Cainites.” But naturally this foolish doctrine was nothing else than an attempt of the devil to undermine our belief. For, if one believes that Cain was right and Abel was wrong, then it follows that God has erred, and that the God of the Bible is not the true and only God, but a false one. The Cainites really used to profess and preach something approximating this doctrine; but this heresy vanished from among mankind a long time ago and he wondered the more that a school friend had been able to learn something on the subject. Nevertheless, he earnestly exhorted me not to let these ideas occupy my attention. CHAPTER THREE THE THIEF ON THE CROSS I could describe scenes of my childhood, spent in peaceful security at the side of father and mother, relate how I passed this period of my life, playing contentedly in the midst of surroundings brightened by love and tenderness. But others have done that. I am only interested in the steps I took in life, in order to attain self-realization. All the pretty resting-places, happy isles and children’s paradises, whose charm is not unknown to me, I leave lying behind me in the shimmer of a distant horizon, and I have no desire to set foot there again.