Scarcely were these worthies, with bag and baggage, well on their way again when I espied, walking towards the inn, a giant of a man—some three inches higher than I am (a sight I have not often seen), miserably attired, dusty and travel-worn. When he came to where I was he threw down his staff and bundle, cast his huge limbs along the bench, gave a careless, surly glance at me, and, throwing back his shaggy head of black hair, seemed about to sleep. Having pity on his weariness I said, ‘Art thirsty, friend? the sun hath power to-day.’ Thereupon he partly raised himself, looked fixedly at me, and then drank off the tankard I pushed towards him, grunting out a something which methought was meant for thanks. Being now curious, I asked him straight, ‘Where he came from?’ _He._ I never came from anywhere. _I._ What are you? _He._ I am not. _I._ What will you? _He._ I will not. _I._ This is passing strange. Tell me your name. _He._ Men call me the Nameless Wild. _I._ Not far off the mark either; you talk wildly enough. Where do you come from? whither are you bound? _He._ I dwell in absolute Freedom. _I._ What is that? _He._ When a man lives as he list, without distinction (Otherness, _Anderheit_), without before or after. The man who hath in his Eternal Nothing become nothing knows nought of distinctions. _I._ But to violate distinction is to violate order, and to break that is to be a slave. That is not the freedom indeed, which the truth gives. He that committeth sin is the servant of sin. No man can be so utterly self-annihilated and lost in God,—can be such a very nothing that there remains no remnant of the original difference between creature and Creator. My soul and body are one, are not separate; but they are distinct. So is it with the soul united to God. Mark the difference, friend, I prithee, between separation and distinction (_Geschiedenheit und Unterschiedenheit_). _He._ The teacher saith that the saintly man is God’s son, and what Christ doth, that doth he. _I._ He saith that such man followeth Christ in righteousness. But our personality must ever abide. Christ is son of God by nature, we by grace. Your pride blinds you. You are enlightened with a false light, coming whence I know not. You try and ‘break through’ to the Oneness, and you break through reason and reverence. He replied by telling me that I was in thick darkness, and the boy coming with my horse, I left him.[93]