in its constraints and pains it leaves the self-preservation and the welfare of the mere subject at a level far beneath itself. When, therefore, Individualism, neglecting the movement of universal history, wishes to limit us to this mere subject, and, effacing all dividing lines, calls upon us to submit to every force which plays upon us, and to enter into the glad enjoyment of life, there is really no difference between this and advising a man, who has gone through the many and difficult experiences of life, to throw to the winds all he has thus gained, and to please himself again with the games of childhood. The position is similar with regard to the relation of the spiritual and the sensuous, as Individualism represents it. It is rightly opposed to both a monkish asceticism and a conventional, feigned, low estimate of the sensuous; it is indeed with good reason that Æsthetic Individualism defends the right of the sensuous. But to give the sensuous its right does not mean to permit it to be joined together in an undifferentiated unity with the spiritual, as though it were of equal value. Naïve ages were able to strive for a perfect balance of spiritual and sensuous; but, with the increasing depth of the life of the soul, a division has resulted which no toil and no art can simply remove again. Now, therefore, either the spiritual will be dominant over the sensuous or the sensuous over the spiritual. In Individualism, with its amalgamation of the spiritual and the sensuous, by which all claim to spiritual activity, and therefore to all independence of spiritual life, is given up, the sensuous will inevitably dominate over the spiritual. The result is simply a degeneration of the spiritual, a refined sensuousness; and it is defenceless against an intrusion of vulgar pleasure. Will any one seriously assert that we find ourselves to-day in a naïve position in relation to sense?