——The escape from action in an artificial absence of all events in life, which often sinks to a veritable brutalizing of man, is the distinguishing feature of all monkish pedagogics. In our time there is especial need of a reconciliation between man and destiny, for all the world is discontented. The worst form of discontent is when one is, as the French say, _blasé_; though the word is not, as many fancy, derived originally from the French, but from the Greek βλαζειν, to wither. It is true that all culture passes through phases, each of which becomes momentarily and relatively wearisome, and that in so far one may be _blasé_ in any age. But in modern times this state of feeling has increased to that of thorough disgust——disgust which nevertheless at the same time demands enjoyment. The one who is _blasé_ has enjoyed everything, felt everything, mocked at everything. He has passed from the enjoyment of pleasure to sentimentality, i.e. to rioting in feeling; from sentimentality to irony with regard to feeling, and from this to the torment of feeling his entire weakness and emptiness as opposed to these. He ridicules this also, as if it were a consolation to him to fling away the universe like a squeezed lemon, and to be able to assert that in pure nothingness lies the truth of all things. And yet nevertheless this irony furnishes the point on which Education can fasten, in order to kindle anew in him the religious feeling, and to lead him back to a loving recognition of actuality, to a respect for his own history. The greatest difficulty which Education has to encounter here is the coquetry, the miserable eminence and self-satisfaction which have undermined the man and made him incapable of all simple and natural enjoyment. It is not too much to assert that many pupils of our _Gymnasia_ are affected with this malady. Our literature is full of its products. It inveighs against its dissipation, and nevertheless at the same time cannot resist a certain kind of pleasure in it. Diabolical sentimentality!—— III. _The Absolute Process of Religious Culture._ § 169. In comparing the stages of the theoretical and practical culture of the religious feeling their internal correspondence appears. Feeling, as immediate knowledge, and the consecration of the sense by means of piety; imagination with all its images, and the church services with their ceremonial observances; finally, the comprehending of religion as the reconciliation with destiny, as the internal emancipation from the dominion of external events——all these correspond to each other. If we seize this parallelism all together, we have the progress which religion must make in its historical process, in which it (1) begins as natural; (2) goes on to historical precision, and (3) elevates this to a rational faith. These stages await every man in as far as he lives through a complete religious culture, but this may be for the individual a question of chance.