We have to pay attention to still another sentence of the same number. "Criticism sets up no dogmas, and wants to learn to know nothing but _things_." The critic is afraid of becoming "dogmatic" or setting up dogmas. Of course: why, thereby he would become the opposite of the critic,--the dogmatist; he would now become bad, as he is good as critic, or would become from an unselfish man an egoist, etc. "Of all things, no dogma!" this is his--dogma. For the critic remains on one and the same ground with the dogmatist,--that of _thoughts_. Like the latter he always starts from a thought, but varies in this, that he never ceases to keep the principle-thought in the _process of thinking_, and so does not let it become stable. He only asserts the thought-process against stationariness in it. From criticism no thought is safe, since criticism is thought or the thinking mind itself. Therefore I repeat that the religious world--and this is the world of thoughts--reaches its completion in criticism, where thinking extends its encroachments over every thought, no one of which may "egoistically" establish itself. Where would the "purity of criticism," the purity of thinking, be left if even one thought escaped the process of thinking? This explains the fact that the critic has even begun already to gibe gently here and there at the thought of Man, of humanity and humaneness, because he suspects that here a thought is approaching dogmatic fixity. But yet he cannot decompose this thought till he has found a--"higher" in which it dissolves; for he moves only--in thoughts. This higher thought might be enunciated as that of the movement or process of thinking itself, _i. e._ as the thought of thinking or of criticism. Freedom of thinking has in fact become complete hereby, freedom of mind celebrates its triumph: for the individual, "egoistic" thoughts have lost their dogmatic truculence. There is nothing left but the--dogma of free thinking or of criticism. Against everything that belongs to the world of thought, criticism is in the right, _i. e._ in might: it is the victor. Criticism, and criticism alone, is "up to date." From the standpoint of thought there is no power capable of being an overmatch for criticism's, and it is a pleasure to see how easily and sportively this dragon swallows all other serpents of thought. Each serpent twists, to be sure, but criticism crushes it in all its "turns."