Ownness includes in itself everything own, and brings to honor again what Christian language dishonored. But ownness has not any alien standard either, as it is not in any sense an _idea_ like freedom, morality, humanity, and the like: it is only a description of the--_owner_. II THE OWNER I--do I come to myself and mine through liberalism? Whom does the liberal look upon as his equal? Man! Be only man, and that you are anyway,--and the liberal calls you his brother. He asks very little about your private opinions and private follies, if only he can espy "Man" in you. But, as he takes little heed of what you are _privatim_,--nay, in a strict following out of his principle sets no value at all on it,--he sees in you only what you are _generatim_. In other words, he sees in you, not _you_, but the _species_; not Tom or Jim, but Man; not the real or unique one,[114] but your essence or your concept; not the bodily man, but the _spirit_. As Tom you would not be his equal, because he is Jim, therefore not Tom; as man you are the same that he is. And, since as Tom you virtually do not exist at all for him (so far, to wit, as he is a liberal and not unconsciously an egoist), he has really made "brother-love" very easy for himself: he loves in you not Tom, of whom he knows nothing and wants to know nothing, but Man. To see in you and me nothing further than "men," that is running the Christian way of looking at things, according to which one is for the other nothing but a _concept_ (_e. g._ a man called to salvation, etc.), into the ground. Christianity properly so called gathers us under a less utterly general concept: there we are "sons of God" and "led by the Spirit of God."[115] Yet not all can boast of being God's sons, but "the same Spirit which witnesses to our spirit that we are sons of God reveals also who are the sons of the devil."[116] Consequently, to be a son of God one must not be a son of the devil; the sonship of God excluded certain men. To be _sons of men_,--_i. e._ men,--on the contrary, we need nothing but to belong to the human _species_, need only to be specimens of the same species. What I am as this I is no concern of yours as a good liberal, but is my _private affair_ alone; enough that we are both sons of one and the same mother, to wit, the human species: as "a son of man" I am your equal. What am I now to you? Perhaps this _bodily I_ as I walk and stand? Anything but that. This bodily I, with its thoughts, decisions, and passions, is in your eyes a "private affair" which is no concern of yours: it is an "affair by itself." As an "affair for you" there exists only my concept, my generic concept, only _the Man_, who, as he is called Tom, could just as well be Joe or Dick. You see in me not me, the bodily man, but an unreal thing, the spook, _i. e._ a _Man_.