In the course of the Christian centuries we declared the most various persons to be "our equals," but each time in the measure of that _spirit_ which we expected from them,--_e. g._ each one in whom the spirit of the need of redemption may be assumed, then later each one who has the spirit of integrity, finally each one who shows a human spirit and a human face. Thus the fundamental principle of "equality" varied. Equality being now conceived as equality of the _human spirit_, there has certainly been discovered an equality that includes _all_ men; for who could deny that we men have a human spirit, _i. e._ no other than a human! But are we on that account further on now than in the beginning of Christianity? Then we were to have a _divine spirit_, now a _human_; but, if the divine did not exhaust us, how should the human wholly express what we are? Feuerbach, _e. g._, thinks that, if he humanizes the divine, he has found the truth. No, if God has given us pain, "Man" is capable of pinching us still more torturingly. The long and the short of it is this: that we are men is the slightest thing about us, and has significance only in so far as it is one of our _qualities_,[117] _i. e._ our property.[118] I am indeed among other things a man, as I am, _e. g._, a living being, therefore an animal, or a European, a Berliner, and the like; but he who chose to have regard for me only as a man, or as a Berliner, would pay me a regard that would be very unimportant to me. And wherefore? Because he would have regard only for one of my _qualities_, not for _me_. It is just so with the _spirit_ too. A Christian spirit, an upright spirit, and the like may well be my acquired quality, _i. e._ my property, but I am not this spirit: it is mine, not I its. Hence we have in liberalism only the continuation of the old Christian depreciation of the I, the bodily Tom. Instead of taking me as I am, one looks solely at my property, my qualities, and enters into marriage bonds with me only for the sake of my--possessions; one marries, as it were, what I have, not what I am. The Christian takes hold of my spirit, the liberal of my humanity. But, if the spirit, which is not regarded as the _property_ of the bodily ego but as the proper ego itself, is a ghost, then the Man too, who is not recognized as my quality but as the proper I, is nothing but a spook, a thought, a concept. Therefore the liberal too revolves in the same circle as the Christian. Because the spirit of mankind, _i. e._ Man, dwells in you, you are a man, as when the spirit of Christ dwells in you you are a Christian; but, because it dwells in you only as a second ego, even though it be as your proper or "better" ego, it remains otherworldly to you, and you have to strive to become wholly man. A striving just as fruitless as the Christian's to become wholly a blessed spirit!