Reduces to the human expression, this sacred essence is "man himself" and "the human." With the deceptive semblance as if the human were altogether our own, and free from all the otherworldliness with which that divine is tainted,--yes, as if Man were as much as I or you,--there may arise even the proud fancy that the talk is no longer of a "sacred essence" and that we now feel ourselves everywhere at home and no longer in the uncanny,[195] _i. e._ in the sacred and in sacred awe: in the ecstasy over "Man discovered at last" the egoistic cry of pain passes unheard, and the spook that has become so intimate is taken for our true ego. But "Humanus is the saint's name" (see Goethe), and the humane is only the most clarified sanctity. The egoist makes the reverse declaration. For this precise reason, because you hold something sacred, I gibe at you; and, even if I respected everything in you, your sanctuary is precisely what I should not respect. With these opposed views there must also be assumed a contradictory relation to spiritual goods: the egoist insults them, the religious man (_i. e._ every one who puts his "essence" above himself) must consistently--protect them. But what kind of spiritual goods are to be protected, and what left unprotected, depends entirely on the concept that one forms of the "supreme being"; and he who fears God, _e. g._, has more to shelter than he (the liberal) who fears Man. In spiritual goods we are (in distinction from the sensuous) injured in a spiritual way, and the sin against them consists in a direct _desecration_, while against the sensuous a purloining or alienation takes place; the goods themselves are robbed of value and of consecration, not merely taken away; the sacred is immediately compromised. With the word "irreverence" or "flippancy" is designated everything that can be committed as _crime_ against spiritual goods, _i. e._ against everything that is sacred for us; and scoffing, reviling, contempt, doubt, and the like, are only different shades of _criminal flippancy_. That desecration can be practised in the most manifold wise is here to be passed over, and only that desecration is to be preferentially mentioned which threatens the sacred with danger through an _unrestricted press_. As long as respect is demanded even for one spiritual essence, speech and the press must be enthralled in the name of this essence; for just so long the egoist might "trespass" against it by his _utterances_, from which thing he must be hindered by "due punishment" at least, if one does not prefer to take up the more correct means against it, the preventive use of police authority, _e. g._ censorship.