But one owes it neither to himself to make anything out of himself, nor to others to make anything out of them; for one owes nothing to his essence and that of others. Intercourse resting on essence is an intercourse with the spook, not with anything real. If I hold intercourse with the supreme essence, I am not holding intercourse with myself, and, if I hold intercourse with the essence of man, I am not holding intercourse with men. The natural man's love becomes through culture a _commandment_. But as commandment it belongs to _Man_ as such, not to _me_; it is my _essence_,[198] about which much ado[199] is made, not my property. _Man_, _i. e._ humanity, presents that demand to me; love is _demanded_, it is my _duty_. Instead, therefore, of being really won for _me_, it has been won for the generality, _Man_, as his property or peculiarity: "it becomes man, _i. e._ every man, to love; love is the duty and calling of man," etc. Consequently I must again vindicate love for _myself_, and deliver it out of the power of Man with the great M. What was originally _mine_, but _accidentally_ mine, instinctively mine, I was invested with as the property of Man; I became feoffee in loving, I became the retainer of mankind, only a specimen of this species, and acted, loving, not as _I_, but as _man_, as a specimen of man, _i. e._ humanly. The whole condition of civilization is the _feudal system_, the property being Man's or mankind's, not _mine_. A monstrous feudal State was founded, the individual robbed of everything, everything left to "man." The individual had to appear at last as a "sinner through and through."