The possessedness of love lies in the alienation of the object, or in my powerlessness as against its alienness and superior power. To the egoist nothing is high enough for him to humble himself before it, nothing so independent that he would live for love of it, nothing so sacred that he would sacrifice himself to it. The egoist's love rises in selfishness, flows in the bed of selfishness, and empties into selfishness again. Whether this can still be called love? If you know another word for it, go ahead and choose it; then the sweet word love may wither with the departed world; for the present I at least find none in our _Christian_ language, and hence stick to the old sound and "love" _my_ object, my--property. Only as one of my feelings do I harbor love; but as a power above me, as a divine power (Feuerbach), as a passion that I am not to cast off, as a religious and moral duty, I--scorn it. As my feeling it is _mine_; as a principle to which I consecrate and "vow" my soul it is a dominator and _divine_, just as hatred as a principle is _diabolical_; one not better than the other. In short, egoistic love, _i. e._, my love, is neither holy nor unholy, neither divine nor diabolical. "A love that is limited by faith is an untrue love. The sole limitation that does not contradict the essence of love is the self-limitation of love by reason, intelligence. Love that scorns the rigor, the law, of intelligence, is theoretically a false love, practically a ruinous one."[200] So love is in its essence _rational_! So thinks Feuerbach; the believer, on the contrary, thinks, Love is in its essence _believing_. The one inveighs against _irrational_, the other against _unbelieving_, love. To both it can at most rank as a _splen__didum vitium_. Do not both leave love standing, even in the form of unreason and unbelief? They do not dare to say, irrational or unbelieving love is nonsense, is not love; as little as they are willing to say, irrational or unbelieving tears are not tears. But, if even irrational love, etc., must count as love, and if they are nevertheless to be unworthy of man, there follows simply this: love is not the highest thing, but reason or faith; even the unreasonable and the unbelieving can love; but love has value only when it is that of a rational or believing person. It is an illusion when Feuerbach calls the rationality of love its "self-limitation"; the believer might with the same right call belief its "self-limitation." Irrational love is neither "false" nor "ruinous"; it does its service as love.