But in reference to _liberty_ State and union are subject to no essential difference. The latter can just as little come into existence, or continue in existence, without liberty's being limited in all sorts of ways, as the State is compatible with unmeasured liberty. Limitation of liberty is inevitable everywhere, for one cannot get _rid_ of everything; one cannot fly like a bird merely because one would like to fly so, for one does not get free from his own weight; one cannot live under water as long as he likes, like a fish, because one cannot do without air and cannot get free from this indispensable necessity; and the like. As religion, and most decidedly Christianity, tormented man with the demand to realize the unnatural and self-contradictory, so it is to be looked upon only as the true logical outcome of that religious overstraining and overwroughtness that finally _liberty itself, absolute liberty_, was exalted into an ideal, and thus the nonsense of the impossible had to come glaringly to the light.--The union will assuredly offer a greater measure of liberty, as well as (and especially because by it one escapes all the coercion peculiar to State and society life) admit of being considered as "a new liberty"; but nevertheless it will still contain enough of unfreedom and involuntariness. For its object is not this--liberty (which on the contrary it sacrifices to ownness), but only _ownness_. Referred to this, the difference between State and union is great enough. The former is an enemy and murderer of _ownness_, the latter a son and co-worker of it; the former a spirit that would be adored in spirit and in truth, the latter my work, my _product_; the State is the lord of my spirit, who demands faith and prescribes to me articles of faith, the creed of legality; it exerts moral influence, dominates my spirit, drives away my ego to put itself in its place as "my true ego,"--in short, the State is _sacred_, and as against me, the individual man, it is the true man, the spirit, the ghost; but the union is my own creation, my creature, not sacred, not a spiritual power above my spirit, as little as any association of whatever sort. As I am not willing to be a slave of my maxims, but lay them bare to my continual criticism without _any warrant_, and admit no bail at all for their persistence, so still less do I obligate myself to the union for my future and pledge my soul to it, as is said to be done with the devil and is really the case with the State and all spiritual authority; but I am and remain _more_ to myself than State, Church, God, and the like; consequently infinitely more than the union too.