Now--we are in search of the _enjoyment_ of life! And what did the religious world do? It went in search of _life_. "Wherein consists the true life, the blessed life, etc.? How is it to be attained? What must man do and become in order to become a truly living man? How does he fulfil this calling?" These and similar questions indicate that the askers were still seeking for _themselves_,--to wit, themselves in the true sense, in the sense of true living. "What I am is foam and shadow; what I shall be is my true self." To chase after this self, to produce it, to realize it, constitutes the hard task of mortals, who die only to _rise again_, live only to die, live only to find the true life. Not till I am certain of myself, and no longer seeking for myself, am I really my property; I have myself, therefore I use and enjoy myself. On the other hand, I can never take comfort in myself so long as I think that I have still to find my true self and that it must come to this, that not I but Christ or some other spiritual, _i. e._ ghostly, self (_e. g._ the true man, the essence of man, and the like) lives in me. A vast interval separates the two views. In the old I go toward myself, in the new I start from myself; in the former I long for myself, in the latter I have myself and do with myself as one does with any other property,--I enjoy myself at my pleasure. I am no longer afraid for my life, but "squander" it. Henceforth the question runs, not how one can acquire life, but how one can squander, enjoy it; or, not how one is to produce the true self in himself, but how one is to dissolve himself, to live himself out. What else should the ideal be but the sought-for, ever-distant self? One seeks for himself, consequently one does not yet have himself; one aspires toward what one _ought_ to be, consequently one is not it. One lives in _longing_ and has lived thousands of years in it, in _hope_. Living is quite another thing in--_enjoyment_! Does this perchance apply only to the so-called pious? No, it applies to all who belong to the departing period of history, even to its men of pleasure. For them too the work-days were followed by a Sunday, and the rush of the world by the dream of a better world, of a general happiness of humanity; in short, by an ideal. But philosophers especially are contrasted with the pious. Now, have they been thinking of anything else than the ideal, been planning for anything else than the absolute self? Longing and hope everywhere, and nothing but these. For me, call it romanticism.