The thought, it was just now shown, rules the possessed world. Well, then, possibility is nothing but thinkableness, and innumerable sacrifices have hitherto been made to hideous _thinkableness_. It was _thinkable_ that men might become rational; thinkable, that they might know Christ; thinkable, that they might become moral and enthusiastic for the good; thinkable, that they might all take refuge in the Church's lap; thinkable, that they might meditate, speak, and do, nothing dangerous to the State; thinkable, that they _might_ be obedient subjects; but, because it was thinkable, it was--so ran the inference--possible, and further, because it was possible to men (right here lies the deceptive point: because it is thinkable to me, it is possible to _men_), therefore they _ought_ to be so, it was their _calling_; and finally--one is to take men only according to this calling, only as _called_ men, "not as they are, but as they ought to be." And the further inference? Man is not the individual, but man is a _thought_, an _ideal_, to which the individual is related not even as the child to the man, but as a chalk point to a point thought of, or as a--finite creature to the eternal Creator, or, according to modern views, as the specimen to the species. Here then comes to light the glorification of "humanity," the "eternal, immortal," for whose glory (_in majorem humanitatis gloriam_) the individual must devote himself and find his "immortal renown" in having done something for the "spirit of humanity." Thus the _thinkers_ rule in the world as long as the age of priests or of schoolmasters lasts, and what they think of is possible, but what is possible must be realized. They _think_ an ideal of man, which for the time is real only in their thoughts; but they also think the possibility of carrying it out, and there is no chance for dispute, the carrying out is really--thinkable, it is an--idea. But you and I, we may indeed be people of whom a Krummacher can _think_ that we might yet become good Christians; if, however, he wanted to "labor with" us, we should soon make it palpable to him that our Christianity is only _thinkable_, but in other respects _impossible_; if he grinned on and on at us with his obtrusive _thoughts_, his "good belief," he would have to learn that we do not at all _need_ to become what we do not like to become. And so it goes on, far beyond the most pious of the pious. "If all men were rational, if all did right, if all were guided by philanthropy, etc."! Reason, right, philanthropy, etc., are put before the eyes of men as their calling, as the goal of their aspiration. And what does being rational mean? Giving oneself a hearing?[221] No, reason is a book full of laws, which are all enacted against egoism.