What at first passed for existence, such as the world and its like, appears now as bare semblance, and the _truly existent_ is much rather the essence, whose realm is filled with gods, spirits, demons, _i. e._ with good or bad essences. Only this inverted world, the world of essences, truly exists now. The human heart may be loveless, but its essence exists, God, "who is love"; human thought may wander in error, but its essence, truth, exists; "God is truth,"--etc. To know and acknowledge essences alone and nothing but essences, that is religion; its realm is a realm of essences, spooks, and ghosts. The longing to make the spook comprehensible, or to realize _non-sense_, has brought about a _corporeal ghost_, a ghost or spirit with a real body, an embodied ghost. How the strongest and most talented Christians have tortured themselves to get a conception of this ghostly apparition! But there always remained the contradiction of two natures, the divine and human, _i. e._ the ghostly and sensual; there remained the most wondrous spook, a thing that was not a thing. Never yet was a ghost more soul-torturing, and no shaman, who pricks himself to raving fury and nerve-lacerating cramps to conjure a ghost, can endure such soul-torment as Christians suffered from that most incomprehensible ghost. But through Christ the truth of the matter had at the same time come to light, that the veritable spirit or ghost is--man. The _corporeal_ or embodied spirit is just man; he himself is the ghastly being and at the same time the being's appearance and existence. Henceforth man no longer, in typical cases, shudders at ghosts _outside_ him, but at himself; he is terrified at himself. In the depth of his breast dwells the _spirit of sin_; even the faintest _thought_ (and this is itself a spirit, you know) may be a _devil_, etc.--The ghost has put on a body, God has become man, but now man is himself the gruesome spook which he seeks to get back of, to exorcise, to fathom, to bring to reality and to speech; man is--_spirit_. What matter if the body wither, if only the spirit is saved? everything rests on the spirit, and the spirit's or "soul's" welfare becomes the exclusive goal. Man has become to himself a ghost, an uncanny spook, to which there is even assigned a distinct seat in the body (dispute over the seat of the soul, whether in the head, etc.).