Thus _self-renunciation_ is common to the holy with the unholy, to the pure and the impure. The impure man _renounces_ all "better feelings," all shame, even natural timidity, and follows only the appetite that rules him. The pure man renounces his natural relation to the world ("renounces the world") and follows only the "desire" which rules him. Driven by the thirst for money, the avaricious man renounces all admonitions of conscience, all feeling of honor, all gentleness and all compassion; he puts all considerations out of sight; the appetite drags him along. The holy man behaves similarly. He makes himself the "laughing-stock of the world," is hard-hearted and "strictly just"; for the desire drags him along. As the unholy man renounces _himself_ before Mammon, so the holy man renounces _himself_ before God and the divine laws. We are now living in a time when the _shamelessness_ of the holy is every day more and more felt and uncovered, whereby it is at the same time compelled to unveil itself, and lay itself bare, more and more every day. Have not the shamelessness and stupidity of the reasons with which men antagonize the "progress of the age" long surpassed all measure and all expectation? But it must be so. The self-renouncers must, as holy men, take the same course that they do as unholy men; as the latter little by little sink to the fullest measure of self-renouncing vulgarity and _lowness_, so the former must ascend to the most dishonorable _exaltation_. The mammon of the earth and the _God_ of heaven both demand exactly the same degree of--self-renunciation. The low man, like the exalted one, reaches out for a "good,"--the former for the material good, the latter for the ideal, the so-called "supreme good"; and at last both complete each other again too, as the "materially-minded" man sacrifices everything to an ideal phantasm, his _vanity_, and the "spiritually-minded" man to a material gratification, the _life of enjoyment_. Those who exhort men to "unselfishness"[41] think they are saying an uncommon deal. What do they understand by it? Probably something like what they understand by "self-renunciation." But who is this self that is to be renounced and to have no benefit? It seems that _you_ yourself are supposed to be it. And for whose benefit is unselfish self-renunciation recommended to you? Again for _your_ benefit and behoof, only that through unselfishness you are procuring your "true benefit." You are to benefit _yourself_, and yet you are not seek _your_ benefit.