How men have struggled and calculated to get at a solution regarding these dualistic essences! Idea followed upon idea, principle upon principle, system upon system, and none knew how to keep down permanently the contradiction of the "worldly" man, the so-called "egoist." Does not this prove that all those ideas were too feeble to take up my whole will into themselves and satisfy it? They were and remained hostile to me, even if the hostility lay concealed for a considerable time. Will it be the same with _self-ownership_? Is it too only an attempt at mediation? Whatever principle I turned to, it might be to that of _reason_, I always had to turn away from it again. Or can I always be rational, arrange my life according to reason in everything? I can, no doubt, _strive_ after rationality, I can _love_ it, just as I can also love God and every other idea. I can be a philosopher, a lover of wisdom, as I love God. But what I love, what I strive for, is only in my idea, my conception, my thoughts; it is in my heart, my head, it is in me like the heart, but it is not I, I am not it. To the activity of priestly minds belongs especially what one often hears called "_moral influence_." Moral influence takes its start where _humiliation_ begins; yes, it is nothing else than this humiliation itself, the breaking and bending of the temper[51] down to _humility_.[52] If I call to some one to run away when a rock is to be blasted, I exert no moral influence by this demand; if I say to a child "You will go hungry if you will not eat what is put on the table," this is not moral influence. But, if I say to it "You will pray, honor your parents, respect the crucifix, speak the truth, etc., for this belongs to man and is man's calling," or even "this is God's will," then moral influence is complete; then a man is to bend before the _calling_ of man, be tractable, become humble, give up his will for an alien one which is set up as rule and law; he is to _abase_ himself before something _higher_: self-abasement. "He that abaseth himself shall be exalted." Yes, yes, children must early be _made_ to practise piety, godliness, and propriety; a person of good breeding is one into whom "good maxims" have been _instilled_ and _impressed_, poured in through a funnel, thrashed in and preached in.