In fact, ancient history ends with this,--that _I_ have struggled till I
won my ownership of the world. "All things have been delivered, to me
by my Father" (Matt. 11.27). It has ceased to be overpowering,
unapproachable, sacred, divine, etc., for me; it is _undeified_, and now
I treat it so entirely as I please that, if I cared, I could exert on it
all miracle-working power, _i. e._ power of mind,--remove mountains,
command mulberry trees to tear themselves up and transplant themselves
into the sea (Luke 17.6), and do everything possible, _i. e. thinkable_:
"All things are possible to him who believes."[64] I am the _lord_ of
the world, mine is the "_glory_."[65] The world has become _prosaic_,
for the divine has vanished from it: it is my property, which I dispose
of as I (to wit, the mind) choose.
When I had exalted myself to be the _owner of the world_, egoism had won
its first complete victory, had vanquished the world, had become
_worldless_, and put the acquisitions of a long age under lock and key.
The first property, the first "glory," has been acquired!
But the lord of the world is not yet lord of his thoughts, his feelings,
his will: he is not lord and owner of the spirit, for the spirit is
still sacred, the "Holy Spirit," and the "worldless" Christian is not
able to become "godless." If the ancient struggle was a struggle against
the _world_, the mediæval (Christian) struggle is a struggle against
_self_, the mind; the former against the outer world, the latter against
the inner world. The mediæval man is the man "whose gaze is turned
inward," the thinking, meditative man.
All wisdom of the ancients is _the science of the world_, all wisdom of
the moderns is _the science of God_.
The heathen (Jews included) got through with the _world_; but now the
thing was to get through with self, the _spirit_, too; _i. e._ to become
spiritless or godless.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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