the force of egoism." "How should there be a fear of God if there were no strength in him? But that there should be something in God which is mere force and strength cannot be held astonishing if only it be not maintained that he is this alone and nothing besides." [63] But what then is force and strength which is merely such, if not corporeal force and strength? Dost thou know any power which stands at thy command, in distinction from the power of kindness and reason, besides muscular power? If thou canst effect nothing through kindness and the arguments of reason, force is what thou must take refuge in. But canst thou "effect" anything without strong arms and fists? Is there known to thee, in distinction from the power of the moral order of the world, "another and more living motive power" than the lever of the criminal court? Is not Nature without body also an "empty, abstract" idea, a "jejune subtilty"? Is not the mystery of Nature the mystery of corporeality? Is not the system of a "living realism" the system of the organised body? Is there, in general, any other force, the opposite of intelligence, than the force of flesh and blood,--any other strength of Nature than the strength of the fleshly impulses? And the strongest of the impulses of Nature, is it not the sexual feeling? Who does not remember the old proverb: "Amare et sapere vix Deo competit?" So that if we would posit in God a nature, an existence opposed to the light of intelligence,--can we think of a more living, a more real antithesis, than that of amare and sapere, of spirit and flesh, of freedom and the sexual impulse?