Of this wisdom the admirer of liberal freedom knows little. Instead of distinguishing the good from the evil in man, of unfolding his inner kernel, the pure spirit, and making it rule; instead of demanding, like _Pythagoras_, discipline as a preparatory school for wisdom, he has learned from _Rousseau_, the master of modern Liberalism, that everything in man is good. Depravity of nature, original sin, are unsympathetic things to his ear. Even _Goethe_ wrote to _Herder_, when _Kant_ had in his religious philosophy found a radical Evil in man: “After it has taken _Kant_ a lifetime to clean his philosophical gown of many filthy prejudices, he now outrageously slabbers it with the stain of the radical Evil, so that Christians, too, may be enticed to come and kiss the seam.” Instead of exhorting for a redemption from internal fetters, as the sages of all ages did, the principle of wisdom now proposed is to quietly let individuality develop, with all its inclinations. They call this freedom. Is it not the freedom whereof the slave of sensuality avails himself to form his theory of life? It, too, “grows up in man with that inner compulsion which is identical with true freedom” (_Adickes_). Freedom this may be. But _only external freedom_, the only freedom they often know. They are unaware that they forfeit thereby the real, the inner freedom. “Thou aimest at free heights,” admonishes even the most impetuous herald of freedom, “thy soul is athirst for stars. But also thy wicked impulses are athirst for freedom. Thy wild hounds want to be free, they bark joyfully in their kennel when thy spirit essays to throw open all dungeons.”(11) They think to be free and speak of the self-assurance of individual reason, and they cannot see that the mind is in the fetters of bondage.