The lives of unusual men from decade to decade, it seems, enter dangerous crises, in which one of two things takes place; either the morbid matter that has been accumulating is thrown off, or the organism succumbs to it in actual material death, or in spiritual death.  One of the most important and, to the observer, most remarkable of these crises occurs in the early thirties or forties, rarely before thirty; in fact, more frequently not until thirty-five and later.  It is the great trial balance of life, which one would rather defer as long as is expedient than make prematurely.

It was in such a crisis that Goethe went on his Italian journey, that Luther nailed his ninety-five theses to the church door in Wittenberg, that Ignatius Loyola hung his weapons in front of an image of the Virgin, never to take them down again, and that Jesus was nailed to the cross.  As for the young physician, Frederick von Kammacher, he was neither a Goethe nor a Luther nor a Loyola; but he was akin to them not only in culture, but also in many a trait of genius.

It is impossible to express in words the extent in which his whole previous existence passed in review before Frederick’s mental vision as the little tender sped beyond the harbour lights of Southampton, carrying him away from Europe and his home.  He seemed to be parting with a whole continent in his soul, upon which he would never set foot again.  It was a farewell forever.  No wonder if in that moment his whole being was shaken and could not regain its balance.

Loyola had not been a good soldier.  Else, how could he have discarded his arms?  Luther had not been a good Dominican.  Else, how could he have discarded his monk’s robes?  Goethe had not been a good barrister or bureaucrat.  A mighty, irresistible wave had swept over those three men and also, for all the disparity between them, over Frederick von Kammacher, washing the uniform away from their souls.

Frederick was not one of those who enter this crisis unconsciously.  He had been feeling its approach for years, and it was characteristic of him that he reflected upon its nature.  Sometimes he was of the opinion that it marked the termination of youth and the beginning, therefore, of real maturity.  It seemed to him as if hitherto he had worked with other people’s hands, according to other people’s will, guided rather than guiding.  His thinking appeared to him to have been no thinking, but an operating with transmitted ideas.  He put it to himself that he had been standing in a hothouse, and his head, like the top of a young tree reaching upward to the light, had broken through the glass roof and made its way into the open.

“Now I will walk with my own feet, look with my own eyes, think my own thoughts, and act from the plenary power of my own will.”

In his valise, Frederick carried Stirner’s “The Individual and his Own.”

Man living in society is never wholly independent.  There is no intellect that does not look about for other intellects, if for no other object than to seek confirmation, that is, reinforcement or guidance, at all events, companionship.  That Frederick von Kammacher’s new intellectual companion was Max Stirner, was the result of a profound disillusionment.  He had been disillusioned in his deep-seated altruism, which until now had completely dominated him.