In regard to the whole Poem of the World I will observe that, up to the time I finished the last line, I had never studied the kindred systems of the Neo-Platonics or the Gnostics.

The verses which described the moment when Matter drew her fiery children to her heart and thus warmed it, another passage in which men who were destitute of intellect sought to destroy themselves and Love resolved to sacrifice her own life, and, lastly, the song where Intellect rises from the lily, besides many others, were worthy, in my opinion, of being preserved.

What first diverted my attention from the work was, as has been mentioned, the study of Feuerbach, to which I had been induced by a letter from the geographer Karl Andree.  I eagerly seized his books, first choosing his “Axioms of the Philosophy of the Future,” and afterwards devoured everything he had written which the library contained.  And at that time I was grateful to my friend the geographer for his advice.  True, Feuerbach seemed to me to shatter many things which from a child I had held sacred; yet I thought I discovered behind the falling masonry the image of eternal truth.

The veil which I afterwards saw spread over so many things in Feuerbach’s writings at that time produced the same influence upon me as the mist whence rise here the towers, yonder the battlements of a castle.  It might be large or small; the grey mist which forbids the eye from definitely measuring its height and width by no means prevents the traveller, who knows that a powerful lord possesses the citadel, from believing it to be as large and well guarded as the power of its ruler would imply.

True, I was not sufficiently mature for the study of this great thinker, whom I afterwards saw endanger other unripe minds.  As a disciple of this master there were many things to be destroyed which from childhood had become interlaced by a thousand roots and fibres with my whole intellectual organism, and such operations are not effected without pain.

What I learned while seeking after truth during those night hours ought to have taught me the connection between mind and body; yet I was never farther from perceiving it.  A sharp division had taken place in my nature.  By night, in arduous conflict, I led a strange mental life, known to myself alone; by day all this was forgotten, unless—­and how rarely this happened—­some conversation recalled it.

From my first step out of doors I belonged to life, to the corps, to pleasure.  What was individual existence, mortality, or the eternal life of the soul!  Minerva’s bird is an owl.  Like it, these learned questions belonged to the night.  They should cast no shadow on the brightness of my day.  When I met the first friend in the blue cap no one need have sung our corps song, “Away with cares and crotchets!”

At no time had the exuberant joy in mere existence stirred more strongly within me.  My whole nature was filled with the longing to utilize and enjoy this brief earthly life which Feuerbach had proved was to end with death.