not itself and during its own lifetime become a
bird.

Everything in me that conspires to break the unity and continuity of my
life conspires to destroy me and consequently to destroy itself. Every
individual in a people who conspires to break the spiritual unity and
continuity of that people tends to destroy it and to destroy himself as
a part of that people. What if some other people is better than our own?
Very possibly, although perhaps we do not clearly understand what is
meant by better or worse. Richer? Granted. More cultured? Granted
likewise. Happier? Well, happiness ... but still, let it pass! A
conquering people (or what is called conquering) while we are conquered?
Well and good. All this is good--but it is something different. And that
is enough. Because for me the becoming other than I am, the breaking of
the unity and continuity of my life, is to cease to be he who I am--that
is to say, it is simply to cease to be. And that--no! Anything rather
than that!

Another, you say, might play the part that I play as well or better?
Another might fulfil my function in society? Yes, but it would not be I.

"I, I, I, always I!" some reader will exclaim; "and who are you?" I
might reply in the words of Obermann, that tremendous man Obermann: "For
the universe, nothing--for myself, everything"; but no, I would rather
remind him of a doctrine of the man Kant--to wit, that we ought to think
of our fellow-men not as means but as ends. For the question does not
touch me alone, it touches you also, grumbling reader, it touches each
and all. Singular judgments have the value of universal judgments, the
logicians say. The singular is not particular, it is universal.

Man is an end, not a means. All civilization addresses itself to man, to
each man, to each I. What is that idol, call it Humanity or call it what
you like, to which all men and each individual man must be sacrificed?
For I sacrifice myself for my neighbours, for my fellow-countrymen, for
my children, and these sacrifice themselves in their turn for theirs,
and theirs again for those that come after them, and so on in a
never-ending series of generations. And who receives the fruit of this
sacrifice?

Those who talk to us about this fantastic sacrifice, this dedication
without an object, are wont to talk to us also about the right to live.
What is this right to live? They tell me I am here to realize I know not
what social end; but I feel that I, like each o