the
members of the corps. I first heard them made the subject of an animated
exchange of thought in the Dirichlet household, where Professor
Baum emerged from his aristocratic composure to denounce vehemently
materialism and its apostles. Of course I endeavoured to gain
information about things which so strongly moved intellectual men, and
read in addition to Lotze's books the polemical writings which were at
that time in everybody's hands.

Vogt's caustic style charmed me, but it was not due solely to the
religious convictions which I had brought from my home and from Keilhau
that I perceived that here a sharp sword was swung by a strong arm to
cut water. The wounds it dealt would not bleed, for they were inflicted
upon a body against which it had as little power as Satan against the
cross.

When, before I became acquainted with Feuerbach, I flung my books aside,
wearied or angered, I often seized in the middle of the night my monster
Poem of the World, my tragedy of Panthea and Abradatus, or some other
poetical work, and did not retire till the wick of the lamp burned out
at three in the morning.

When I think how much time and earnest labour were lavished on that
poem, I regret having yielded to the hasty impulse to destroy it.

I have never since ventured to undertake anything on so grand a scale.
I could repeat only a few lines of the verses it contained; but the
plan of the whole work, as I rounded it in Gottingen and Hosterwitz, I
remember perfectly, and I think, if only for the sake of its peculiarity
and as the mirror of a portion of my intellectual life at that time, its
main outlines deserve reproduction here.

I made Power and Matter, which I imagined as a formless element; the
basis of all existence. These two had been cast forth by the divine
Ruler of a world incomprehensible to human intelligence, in which the
present is a moment, space a bubble, as out of harmony with the mighty
conditions and purposes of his realm. But this supreme Ruler offered to
create for them a world suited to their lower plane of existence. Power
I imagined a man, Matter a woman. They were hostile to each other,
for he despised his quiet, inert companion, she feared her restless,
unyielding partner; yet the power of the ruler of the higher world
forced them to wed.

From their loveless union sprang the earth, the stars-in short, all
inorganic life.

When the latter showed its relation to the father, Power, by the
impetu