led
me to self-examination, and thence to a knowledge of my own character
which revealed many surprising and unpleasing things. But I also felt
that it was not yet too late to bring the good and evil traits, partly
hereditary, partly acquired, into harmony with one another and render
them of use to the same higher objects.

Yes, if I were permitted time to do so!

I had learned how quickly and unexpectedly the hour strikes which puts
an end to all struggle towards a goal.

Besides, I now knew what would protect me from a relapse into the old
careless waste of strength, what could aid me to do my utmost, for the
mother's heart had again found the son's, fully and completely.

I had been forced to become as helpless as a child in order again to lay
my head upon her breast and belong to her as completely as during the
first years of life. During the long nights when fever robbed me of
sleep she sat beside my bed, holding my hands in hers.

At last one came which contained hours of the most intense suffering,
and in its course she asked, "Can you still pray?" The answer, which
came from my inmost heart, was, "When you are with me, and with you,
certainly."

We remained silent a long time, and whenever impatience, suffering,
and faintness threatened to overpower me, I found, like Antaeus when he
touched the earth that had given him birth, new strength in my mother's
heart.

My old life seemed henceforward to lie far behind me.

I did not take up Feuerbach's writings again; his way could never again
have been mine. In my suffering it had become evident from what an Eden
he turns away and into what a wilderness he leads. But I still value
this thinker as an honest, virile, and brilliantly gifted seeker after
truth.

I also laid aside the other philosophers whose works I had been
studying.

I never resumed Lotze, though later, with two other students, I attended
Trendelenburg's difficult course, and tried to comprehend Kant's
"critiques."

I first became familiar with Schopenhauer in Jena.

On the other hand, I again devoted many leisure hours to Egyptological
works.

I felt that these studies suited my powers and would satisfy me.
Everything which had formerly withheld me from the pursuits of learning
now seemed worthless. It was as if I stood in a new relation to all
things. Even the one to my mother had undergone a transformation. I
realized for the first time what I possessed in her, how wrong I had
been