Christianity has aimed to deliver us from a life determined by nature, from the appetites as actuating us, and so has meant that man should not let himself be determined by his appetites. This does not involve the idea that _he_ was not to _have_ appetites, but that the appetites were not to have him, that they were not to become _fixed_, uncontrollable, indissoluble. Now, could not what Christianity (religion) contrived against the appetites be applied by us to its own precept that _mind_ (thought, conceptions, ideas, faith, etc.) must determine us; could we not ask that neither should mind, or the conception, the idea, be allowed to determine us, to become _fixed_ and inviolable or "sacred"? Then it would end in the _dissolution of mind_, the dissolution of all thoughts, of all conceptions. As we there had to say "We are indeed to have appetites, but the appetites are not to have us," so we should now say "We are indeed to have _mind_, but mind is not to have us." If the latter seems lacking in sense, think _e. g._ of the fact that with so many a man a thought becomes a "maxim," whereby he himself is made prisoner to it, so that it is not he that has the maxim, but rather it that has him. And with the maxim he has a "permanent standpoint" again. The doctrines of the catechism become our _principles_ before we find it out, and no longer brook rejection. Their thought, or--mind, has the sole power, and no protest of the "flesh" is further listened to. Nevertheless it is only through the "flesh" that I can break the tyranny of mind; for it is only when a man hears his flesh along with the rest of him that he hears himself wholly, and it is only when he wholly hears _himself_ that he is a hearing or rational[42] being. The Christian does not hear the agony of his enthralled nature, but lives in "humility"; therefore he does not grumble at the wrong which befalls his _person_; he thinks himself satisfied with the "freedom of the spirit." But, if the flesh once takes the floor, and its tone is "passionate," "indecorous," "not well-disposed," "spiteful," etc. (as it cannot be otherwise), then he thinks he hears voices of devils, voices _against the spirit_ (for decorum, passionlessness, kindly disposition, and the like, is--spirit), and is justly zealous against them. He could not be a Christian if he were willing to endure them. He listens only to morality, and slaps immorality in the mouth; he listens only to legality, and gags the lawless word. The _spirit_ of morality and legality holds him a prisoner; a rigid, unbending _master_. They call that the "mastery of the spirit,"--it is at the same time the _standpoint_ of the spirit.