Do or Die, Punishing the wicked and rewarding the righteous." I had to be satisfied with this. The prophet and the poet are the same. A man who believed that his soul had a weight to be balanced was more like a poet than a prophet. My master explained that he had learned that the soul was an organ of sense. He told me that this poet and prophet was named Origen. It was he who had first established this theory, and that it had been generally accepted since. It now appeared to him as the only right one. He believed that everything in this world was an instrument of good and a school of virtue, and that vice was an instrument of evil. In order to see this clearly he was obliged to make a theory of this kind. All the evil, he thought, was caused by the imagination, but it was its task to represent good to the soul. "You cannot imagine what an admirable sight it is to see a soul in which the imagination is at rest." This idea was new and strange to me, and I tried it on by means of the following image: A blind man is feeling his way along the wall; if the wall were to disappear he would be quite at a loss. I was very familiar with this idea. It is to me a familiar idea that the world is only an illusion, and that we are not certain whether we shall awake from this dream or not. After a time the world would begin to appear less and less an illusion. Everything which is not will begin to have an existence of its own, and all things which are are continually becoming something else. Every perception, every movement of the soul—it is easy to imagine how a man must be in such a state of perplexity as to know nothing for certain—will take on a definite form, which in some way or other must be connected with the other forms. But as the soul is not yet in a condition to see distinctly, every movement which it makes is very clumsy. If we imagine that our dreams are real we will also have to assume that things have a reality which is to be found in sleep. This condition of the soul seemed to me now so strange and wonderful that I sought for new images to picture it to myself. As I could imagine this condition of the soul to be like being asleep, so I was convinced that this sleep must be the dream of a man who had passed through death. By this time I had been thinking more deeply than my master, and had a different idea of this sleep in which we imagine that we are dead, namely, that we should not feel dead. When the image of death came to my mind, then all at once my father's image was there, too. This image was a very peculiar one, but it was not an illusion. Whenever I thought of him, it seemed as if he had stepped out of his picture before me. When I looked at the picture, it seemed to me that he was not far off, and when I turned away, it seemed to me as if he were standing right there. His image was so strong and so true that I was quite beside myself with it. As I grew older my father's image was for me always the most beautiful in the world, and in looking at myself in the mirror it was always the most beautiful of all the figures I saw there. I tried to think what he had felt at my birth. Probably he was proud of me; probably he was pleased to hear the songs my mother sang to me. But he did not know me then. I thought of all that might happen to me when he should die, and then I saw how the world would be darkened and become full of ghosts and demons. I thought of the misery which I should be obliged to endure, and yet when I made this vision more definite and pictured it to myself in more detail, then it seemed as if it had happened before to me. I asked myself the question if I should lose my father when I was a little older, and said to myself: "Yes, that will be the case," and thought no more of it. I always took this view of the matter, that if one is to live in the world one must be prepared for death, and the dead man should be forgotten. I imagined it would be just as pleasant to follow the body to the grave, and then there would be nothing left but the soul. It would then begin to soar like a bird, which had never lived on earth and had never known joy or suffering. The world could not harm me, since I had no connection with it. I had no father or mother, no relations, no friends, no foes. There was nothing to be afraid of but my own weaknesses. Nothing could affect me save myself. My father's image became more and more distinct, I saw him better and better; but then it also seemed to me as if I were living with him, and when I was with him it seemed to me that he was really living. One day he sat down beside me and said: "My dear son, what will you do when you grow up? Will you study philosophy? You have much that is of use in it, but what will you do when the philosophers die? Will you not wish to understand the philosophers who are gone, and why they felt and thought as they did?" "They are all dead now," I said. "But not all of them are dead," he replied; "not all the dead have been laid in the grave. But even if there were a philosopher who had died today, you would seek him out and become his pupil. You would wish to know why he thought as he did, that you might think the same." This he said to encourage me, and because he had been disappointed in me. The truth of the matter was that I was not so lazy as he thought, that I had not allowed myself to be discouraged. I said: "Yes, this is all true, but as you are dead, you can do nothing for me." "Yes," he answered, "I know I am dead, but that is not to say that you know it. I have lived a hundred and forty years; but I am still living, for your future is yet to come, and I must think of what you shall be. I do not see yet what you will become, but it is certain you will become something. As yet you do not know what it is to be. Your time has not come. But now that you are standing at the door of your future life, it is proper that you should ask me what I believe your future is to be." "I believe," I said, "that I shall be a great man." "A great man!" he said. "Yes, that may come about. That is the most natural, and for the most part the happiest, career of man; to be really great one must be earnest." I asked him what I should have to do. "That I cannot tell," he answered; "it will depend on your own nature and inclinations." "What should I have to learn?" I asked again. "I can only say that when your soul has once received an impulse, it will be more difficult to check it than to help it on. What do you think of the philosopher?" "He was a very wise man," I replied, "and I am his son. If it is thus with him, it can be no worse with me." "We will see if it is thus," he said, and there was something in his voice which made my heart beat. A great change took place in me, but I did not understand it. If I think of that hour of my life now, I am astonished at my own thoughts. It did not seem to me that this was a human being speaking to me, this was the great poet, the prophet, the prophet of fate. "Look," he said, "I am a prophet! In the course of ages there have been many prophets; the world has thought they were mad, but in reality they were only prophets. The day will come when you will believe me to be what I really am." Then I became conscious that he was a great teacher who had come into my room, and was speaking to me in the great style which is used to move the world, and which I was so soon to use to move myself. When he saw that I took my part in it, he laughed very kindly, so that I saw that he was human and could laugh, and then I said: "If the thing does not make me laugh, it is not the right thing." "Very well, my son," he said; "then it is good to cry, for at such moments we come very near to each other." "Why did you talk to me about death?" I asked; "I can understand why you might talk to somebody else, but I am not so dull as that." "I will show you why I spoke to you as I did," he said. "I have long been anxious to give a sign of my presence, and at last I have found one in you, for you can only understand my words when your heart has opened. Your soul is still so cold that you cannot appreciate what is written here; but one day, and that not so far off, you will call on the name of the most divine of the prophets; and if you really wish for it, it will not be hard for