Frederick was not one of those who enter this crisis unconsciously. He
had been feeling its approach for years, and it was characteristic of him
that he reflected upon its nature. Sometimes he was of the opinion that
it marked the termination of youth and the beginning, therefore, of real
maturity. It seemed to him as if hitherto he had worked with other
people's hands, according to other people's will, guided rather than
guiding. His thinking appeared to him to have been no thinking, but an
operating with transmitted ideas. He put it to himself that he had been
standing in a hothouse, and his head, like the top of a young tree
reaching upward to the light, had broken through the glass roof and made
its way into the open.

"Now I will walk with my own feet, look with my own eyes, think my own
thoughts, and act from the plenary power of my own will."

In his valise, Frederick carried Stirner's "The Individual and his Own."

Man living in society is never wholly independent. There is no intellect
that does not look about for other intellects, if for no other object
than to seek confirmation, that is, reinforcement or guidance, at all
events, companionship. That Frederick von Kammacher's new intellectual
companion was Max Stirner, was the result of a profound disillusionment.
He had been disillusioned in his deep-seated altruism, which until now
had completely dominated him.




III