What first diverted my attention from the work was, as has been
mentioned, the study of Feuerbach, to which I had been induced by a
letter from the geographer Karl Andree. I eagerly seized his books,
first choosing his "Axioms of the Philosophy of the Future," and
afterwards devoured everything he had written which the library
contained. And at that time I was grateful to my friend the geographer
for his advice. True, Feuerbach seemed to me to shatter many things
which from a child I had held sacred; yet I thought I discovered behind
the falling masonry the image of eternal truth.

The veil which I afterwards saw spread over so many things in Feuerbach's
writings at that time produced the same influence upon me as the mist
whence rise here the towers, yonder the battlements of a castle. It
might be large or small; the grey mist which forbids the eye from
definitely measuring its height and width by no means prevents the
traveller, who knows that a powerful lord possesses the citadel, from
believing it to be as large and well guarded as the power of its ruler
would imply.

True, I was not sufficiently mature for the study of this great thinker,
whom I afterwards saw endanger other unripe minds. As a disciple of this
master there were many things to be destroyed which from childhood had
become interlaced by a thousand roots and fibres with my whole
intellectual organism, and such operations are not effected without pain.

What I learned while seeking after truth during those night hours ought
to have taught me the connection between mind and body; yet I was never
farther from perceiving it. A sharp division had taken place in my
nature. By night, in arduous conflict, I led a strange mental life,