When, before I became acquainted with Feuerbach, I flung my books aside,
wearied or angered, I often seized in the middle of the night my monster
Poem of the World, my tragedy of Panthea and Abradatus, or some other
poetical work, and did not retire till the wick of the lamp burned out at
three in the morning.

When I think how much time and earnest labour were lavished on that poem,
I regret having yielded to the hasty impulse to destroy it.

I have never since ventured to undertake anything on so grand a scale.
I could repeat only a few lines of the verses it contained; but the plan
of the whole work, as I rounded it in Gottingen and Hosterwitz, I
remember perfectly, and I think, if only for the sake of its peculiarity
and as the mirror of a portion of my intellectual life at that time, its
main outlines deserve reproduction here.

I made Power and Matter, which I imagined as a formless element; the
basis of all existence. These two had been cast forth by the divine
Ruler of a world incomprehensible to human intelligence, in which the
present is a moment, space a bubble, as out of harmony with the mighty
conditions and purposes of his realm. But this supreme Ruler offered to
create for them a world suited to their lower plane of existence. Power
I imagined a man, Matter a woman. They were hostile to each other, for
he despised his quiet, inert companion, she feared her restless,
unyielding partner; yet the power of the ruler of the higher world
forced them to wed.

From their loveless union sprang the earth, the stars-in short, all
inorganic life.