capacity and this entity are themselves only suppositions.
Spirit. Thou reasonest correctly.
I. And thou hast pleasure in this! I may then indeed say “it is thought,”—and yet I can scarcely say even this;—rather, strictly speaking, I ought to say “the thought appears that I feel, perceive, think”—but by no means that “I feel, perceive, think.” The first only is fact; the second is an imaginary addition to the fact.
Spirit. It is well expressed.
I. There is nothing enduring, either out of me, or in me, but only a ceaseless change. I know of no being, not even of my own. There is no being. I myself absolutely know not, and am not. Pictures are:—they are the only things which exist, and they know of themselves after the fashion of pictures:—pictures which float past without there being anything past which they float; which, by means of like pictures, are connected with each other:—pictures without anything which is pictured in them, without significance and without aim. I myself am one of these pictures;—nay, I am not even this, but merely a confused picture of the pictures. All reality is transformed into a strange dream, without a life which is dreamed of, and without a mind which dreams it; into a dream which is woven together in a dream of itself. Intuition is the dream; thought,—the source of all the being and all the reality which I imagine, of my own being, my own powers, and my own purposes,—is the dream of that dream.
Spirit. Thou hast well understood it all. Employ the sharpest expressions to make this result hateful, if thou
