Seht da den Menschen! Aus dem Franzoesischen: Ecce homo

10

...has in her works Werken as much as we have in ours; indeed, because she is more fruitful and insightful than we are, her works—if we knew her spirit Geist—would have the sublime advantage of granting our thinking and our soul Seele even more living satisfaction than they do our sight, as they lay out before us the splendor of their outward glory and the rich but regular diversity of their forms! Let us also believe that it would fulfill the purpose of this highest wisdom Weisheit if we directed our being toward researching the goals she had when she multiplied that immensity of different objects before our eyes. Since it is true that all reality Wirklichkeit strives to expand and make itself known, and this can only happen through its signs or witnesses, the proclamation Kundmachung would be precisely facilitated and supported if we carefully questioned the witnesses and signs regarding it

11

and even more carefully collected their statements.

But who among these witnesses and signs, other than man Mensch, could be more worthy of our attention and reveal the greatest realities to us? Who could give more significant indications? Who could let those countless streams of fire Feuerströme circle before us, which seem to emerge living from his thoughts and his heart and, so to speak, show him to us as if sitting on the throne of all worlds Weltall, judging and guiding them under the eye of the invisible ruler Herrschers, who is the essence of everything man finds above himself?

If all other signs making up the universe present themselves to us in terms of their fragility and their striking inequalities only as passive and individual reflections of the spiritual and derived powers of the deity Gottheit, then man, placed as if before the face of the deity itself, sufficiently announces himself as destined,