Agathe was wondering why it should be simpler to attend to others’ needs than to one’s own. She was one of those not at all egotistic natures whose thoughts always revolve around themselves but who never look after their own interests, and this is much further removed from the usual, self-serving sort of selfishness than is the contented unselfishness of those who look after their fellow men. And so what her neighbor was saying was at bottom foreign to her, but somehow it affected her nonetheless, and particular words, wielded with such energetic emphasis, danced before her eyes unsettlingly, as if their meaning was more to be seen in the air than heard. They happened to be walking along a ridge that gave Agathe a wonderful view of the deeply sunken valley, while her companion evidently experienced the site as akin to a pulpit or lectern. She stopped, and with her hat, which she had all along been carelessly swinging in her hand, she drew a line through the stranger’s speech. “So you did form an image of me,” she said. “I see it shining through, and it’s not flattering!”

The tall gentleman was dismayed, for he had not meant to offend her, and Agathe gave him a friendly smile. “You seem to be confusing me with the rights of the free personality. And what’s more, with a rather neurasthenic and quite unpleasant personality!”

“I was only speaking of the essential foundation of the personal life,” he said apologetically, “and admittedly, the situation in which I found you gave me the feeling that you might be in need of counsel. The essential foundation of life goes frequently unrecognized these days. All the neurosis of modern life, with all its excesses, only comes from a slack inner atmosphere where there’s a lack of will, because without a special effort of the will no one can gain that unity and constancy that raise one above the dark tumult of the organism!”

Here again two words, “unity” and “constancy,” came up like a memory recalling Agathe’s yearning and self-reproaches. “Explain to me what you mean by that,” she said. “Surely one can only have a will if one already has a goal?!”

“It doesn’t matter what I mean,” he replied in a tone that was as mild as it was curt. “Don’t all of humanity’s great scriptures tell us with unsurpassable clarity what we must and must not do?”

Agathe was baffled.

“Establishing fundamental ideals for living,” her companion explained, “demands such a penetrating knowledge of life and of man, and at the same time such a heroic mastery of the passions and of one’s own selfish nature, as has only been granted to very few people in the course of thousands of years. And these teachers of humanity have at all times professed the same truth.”

Agathe involuntarily resisted, as would any young person who values his or her flesh and blood more highly than the bones of dead sages. “But laws made for all of humanity thousands of years ago can’t possibly apply to conditions today!” she exclaimed.