brother. He appeared to me as an angel of deliverance, for he recognised
amidst my many faults my better nature, and protected me against
ill-treatment. He went away again after a short stay; but I felt that my
soul was linked to his, thenceforth, down to its inmost depths; and
indeed, after his death, this love of mine for him turned the whole
course of my life.[10]

The boon was at last vouchsafed me, and that at my greatest need, to
leave my father's house. Had it been otherwise, the flagrant
contradiction between my outer and inner life must necessarily have
developed the evil inclinations which had begun in earnest to fasten
upon me. A new life entirely different from the former now opened before
me. I was ten years and nine months old. But I pause yet another moment
in the contemplation of this period before I pass to its narration. In
order to be clearly understood by your serene Highness, which is very
necessary to me if I am to attain my object, I will compare, with your
permission, my former life with my present. I shall endeavour to show
how I trace the connection of my earlier and my later life; how my
earlier life has proved for me the means of understanding my later; how,
in general, my own individual life has become to me a key to the
universal life, or, in short, to what I call the symbolic life and the
perpetual, conditioned, and unbroken chain of existence.

Since, throughout the period which I have just described, my inner self,
my life and being, my desires and endeavours, were not discerned by my
parents, so is it with me now with regard to certain German
Governments.[11] And just as my outward life then was imperfect and
incomplete, through which incompleteness my inner life was
misunderstood, so also now the imperfection and incompleteness of my
establishment prevent people from discerning the true nature, the basis,