in a flash the comicality of my indignation over such articles as it
contained. My horizon was still sufficiently circumscribed for me to
suppose that the state of affairs in Copenhagen was, in and of itself,
of importance. I myself regarded my horizon as wide. One day, when
making a mental valuation of myself, I wrote, with the naivete of
nineteen, "My good qualities, those which will constitute my
personality, if I ever become of any account, are a mighty and ardent
enthusiasm, a thorough authority in the service of Truth, _a wide
horizon_ and philosophically trained thinking powers. These must make
up for my lack of humour and facility."

It was only several years after the beginning of our acquaintance that I
felt myself in essential agreement with Hans Broechner. I had been
enraptured by a study of Ludwig Feuerbach's books, for Feuerbach was the
first thinker in whose writings I found the origin of the idea of God in
the human mind satisfactorily explained. In Feuerbach, too, I found a
presentment of ideas without circumlocution and without the usual heavy
formulas of German philosophy, a conquering clarity, which had a very
salutary effect on my own way of thinking and gave me a feeling of
security. If for many years I had been feeling myself more conservative
than my friend and master, there now came a time when in many ways I
felt myself to be more liberal than he, with his mysterious life in the
eternal realm of mind of which he felt himself to be a link.


III.

I had not been studying Jurisprudence much more than a year before it
began to weigh very heavily upon me. The mere sight of the long rows of
_Schou's Ordinances_, which filled the whole of the back of my