Therefore I repeat that the religious world--and this is the world of thoughts--reaches its completion in criticism, where thinking extends its encroachments over every thought, no one of which may "egoistically" establish itself. Where would the "purity of criticism," the purity of thinking, be left if even one thought escaped the process of thinking? This explains the fact that the critic has even begun already to gibe gently here and there at the thought of Man, of humanity and humaneness, because he suspects that here a thought is approaching dogmatic fixity. But yet he cannot decompose this thought till he has found a--"higher" in which it dissolves; for he moves only--in thoughts. This higher thought might be enunciated as that of the movement or process of thinking itself, _i. e._ as the thought of thinking or of criticism.
Freedom of thinking has in fact become complete hereby, freedom of mind celebrates its triumph: for the individual, "egoistic" thoughts have lost their dogmatic truculence. There is nothing left but the--dogma of free thinking or of criticism.
Against everything that belongs to the world of thought, criticism is in the right, _i. e._ in might: it is the victor. Criticism, and criticism alone, is "up to date." From the standpoint of thought there is no power capable of being an overmatch for criticism's, and it is a pleasure to see how easily and sportively this dragon swallows all other serpents of thought. Each serpent twists, to be sure, but criticism crushes it in all its "turns."
I am no opponent of criticism, _i. e._ I am no dogmatist, and do not feel myself touched by the critic's tooth with which he tears the dogmatist to pieces. If I were a "dogmatist," I should place at the head a dogma, _i. e._ a thought, an idea, a principle, and should complete this as a "systematist," spinning it out to a system, _i. e._ a structure of thought. Conversely, if I were a critic, _viz._, an opponent of the dogmatist, I should carry on the fight of free thinking against the enthralling thought, I should defend thinking against what was thought. But I am neither the champion of a thought nor the champion of thinking; for "I," from whom I start, am not a thought, nor do I consist in thinking. Against me, the unnameable, the realm of thoughts, thinking, and mind is shattered.