Back of the rod, mightier than it, stands our--obduracy, our obdurate courage. By degrees we get at what is back of everything that was mysterious and uncanny to us, the mysteriously-dreaded might of the rod, the father's stern look, etc., and back of all we find our--ataraxy, _i. e._ imperturbability, intrepidity, our counter force, our odds of strength, our invincibility. Before that which formerly inspired in us fear and deference we no longer retreat shyly, but take _courage_. Back of everything we find our _courage_, our superiority; back of the sharp command of parents and authorities stands, after all, our courageous choice or our outwitting shrewdness. And the more we feel ourselves, the smaller appears that which before seemed invincible. And what is our trickery, shrewdness, courage, obduracy? What else but--_mind!_[6]
Through a considerable time we are spared a fight that is so exhausting later--the fight against _reason_. The fairest part of childhood passes without the necessity of coming to blows with reason. We care nothing at all about it, do not meddle with it, admit no reason. We are not to be persuaded to anything by _conviction_, and are deaf to good arguments, principles, etc.; on the other hand, coaxing, punishment, and the like are hard for us to resist.
This stern life-and-death combat with _reason_ enter later, and begins a new phase; in childhood we scamper about without racking our brains much.
_Mind_ is the name of the _first_ self-discovery, the first undeification of the divine, _i. e._ of the uncanny, the spooks, the "powers above." Our fresh feeling of youth, this feeling of self, now defers to nothing; the world is discredited, for we are above it, we are _mind_.
Now for the first time we see that hitherto we have not looked at the world _intelligently_ at all, but only stared at it.
We exercise the beginnings of our strength on _natural powers_. We defer to parents as a natural power; later we say: Father and mother are to be forsaken, all natural power to be counted as riven. They are vanquished. For the rational, _i. e._ "intellectual" man there is no family as a natural power; a renunciation of parents, brothers, etc., makes its appearance. If these are "born again" as _intellectual, rational powers_, they are no longer at all what they were before.