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What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself.
Now God's power resides in the capacity to advance into emptiness.
For should I thereby succeed only in arousing in other people a serious doubt whether it had not been granted me to throw a glance behind the dark veil which otherwise hides the beyond from the eyes of man, my work would certainly still belong to the most interesting ones ever written since the existence of the world.
“… God demands a constant state of enjoyment… and it is my duty to provide him with this … in the shape of the greatest possible output of spiritual voluptuousness. And if, in this process, a little sensual pleasure falls to my share, I feel justified in accepting it as some slight compensation for the inordinate measure of suffering and privation that has been mine for so many past years.”1 So writes Senatsprasident Schreber in his Memoirs and although he is considered to be a