B1235 <=> B1237 [BTG XLVIII From the Author, p. 1236]

Such a compromise, I think, is possible if certain people consciously set themselves, as the chief aim of their existence, to acquire in their presences all the corresponding data to become masters among those around them similar to themselves.

Proceeding from this and acting in accordance to the wise saying of ancient times affirming that “in order to be in reality a just and good altruist it is inevitably required first of all to be an out and out egoist,” and also profiting by the good sense given us by Great Nature, each one of us must set for his chief aim to become in the process of our collective life a master.

But not a master in that sense and meaning which this word conveys to contemporary people, namely, one who has many slaves and much money, handed down, in most cases, by inheritance, but in the sense that a given man, thanks to his, in the objective sense, devout acts towards those around him – that is to say, acts manifested by him according to the dictates of his pure Reason alone, without the participation of those impulses which in him as in all people are engendered from the mentioned consequences of the properties of the maleficent organ Kundabuffer – acquires in himself that something which of itself constrains all those about him to bow before him and with reverence carry out his orders.

I now consider this first series of my writings ended and ended in just such a form that satisfies even myself.

In any case, I give my word that from tomorrow I shall not waste even five minutes of my time on this first series.

And now, before beginning work on the second series of my writings, in order to put them, from my point of view, into a generally accessible form, I intend to rest for a whole month, to write positively nothing, and for a stimulus to my organism, fatigued to the extreme limit, s-l-o-w-l-y to drink the still remaining fifteen bottles of “super-most-super-heavenly-nectar” called at the present time on Earth “old Calvados.”