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3rd June "Is everything nothing but illusion? How? I have lived, have lived and worked for myself and for others, have taken and given delight, have set others of my kind in the world, who will continue the work that I have begun and take pleasure in it. [...] And whoever has expected complete happiness in this world, he certainly must complain of illusion. But he who knows that he is a frail human being and of what he is and is not capable, and knows the worth of things around him, he will seldom complain of disillusion. It can be! And so I must search out illusion in myself only and not in the things exterior to me.

8th June I think that under the moon no such devils exist as those who call themselves human beings, but are really only disguised in the human frame. All my days nothing has made me so angry as when I have read the law reports and learn of such monsters who found their lustful pleasure in murder, and not only in murder but in torture. Those who have devised all imaginable pains, so as to torment to a slow death such of their fellow-creatures that have fallen into their claws, and that only for their opinions! But it might be that these devils are not really so interested in opinions, but more in satisfying their lust for killing. Are these not true signs of a devil?

9th June It seems to me dreadful that even in our times princes and monarchs exist on this globe who allow themselves to be led by these devils, grant them power to persecute their fellow-creatures in this way. [...] Woe to the land where such devils have the upper hand, where no righteous man, who thinks differently from them, can do aught from fear of only rousing suspicion against himself, because these devils have already seized in their talons so many honest men on suspicion only, who can never more struggle free of them. Woe to the land where one cannot think freely! Woe to the land where unrighteousness sits on every throne and tyrants lord it over us.

10th June [...] I would willingly pray for illumination, so long as faith in being heard does not fail me, Being of all beings, immeasurable All, incomprehensible builder and creator of innumerable worlds, hast Thou thrown our planet into Thy boundless creation only at random, like a meaningless little spot? No, that Thou hast not done. The wisest of all Thy creatures on this planet have found out that Thou hast made everything very wisely. But the many thousands of ants who crawl about on the antheap of this globe and call themselves human beings, hast Thou left these, O incomprehensible Wisdom, to their fate, given them freedom to do what they will there, to bite and devour each other, to live in perpetual strife and fret? Or hast Thou set these tiny little animals on their course of life, to be born and die, like any other mite? But the good and the evil - is there to be no difference? We do not see it. From outward appearances the evil little beasts are always happier than the good ones. The latter must always suffer much from the former.

11th June Our globe must indeed, amid the immeasurable edifice of creation, be very small, yes, a point of little significance. How small then must we men be? Yet we are living beings. Are we then so small that Thy eye that sees so clearly cannot reach us, ineffable Creator? And yet we too belong to the whole, we are also Thy work, although it often seems to us that Thou givest us little attention. I see that in all my littleness I consist of two parts, body and spirit. I know from experience that the body without the spirit is dead, it collapses and rots away. But I do not know from experience whether the spirit too can go on existing outside its house, the body.

12th June It would indeed be my wish that my spirit might continue to live even at the separation from the body, and this wish is, so far as I know, planted in no other creature but ourselves. Or hast Thou not, incomprehensibly good and wise Creator, stamped this wish in my bosom? Is it maybe awakened by hearsay, from education, from my parents and grandparents, nourished in me and in many other men, believed and taken as certainty. Have there not been other little ignorant people, who have claimed a revelation from Thee? Art Thou then, the Ineffable, such a partial being, that Thou hast entrusted secrets to some of Thy tiny creatures, and withheld that revelation from the other, much larger crowd of Thy creatures, that class of people who are full of curiosity and the spirit of enquiry? I cannot believe it. Or is it Thy will, All-Wise one, that we should

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