In his finitude each individual begins anew. For his maturing he depends upon authority in order to appropriate the content that can be handed on by … - Karl Jaspers

For one wishing to philosophize, it is of particular, indeed of crucial importance to ascertain the difference between the object cognition that is achieved in the sciences and the transcending thought that characterizes philosophy......which transcend[s] the limits of the knowable and of the world as a whole, so that through these limits we become aware of the phenomenality of empirical existence and hence of the Comprehensive nature of being, thus entering into the area of faith.

Ale morální a metafyzická vina, již chápe jen jedinec ve svém společenství jako svou vinu, se neodpykává (jak vyplývá z její podstaty). Nepřestává. Kdo ji má, vstupuje do procesu, který potrvá po celý jeho život.

Pro nás Němce tu platí alternativa: Bud se přijetí oné viny - kterou nemají ostatní na mysli, ale kterou stále znovu vyslovuje naše svědomí – stane základním rysem našeho německého sebeuvědomění, a pak půjde naše duše cestou proměny, nebo klesneme do lhostejné průměrnosti pouhého žití.

"Just as primitive man believed himself to stand face to face with demons and believed that could he but know their names he would become their master, so is contemporary man faced by this incomprehensible, which disorders his calculations. "If I can but grasp it, if I can but cognise it", so he thinks, "I can make it my servant.