Our hearts have not even been engaged—nor, for that matter, have our ears! We've
been much more like someone divinely distracted and self-absorbed into whose ear
the clock has just pealed the twelve strokes of noon with all its force and who all at
once wakes up and asks himself "What exactly did that clock strike?"—so we rub
ourselves behind the ears afterwards and ask, totally surprised and embarrassed "What
have we really just experienced? And more: "Who are we really?" Then, as I've
mentioned, we count—after the fact—all the twelve trembling strokes of the clock of
our experience, our lives, our being—alas! in the process we keep losing the count. So
we remain necessarily strangers to ourselves, we do not understand ourselves, we
have to keep ourselves confused. For us this law holds for all eternity: "Each man is
furthest from himself." Where we ourselves are concerned, we are not
"knowledgeable people