16. Neighbour Love
Ye crowd around your neighbor, and have fine words for it. But I say to you: your neighbor-love is your bad love of yourselves.
You flee unto your neighbor from yourselves, and would rather make a virtue of it: but I fathom your "unselfishness."
The Thou is older than the I; the Thou has been consecrated, but not yet the I: so man presses near to his neighbor.
Do I advise you to neighbor-love? Rather do I advise you to neighbor-flight and to furthest love!
Higher than love of your neighbor is love to the furthest and future ones; higher still than love to men, is love to things and phantoms.
The phantom that runs on before thee, my brother, is fairer than thou; why dost thou not give unto it thy flesh and thy bones? But thou fearest, and runnest unto thy neighbor.
Ye cannot endure it with yourselves, and do not love yourselves sufficiently: so ye seek to mislead your neighbor into love, and would fain gild yourselves with his error.
Would that ye could not endure it with any kind of near ones, or their neighbors; then would ye have to create your friend and his overflowing heart out of yourselves.
Ye call in a witness when ye want to speak well of yourselves; and when ye have misled him to think well of you, ye also think well of yourselves.
Not only does he lie, who speaketh contrary to his knowledge, but more so, he who speaketh contrary to his ignorance.
