Page 11

 
                   The End of One Life                        II 
what earthly deeds we achieved, but what we made of our own 
selves." 
  One day I hesitantly confessed to Dr. Ritter that I could never 
have any children, but he consoled me, saying, "Children are an 
extension of the personal into the world matter, a postponement of 
personal redemption and of the fulfillment of the ultimate duty 
laid upon every person to perfect himself." Fatherhood, he said, was
one of the ordinary human joys which he had long since renounced. 
  I recognized now that the Ego, always dominant in woman, must 
be overcome by me in myself, still bound by many ties to earth. 
I was to find myself in self-abnegation. I prayed that my body 
might become the vessel of the beautiful and divine so that my 
life be filled and fulfilled. How few, if any, of the millions strug- 
gling along the world's ways, have ever had or sought the oppor- 
tunity to find themselves. The leisure after the day's work is not 
devoted to this higher learning. Time that the wise #vould spend 
in meditating on these things is spent at movies, cafes and theaters, 
created as if by malicious design to hinder contemplation. 
  Frederick and I rejected all these things and were determined 
to fight our way to inner freedom in spite of all the hindrances 
of civilized life. His logical and abstract way of thinking was a 
revelation to me. It opened up a new world, a world which even 
this daring and adventurous thinker had not yet explored, and I 
realized from the start that unless I was prepared to impose upon 
myself the most rigorous self-restraint and discipline, I never could 
expect to keep pace with him. I felt in him the triumph of the 
masculine and was determined, in order not to fall by the wayside, 
to subjugate the eternal feminine in me as far as possible. Not that 
the normal relationship between man and woman should be quite 
rejected. It must, however, not dominate the situation. 
  "I cannot have a love-sick woman full of romantic notions trail- 
ing after me into the wilderness. . . ." Dr. Ritter used to say. This
was in the early days, but gradually he saw that I was ready to 
take whatever the great plan brought with it, and after a while 
this objection disappeared and he became reconciled to the idea of 
my accompanying him. I often think, indeed I am quite sure, that 
this experiment, with the idea of which he had been dallying off