4. "For in no matter can a man be more easily talked around than precisely in the one he does not understand himself.
5. "For in this case he either accepts the verdict out of ignorance or because he believes in the authority of the speaker, and will then never arrive at an opinion of his own. 6. "And this means nothing else but to shackle the independence of his own spirit and to become a mechanical spirit of another or set aside his own life in favor of an alien, spurious life. 7. "I am telling you this from my own experience so that you may not let yourself be talked around by me, but accept only that which makes sense to you; thus you shall not accept a single syllable which you merely had to believe without having grasped it beforehand firmly in your mind. 8. "There is no worse state for a free man than that of a blind faith; for such a faith engenders the true death of the spirit. 9. "Whoever believes blindly, is at the same time a spirit under judgment by some ambitious brother. 10. "If already a judgment of the living God is deadly, how much more must this be the case with the judgment of a dead man or one who himself possesses only a spurious life. 11. "Behold, for this reason a personal opinion - be it ever so poor - is much better than one adopted only through faith, for the veracity of which the spirit which must be free has no guarantee other than the authority of the preacher and the lukewarm complacency of its own foolishness. 12. "All of which is surely an abomination before God; for God created man for a free life and not that he might be an indolent mouthpiece of some ambitious preacher who is a selfish judge of the hearts of men who are meant to be free.
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