Related drafts for the first, second, and third scenes

THOMASIUS: You have a victor, O high bearers of wisdom, In me, who after many heated struggles And years of mental effort Has erected the proud edifice of knowledge, And found it defended first By the spirit of inquiry of my own soul And now by the confession of many people. Finally, raise up as a member of your temple treasure You, this my work. Blinded by such abundance of light, It seems to me that only astonishment is fitting Before what the power of the mind, through me, A weak instrument, wanted to achieve. And truly, if anything in the vast universe Could drown out the voice of my own heart, The words of the high master Must be able to do so, who just now Spoke to me so fatherly. But in truth, man alone May approach this temple. Therefore, it befits me to do something else Than to ask for your high protection. For know that the accomplisher of the work, Who found countless confessors, To whom you wish to give consecration: He stands as a renegade of his own message In this hour before your judgment seat, And with his own soul's contradiction The terrible realization unites, That here in this place recognition May find what to the creator Can only appear as error. — As long as the work held me in chains And I was driven from conclusion to conclusion Rushing toward the deceptive goal, The structure appeared rock-solid to me. And it remained so for a long time, After the work was completed. Had it been otherwise, I would have understood The effect That emanated from my message. But only late, when the numbness had faded, The creative forces poured over my self, And I faced myself again, Then the resistance could awaken, Which showed me in my own being Quite clearly what an illusion Had sprung from the spirit, Which believed itself so secure, yes, that The world could still hold firmly together at this hour. The world, for which my edifice of knowledge Was to provide a firm foundation And which, from the depths of its being In times when the spirit enters spiritual spheres Can rise to conscious vision Appeared in its own essence And true form before my soul. Oh, how different everything was there, Than it had been drawn in my soul's delusion In the well-constructed edifice of knowledge. There I had to see How error stands in relation to truth in reality. Death is not only the destruction Of the physical being that envelops the core of man, It is also the destruction of what, as truth, The shell with its senses can ever conceive. And when the man will one day appear Who brings true images of what Lies beyond the threshold of death, Then it will not be through harmony with all that reason recommends, the reality of the spiritual realm before the soul, it will be through its conflict with all that is temporal that the eternal being will be brought to life in the heart. You imagine yourselves to be the messengers of a higher world; you want to have received from ancient times A knowledge of the original forms of beings. By entrusting it to the signs That come from the realm of time, You have already married it to delusion and delusional beings. You have entered the realm of deception And have the true essence of being, That was once bequeathed to you, Transformed into a caricature even more distorted Than those dull human souls Whom you wish to guide as leaders. If delusion had departed from my errant soul at the right moment, I would have found the strength To proclaim to the whole world: To cry out to the whole world: O Avoid, O people, the error, Which with glitzy arts Creeps into your souls. — Before I could, I received word That your protection is with my message. I hurried to my friend, Who knew best How I should find myself in this cruel hardship, That your light of wisdom would shine brightly Over my deception. With words of wisdom deeply rooted My noble friend met me, But only a dark certainty seized me The certainty that I had deceived myself, And since my evil art had succeeded In deceiving you too, that In all the wide world the pillars of truth Stand on rotten ground. The compulsion that drives me here To tell you freely that you too Can only walk in darkness, It takes more from man Than spiritual spheres can ever give him.