put itself once for all into the prison of pessimism, it is at this juncture that the eye has to recoil and rebound in despair from off an adamantine impossibility, it is at this juncture that the ideas “guilt” and “duty” have to turn backwards⁠—turn backwards against whom ? There is no doubt about it; primarily against the “ower,” in whom the bad conscience now establishes itself, eats, extends, and grows like a polypus throughout its length and breadth, all with such virulence, that at last, with the impossibility of paying the debt, there becomes conceived the idea of the impossibility of paying the penalty, the thought of its inexpiability (the idea of “eternal punishment”)⁠—finally, too, it turns against the “creditor,” whether found in the causa prima