There was once a man, Harry, called the Steppenwolf. He went on two legs, wore clothes and was a human being, but heless he was iy a wolf of the Steppes. He had learned a good deal of all that people of a good intelligence , and was a fairly clever fellow. What he had not learned, however, was this: to find te in himself and his own life. The cause of this apparently was that at the bottom of his heart he knew all the time (or thought he khat he was iy not a man, but a wolf of the Steppes. Clever men might argue the point whether he truly was a wolf, whether, that is, he had been ged, before birth perhaps, from a wolf into a human being, or had been given the soul of a wolf, though born as a human being; or whether, oher hand, this belief that he was a wolf was no more than a fancy or a disease of his. It might, for example, be possible that in his childhood he was a little wild and disobedient and disorderly, and that those whht him up had declared a war of extin against the beast in him; and precisely this had given him the idea and the belief that he was in fact actually a beast with only a thin c of the human. On this point one could speak at length aertainingly, and indeed write a book about it. The Steppenwolf, however, would be he better for it, since for him it was all one whether the wolf had beeched or beaten into him, or whether it was merely an idea of his own. What others chose to think about it or what he chose to think himself was no good to him at all. It left the wolf inside him just the same.
And so the Steppenwolf had two natures, a human and a wolfish ohis was his fate, and it may well be that it was not a very exceptional ohere must have been many men who have had a good deal of the dog or the fox, of the fish or the serpent in them without experieng araordinary difficulties on that at. In such cases, the man and the fish lived on together aher did the other any harm. The one even helped the other. Many a man indeed has carried this dition to suviable lengths that he has owed his happiness more to the fox or the ape in him than to the man. So much for on knowledge. In the case of Harry, however, it was just the opposite. In him the man and the wolf did not go the same way together, but were in tinual and deadly enmity. Oed simply and solely to harm the other, and when there are two in one blood and in one soul who are at deadly enmity, then life fares ill. Well, to each his lot, and none is light.
Now with our Steppenwolf it was so that in his scious life he lived now as a wolf, now as a man, as ihe case is with all mixed beings. But, when he was a wolf, the man in him lay in ambush, ever och to interfere and n, while at those times that he was a man the wolf did just the same. For example, if Harry, as man, had a beautiful thought, felt a fine and noble emotion, or performed a so-called good act, then the wolf bared his teeth at him and laughed and showed him with bitter s how laughable this whole pantomime was in the eyes of a beast, of a wolf who knew well enough in his heart what suited him, namely, to trot alone over the Steppes and now and then te himself with blood or to pursue a female wolf. Then, wolfishly seen, all human activities became horribly absurd and misplaced, stupid and vain. But it was exactly the same when Harry felt and behaved as a wolf and showed others his teeth a hatred ay against all human beings and their lying and degee manners and s. For then the human part of him lay i