be thyself and the ideas of Jesus
‘Know thyself’ was written over the portal of the antique world. ‘Be thyself’ — the message of Christ to man—shall be written over the portal of the new world. What Jesus meant, was “You have a wonderful personality. Develop it. Be yourself. Don’t imagine that your perfection lies in accumulating or possessing external things. Your affection is inside of you.”
Jesus moved in a community that allowed the accumulation of private property, when he talks about the rich he simply means people who have not developed their personalities. Man reaches his perfection, not through what he has, not even through what he does, but entirely through what he is … The ideals that we owe to Christ are the ideals of the man who abandons society entirely, or of the man who resists society absolutely. But man is naturally social. 1