No More Learning

But, immediately
below, a strong judgment is uttered with becoming
non-modesty, and precisely in regard to the Ninth
Symphony. It is said, for instance, that this


## p. 39 (#129) #############################################

DAVID STRAUSS. 39
symphony "is naturally the favourite of a pre-
valent taste, which in art, and music especially,
mistakes the grotesque for the genial, and the
formless for the sublime" (p. 428). It is true that
a critic as severe as Gervinus was gave this work a
hearty welcome, because it happened to confirm one
of his doctrines; but Strauss is " far from going to
these problematic productions" in search of the
merits of his Beethoven. "It is a pity," cries our
Master, with a convulsive sigh, "that one is com-
pelled, by such reservations, to mar one's enjoyment
of Beethoven, as well as the admiration gladly
accorded to him. " For our Master is a favourite
of the Graces, and these have informed him that
they only accompanied Beethoven part of the way,
and that he then lost sight of them. "This is a
defect," he cries, "but can you believe that it may
also appear as an advantage? " "He who is
painfully and breathlessly rolling the musical idea
along will seem to be moving the weightier one,
and thus appear to be the stronger" (pp. 423-24).
This is a confession, and not necessarily one con-
cerning Beethoven alone, but concerning "the
classical prose-writer" himself. He, the celebrated
author, is not abandoned by the Graces. From the
play of airy jests—that is to say, Straussian jests —
to the heights of solemn earnestness—that is to say,
Straussian earnestness—they remain stolidly at his
elbow. He, the classical prose-writer, slides his
burden along playfully and with a light heart,
whereas Beethoven rolls his painfully and breath-
lessly. He seems merely to dandle his load; this is
indeed an advantage. But would anybody believe


## p. 40 (#130) #############################################

40 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
that it might equally be a sign of something
wanting? In any case, only those could believe
this who mistake the grotesque for the genial, and
the formless for the sublime—is not that so, you
dandling favourite of the Graces? We envy no
one the edifying moments he may have, either in
the stillness of his little private room or in a new
heaven specially fitted out for him; but of all
possible pleasures of this order, that of Strauss's is
surely one of the most wonderful, for he is even
edified by a little holocaust. He calmly throws
the sublimest works of the German nation into the
flames, in order to cense his idols with their smoke.
Suppose, for a moment, that by some accident,
the Eroica, the Pastoral, and the Ninth Sym-
phony had fallen into the hands of our priest
of the Graces, and that it had been in his power to
suppress such problematic productions, in order to
keep the image of the Master pure, who doubts
but what he would have burned them? And it is
precisely in this way that the Strausses of our time
demean themselves: they only wish to know so
much of an artist as is compatible with the service
of their rooms; they know only the extremes—
censing or burning. To all this they are heartily
welcome; the one surprising feature of the whole
case is that public opinion, in matters artistic,
should be so feeble, vacillating, and corruptible as
contentedly to allow these exhibitions of indigent
Philistinism to go by without raising an objection;
yea, that it does not even possess sufficient sense of
humour to feel tickled at the sight of an unsesthetic
little master's sitting in judgment upon Beethoven.


## p. 41 (#131) #############################################

DAVID STRAUSS. 41
As to Mozart, what Aristotle says of Plato ought
really to be applied here: "Insignificant people
ought not to be permitted even to praise him. " In
this respect, however, all shame has vanished—from
the public as well as from the Master's mind: he is
allowed, not merely to cross himself before the
greatest and purest creations of German genius, as
though he had perceived something godless and
immoral in them, but people actually rejoice over
his candid confessions and admission of sins—more
particularly as he makes no mention of his own,
but only of those which great men are said to have
committed. Oh, if only our Master be in the right!
his readers sometimes think, when attacked by a
paroxysm of doubt; he himself, however, stands
there, smiling and convinced, perorating, condemn-
ing, blessing, raising his hat to himself, and is at
any minute capable of saying what the Duchesse
Delaforte said to Madame de Stael, to wit: " My
dear, I must confess that I find no one but myself
invariably right. "
VI.
A corpse is a pleasant thought for a worm, and a
worm is a dreadful thought for every living creature.
Worms fancy their kingdom of heaven in a fat
body; professors of philosophy seek theirs in
rummaging among Schopenhauer's entrails, and as
long as rodents exist, there will exist a heaven for
rodents. In this, we have the answer to our first
question: How does the believer in the new faith
picture his heaven? The Straussian Philistine


## p. 42 (#132) #############################################

42 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
harbours in the works of our great poets and
musicians like a parasitic worm whose life is
destruction, whose admiration is devouring, and
whose worship is digesting.
Now, however, our second question must be
answered: How far does the courage lent to its
adherents by this new faith extend? Even this
question would already have been answered, if
courage and pretentiousness had been one; for
then Strauss would not be lacking even in the just
and veritable courage of a Mameluke. At all
events, the "becoming modesty" of which Strauss
speaks in the above-mentioned passage, where he
is referring to Beethoven, can only be a stylistic
and not a moral manner of speech. Strauss has
his full share of the temerity to which every
successful hero assumes the right: all flowers grow
only for him—the conqueror; and he praises the
sun because it shines in at his window just at the
right time. He does not even spare the venerable
old universe in his eulogies—as though it were
only now and henceforward sufficiently sanctified
by praise to revolve around the central monad
David Strauss. The universe, he is happy to
inform us, is, it is true, a machine with jagged iron
wheels, stamping and hammering ponderously,
but: "We do not only find the revolution of pitiless
wheels in our world-machine, but also the shedding
of soothing oil" (p. 435). The universe, provided
it submit to Strauss's encomiums, is not likely to
overflow with gratitude towards this master of
weird metaphors, who was unable to discover
better similes in its praise. But what is the oil


## p. 43 (#133) #############################################

DAVID STRAUSS. 43
called which trickles down upon the hammers and
stampers? And how would it console a workman
who chanced to get one of his limbs caught in the
mechanism to know that this oil was trickling over
him? Passing over this simile as bad, let us turn
our attention to another of Strauss's artifices,
whereby he tries to ascertain how he feels disposed
towards the universe; this question of Marguerite's,
"He loves me—loves me not—loves me ? " hanging
on his lips the while. Now, although Strauss is
not telling flower-petals or the buttons on his
waistcoat, still what he does is not less harmless,
despite the fact that it needs perhaps a little more
courage. Strauss wishes to make certain whether
his feeling for the "All" is either paralysed or
withered, and he pricks himself; for he knows that
one can prick a limb that is either paralysed or
withered without causing any pain. As a matter
of fact, he does not really prick himself, but selects
another more violent method, which he describes
thus: "We open Schopenhauer, who takes every
occasion of slapping our idea in the face" (p. 167).
Now, as an idea—even that of Strauss's concerning
the universe—has no face, if there be any face in
the question at all it must be that of the idealist,
and the procedure may be subdivided into the
following separate actions:—Strauss, in any case,
throws Schopenhauer open, whereupon the latter
slaps Strauss in the face. Strauss then reacts re-
ligiously; that is to say, he again begins to belabour
Schopenhauer, to abuse him, to speak of absurdities,
blasphemies, dissipations, and even to allege that
Schopenhauer could not have been in his right


## p. 44 (#134) #############################################

44 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
senses. Result of the dispute: "We demand the
same piety for our Cosmos that the devout of old
demanded for his God"; or, briefly, "He loves
me. " Our favourite of the Graces makes his life a
hard one, but he is as brave as a Mameluke, and
fears neither the Devil nor Schopenhauer. How
much " soothing oil" must he use if such incidents
are of frequent occurrence!
On the other hand, we readily understand
Strauss's gratitude to this tickling, pricking, and
slapping Schopenhauer; hence we are not so very
much surprised when we find him expressing him-
self in the following kind way about him: "We
need only turn over the leaves of Arthur Schopen-
hauer's works (although we shall on many other
accounts do well not only to glance over but to study
them), etc. " (p. 166). Now, to whom does this
captain of Philistines address these words? To him
who has clearly never even studied Schopenhauer,
the latter might well have retorted, "This is an
author who does not even deserve to be scanned,
much less to be studied. " Obviously, he gulped
Schopenhauer down "the wrong way," and this
hoarse coughing is merely his attempt to clear his
throat. But, in order to fill the measure of his
ingenuous encomiums, Strauss even arrogates to
himself the right of commending old Kant: he
speaks of the latter's General History of the
Heavens of the Year 1J55 as of "a work which
has always appeared to me not less important
than his later Critique of Pure Reason. If in the
latter we admire the depth of insight, the breadth
of observation strikes us in the former. If in the


## p. 45 (#135) #############################################

DAVID STRAUSS. 45
latter we can trace the old man's anxiety to secure
even a limited possession of knowledge—so it be
but on a firm basis—in the former we encounter
the mature man, full of the daring of the discoverer
and conqueror in the realm of thought. " This
judgment of Strauss's concerning Kant did not
strike me as being more modest than the one con-
cerning Schopenhauer. In the one case, we have
the little captain, who is above all anxious to
express even the most insignificant opinion with
certainty, and in the other we have the famous
prose-writer, who, with all the courage of ignorance,
exudes his eulogistic secretions over Kant. It is
almost incredible that Strauss availed himself of
nothing in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason while
compiling his Testament of modern ideas, and
that he knew only how to appeal to the coarsest
realistic taste must also be numbered among the
more striking characteristics of this new gospel,
the which professes to be but the result of the
laborious and continuous study of history and
science, and therefore tacitly repudiates all connec-
tion with philosophy. For the Philistine captain
and his "We," Kantian philosophy does not exist.
He does not dream of the fundamental antinomy
of idealism and of the highly relative sense of all
science and reason. And it is precisely reason
that ought to tell him how little it is possible to
know of things in themselves. It is true, however,
that people of a certain age cannot possibly under-
stand Kant, especially when, in their youth, they
understood or fancied they understood that
"gigantic mind," Hegel, as Strauss did; and had


## p. 46 (#136) #############################################

46 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
moreover concerned themselves with Schleier-
macher, who, according to Strauss, "was gifted
with perhaps too much acumen. " It will sound
odd to our author when I tell him that, even
now, he stands absolutely dependent upon Hegel
and Schleiermacher, and that his teaching of the
Cosmos, his way of regarding things sub specie
biennii, his salaams to the state of affairs now
existing in Germany, and, above all, his shameless
Philistine optimism, can only be explained by an
appeal to certain impressions of youth, early habits,
and disorders; for he who has once sickened on
Hegel and Schleiermacher never completely re-
covers.
There is one passage in the confession-book
where the incurable optimism referred to above
bursts forth with the full joyousness of holiday
spirits (pp. 166-67). "If the universe is a thing
which had better not have existed," says Strauss,
"then surely the speculation of the philosopher, as
forming part of this universe, is a speculation which
had better not have speculated. The pessimist
philosopher fails to perceive that he, above all,
declares his own thought, which declares the world
to be bad, as bad also; but if the thought which
declares the world to be bad is a bad thought, then
it follows naturally that the world is good. As a rule,
optimism may take things too easily. Schopen-
hauer's references to the colossal part which sorrow
and evil play in the world are quite in their right
place as a counterpoise; but every true philosophy
is necessarily optimistic, as otherwise she hews
down the branch on which she herself is sitting. "


## p. 47 (#137) #############################################

DAVID STRAUSS. 47
If this refutation of Schopenhauer is not the same
as that to which Strauss refers somewhere else
as "the refutation loudly and jubilantly acclaimed
in higher spheres," then I quite fail to understand
the dramatic phraseology used by him elsewhere
to strike an opponent. Here optimism has for
once intentionally simplified her task. But the
master-stroke lay in thus pretending that the refu-
tation of Schopenhauer was not such a very difficult
task after all, and in playfully wielding the burden
in such a manner that the three Graces attendant
on the dandling optimist might constantly be
delighted by his methods. The whole purpose of
the deed was to demonstrate this one truth, that it
is quite unnecessary to take a pessimist seriously;
the most vapid sophisms become justified, provided
they show that, in regard to a philosophy as
"unhealthy and unprofitable" as Schopenhauer's,
not proofs but quips and sallies alone are suitable.
While perusing such passages, the reader will
grasp the full meaning of Schopenhauer's solemn
utterance to the effect that, where optimism is not
merely the idle prattle of those beneath whose flat
brows words and only words are stored, it seemed
to him not merely an absurd but a vicious attitude
of mind, and one full of scornful irony towards
the indescribable sufferings of humanity. When a
philosopher like Strauss is able to frame it into a
system, it becomes more than a vicious attitude of
mind—it is then an imbecile gospel of comfort for
the "I" or for the "We," and can only provoke
indignation.
Who could read the following psychological


## p. 48 (#138) #############################################

48 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
avowal, for instance, without indignation, seeing
that it is obviously but an offshoot from this vicious
gospel of comfort? —"Beethoven remarked that he
could never have composed a text like Figaro or
Don Juan. Life had not been so profuse of its
snubs to him that he could treat it so gaily, or deal
so lightly with the foibles of men" (p. 430). In
order, however, to adduce the most striking instance
of this dissolute vulgarity of sentiment, let it
suffice, here, to observe that Strauss knows no
other means of accounting for the terribly serious
negative instinct and the movement of ascetic
sanctification which characterised the first century
of the Christian era, than by supposing the exist-
ence of a previous period of surfeit in the matter
of all kinds of sexual indulgence, which of itself
brought about a state of revulsion and disgust.
"The Persians call it bidamag buden,
The Germans say 'Katzenjammer. '"*
Strauss quotes this himself, and is not ashamed.
As for us, we turn aside for a moment, that we
may overcome our loathing.
VII.
As a matter of fact, our Philistine captain is
brave, even audacious, in words; particularly when
* Remorse for the previous night's excesses. —Translator's
note.


## p. 49 (#139) #############################################

DAVID STRAUSS. 49
he hopes by such bravery to delight his noble
colleagues—the "We," as he calls them. So the
asceticism and self-denial of the ancient anchorite
and saint was merely a form of Katzenjammer'i
Jesus may be described as an enthusiast who
nowadays would scarcely have escaped the mad-
house, and the story of the Resurrection may be
termed a "world-wide deception. " For once we
will allow these views to pass without raising any
objection, seeing that they may help us to gauge
the amount of courage which our " classical Philis-
tine" Strauss is capable of. Let us first hear his
confession: "It is certainly an unpleasant and a
thankless task to tell the world those truths which
it is least desirous of hearing. It prefers, in fact,
to manage its affairs on a profuse scale, receiving
and spending after the magnificent fashion of the
great, as long as there is anything left; should any
person, however, add up the various items of its
liabilities, and anxiously call its attention to the
sum-total, he is certain to be regarded as an im-
portunate meddler. And yet this has always been
the bent of my moral and intellectual nature. " A
moral and intellectual nature of this sort might
possibly be regarded as courageous; but what still
remains to be proved is, whether this courage is
natural and inborn, or whether it is not rather
acquired and artificial. Perhaps Strauss only
accustomed himself by degrees to the rdle of an
importunate meddler, until he gradually acquired
the courage of his calling. Innate cowardice,
which is the Philistine's birthright, would not be
incompatible with this mode of development, and
D


## p. 49 (#140) #############################################

48
THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
THO
avowal, for instance, without indignation, seeing
that it is obviously but an offshoot from this vicious
gospel of comfort ? —“Beethoven remarked that he
could never have composed a text like Figaro or
Don Juan. Life had not been so profuse of its
snubs to him that he could treat it so gaily, or deal
so lightly with the foibles of men” (p. 430). In
order, however, to adduce the most striking instance
of this dissolute vulgarity of sentiment, let it
suffice, here, to observe that Strauss knows no
other means of accounting for the terribly serious
negative instinct and the movement of ascetic
sanctification which characterised the first century
of the Christian era, than by supposing the exist-
ence of a previous period of surfeit in the matter
of all kinds of sexual indulgence, which of itself
brought about a state of revulsion and disgust.
“The Persians call it bidamag buden,
The Germans say 'Katzenjammer. '”*
Strauss quotes this himself, and is not ashamed.
As for us, we turn aside for a moment, that we
may overcome our loathing.
VII.
As a matter of fact, our Philistine captain is
brave, even audacious, in words; particularly when
* Remorse for the previous night's excesses. -Translator's
note.


## p. 49 (#141) #############################################

DAVID STRAUSS.
49
he hopes by such bravery to delight his noble
colleagues—the “We," as he calls them. So the
asceticism and self-denial of the ancient anchorite
and saint was merely a form of Katzenjammer?
Jesus may be described as an enthusiast who
nowadays would scarcely have escaped the mad-
house, and the story of the Resurrection may be
termed a “world-wide deception. ” For once we
will allow these views to pass without raising any
objection, seeing that they may help us to gauge
the amount of courage which our" classical Philis-
tine” Strauss is capable of. Let us first hear his
confession: “It is certainly an unpleasant and a
thankless task to tell the world those truths which
it is least desirous of hearing. It prefers, in fact,
to manage its affairs on a profuse scale, receiving
and spending after the magnificent fashion of the
great, as long as there is anything left; should any
person, however, add up the various items of its
liabilities, and anxiously call its attention to the
sum-total, he is certain to be regarded as an im-
portunate meddler. And yet this has always been
the bent of my moral and intellectual nature,” A
moral and intellectual nature of this sort might
possibly be regarded as courageous; but what still
remains to be proved is, whether this courage is
natural and inborn, or whether it is not rather
acquired and artificial. Perhaps Strauss only
accustomed himself by degrees to the role of an
importunate meddler, until he gradually acquired
the courage of his calling. Innate cowardice,
which is the Philistine's birthright, would not be
incompatible with this mode of development, and
D


## p. 50 (#142) #############################################

JO THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
it is precisely this cowardice which is perceptible
in the want of logic of those sentences of Strauss's
which it needed courage to pronounce. They
sound like thunder, but they do not clear the air.
No aggressive action is performed: aggressive
words alone are used, and these he selects from
among the most insulting he can find. He more-
over exhausts all his accumulated strength and
energy in coarse and noisy expression, and when
once his utterances have died away he is more of
a coward even than he who has always held his
tongue. The very shadow of his deeds — his
morality—shows us that he is a word-hero, and
that he avoids everything which might induce him
to transfer his energies from mere verbosity to
really serious things. With admirable frankness,
he announces that he is no longer a Christian, but
disclaims all idea of wishing to disturb the content-
ment of any one: he seems to recognise a contra-
diction in the notion of abolishing one society by
instituting another—whereas there is nothing con-
tradictory in it at all. With a certain rude self-
satisfaction, he swathes himself in the hirsute
garment of our Simian genealogists, and extols
Darwin as one of mankind's greatest benefactors;
but our perplexity is great when we find him con-
structing his ethics quite independently of the
question, "What is our conception of the uni-
verse? " In this department he had an opportunity
of exhibiting native pluck; for he ought to have
turned his back on his "We," and have established
a moral code for life out of bellum omnium contra
omnes and the privileges of the strong. But it is to


## p. 51 (#143) #############################################

DAVID STRAUSS. SI
be feared that such a code could only have emanated
from a bold spirit like that of Hobbes', and must
have taken its root in a love of truth quite different
from that which was only able to vent itself in
explosive outbursts against parsons, miracles, and
the "world-wide humbug" of the Resurrection.
For, whereas the Philistine remained on Strauss's
side in regard to these explosive outbursts, he
would have been against him had he been con-
fronted with a genuine and seriously constructed
ethical system, based upon Darwin's teaching.
Says Strauss: "I should say that all moral
action arises from the individual's acting in con-
sonance with the idea of kind" (p. 274). Put quite
clearly and comprehensively, this means: "Live
as a man, and not as an ape or a seal. " Unfortu-
nately, this imperative is both useless and feeble;
for in the class Man what a multitude of different
types are included—to mention only the Patagonian
and the Master, Strauss; and no one would ever
dare to say with any right, "Live like a Pata-
gonian," and "Live like the Master Strauss"!
Should any one, however, make it his rule to live
like a genius—that is to say, like the ideal type 01
the genus Man—and should he perchance at the
same time be either a Patagonian or Strauss him-
self, what should we then not have to suffer from
the importunities of genius-mad eccentrics (con-
cerning whose mushroom growth in Germany even
Lichtenberg had already spoken), who with savage
cries would compel us to listen to the confession
of their most recent belief! Strauss has not yet
learned that no "idea" can ever make man better


## p. 52 (#144) #############################################

52 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
or more moral, and that the preaching of a morality
is as easy as the establishment of it is difficult.
His business ought rather to have been, to take
the phenomena of human goodness, such — for
instance—as pity, love, and self-abnegation, which
are already to hand, and seriously to explain them
and show their relation to his Darwinian first
principle. But no; he preferred to soar into the
imperative, and thus escape the task of explaining.
But even in his flight he was irresponsible enough
to soar beyond the very first principles of which
we speak.
"Ever remember," says Strauss, "that thou art
human, not merely a natural production; ever re-
member that all others are human also, and, with
all individual differences, the same as thou, having
the same needs and claims as thyself: this is the
sum and the substance of morality" (p. 277). But
where does this imperative hail from? How can it be
intuitive in man, seeing that, according to Darwin,
man is indeed a creature of nature, and that his
ascent to his present stage of development has been
conditioned by quite different laws—by the very
fact that he was continually forgetting that others
were constituted like him and shared the same
rights with him; by the very fact that he regarded
himself as the stronger, and thus brought about the
gradual suppression of weaker types. Though
Strauss is bound to admit that no two creatures
have ever been quite alike, and that the ascent of
man from the lowest species of animals to the
exalted height of the Culture-Philistine depended
upon the law of individual distinctness, he still sees


## p. 53 (#145) #############################################

DAVID STRAUSS. 53
do difficulty in declaring exactly the reverse in his
law: "Behave thyself as though there were no such
things as individual distinctions. " Where is the
Strauss-Darwin morality here? Whither, above
all, has the courage gone?
In the very next paragraph we find further
evidence tending to show us the point at which
this courage veers round to its opposite; for Strauss
continues: "Ever remember that thou, and all that
thou beholdest within and around thee, all that
befalls thee and others, is no disjointed fragment,
no wild chaos of atoms or casualties, but that,
following eternal law, it springs from the one
primal source of all life, all reason, and all good:
this is the essence of religion " (pp. 277-78). Out
of that "one primal source," however, all ruin and
irrationality, all evil flows as well, and its name,
according to Strauss, is Cosmos.
Now, how can this Cosmos, with all the con-
tradictions and the self-annihilating characteristics
which Strauss gives it, be worthy of religious
veneration and be addressed by the name "God,"
as Strauss addresses it? —"Our God does not,
indeed, take us into His arms from the outside
(here one expects, as an antithesis, a somewhat
miraculous process of being " taken into His arms
from the inside"), but He unseals the well-springs
of consolation within our own bosoms. He shows
us that although Chance would be an unreasonable
ruler, yet necessity, or the enchainment of causes
in the world, is Reason itself. " (A misapprehension
of which only the "We" can fail to perceive the
folly; because they were brought up in the Hegelian


## p. 54 (#146) #############################################

54 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
worship of Reality as the Reasonable—that is to
say, in the canonisation of success. ) "He teaches
us to perceive that to demand an exception in the
accomplishment of a single natural law would
be to demand the destruction of the universe"
(pp. 435-36). On the contrary, Great Master: an
honest natural scientist believes in the uncondi-
tional rule of natural laws in the world, without,
however, taking up any position in regard to the
ethical or intellectual value of these laws. Wherever
neutrality is abandoned in this respect, it is owing
to an anthropomorphic attitude of mind which
allows reason to exceed its proper bounds. But it
is just at the point where the natural scientist
resigns that Strauss, to put it in his own words,
"reacts religiously," and leaves the scientific and
scholarly standpoint in order to proceed along less
honest lines of his own. Without any further
warrant, he assumes that all that has happened
possesses the highest intellectual value; that it
was therefore absolutely reasonably and intention-
ally so arranged, and that it even contained a
revelation of eternal goodness. He therefore has
to appeal to a complete cosmodicy, and finds
himself at a disadvantage in regard to him who
is contented with a theodicy, and who, for instance,
regards the whole of man's existence as a punish-
ment for sin or a process of purification. At this
stage, and in this embarrassing position, Strauss
even suggests a metaphysical hypothesis—the driest
and most palsied ever conceived—and, in reality,
but an unconscious parody of one of Lessing's
sayings. We read on page 255: "And that other


## p. 55 (#147) #############################################

DAVID STRAUSS. 55
saying of Lessing's—' If God, holding truth in His
right hand, and in His left only the ever-living
desire for it, although on condition of perpetual
error, left him the choice of the two, he would,
considering that truth belongs to God alone, humbly
seize His left hand, and beg its contents for Him-
self—this saying of Lessing's has always been
accounted one of the most magnificent which he
has left us. It has been found to contain the
general expression of his restless love of inquiry
and activity. The saying has always made a
special impression upon me; because, behind its
subjective meaning, I still seemed to hear the faint
ring of an objective one of infinite import.
For
does it not contain the best possible answer to the
rude speech of Schopenhauer, respecting the ill-
advised God who had nothing better to do than
to transform Himself into this miserable world?
if, for example, the Creator Himself had shared
Lessing's conviction of the superiority of struggle
to tranquil possession? " What! —a God who
would choose perpetual error, together with a
striving after truth, and who would, perhaps, fall
humbly at Strauss's feet and cry to him, "Take
thou all Truth, it is thine! "? If ever a God and
a man were ill-advised, they are this Straussian
God, whose hobby is to err and to fail, and this
Straussian man, who must atone for this erring
and failing. Here, indeed, one hears "a faint ring
of infinite import"; here flows Strauss's cosmic
soothing oil; here one has a notion of the rationale
of all becoming and all natural laws. Really? Is
not our universe rather the work of an inferior


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$6 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
being, as Lichtenberg suggests? —of an inferior
being who did not quite understand his business;
therefore an experiment, an attempt, upon which
work is still proceeding? Strauss himself, then,
would be compelled to admit that our universe is
by no means the theatre of reason, but of error,
and that no conformity to law can contain anything
consoling, since all laws have been promulgated
by an erratic God who even finds pleasure in
blundering. It really is a most amusing spectacle
to watch Strauss as a metaphysical architect,
building castles in the air. But for whose benefit
is this entertainment given? For the smug and
noble "We," that they may not lose conceit with
themselves: they may possibly have taken sudden
fright, in the midst of the inflexible and pitiless
wheel-works of the world-machine, and are tremu-
lously imploring their leader to come to their aid.
That is why Strauss pours forth the "soothing oil,"
that is why he leads forth on a leash a God whose
passion it is to err; it is for the same reason, too,
that he assumes for once the utterly unsuitable r61e
of a metaphysical architect. He does all this,
because the noble souls already referred to are
frightened, and because he is too. And it is here
that we reach the limit of his courage, even in the
presence of his "We. " He does not dare to be
honest, and to tell them, for instance: "I have
liberated you from a helping and pitiful God: the
Cosmos is no more than an inflexible machine;
beware of its wheels, that they do not crush you. "
He dare not do this. Consequently, he must
enlist the help of a witch, and he turns to meta-


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DAVID STRAUSS. 57
physics. To the Philistine, however, even Strauss's
metaphysics is preferable to Christianity's, and the
notion of an erratic God more congenial than that
of one who works miracles. For the Philistine
himself errs, but has never yet performed a miracle.
Hence his hatred of the genius; for the latter is
justly famous for the working of miracles. It is
therefore highly instructive to ascertain why
Strauss, in one passage alone, suddenly takes up
the cudgels for genius and the aristocracy of
intellect in general. Whatever does he do it for?
He does it out of fear—fear of the social democrat.
He refers to Bismarck and Moltke, "whose great-
ness is the less open to controversy as it manifests
itself in the domain of tangible external facts.
No help for it, therefore; even the most stiff-necked
and obdurate of these fellows must condescend to
look up a little, if only to get a sight, be it no
farther than the knees, of those august figures"
(p. 327). Do you, Master Metaphysician, perhaps
intend to instruct the social democrats in the art
of getting kicks? The willingness to bestow them
may be met with everywhere, and you are perfectly
justified in promising to those who happen to be
kicked a sight of those sublime beings as far as the
knee. "Also in the domain of art and science,"
Strauss continues, "there will never be a dearth of
kings whose architectural undertakings will find
employment for a multitude of carters. " Granted;
but what if the carters should begin building? It
does happen at times, Great Master, as you know,
and then the kings must grin and bear it.
As a matter of fact, this union of impudence and


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58 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
weakness, of daring words and cowardly con-
cessions, this cautious deliberation as to which
sentences will or will not impress the Philistine or
smooth him down the right way, this lack of
character and power masquerading as character
and power, this meagre wisdom in the guise of
omniscience,—these are the features in this book
which I detest. If I could conceive of young men
having patience to read it and to value it, I should
sorrowfully renounce all hope for their future.
And is this confession of wretched, hopeless, and
really despicable Philistinism supposed to be the
expression of the thousands constituting the "We"
of whom Strauss speaks, and who are to be the
fathers of the coming generation? Unto him who
would fain help this coming generation to acquire
what the present one does not yet possess, namely,
a genuine German culture, the prospect is a
horrible one. To such a man, the ground seems
strewn with ashes, and all stars are obscured; while
every withered tree and field laid waste seems to
cry to him: Barren! Forsaken! Springtime is no
longer possible here! He must feel as young
Goethe felt when he first peered into the melan-
choly atheistic twilight of the Systeme de la Nature;
to him this book seemed so grey, so Cimmerian
and deadly, that he could only endure its presence
with difficulty, and shuddered at it as one shudders
at a spectre.


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DAVID STRAUSS. 59
VIII.
We ought now to be sufficiently informed con-
cerning the heaven and the courage of our new
believer to be able to turn to the last question:
How does he write his books? and of what order
are his religious documents?
He who can answer this question uprightly and
without prejudice will be confronted by yet another
serious problem, and that is: How this Straussian
pocket-oracle of the German Philistine was able to
pass through six editions? And he will grow more
than ever suspicious when he hears that it was
actually welcomed as a pocket-oracle, not only in
scholastic circles, but even in German universities
as well. Students are said to have greeted it as a
canon for strong intellects, and, from all accounts,
the professors raised no objections to this view;
while here and there people have declared it to be
a religious book for scholars. Strauss himself gave
out that he did not intend his profession of faith
to be merely a reference-book for learned and
cultured people; but here let us abide by the fact
that it was first and foremost a work appealing to
his colleagues, and was ostensibly a mirror in
which they were to see their own way of living
faithfully reflected. For therein lay the feat.
The Master feigned to have presented us with a
new ideal conception of the universe, and now
adulation is being paid him out of every mouth;
because each is in a position to suppose that he too
regards the universe and life in the same way.


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6o THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
Thus Strauss has seen fulfilled in each of his
readers what he only demanded of the future. In
this way, the extraordinary success of his book is
partly explained: "Thus we live and hold on our
way in joy," the scholar cries in his book, and
delights to see others rejoicing over the announce-
ment. If the reader happen to think differently
from the Master in regard to Darwin or to capital
punishment, it is of very little consequence; for he
is too conscious throughout of breathing an atmo-
, sphere that is familiar to him, and of hearing but
the echoes of his own voice and wants. However
painfully this unanimity may strike the true friend
of German culture, it is his duty to be unrelenting
in his explanation of it as a phenomenon, and not
to shrink from making this explanation public.
We all know the peculiar methods adopted in our
own time of cultivating the sciences: we all know
them, because they form a part of our lives. And,
for this very reason, scarcely anybody seems to ask
himself what the result of such a cultivation of the
sciences will mean to culture in general, even
supposing that everywhere the highest abilities and
the most earnest will be available for the promotion
of culture. In the heart of the average scientific
type (quite irrespective of the examples thereof
with which we meet to-day) there lies a pure
paradox: he behaves like the veriest idler of
independent means, to whom life is not a dreadful
and serious business, but a sound piece of property,
settled upon him for all eternity; and it seems to
him justifiable to spend his whole life in answering
questions which, after all is said and done, can


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DAVID STRAUSS. 61
only be of interest to that person who believes in
eternal life as an absolute certainty. The heir of
but a few hours, he sees himself encompassed by
yawning abysses, terrible to behold; and every
step he takes should recall the questions, Where-
fore? Whither? and Whence? to his mind. But
his soul rather warms to his work, and, be this the
counting of a floweret's petals or the breaking of
stones by the roadside, he spends his whole fund
of interest, pleasure, strength, and aspirations upon
it. This paradox—the scientific man—has lately
dashed ahead at such a frantic speed in Germany,
that one would almost think the scientific world
were a factory, in which every minute wasted meant
a fine. To-day the man of science works as
arduously as the fourth or slave caste: his study
has ceased to be an occupation, it is a necessity;
he looks neither to the right nor to the left, but
rushes through all things — even through the
serious matters which life bears in its train—with
that semi-listlessness and repulsive need of rest so
characteristic of the exhausted labourer. This is
also his attitude towards culture. He behaves as if
life to him were not only otium but sine dignitate:
even in his sleep he does not throw off the yoke,
but like an emancipated slave still dreams of his
misery, his forced haste and his floggings. Our
scholars can scarcely be distinguished—and, even
then, not to their advantage—from agricultural
labourers, who in order to increase a small patri-
mony, assiduously strive, day and night, to culti-
vate their fields, drive their ploughs, and urge on
their oxen. Now, Pascal suggests that men only


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62 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
endeavour to work hard at their business and
sciences with the view of escaping those questions
of greatest import which every moment of loneli-
ness or leisure presses upon them—the questions
relating to the wherefore, the whence, and the
whither of life. Curiously enough, our scholars
never think of the most vital question of all—the
wherefore of their work, their haste, and their
painful ecstasies. Surely their object is not the
earning of bread or the acquiring of posts of
honour? No, certainly not. But ye take as much
pains as the famishing and breadless; and, with
that eagerness and lack of discernment which
characterises the starving, ye even snatch the dishes
from the sideboard of science. If, however, as
scientific men, ye proceed with science as the
labourers with the tasks which the exigencies
of life impose upon them, what will become of a
culture which must await the hour of its birth and
its salvation in the very midst of all this agitated
and breathless running to and fro—this sprawling
scientifically?
For it no one has time—and yet for what shall
science have time if not for culture? Answer us
here, then, at least: whence, whither, wherefore all
science, if it do not lead to culture? Belike to
barbarity? And in this direction we already see
the scholar caste ominously advanced, if we are to
believe that such superficial books as this one of
Strauss's meet the demand of their present degree
of culture. For precisely in him do we find that
repulsive need of rest and that incidental semi-
listless attention to, and coming to terms with,


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DAVID STRAUSS. 63
philosophy, culture, and every serious thing on
earth. It will be remembered that, at the meetings
held by scholars, as soon as each individual has had
his say in his own particular department of know-
ledge, signs of fatigue, of a desire for distraction at
any price, of waning memory, and of incoherent
experiences of life, begin to be noticeable. While
listening to Strauss discussing any worldly question,
be it marriage, the war, or capital punishment, we
are startled by his complete lack of anything like
first-hand experience, or of any original thought on
human nature. All his judgments are so redolent
of books, yea even of newspapers. Literary remini-
scences do duty for genuine ideas and views, and
the assumption of a moderate and grandfatherly
tone take the place of wisdom and mature thought.
How perfectly in keeping all this is with the ful-
some spirit animating the holders of the highest
places in German science in large cities! How
thoroughly this spirit must appeal to that other!
for it is precisely in those quarters that culture is
in the saddest plight; it is precisely there that its
fresh growth is made impossible—so boisterous are
the preparations made by science, so sheepishly are
favourite subjects of knowledge allowed to oust
questions of much greater import. What kind of
lantern would be needed here, in order to find men
capable of a complete surrender to genius, and of
an intimate knowledge of its depths—men possessed
of sufficient courage and strength to exorcise the
demons that have forsaken our age? Viewed from
the outside, such quarters certainly do appear to
possess the whole pomp of culture; with their im-


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/
64 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
posing apparatus they resemble great arsenals fitted
with huge guns and other machinery of war; we
see preparations in progress and the most strenuous
activity, as though the heavens themselves were to
be stormed, and truth were to be drawn out of
the deepest of all wells; and yet, in war, the largest
machines are the most unwieldy. Genuine culture
therefore leaves such places as these religiously
alone, for its best instincts warn it that in their midst
it has nothing to hope for, and very much to fear.
For the only kind of culture with which the in-
flamed eye and obtuse brain of the scholar working-
classes concern themselves is of that Philistine
order of which Strauss has announced the gospel.
If we consider for a moment the fundamental
causes underlying the sympathy which binds the
learned working-classes to Culture-Philistinism, we
shall discover the road leading to Strauss the
Writer, who has been acknowledged classical, and
thence to our last and principal theme.
To begin with, that culture has contentment
written in its every feature, and will allow of no
important changes being introduced into the
present state of German education. It is above
all convinced of the originality of all German
educational institutions, more particularly the
public schools and universities; it does not cease
recommending these to foreigners, and never
doubts that if the Germans have become the most
cultivated and discriminating people on earth, it is
owing to such institutions. Culture-Philistinism
believes in itself, consequently it also believes in
the methods and means at its disposal. Secondly,


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DAVID STRAUSS. 65
however, it leaves the highest judgment concerning
all questions of taste and culture to the scholar,
and even regards itself as the ever-increasing
compendium of scholarly opinions regarding art,
literature, and philosophy. Its first care is to urge
the scholar to express his opinions; these it pro-
ceeds to mix, dilute, and systematise, and then
it administers them to the German people in the
form of a bottle of medicine. What comes to life
outside this circle is either not heard or attended
at all, or if heard, is heeded half-heartedly; until,
at last, a voice (it does not matter whose, provided
it belong to some one who is strictly typical of the
scholar tribe) is heard to issue from the temple
in which traditional infallibility of taste is said to
reside; and from that time forward public opinion
has one conviction more, which it echoes and
re-echoes hundreds and hundreds of times. As a
matter of fact, though, the aesthetic infallibility of
any utterance emanating from the temple is the
more doubtful, seeing that the lack of taste, thought,
and artistic feeling in any scholar can be taken
for granted, unless it has previously been proved
that, in his particular case, the reverse is true.
And only a few can prove this. For how many
who have had a share in the breathless and unend-
ing scurry of modern science have preserved that
quiet and courageous gaze of the struggling man
of culture—if they ever possessed it—that gaze
which condemns even the scurry we speak of as
a barbarous state of affairs? That is why these
few are forced to live in an almost perpetual
contradiction. What could they do against the
£


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66 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
uniform belief of the thousands who have enlisted
public opinion in their cause, and who mutually
defend each other in this belief? What purpose
can it serve when one individual openly declares
war against Strauss, seeing that a crowd have
decided in his favour, and that the masses led by
this crowd have learned to ask six consecutive times
for the Master's Philistine sleeping-mixture?
If, without further ado, we here assumed that
the Straussian confession-book had triumphed
over public opinion and had been acclaimed and
welcomed as conqueror, its author might call our
attention to the fact that the multitudinous criti-
cisms of his work in the various public organs are
not of an altogether unanimous or even favourable
character, and that he therefore felt it incumbent
upon him to defend himself against some of the
more malicious, impudent, and provoking of these
newspaper pugilists by means of a postscript.
How can there be a public opinion concerning my
book, he cries to us, if every journalist is to regard
me as an outlaw, and to mishandle me as much as
he likes? This contradiction is easily explained,
as soon as one considers the two aspects of the
Straussian book—the theological and the literary,
and it is only the latter that has anything to do
with German culture. Thanks to its theological
colouring, it stands beyond the pale of our German
culture, and provokes the animosity of the various
theological groups—yea, even of every individual
German, in so far as he is a theological sectarian
from birth, and only invents his own peculiar
private belief in order to be able to dissent from


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DAVID STRAUSS. 67
every other form of belief. But when the question
arises of talking about Strauss the writer, pray
listen to what the theological sectarians have to
say about him. As soon as his literary side comes
under notice, all theological objections immediately
subside, and the dictum comes plain and clear, as
if from the lips of one congregation: In spite of it
all, he is still a classical writer!
Everybody—even the most bigoted, orthodox
Churchman—pays the writer the most gratifying
compliments, while there is always a word or two
thrown in as a tribute to his almost Lessingesque
language, his delicacy of touch, or the beauty and
accuracy of his aesthetic views. As a book, there-
fore, the Straussian performance appears to meet
all the demands of an ideal example of its kind.
The theological opponents, despite the fact that
their voices were the loudest of all, nevertheless
constitute but an infinitesimal portion of the great
public; and even with regard to them, Strauss still
maintains that he is right when he says: "Com-
pared with my thousands of readers, a few dozen
public cavillers form but an insignificant minority,
and they can hardly prove that they are their
faithful interpreters. It was obviously in the
nature of things that opposition should be clamor-
ous and assent tacit. " Thus, apart from the angry
bitterness which Strauss's profession of faith may
have provoked here and there, even the most
fanatical of his opponents, to whom his voice seems
to rise out of an abyss, like the voice of a beast,
are agreed as to his merits as a writer; and that
is why the treatment which Strauss has received at


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68 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
the hands of the literary lackeys of the theological
groups proves nothing against our contention
that Culture-Philistinism celebrated its triumph in
this book. It must be admitted that the average
educated Philistine is a degree less honest than
Strauss, or is at least more reserved in his public
utterances. But this fact only tends to increase
his admiration for honesty in another. At home,
or in the company of his equals, he may applaud
with wild enthusiasm, but takes care not to put
on paper how entirely Strauss's words are in har-
mony with his own innermost feelings. For, as we
have already maintained, our Culture-Philistine
is somewhat of a coward, even in his strongest
sympathies; hence Strauss, who can boast of a
trifle more courage than he, becomes his leader,
notwithstanding the fact that even Straussian pluck
has its very definite limits. If he overstepped
these limits, as Schopenhauer does in almost every
sentence, he would then forfeit his position at the
head of the Philistines, and everybody would flee
from him as precipitately as they are now follow-
ing in his wake. He who would regard this artful
if not sagacious moderation and this mediocre
valour as an Aristotelian virtue, would certainly
be wrong; for the valour in question is not the
golden mean between two faults, but between
a virtue and a fault—and in this mean, between
virtue and fault, all Philistine qualities are to be
found.


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DAVID STRAUSS. 69
IX.
"In spite of it all, he is still a classical writer. "
Well, let us see! Perhaps we may now be allowed
to discuss Strauss the stylist and master of
language; but in the first place let us inquire
whether, as a literary man, he is equal to the
task of building his house, and whether he really
understands the architecture of a book. From this
inquiry we shall be able to conclude whether he is
a respectable, thoughtful, and experienced author;
and even should we be forced to answer " No" to
these questions, he may still, as a last shift, take
refuge in his fame as a classical prose-writer. This
last-mentioned talent alone, it is true, would not
suffice to class him with the classical authors, but
at most with the classical improvisers and virtuosos
of style, who, however, in regard to power of ex-
pression and the whole planning and framing of the
work, reveal the awkward hand and the embarrassed
eye of the bungler. We therefore put the question,
whether Strauss really possesses the artistic strength
necessary for the purpose of presenting us with a
thing that is a whole, totum ponere?
As a rule, it ought to be possible to tell from
the first rough sketch of a work whether the author
conceived the thing as a whole, and whether, in
view of this original conception, he has discovered
the correct way of proceeding with his task and of
fixing its proportions. Should this most important
part of the problem be solved, and should the
framework of the building have been given its most


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70 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
favourable proportions, even then there remains
enough to be done: how many smaller faults have
to be corrected, how many gaps require filling in!
Here and there a temporary partition or floor was
found to answer the requirements; everywhere
dust and fragments litter the ground, and no
matter where we look, we see the signs of work done
and work still to be done. The house, as a whole,
is still uninhabitable and gloomy, its walls are bare,
and the wind blows in through the open windows.
Now, whether this remaining, necessary, and very
irksome work has been satisfactorily accomplished
by Strauss does not concern us at present; our
question is, whether the building itself has been
conceived as a whole, and whether its proportions
are good? The reverse of this, of course, would
be a compilation of fragments—a method generally
adopted by scholars. They rely upon it that
these fragments are related among themselves,
and thus confound the logical and the artistic
relation between them. Now, the relation between
the four questions which provide the chapter-head-
ings of Strauss's book cannot be called a logical
one. Are we still Christians? Have we still a
religion? What is our conception of the universe?
What is our rule of life? And it is by no means
contended that the relation is illogical simply
because the third question has nothing to do with
the second, nor the fourth with the third, nor all
three with the first. The natural scientist who
puts the third question, for instance, shows his
unsullied love of truth by the simple fact that he
tacitly passes over the second. And with regard


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DAVID STRAUSS. 71
to the subject of the fourth chapter—marriage,
republicanism, and capital punishment—Strauss
himself seems to have been aware that they could
only have been muddled and obscured by being
associated with the Darwinian theory expounded
in the third chapter; for he carefully avoids all
reference to this theory when discussing them. But
the question, "Are we still Christians? " destroys
the freedom of the philosophical standpoint at
one stroke, by lending it an unpleasant theological
colouring. Moreover, in this matter, he quite
forgot that the majority of men to-day are not
Christians at all, but Buddhists. Why should one,
without further ceremony, immediately think of
Christianity at the sound of the words "old
faith"? Is this a sign that Strauss has never
ceased to be a Christian theologian, and that he
has therefore never learned to be a philosopher?
For we find still greater cause for surprise in the
fact that he quite fails to distinguish between belief
and knowledge, and continually mentions his " new
belief" and the still newer science in one breath.
Or is " new belief" merely an ironical concession
to ordinary parlance? This almost seems to be
the case; for here and there he actually allows
"new belief" and "newer science" to be inter-
changeable terms, as for instance on page ir,
where he asks on which side, whether on that of
the ancient orthodoxy or of modern science, "exist
more of the obscurities and insufficiencies unavoid-
able in human speculation. "
Moreover, according to the scheme laid down
in the Introduction, his desire is to disclose those


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72 THOUGHTS OUT OF SEASON.
proofs upon which the modern view of life is based;
but he derives all these proofs from science, and
in this respect assumes far more the attitude of a
scientist than of a believer.
At bottom, therefore, the religion is not a new
belief, but, being of a piece with modern science, it
has nothing to do with religion at all. If Strauss,
however, persists in his claims to be religious, the
grounds for these claims must be beyond the pale
of recent science. Only the smallest portion of the
Straussian book—that is to say, but a few isolated
pages—refer to what Strauss in all justice might
call a belief, namely, that feeling for the "All"
for which he demands the piety that the old
believer demanded for his God. On the pages in
question, however, he cannot claim to be altogether
scientific; but if only he could lay claim to being
a little stronger, more natural, more outspoken,
more pious, we should be content. Indeed, what
perhaps strikes us most forcibly about him is the
multitude of artificial procedures of which he avails
himself before he ultimately gets the feeling that
he still possesses a belief and a religion; he
reaches it by means of stings and blows, as we
have already seen. How indigently and feebly
this emergency-belief presents itself to us! We
shiver at the sight of it.
Although Strauss, in the plan laid down in his
Introduction, promises to compare the two faiths,
the old and the new, and to show that the latter
will answer the same purpose as the former, even
he begins to feel, in the end, that he has promised
too much. For the question whether the new


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DAVID STRAUSS. 73
belief answers the same purpose as the old,
or is better or worse, is disposed of incident-
ally, so to speak, and with uncomfortable haste,
in two or three pages (p. 436 et seq'), and
is actually bolstered up by the following subter-
fuge: "He who cannot help himself in this matter
is beyond help, is not yet ripe for our standpoint"
(p. 436). How differently, and with what intensity
of conviction, did the ancient Stoic believe in the
All and the rationality of the All! And, viewed
in this light, how does Strauss's claim to originality
appear? But, as we have already observed, it
would be a matter of indifference to us whether it
were new, old, original, or imitated, so that it were
only more powerful, more healthy, and more
natural.