We may generalise this scale as much as we please, and gradually permit the gradations to vanish, but I doubt if even two mothers could be found who would agree in such an interpretation of their children's looks. Add to this that this whole scale has very little to do with what, in the strict sense of the word, we call mind. From fear up to shame and penitence are all manifestations simply of the feelings, and not of the mind. We know that what we call fear is often a reflex action, as when a child closes its eyelids before a blow. What has been named jealousy in a child, is often nothing but hunger, while shame is instilled into one child, and in others is by no means of spontaneous growth.

The worst feature of such observations is that they are very quickly regarded as safe ground, and are reared higher and higher until in the end the entire scaffold collapses. In order to establish the truth of this psychologic scale in children still more firmly, and at the same time to make good its universal necessity, an effort has been made to prove that a similar scale is to be found in the animal kingdom, and of course what was sought has been found. Romanes asserts that the lowest order of animals, the annelids, only show traces of fear; a little higher in the scale, in insects, are found social instincts such as industry, combativeness, and curiosity; another step higher, fishes exhibit jealousy, and birds, sympathy; then in carnivorous animals follow cruelty, hate, and grief; and lastly, in the anthropoid apes, [pg 122] remorse, shame, and a sense of the ridiculous, as well as deceit. It needs but one step more to make this scale, which belongs much more to the sphere of feeling than the realm of thought, universally applicable to all psychology. How should we otherwise explain the parallelism between the mental development of infants and that of undeveloped animals? One need but take a firm hold of such observations, and they are transformed into airy visions. Who, for instance, would dare to distinguish the traces of fear in annelids from those of surprise in higher animals? Nevertheless fear occupies the first place, surprise the third. And what mark distinguished combativeness in insects from jealousy in fishes? In the same way I doubt if any two nurses would agree in the chronology of the phenomena of the infant disposition, and have therefore long since given up all hope of obtaining any hints either in embryological or physiological development, about the real historical unfolding of the human consciousness, either out of a nursery or out of a zoÖlogical garden.

As for ethnological museums, they certainly give us wonderful glimpses into the skilfulness of primitive man, especially in what relates to the struggle for life; but of the historic or prehistoric age of these wood, horn, and stone weapons, they tell us absolutely nothing. Whoever thinks that man descended from an ape, may no doubt say that flint implements for kindling fire belonged to a higher period, What then remains to enable us to study the earliest phase of development of the human mind accessible to us? If we go to savages, whose language we only understand imperfectly, these observations are of course still more untrustworthy than in the case of our own children; at all events we must wait before we receive any really valuable evidence of the development of the human mind from that source. I repeat that the human mind itself, as far as it perceives, must simply be accepted as a fact, given to us and inexplicable, whether in civilised or uncivilised races; but only in its greatest simplicity, as mere self-conscious perception—a perception which in this simplicity can in no wise be denied to animals, although [pg 124] we can only with difficulty form a clear idea of the peculiarity of their sentient perceptions.

Where can we observe the first steps that rise above this simple perception? I say, as I have always said, In language and in language alone. Language is the oldest monument which we possess of man's mental power, older than stone weapons, than cuneiform inscriptions, than hieroglyphics. The development of language is continuous, for where this continuity is broken, language dies. After every Tasmanian had been killed or had died, the Tasmanian language Of course it will be said that all this only applies to the Aryan race, and that they constitute only a small and perhaps the youngest portion of the human race. Well, it is difficult to prove that the Aryans constitute the least numerous subdivision. We know too little of their great masses to attempt a census. That they are the youngest branch of the human race is really of no consequence; we should then have to assume against all Darwinian principles, various, not contemporaneous, but successive monstrosities, slowly ascending to humanity, and this would only be pure invention. Nothing absolutely compels us to ascribe a shorter earthly life [pg 127] to those races which speak Chinese, Semitic, Bantu, American, Australian, or other languages, than to the Aryans. That all races have begun on a lower plane of culture, and especially of the knowledge of language, will no doubt be universally acknowledged. But even if we only place the first beginnings of the Aryan race at 10,000 B.C., there is time enough for it and other races to have risen, and also to have again declined. The difference would merely be that the Aryans, in spite of many drawbacks, on the whole constantly progressed, while the Australians, Negroes, and Patagonians, forced into unfavourable positions, remained stationary on a very low level. That their present plane can in any respect, and especially in regard to their language, supply a picture of the earliest condition of the human race, or even of certain branches of it, is again mere assumption, and as bare of all analogy as the attempt to see in the salons of London a picture of Aryan family life before the first separation. There are savages who are cannibals. Shall we conclude from this that the first men all devoured each other, or that only those who were least appetising remained over as survivals of the fittest? It is remarkable how many ideas are current in science which the healthy human mind, after short reflection, silently lays aside. Any one who has occupied himself with the polysynthetic tongues of the Redskins, or with the prefixes in the languages of the Bantus, knows how much time must have been needed to develop their grammar, and how much higher the [pg 128] makers of these languages must have stood than those who speak them now.

But even if language is the oldest chronicle in which the human mind has traced its own development, we must by no means imagine that any known language, be it as old as the pyramids, or as the cuneiform inscriptions, can offer us a picture of the first beginning of the mental life of the race. Long before the pyramids, long before the oldest monuments in Babylon, Nineveh, and China, there was language, even writing; for on the oldest Egyptian inscriptions we find among the hieroglyphic signs writing materials and the stilus. Here perspectives open up to us, before which every chronological telescope gives way. There is a rigorous continuity in the development of a language, but this continuity in no wise excludes a transformation as marked as that of the butterfly from the caterpillar. Even when, as for instance in Sanskrit, we go back to a number of roots, to which Indian grammarians such as These ethnologists, too, always make the old mistake of confounding the learning of a language, as [pg 130] is done by every child, with the first invention or formation of a language. The two things are as radically different as the labour of miners who bring forth to the light of day gold ore out of the depths of the earth, and the enjoyment which the heirs of a rich man have in squandering his cash. The two things are quite different, and yet there are books upon books which attempt to draw conclusions as to the creation of language from children learning to talk. We have at least now got so far as to admit that language facilitates thinking; but that language first made thought possible, that it was the first step in the development of the human mind, but few anthropologists have seen.47 They do not know what language in the true sense of the word means, and still think that it is only communication, and that it does not differ from the signals made by chamois, or the information imparted by the antennÆ of ants. Henry Drummond goes so far as to say that “Any means by which information is conveyed from one mind to another, is language.”48 That is entirely erroneous. The entire chapter on sign language, interesting as it is, must be treated quite differently by the [pg 131] philologist, compared with the ethnologist. When the sign is such as was used in the old method of telegraphing, and meant a real word, or, as in modern electric telegraphy, even a letter, this is really speaking by signs; and so is the finger language of the deaf and dumb. But when I threaten my opponent with my fist, or strike him in the face, when I laugh, cry, sob, sigh, I certainly do not speak, although I do make a communication, the meaning of which cannot be doubted. Not every communication, therefore, is language, nor does every act of speaking aim at a communication. There are philologists who maintain that the first words were merely a clearing of the ideas, a sort of talking to oneself. This may have been so or not, at any rate it appears to me that in such primitive times, practical ends deserve the first consideration. No one can distinguish the difference in the stages of mental development, between wiping the perspiration from the brow after work, which signifies and communicates to every observer, “It is warm” or “I am tired,” and the man who can actually say, “It is warm,” “I am tired.” Thousands, millions of years may lie between these two steps. We do not know, and to attempt to fix periods of time where the means are lacking, is like pouring water into the Danaids' sieves.

Just consider what effort was required to enable an Aryan man to say, “It is warm.” We shall say nothing of “it”; it may be a simple demonstrative stem, which needed little for its formation. But [pg 132] before this “i-t” or “id” could become an impersonal “it,” long-continued abstraction, or, if you prefer, long-continued polishing, was required. Take the word is. Whence comes such a verbal form, Sanskrit This may appear to be a very small step, just as the first slight deviation in a railroad track is scarcely a finger's breadth, but in time changes the course of the train to an entirely different part of the world. The formation of an idea, such as to be, or to become, or to take a still simpler one, such as four or eight, appears to us to be a very small matter, and yet it is this very small matter that distinguishes man from the animal, that pushed man forward and left the animal behind on his old track. Nay, more, this “concept” has caused much shaking of the head among philosophers of all times. That one and one are two, two and two, four, four and four, eight, [pg 133] eight and eight, sixteen, etc., appears to be so very easy, that we do not understand how such things can constitute an eternally intended distinction between man and animal. I have myself seen an ape so well trained that as the word “seven” was spoken, he picked up seven straws. But what is such child's play in comparison with the first formation of the idea of seven? Do you not see that the formation of such an abstract idea, isolating mere quantity apart from all qualities, requires a power of abstraction such as has never been displayed by an animal? If there were any languages now that actually had no word for seven, it would be a valuable confirmation of this view. I doubt only, whether the speakers of such languages could not call composition to their aid, and attain the idea of seven by two, two, two, plus one. We still know too little of these languages and of those who speak them. Of what takes place in animals we know absolutely nothing, and nowhere would a dose of agnosticism be more useful than here. Sense-impressions an animal certainly has; whether quite the same as man must remain uncertain. And sense-impressions enable an animal to accomplish much, especially in the realm of feeling; but language—never.

This fact, as a bare undeniable fact, should have startled the Darwinians, even as it startled the venerable Darwin, when I simply set the facts before him, and he immediately drew the necessary consequences. Of any danger there could be no fear. The facts are [pg 134] there and show us the right path. And it is not only simple facts, but the consequences of preËxisting conditions which render every so-called transition from animal to man absolutely unthinkable. Language—as ethnologists should have learned—has neither originated from artificial signs, nor from imitation of sounds. That we can communicate with signs without saying a word, that we even now use signs in our speech, is best learned in southern races, and in such pantomimes as If we now return, to our is,—Sanskrit But here I should like to call attention to the long process through which a language must pass, before it could reduce “breathe” to “be” and form such a sentence as “It is warm.” Even an animal feels [pg 137] warmth, and can in various ways make known if it is overheated. But in all this it is only a question of feelings, not to ideas, and still less of language. Let us consider “warm.” Of course “warm” may represent a mere feeling, and then a simple panting would suffice to express it. That is communication, but not language. To think a word like warm, a root and an idea are necessary. Probably, and in spite of a few phonetic difficulties, the root was in this case ghar (in Of all this, of course, when we learn to speak as [pg 138] children, we have no suspicion. We learn the language made by others who came before us, and proceed from words to ideas, not from ideas to words. Whether the relation between ideas and words was a succession, it is hard to say, because no idea exists without a word, any more than a word without an idea. Word and idea exist through each other, beside each other, with each other; they are inseparable. We could as easily try to speak without thinking, as to think without speaking. It is at first difficult to grasp this. We are so accustomed to think silently, before speaking aloud, that we actually believe that the same is true, even of the first formation of ideas and words. Our so-called thinking before speaking, however, refers simply to reflection, or deliberation. It is something quite different, and occurs only with the aid of silent words that are in us, even if they are not uttered. Every person, particularly in his youth, believes that he cherishes within himself inexpressible feelings, or even thoughts. These are chiefly obscure feelings, and the expression of feelings has always been the most difficult task to be performed by language, because they must first pass through a phase of conception. If, however, they are actually ideas, they are such as have an old expression that is felt to be inconvenient, or inadequate, and must be replaced by a new one. We cannot do enough to rid ourselves of the old error, that thought is possible without words. We can, of course, repeat words without meaning; but that is not speaking, [pg 139] only making a noise. If any one, however, tells us that he can think quite well without words, let this silent thinker be suddenly interrupted, ask him of what he has thought in silence, and he will have to admit that it was of a dog, a horse, or a man—in short, of something that has a name. He need not utter these words—that has never been maintained, but he must have the ideas and their signs, otherwise there are not, and there cannot be for him, either ideas or things. How often we see children move their lips while they are thinking, that is, speaking without articulation. We can, of course, in case of necessity, use other signs; we can hold a dog on high and show him, but if we ask what is shown, we shall find that the actual dog is only a substitute for the abstract word “dog,” not the reverse, for a dog that is neither a spaniel, poodle, dachshund, etc., is nowhere to be found, At any rate, we can now understand in what manner language offers us really historical documents of the oldest stages which we can reach in the development of the human mind. I say, “which we can reach,” for what lies beyond language does not exist for us. Nothing remains of the history of homo alalus. But every word represents a deed, an acquisition of the mind. If we take such a word as the Vedic All this occurred, of course, on exclusively Aryan ground, while the Semitic and other branches went their own way in the formation of ideas, and of sounds for their ideas. Physiologically all these branches may have one and the same origin, but linguistically they have various beginnings, and have not, at least as far as scientific proof is possible, sprung from one and the same source. The common origin of all languages is not impossible, but it is and remains undemonstrable, and to science that is enough, If we take any root of the Aryan language, we shall be astonished at the enormous number of its derivatives and the shades in their meaning. Here we see very plainly how thought has climbed forward upon words. We find, for instance, in the list of Sanskrit roots, the root But these forms, with all their cases and persons and tenses, give us no idea of the fruitfulness of a root, especially if we follow its ramifications in the cognate languages. In Greek we have If We have already seen how Offerre (bring before) leads to Opfer (sacrifice) and to the simpler offrir, as sufferre to souffrir (suffer).

It has been usual to derive Fors, Fortuna, from ferre,50 the goddess who brings, although she takes away as well. The ancients had no doubts of this derivation, and It would lead us too far if we tried to collect all the meanings which our roots had in the various ancient Aryan tongues in combination with prepositions. It must suffice to select a small number from a modern language such as French, which give us an idea of the endless modifications to which every root is more or less adapted. Thus from I do not say that all ideas can be so clearly traced to their origin as in this root. In some the intermediate forms have been lost, and the etymologies become uncertain, often impossible. But the result on the whole remains the same. Wherever we can see clearly, we see that what we call mind and thought consists in this, that man has the power not only to receive presentations like an animal, but to discover something general in them. This element he can eliminate and fix by means of vocal signs; and he can further classify single presentations under the same general concepts, and mark them by the same vocal signs. What we call derivative forms, such as If we have the ideas and the words, the process of thought, as Hobbes has taught us, is nothing but an addition and subtraction of ideas. We add when we say, A is B; when we say, for instance, man, or Caius, [pg 149] is mortal, adding Caius, or man, to all that we call mortal; we subtract when we say, A is not B; that is, when we abstract Enoch from all that we call mortal. Everything that man has ever thought, humiliating as it may sound, consists in these two operations; just as the most abstruse operations of mathematics go back in the end to addition and subtraction. To what else could they go back? Whether these mental operations are true or false, is another question, with which the method of the thinker has nothing to do; any more than formal logic inquires whether all men are mortal, but only infers on the basis of these premises that Caius, because he is a man, is also mortal.

We see, therefore, how language and thought go hand in hand; where there is as yet no word, there is not yet an idea. The thinking capacity of the mind has its source in language, lives in language, and develops continuously in language. The human mind is human language, and as animals possess no language, they do not In one sense, therefore, the Horseherd is quite right. The mind is a development, an eternal, ceaseless development; but when he calls it a function possessed by all living organisms, even a goose and a chicken, he goes far beyond the facts. No goose speaks, although it cackles, and although by cackling it apprised the Romans of the important fact that their Capitol was in danger. How much a dog could tell us if he could speak! As if this capacity or incapacity is not as much the result of intention as every other capacity and incapacity in nature! If we translate this ability by But it must not be supposed that because we deny thought and speech to animals, we wish to degrade them. Everything that has been told us of the ingenious tricks of animals, even the most incredible, we shall gladly believe, only not that So far I hope to have answered the second objection of the Horseherd or Horseherds, that the mind is a function possessed also by a goose or a chicken. Mind is language, and language is mind, the one the The most difficult and at all events the thorniest problem that was presented to me by the Horseherd still remains unanswered, and I have long doubted whether I should attempt to answer it in so popular a periodical as the There are so many things that have been so long settled among scholars that they are scarcely mentioned, while to a great majority of even well-informed people they are still enveloped in a misty gloom. To this class belong especially the so-called articles of faith. We must not forget that with many, even with most men, faith is not faith, but acquired habit. Why otherwise should the son of a Jew be a Jew, the son of a Parsi a Parsi? Moreover, no one likes to be disturbed in his old habits. There are questions, too, on which mankind as it is now constituted will never reach a common understanding, because they lie outside the realm of science or the knowable. Concerning such questions it is well to waste no more words. But it is on just such a question, namely, the true nature of revelation, that the Horseherd and his companions particularly wish to know my views. The [pg 154] current theory of revelation is their greatest stumbling block, and they continually direct their principal attack against this ancient stronghold. On the other hand there is nothing so convenient as this theory, and many who have no other support cling fast to this anchor. The Bible is divine revelation, say they, therefore it is infallible and unassailable, and that settles everything.

Now we must, above all things, come to an understanding as to what is meant by revelation before we attribute revelation to the Bible. There are not many now who really believe that an angel in bodily form descended from heaven and whispered into the ear of the apostles, in rather bad Greek, every verse, every word, even every letter of our Gospels. When Peter in his second Epistle (i. 18) assures us that he heard a voice from heaven, that is a fact that can only be confirmed, or invalidated, by witnesses. But when he immediately after says (i. 21) that “holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Spirit,” he presents to us a view of inspiration that is easily intelligible, the possibility or truth of which must yet be first determined by psychologists. If it be conceded, however, that holy men may partake of such an inspiration, even then it is plain that it requires a much higher inspiration to declare others to be divinely inspired than to make such a claim for oneself alone. This theory, that the Gospels are inspired by God, and therefore are infallible and unassailable, has gained more and more currency since the time [pg 155] of the Reformation. The Bible was to be the only authority in future for the Christian faith. Pope and ecclesiastical tradition were cast aside, and a greater stress was consequently laid on the If, as might have happened, without any miracle, the original autograph of the Gospels, as they were written by the apostles or some one else with their own hands, had been carefully preserved in the archives of the first popes, our professors would have been spared much labour. But we nowhere read that these successors and heirs of Peter showed any special solicitude for this prime duty of their office, the preservation of this precious jewel of their treasure, the New Testament. What they neglected, had therefore to be recovered by our philologists. Just as those who wished to study the Peloponnesian war resorted to the manuscripts of Thucydides, the [pg 156] Christian scholars, to become acquainted with the origins of Christianity, betook themselves to the manuscripts of the New Testament. And as the manuscripts of Thucydides vary widely from one another and in certain passages leave us quite helpless, so do the manuscripts of the New Testament. Bentley speaks of thirty thousand I therefore first endeavoured to make clear to my unknown friends two things, which constitute the foundation of all religion: first, that the world is rational, that it is the result of thought, and that in this sense only is it the creation of a being which possesses reason, or is reason itself (the Logos); [pg 158] and secondly, that mind or thought cannot be the outcome of matter, but on the contrary is the prius of all things. To this end a statement of the results of the philosophy of language was absolutely necessary, partly to establish more clearly the relation of thought to speech, partly to comprehend the true meaning of the Logos or the Word in the New Testament, and understand in how easily intelligible and perfectly reasonable a sense the term “Word” (Logos) can be applied to the Son of God.

I am not one of those who pretend to find no difficulties in all these questions. On the contrary, I have wrestled with them for years, and remember well the joy I felt when first the true historical meaning of the opening of the Fourth Gospel, “In the beginning was the word,” became clear to me. It is true that I turned no somersaults like the Horseherd, but I was well satisfied. I do not therefore consider the objections raised by him as unfounded or without justification; on the contrary, it were better if others would speak with the same freedom as he has done, although a calmer tone in such matters would be more effective than the fortissimo of the Horseherd.

What aided me most in the solution of these religious or theological difficulties, was a comparative study of the religions of mankind. In spite of their differences, they are all afflicted with the same ailments, and when we find that we encounter the same difficulties in other religions as those with [pg 159] which we are ourselves contending, it is safe to consider them as deeply rooted in human nature, and in this same nature, be it weak or strong, to seek their solution. As comparative philology has proved that many of the irregular nouns and verbs are really the most regular and ancient, so it is with the irregular, that is, the miraculous occurrences in the history of religion. Indeed, we may now say that it would be a miracle if there were anywhere any religion without miracles, or if the Scriptures on which any religion is based were not presented by the priests and accepted by the believers as of superhuman, even divine origin, and therefore infallible. In all these matters we must seek for the reasons, and in this manner endeavour to understand their truth as well as error.

Whether or not I have succeeded in proving that the world is rational, and that mind is the prius of matter, I must leave to the decision of the Horseherd and his friends. Fortunately these questions are of that nature that we may entertain different opinions upon them without accusing each other of heresy. Many Darwinians, for instance, Romanes, and even Huxley, have always considered themselves good Christians, although they believed the doctrine of Darwin to be the only way of salvation. If, however, we take up such questions as were propounded to me by the Horseherd, and which have more to do with Christian theology than Christian religion, there is an immediate change of tone, and unfortunately the [pg 160] difference of view becomes at once a difference of aim. The moral element enters immediately, and those who believe otherwise are designated unbelievers, though we do not at once stamp those who think otherwise as incapable of thought. Here lies the great difficulty in considering and treating calmly religious, or rather, theological questions. There is little hope of reaching a mutual understanding when the first attack is characterised by such vigour as was shown by the Horseherd and many of his comrades. He speaks at once of tales of fraud and deceit, and of the fantasies of the Christian religion. He says that he is full of bloodthirstiness against the Jewish idea of God, and believes that since the writings of Hume and Schopenhauer, positive Christianity has become a sheer impossibility, and more of the same import. This is certainly “fortissimo,” but not therefore by any means “verissimo.”

Other correspondents, such as Agnosticus, declare all revelation a chimera; in short, there has been no lack of expressions subversive of Christianity, and, in fact, of all revealed religion.

At this point a glance at the development of the religion of the Hindus may be of great service to us. Nowhere is the idea of revelation worked out so carefully as in their literature. They have a voluminous literature, treating of religion and philosophy, and they draw a very sharp distinction between revealed and unrevealed works ( Now it is very useful, before we treat of our own idea of a revelation emanating from God, to look round among other nations and see how they reached the idea of a revelation. We see in India that a [pg 163] number of hymns in an ancient dialect and in fixed metres were preserved by oral tradition—the method was wonderful, but is authenticated by history—before there could have been a thought of reducing them to writing. These hymns contain very little that would appear to be too high or too deep for an ordinary human poet. They are of great interest to us because they make known, as clearly as possible, the sound of the oldest Aryan language, and the nature of the oldest Aryan gods. As Professor Deussen, in his valuable History of Philosophy says, (I, 83), the Vedic religion, which he at the same time calls the oldest philosophy, is richer in disclosures than any other in the world. In this sense he very properly calls the study of the Rigveda the high school of the science of religion, so that as he says no one can discuss these matters without a knowledge of it. This unique distinction rests, as he truly remarks, on the fact, “That the process on which originally all gods depend, the personification of the phenomena of nature, while it is more or less obscured by all other religions, in the Rigveda still takes place, so to speak, before our eyes visibly and palpably.” I have long preached this in vain. All who have studied the Rigveda say this, and all who have not studied it say just the contrary, and lay especial stress upon the fact that these hymns contain ideas that once and for all they declare as modern. But no one has ever contended that this is not so. What is historically the oldest, may from a higher [pg 164] point of view be quite modern, and there are scholars who even look upon Adam as a reformer of mankind. Those who best know the Rigveda have often shown that it stands at a tolerably advanced stage, and here and there casts a distant glance into its own past. I myself have often said that I would give much if I could escape from my own proofs of the age of this collection of hymns, and could clearly show that at least some of these Vedic hymns had been added later.

These hymns, therefore, just because, judging from their language and metre, they are older than everything else in India, or even in the entire Aryan world, and because they are mainly concerned with the ancient gods of nature, appeared to the Hindus themselves as All this is easily intelligible. There followed a period, however, during which the true understanding of the hymns became considerably obscured, and a new series of works, the so-called The remarkable thing, however, is that they did not assume, like the Romans in the case of Numa and Egeria, a communication from the Vedic gods of nature to ordinary men, but contented themselves with declaring that the Veda had been seen by the Rishis, whose name Rishi they explained etymologically as “seer.”

It is clear, therefore, that what the Brahmans understood under We see, therefore, that the idea of the As for Islam, the Koran is looked upon as communicated to Mohammed by the angel Gabriel, even as Zoroaster in the Avesta claims to have received certain communications in conversation with Ahuramazda.

In Christianity, in whose history the theory of revelation has played so great a part, there is in fact—and this is frequently overlooked—no declaration on the subject by Christ or the apostles themselves. That the Gospels, as they have come down to us, have been revealed, is nowhere stated in them, nor can it be gathered from the Acts of the Apostles or the Epistles. No one has ever maintained that any New Testament Scripture was known to Christ or even to the apostles.51 On the contrary, if we take the titles of the Gospels in their natural meaning, they do not purport to have been written down by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John themselves: they are simply the sacred history as it was recorded by others according to each of these men. Attempts have indeed been made to reason away the meaning of In any case we learn this much from a comparative study of religions, that the majority of them have their holy books, which are usually the oldest remains of literature, oral or written, that they possess. They look upon the authors of these Scriptures as extraordinary, even superhuman beings; and the later theologians in order to remove from the minds of the people every doubt as to their truth, devised the most ingenious theories, to show how these books were not produced by men, but were merely seen by them, and how in the end even the words and letters of the original text were dictated to certain individuals. It is imagined, therefore, that the Deity condescended to speak Hebrew or Greek in the dialect of that period, and that therefore no letter or accent may be disturbed.

This would, of course, make the matter very easy, and this is no doubt the reason why the theory has found so many adherents. It is only strange that no founder of any religion ever appears to have felt the necessity of leaving anything in his own writing either to his contemporaries or to posterity. No one has ever attempted to prove that Moses wrote books, nor has it ever been said of Christ that he composed a book (John vii. 15). The same is true of Buddha, in spite of the legend of the alphabets; and of Mohammed we know from himself that he could neither read nor write. What we possess, therefore, in the [pg 169] way of holy Scriptures is always the product of a later generation, and subject to all the hazards involved in oral tradition. This was not to be avoided, and ought not to surprise us. If we attempt ourselves to write down without the aid of books or memoranda, occurrences or conversations of which we were witnesses fifty years ago, we shall see how difficult it is, and how untrustworthy is our memory. We may be entirely veracious, but it by no means follows that we are also true and trustworthy. Let any one try to describe the incidents of the Austro-Prussian War without referring to books, and he will see how, with the best intentions, names and dates will waver and reel. When did the German National Assembly elect the German Emperor? Who were the members of the regency? Who was Henry Simon, and were there one or more Simons, like the nine Simons in the New Testament? Who can answer these questions now without newspapers, and yet these are matters only fifty years old, and at the time were well known to all of us. Was it different with the Christians in the year 50 A.D.? It was therefore very natural that a certain inspiration or preËminent endowment should be demanded for the authors of the Gospels; if some do so still, it is on their own responsibility, just as if we demanded for the mother of Mary the same immaculate birth as for Mary herself, If they were not, then all these difficulties of our own making disappear. We then find in the Gospels just what we might expect: no ingeniously prepared statements without inconsistencies and without contradictions, but simple, natural accounts, such as were current from the first to the third generations in certain circles or localities, and even according to the attachment of certain families to the personal narrations of one or another of the apostles. We must not forget that in the first generation the necessity for a record was not even felt. Children were still brought up as Jews, for Christianity did not seek to destroy, only to fulfil; and as all the Scriptures, that is the Old Testament, were derived from God and were good for instruction, they continued in use for teaching without further question. But in the second and third generations the breach between Jews and Christians became wider and wider, and the number of those who had known Christ and the apostles, less and less; the need of books especially for the instruction of children consequently became more urgent, and the four Gospels thus arose by a [pg 171] natural process in answer to a natural and even irresistible want. The difficulties involved even in the smallest contradiction between the Gospels on a theory of inspiration thus disappear of themselves; nay, their discrepancies become welcome, because they entirely exclude every idea of intentional deviation, and simply exhibit what the historical conditions would lead us to expect. Of what harm is it, for instance, that Matthew (viii. 28), in relating the expulsion of the devils in the land of the Gergesenes, speaks of two possessed men, while Mark (v. 2) knows only of one among the Gadarenes? Mark also speaks only of unclean spirits, while Matthew speaks of devils. Mark and Luke know the name of the sufferer, Legion; Matthew does not mention the Roman name. These are matters of small import in human traditions and records; in divine revelations they would be difficult to explain.

But it becomes still more difficult when we come to expressions which are really significant and essential for Christianity, for even in these we find inconsistencies. What can be more important than the passage in which Christ asks his disciples, “But whom say ye that I am,” and Peter answers, “Thou art the Messiah” (Mark viii. 29). That was a purely Jewish-Christian answer, and Jesus accepts it as the perfect truth, which, however, should still remain secret. In (Matthew xvi. 16) Peter says not only, “Thou art the Messiah,” but adds, “Son of the living God.” This makes a great difference, and the remarkable thing [pg 172] is, that later on Jesus only commands his disciples to keep secret that he, Jesus, was the Messiah, and says nothing of himself as the Son of God. So much has been written about other discrepancies in this passage, particularly of the promise of the building of the church upon this rock (Peter), which is only found in (Matthew xvi. 18), that we have nothing further to say about it, unless it be that in Mark in this very passage Jesus rebukes Peter because he thinks more of the world than of God, like so many of his later successors.

Let us bear in mind further that neither revelation nor divine inspiration was really necessary for recording most of the things related in the Gospels. The less, the better; for either the witnesses knew that Pilate was at the time governor in Palestine, that Caiaphas was high priest, and that Jairus was ruler of a synagogue, or they did not know it, and in that case we cannot assume that these things were revealed to them by God without irreverence. If, however, it is impossible that God should have inspired or sanctioned the historical part of the Gospels, why then the other part, which contains the teachings of Christ? Is it not much better, much more honest and trustworthy for the writers to have communicated them to us, as they knew and understood them (and that they occasionally misunderstood them they themselves quite honestly admit), than to have been supernaturally inspired for the purpose, and even to have received a revelation in the form of a theophany? [pg 173] Through such weak human ideas we merely drag the Real, the truly Divine, into the dust, and from whom do these ideas of a divine inspiration or revelation come, if not from men as they were everywhere, whether in India or Judea? Everywhere the natural is divine, the supernatural or miraculous is human.

Even for the Apostles and the authors of the Gospels there was only one revelation: that was the revelation through Christ; and this has an entirely different meaning. To understand this, however, we must glance at what we know of the intellectual movements of that time. The Jewish nation cherished two great expectations. The one was ancient and purely Jewish, the expectation of the Messiah, the anointed (Christ), who should be the political and spiritual liberator of the chosen but enslaved people of Israel. The other was also Jewish, but transfused with Greek philosophy, the recognition of the word (Logos) as the Son of God, who should reconcile or unite humanity with God. The first declares itself most clearly, though not exclusively, in the three so-called Synoptic Gospels, the second in the so-called Gospel of John. But it is worthy of note how often these apparently remote ideas are found combined in the Gospels. The idea that a man can be the Son of God was blasphemy in a strict Jewish view, and it was for this reason that the last question of the high priest was, “I adjure thee by the living God, that thou tell us whether thou be the Christ, the Son of God” (Matthew xxvi. 63). The Jewish Messiah could [pg 174] never be the Son of God, the Word, in the Christian sense of the term, but only in the sense in which many nations have called God the Father of men. In this sense, also, the Jews say (John viii. 4), “We have one father, even God,” while they start back affrighted at the idea of a divine sonship of man. The Messiah, according to Jewish doctrine, was to be the son of David (Matthew xxii. 42), as the people appear to have called Jesus (Mark x. 47, xv. 39), and in order to counteract this view Christ himself said, in a passage of great historical import: “How then doth David in spirit call the Messiah Lord, saying, The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand till I make thine enemies thy footstool? If then David called him Lord, how is he his son?” With these words the true Messiah publicly renounced his royal descent from David, whilst he immediately laid claim to a much higher one. Of what use is it, then, that the author of the Gospel takes such pains in the first chapter to trace Joseph's descent genealogically from David, in spite of the fact that he does not represent Joseph himself as the natural father of Jesus?

These contradictions are quite conceivable in an age strongly influenced by different intellectual currents, but they would be intolerable in a revealed or divinely inspired book. All becomes intelligible, clear, and free from contradiction, if we see in the Synoptic Gospels that which they profess to be—narratives of what had long been told and believed in certain circles [pg 175] about the teaching and person of Christ. I say, what they themselves profess to be; for can we believe, that if the authors had really witnessed a miraculous vision, if every word and every letter had been whispered to them, they would have made no mention of it? They relate so many wonders, why not this one, the greatest of all? But it is not enough that they do not claim any miraculous communication for themselves or their works. Luke states in plain words the character of his gospel, “For as much as many have taken in hand to draw up a narrative concerning those matters which have been fulfilled among us, even as they delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eye-witnesses, and ministers of the word (Logos); it seemed good to me also, having traced the course of all things accurately from the first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus, that thou mightest know the certainty concerning the things wherein thou wast instructed.”

What can be clearer? Theophilus had evidently received a not very systematic Christian training, such as was possible under the conditions of that time. As Luke says, there were even then several works on the matters of common belief among Christians. In order, however, that Theophilus may have a trustworthy knowledge of them, his friend (whether Luke or any one else) determines to communicate them to him in regular order, as they had been imparted to him, without asserting that he had himself been from the beginning an eye-witness of them, or [pg 176] a minister of the Word. It is apparent, therefore, that the writer rests upon a tradition derived from eye-witnesses, and that he had even investigated everything with care. Is it credible that he would not have made mention of a revelation or a theophany, had either fallen to his lot? He also lays stress upon his orderly arrangement, which probably implies that even at that time there were the same discrepancies in the sequence of events that we observe in the four Gospels, to say nothing about the numerous apocryphal Gospels. This is just what we as historians expected, in fact it could scarcely be otherwise. Christ's message had first to pass through the colloquial process, the leavening process of oral transmission; then followed the reduction to written form, and it is this that we have, apart from the corruptions of copyists. It is difficult to conceive how it could have been otherwise, and still we are not content with these facts, and imagine that we could have done it much better ourselves.

When we take the Synoptic Gospels one by one, we find in Luke the most complete and probably the latest sequence of all the important events; in Mark, the shortest and probably most original narrative, which only contains that which seemed to him undisputed or of the greatest importance; while Matthew, on the contrary, clearly presents the tradition formed and established among the Jewish Christians and believers in the Messiah.

If we may speak of communities at this early time, [pg 177] the community for which the first Gospel was intended manifestly consisted of converted Jews, who had recognised in Jesus their long-expected Messiah or Christ, and were, therefore, convinced that everything which had been expected of the Messiah came true in this Jesus. They went still farther. When they were once convinced that Jesus was the Messiah, many traditions arose which ascribed to him what he, if he were the Messiah, must have done. This is the pervading feature of the first Gospel, as every one who reads it carefully may easily be convinced. This alone explains the frequent and frank expression that this and that occurred “for thus it was written, and thus it was spoken by the prophet.” Every idea of intentional invention of Messianic fulfilments, which has so often been asserted, disappears of itself in our interpretation of the origin of the Gospel. It must be so, people thought, and they soon told themselves and their children that it had been so, and all in good faith, for otherwise Jesus could not have been the expected Messiah.

If we examine the gospel of Matthew from this historical standpoint in detail, we find that it begins with an entirely unnecessary genealogy of Joseph, the ostensible father of Jesus. Then follows the birth, and this is confirmed in i. 22, “For all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet,” namely, Isaiah (vii. 14), “Behold a maiden is with child and shall bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” This means simply [pg 178] that it will be the first-born son, and that he will be called “God is with us,” and, therefore, certainly nothing supernatural.

The next story that the birth took place in Bethlehem, and that the wise men from the East saw the star over Bethlehem, is again founded on the prophet's word that the ruler of Israel would come from Bethlehem.

When the flight of Joseph and Mary to Egypt with the Christ child is told, it is again set forth in ii. 15, that what the prophet said might be fulfilled, “Out of Egypt have I called my son.”

The massacre of the children in Bethlehem, with all its difficulties in the eyes of the historian, finds a sufficient reason in verse 17 on the words which were spoken by Jeremiah the prophet, “A voice was heard in Rama, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children; and she would not be comforted, because they are not.”

Later, when Joseph returns with the child and journeys to Nazareth, this too is explained by the words of the prophet, who said, “He shall be called a Nazarene.”

On the false idea of the words of the prophet, that a Nazarene is an inhabitant of Nazareth, I shall say nothing here. Everything, even such popular errors, is quite intelligible from this point of view, and only shows how convinced the people were that Jesus was the Messiah, and therefore must have fulfilled everything which was expected of the Messiah. To us [pg 179] these fulfilments of the prophecy may not sound very convincing. But as a presentation of the ideas which then held sway over the people, and as proof of the grasp of the colloquial process, they are of great value to the historian.

The appearance of John the Baptist, too, is immediately explained by reference to prophetic words (iii. 3). And when Jesus, after the imprisonment of John, left his abode and removed to Capernaum, as was quite natural, this, likewise must have occurred (iv. 14-16) that certain words of Isaiah should be fulfilled.

There follows in the fifth to the seventh chapters the real kernel of Christian teaching in the sermon on the mount, and the announcement of the coming kingdom of God upon earth. Here we ask nothing more than a true statement, such as an apostle or his disciples were fully in a position to give us. No miraculous inspiration is needed for it; on the contrary, it would only injure for us the trustworthiness of the reporter. In the next chapters we read of the works done by Jesus, which were soon construed by the people as miracles, while in another place the evangelist sets the forgiveness of sins higher than all miracles, than all healing of the sick, and even declares this to be a power which God had given to men (ix. 8). Jesus himself often makes his healing power depend on the faith of the person to be healed, and of miraculous arts he says not a word (ix. 28). Next follow the appointment and [pg 180] despatch of the disciples, and soon after those words, which are so significant for this Gospel (xi. 27), “All things are delivered unto me of my Father; and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the son willeth to reveal him.” Here we have in a few words the true spirit, the true inspiration of the teaching which Christ proclaimed, that he was not only the Messiah or the son of David, but the true son of God, the Logos, which God willed when he willed man, the highest thought of God, the highest revelation of God, which was imparted in Jesus to blind humanity. We cannot judge of this so correctly as those who saw and knew Jesus in his corporeal existence, and found in him all those perfections, particularly in his life and conduct, of which human nature is capable. We must here rely on the evidence of his contemporaries who had no motive to discover in him, the son of a carpenter, the realisation on earth of the divine ideal of man, if this ideal had not stood realised in him, before their eyes, in the flesh. What is true Christianity if it be not the belief in the divine sonship of man, as the Greek philosophers had rightly surmised, but had never seen realised on earth? Here is the point, where the two great intellectual currents of the Aryan and Semitic worlds flow together, in that the long-expected Messiah of the Jews was recognised as the Logos, the true son of God, and that he opened or revealed to every man the [pg 181] possibility to become what he had always been, but had never before apprehended, the highest thought, the Word, the Logos, the Son of God. Knowing here means being. A man may be a prince, the son of a king, but if he does not know it, he is not so. Even so from all eternity man was the son of God, but until he really knew it, he was not so. The reporters in the Synoptic Gospels only occasionally recognise the divine sonship of man with real clearness, for in their view the practical element in Christianity was predominant, but in the end everything practical must be based upon theory or faith. Our duties toward God and man, our love for God and for man, are as nothing, without the firm foundation which is formed only by our faith in God, as the Thinker and Ruler of the world, the Father of the Son, who was revealed through him as the Father of all sons, of all men. Such sayings are especially significant in the Synoptic Evangelists, because it might appear as though they had not recognised the deepest mystery of the revelation of Christ, but were satisfied with the purely practical parts of his teachings. Shortly after, when Jesus again proves his healing powers among the people, and the Pharisees persecute him because the people were more and more inclined to recognise in him the son of David, the Evangelist again declares (xii. 17) that all this occurred that the words of the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled, “Behold my servant, whom I have chosen, my beloved in whom my soul is well pleased; I will [pg 182] put my spirit upon him, and he shall declare judgment unto the Gentiles.”

Then follow many of the profoundest and most beautiful parables which contain the secrets of Christ's teaching, and of which some, as we read, and not by any means the most obscure, remained unintelligible even to the disciples. Even at that time his fame had become so great, that on returning to his own birthplace, the people would scarcely believe that he was the same as the son of the carpenter, that his mother was named Mary, and his brothers, Jacob, Joseph, Simon, and Judas, who like his sisters were all still living. Yet among his own people he could accomplish but few works. The Gospel then goes on to relate that as Herod had caused John to be beheaded, Jesus again withdrew to a lonely place, probably to escape the persecutions of Herod. Then follow the really important chapters, full of teachings and of parables, intended to illumine these teachings and to bring them home to the people. Here we naturally do not expect any appeal to the prophets; on the contrary we often find a very bold advance beyond the ancient law or a higher interpretation of the ancient Jewish teachings. As soon, however, as we return to facts like the last journey to Jerusalem, and the arrest of Jesus through the treachery of Judas, the words immediately recur that all this came to pass that the Scriptures should be fulfilled (xxvi. 54). Even Jesus himself, when he commands his disciples to make no resistance, must [pg 183] have added the words, “But how then shall the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be,” which clearly refers to the famous prophecy of Isaiah in the fifty-third chapter. Even the thirty pieces of silver which were paid Judas for his betrayal, are considered necessary, that a prophesy of Jeremiah's may be fulfilled. But it seems that this prophesy is not to be found in Jeremiah, and must be sought in Zechariah (xi. 12, 13). Such a confusion might easily occur among the people, imperfectly acquainted with the text of the prophets. In this case, therefore, it is quite harmless; but how could it possibly occur in a revealed gospel? At the crucifixion of Jesus the garments are divided, and another passage is immediately recalled, this time in a Psalm (xxii. 19), in which the poet says of himself that his enemies divided his garments between them, but there is no mention of the Messiah. Such an application of the words of the Psalm to Jesus is perfectly intelligible in the contemporary feeling of the Jewish people. Once convinced that Jesus was the Messiah or Christ, all the incidents of his life and death must necessarily remind them of the prophecies which had been current for years, and kept alive among them the hope of their deliverer. Such details were probably employed to deepen the conviction in themselves and others that Jesus was really the Messiah. This is all quite natural and comprehensible; but if we look at it with the idea that the writer was called and inspired by God, what must we say? First, in some [pg 184] cases there are plain errors which would be impossible in an infallible witness. Secondly, must we believe that such events as the birth of Christ in Bethlehem and his betrayal by Judas took place merely in order that certain prophecies might be fulfilled? This would reduce the life of Christ to a mere phantasm and rob it of its entire historical significance. Or shall we assume (as some critics have done) that all these events were simply invented to prove the Messiahship of Jesus?

From all these difficulties we escape when we recognise in the Gospels a record or deposit of what was developed in the first century in the consciousness of the Christians, and concerning the Gospel of Matthew in particular, Christians who were converts from Judaism. In this view everything that borders on intentional deceit drops away of itself. The facts remain as before, as the people had explained and arranged them. According to Matthew and his successors, Christianity originated as is described in the Gospel according to Matthew. Many facts may in the minds and mouths of the people have assumed a more popular or legendary form; that was not to be avoided. We know how much this popular influence, or what I call the colloquial process, has infected the traditions of other nations, and it is very helpful to know this, in order to do justice to the Gospels. For how should this influence have been wanting just in the first and second centuries in Palestine? Everything becomes clear when we accept [pg 185] the historical view, supported by many parallel cases, of the origin of the Gospels in the mouths of the people. The tradition was just such as we should expect under the existing conditions. Of intentional deceit there is no further question. We cannot expect anything other or better than what we have, i.e. what the people, or the young Christian community, related about the life of the founder of the new religion, unless it were a record from the hand of the founder of our religion himself; for even the apostles are only depicted as men, and their comprehension is represented as purely human and often very fallible. When we speak of revelation, the term can only refer to the true revelation of the eternal truths through Jesus himself, as we find them in the Gospels, and the verity of which, even where it is somewhat veiled by the tradition, confers on it the character of revelation. For it is a fact which we should never forget, that even the best attested revelation, as it can only reach us in human setting and by human means, does not make truth, but it is truth, deeply felt truth, which makes revelation. Truth constitutes revelation, not revelation truth. We therefore lose nothing by this view, but gain immensely, and are at once relieved from all the little difficulties which a laborious criticism thinks it discovers by a comparison of the Gospels with one another. The only difficulty that seems to remain is this, that the Synoptic Gospels are so often content to put the Jewish conception of Jesus as the Messiah, as the son of [pg 186] David and Abraham, and finally as the bodily son of God, in the foreground, and only hint at the leading and fundamental truth of Christ's teaching. We must never forget that the apostles were no philosophers, and the Logos idea in its full significance and historical development demands, for its correct understanding, a considerable philosophical training.

Here we are helped by the Fourth Gospel, which must decidedly be ascribed to Christians with more of Greek culture. That Greek ideas had penetrated into Palestine is best seen in the works of Philo JudÆus, the contemporary of Jesus. We cannot suppose that he stood alone, and other Jewish thinkers must like him have accepted the Logos idea as a solution of the riddle of the universe. Out of soil like this, permeated and fructified with such ideas, grew the Fourth Gospel. If we ever make it plain to ourselves that Jews who, like Philo, had adopted the Logos idea with all its consequences, necessarily recognised in the Logos the Son of God, the chosen of God (Luke xxiii. 35), the realised image of God, and then in the actual Jesus the incarnation or realisation, or rather the universalising of this image, the Fourth Gospel ascribed to John will become much clearer to us. Here lies the nucleus of true Christianity, in so far as it deals with the personality of Christ, and the relation of God to humanity. It is no longer said that God has made and created the world, but that God has thought and uttered the world. All existences are thoughts, or collectively the thought [pg 187] (Logos) of God, and this thought has found its most perfect expression, its truest word, in a man in Jesus. In this sense and in no other was Jesus the Son of God and the Word, as the Jews of Greek culture believed, and as the author of the Fourth Gospel believed, and as still later the young Athanasius and his contemporaries believed, and as we must believe if we really wish to be Christians. There is no other really Christian explanation of the world than that God thought and uttered it, and that man follows in life and thought the thoughts of God. We must not forget that all our knowledge and hold of the world are again nothing but thoughts, which we transform under the law of causality into objective realities. It was this unswerving dependence on God in thought and life that made Jesus what he was, and what we should be if we only tried, viz., children of God. This light or this revelation shines through here and there even in the Synoptic Gospels, though so often obscured by the Jewish Messianic ideas.

In the Fourth Gospel the influence of these ideas and their employment by Jesus and his disciples cannot be mistaken. And why should not Jesus have adopted and fulfilled the Logos ideas of the Greek world as well as the Messianic ideas of the Jewish people? Do the Jews as thinkers rank so much higher than the Greeks? How does the first verse read, which might well have been said by a Neo-platonic philosopher, “In the beginning was the Word”? This Word is the Logos, and this Greek [pg 188] word is in itself quite enough to indicate the Greek origin of the idea. Word (Logos), however, signified at the same time thought. This creative Word was with God, nay, God himself was this Word. And all things were made by this Word, that is to say, in this Word and in all Words God thought the world. Whoever cannot or will not understand this, will never enter into the deepest depths of the teaching of Christ, good Christian as he may otherwise be, and the Fourth Gospel in its deepest meaning does not exist for him. That there was life in these words or things shining forth from God, we know, and this life, be it what it may, was a light to man, the light of the world, even though man had long been blind and imprisoned in darkness, and did not understand the life, the light, the Word.

Now, in passing to the gospel story, the evangelist says that Jesus brought or himself was the true light, while John's duty was merely to announce his coming beforehand. This is certainly a great step—it is the Christian recognition of the Word or of the Son of God in the historical Jesus, whose historical character is confirmed by the character of John the Baptist. The people believed in John, and John believed in Jesus. Of course we must not assume that the philosophical significance of the Word, or of the Logos, was ever clearly and completely present to the people in the form worked out by the Neo-platonists. That was impossible at the time, and it is so even now with the great mass of Christians. [pg 189] On the other hand, the many subtleties and oddities which have made the later Neo-platonism so repulsive to us, hardly existed for the consciousness of the masses, which could only adopt the fundamental ideas of the Logos system with a great effort. Religion is not philosophy; but there has never been a religion, and there never can be, which is not based on philosophy, and does not presuppose the philosophical notions of the people. The highest aim, toward which all philosophy strives, is and will always remain the idea of God, and it was this idea which Christianity grasped in the Platonic sense, and presented to us most clearly in its highest form, in the Fourth Gospel. To John, if for brevity we may so call the author of the Fourth Gospel, God was no longer the Jewish Jehovah, who had created the world in six days, formed Adam out of the dust, and every living creature out of the ground; for him God had acquired a higher significance, his nature was a spiritual nature, his creation was a spiritual creation, and as for man the Word comprehends everything, represents everything, realises everything that exists for him; so God was conceived as being in the beginning, and then expressing Himself in the Word, or as one with the Word. To God the Word, that is the all-comprehensive Word, was the utterance, the actualising or communicating of His subjective divine ideas, which were in Him, and through the Word passed out of Him into human perception, and thereby into objective reality. This [pg 190] second reality, inseparable from the first, was the second Logos, inseparable as cause and effect are inseparable in essence. As the highest of all Logoi was man, the most perfect man was recognised as the son of God, the Logos become flesh, the highest thought and will of God. In this there is nothing miraculous. Everything is consistently thought out, and in this sense Jesus could have been nothing else than the Word or the Son of God. All this sounds very strange to us at first, because we have forgotten the full meaning of the utterance or the Word, and are not able to transfer the creation of the Word and the Thought, even though only in the form of a similitude, to that which was in the beginning. A similitude it is and must remain, like everything that we say of God; but it is a higher and more spiritual similitude than any that have been or can be applied to God in the various religions and philosophies of the world. God has thought the world, and in the act of thinking has uttered or expressed it; and these thoughts which were in Him, and were thought and uttered by Him in rational sequence, are the Logoi, or species, or kinds, which we recognise again by reflection in the objective world, as rationally developing one from another. Here we have the true “Origin of Species” long before Darwin's book.

To the philosophers this is all perfectly intelligible. The step taken by Christ and his disciples (those, namely, who speak to us in the Fourth Gospel) was this, that they believed they recognised in the historical [pg 191] Jesus, the son of the carpenter of Nazareth, the highest Logos “Man” in his complete realisation. It was entirely natural, but it can only have occurred after overpowering experiences, for it must have signified more than we understand under the “ideal of a man,” although originally both expressions are derived from the same source. Nor was the designation of the Saviour as the Word, or, in more human fashion, the Son of God, intended so much for him conceived purely spiritually, but rather for his personality as inspired by the highest ideas.

In all these matters we must think of the ever changing medium, in which these expressions moved. Word and Son in the mouths of the people might coalesce or be kept quite apart; Son of David, Son of Abraham, might at times take the place of Son of God, and all these phrases might appear in popular intercourse to express only what others called the Messiah or Christ. In any case, all these were the highest expressions which could be applied to man or to the son of man. To the ordinary understanding, still permeated with heathen ideas, it was certainly monstrous to elevate a man to Olympus, to transform him into a son of God. But what was there for man higher than man? Intermediate beings, such as demons, heroes, or angels, had never been seen, nor did they answer the purpose. One step, however small, above the human, could only lead to the divine, or bring into consciousness the divine in man. What seemed blasphemy to the Jewish consciousness [pg 192] was just that truth which Christ proclaimed, the truth for which he laid down his human life. If we enter into this thought, we shall understand not only the occasional expressions of the Synoptics, but the Fourth Gospel especially in all its depth. How it was possible to make this last Gospel intelligible without these ideas, is almost incomprehensible.

What, then, did the readers think of the Word, that was in the beginning, that was with God, that even was God, of the Word, by which all things were made? And what was understood when Jesus was called the Word, that was in the world, without the world knowing him, while those who recognised and acknowledged him as the Word, thereby became like him sons of God? We must ascribe some meaning to these words, and what can we ascribe if we do not take the philosophic term “Logos” in its historic sense? One need only attempt to translate the beginning of the Fourth Gospel into a non-Christian language, and we shall realise that without its heathen antecedents the words remain absolutely unintelligible. We find translations that mean simply, “In the beginning was the substantive.” That may seem incredible to us; but what better idea has a poor old peasant woman in reading the first chapter of the Fourth Gospel, and what better idea can the village preacher give her if she asks for an explanation?

For us the greatest difficulty remains in verse 14, “The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us.” [pg 193] But what grounds have we for setting our opinion against the unhesitating acceptance of contemporaries, and later even of the Alexandrian philosophers? They must have felt the same difficulties as ourselves, but they overcame them in consideration of what they had seen in Jesus, or even only heard of him. They could not comprehend him in his moral elevation and holiness, except as the Logos, the Word, the Son of God. If we follow them, we are safe; if not, we can no doubt say much in excuse, but we place ourselves in the strongest opposition to history. We may say that men have never seen any divine idea, any divine word, any divine thought of any kind realised on earth; nay, that man can never have the right to pass such a deifying judgment, of his own sovereign power, on anything lying within his actual experience. We so easily forget that if God is once brought near to humanity, and no longer regarded as only transcendent, humanity must, at the same time, be thought and brought nearer to the divine. We may acknowledge this and still maintain that others, like the apostles and the philosophers of Alexandria after them, must have felt the same difficulty, perhaps even more strongly than we, who never were eye-witnesses nor Platonic philosophers. Yet they still insisted that Jesus in his life, conduct, and death demonstrated that human nature could rise no higher than in him, and that he was all and fulfilled all that God had comprised in the Logos “man.” Jesus himself declares, when Peter first called him the son of [pg 194] God, that flesh and blood had not revealed it unto him, but his Father which is in heaven (Matthew xvi. 17). And this was perfect truth and applies to us also.

We may go through the whole Fourth Gospel, and we shall find that it remains incomprehensible, except from the standpoint that we ascribe to the author. When we read (i. 18), “No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him,” shall we then think only of the son of the carpenter, the bodily Jesus, and not rather of the Word that was in him, and that was as near to the Father as He to himself; that was in the bosom of the Father, and that declared to us the Father, who was in the beginning? Has not Jesus himself stated (iii. 13) that no man hath ascended up to heaven except him who came down from heaven, that is from God, and that no one has seen the Father, save he which is of God, that is the Son (vi. 46)? These are, of course, figurative expressions, but their meaning cannot be doubtful. When Nathanael called Jesus, Rabbi, King of Israel, and Son of God, his ideas may still have been very immature, but in time the true meaning of the Son of God breaks through more and more clearly.

The declaration of Jesus to Nicodemus, “Ye must be born anew,” is a remarkable one—remarkable, because the Brahmans from the earliest times make use of the same expression, and call themselves the reborn, the twice born (Dvija), and both no doubt [pg 195] attributed the same meaning to the second birth, namely, the recognition of the true nature of man, the Brahmans as one with Brahman, that is, the Word; the Christians as one with the Word, or the Son of God. And why should this belief in the Son give everlasting life (ii. 16)? Because Jesus has through his own sonship in God declared to us ours also. This knowledge gives us eternal life through the conviction that we too have something divine and eternal within us, namely, the word of God, the Son, whom He hath sent (v. 38). Jesus himself, however, is the only begotten Son, the light of the world. He first fulfilled and illumined the divine idea which lies darkly in all men (see John viii. 12, xii. 35, 46), and made it possible for all men to become actually what they have always been potentially—sons of God.

Further reading in the Fourth Gospel will of course show us many things that are only indirectly connected with this, which I believe to be the supreme truth of Christianity. To the woman of Samaria Jesus only declares that God is a spirit, and that he must be worshipped in spirit, bound neither to Jerusalem nor to Samaria. She knows only that the Messiah will come, she was scarcely ready for the idea of a son of God, but like the Pharisees (v. 18) would have considered this only as blasphemy (x. 33). But again and again the keynote of the new teaching breaks through. When Jesus speaks of his works, he calls them the works of his [pg 196] Father (v. 19); even the resurrection from the dead is explained by him, as clearly as possible, to be an awakening through the Word, “He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life” (v. 14), which means that he is immortal. He, however, who did not recognise the Word and his divine nature, as Jesus taught it, does not yet possess that eternal life, for which he is destined, but which must first be gained through insight, or belief in Jesus. Can anything be clearer than the words (John xvii. 3), “And this is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent”? Of course many of these expressions were not understood by the masses, or were even misunderstood. The words were repeated, and when necessary, especially in the questionings of children, they had to be explained somehow, often by a parable or story, which the mother invents at the moment, to quiet them. All this is inevitable; it has happened everywhere, and happens still. Whoever wishes to learn how tradition or common report treats historical facts, should compare the GÜnther or Etzel of the Nibelungen with the Gundicarius or Attila of history, or Charles the Great crowned by the Pope with the Charlemagne who besieged Jerusalem, or Hruodlandus with Roland, or Arturus with Arthur. Or, to come to later days, we need only recall the wonderful tales of the French journals during the last Franco-German War, and we shall be astonished at [pg 197] the manner in which, quite unintentionally, the people adapt all tidings to their own views. Nineteen hundred years ago there were no newspapers. Why should it have been different then?

What the children had heard and believed, they remembered when they had grown older, or themselves had become parents. It was convenient and natural to tell their children again what they had heard in their own childhood, and like a rolling stone, with each repetition the tradition constantly took up new miraculous elements. There is scarcely a miracle in the New Testament that did not account for itself spontaneously in this way, and that did not in its original form reveal to us a far higher truth than the mere miracle itself. And when the time came for a record, was it not quite natural that everything available should be gathered together, according to the tales told and believed from house to house, or village to village? In this process, moreover, the appeal to a voucher, if possible to a contemporary or eye-witness, was not at all surprising, especially if there was a still living tradition, that this or that had been heard from one of the apostles, and could be traced back to him from son to father. Why should we put aside, nay, indignantly reject, this simple, natural theory, suggested by all the circumstances, and capable of at once removing all difficulties, in order to prefer another, which has the advantage, it is true, of having been generally accepted for centuries, but nevertheless [pg 198] was originally nothing more than a human appeal to a superhuman attestation? It must not be forgotten that if a voice were really heard from heaven, it lies with man to understand it, or, on his own authority, to declare it the voice of God or an angel. With one-half of Christendom the doctrine of the verbal inspiration of the four Gospels never became an article of faith. It was first made so among the Protestants to provide something incontestable in place of the councils and the Pope. But this only drove Protestants from Scylla into Charybdis, and landed them in inextricable difficulties, because they withdrew the Gospels from the historical soil out of which they sprang. But we do not escape Charybdis by steering again into Scylla, but by endeavouring to rise above Charybdis, ay, even above the Gospels. In our human shortsightedness we may believe that it would have been better for us had Jesus or the apostles themselves left us something in writing. But as this did not happen, why should we not be content with what we have? The ruins of the true Christianity still remain; why should we not endeavour with their help to restore the ancient temple?