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1916

THE SILESIAN HOBSEHERD

THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
(DAS PFEBDEBURLA)
QUESTIONS OF THE HOUR
ANSWERED BY
FEIEDEICH MAX MULLEK.

TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN
By OSCAR A. FECHTER
WITH A PREFACE
By J. ESTLIN CARPENTER, M.A.

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
91 and 93 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
LONDON AND BOMBAY
1903

CoPYRKJHT, 1903, BT
LONGMANS, GKEEN, AND CO.

PH-Gr

Norbjcatf P«sb
J. S. Cushing & Co. —Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

PREFACE
The story of this volume is soon told. In July,
1895, Professor Max Miiller contributed to the
Deutsche Rundschau an essay on the lost treatise
against Christianity by the philosopher Celsus,
known to us through the reply of Origen of Alex
andria. This essay, entitled " The ' True History ' J
of Celsus," contained an exposition of the doctrine of
the Logos and its place in Christian teaching, with
reference also to its applications in our modern
thought. Among the comments upon it which in
diie time found their way to Oxford, was a vigorous,
if familiar, letter (dated February, 1896) from a
German emigrant to the United States, residing in
Pennsylvania, who signed himself by the unusual
name of the Pferdebiirla, or "Horseherd."2 His
criticisms served as a fair sample of others ; and his
letter was published with a reply from Professor
1 The Greek term " logos " was rendered Geschichte in the Ger
man title.
2 The word Pferdebiirla is apparently a Silesian equivalent for
Pferdebursche, and is represented in this volume by the term
"horseherd," after the analogy of cowherd, swineherd, or shep
herd. The termination biirla is probably a local corruption of the
diminutive biirschel or burschlein. v

VI PREFACE
Max Miiller in the Rundschau of November, 1896.
More letters poured in upon the unwearied scholar
who had thus set aside precious time out of his last
years to answer his unknown correspondent. One
of these, from " Ignotus Agnosticus," supplied a text
for further comment, and the whole grew into a
little popular apologia, which was published at Berlin
in 1899, and entitled Das Pferdebiirla, or " Questions
of the Day answered by Friedrich Max Miiller."
The veteran teacher thus enforced once more his
ideas of the relation of language and thought, in
which he had long since recognised the clue to man's
knowledge of the relation of his spirit to God. This
inner union he found realised in Christ, according
to the testimony of the Fourth Gospel ; 1 and the
lucid treatment of this great conception, freed from
the technicalities of theology, will possibly prove to
some readers the most helpful portion of this book.
Ranging over many topics, once the themes of vehe
ment controversy, the discussion has often an inti
mate, familiar, personal air. The disputants on
opposite sides had drawn nearer ; they could better
understand each other's points of view.2 These pages,
therefore, reveal the inmost beliefs of one who had
1 "What difference does it make," he would ask, "whether it
was written by the son of Zebedee, or some other John, if only
it reveals to us the Son of God ? " (letter from the Vicar of St.
Giles's, Oxford, Life and Letters, II, Chap, xxxvi.).
2 See the letters between Max Muller and Dr. G. J. Romanes,
Life and Letters, II, Chap. xxxi.

PREFACE yii
devoted more than fifty years to the study of the
history of religious thought on the widest scale, and
had himself passed through severe struggles and
deep griefs with unshaken calm. No reader of Max
Muller's writings, or of the Life and Letters, can fail
to recognise in these trusts the secret unity of all
his labours. The record of human experience con
tained in the great sacred literatures of the world,
and verified afresh in manifold forms from age to
age, provided a basis for faith which no philosophy
or science could disturb.
This is the key to the reasonings and appeals of
this little book. It was translated as a labour of
love by Mr. Fechter, Mayor of North Yakima, in the
United States. The translation has been revised on
this side of the Atlantic, and is now offered to the
public in the belief that this final testimony of a
"voice that is still" to the reality of "things un
seen " will be welcome to many inquiring and per
haps troubled minds. J. ESTLIN CARPENTER.
Oxford, April 2, 1903.

CONTENTS
PAGE
Preface  v
I. The ' True History ' of Celsus ... 1
II. The Horseherd  40
III. Concerning the Horseherd .... 68
IV. Language and Mind  105
V. The Reasonableness of Religion . . . 153
VI. Conclusion  217

THE SILESIAN HOESEHEED
The following essays, which were intended pri
marily for the Horseherd, but which were published
in the Deutsche Rundschau, demand a short explana
tory introduction. This, I believe, can best be given
by me, by means of a reprint of another essay which
appeared in the same periodical, and was the direct
cause for the letter, which the writer, under the
name of " Horseherd," addressed to me. I receive
many such anonymous communications, but regret
that it is only rarely possible for me to answer them
or to give them attention, much as I should like to
do so. In this particular case, the somewhat abrupt,
but pure, human tone of the letter appealed to me
more than usual, and at my leisure I attempted an
answer. My article, which called forth the letter
of the Horseherd, was entitled " The ' True History '
of Celsus," 1 in the July number of the Deutsche
Rundschau, 1895, and, with a few corrections, is as
follows : — I
THE 'TRUE HISTORY' OF CELSUS
In an article which appeared in the March num
ber of the Deutsche Rundschau, 1895, entitled " The
Parliament of Religions in Chicago," I expressed my
1 XJeber die Wahre Geschichte des Celsus.
b 1

2 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
surprise that this event which I had characterised as
in my opinion the most important of the year 1893,
had been so little known and discussed in Germany
— so little, that the editors of the Wiener Fremden-
blatt thought it needful to explain the nature of
the Chicago Congress. Likewise, when in answer
to the question as to what I should consider the most
desirable discovery of the coming year in my depart
ment, I answered the discovery of the Sermo Verus
of Celsus ; this, too, appeared to be a work so little
known, that the editors considered it necessary to
add that Celsus was a renowned philosopher of the
second century, who first subjected the ever spread
ing system of Christianity to a thorough criticism in
a work entitled Sermo Verus. The wish, yes, even
the hope, that this lost book, of which we gain a fair
idea from the reply of Origen, should again make its
appearance, was prompted by the recent discoveries
of ancient Greek papyrus manuscripts in Egypt.
Where so many unexpected discoveries have been
made, we may hope for yet more. For who would
have believed that ancient Greek texts would be
found in a mummy-case, the Greek papyrus leaves
being carelessly rolled together to serve as cush
ions for the head and limbs of a skeleton? It
was plain that these papyrus leaves had been sold
as waste paper, and that they were probably ob
tained from the houses of Greek officials and mili
tary officers, who had established themselves in Egypt
during the Macedonian occupation, and whose furni-

THE 'TRUE HISTORY' OF CELSUS 3
ture and belongings had been publicly sold and scat
tered on occasion of their rapid withdrawal. There
were found not only fragments of classical texts, as
of Homer, Plato, and the previously unknown treatise
on " The Government of the Athenians," not, per
haps, composed, but utilised, by Aristotle, but also
many fragments of Christian literature, which made
it probable that the libraries of Christian families also
had been thrown on the market, and that papyrus
leaves, when they appeared useless for any other
purpose, were used as waste paper, or as a kind of
papier-mache. But why should the ' True History ' of Celsus, the
Xo'70? a\r)6r)<;, or Sermo Verus, excite our curiosity ?
The reason is quite plain. We know practically
nothing of the history of the teaching of Christ in
the first, second, and even third centuries, except
what has been transmitted to us by Christian writers.
It is an old rule, however, that it is well to learn from
the enemy also, — " Fas est et ab hoste doceri." Cel
sus was a resolute foe of the new Christian teaching,
and we should, at all events, learn from his treatise
how the Christian religion appeared in the eyes of a
cultivated man of the second century, who, it seems,
concurred in many important points with the philo
sophical conception cherished in the Christian church,
or at least was familiar with it, namely, the Logos
idea ; but who could not comprehend how men, who
had once understood and assimilated a view of the
world founded on the Logos, could combine with

4 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
it the belief in Christ as the incarnate Logos. To
Celsus the Christian religion is something objective ;
in all other works of the first three centuries it is,
and remains, almost entirely subjective.
This could hardly be otherwise, for a religion in
its first inception scarcely exists for the outer world.
What at that time were Jerusalem and Palestine in
the eyes of the so-called world ? A province yield
ing little profit, and often in rebellion. The Jews
and their religion had certainly attracted the atten
tion of Rome and Athens by their peculiarities ;
but the Jewish sects interested the classical world
much less than the sects of the Platonic and Stoic
schools. Christians were regarded as Jews, just as,
not many years ago, Jains were treated by us as
Buddhists, Sikhs as Brahmans, and Buddhists, Jains,
Sikhs, and Brahmans were promiscuously placed in
one pile as Indian idolaters. How should the dif
ferences which distinguished the Christian from the
Jew, and the Jewish Christian from the heathen
Christian, have been understood at that time in
Rome? To us, naturally, the step which Paul and
his associates took appears an enormous one — one of
world-wide import ; but of what interest could these
things be outside of Palestine? That the Jews who
looked upon themselves as a peculiar people, who
would admit no strangers, and tolerate no marriages
between Jew and Gentile, who, in spite of all their
disappointments and defeats, energetically clung to
their faith in a deliverer, in an earthly Messiah,

THE 'TRUE HISTORY' OF CELSUS 5
and in the coming glory of their nation ; that they
should suddenly declare clean what they had always
considered unclean ; that they should transform their
national spirit into a universal sympathy; yes, that
they should recognise their Messiah in a crucified
malefactor, indicate a complete revolution in their
history ; but the race itself was and continued to be,
in the eyes of the world, if not beneath notice, at
least an object of contempt. It should not, therefore,
surprise us that no classical writer has given us a
really historical account of the Christian religion, or
has even with one word referred to the wonderful
events which, had they actually taken place as
described in the Gospels, would have stirred the
uttermost corners of the earth. Celsus is the only
writer of the second century who, being neither Chris
tian nor Jew, was not only acquainted with represen
tatives of Christianity and Judaism, but had also, it
would seem, carefully read portions of the Old and
New Testaments. He even boasts of having a better
knowledge of these religions than many of their ad
herents (II, 12). That such a man considered this
new Christian sect of sufficient importance to subject
it to a searching investigation, is proof of his deep
insight, and at the same time of the increasing power
of Christianity as a religion independent of Judaism.
Who this Celsus really was, it is not easy to discover.
Even his adversary, Origen, seems to know but little
of him ; at any rate he tells us nothing of him, — in
deed, we are even still in doubt about his date. It has

6 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
been thought that he is the Celsus to whom Lucian
(120-200 A.D.) dedicated his work on the false Alex
ander. This is possible ; but Celsus is a very com
mon name, and Origen speaks of two men of this
name who were both Epicureans and are supposed
to have lived in the times of Nero (54-68 A.D.) and
Hadrian (118-138 A.D.). It has been argued that
the latter could not have been the author of the
Sermo Verus, because it apparently mentions the
sect of the Marcellians, and this was not founded
till the year 155 under Bishop Anicetus. But
Origen's remark, that Celsus may have outlived the
reign of Hadrian, has been overlooked. At any rate
Origen speaks of the Sermo Verus as a work long
known, and as he did not die until the year 253 A.D.,
in his time the work of Celsus would have been
recognised as of considerable age, even if written
after the year 155. Much learning has been ex
pended on the identification of Celsus, which seems to
me to have been wasted. It is remarkable that Ori
gen made no effort to become personally acquainted
with his adversary. He leaves the question open
whether he is the same Celsus who composed two
other books against the Christians (Contra Celsum,
IV, 36). At the end of his book he speaks of him
as if he had been a contemporar3r, and asserts that a
second book by him against the Christians, which
has either not yet been completed or has not yet
reached him, shall be as completely refuted as the
Sermo Verus. Such language is only used of a con-

THE 'TRUE HISTORY' OF CELSUS 7
temporary. Could it be proved that Celsus was a
friend of Lucian, then we should know that in the
judgment of the latter he was a noble, truth-loving,
and cultivated man. It was not Origen's interest to
emphasise these aspects of his opponent's character ;
but it must be said to his credit, that though he was
much incensed at some of the charges of Celsus, he
never attacked his personal character. Perhaps it
was not fair in Origen to accuse Celsus of being
ashamed of his Epicureanism, and of concealing his
own philosophical and atheistic convictions, in order
to obtain an easier hearing among Jews and Chris
tians.1 This does not appear quite fair, for it was
a very pardonable device for Celsus first to attack a
part of Christian teaching under the mask of a Jew,
who represents his faith as the older and more re
spectable, and seeks to convince the Christians that
they would have done better had they remained true
to the religion of their fathers. On the contrary,
as Celsus, whatever he may have been except a
Jew, could not with a good conscience have under
taken an actual defence of Judaism, it was quite nat
ural that he should choose a Jew as an advocate of
the Jewish religion, and put into his mouth, like a
second Philo, ideas which at all events sound more
Platonic than Epicurean. Origen was entirely justi
fied in showing that in this process Celsus frequently
forgot his part ; and this he did with much skill.
But whatever Celsus may have been, — an Epicu-
1 Contra Celsum, I, 8.

8 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
rean, or, as has occasionally been maintained, a Neo-
platonist, — he was at all events no mean adversary
and certainly not unworthy of Origen's steel. If not,
why should Origen have felt the need of such an
earnest refutation ? He says, certainly, that he did
it only at the request of his old friend and protector,
Ambrosius. But that is what many writers under
similar circumstances have said and still say. We
have, at all events, lost much through the loss (or
destruction ?) of all manuscripts of Celsus. Not only
was he acquainted with the principal philosophical
schools of antiquity, he appears also to have studied
zealously the religions of the ancient world as they
were known at that time to the learned, especially
in Alexandria, of which we have but scant know
ledge. Origen expressly states (I, 14) that Celsus
described the various peoples who possessed religious
and philosophical systems, because he supposed that
all these views bore a certain relationship to one an
other. Without a doubt much has been here lost to
us, not only for the history of Greek philosophy, but
also for the history of Oriental religions and philoso
phies, whose representatives at that time sojourned in
Alexandria, yet as to whose personal influence we are
almost entirely in the dark. Celsus is presumed
to have written of the doctrines of the Egyptians,
the Assyrians, the Jews, Persians, Odrysians, Samo-
thracians, Eleusinians, even of the Samaneans, i.e.
the Buddhists (I, 24), and to have represented
these as better accredited than those of the Jews.

THE 'TRUE HISTORY' OF CELSUS 9
We see anew what treasures were stored up in
Alexandria, and we feel all the more deeply their
irrevocable loss. The desire and the hope of re
covering the work of Celsus were therefore quite
natural for an)r who wished to penetrate more
deeply into the spiritual atmosphere of the second
and third centuries, and especially for such as strove
to understand clearly how men of this age, versed in
philosophy, such as Clement and Origen himself,
could confess Christianity, or become converted to
it, or could defend it against other philosophers
without in the least becoming untrue to their philo
sophical convictions. That the lower classes among
Jews and Greeks followed the new teaching, is much
more intelligible, even without wishing to lay too
much stress on the evidential value of the miracles
at that time. The great majority were accustomed
to miracles ; what was almost entirely lacking was
practical religion. The Greek thinkers had created
systems of philosophy and morals, but the traditional
worship had degenerated into a mere spectacle.
Even among the Jews the old religion had become a
rigid temple ritual, which offered but little comfort
and hope to the weak heart of man. In the eyes of
the majority of the philosophers of the age every re
ligion was only pernicious superstition, good enough
for the masses, but scarcely worth consideration by
the cultured. That Celsus made the Christian
religion the object of serious treatment and refuta
tion, not only implies a subtle and unprejudiced

10 THE SLLESIAN HORSEHERD
view of his age, but shows us at the same time how
the Christianity of that period, entirely independent
of the Jewish religion, had gained in significance,
and had even in the eyes of a heathen philosopher
begun to be esteemed as something important, as
something dangerous, as something that had to be
combated with philosophical weapons.
Christianity is especially indebted for its rapid
spread to its practical side, to the energy of its love,
which was bestowed on all who were weary and
heavy laden. Christ and the apostles had understood
how to gather around them the poor, the sinners,
the most despised members of human society. They
were offered forgiveness of their sins, love, and sym
pathy, if they merely promised to amend and sin
no more. Among these earliest followers of Christ
there was scarcely a change of religion in our sense
of the word. Christianity was at first much more
a new life than a new religion. The first disciples
were and remained Jews in the eyes of the world,
and that they came from the most despised classes
even Origen does not dispute. Celsus had re
proached the Christians because the apostles, around
whose heads even in Ms time a halo had begun to
shine, had been men of bad character, criminals,
fishermen, and tax-gatherers. Origen admits that
Matthew was a tax-gatherer, James and John fisher
men, probably Peter and Andrew as well ; but de
clares that it was not known how the other apostles
gained a livelihood. Even that they had been

THE 'TRUE HISTORY' OF CELSUS 11
malefactors and criminals, Origen does not abso
lutely deny. He refers to the letter of Barnabas,
in which it is stated " that Jesus chose men as his
apostles who were guilty of sin more than all other
evil doers. " 1 He relies upon the words of Peter,
when he says, " Depart from me ; for I am a sinful
man, O Lord." 2
Paul, in like manner, says in his epistle to Timothy,3
" This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all accepta
tion, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save
sinners, of whom I am chief."
But it is just in this that Origen recognises the
divine power of the personality and the teaching of
Christ, that by means of it men who had been deeply
sunken in sins could be raised to a new life ; and he
declares it to be unjust that those who repented of
their early sins, and had entered into a pure life, well
pleasing to God, should be reproached with their pre
vious sinfulness. In this respect he makes, indeed,
no distinction between the apostles and such men as
Phsedon and Polemo, who were rescued from the mire
of their sins through philosophy ; and he recognises
in the teaching of Christ a still greater force, because
it had proved its saving and sanctifying power with
out any of the arts of learning and eloquence. What
the apostles were, and what they became through the
influence of the Gospel, Origen himself explains in
the words of Paul, " For we also were aforetime
foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts
1 Contra Celsum, I, 63. 2 Luke v. 8. 8 1 Tim. i. 15.

12 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
and pleasures, living in malice and envy, and hating
one another."1
He attributes it as an honour to the apostles that,
even if their self-accusations were extravagant, they
had so openly acknowledged their sins, in order to
place the saving influence of the Gospel in a clearer
light. But the fact itself, that the apostles had
been sinful and despised men, Origen honestly ad
mits. We also know with what true humanity
Christ himself treated the adulteress : how he chal
lenged the Pharisees, if they themselves were free
from sin, to cast the first stone at her. And who
does not admire the aged Pharisees who silently
withdrew, one after the other, from the oldest to the
youngest, without casting a stone? Have we many
such Pharisees in our time? Jesus, however, dis
missed the adulteress with the compassionate words,
"Sin no more." That such a course toward sin-
laden mankind by one who knew no sin, made a deep
impression on the masses, is perfectly intelligible.
We see a remarkable parallel in the first appearance
of Buddha and his disciples in India. He, too, was
reproached for inviting sinners and outcasts to him,
and extending to them sympathy and aid. He, too,
was called a physician, a healer of the sick ; and we
know what countless numbers of ailing mankind
found health through him. All this can be quite
understood from a human standpoint. A religion
is, in its nature, not a philosophy ; and no one could
1 Tit. iii. 3.

THE 'TRUE HISTORY' OF CELSUS 13
find fault with Christianity if it had devoted itself
only to the healing of all human infirmities, and had
set aside all metaphysical questions. We know how
Buddha also personally declined all philosophical
discussion. When one of his disciples put questions
to him about metaphysical problems, the solution of
which went beyond the limits of human reason, he
contended that he wished to be nothing more than
a physician, to heal the infirmities of mankind. Ac
cordingly, he says to Malunkyaputta : " What have
I said to you before ? Did I say, ' Come to me and be
my disciple, that I may teach you whether the world
is eternal or not ; whether the world is finite or in
finite; whether the life-principle is identical with
the body or not, whether the perfect man lives after
death or not ? ' "
Malunkyaputta answered, " Master, you did not say
that." Then Buddha continued, "Did you then say,
'I will be your disciple,' but first answer these
questions ? "
" No," said the disciple.
Thereupon Buddha said : " A man was once
wounded by a poisoned arrow, and his friends called
in an experienced physician. What if the wounded
man had said, I shall not permit my wound to be ex
amined until I know who wounded me, whether he
be a nobleman, a Brahman, a Vaisya, or a Sudra ;
what his name is ; to what family he belongs ; if he
be large or small, or of medium size, and how the

14 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
weapon with which he wounded me looked. How
would it fare with such a man ? Would he not cer
tainly succumb to his wound ? "
The disciple then perceives that he came to Buddha
as a sick man, desiring to be healed by him as a physi
cian, not to be instructed about matters that lie far
beyond the human horizon.
Buddha has often been censured because he claimed
for his religion such an exclusively practical charac
ter, and instead of philosophy preached only moral
ity. These censures began in early times ; we find
them in the famous dialogues between Nagasena and
Milinda, the king Menander, about 100 B.C. And
yet we know how, in spite of all warnings given by
the founder of Buddhism, this religion was soon en
tirely overgrown with metaphysics ; and how, finally,
metaphysics as Abhidharma found an acknowledged
place in the Sacred Canon of the Buddhists.
Christianity presents a parallel case. In the be
ginning it sought only to call sinners to repentance.
The strong, as Jesus himself said, do not require a
physician, but the sick. He therefore looked upon
himself as a physician, just as Buddha had done in
an earlier day. He declared that he was not come
to destroy the law, but to fulfil it. The truth of his
teaching should be known by its fruits, and there is
scarcely a trace in the Gospels of philosophical dis
cussions, or even of attacks on the schools of Greek
philosophy. But even here it was soon apparent that,
for a practical reformation of conduct, a higher conse-

THE 'TRUE HISTORY' OF CELSUS 15
cration is essential. It was admitted, as an Indian
philosopher is reputed long since to have said to
Socrates, that no one could understand the human ele
ment who had not first understood the divine. Men
of Greek culture who felt themselves attracted by
the moral principles of the little Christian congre
gations soon, however, wanted more. They had to
defend the step which they had taken, and the Chris
tianity which they wished to profess, or had pro
fessed, against their former friends and co-believers,
and this soon produced the so-called apologies for
Christianity, and expositions of the philosophical
and theological views which constituted the founda
tion of the new teaching. A religion which was re
cruited only from poor sinners and tax-gatherers
could scarcely have found entry into the higher
circles of society, or maintained itself in lecture-
rooms and palaces against the cultivated members
of refined circles, if its defenders, like Buddha, had
simply ignored all philosophical, especially all meta
physical, questions.
How came it, then, that cultured men in high
stations, entirely independent, professed Christi
anity? how did they make their friends and former
co-believers understand that such a step was bona
fide ? In answering this question, we get help from
Celsus, as well as his opponent, Origen.
The bridge which led across from Greek philoso
phy to Christianity was the Logos. It is remarkable
how much this fundamental doctrine of Christianity

16 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
fell, later on, into the background ; how little it is
understood, even by the educated of our own time,
and how often, without giving it any consideration,
they have cast it aside. In early Christian days this
was probably a consequence of the practical and polit
ical development of the new religion. But the liv
ing nerve of the Christian religion, which was its
closest bond to the highest spiritual acquisitions of
the ancient Greek world, was thus severed. First,
the Logos, the Word, the Son of God, was misunder
stood, and mjrthology was employed to make the
dogma, thus misconceived, intelligible. In modern
times, through continued neglect of the Logos doc
trine, the strongest support of Christianity has been
cut from under its feet, and at the same time its his
torical justification, its living connection with Greek
antiquity, has almost entirely passed out of view.
In Germany it almost appears as though Goethe, by
his Faust, is answerable for the widespread treat
ment of the Logos idea as something obscure, in
comprehensible, mystical. Many, when reading the
opening of the Fourth Gospel, " In the beginning was
the Word," say to themselves, " No one understands
that," and read on. He who does not earnestly and
honestly make an effort to understand this beginning
of the Gospel, shows that he is but little concerned
with the innermost essence of Christianity, as clearly
presented to us in the Fourth Gospel. He forgets
that not only faith, but thought, pertains to a re
ligion. It is no excuse to say, " Did not the learned

THE 'TRUE HISTORY' OF CELSUS 17
Dr. Faust torment himself to discover what ' the
word ' here meant, and did not find it out ? " He
says in Goethe : —
" 'Tis writ : ' In the beginning was the Word ' !
I pause perplexed 1 Who now will help afford ?
I cannot the mere Word so highly prize,
I must translate it otherwise."
But this is just what he ought not do. It was
not necessary to translate it at all ; he only needed
to accept the Logos as a technical expression of
Greek philosophy. He would then have seen that
it is impossible to prize the Word too highly, if
we first learn what the Word meant in the idiom
of contemporary philosophy. Not even to a Faust
should Goethe have imputed such ignorance as when
he continues to speculate without any historical
knowledge : —
" If by the spirit guided as I read,
' In the beginning was the Sense,' Take heed.
The import of this primal sentence weigh,
Lest thy too hasty pen be led astray.
Is force creative then of sense the dower?
1 In the beginning was the Power.'
Thus should it stand; yet, while the line I trace,
A something warns me once more to efface.
The spirit aids, from anxious scruples freed,
I write : ' In the beginning was the Deed.' " J
Had Goethe wished to scourge the unhistorical
exegesis of modern theologians, he could not have
1 Miss Swanwick's translation.

18 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
done so better than by this attempt of an interpre
ter of the Bible, fancying himself illumined by the
spirit, but utterly destitute of all knowledge of his
tory. Knowledge of the history of the Greek phi
losophy of the first and second centuries after Christ
is indispensable to the understanding of such a word
as Logos — a word that grew up on Greek soil, and
whose first roots reach far into the distant past of the
Greek mind ; and for that very reason not admitting
of translation, either into Hebrew or into German.
Like many other termini technici, it must be under
stood historically ; just as logic, metaphysic, analytic,
organon, etc., can only be apprehended and under
stood historically. Now it is, perhaps, not to be de
nied, that even now a majority of educated readers
either perfunctorily repeat the first sentence of the
Fourth Gospel, " In the beginning was the Word,"
or believe that something lies buried therein that is
beyond the depth of ordinary men. This, of course, is
partially true, and it cannot be otherwise in religions
which are intended not only for the young, but for the
wise and learned, and which should be strong meat for
adults, and not merely milk for babes. The fault lies
chiefly in the translation, in that it should have been
thought necessary to translate a word instead of per
mitting it to remain, what it was, a foreign word.
This becomes still worse when, as for instance, in cer
tain Oriental languages, the newly converted Chris
tian has to read, " In the beginning was the Noun or
the Verb." The correct translation would, of course,

THE 'TRUE HISTORY' OF CELSUS 19
be, "In the beginning was the Logos." For Logos
is not here the usual word Logos, but a terminus techni-
eus, that can no more be translated out of the lexicon
than one would think of etymologically translating
Messiah or Christ as the "Anointed," or Angelos
as "messenger" or "nuncio." If we read at the
beginning of the Gospel, " In the beginning was the
Logos," at least every one would know that he has to
deal with a foreign, a Greek word, and that he must
gain an understanding of it out of Greek philosophy,
just as with such words as atom, idea, cosmos, etc.
It is remarkable what human reason will consent to.
Millions of Christians hear and read, " In the begin
ning was the Word," and either give it no thought,
or imagine the most inconceivable things, and then
read on, after they have simply thrown away the
key to the Fourth Gospel. That thought and re
flection also are a divine service is only too readily
forgotten. Repeated reading and reflection are
necessary to make the first verse of the Fourth
Gospel accessible and intelligible in a general way ;
but one cannot be a true Christian without thinking
and reflecting.
An explanation of Logos in Greek philosophy is
much simpler than is commonly supposed. It is only
needful not to forget that for the Greeks thought
and word were inseparable, and that the same term,
namely, Logos, expressed both, though they dis
tinguished the inner from the outer Logos. It
is one of the most remarkable aberrations of the

20 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
human mind, to imagine that there could be a word
without thought or a thought without word. The
two are inseparable: one cannot exist or be even
conceived without the other. I believe that I
have clearly shown in my Science of Thought that
thought without word and word without thought
are impossible and inconceivable, and why it is so.
Here is the first key to a historical solution of the
riddle at the beginning of the Fourth Gospel. We
know that Greek philosophy after making every
possible effort to explain the world mechanically,
had already in the school of Anaxagoras reached
the view that the hylozoic as well as the atomic
theory leaves the human mind unsatisfied ; and that
it is necessary to posit as the origin of all things
a thought or thinking mind that manifests itself
in the universe. This was the nous, the mind, of
Anaxagoras. He could just as well have called it
Logos, for the word was in use even before the time
of Anaxagoras, to express that reason, the rec
ognition of whose all-pervading presence in the
universe was the great step in advance made by
the system of Anaxagoras. Even Heraclitus had
divined the existence of reason in the universe,
and had applied to it the name Logos. While
the masses recognised in Moira or SeimarmenS
only destiny, or fate, Heraclitus declared, that the
essence of this Heimarmene is the Logos, the Reason
that pervades the world. This is the oldest expres
sion of Hegel's thought, "What is, is rational."

THE 'TRUE HISTORY' OF CELSUS 21
We must not suppose, however, that Heraclitus con
sidered this Logos as identical with his fire. He
merely says that the fire is subordinate to the Logos,
that it operates Kara rbu \6yov, according to the
Logos, or (as we should say) rationally.
Our knowledge of the entire system of Heraclitus
is of course so fragmentary that we can only speak
of this, as of many other points, with great caution.
The same is true, although in a lesser degree, of the
system of Anaxagoras. His nous, if we translate it
by mind, is more comprehensive than Logos. We
must not, however, suppose, that this nous bore a
personal character, for Anaxagoras expressly states
that it is a ^prifia, a thing, even though he would
have said that this nous regulated all things.
Whether an impersonal mind is conceivable, was
still at that time a remote problem. Even in Plato
we cannot clearly determine whether he represented
his nous as God in our sense, or as Sophia, wisdom,
a word which with him often replaces nous. It is
remarkable that in his genuine works Plato does
not generally use the word Logos, and in Aristotle
as well nous remains the first term, what we should
call the divine mind, while Logos is the reason, the
causal nexus, the ov eveica, therefore decidedly some
thing impersonal, if not unsubjective.
Plato is the first who distinguishes between essence
and being in the primeval cause, or, as we might say,
between rest and activity. He speaks of an eternal
plan of the world, a thought of the world, the world

22 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
as a product of thought, inseparable from the creator,
but still distinguishable from him. This is the Pla
tonic world of " Ideas," which lies at the foundation
of the world perceivable by the senses, the phenome
nal world. What is more natural or more reason
able than this thought ? If the world has an author,
what can we imagine as reasonable men, but that
the thought, the plan of the world, belongs to the
author, that it was thought, and thereby realised for
the first time ? Now this plan, this idea, was the
inner Logos, and as every thought finds its imme
diate expression in a word, so did this one, which
was then called the outer Logos. The outer was
not possible without the inner, even as a word
is impossible without mind and reason. But the
inner Logos also first realises itself in the outer, just
as the reasonable thought can only be made real in
the word. This character of the Logos as thought
and word, at once capable of distinction and yet
undifferentiated and inseparable, is of the highest
importance for Christian speculation ; without an
exact comprehension of it, we shall see that the
relation of the Son to the Father as we find it
explained by Clemens and other fathers of the
church, remains dark and misty. We have no con
cept without a word, and philology has shown us
how every word, even the most concrete, is based
on a concept. We cannot think of " tree " without
the word or a hieroglyphic of some kind We can
even say that, as far as we are concerned, there is

THE 'TRUE HISTORY' OF CELSUS 23
no tree, except in language, for in the nature of
things there are only oaks or beeches, but not and
never a tree. And what is true of tree is true of
all words, or t» speak with Plato, of all ideas, or to
speak with the Stoics, of all Logoi. There are no
doubt conjurers who pretend to be able to think
without words, and even take no little pride in be
ing able to perform this trick. They forget only too
often that their inexpressible thoughts are nothing
but obscure feelings, in fact, they do not even dis
tinguish between presentation and idea, and forget
that when we speak of words, we do not understand
by them mere mimicry of sound or interjections, but
only and exclusively intelligible words, that is, such
as are based on concepts and are derived from roots.
The old Greek philosophers, probably favoured by
their language, appear never to have forgotten the
true relation between Logos and Logos, and their
thought finally resulted in a view of the world
founded upon it. Although it is now the custom
to speak slightingly of the later Platonists, we should
always recognise that we owe to them the preserva
tion of this, the most precious jewel out of the rich
storehouse of Greek philosophy, that the world is
the expression and realisation of divine thought, that
it is the divine word expressed.
We cannot here enter into the various phases in
which Plato and his followers presented these ideas.
At times they are represented as independent of the
Creator, as models, as golden statues, to which the

24 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
creative mind looks up. Soon, however, they are
conceived as thoughts of this mind, as something
secondary, created, sometimes also as something in
dependent, as much so as is the Son in relation
to his Father. The whole Logos, with all ideas,
became in this manner the first-born Son of the
Creator, yet so that the Father could not be Father
without the Son, or the Son without the Father, Son.
All these distinctions, insignificant as they may
appear from a purely philosophical point of view,
demand attention because of the influence that they
afterward exerted on Christian dogma, especially on
that of the Trinity — a dogma which, however spe
cifically Christian it may appear to be, must still in
all its essential features be traced back to Greek
elements. It is certainly remarkable that Jewish philosophy
also developed on very similar lines, of course not
with the purity and exactness of the Greek mind,
but still with the same object in view, — to bring
the reason and wisdom recognised in nature into
renewed connexion with their supernatural Jehovah.
Through the Proverbs of Solomon and similar works
the Jews were well acquainted with Wisdom, who
says of herself (viii. 22 ff.) : " The Lord possessed
me in the beginning of his way, before his works
of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the
beginning, or ever the earth was. . . . Before the
mountains were settled, before the hills was I brought
forth. . . . When he prepared the heavens, I was

THE 'TRUE HISTORY' OF CELSUS 25
there : when he set a compass upon the face of the
depth. . . . Then I was by him, as a master work
man : and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always
before him." These and similar thoughts were fa
miliar to Jewish thinkers (see Proverbs viii. and ix. ,
Job xxviii. 12, Ecclesiasticus i. 4), and it was nat
ural that, in coming in contact with Greek philos
ophy, especially in Alexandria, they should seek to
recognise again this traditional conception of divine
Wisdom in the Logos of Greek philosophers. We
see this most clearly in Philo, a contemporary of
Christ, of whom it is often difficult to say whether
he reasons more as a Greek or as a Jew. While the
Greeks had almost lost sight of the bridge between
the world and God by abstraction, the Jews, through
mistaken reverence, had so far removed the Creator
above his creation that on both sides the need of
mediation or a mediator was deeply felt. The Jew
ish God was little better than the Epicurean. If
the Epicureans taught that there probably is a God,
but that the world is of no concern to Him, so among
the Jews of the first century gnostic ideas prevailed,
according to which not the highest but a subordinate
God created and ruled the world. The task of cre
ation seemed unworthy of the supreme God. Philo
therefore seized the Stoic idea of the Logos or Logoi
in order to bring his transcendental God again into
relation with the visible world. The most important
attributes and powers of God were hypostatised as be
ings who participated in the creation and government

26 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
of the world. Philo's God first of all creates or pos
sesses within himself a world that is conceived, an
invisible world,1 which is also called the world of
ideas2 or the idea of ideas.3 These ideas are the
types* of all things, and the power by which God
created them is often called Sophia or Episteme,
wisdom or knowledge.5 This world of ideas in its
entirety corresponds, as is readily seen, to the Greek
Logos, the separate types to the Platonic ideas or
the Stoic Logoi.
The entire Logos, or the sum of Ideas, is called
by Philo, entirely independent of Christianity, the
true Son of God, while the realised world of Chris
tian teaching passes as the second Son. If the first
Logos is occasionally called the image or shadow of
God, the world of sense is the image of the image,
the shadow of the shadow. More logically expressed,
God would be the causa efficiens, matter the causa
materialis, the Logos the causa instrumentalis, while
the goodness of God is sometimes added as the causa
finalis. At the same time we also see here the dif
ference between the working of the Jewish and Greek
minds. In the Old Testament and in Philo, the So
phia or wisdom of God becomes a half mythological
being, a goddess who is called the mother, and even
the nurse,6 of all beings. She bore with much labour
out of the seed of God,7 as Philo says, the only and
1 k6<t/ws votit6s, idparos. 2 n6<r/jios ISewr.
3 I5^a twv ISe&v. * wapaSctypjiTa.
6 Philo, vol. I, p. 106. • tiHvt\. i De Ebriet., VIH, 1, 361 f,

THE 'TRUE HISTORY' OF CELSUS 27
beloved visible Son, that is to say, this Cosmos. This
Cosmos is called by him the Son of God,1 the only
begotten,2 while the first Logos is the first-born,3 and
as such often coincides with the Sophia and its
activity.4 He is also called the elder son,6 and as
such is distinguished from a younger son,6 from the
real, visible world. But this divine Sophia may not,
according to Philo, any more than God Himself, come
into direct contact with impure matter. According
to him this contact occurs through the instrumen
tality of certain powers,7 which in part correspond to
the Greek Logoi, and which in his poetic language
are also represented as angels.8 Philo says in plain
terms that the eternal Logoi, that is the Platonic
ideas, are commonly called angels.
We see by this in how misty an atmosphere Philo
lived and wrote, and we may be certain that he
was not the only one who in this manner blended
the Jewish religion with Greek philosophy. In the
Samaritan theology also, in Onkelos and Jonathan,
traces of the Logos idea are to be found.9 If we now
observe in the Fourth Gospel, somewhere in the first
half of the second century, this same amalgamation
of Christian doctrine with Platonic philosophy, only
in a much clearer manner, we can scarcely doubt from
1 vlbs rov Beov. 2 fiovoyeirfs.
8 irpior byovos. * <ro<pla = Beov \6yos.
6 irpetrpirepos vl6s. 6 veiirepos vl&s rov Beov. 7 dvvd/xeis.
8 M. M., Theosophy and Psychological Religion, p. 406.
9 Liicke, Commentary on the Gospel of John.

28 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
what source the ideas of the Logos as the only begot
ten Son of God, and of the divine wisdom, originally
flowed. Christian theologians are more inclined to
find the first germs of these Christian dogmas in the
Old Testament, and it is not to be denied that in
the minds of the authors of some of the books of the
Old Testament analogous ideas struggle for expres
sion. But they are always tinctured with mythol
ogy, and among the prophets and philosophers of
the Old Testament there is absolutely no trace of
a truly philosophical conception of the Logos, such
as confronts us as a result of centuries of thought
among the Platonists and Neo-Platonists, the Stoics
and Neo-Stoics. We look in vain in Palestine for a
word like Logos, for a conception of the Cosmos as
the expression of a rationally thinking mind, espe
cially for the Logoi as the species of the Logos, as
the primeval thoughts and types of the universe.
It is difficult to understand why theologians should
have so strenuously endeavoured to seek the germs
of the Logos doctrine among the Jews rather than
the Greeks, as if it was of any moment on which
soil the truth had grown, and as if for purely specu
lative truths, the Greek soil had not been ploughed
far deeper and cultivated more thoroughly than the
Jewish. That Philo found employment for Platonic
ideas, and especially for the Stoic Logos, nay, even
for the Logoi, in his own house, and that other phi
losophers went so far as to declare the fundamental
truths of Greek philosophy to have been borrowed

THE 'TRUE HISTORY' OF CELSUS 29
from the Old Testament, is well known ; but modern
researches have rendered such ideas impossible. The
correspondences to the Greek Logos that are found
in the Old Testament are of great interest, in so far
as they make the later amalgamation of Semitic and
Aryan ideas historically more intelligible, and also
in so far as — like the correspondences to be found
among the East Indians and even the red Indians1 —
they confirm the truth or at least the innate human
character of a Logos doctrine. But wherever we
encounter the word Logos outside of Greece, it is,
and remains, a foreign word, a Hellenic thought.
Jewish philosophers, while they adopted the word,
only filled their old skins with new wine, with the
natural consequence that the wine burst the old
skins ; but without spilling. For it was this which,
in the hands of such men as the writer of the Fourth
Gospel, as Hippolytus, Clement, Origen, and the
best of the church fathers, gave them the strength
and enthusiasm to triumph over the world, and
especially over the strongholds of heathen religion,
and even over Greek philosophy. Had the Fourth
Evangelist wished to say that Christ was the divine
Sophia or the Shekinah, or, as in Job, Wisdom as
the fear of God, would he have said, " In the begin
ning was the Logos, and the Logos became flesh, and
lived among us, and we saw his glory, a glory as of
the only begotten Son of the Father, full of grace
and truth?" Why not take the facts just as they
1 M. M., Theosophy and Psychological Religion, p. 383.

30 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
are, and why wish to improve that which requires
no human improvement ? The Christian doctrine is
and remains what it is ; it rests on an indestructible
arch, supported on one side by the Old Testament
and on the other by Greek philosophy, each as indis
pensable as the other. We forget only too readily
how much Christianity, in its victory over Greek phi
losophy, owes to this very philosophy. Christianity
could no doubt have achieved the moral and social
regeneration of the people without these weapons of
the Greek mind ; but a religion, especially in the age
of the downfall of Greek and Roman philosophy, must
have been armed for battle with the best, the most
cultured, and the most learned classes of society, and
such a battle demanded a knowledge of the weapons
which had been forged in the schools of Greek phi
losophy. We cannot therefore put too high a value
on the Fourth Gospel for a knowledge of the intel
lectual movement of that day. It is true that a
religion need not be a philosophy, but it must not
owe philosophy any answer. Small as may be the
emphasis that we now lay on the Logos doctrine, in
that period it was the centre, the vital germ of the
whole Christian teaching. If we read any of the
writings of Athanasius, or of any of the older church
fathers, we shall be surprised to see how all of them
begin with the Word (Logos) as a fixed point of
departure, and then proceed to prove that the Word
is the Son of God, and finally that the Son of God
is Jesus of Nazareth. Religious and philosophical

THE 'TRUE HISTORY' OF CELSUS 31
are here closely related. If the Christian philoso
phers gain on the one hand the divinity of the Son
of God, on the other hand they retain the rationality
of the created universe. That "the all is Logos,
is Word or Reason," was at that time as much the
battle cry of the prevailing philosophy as the con
trary has now become the battle cry of the Darwin
ians, who seek to explain species, kinds, i.e. the
Logoi, the divine ideas, as the products not of the
originating Mind, but of natural selection, of envi
ronment or circumstance, of the survival of the fit
test. And what is the fittest, if not the rational,
the Platonic " Good," that is, the Logos ? Why, then,
turn back to the stone age of human thinking, why
again turn nature into wood, when for thousands of
years Greek philosophers and Christian thinkers have
recognised her as something spiritual, as a world
of eternal ideas ? How would such men as Herder,
Schelling, and Hegel have smiled at such a view of
the world ! Yes, Darwin himself would be ashamed
of his followers, for he saw, though not always clearly,
that everything in this sphere presupposes something
beyond, and in the loftiest utterance of his book he
demanded an origin, yes, an originator. In the writ
ings of the philosophical church fathers we con
stantly hear more of the Logos which was in the
beginning, and through which all things were made,
than of God, who in the beginning created heaven
and earth.
And in this lies the great interest of the lost

82 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
treatise of Celsus. Had he been an Epicurean, as
Origen supposed, he would have had no personal in
terest in the Logos. But this Logos had become at
that time to such an extent the common property of
Greek philosophy, that the Jew, under whose mask
Celsus at the outset attacked the Christians, could
quite naturally express his willingness to acknow
ledge the Logos as the Son of God. Origen, it is
true, says that the Jew has here forgotten his part,
for he had himself known many Jewish scholars, no
one of whom would have acknowledged such an idea.
This shows that Origen did not know the works of
Philo, who would certainly have offered no objection
to such a doctrine, for he himself calls the Logos the
first-born Son (uto? Trpwroovos').1 When therefore
Celsus, the heathen philosopher, admits through the
mouth of the Jew that the Logos is the Son of God,
he is merely on his guard against the identification
of any individual with the Son of God and indi
rectly with the Logos, that is to say, he does not
wish to be a Christian. At all events we see how
general was the view at that time, that the whole
creation was the realisation of the Logos, nay, of
the Son of God ; that God uttered Himself, revealed
Himself, in the world ; that each natural species is a
Word, a Thought of God, and that finally the idea
of the entire world is born of God, and is thereby
the Son of God.
This idea of a Son of God, although in its philo-
1 M. M., Theosophy, p. 404.

THE 'TRUE HISTORY' OF CELSUS 33
sophical sense decidedly Greek, had, it is true, cer
tain preparatory parallels among the Jews, on which
Christian theologians have laid only too great stress.
In the fifth book of Moses we read, " You are chil
dren of the Lord your God. " In the book of Enoch,
chap, cv., the Messiah is also called the Son of God,
and when the tempter says to Christ, Matthew iv. 1,
" If thou be the Son of God," it means the same as
"If thou be the Messiah."
The question is : Is this Jewish conception of the
Son of God as Messiah the Christian as well ? Such
it has been, at least in one book of the Christian
church, in the Fourth Gospel, and it found its ex
pression first in the representation that Joseph was
descended from David ; secondly, in the belief that
Jesus had no earthly father. We see here at once the
first clear contradiction between Christian philosophy
and Christian mythology. If Joseph were not the
father of Jesus, how could Joseph's descent from
David prove the royal ancestry of Jesus ? And how
does it follow from his being the Son of God that
he had no earthly father ? Although he was the
Son of God, he was called the son of the carpenter,
and his brothers and sisters were well known. The
divine birth demands the human ; without it, it is
entirely unintelligible. We know from the recently
discovered ancient Sjaian translation of the Gospels
that the two streams of thought — that Christ was
the Son of God, and that at the same time he had
an earthly father, — could flow side by side, quite

34 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
undisturbed, without the one rendering the other
turbid. It was the misunderstanding of the spiritual birth
of Christ from his divine Father, and even from his
divine mother (the Ruach, feminine, the holy spirit),
that appeared to make it necessary to deny him an
earthly father, and to assert that even his human
mother did not conceive and give birth to him in the
ordinary way. In the earliest period of the Chris
tian church this was otherwise. It was considered
at that time that in Christ the divine sonship went
hand in hand with the human, and further that the
one without the other would lose its true meaning.
In a Syrian palimpsest, which was recently discovered
in the convent at Mount Sinai by Mrs. Smith Lewis,
and which, being written in the fifth century, pre
supposes a still older Syrian translator, we now see an
original Greek text, probably of the second century,
in which the Davidic genealogy of Joseph (Mat
thew i. 16) is really the genealogy of Jesus, for it
is there said, " Jacob begat Joseph ; Joseph to whom
the virgin Mary was espoused begat Jesus, who is
called Christ." In the twenty -first verse it reads
also, " And she shall bear him a son," and in the
twenty-fifth verse, " And took unto him his wife, and
she bare him a son, and he called his name Jesus."
This purely human birth of Jesus does not in any
manner disturb the belief in his true divine origin,
as the Son of God, as the first-born, the image of
God, whose name was called the Word of God, i.e.

THE 'TRUE HISTORY' OF CELSUS 35
Logos. On the contrary, it removes all difficulties
with which so many Christians have contended,
openly or in silence, when they asked themselves
how it is possible to conceive a human birth, a
human mother, without a human father. Even a
deification of the mother, or even of the grand
mother, such as is proclaimed by the Roman church,
does not help any honest soul out of this mire which
has been made by well-meaning but ignorant theo
logians. The old Christian philosophers, the old
church fathers, saints, and martyrs, alone give us
light and leading. As long as we conceive the
divine sonship of Christ from the Jewish or Greek
mythological standpoint, the true divine nature of
Christ remains a mere phrase. When, however, we
call to our aid the most orthodox and enlightened
men of the second century, we find that such men
as Justin, Tatian, Theophilus, Athenagoras, Apollo-
nius1 and Clement, to say nothing of Origen, be
lieved in Jesus as the only begotten son of God2
in the sense which these words had at that time for
every one who spoke and thought in Greek. This
Son is often represented as distinguishable from the
Father, but not as separable. Of a Son of God in
the Jewish sense of the word, of a descendant of
David, the evangelist would never have said that all
things were made by him. That could be affirmed
only of the true Son of God, of the Logos, as the
1 See the Deutsche Rundschau, 1895, XXXIII, p. 47.
2 The puwoyevTis vlbs rov Beov.

36 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
thought of God, which is uttered in the visible
world. In what sense this Logos was recognised in Jesus,
is certainly a difficult question, and here the work of
Celsus would have been of great use to us, for he
expressly states that he has no objection to the Logos
idea ; but how philosophers could accept an incarna
tion x of this Logos in Jesus, was beyond his under
standing. It must be borne in mind that matter and
flesh were held by Celsus to be something so unclean,
that according to him the Deity could only operate
on matter by means of an endless number of inter
mediaries (a true foetus asonum). This obscurity
in the conception of Jesus as Logos by the Christian
church is the reason why Celsus does not regard
Joseph as the natural father of Jesus, but Panthera.
Origen, of course, denounces this very indignantly ;
and the legend is nothing more than one of the many
calumnies, which are nearly always to be traced
among the opponents of a new religion and its
founders. For the true nature and the divine birth
of Christ, as Origen himself seems to feel, such a
story would naturally have no significance whatever.
It remains true, however, that no writer of authority
of the second and third centuries has clearly ex
plained in what sense the Christian church con
ceived Jesus as the Logos.
Three conceptions are possible. The first appears
to have been that of the Fourth Gospel, that the
1 'O \6yos ab.pl- iyiiero.

THE 'TRUE HISTORY' OF CELSUS 37
Logos, in all its fulness, as the Son, who in the be
ginning was with God and was God, by whom all
things were made, became flesh in Jesus, and that this
Jesus gave to those who believed in him as Logos the
power themselves to become sons of God, born like
him not of blood nor of the will of flesh, but of God.
This may also explain why the legendary details of
the birth of Christ are never mentioned in the Fourth
Gospel. But however clear the view of the evan
gelist is, it nevertheless remains obscure how he con
ceived the process of this incarnation of an eternal
being, transcending time and space and comprehend
ing the whole world, which lived among them, which,
as is said in the Epistle of John, was from the begin
ning, that which we have heard, that which we have
seen with our eyes, that which we have beheld and
our hands handled, the Word of life,1 etc. If we
think ourselves for a moment into this view, into
the unity of the Divine that lives and moves in the
Father, in the Logos, and in all souls that have re
cognised the Logos, we shall comprehend the mean
ing of the statement, that whoever believes in Jesus
is born of God, that whoever has the Son, has the life.
To have the truth, to have eternal life, to have the
Son, to have the Father, all this then signifies one
and the same thing for the evangelist, and for the
greatest among the ante-Nicene fathers.
But second, the conception that the Logos was
born in Jesus might simply signify the same as
1 \6yos rijs forijs.

38 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
Philo means, when he speaks of the Logos in Abra
ham and in the prophets. This would be intel
ligible from Philo's point of view in relation to
Abraham, but clearly does not go far enough to
explain the deification of Christ as we find it in all
the Evangelists.
There remains possible therefore only a third con
ception. Philo knows very well that God has an in
finite number of powers or ideas, all of which might
be called Logoi, and together constitute the Logos.
If now, among these Logoi, that of humanity were
conceived as highest, and Jesus were regarded as the
incarnate Logos, as the expressed and perfectly real
ised idea of man, all would be intelligible. Jesus
would then be the ideal man, the one among mortals
who had fully realised the idea of man as it existed
in God, who on the one side was the son of God, on
the other side the son of man, the brother of all men,
if they would only acknowledge Christ as the Son of
God, and emulate His example. This would be a
correct and to us a perfectly intelligible and accept
able conception. But many as are the difficulties
which this would remove, the objection remains
that we can produce no historical proof of such a
conception of Jesus as Logos of humanity. We are
too poor in historical monuments of the first three
Christian centuries to be able to speak with assur
ance of the inner processes of thought of even the
most prominent personalities of that time. In every
thing, even in relation to many of the leading ques-

THE 'TRUE HISTORY' OF CELSUS 39
tions of the Christian religion, we are obliged to rely
on combination and construction. Not only in the
Evangelists, but in many of the church fathers, feel
ing overcomes reason, and their expressions admit
but too often of the most varied interpretations, as
the later history of the church has only too clearly
proved. Nevertheless we must endeavour to enter
not only into their emotions, but also into their
thoughts, and not believe that they used words
without thoughts. I do not say that this is im
possible. Unthinkable as it is, that words arise and
exist without ideas, yet we know only too well that
words become mere words, that they grow pale and
die, and that they may finally become vox et pra
ter ea nihil. It is. however, the duty of the historian
and especially of the philologist to call back to life
such words as have given up the ghost. May what I
have here written about the meaning of the Logos
fulfil this aim, and at the same time make it clear
that my desire for the discovery of the original text
of the SERMO VERUS was not an idle one. I
have since learned that the same wish was expressed
at an earlier date by no less a person than Barthold
Niebuhr.

II
THE PFERDEBURLA (HORSEHERD)
A contributor to a periodical, which, like the
Deutsche Rundschau, has a world-wide circulation,
receives many letters from every corner of the earth.
Many of them are nothing more than the twitter of
birds in the trees ; he listens and goes his way.
Others contain now and then something of use, for
which he is thankful, usually of course in silence,
for a day and night together contain only twenty-
four hours, and but little time remains for corre
spondence. It is interesting to note how radically
one is often misunderstood. While one person
anonymously accuses the writer of free thinking and
heresy, another, and he generally gives his name,
complains of his orthodox narrow-mindedness, hypo
crisy, and blindness, which for the most part are
attributed to poor Oxford, which, in foreign countries
at least, still has the reputation of high church
orthodoxy. Yet, in spite of all this, such letters are useful, for
they give us a knowledge of the public which we
desire to influence, but which for the most part goes
its own way, as it may find most convenient. Often
40

THE HORSEHERD 41
such opinions come to us from the highest circles, at
times also from the lowest, and it is difficult to tell
which of the two are the more instructive. The
problems of humanity in all their simplicity are after
all the same for us all, only they are viewed from
different standpoints, and are treated with scientific
or practical design. Members of the same profession
readily understand each other; they employ their
own technical language ; but the unprofessional per
son often goes straighter to the heart of a question,
and refuses to be satisfied with authorities or tradi
tional formulas. These gentlemen it is often difficult
to silence. We can easily contend with combatants
who wield their weapons according to the rules laid
down by the schools ; we know what to expect, and
how to parry a quart or a tierce. But an opponent
who strikes regardless of all rule is often hard to
manage, and we get a scar where it is least expected
or deserved. In this wise I was served by an un
known opponent, who wrote to me from a place in
the neighbourhood of Pittsburgh, not far from Ohio.
He had read in his country solitude my article on
Celsus in the Deutsche Rundschau. I know noth
ing of him, except what he himself writes, but the
man interested me. After all, he says in his rude
way very much the same things as others veil in
learned phrases, and his doubts and difficulties are
manifestly products of his heart as well as of his
brain. The problems of humanity have troubled
him with genuine pain, and after honestly thinking

42 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
them out as well as he knew how, his convictions
stand firm as a rock, and all who disagree with him
seem to him not only fools, but unfortunately hypo
crites as well. It is the misfortune of these lonely
thinkers that they cannot comprehend how any one
can hold opinions differing from their own without
being dishonest. They cannot doubt that they have
been honest toward themselves, and as a consequence
they cannot conceive how others, who are of a dif
ferent mind, can be equally honest, and have come
by their convictions by a straightforward path.
Often it has been very difficult for them to break
with their old faith, cherished from childhood, and
they can only look upon it as cowardice and weak
ness if others, as they think, have not made or wished
to make this sacrifice. But we shall let the horse
herd who emigrated to America speak for himself.
I here print his letter exactly as I received it,
without any alterations.1 To me it seems that the
man speaks not only for himself, but for many who
think as he does, but who have not the ability nor
the opportunity to express themselves clearly. I
resolved, accordingly, to reply to him, and once
begun, my pen ran on, and my letter unexpectedly
covered more ground than I had intended. Whether
he received the letter or not, I do not know ; at least
it must have been delivered to his address, for it was
not returned to me. As I have not, however, heard
from him again since February, and as he speaks in
1 The original was, however, in German.

THE HORSEHERD 43
his letter of chest catarrh, which he hopes will in no
long time bring him to a joyful end, I must wait no
longer for an answer, and publish the correspondence
in the hope that there are other " Pf erdeburle " in
the world to whom it may be of value.
" Pittsburgh, Pa., U.S., February 26, 1896.
"Dear Colleague Max Muller: — Your article
in the Deutsche Rundschau on Celsus pleased me
very much. What does it matter that you do not
know me ? I love you, and that gives me a right to
address you. Why those vain regrets over the loss
of the original ? I would not stretch out my little
finger for that Celsus ; gone is gone like the lost
parts of the Annals of Tacitus. More than likely
both of these losses are to be ascribed to Christian
fanaticism. Tacitus hated the Jews and the Chris
tian sect derived from them. But, father Max, have
we not much greater modern Celsuses and Tacituses,
for instance David Hume and Schopenhauer? One
would think that after the writings of these heroes
positive Christianity would be an impossibility, and
yet the persistence of error is so great that it may take
several centuries more before the end of the Christian
era is reached. Has there ever been anything in the
history of the world more humiliating to the human
understanding than this false and lying tale of the
Christian religion ? And is there anything in face of
our knowledge, and of the realm of nature and of man's

44 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
position in it, so unbearable, yes so odious, as the in
oculation of such error in the tender consciousness of
our school children ? I shudder when I think that in
thousands of our churches and schools this systematic
ruin of the greatest of all gifts, the consciousness, the
human brain, is daily, even hourly, going on. Max,
can you, too, still cling to the God-fable? The Eng
lish atmosphere may serve as an apology. I could
not strike a dog, but I am filled with bloodthirstiness
toward the Jewish idea of God, the soul-phantom, and
the hallucination of immortality. — The facts are so
simple and clear ; we are the highest existing forms
of being in the animal world of this planet, and share
one and the same nature with them. After death we
are just as entirely reduced to nothing as before our
birth. Nature tells us so plainly that the eternal con
ditions before and after our birth are identical.
" You ask me what this juggling means ;
Take this short answer for your pains;
A game of chance from the eternal sea
By the same sea again will swallowed be.
Omar Khayyam (Bodenstedt).
" But there is nothing in this world so false as the
statement that good can ever come out of lies.
Nothing in the world is so wholesome as truth, and
truth is under all circumstances lovable, beautiful,
and holy. Let us kneel before the truth of nature ;
nature cannot go astray. The distinction between
good and evil, the evil heritage of Judaism, must

THE HORSEHERD 45
fall in the end. Max, on quiet fields, in a mountain
village of Silesia, I turned somersaults with joy at
the discovery that this distinction is false, and that
good and evil are identical. Max, you will not be
angry with me ? I am no learned fellow. I never
attended a high school, and now I rejoice at it,
for what a German calls education can only serve
to miseducate after all. Modern life is, for every
open-minded person, the real high school. Max, all
German savants, or, if you please, the majority of
them, still labour under the delusion that the mind is
a 'prius.' By no means, Max! Mind is a develop
ment, an evolving phenomenon. One would sup
pose it impossible that a thinking man, who has ever
observed a child, could be of any other opinion ; why
seek ghosts behind matter? Mind is a function of
living organisms, which belongs also to a goose and
a chicken. Then, Max, why not be content with the
limits of our knowledge, conditioned by experience,
and give up this infamous romancing and tyrannical
lying? The only affection which after fifty years
I still cherish in my bosom is the sweet, unquench
able longing for that truth which fate has denied us.
" Max, you are by no means a free man, as I observe
that the religious congress in Chicago impressed you
very much.1 I was present when the gayly dressed
idolators from Cardinal Gibbons down to the stupid
Shinto priest and the ill-favoured Baptist woman
1 Deutsche Rundschau, 1895, LXXXII, 409 ff., " The Parliament
of Religions in Chicago," by F. Max Muller.

46 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
preacher sat together on the platform. It was very
pretty and refreshing to look upon. They all talked
nonsense and thought themselves very wise. There
was but one exception which interested me : a yellow
Buddhist monk inquired, what they thought of
English missionaries, who in time of famine distrib
uted bread to the poor, but only on one condition,
that they adopted the Christian superstition (indif
ferent whether honestly or not). The so-called
" Ethical Culture Societies " were not admitted by
the committee to their congress of many religions.
Max, it was pitiful to listen to the tittle-tattle that
was read. None had learned beforehand what he
wanted to say. Dicere de scripto is a shame for
learned men. Only Cardinal Gibbons made a short,
but colourless and dull extemporaneous address, which
closed with the hypocrisy, what a great thing it is
to keep oneself unspotted by this world. Accursed
hypocrites, you yourselves are this world, — pitifully
incarnate, it is true, — but you yourselves are this
' spotted world.' Why then still hold to the stupid
distinction between good and evil, when we must
admit that evil is essential to the very existence of
things, and it would be impossible for the world to
be, except as it is. We must be as we are, or we
should not be at all. O beautiful longing for the
primeval cause ! Our ignorance is like evil, welcome.
Let us, O Max, embrace the evil and ignorance, for
if we were nothing but wretched cripples of virtue,
and knew everything, we could not bear to live. As

THE HORSEHERD 47
it is, we enjoy the spirited battle, and carry a sweet
yearning in our breasts.
" Max, how are you personally ? Have you a
family ? How is your health ? How old are you ?
What relation do you bear to the learned set in
England? Do you know the one German philoso
pher, with the courage of his convictions, Emil Diih-
ring, in Berlin. I consider my knowledge of the
writings of Dr. Diihring as the greatest gift of fate
which has been vouchsafed to me. The Jews and
state professors hide his fame under a bushel. Oh !
could not such independent men as you, honoured
Max Muller, do something to bring this hero nearer
to our young students ? Diihring is the only writer
of the present day who is to be enjoyed almost with
out drawback. What is to be said of our German set
which is cowardly enough to repress so long the
greatest mind which our century has produced ? Were
I in your position, how would I shout my ' Quos
Ego ' across to Germany ! Please, my countryman,
favour me with a few lines in answer to this effusion,
in order that I may learn who and what you are. I
am a Silesian horseherd (to be distinguished from the
cowherds [Iciih burla?s~\ , who till their field with pious
moo-moos). Instead of attending a high school, I
herded cows, ploughed, harvested, and helped to thrash
in the winter. While herding I played the flute in the
valleys of the Sudetic Mountains ; and because the
hands of the old village schoolmaster trembled very
much, I begged of him to let me try to play the organ

48 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
for him. ' Ah, you rascal, you can play better than
I,' and he boxed my ears. Then my eldest brother
took possession of the farm of seventy-five acres, gave
us no compensation, and the rest of us lads had to
pack off. We scraped together the passage money to
America, and about thirty years ago I arrived here,
where — I almost said God be praised — it has
always gone pretty hard with me. Whether I fare
well or ill is the same to me. I make no distinction,
for in view of the rapid passing of life, it does not
pay to give much thought to unnecessary distinc
tions. I never could think of marrying, chiefly be
cause the majority of the women in this country are
shrews, cannot cook, and spend much too much
money on the housekeeping. Besides, I have but a
short time to live, for I possess a chest catarrh most
loyally devoted to me, verging upon a perfect
asthma, which I hope erelong will bring me to a
joyful end. No doubt you will think what a dis
consolate fellow this is who has written to me. O
pshaw! I have always enjoyed the sunshine, and have
sat alone hundreds of snug hours before my winter's
companion, a small iron stove. During the last three
nights I have repeatedly read through your article
on Celsus, published in the Deutsche Rundschau, by
a tallow-candle. In relation to your enthusiasm over
the religious clap-trap in Chicago, I should like to
observe that you would have been entirely in the
right if you had represented the Exhibition as the
greatest event of the past ten years. I came through

THE HORSEHERD 49
Chicago in September, 1892, visited the prospective
site of the Exposition, and found there a mere wilder
ness, scarcely a single building half finished, and it was
a wonder of wonders what American enterprise and
genius for organisation accomplished within the single
intervening winter. One could scarcely recover from
one's astonishment at what ten thousand labourers,
urged on by the Yankee lash, could make ready in six
months. ' There was money in the business,' and for
money Jonathan works real miracles. Its like the
world has never produced. The American is cut on
a large pattern, and in spite of his political delusions
I entertain the greatest hopes for the future of a
country which is in such hands.
" With many friendly greetings,
" A Silesian Horseherd,
'¦'¦Emigrated to America."
I answered my unknown friend and correspondent
as follows : — ¦
"My Good Friend: You are an honest fellow,
and I believe that I am one too, but our views are
widely divergent. I am an old professor, am now
seventy-two years old, or as has been often said to
me, seventy-two years young. Like yourself I com
menced life with nothing, and have laboured till I
have become not rich, but independent. Here in
wealthy England and in wealthy Oxford I am con-

50 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
sidered a poor man, but I am quite content, and call
that riches. I have been married thirty -seven years,
have one son, secretary to the Embassy at Constanti
nople, and a happily married daughter, with four
grandchildren. Now you know all that you wished
to know. Of my sorrow, the loss of two daughters,
I must remain silent.
" All my life I have been engaged in investigating
the past ; I am a philologist and have therefore been
also a student of history, have especially studied the
historical development of the various religions of
mankind, and to this end have had to make a study
of ancient languages, particularly Oriental languages.
When one consecrates one's life to such a cause, one
acquires an interest in and a love for the ancients,
and a wish to know what has consoled them in this
vale of grief. As you probably acquired a love for
your colts, mares, and stallions, I acquired an interest
in ancient and modern religions. And as you probably
do not immediately kill or reject your horses because
they possess a blemish, shy, kick, prance about, etc., so
I do not immediately destroy all beliefs, and least of all
my own mount, because they are not faultless, occasion
ally leave me in the lurch, behave foolishly, even dance
on their hind legs with head in air ; but I endeavour to
understand them. When we understand even a little,
we can forgive much. That many religions, including
our own, contain errors and weak points, just as your
horses do, I know perhaps even better than you. But
have you ever asked yourself, what would have be-

THE HORSEHERD 51
come of mankind without any religion, without the
conviction that beyond our horizon, that is beyond our
limit, there still must be something? You will answer,
' How do we know that ? ' Well, can there be any boun
dary without something beyond it ? Is not that as true
as any theorem in geometry ? If it were not so, how
could we explain the fact that mankind has never
been without a belief in a world beyond, nor without
religion, either in the lowest or in the highest levels.
" This horizon, this boundary, does not relate only
to space, as all will agree, even when carried beyond
the Milky Way; it relates as well to time. You
assert, ' The world is much older than we suppose ' ;
you are right, but if it were a million years, still
there must have been a time before it was even a
day old. That also is indisputable. But when we
reach the limit of our senses and' our understanding,
then the horse shies, then we imagine that nothing
can go beyond our understanding. Now let us begin
with our five senses. They seem to be our wings,
but seen in the light they are our fetters, our prison
walls. All our senses have their horizon and their
limits ; and the limits in the external world are our
making. Our sight scarcely reaches a mile, then it
ceases; we can observe the movement of the second
hand, but that of the minute hand escapes us. Why ?
We might know that a cannon-ball passes through
our field of vision, but we cannot locate it. Why
not? Our sense of touch is also very weak and
only extends over a very limited space. And as it

52 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
is on the large scale, so is it with the small. We
see the eye of a needle, but infusoria and bacteria,
which we know to be there and which affect us so
much, we cannot see. With telescopes and micro
scopes we can slightly extend the field of our per
ception, but the limitations and weakness of our
sense-impressions remain none the less an undeniable
fact. We live in a prison, in a cave as Plato said,
and yet we accept our impressions as they are, and
form out of them general notions and words, and
with these words we erect this stately building, or
this tower of Babel, which we then call human
science. " Yes, say certain philosophers, our senses may be
finite and untrustworthy, but our understanding,
and still further our reason, they are unlimited, and
recognise nothing which is beyond them. Well, what
does this most wise understanding do for us ? Has
not Hobbes long since taught us that it adds and
subtracts, and voild tout? It receives the impressions
of the senses, combines them, feels them, comprehends
and designates or names them after any characteristic,
and when man has found words, then the adding and
subtracting begin, but unfortunately also the jum
bling and chattering, till we finally establish that
philosophy and religion, which have aroused in so
great degree your anger, and even your blood thirsti-
ness. In spite of all it remains true that we can
no more get beyond the horizon of our senses than
we can jump out of our skins. You know that old

THE HORSEHERD 53
saying of Locke's, although it is much older than
Locke, that there is nothing in our intellect which
was not first in our senses. And therefore, however
much we may extend our knowledge by adding and
subtracting, everywhere we feel in the end our horizon,
our limitations, our ignorance, for with the limitations
of our senses it cannot be otherwise. Invariably
we receive the old answer, ' You are like the mind
which you conceive, not me.'
" But you say that we have no right whatever to
speak of a mind. That is possible, but everything
depends upon what we understand by the term
' mind.' Is not mind, that is to say, a recipient,
essential to our seeing and hearing? The eye can
no more see than a camera obscura. True seeing,
hearing, and feeling are not perceptible through the
organs of sense, but through the recipient, for without
it the organs of sense could make no resistance, could
not receive, could not perceive. This unknown ele
ment which lies beyond the senses, this recipient must
be there. It is true he cannot be named. Perhaps
it would have been better to have called him ' x ' or
the Unknown; but when we know what is meant,
why not call it mind or spirit, that is, breath? You
call it a soul-phantom. Well, good, but without such
a soul-phantom we cannot get on; you would have
to consider yourself a mere photographic apparatus,
and I do not believe that you do.
"Of course you can still say that the mind is a
development, a self-evolving phenomenon. Rightly

54 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
understood that is quite true, but how misleading
that word ' evolution ' has been in these latter days.
Darwin certainly brought much that is beautiful and
true to the light of day. He demonstrated that
many of the so-called species are not independent
creations, but have been developed from other spe
cies. That means that he has corrected the earlier
erroneous nomenclature of Natural History and has
introduced a more correct classification. He has
greatly simplified the work of the Creator of the
world. Of that merit no one will deprive him, and
it is a great merit. And those who believed that every
species required its own act of creation, and had to
be finished by the Creator separately (as was the es
tablished opinion in England, and still is in some
places), cannot be grateful enough to Darwin for
having given them a simpler and worthier idea of
the origin of the earth and of its animal and vegeta
ble kingdoms.
"But now comes Mr. Herbert Spencer and tells
us, 'We have to deal with man as a product of
evolution, with society as a product of evolution,
and with moral phenomena as products of evolu
tion.' That sounds splendid, but every one who
does not quite ignore the past, knows that evolu
tion or development is neither anything very new or
very useful. Formerly we used simply to say the
tree grows, the child develops, and this was meta
phorically transferred to society, the state, science,
and religion. The study of this development was

THE HORSEHERD 55
called history, and occasionally genetic or pragmatic
history ; but instead of talking as we do now of evolu
tion with imperceptible transitions, it was these trans
itions which industrious and honest investigators
formerly sought to observe. They aimed at learning
to know the men, and the events, which marked a de
cided step in advance in the history of society, or in
the history of morals. This required painstaking
effort, but the result obtained was quite different from
the modern view, in which everything is evolved, and,
what is the worst, by imperceptible degrees. In
Natural History this is otherwise ; in it the term
' evolution,' or 'growth,' may be correctly applied,
because no one really has ever seen or heard the
grass grow, and no one has ever observed the once
generally accepted transition from a reptile to a bird.
In this we must doubtless admit imperceptible trans
itions. Yet even in this we must not go beyond the
facts ; and if a man like Virchow assures us that the
intermediate stages between man and any sort of
animal have never been found to this day, then
in spite of all storms we shall probably have to
rest there. But I go still farther. Even suppos
ing, say I, that there is an imperceptible transition
from the Pithecanthropos to man, affecting his
thigh, his skull, his brain, his entire body, have we
then found a transition from the animal to man?
Certainly not ; for man is man, not because he has no
tail, but because he speaks, and speech implies not
only communication, — an animal can do that per-

56 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
haps better than a man, — but it implies thinking,
and thinking not only as an animal thinks, but think
ing conceptually. And this small thing, the con
cept, is the transition which no animal has ever
accomplished. The moment an ape achieved it, he
would be ipso facto a man, in spite of his miserable
brain, and in spite of his long tail.
" Concepts do not present themselves spontaneously
(or we should find them also among animals), but they
are a special product, in part the work of our ances
tors, and inherited by us with our language, and in
part even now the work of more gifted men from
time to time. This making necessarily implies the
existence of a maker, and if we now provisionally
call this maker, this transcendent, invisible, but very
powerful '#,' mind, are we thereby chargeable, as
you say, with having conjured up a soul-phantom?
Call it a phantom if you will, but even as a phantom
it has a right to exist. Call it mind, breath, breath
ing, willing, or (with Schopenhauer) will, there is
always a He or It to be reckoned with. Of this He
or It, this pronominal soul-phantom, you will never
rid yourself.
" And if we now perceive with our senses a
world as it is given us whether we will or no, and
in this objective world, without us, which so many
regard as within us, we everywhere recognise the
presence of purpose, must we then not also have a
name for that which manifests itself in nature as
purposive or rational ? Shall we only call it ' x,' or

THE HORSEHERD 57
may we transfer the word designating what works
purposively in us to this Unknown, and speak of a
universal Mind without which nature could not be
what it is ? Nature is not crazy nor incoherent.
When the child is born, has the mother milk, and to
what purpose ? Why, certainly, to nourish the child.
And the child has the lips and muscles to suck.
When the fruit has ripened on the tree, it falls to the
earth full of seed. The husk breaks, the seed falls in
the soil, it rains and the rain fertilises the seed, the
sun shines and makes it grow, and when the tree has
grown and again bears blossoms and fruit, this fruit is
useful to man, is food and not poison to him. Is all
this without purpose, without reason ? Is it a sym
phony without a composer ? Man, too, needs rain and
sunshine, and warmth and darkness ; and all this is
given to him so that he may live and work and think.
What would man be without darkness, without the
rest afforded by night? Probably crazy. What
would he be without sunshine ? Perhaps an Esqui
mau or a mole. But how remarkable it is that as
the tree always reproduces itself, so also does man.
The son differs from the father, and yet how like they
are. Where is the form which retains the continu
ous resemblance to itself, and yet leaves to each
separate person freedom and individuality ? Whence
comes this purpose in all nature ? That is an old ques
tion which has received many answers, both wise
and foolish. Unfortunately men so frequently forget
what has already been attained, and then begin again

58 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
at the beginning. Darwin was an industrious and
delicate observer, and showed admirable power of
combination. But he was no philosopher, and never
sought to be one. He was of opinion that everything
in nature which appeared to show purpose proceeded
from the survival of the fittest. But that is no
answer. We ask, Why does the fittest survive?
And what is the answer ? Because only the fittest
survives. And when we come to Natural Selection,
who is the selector that selects ? These are nothing
but phrases, which have long been known and long
since been abandoned, and still are always warmed
up again. If we recognise in nature purpose or
reason, then we have a right to conclude that the
source of it lies in the eternal reason, in the eternally
rational. Behind all objects lies the thought or the
idea. If there are rational ideas in nature, then
there must be a rational thinker. Behind all trees —
oaks, birches, pines — lies the thought, the idea, the
form, the word, the logos of tree. Who made or thought
it before ever the first tree existed ? We can never
see a tree ; we see only an oak, a birch, a pine, never
a tree. But the thought or idea of tree meets us,
realised and diversified in all trees. This is true of
all things. No one has ever seen an animal, a man,
a dog, but he sees a St. Bernard, a greyhound, a
dachshund, and strictly not even that. What, then,
is it that is permanent, always recurring in the dog,
by means of which they resemble each other, the
invisible form in which they are all cast ? That is

THE HORSEHERD 59
the thought, the idea, the logos of dog. Can there
be a thought without a thinker ? Did the ideas in
nature, the millions of objects which make up our
knowledge, fall from the clouds? Did they make
themselves or did nature make them ? Who, then,
is nature ? Is it a masculine, feminine, or neuter ? If
nature can choose, then it can also think and pro
duce. But can it? No, nature is a word, very
useful for certain purposes; but empty, intangible,
and incomprehensible. Nature is an abstraction, as
much as dog or tree, but far more inclusive. When
we recognise thought, reason, purpose in nature, still
it is all in vain, we must assume a thinker in, above,
behind nature, and we must as a matter of course
have a name for hini. The infinite thinker of all
things, of all ideas, of all words, who can never be
seen and never comprehended, because he is infinite,
but in whose thoughts all creatures, the entire crea
tion, have their source, and who when rightly under
stood approaches us palpably or symbolically in all
things, in the sole path of sense by which he can
approach us sentient beings, why should we not call
him Mind, or God, or as the Jews called him, Jeho
vah, or the Mohammedans, Allah, or the Brahmins,
Brahman ? Either reason operates in nature, or nature
is without reason, is chaos and confusion. Neither
survival of the fittest nor natural selection could
bring order into this confusion ; we might as well
believe that if the type in a printing office be
thoroughly shaken and mixed, it could produce

60 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
Goethe's Faust by chance. If we insist upon adher
ing to the theories of natural selection, or survival of
the fittest, be it so ; we only transfer the choice to a
Something which can choose, and leave the fitness
or adaptability to the judgment of an originator, who
can really judge and think.
" I hope that I have made this plain to you ;
but what would be plain to us would not be plain
to children, and still less to mankind in its infancy
five thousand or fifty thousand years ago. I have
especially endeavoured to discover what led these
men of old, in many respects so uncultivated, to be
lieve in something beyond, invisible, superhuman,
supernatural. We can see from their language and
from the oldest monuments of their religion that
they early observed that something happened in the
world. The world was not dark, nor still, nor dead.
The sun rose, and man awoke, and asked himself and
the sunshine. ' Whence ? ' he said ; ' stop, what is
there ? who is there ? ' Such an object as the sun can
not rise of its own volition. There is something
behind it. At first the sun itself was considered a
labourer ; it accomplished the greatest work on earth,
gave light, heat, life, growth, fruits. It was quite
natural, then, to pay great honour to the sun ; to be
grateful to it, to appeal to it for light, heat, and in
crease. And therefore the sun became a God, e.g.
a Deva (deus), which originally meant nothing more
than light. But even then an old Inca in Peru ob
served that the sun was not free ; could not, therefore,

THE HORSEHERD 61
be a being, to whom man could be grateful, to whom
he could pray. It is, said he, like a beast of burden,
which must daily tread its appointed round. And
although the worship of the sun was the religion of
his country, and he himself was worshipped as a
child of the sun, he renounced the ancient faith
of his country, and became what is now frequently
called an atheist ; that is, he longed after a truer God.
What say you to this Inca ? This same thing occurred
also in other lands, and instead of continuing to wor
ship the sun and moon, the dawn, the storm-wind, or
the sky, they worshipped that which must be behind
it all, which was called Heaven-Father, Jupiter, and
every conceivable name. These names were no
longer to indicate the visible object, but Him who
had thought and created the object, the thinker and
ruler of the world. This is the fundamental idea
from which all religions have arisen: not aminism,
fetishism, totemism, or whatever the little tributaries
may be called, which have poured for thousands of
years into the main stream. Every people has pro
duced its own religion, its own language, in the course
of thousands of years ; later, religions have been framed
for all mankind, and we are still engaged in that task,
even in what you call that clap-trap of Chicago. Even
though we have all been born and educated in some
religion, we nevertheless have the right, even the
duty, like the old Inca, to examine every article of
our hereditary religion, to retain it or to cast it aside,
according to our own judgment and conception of the

62 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
truth. Only the fundamental principle must remain ;
there is a thinker and a ruler of the universe. Of
Pontius Pilate and Caiaphas, of Joseph and Mary,
of the resurrection and ascension, let each one be
lieve what he will, but the highest commandment
applies to all, 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God
with all thy heart, and thy neighbour as thyself. '
"You see, therefore, that I, too, am a God-romancer.
And what objection can you raise against it? You
are of opinion that to love God and your neighbour
is equivalent to being good, and are evidently very
proud of your discovery that there is no distinction
between good and evil. Well, if loving God and
your neighbour is equivalent to being good, then it
follows that not loving God and not loving your
neighbour is equivalent to not being good, or to being
evil. There is, then, a very plain distinction between
good and bad. And yet you say that you turned a
somersault when you discovered that there was no
such distinction. It is true that the nature of this
distinction is often dependent on the degree of lati
tude and longitude where men are congregated, and
still more on the intention of the agent. This is very
ancient knowledge. The old Hindu philosophers
went still farther, and said of an assassin and his
victim, ' The one does not commit murder, and the
other is not murdered.' That goes still farther
than your somersault. At all events, we entirely
agree with each other, that everything which is done
out of love to God and our neighbour is good, and

THE HORSEHERD 63
everything which is done through selfishness is bad.
The old philosopher in India must have turned more
somersaults than you ; but what he had in his mind
in doing it does not concern us here. But it was not
so bad as it sounds, and I believe that what you say,
that there is no real distinction between good and
evil, is not so bad as it sounds.
" We have now reached that stage that we must
admit that there is a mind within us, in our inner
world, and a mind without us, in the outer world.
What we call this mind, the Ego, the soul within us,
and the Non-ego, the world-soul, the God without
us, is a matter of indifference. The Brahmans ap
pear to me to have found the best expression. They
call the fundamental cause of the soul, of the Ego,
the Self, and the fundamental cause of the Non-ego,
of the World-soul, of God, the highest Self. They
go still farther, and hold these two selves to be in
their deepest nature -one and the same— but of this
another time. To-day I am content, if you will ad
mit, that our mind is not mere steam, nor the world
merely a steam-engine, but that in order that the ma
chine shall run, that the eye shall see, the ear hear,
the mind think, add, and subtract, we need a seer,
a hearer, a thinker. More than this I will not inflict
on you to-day ; but you see that without deviating a
finger's breadth from the straight path of reason, that
is from correct and honest addition and subtraction,
we finally come to the soul-phantom and to the idea
of God, which you look upon with such blood-

64 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
thirstiness. I have indicated to you, with only a few
strokes, the historical course of human knowledge.
There still remains much to fill in, which must be
gained from history and the diligent study of the
sacred books of mankind, and the works of the lead
ing philosophers of the East and the West. We shall
then learn that the history of mankind is the best
philosophy, and that not only in Christianity and
Judaism, but that in all religions of the world, God
has at divers times spoken through the prophets in
divers manners, and still speaks.
"And now only a few words more over another
somersault. You say that the mind is not a prius,
but a development out of matter. You are right
again, if you view the matter only from an embryo-
logical or psychological standpoint. A child begins
with deep sleep, then comes dream-sleep, and finally
awakening, collecting, naming, adding, subtracting.
What is that which awakens in the child ? Is it a
bone, or is it the soft mass which we call brain ? Can
the gray matter within our skulls give names, or add ?
Why, then, has no craniologist told us that the mon
key's brain lacks precisely those tracts which are con
cerned with speech or with aphasia ? 1 I ask again,
Can the eye see, the ear hear ? Try it on the body
under dissection, or try it yourself in your sleep.
Without a subject there is no object in the world,
without understanding there is nothing to under-
1 See Prof. Dr. Paul Flechsig, Neue Untersuchungen uber die
Marhbildung in den menschlichen Gehirnlappen, p. 67.

THE HORSEHERD 65
stand, without mind no matter. You think that
matter comes first, and then what we call mind.
Where is this matter? Where have you ever seen
matter ? You see oak, fir, slate, and granite, and all
sorts of other materies, as the old architects called
them, never matter. Matter is the creation of the
mind, not the reverse. Our entire world is thought,
not wood and stone. We learn to think or reflect
upon the thoughts, which the Thinker of the world,
invisible, yet everywhere visible, has first thought.
What we see, hear, taste, and feel, is all within us,
not without. Sugar is not sweet, we are sweet. The
sky is not painted blue, we are blue. Nothing is
large or small, heavy or light, except as to ourselves.
Man is the measure of all things, as an ancient Greek
philosopher asserted; and man has inferred, discov
ered, and named matter. And how did he do it?
He called everything, out of which he made any
thing, matter ; materia first meant nothing more than
wood used for building, out of which man built his
dwelling. Here you have the whole secret of matter.
It is building-material, oak, pine, birch, whichever you
prefer. Abstract every individual characteristic, gen
eralise as you will, the wood, the hyle, always remains.
And you will have it that thought, or even the thinker,
originated from this wood. Do you really believe
that there is an outer world such as we see, hear,
or feel? Where have we a tree, except in our
imagination ? Have you ever seen a whole tree,
from all four quarters at once ? Even here we have

66 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
something to add first. And of what are our
ideas composed, if not our sense-perceptions ? And
these perceptions, imperfect as they are, exist only in
us, for us, and through us. The thing perceived is
and always remains, as far as we are concerned in the
outer world, transcendent, a thing in itself ; all else is
our doing ; and if you wish to call it matter or the
material world, well and good, but at least it is not
the prius of mind, but the posterius, that which is
demanded by the mind, but is always unattainable.
Even the professional materialist ascribes inertia to
matter. The atoms, if he assumes atoms, are motion
less, unless disturbed. From whence comes this dis
turbance ? It must proceed from something outside
the atoms, or the matter, so that we can never say
that there is nothing in the universe but matter.
And now if we ascribe motion to the atoms, or like
other philosophers, perception, then that is nothing
more nor less than to ascribe mind to them, which,
however, if you are right, must first evolve itself out
of this matter. If we wind something into these
atoms, then we can also wind something out of them ;
in doing this, however, we give up at the outset the
experiment of letting mind evolve itself out of matter.
Give an atom the germ-power of an acorn, and it will
develop into an oak. Give an atom the capacity of
sense-perception, and it will become an animal, possi
bly a man. But what was promised us was the devel
opment of feeling and perception out of the dead
atoms of hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, etc.

THE HORSEHERD 67
Even if we could explain life out of the activities of
these atoms, which may be possible, — although denied
by Haeckel and Tyndall, — still feeling, perception,
understanding, all the functions of mind, would re
main unexplained. J. S. Mill is certainly no idealist,
and no doubt is one of your heroes. Well Mr. Mill
declares that nothing but mind could produce mind.
Even Tyndall, in his address as President of the
British Association in Belfast, declared in plain
words that the continuity of molecular processes and
the phenomena of consciousness constitute the rock
on which all Materialism must inevitably be shattered.
" Think over all of this by your iron stove, or better
still at some beautiful sunrise in spring, and you will
see before you a more glorious revelation than all the
revelations of the Old World. " Yours faithfully,
"F. Max Muller.
" Oxford, November, 1896."

Ill
CONCERNING THE HORSEHERD
The appearance of my article in the Deutsche
Rundschau seems to have caused much headshaking
among my friends in Germany, England, and Amer
ica. Many letters came to me privately, others were
sent directly to the publishers. They came chiefly
from two sides. Some were of the opinion that I
dealt too lightly with the Horseherd ; others pro
tested against what I said about the current theory
of evolution. The first objection I have sought to
make up for in what follows. The other required
no answer, for I had I think, in my previous writ
ings, quite clearly and fully explained my attitude
in opposition to so-called Darwinism. Some of my
correspondents wished peremptorily to deny me the
right of passing judgment upon Darwin's doctrine,
because I am not a naturalist by profession. Here
we see an example of the confusion of ideas that re
sults from confusion of language. Darwinism is a
high-sounding, but hollow and unreal word, like
most of the names that end in ism. What do such
words as Puseyism, Jesuitism, Buddhism, and now
even Pre-Darwinism and Pre-Lamarckism signify?
Everything and nothing, and no one is more on his
68

CONCERNING THE HORSEHERD 69
guard against these generalising termini technici
than the heroes eponymi himself. What has not
been called Darwinism ? That the present has come
out of the past, has been called the greatest dis
covery of the nineteenth century. Darwin himself
is not responsible for such things. He wished to
show how the present has come out of the past, and
he did it in such a manner that even the laity could
follow him and sincerely admire him. Now, of course,
it cannot be denied that if we understand Darwinism
to mean Darwin's close observations concerning the
origin of the higher organisms out of lower as well as
the variations of individuals from their specific types,
caused by external conditions, it would as ill become
me to pass either a favourable or unfavourable judg
ment as it would Darwin to estimate my edition of
the Rig-Veda, or a follower of Darwin to criticise
my root theory in philology, without knowing the
ABC of the science of language. If, however, we
speak of Darwinism in the domain of universal philo
sophical problems, such as, for instance, the creation or
development of the world, then we poor philosophers
also have no doubt a right to join in the conversa
tion. And if, without appearing too presuming, we
now and then dare to differ from Kant, or from
Plato or Aristotle, is it mere insolence, or perhaps
treason, to differ from Darwin on certain points?
This was not the tone assumed by Darwin, giant
as he was, even when he spoke to so insignificant a
person as myself. I have on a previous occasion

70 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
published a short letter addressed to me by Darwin
(Auld Lang Syne, p. 178). Here follows another,
which I may no doubt also publish without being
indiscreet. " Down, Beckenham, Kent, July 3, 1873.
"Dear Sir: I am much obliged for your kind
note and present of your lectures. I am extremely
glad to have received them from you, and I had
intended ordering them.
" I feel quite sure from what I have read in your
work, that you would never say anything to an hon
est adversary to which he would have any just right
to object; and as for myself, you have often spoken
highly of me, perhaps more highly than I deserve.
" As far as language is concerned, I am not worthy
to be your adversary, as I know extremely little
about it, and that little learnt from very few books.
I should have been glad to have avoided the whole
subject, but was compelled to take it up as well as I
could. He who is fully convinced, as I am, that
man is descended from some lower animal, is almost
forced to believe, a priori, that articulate language
has been developed from inarticulate cries, and he is
therefore hardly a fair judge of the arguments op
posed to this belief.
" With cordial respect I remain, dear sir,
" Yours very faithfully,
" Charles Darwin."

CONCERNING THE HORSEHERD 71
This will at all events show that a man who could
look upon a chimpanzee as his equal, did not entirely
ignore, as an uninformed layman, a poor philologist.
Darwin did not in the least disdain the uninformed
layman. He thought and wrote for him, and there
is scarcely one of Darwin's books that cannot be read
by the uninformed layman with profit. And in the
interchange of acquired facts or ideas, mental science
has at least as much right as natural science. We
live, it is true, in different worlds. What some look
upon as the real, others regard as phenomenal. What
these in their turn look upon as the real, seems to
the first to be non-existent. It will always be thus
until philology has defined the true meaning of reality.
It is, however, a worn-out device to place all those
who differ from Darwin in the pillory of science as
mystics, metaphysicians, and (what seems worst of all)
as orthodox. It requires more than courage, too, to
class all who do not agree with us as uninformed
laymen, "to accuse them of ignorance and supersti
tion, and to praise our friends and disciples as the
only experts or competent judges, as impartial and
consistent thinkers." Through such a defence the
greatest truths would lose their worth and dignity.
The true scholar simply leaves such attacks alone.
It is to be regretted that this resounding trumpet
blast of a few naturalists renders any peaceful inter
change of ideas impossible from the beginning. I
have expressed my admiration for Darwin more
freely and earlier than many of his present eulo-

72 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
gists. But I maintain, that when anthropogeny is dis
cussed, it is desirable first of all to explain what is
understood by anthropos. Man is not only an object,
but a subject also. All that man is as an object, or
appears to be for a time on earth, is his organic body
with its organs of sense and will, and with its slowly
developed so-called ego. This body is, however, only
phenomenal ; it comes and goes, it is not real in the
true sense of the word. To man belongs, together
with the visible objective body, the invisible subjec
tive Something which we may call mind or soul or
x, but which, at all events, first makes the body
into a man. To observe and make out this Some
thing is in my view the true anthropogeny ; how the
body originated concerns me as little as does the
question whether my gloves are made of kid or peau
de suide. That will, of course, be called mysticism,
second sight, orthodoxy, hypocrisy, but fortunately it
is not contradicted by such nicknames. If an ani
mal could ever speak and think in concepts, it would
be my brother in spite of tail or snout ; if any human
being had a tail or a forty-four toothed snout, but
could use the language of concepts, then he would
be and remain a man, as far as I am concerned, in
spite of all that. We, too, have a right to express
our convictions. They are as dear to us as to those
who believe or believed in the Protogenes Haeckelii.
It is true we do not preach to the whole world that
our age is the great age of the study of language and
mind, and that it has cast more light on the origin

CONCERNING THE HORSEHERD 73
of the mind (logogeny) and on the classification of
the human race (anthropology) than all other sci
ences together. A little progress, however, we have
made. Who is there that still classifies the human
race by their skulls, hair, anatomy, etc., and not by
their speech ? If, like zoology, we may borrow count
less millions of years, where is there any pure blood
left, amid the endless wars and migrations, the poly
gamy and slavery of the ancient world ? Language
alone is and remains identical, whoever may speak it ;
but the blood, ' this very peculiar fluid,' how can we
get at that scientifically? It is, however, and re
mains a fixed idea with these " consistent thinkers "
that the sciences of language and mind lead to super
stition and hypocrisy, while on the other hand the
science of language gratefully acknowledges the
results of zoology, and only protests against en
croachments. Both sciences might advance peace
fully side by side, rendering aid and seeking it ; and
as for prejudices, there are plenty of them surviving
among zoologists as well as philologists, which must
be removed viribus unitis. What is common to us is
the love of truth and clearness, and the honest effort
to learn to understand the processes of growth in
mind and language, as well as in nature, in the indi
vidual (ontogenetically) as well as in the race (phy-
logenetically). Whether we now call this evolution
or growth, philology at all events has been in advance
of natural science in setting a good example, and
securing recognition of the genetic method. Such

74 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
men as William Humboldt, Grimm, and Bopp did
not exactly belong to the dark ages, and I do not
believe that they ever doubted that man is a mammal
and stands at the head of the mammalia. This is no
discovery of the nineteenth century. Linnaeus lived
in the eighteenth century and Aristotle somewhat
earlier. I see that the Standard Dictionary already
makes a distinction between Darwinism and Darwin-
ianism, between the views of Darwin and those of
the Darwinians, and we clearly see that in some of
the most essential points these two tendencies are
diametrically opposed to each other. There is one
thing that naturalists could certainly learn from phi
lologists, viz., to define their termini technici, and not
to believe that wonders can be performed with words,
if only they are spoken loud enough.
The following letter comes from a naturalist, but
is written in a sincere and courteous tone, and de
serves to be made public. I believe that the writer
and I could easily come to terms, as I have briefly
indicated in my parentheses.
AN OPEN LETTER TO PROFESSOR F. MAX MULLER.
"Respected Sir: Your correspondence in this
periodical with the ' Horseherd ' has no doubt
aroused an interest on many sides. There are many
more Horseherds than might be supposed; that is
to say, men in all possible positions and callings, who
after earnest reflection have reached a conclusion

CONCERNING THE HORSEHERD 75
that does not essentially differ from the mode of
thought of your backwoods friend.
"The present writer considers himself one of
these ; he is, indeed, not self-taught like the Horse
herd, but a scientific man, and like you, a professor ;
but as he had no philosophical training, and he has
only reached his views through observation and
reflection; in contrast to you, the profound philolo
gist, he stands not much higher than the Silesian
countryman. And to complete the contrast, he
adds, that he has long been a severe sufferer. So
that instead of guiding the plough on the field of
science with a strong hand, he must remain idly at
home, and modestly whittle pine shavings for the
enlightenment of his home circle.
" I do not know whether the Horseherd will con
sider that his argument has been refuted when he
reads your letter by his warm stove. In this,
according to my view, you have practically failed.
{My counter arguments shall follow later. ~)
" Yes, I find in your reasoning very remarkable
contradictions. You acknowledge for instance the
infinity of space and time, and in spite of this you
say that there was a time before the world was a
year old. I do not understand that. We must
assume for matter, for that is no doubt what you
mean by the term ' world,' the same eternity as for
space and time, whose infinity can be proved but
not comprehended. (Well, when we say that the
world is 1898 years old, we can also say that it once

76 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
was a year, or half a year old ; of course not other
wise.) " A ' creation ' in the sense of the various religions
is equally incomprehensible to us. (Certainly.)
" But I do not wish to enlarge on this point any
farther. Here begins the limit of our thinking
faculties, and it is the defect of all religions that
they require us to occupy ourselves with matters
that lie beyond this limit, that never can be revealed
to us, since we are denied the understanding of
them ; a revelation is at all events a chimera. For
either that which is to be revealed lies beyond our
senses and ideas, — and then it cannot be revealed to
us, — or it lies on this side, and then it need not be
revealed to us. (This is not directed against me.)
" I believe, moreover, dear sir, that through your
comparative studies of religion you must reach the
same conclusion as myself, that all religious ideas
have arisen solely in the brain of man himself, as
efforts at explanation in the broadest sense; that
dogmas were made out of hypotheses, and that no
religion as a matter of fact reveals anything to us.
(Not only religious ideas, but all ideas have arisen in
the brain.)
" You express a profound truth when you say that
atheism is properly a search for a truer God. I was
reminded by it of a passage in one of Daudet's
novels, in which the blasphemy of one who despairs
of a good God, is yet called a kind of prayer. You
will therefore bear with me if I explain to you how

CONCERNING THE HORSEHERD 77
a scientific man who thinks consistently can reach a
conclusion not far removed from that which prompted
the Horseherd to turn a somersault.
" Good and evil are purely human notions ; an
almighty God stands beyond good and evil. He is as
incomprehensible to us in moral relations as in every
other. (From the highest point of view, yes ; but in the
lives of men there is such a distinction.)
" Only look at the world ! The existence of the
majority of living creatures is possible only through
the destruction of others. What refined cruelty is
expressed by the various weapons with which animals
are provided. Some zoologist ought to write an illus
trated work entitled, The Torture Chamber of Nature.
I merely wish to touch upon this field; to exhaust
it would require pages and volumes. Your adopted
countryman, Wallace, seeks, it is true, to set aside
these facts by a superficial observation. That most
of the animals that are doomed to be devoured, enjoy
their lives until immediately before the catastrophe,
takes none of its horror from the mode of death. To
be dismembered alive is certainly not an agreeable
experience, and I suggest that you should observe
how, for instance, a water-adder swallows a frog ; how
the poor creature, seized by the hind legs, gradually
disappears down its throat, while its eyes project star
ing out of their sockets ; how it does not cease
struggling desperately even as it reaches the stomach.
"Now I, who am but a poor child of man, full of
evil inclinations according to Biblical lore, liberated

78 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
the poor frog on my ground. But ' merciful nature '
daily brings millions and millions of innocent crea
tures to a like cruel and miserable end.
" I intentionally leave out of consideration here
the unspeakable sufferings of mankind. Believers
in the Bible find it so convenient to argue about
original sin. Where is the original sin of the tor
mented animal kingdom?
" Of course man in his unutterable pride looks with
deep disdain on all living creatures that are not hu
man. As if he were not bone of their bone, as if suf
fering did not form a common bond with all living
creatures ! (i~ have never done that, but J think that it
is difficult to establish a thermometer of suffering.)
" Do you not bethink you, honoured student of San
skrit, of the religion of the Brahmins ? In sparing all
animals, the Hindus have shown only the broadest
consistency. " There will come a time when there will be only
one religion, without dogma : the religion of compas
sion. (Buddhism is founded on Kdrunya, compassion.)
Christianity, lofty as is its ethical content, is not the
goal, but only a stage in our religious development.
" It is a misfortune that Nietzsche, the great keen
thinker, should have been misled into an opposite con
clusion by the mental weakness, the paralytic imbe
cility, which gradually enveloped his brain like a
growth of mould. And the foolish youths, who es
teem the expressions of this incipient insanity as the
revelations of a vigorous genius, swear by his later

CONCERNING THE HORSEHERD 79
hallucinations about the Over-man and the blond
beast. "A specialist in mental disease can point out the
traces of his malady years before it openly broke out.
And as if he had not written enough when the world
still considered him of sound mind, must men still
try to glean from the time when his brain was already
visibly clouded ?
" How few there are who can pick out of the deso
late morass of growing imbecility the scanty grains
of higher intelligence ! There will always be people
who will be impressed, not by the sound part of his
thought, but by his paradoxical nonsense. (May be.)
" But — I am straying from the path. Now to the
subject. I perfectly understand that the majority of
religions had to assume a good and evil principle
to guard themselves against the blasphemy of attrib
uting all the suffering of the world to an all-merciful
Creator. (Some religions have done this, on the theory
that an almighty Grod stands beyond good and evil.)
The devil is a necessary antithesis to God ; to deny
him is the first step made by the consistent man of
science toward that atheism which originates really
from the search for a better God. The Horseherd
is wrong when he denies the existence of things be
yond our power of conception. There are, as can
be proved, tones that we do not hear, and rays that
we cannot see. There are many things that we shall
learn to comprehend in the hundreds of thousands of
years that are in store for mankind. We are merely

80 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
in the beginning of our development. Something,
however, will always remain over. The ' Ignorabimus '
of one of our foremost thinkers and investigators will
always retain its value for us. (Most certainly.)
The other world is of but little concern to him who
has constantly endeavoured to lead a good life, even
if he has never given much thought to correct belief.
If personal existence is continued, our earthly being
must be divested of so many of its outer husks that
we should scarcely recognise each other, for only a
part of the soul is the soul. ( What we call soul is
a modification of the Self.) If, however, an eternal
sleep is decreed for us, then this can be no great mis
fortune. Let the wise saying in Stobxi Florilegium,
Vol. VI, No. 19, in 'praise of death ' serve to comfort
us : ' Ava^ayopas Svo eXeye 8i8acr/caXLa<; elvai Oavdrov,
rov re 77y>o rod yeveaOat ypovov ical top vttvov, — 'An
axagoras said that two things admonished us about
death: the time before birth and sleep.'
" The raindrop, because it is a drop, may fear for
its individuality when it falls back into the sea
whence it came. We men are perhaps only passing
drops formed out of the everlasting changes of the
world-sea. (Of what does the world-sea consist but
drops ?)
" Those who think as I do constitute a silent but
large congregation: silent, because the time is not yet
ripe for a view that will rob thousands of their illu
sions. We do not preach a new salvation, but a silent,
for many, a painful, renunciation. But the profound

CONCERNING THE HORSEHERD 81
peace that lies in this view is as precious to those who
have acquired it as is the hope of heaven to the be
liever. In honest doubt, too, lies a saving power as
well as in faith ; and your Horseherd is on the path
of this salvation. (I believe that too.)
" With great respect,
" Yours very faithfully,
"Ignotus Agnosticus."
Whilst I received this and many other letters from
many lands, no sign of life reached me from my Horse
herd. He must have received my letter, or it would
have been returned to me through the post. I re
gretted this, for I had formed a liking for the man as
he appeared in his letter, and he no doubt would have
had much to say in reply to my letter, which would
have placed his views in a clearer light. He was an
honest fellow, and I respect every conviction that is
honest and sincere, even if it is diametrically opposite
to my own. Now, my unknown friend could have
had no thought of self in the matter. He knew that
his name would not be mentioned by me, and it would
probably have been of little concern to him if his
name had become known. The worst feature of all
discussions is the intrusion of the personal element.
If for instance in a criticism of a new book we empha
sise that which we think erroneous, for which every
author should be grateful, we feel at the same time,
that while desiring to render a service to the cause of

82 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
truth, we may not only have hurt the book or the
writer, but may have done a positive injury. The
writer then feels himself impelled to defend his view
not only with all the legitimate arts of advocacy, but
also with the illegitimate. This poor truth is the
greatest sufferer. As long as two paths are open,
there is room for quiet discussion with one's travelling
companion as to which may be the right and best path
by which to reach the desired point. Both parties
have the same object in view, the truth. As soon
however as one goes, or has gone his own way, the
controversy becomes personal and violent. There is
no thought of turning back. It is no longer said:
" This is the wrong path," but " You are on the
wrong path," and even if it were possible to turn back,
the controversy generally ends with, "I told you so."
Poor Truth stands by sorrowfully and rubs its eyes.
Now what was the Horseherd to me, and what
is he now, even if he has been brought to what he
called a joyful end by his catarrh " verging upon a
perfect asthma." There was nothing personal between
us. He knew me only by that which I have thought
and said ; I knew of him only what he had gathered
in his hours of leisure, and had laid aside for life. I
have never seen him face to face, do not know the
colour of his eyes, hardly even whether he was old or
young. He was a man, but he may be even that no
longer. Everything that in our common view con
stitutes a man, his body, his speech, his experience, is
gone. We did not bring these things with us into

CONCERNING THE HORSEHERD 83
the world and probably shall not take them away
with us. What the body is, we see with our eyes,
especially if we attend a cremation, or if in ancient
graves we look into the urns which contain the gray
ish black ashes, whilst near by there sleeps in cold
marble, as in the Museo Nazionale in Rome, the
lovely head of the young Roman maiden, to whom
two thousand years ago belonged these ashes, as well
as the beautiful mansion that has been excavated
from the earth and rebuilt round about her. And
the language, the language in which all our experi
ence here on earth lies stored, will this be everlast
ing? Shall we in another life speak English or
Sanscrit? The philologist knows too well of what
material speech is made, how much of the temporal
and accidental it has adopted in its eternal forms, to
cherish such a hope, and to think that the Logos can
be eternally bound to the regular or irregular declen
sions or conjugations of the Greek, the German, or
even the Hottentot languages. What then remains ?
Not the person, or the so-called ego — that had a be
ginning, a continuation, and an end. Everything
that had a beginning, once was not, and what once
was not, has in itself, from its very beginning, the
germ of its end. What remains is only the eternal
One, the eternal Self, that lives in us all without be
ginning and without end, in which each one has his
true existence, in which we live, move, and have our
being. Each temporal ego is only one of the million
phenomena of this eternal Self, and such a phenome-

84 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
non was the Horseherd to me. It is only what we
recognise in all men as the eternal, or as the divine,
that we can love and retain. Everything else comes
and goes, as the day comes in the morning and goes
at night, but the light of the sun remains forever.
Now it may be said: This Self, that is and abides,
is after all next to nothing. It is, however, and that
iis,7 is more than everything else. Light is not much
either, probably only vibration, but what would the
world be without it? Did we not begin this life
simply with this Self, continue it with this Self, and
bring it to an end with this Self? There is nothing
that justifies us in saying that this Self had a begin
ning, and will therefore have an end. The ego had
a beginning, the persona, the temporal mask that
unfolds itself in this life, but not the Self that
wears the mask. When therefore my Horseherd says,
" After death we are just as much a nullity as before
our birth," I say, quoderat demonstrandum is still to
be proved. What does he mean by we ? If we were
nothing before birth, that is, if we never had been at
all, what would that be that is born? Being born
does not mean becoming something out of nothing.
What is born or produced was there, before it was
born or produced, before it came into the light of
the world. All creation out of nothing is a pure
chimera for us. Have we ever the feeling or ex
perience that we had a beginning here on earth,
or have we entirely forgotten the most remarkable
thing in our life, viz., its beginning ? Have we ever

CONCERNING THE HORSEHERD 85
seen a beginning? Can we even think of an abso
lute beginning? In order to have had our begin
ning on earth, there must have been something
that begins, be it a cell or be it the Self. All that
we call ego, personality, character, etc., has unfolded
itself on earth, is earthly, but not the Self. If we
now on earth were content with the pure Self, if in
all those that we love, we loved the eternal Self
and not only the appearance, what then is more
natural than that it should be so in the next world,
that the continuity of existence cannot be severed,
that the Self should find itself again, even though
in new and unexpected forms? When therefore
my friend makes the bold assertion : " After our
death we are again as much a nullity as before our
birth," I say, " Yes, if we take nullity in the Hegelian
sense." Otherwise I say the direct contrary to this :
"After our death we are again as little a nullity
as before our birth. What we shall be we cannot
know ; but that we shall be, follows from this, that
the Self or the divine within us can neither have a
beginning nor an end." That is what the ancients
meant in saying that death was to be best under
stood from the time before birth. But we must
not think that each single ego lays claim only to
a part of the Self, for then the Self would be di
vided, limited, and finite. No, the entire Self bears
us, just as the entire light illumines all, every grain
of sand and every star, but for that reason does not
belong exclusively to any one grain of sand or star,

86 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
It is that which is eternal, or in the true sense of the
word that which is divine in us, that endures in all
changes, that makes all change possible, for without
something that endures in change, there could be
no change ; without something continuous, that per
sists through transformation, nothing could be trans
formed. The Self is the bond that unites all souls,
the red thread which runs through all being, and the
knowledge of which alone gives us knowledge of our
true nature. " Know thyself " no longer means for us
" Know thy ego," but " Know what lies beyond thy
ego, know the Self," the Self that runs through the
whole world, through all hearts, the same for all men,
the same for the highest and the lowest, the same for
creator and creature, the Atman of the Veda, the old
est and truest word for God.
For this reason the Horseherd was to me what
all men have always been to me — an appearance of
the Self, the same as I myself, not only a fellow-
creature, but a fellow-man, a fellow-self. Had I met
him in life, who knows whether his ego or his ap
pearance would have attracted me as much as his
letter. We all have our prejudices, and much as I
honour a Silesian peasant who has spent his life faith
fully and honestly in a strange land, I do not know
whether I should have sat down by his iron stove and
chatted with him about to, [leyicna.
I also felt as I read his letter, that it was not a soli
tary voice in the desert, but that he spoke in the
name of many who felt as he felt, without being

CONCERNING THE HORSEHERD 87
willing or able to express it. This also has proved
to be entirely true.
Judging by the numerous letters and manuscripts
that reach me, the Horseherd was not alone in his
opinions. There are countless others in the world
of the same mind, and even if his voice is silenced,
his ideas survive in all places and directions, and he
will not lack followers and defenders. The strik
ing thing in the letters that reached me was that the
greater number and the most characteristic among
his sympathisers did not wish their names to be
known. What does this signify? Do we still live
on a planet on which we dare not express what we
hold to be the truth — planet Terra so huge and yet
so contemptibly small ? Has mankind still only free
dom of thought, but not freedom of utterance ? The
powers may blockade Greece ; can they blockade
thoughts on wings of words ? It has been attempted,
but force is no proof, and when we have visited the
prisons in which Galilei or even Giordano Bruno
was immured, we learn how nothing lends greater
strength to the wings of truth than the heavy
chains with which men try to fetter it. It is still the
general opinion that even in free England thought
and speech are not free, that in the realm of thought
there is even less freedom on this side of the Chan
nel than on the other.1 Oxford especially, my own
university, is still considered the stronghold of
1 These pronouns, referring of course to England and the Con
tinent, were reversed in the original.

88 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
obscurantists, and my Horseherd even considers the
fact that I have lived so long in Oxford a circon-
stance attSnuante of my so-called orthodoxy. Plainly
what is thouglit, said, and published in England, and
especially in Oxford, is not read. In England we
can say anything we please, we must only bear in
mind that the same consideration is due to others
that we claim from others. It is true that from time
to time in England, and even in Oxford, feeble efforts
have been made, if not to curtail freedom of thought,
at least to punish those who laid claim to it. Where
possible the salaries of professors were curtailed ; in
certain elections very weak candidates were preferred
because they were outwardly orthodox. I do not
wish to mention any names, but I myself have re
ceived in England, even if not in Oxford, a gentle
aftertaste of this antiquated physic. When at the
request of my friend Stanley, the Dean of Westmin
ster Abbey, I delivered a discourse in his venerable
church, which was crowded to the doors, petitions
were sent to Parliament to condemn me to six
months' imprisonment. I was accosted in the streets,
and an ordinary tradesman said to me, " Sir, if you
are sent to prison, you shall have at least two warm
dinners each week from me." I am, to be sure, the
first layman that ever spoke publicly in an English
church, but I had the advice of the highest authori
ties that the Dean was perfectly within his rights, and
that we were guilty of no violation of law. I there
fore waited in silence ; I knew that public opinion

CONCERNING THE HORSEHERD 89
was on my side, and that in the end the petition to
Parliament would simply be laid aside. Later on it
was attempted again. At the time that I delivered
my lectures on the Science of Religion at the uni
versity of Glasgow, by invitation of the Senate, I was
accused first before the presbytery at Glasgow, and
when this attempt failed, the charge was carried
before the great Synod at Edinburgh. In this case,
too, I went on my way, in silence, and in the end,
even in Scotland, the old saying, " Much cry and
little wool," was verified. This proverb is frequently
heard in England. I have often inquired into its
origin. Finally I found that there is a second line,
"As the deil said when he shore the sow." Of course
such an operation was accompanied with much noise
on the part of the sow, but little wool, nothing but
bristles. I have never, however, had to turn my bris
tles against the gentlemen who wished to shear me.
I am of opinion, therefore, that those who wished
to espouse the cause of my Horseherd should have
done so publicly and with open visor. As soon as
any one feels that he has found the truth, he knows
also that what is real and true can never be killed or
silenced ; and secondly, that truth in the world has its
purpose, and this purpose must in the end be a good
one. We do not complain about thunder and light
ning, but accustom ourselves to them, and seek to
understand them, so as to live on good terms with
them ; and we finally invent lightning conductors, to
protect ourselves, as far as we can, against the inevi-

90 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
table. So it is with every new truth, if it is only
maintained with courage. At first we cry and
clamour that it is false, that it is dangerous. In
the end we shake our wise heads and say these
are old matters known long since, of which only old
women were afraid. In the end, after the thunder
and lightning, the air is made clearer, fresher,
and more wholesome. When I first read the long
letter of my Horseherd, I said to myself, " He is a
man who has done the best he could in his position."
He has let himself be taught, but also irresistibly
influenced, by certain popular books, and has come
to think that the abandonment of views that have
been instilled into him from his youth is so brave
and meritorious, that all who disagree with him must
be cowards. This inculcation of truth into childish
minds is always a dangerous matter, and even if I
do not use the strong expressions that are used by
my friend, — for I always think, the stronger the
expression the weaker the argument, — I must admit
that he is right up to a certain point. It does not
seem fair that in the decision of the most important
questions of life the young mind should have no
voice. A Jewish child becomes a Jew, a Christian
child a Christian, and a Buddhist child a Buddhist.
What does this prove ? Unquestionably, that in the
highest concern in life the child is not allowed a
voice. My friend asks indignantly : " Is there any
thing in face of our knowledge, and of the realm
of nature and of man's position in it, so unbearable,

CONCERNING THE HORSEHERD 91
yes so odious, as the inoculation of such error in
the tender consciousness of our school children ? I
shudder when I think that in thousands of our
churches and schools this systematic ruin of the
greatest of all gifts, the consciousness, the human
brain, is daily, even hourly, going on. Max, can
you, too, still cling to the God-fable ? " etc.
Now I have explained clearly and concisely in
what sense I cling to the God-fable, and I should
like to know if I have convinced my Horseherd. I
belong, above all, to those who do not consider the
world an irrational chaos, and also to those who can
not concede that there can be reason without a
reasoner. Reason is an activity, or, as others have
it, an attribute, and there can neither be an activity
without an agent, nor an attribute without a subject ;
at least, not in the world in which we live. When
ordinary persons and even professional philosophers
speak of reason as if it were a jewel that can be
placed in a drawer or in a human skull, they are
simply myth-makers. It is precisely in this ever
recurring elevation of an adjective or a verb to a
noun, of a predicate to a subject, that this disease of
language, as I have called mythology, has its deepest
roots. Here lies the genesis of the majority of gods,
not by any means, as it is generally believed I have
taught, merely in later quibbles and misunderstand
ings, which are interesting and popular, but have
little reference to the deepest nature of the myth.
We must not take these matters too lightly.

92 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
I recognise therefore a reasoner, and consequent
reason in the world, or in other words, I believe in
a thinker and ruler of the world, but gladly concede
that this Being so infinitely transcends our faculties
of comprehension, that even to wish only to give him
a name borders on madness. If, in spite of all of this,
we use such names as Jehovah, Allah, Deva, God,
Father, Creator, this is only a result of human weak
ness. I cling therefore to the God-fable in the sense
which is more fully set forth in my letter, and it
pleased me very much to see that at least a few of
those, who as they said were formerly on the side of
the Horseherd, now fully agree with me, that the
world is not irrational. Here is the dividing line be
tween two systems of philosophy. Whoever thinks
that an irrational world becomes rational by the sur
vival of the fittest, etc., stands on one side ; I stand on
the other, and hold with the Greek thinkers, who
accept the world as the expression of the Logos, or of
a reasonable thought or thinker.
But here the matter became serious. To my
Horseherd I thought that I could make myself intel
ligible in a humorous strain, for his letter was per
meated with a quiet humour. But my known and
unknown opponents take the matter much more seri
ously and thoroughly, and I am consequently obliged
at least to try to answer them seriously and thoroughly.
What my readers will say to this I do not know. I
believe that even in short words we can be serious
and profound. When Schiller says that he belongs

CONCERNING THE HORSEHERD 93
to no religion, and why? because of religion, the
statement is short and concise, and yet easily under
stood. I shall, however, at least attempt to follow my
opponents step by step, even at the risk of becoming
tedious. And first of all a confession. It has been pointed
out to me that in one place I did my Horseherd an
injustice. I wrote : " You are of opinion that to love
God and your neighbour is equivalent to being good,
and are evidently very proud of your discovery that
there is no distinction between good and evil.
Well," I then continue, "if loving God and your
neighbour is equivalent to being good, then it follows
that not loving God and not loving your neighbour is
equivalent to not being good, or to being evil. There
is, then, a very plain distinction between good and
evil. And yet you say that you turned a somersault
when you discovered that there was no such distinc
tion." Well, that looked as though I had driven my friend
into a corner from which he would find it difficult to
extricate himself. But I did him an injustice and
shall therefore do everything in my power to right
it. My memory, as it so frequently does, played me
a prank. At the same time that I answered him, I
was in active correspondence with one of the dele
gates to the Chicago Parliament of Religions, at which
the love of God and one's neighbour had been adopted,
as a sort of article of agreement which the followers
of any or every faith could accept. Thus it befell

94 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
that I supposed the Horseherd in America to stand
at the same point of view, and consequently to be
guilty of a contradiction. Such is, however, not
the case ; he made no such concession of love of God
and one's neighbour in his letter. If he therefore
insists that there is no distinction between good and
evil, I cannot at least refute him out of his own
mouth. The only place where he is inconsistent is
where he concedes that he could not strike a dog, but
is filled with bloodthirstiness toward the Jewish idea
of God. Here he clearly holds it good that he cannot
be cruel to an animal, and that he looks upon blood-
thirstiness as a contrast. He also concedes that a lie
can never accomplish any good, and believes that the
truth is beautiful and holy. If a lie can accomplish
no good, only evil, then there must be a distinction
between good and evil. And what is the meaning
of beautiful and holy, if there is no contrast between
good and evil. But I shall argue this point no
farther, but simply say peecavi, and I believe that he,
and those like-minded with him, will be satisfied with
that. How different it would have been, however,
had I been guilty of such a mistake in a personal dis
pute ! The injured party would never have believed
that my oversight was accidental, and not malicious, in
spite of the fact that it would have been the most
stupid malevolence to say that which every one who
can read would instantly recognise as untrue. But
enough of this, and enough to show that my Horse
herd at least remained consistent. Even when he

CONCERNING THE HORSEHERD 95
so far forgets himself as to say, " God be praised," he
excuses himself. Only he has unfortunately not told
us what he really means when he says that good and
evil are identical. Good and evil are relative ideas,
just like right and left, black and white, and although
he has told us that he turned somersaults with joy
over the discovery that this distinction is false, he has
left us in total darkness as to how we shall conceive
this identity.
But let us turn back to more important things.
My opponents further call me sharply to account,
and ask how I can imagine that the material world
can be rational, or permeated with reason. I believed
that it must be clear to every person with a philo
sophical training, that there are things that are be
yond our understanding, that man can neither sensibly
apprehend nor logically conceive an actual beginning
and that to inquire for the beginning of the subjective
self, or of the objective world, is like inquiring for the
beginning of the beginning. All that we can do is to
investigate our perceptions, to see what they presup
pose. A perception plainly presupposes a self that
perceives, or that resists, and on the other side, some
thing that forces itself upon us, or, as Kant says, some
thing that is given. This " given " element might be
mere confusion, but it is not ; it displays order, cause
and effect, and reveals itself as rational. This reve
lation of a rational world may, however, be explained
in two ways. That there is reason in nature, even
the majority of Darwinians admit, but they think that

96 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
it arises of itself, since in the struggle for life that
which is most adapted to its conditions, fittest, best,
necessarily survives. In this view of the world,
however, if I see it aright, much is admitted surrep
titiously. Whence comes all at once this idea of
the best, of the good, the fit, the adapted, in the
world? Do roasted pigeons fall from the sky? Is
the pigeon itself an accidental combination, an evo
lution, that might as well have been as it is, or
otherwise? It is all very fine to recognise in the
ascending series of protozoa, coelenterata, echino-
derms, worms, mollusks, fishes, amphibia, reptiles, the
stages of progress toward birds and finally to mam
mals and man. But whence comes the idea of bird
or pigeon ? Is it no more than an abstraction from
our perceptions of thousands of birds or pigeons, or
must the idea of bird, of pigeon, even of the wood
pigeon, be there already, that we may detect it
behind the multiplicity of our perceptions ?
Is the pigeon, in whose wing each feather is counted,
a mere accident, a mere survival which might have
been what it is or something different, or is it some
thing willed and thought, an organic whole? It is
the old question whether the idea preceded or fol
lowed the reality, on which the whole Middle Ages
broke their teeth, the question which separated and
still separates philosophers into two camps, — the Real
ists and the Nominalists. I think that the latest in
vestigations show us that the Greek philosophers, and
especially Plato, saw more correctly when they recog-

CONCERNING THE HORSEHERD 97
nised behind the multiplicity of individuals the unity
of the idea, or the species, and then sought the true
sequence of evolution not in this world, in a struggle
for existence, but beyond the perception of the senses,
in a development of the Logos or the idea. The
circumstances, it appears to me, in this view remain
just the same ; the sequence, and the purposiveness
in this sequence, remain untouched, only that the
Greeks saw in the rational and purposive in nature
the realisation of rational progressive thoughts, not
the bloody survivals of a monstrous gladiatorial com
bat in nature. The Darwinians appear to me to re
semble the Roman emperors, who waited till the
combat was ended, and then applauded the survival
of the fittest. The idealist philosophy, be it Plato's or
Hegel's, recognises in what actually is, the rational,
the realisation of eternal, rational ideas. This reali
sation, or the process of what we call creation, can
never be conceived by us otherwise than figuratively.
But we can make this figurative presentation clearer
and clearer. That the world was made by a wood
cutter, as was originally implied in the Hebrew
word bara, and in the German schoepfer, schaffer, in
the English shaper, or in the Vedic tvashtd, and the
Greek re/crcw, was quite comprehensible at a time
in which man's highest product was that of the car
penter and the stone mason ; and in which the name
of timber (materies) could become the universal
name for matter (vXr/, Avood). After this idea of the
founder of the universe as a carpenter or builder was

98 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
abandoned as inadequate, the world was divided into
two parties. The one adopted the theory of material
primitive elements, whether they be called atoms, or
monads, or cells, which by collision or struggle with
each other, and by mutual affinity, became that which
we now see around us. The other saw the impossi
bility of the rise of something rational out of the irra
tional, and conceived a rational being, in which was
developed the original type of everything produced,
the so-called Logos of the universe. How this Logos
became objectively and materially real, is as far be
yond human comprehension as is the origin of the
cosmos out of countless atoms, or even out of living
cells. So far, then, one hypothesis would be as com
plete and as incomplete as the other. But the Logos
hypothesis has the far-reaching advantage, that in
stead of a long succession of wonders, — call them
if you like the wonder of the monads, or the worm, or
the mollusk, or the fish, or the amphibian, or the rep
tile, or the bird, or, lastly, man, — it has but one won
der before it, the Logos, the idea of thought, or of the
eternal thinker, who thought everything that exists
in natural sequence, and in this sense made all. In
this view we need not even abandon the survival of
the fittest, only it proceeds in the Logos, in the mind,
not in the outward phenomenal world. It would
then also become conceivable that the embryological
development of animated nature runs parallel with
the biological or historical, or as it were recapitulates
it, only the continuity of the idea is far closer and more

CONCERNING THE HORSEHERD 99
intimate than that of the reality. Thus, for instance,
in the development of the human embryo, the transi
tion from the invertebrate to the vertebrate may be
represented in the reality by the isolated amphioxus,
which remains stationary where vertebrate man be
gins, and can make no step forward, while the human
embryo advances farther and farther till it reaches its
highest limit.
In order now to infer from these and similar facts
that man at one time really existed in this scarcely
vertebrate condition of the amphioxus, — a conclu
sion which, strictly understood, yields no meaning, —
we can make the case much more easily conceivable
if we represent the thinking, or invention of the
world, as an ascending scale, in which even the least
chromatic tone must have a place without a break,
while the principal tones do not become clear and
full until the requisite number of vibrations is at
tained. These gradations of tone are the really
interesting thing in nature. As the full, clear tones
imply certain numerical relations among the vibra
tions, so the successive stages or the true species in
nature imply a will or thought in which the true
Origin of Species has its foundation. That natural
selection, as it is called, could suffice to explain the
origin of species, was doubted even by Huxley,1 who
yet described himself as Darwin's bull-dog.
If we have followed the supporters of my Horse
herd so far, I should like here to enter a caveat, that
1 Academy, January 2, 1897, p. 12.

100 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
is indeed of no great significance, but may turn one
or another from a by-way, which the Horseherd
himself has not avoided. He speaks of the place of
man in nature ; he thinks (like so many others) that
man is not only an animal belonging to the mam
malia, which no one has ever denied, but that he is
of the same nature as the animal world. He need
not therefore have accepted the whole simian theory,
at least he does not say so ; but that each man, and
the entire human race, has descended from an un
known pair of animals, he appears to receive as indu
bitable. This would not, so far as I can see, make
the slightest difference in the so-called dignity of
mankind. If man had a prehensile tail, it would not
detract from his worth. I myself have little doubt
that there were men with tails in prehistoric or even
in historic times. I go still farther and declare that if
ever there should be an ape who can form ideas
and words, he would ipso facto be a man. I have
therefore no prejudices such as the advocates of the
simian theory like to attribute to us. What I and
those who agree with me demand of our opponents,
is merely somewhat keener thought, and a certain
consideration for the results of our knowledge, such
as we on our side have bestowed on their researches.
They have taught us that the body in which we live
was at first a simple cell. The significance of this
" at first " is left somewhat vague. This cell was
really what the word means, the cella (room) of a
dumb inhabitant, the Self. The essential thing is

CONCERNING THE HORSEHERD 101
and remains what was in the cell. Through gem
mation, differentiation, segmentation, evolution, or
whatever other technical expressions we may use for
division, multiplication, budding, increase, etc., each
cell became a hundred, a thousand, a million. Within
this cell is a bright spot into which not even the
microscope can penetrate, although whole worlds
may be contained therein. If it is now remembered
that no one has ever succeeded in distinguishing the
human cell from the cell of a horse, an elephant, or
an ape, we shall see how much unnecessary indigna
tion has been expended in recent years over the
simian origin of the human race, and how much intel
ligent thought has been wasted about the animal
origin of man, that is of the individual. My body,
your body, his body, is derived (ontogenetically)
from the cell, is in fact the cell which has re
mained persistently the same from beginning to
end, without ever, in spite of all changes, losing
its identity. This cell in its transformations has
shown remarkable analogies with the transformations
of other animal cells. While, however, the other ani
mal cells in their transformations remain stationary
here and there, either at the boundary line of worms,
fishes, amphibia, reptiles, or mammals, the one cell
which was destined to become man moves on to the
stage of the tailed catarrhine apes, then of the tail
less apes, and without staying here it irresistibly
strides towards its original goal, and only stops
where it is destined to stop. Speaking, however, not

102 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
phylogenetically, but ontogenetically, at what point
does our own cell come in contact with the cell that
was intended to become an ape, and that became and
remained an ape? If we accept the cell theory in
its latest form, what meaning can there be in the
statement of the late Henry Drummond, that " In a
very distant period the progenitors of birds and the
progenitors of men were one and the same " ? 2 Would
not a very small quantity of strictly logical thought
have cut off a priori the bold hypothesis that directly
or indirectly we descend from a menagerie ? Every
man, and consequently all mankind, has accomplished
his uninterrupted embryological development on his
own account; no man and no human cell springs
from the womb of an ape or any other animal, but
only from the womb of a human mother, fertilised
by a human father. Or do men owe their being to
a miscarriage ?
As many streams may flow alongside of each
other and through the same strata, and one ends
in a lake while the others flow on and grow larger
and larger, till finally one river attains its highest
goal, the sea, so the cells develop for a time along
side of each other, then some remain stationary at
their points of destination, while others move on
farther ; but the cell that has moved forward is as
little derived from the stationary cell as the Indus
from the Sarasvati. It is at the points of destination
that the true species digress, and when these points
1 Ascent of Jlfan, p. 187.

CONCERNING THE HORSEHERD 103
are reached, the specific development ceases, and
there remains only the possibility of the variety,
the origin of which is conditioned by the multiplicity
of individuals ; but which must never be confounded
with a true species. Every species represents an act
of the will, a thought, and this thought cannot be
shaken from its course, however close temptation
may often come.
With this I believe I have cleared up and refuted
one of the objections that my correspondents made,
at any rate to the best of my ability. Whoever is
convinced that each individual, be it fish or bird,
springs from its own cell, knows ipso facto that a
human cell, however undistinguishable it may be to
the human eye from the cell of a catarrhine ape,
could never have been the cell of an ape. And
what is true ontogenetically, is of course true phylo
genetically. For myself this inquiry into the simian
origin of man never had any great interest ; I even
doubt whether the Horseherd would have laid great
stress upon it. His champions, however, plainly con
sider it one of the principal and fundamental questions
on which our whole view of the world must be
erected. In my opinion so little depends on our
covering of flesh, that as I have often said, I should
instantly acknowledge an ape that could speak, that
is, think in concepts, as a man and brother, in spite
of his hide, in spite of his tail, in spite of his stunted
brain. We are not that which is buried or burned.
We are not even the cell, but the inhabitant of the

104 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
cell. But this leads me to new questions and objec
tions, which have been made by the representatives
and successors of the Horseherd, and to which I
hope to reply on some other occasion, assuming that
my own somewhat dilapidated cell holds out so
long against wind and rain.
F. Max Muller.
Frascati, April, 1897.

IV
LANGUAGE AND MIND
The number of Horseherds appears to grow each
month. He would rejoice to see the letters of men
and women who are all on his side, and give me
clearly to understand that I should by no means
imagine that I have refuted my unknown friend.
The letter of Ignotus Agnosticus in the June num
ber of the Deutsche Rundschau is a good example
of these communications. I have read it with
much interest, and have partly dealt with it in my
article in the same number; but I hope at some
future time to answer his objections, and those of
several other correspondents, more fully. I should
have been glad to publish some of these letters.
But first, they are too long, and they are far inferior
in power to the letter of the Horseherd. Moreover,
they are usually so full of friendly recognition, even
when disagreeing with me, that it would ill become
me to give them publicity. That there was no lack
of coarse letters as well, may be taken for granted ;
these however were all anonymous, as if the writers
were ashamed of their heroic style. I have never
been able to understand what attraction there can
105

106 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
be in coarseness. The coarse work is generally left
for the apprentice. Everything coarse, be it a block,
a wedge, or a blade, passes as unfinished, as raw,
jagged, and just the reverse of cutting. No one is
proud of a coarse shirt, but many, even quite dis
tinguished people, proudly strut about the streets
in a coarse smock of abusive language, quite un
concernedly, without any suspicion of their unsuit
able attire.
Well, I shall endeavour to be as fair as I can to
my unknown opponents and friends, the coarse as
well as the courteous. I cannot be coarse myself,
much as it seems to be desired in some quarters that
I should. Each one must determine for himself what
is specially meant for him.
I cannot of course enter into all the objections
that have been made. Many have very little or
nothing to do with what lay nearest the Horse-
herd's heart. The antinomies, for example, on the
infinity of space and time, have long since belonged
to the history of metaphysics, and have been so
thoroughly worked out by Kant and his school that
there is hardly anything new to be said about them. In
the question about the age of our world, we need only
distinguish between world as universe and world as
our world, that is, as the earth or the terrestrial world.
A beginning of the world as universe is of course
incomprehensible to us ; but we may speak of the
beginning of the earth, especially of the earth as
inhabited by man, because here, as Lord Kelvin

LANGUAGE AND MIND 107
has shown, astronomical physics and geology have
enabled us to fix certain chronological limits, and
to say how old our earth may be, and no older or
younger. When I said of the world, that though
it were millions of years old, there still was a time
before it was one year or 1897 years old, I referred
to the world in the sense of our world, that is, the
earth. Of the world as universe this would scarcely
be said; on the contrary, we should here apply the
axiom that every boundary implies something be
yond, i.e. an unbounded, until we arrive at the region
where, as people say, the world is nailed up with
boards. Many years ago I tried to prove that our
senses can never perceive a real boundary, be it on
the largest or the smallest scale ; they present to us
everywhere the infinite as their background, and every
thing that has to do with religion has sprung out of
this infinite background as its ultimate and deepest
foundation. Instead of saying that by our senses
we perceive only the finite or limited, I have sought
to show ( On the Perception of the Infinite) that we
everywhere perceive the unlimited, and that it is
we, and not the objects about us, that draw the
boundary lines in our perceptions. When I also
called this unknown omnipresence of the infinite
the source of all religion, this was the highest, the
most abstract, and the most general expression that
could be found for the wide domain of the tran
scendent; it had of course nothing to do with the
historical beginnings of religion. When the Aryans

108 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
felt, thought, and named their god, their Dyaus, in
the blue sky, they meant the blue sky within the
limits of the horizon. We know, however, that
while they called the sky Dyaus, they had in mind
an infinite subject, a Deva, a God. But, as stated,
these things were remote from the Horseherd, and
he would scarcely have had anything to object.
His chief objection was of a quite different nature.
He wished to show that the human mind was a mere
phantom of man's making, that there are only bodies
in the world, and that the mind has sprung from the
body, and therefore constituted, not the prius, but
the posterius of those bodies. This view is evidently
widely disseminated and has found very abundant
support, at least in the letters addressed to me. " The
mind," so wrote the Horseherd, " is not a prius, it is
a development, a self-evolving phenomenon." Every
thing is now development, and there is no better
salve for all ills than development. If our knowledge
of development is taken in the sense of scientific his
torical inquiry, then we all agree, for how can there
be anything that has not developed? In order to
know what a thing is, we must learn how it became
what it is. A much-admired philosopher, recently
deceased, Henry Drummond, who was quite intoxi
cated with evolution, nevertheless admits quite
plainly in his last work, The Ascent of Man, that
" Order of events is history, and evolution is his
tory" (p. 132). With this I am of course quite satis
fied, for it is what I have been preaching in season

LANGUAGE AND MIND 109
and out of season for at least thirty years. But
this order, or this sequence of facts, must be proved
with scientific accuracy, and not merely postulated.
If then my Horseherd had been content to say, " The
human mind is also a development," certainly no
student of history, least of all a philologist, would
have contradicted him. But he says : " Max, all
German savants, or, if you please, the majority of
them, still labour under the delusion that mind is a
prius. But nonsense, Max, mind is a development,
a self-evolving phenomenon. One would consider it
impossible that a thinking man, who has ever ob
served a child, could be of any other opinion; why
seek ghosts behind matter? Mind is a function of
living organisms, which belongs also to a goose and
a chicken." In the Horseherd such language was excusable,
but for philosophers to talk in the same style is
strange, to say the least. How can such an asser
tion be made without any proof whatever, without
even a few words to explain what is meant by the term
"mind"? The German like the English language
swarms with words that may be used interchangeably,
though each of them has its own shade of meaning.
If we translate Geist (Spirit) as mind, then we must
consider that " spirit," in such expressions as " He
has yielded up his spirit," means the same as the
principle of life or physical life. The same is true
of " spirit " in such a phrase as " his spirit has
departed." But easy as it is to distinguish between

110 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
spirit in the sense of the breath of life, and spirit
in the sense of mind, the exact definition of such
words as intellect, reason, understanding, thought,
consciousness, or self-consciousness becomes very
difficult, to say nothing of soul and feeling in
their various activities. These words are used in
both English and German so confusedly that we
often hesitate merely to touch them. Now if we
say that the mind is a development, and is not a
prius, what idea ought it to suggest? Does this
mean the principle of life, or the understanding, or
the reason, or consciousness ? We suffer here from a
real and very dangerous embarras de richesse. The
words are often intended to signify the same things,
only viewed under different aspects. But as there
were various words, it was believed that they must
also signify various things. Different philosophers
have further advanced different definitions of these
words, until it was finally supposed that each of these
names must be borne by a separate subject, while
some of them originally only signified activities of
one and the same substance. Understanding, rea
son, and thought originally expressed properties or
activities, the activities of understanding, of perceiv
ing, of thinking, and their elevation to nouns was
simply psychological mythology, which has pre
vailed, and still prevails just as extensively as the
physical mythology of the ancient Aryan peoples.
It would be most useful if we could lay aside all
these mouldy and decayed expressions, and introduce

LANGUAGE AND MIND 111
a word that simply means what is not understood by
body, the subject, in opposition to the objective world.
It would by no means follow that what is not body
must therefore exist independent of the body. It
would first of all only declare that beside the ob
jective body perceived by the senses, there is also
something subjective, which the five senses cannot
perceive. The best name for this appears to me still
to be the Vedantic term Atman, which I translate
into " the Self " (neuter), because our language will
scarcely allow the phrase "the Self" (masculine).
" Soul " has a too tender quality to be the equivalent
of Atman.
This Self is something that exists for itself and not
for others. While everything that is purely corporeal
only exists for us men, inasmuch as it is perceived,
the Self exists by reason of the fact that it perceives.
While the Esse of all objects is a percipi, a some
thing perceived, which has come into knowledge, the
Esse of the self is a percipere, a perceiving, a know
ing, that is, the Self can only be thought of as self-
knowing. The Self exists even when it does not yet
clearly know itself, but it is not the real Self until it
knows itself ; and it requires long and earnest thought
for the Self to know or recognise itself as different
from the ego or the body. But if the Self has once
come to itself, the darkness or the phenomenal ap
pearance which the Vedanta philosophers called
Avidyd (not knowing, ignorance), or also Mdyd (ap
pearance, or illusion), vanishes.

112 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
The origin of this ignorance, this illusion, or the
world of appearance, is a question which no human
being will ever solve. There are questions which
must be set aside as simply ultra vires by every rea
sonable philosophy. We know that we cannot hear
certain tones, cannot see certain colours ; why not
then understand that we cannot comprehend certain
things? The Vedanta philosophers consider the
Avidyd (ignorance) as inexplicable, and this was no
doubt originally implied in the name which they
gave it. Their aim was, to prove the temporal exist
ence of such an Avidyd, not to discover its origin ;
and then in the Vidyd, the Vedanta philosophy, to
set forth the means by which the Avidya, could be
destroyed. How or when the Self came into this
ignorance, Avidyd, or Mdyd (illusion, or the phe
nomenal world), the Vedanta philosophers no more
sought to explain than we seek to explain how the
Self conies into the body, the bodily senses, and the
phenomenal world which they perceive. We begin
our philosophy with what is given us, that is, with a
Self, that in its embodiment knows everything that
befalls the body ; that for a time is blended with the
body, till it attains a true self-knowledge, and then,
even in life, or later in death, by liberation from its
phenomenal existence, or from the body, again comes
to itself.
How this body, with its senses that convey and
present to us the phenomenal world, originated or
developed, is a question that belongs to biology. So

LANGUAGE and mind 113
far as is possible to the human understanding, this
question has been solved by the cell theory. The
other question is the development of what we call
mind, that is, the subjective knowledge of the phe
nomenal world. To this the body, as it exists and
lives, and the organs of sense, as they exist, are essen
tial. We know that all sense-perceptions depend
upon bodily vibrations, i.e. the nerves ; and if we
wish to make plain the transition of impressions to
conscious ideas, we can best do so through the
assumption of the Self as a witness or accessory to
the nerve-vibrations. This, however, is only an
image, not an explanation, for an explanation belongs
to the Utopia of philosophy. How it happens that
atoms think, atomists do not know, and no one
should imagine that so-called Darwinism has helped
or can help us even one step farther. Whatever
some Darwinians may say, nothing can be simpler
than the frank admission of ignorance on this point
on the part of Darwin. The frank and modest
expressions of this great but sober thinker are gen
erally passed over in silence, or are even controverted
as signs of a temporary weakness. To me, on the
contrary, they are very valuable, and very char
acteristic of Darwin.
In one place 1 he says, " I have nothing to do with
the origin of the primary mental power any more than
I have with that of life itself." In another place2
1 Origin of Species, 5th ed., 1869, p. 255.
2 Descent of Man, 1871, Vol. I, p. 36.
i

114 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
he speaks still more plainly and says, " In what man
ner the mental powers were first developed in the
lowest organisms is as hopeless an inquiry as how
life first originated." Let no one suppose, therefore,
that all gates and doors can be opened with the word
"evolution" or the name Darwin. It is easy to say
with Drummond, " Evolution is revolutionising the
world of nature and of thought, and within living
memory has opened up avenues into the past and
vistas into the future such as science has never wit
nessed before." 1 Those are bold words, but what do
they mean or prove ? DuBois-Reymond has said long
before, " How consciousness can arise from the co
operation of atoms is beyond our comprehension."
In the Contemporary Review, November, 1871,2 Hux
ley speaks just as decidedly as Darwin in the name
of biology, "I really know nothing whatever, and
never hope to know anything, of the steps by which
the passage from molecular movement to states of
consciousness is effected." Molecules and atoms are
objects of knowledge. If we ascribe knowledge to
them, they immediately become the monads of Leibnitz ;
you may evolve out of them what you have first
involved into them. Knowledge belongs to the Self
alone, call it what we will. The nerve-fibres might
vibrate as often as they pleased, millions and millions
of times in a second ; they would never produce the
sensation of red if there were no Self as the receiver
and illuminator, the translator of these vibrations of
1 Ascent of Man, 1894, p. 9. 2 Vol. XVIII, p. 464.

LANGUAGE AND MIND 115
ether ; this Self, that alone receives, alone illumines,
alone knows, and of which we can say nothing more
than what the Indian philosophers call sa&-&id-&nanda,
that it exists, that it perceives, and as they add, that
it is blessed, i.e. that it is complete in itself, serene
and eternal.
If we take a firm stand on this living and perceiv
ing Self (for kid is not so much thinking as perceiv
ing, or knowing), there can then be no question that
it is present not only in men, but in animals as well ;
only let us beware of the inference that what we
mean by human mind, that is, understanding and
reasoning thought, is a necessary function of all living
organisms, and is possessed also by a goose or a
chicken. It is just the same with the perceiving Self
as it is with the cell. To the eye they are all alike.
To express it figuratively, one cell has a ticket to
Cologne, another to Paris, a third to London. Each
reaches its destination, and then remains stationary,
and no power on earth can make it advance beyond
the place to which it is ticketed, that is, its original
destination, its fundamental eternal idea. It is just
the same with the perceiving Self. It is true that
the Self sees, hears, and thinks. As there are ani
mals that cannot see, that cannot hear, so there are
animals — and this class includes the whole of them
— that cannot speak. It is true that the speaking
animals, that is men, have passed the former stations
on a fast train ; but they did not leave the train, nor
have they anything in common with those who re-

116 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
mained behind at previous stations, least of all can
we consider them as the offspring of those that
remained behind. This is only a simile, and should
not provoke ridicule. Of course it will be said that
those who can journey to Cologne may go on to
Paris, and once in Paris may easily cross the Channel.
We must not ride a comparison to death, but always
adhere to the facts. Why does not grass grow as
high as a poplar, why is care taken, as Goethe says,
that no tree grows up to the sky? A strawberry
might grow as large as a cucumber or a pumpkin, but
it does not. Who draws the line? It is true, too,
that along every line slight deviations take place
right and left. Nearly each year we hear of an
abnormally large strawberry, and no doubt abnor
mally small ones could be found as well. But in
spite of all, the normal remains. And whence comes
it, if not from the same hand or the same source
which we compared with the ticket agent at the
railway station, in whom all who are familiar with
the history of philosophy will again readily recognise
the Greek Logos ?
These comparisons should at least be so far useful
as to disclose the confusion of thought, when, for in
stance, Mr. Romanes holds that it is not only compre
hensible, but the conclusion is unavoidable, that the
human mind has sprung from the minds of the higher
quadrumana on the line of natural genesis. The
human mind may mean every possible thing; the
question therefore arises if he refers only to con-

LANGUAGE AND MIND 117
sciousness, or to understanding and reason. In the
second place the human mind is not something sub
sisting by itself, but can only be the mind of an in
dividual man. We cannot be too careful in these
discussions — otherwise we only end by substituting
bare abstractions for concrete things. We do not
know the human mind as anything concrete at all,
only as an abstraction, and in that case only as the
mind of one man, or of many men. How can it then
be thought that my mind or the mind of Darwin
sprang from the minds of the higher quadrumana.
We may say such things, but what meaning can we
attach to them ? The same misconception exists here,
if I am not mistaken, as in the statement, that the
human body springs from the bodies of the higher
quadrupeds — a misconception to which we have al
ready referred. That has absolutely no sense if we
only hold firmly, that every organised body was origi
nally a cell, or originates in a cell, and that each cell,
even in its most complicated, manifold, and perfect
form, always is, and remains, an individual. It is
useless therefore to talk of a descent of the human
mind from the minds of the higher quadrupeds, for
no intelligible meaning can be discovered in it ; we
should have to fall back on a miscarriage, and to set
up this miscarriage as the mother of all men, and with
out a legitimate father. Such are the wanderings of
a wrong method of thought, even if it struts about
in kingly robes.
Above all things we must settle what we are really

118 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
to understand by the mind of the higher quadrupeds
as distinguished from the human mind. What is there
lacking in these animal minds to make them human?
And what do they possess, or what are they, that they
should claim equal birth with man? How much
obscurity there is in these matters among the best
animal psychologists is seen when, for instance, we
compare the assertions of Romanes with those of Lloyd
Morgan. While the former sets up a natural genesis of
the human mind from animal mind as being indispu
table and as not being thinkable in any other way, the
latter, his greatest admirer, says, " Believing, as I do,
that conception is beyond the power of my favourite
and clever dog, I am forced to -believe that his mind
differs generically from my own. " 1 Undoubtedly by
" generically " is meant, according to his genus or
his genesis. But in spite of this, the same savant says
in another place, that he cannot allow that there is a
difference in kind, that is in genere, between the hu
man mind and the mind of a dog. If men would
only define their words, such contradictions would in
time become impossible.
What men and animals have in common is the Self,
and this so-called Self consists first of all in percep
tion. This perception belongs, as has been said, to
those things which are given us, and not to those
which can be explained. It is a property of the
eternal Self, as of light, to shine, to illumine itself,
that is, to know. Its knowing is its being, and its
1 Lloyd Morgan, Animal Life and Intelligence, p. 350.

LANGUAGE AND MIND 119
being is its knowing, or its self-consciousness. If we
take the Self as we find it, not merely in itself, but
embodied, we must attribute to it, besides its own
self-consciousness, a consciousness of the conditions of
the body ; but of course we must not imagine that we
can make this embodiment in any way conceivable to
us. It is so — that is all that we can say, just as in an
earlier consideration of the embodiment and multipli
cation of the eternal Logos we had to accept this as a
datum, without being able to come any nearer to the
fact by conceptions, or even by mere analogies. This
is where the task of the psychologist begins. Grant
the self-consciousness of the individual, although still
very obscure ; grant the sentient perception ; every
thing else that we call mind is the result of a develop
ment, which we must follow historically in order to
understand that it could not come about in any other
way. But where are the facts, where the monuments,
where the trustworthy documents, from which we can
draw our knowledge of this wonderful development ?
Four sources have been propounded for the study
of psychogenesis. It has been said that to investigate
the development of the human mind, the following
objects must be scientifically observed : (1) The mind
of a child ; (2) the mind of the lower animals ; (3)
the survivals of the oldest culture, as we find it in
ethnological collections ; (4) the mind of still living
savages. I formerly entertained similar hopes, but in
my own melancholy experience all these studies end
in delusion, in so far as they are applied to explain the

120 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
genesis of the human mind. They do not reach far
enough, they give us everywhere only the products
of growth, the result of art, not the natural growth,
or the real evolution. The observations on the
development of a child's mind are very attractive,
especially when they are made by thoughtful mothers.
But this nursery psychology is wanting in all scien
tific exactness. The object of observation, the child
that cannot yet speak, can never be entirely iso
lated. Its environment is of incalculable influence,
and the petted child develops very differently from the
neglected foundling. The early smile of the one is often
as much a reflex action as the crying and blustering
of the other, from hunger or inherited disease. Much
as I admire the painstaking effort with which the first
evidences of perception or of mental activity in a child
have been recorded from day to day, from week to
week, these observations prove untrustworthy when we
endeavour to control them independently. It has been
said that the mental activities of a child develop in
the following order : —
After three weeks fear is manifested ;
After seven weeks social affections ;
After twelve weeks jealousy and anger ;
After five months sympathy ;
After eight months, pride, sentiment, love of orna
ment; After fifteen months, shame, remorse, a sense of the
ludicrous.1 1 H. Drummond, Ascent of Man, 1894, p. 169.

LANGUAGE AND MIND 121
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 chil
dren'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 peni
tence 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 in
stilled 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, sym
pathy ; then in carnivorous animals follow cruelty,
hate, and grief ; and lastly, in the anthropoid apes,

122 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
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 feel
ing 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 an
nelids from those of surprise in higher animals?
Nevertheless fear occupies the first place, surprise
the third. And what mark distinguished combative
ness 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 disposi
tion, 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 zoological garden.
As for ethnological museums, they certainly give
us wonderful glimpses into the skilfulness of primi
tive 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 de
scended from an ape, may no doubt say that flint
implements for kindling fire belonged to a higher
period, post hominem natum, although it has been

LANGUAGE AND MIND 123
thought that even apes could have imitated such
weapons, though they could not have invented them.
Romanes, in his book on Mental Evolution in Animals,
has collected a large number of illustrations of animal
skilfulness ; the majority of them, however, are ex
plained by mere mimicry ; of a development of origi
nal ideas peculiar to animals in their wild state, apart
from the contact and influence of human society, there
is no trace. Even the most intelligent animal, the
elephant, acquires reason only in its intercourse with
men, and similarly the more or less trained apes, dogs,
parrots, etc. All this is very interesting reading,
and an English weekly, The Spectator, has from week
to week given us similar anecdotes about wonderfully
gifted animals from all parts of the earth, but these
matters lie outside the narrow sphere of science.
What then remains to enable us to study the earli
est phase of development of the human mind accessi
ble 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 develop
ment 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, al-

124 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
though 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 in
scriptions, 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 ipso
facto ceased; and even if any literary remains had
survived, the language itself would have to be reck
oned, like Latin and Greek, with dead languages.
Thousands of them may have disappeared from the
earth; in its development a language may have
changed as much as Sanskrit to Bengali ; but it suffers
no break, it remains always the same, and in a certain
sense we still speak in German the same tongue as
was spoken by the Aryans before there was a San
skrit, a Greek, or a Latin language. Consider what
this signifies. Chronologically, we cannot get at
this primitive Aryan speech. Let us assume that
Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin were spoken as inde
pendent national tongues at least fifteen hundred
years before our chronology — what an age had
elapsed before these three, as well as the remaining
Aryan tongues, could have diverged so much as San
skrit diverges from Greek and Greek from Latin.
The numerals are the same in these three languages,

LANGUAGE AND MIND 125
and yet katvaras sounds quite differently from reao-a-
pe? and quatuor and our four. The words for eight,
octo in Latin, oktco in Greek, and ashiau in Sanskrit,
are nearly identical ; and it is even possible that the
lesser deviations in the pronunciation of these words
demanded no great interval of time. But now let us
consider what lies behind these ten numerals. There
is the elaboration of a decimal system from 1 to 10,
no, to 100 (eicaTov), Sanskrit satdm, centum. There
is the formation and fixing of names for these num
bers, which must have been originally more or less
arbitrary, because numbers only subordinate them
selves with difficulty to one of those general ideas
which are expressed in the Aryan roots. Besides
these words are, even in their oldest attainable forms,
already so weather-beaten, that in most cases it is im
possible even to guess their etymology and original
meaning. We see that the names for two and eight
are dual, while those for three and four clearly have
plural endings. But why eight in the primitive
Aryan was a dual, and what were the two tetrads,
which, combined in ash£-au, oct-o, okt-o), expressed the
number eight, will probably never be discovered. It
is possible that ashi-i was a name for the four phases
of the moon, or for the four fingers of the hand with
out the thumb. Analogies occur in other families of
language, but certainty is beyond our reach. If we
now consider what mental effort is necessary to work
out a decimal system, and to secure general recogni
tion and value for the name given to each number,

126 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
we shall readily realise what remote periods in the
development of the human mind open up before us
here, and of how little use it would be to try to estab
lish chronological limits. Old as the Vedas, old as
the Homeric songs may be, what is their age com
pared with the periods that were required not only
to work out the numerals but the entire treasury of
Aryan words, and the wonderful network of grammar
that surrounds this treasure, which also was complete
before the separation of the Aryan languages began.
The immeasurable cannot be measured, but this
much stands immovable in the mind of every lin
guist, that there is nothing older in the entire Aryan
world than the complete primitive Aryan language
and grammar, in which nearly all the categories of
thought, and consequently the whole scaffold of our
thinking, have found their expression.
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 hu
man 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 prin
ciples, various, not contemporaneous, but successive
monstrosities, slowly ascending to humanity, and
this would only be pure invention. Nothing ab
solutely compels us to ascribe a shorter earthly life

LANGUAGE AND MIND 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 re
gard 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 de
voured 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 him
self 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

128 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
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 in
scriptions, can offer us a picture of the first beginning
of the mental life of the race. Long before the pyra
mids, long before the oldest monuments in Babylon,
Nineveh, and China, there was language, even writ
ing; 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 lan
guage, 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 Pamni have systemati
cally traced back the entire wealth of their abundant
language, we must not suppose that these roots really
constituted the original and complete material with
which the primitive Aryan tongue began its historical
career. This is not true even of the Indian branch
of this primitive tongue, for in its development much
may have been lost, and much so changed that we
dare not think of restoring a perfect picture from
these fragments of the earliest mental development
of the Indians. These things are so simple that phi-

LANGUAGE AND MIND 129
lologists accept them as axioms ; but it is curious
to observe, that in spite of the widespread interest
that has been created in all civilised nations by the
results of the science of language, philosophers who
write about language and its relation to thought still
trouble themselves over notions long since antiquated.
I had, for instance, classified the principal ideas ex
pressed in Sanskrit roots, and had reduced them to
the small number of 121.1 With these 121 ideas, Ind
ian philology pledges itself to explain all the simple
and derivative meanings of words that fill the thick
volumes of a Sanskrit lexicon. And what did eth
nologists say to this ? Instead of gratefully accepting
this fact, they asserted that many of these 121 radi
cal ideas, as for instance, weaving or cooking, could
not possibly be primitive. Impossible is always a
very convenient word. But who ever claimed that
these 121 fundamental ideas all belonged to the prim
itive Aryan language. They are, in fact, the ideas
that are indicated in the thousands of words in clas
sical Sanskrit, but they have never made any claim
to have constituted the mental capital of the primi
tive Aryans, whether acquired from heaven or from
the domicile of apes. And if now a few of these
ideas, such as to weave, to cook, to clean, appear
modern, what of that compared with the simple fact
that they are actually there ?
These ethnologists, too, always make the old mis
take of confounding the learning of a language, as
1 See Science of Thought, p. 405.

130 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
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.1 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 antennae 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." 2 That is entirely erro
neous. The entire chapter on sign language, interest
ing as it is, must be treated quite differently by the
1 See the author's preface to his English translation (second edi
tion) of Kant's Critic of Pure Reason, p. xxviii, to which we
now add the prophetic words of Shelley, in his Prometheus Tin-
bound (II, 4) : —
" He gave man speech, and speech created thought,
Which is the measure of the Universe."
2 Ascent of Man, 1894, p. 200.

LANGUAGE AND MIND 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 speak
ing 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 can
not 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 sig
nifies 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

132 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
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 as-ti, Greek
ea-Ti, Latin est ? Was the abstract " to be " onomatopo-
etically imitated ? Often, of course, we cannot answer
such questions at all. In this case, however, it is pos
sible. The root as in asti, that we now translate as
is, means as we see from as-u, breath, originally to
breathe. Whoever likes may see in as, to breathe,
an imitation of hissing breath. We neither gain
or lose anything by this; for the critical step
always remains to be taken from a single imitation of
a single act, to the comprehension of many such acts,
at various places, and at various times, as one and
the same, which is called abstraction or the forming
of a concept.
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 be
come, 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,

LANGUAGE AND MIND 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 com
parison 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-im
pressions 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 vener
able 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

134 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
there and show us the right path. And it is not only
simple facts, but the consequences of preexisting con
ditions 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 with
out saying a word, that we even now use signs in our
speech, is best learned in southern races, and in such
pantomimes as Eenfant prodigue. We have long
known that imitations of sound exist in greater or
lesser numbers in every language, and how far they
can reach has probably never been shown in such
detail as by myself.1 But that our Aryan tongues, and
also the Semitic, and all others that have been studied
scientifically, originated from roots, is now generally
known and recognised. That these roots may in
remote times have contained an element of imitation,
we may readily concede, for it is really self-evident ;
only we should not from the beginning bar our way
by conceiving them as mere imitations of sound. If
this were so, the problem of language would long
since have been solved, and the first formation of
ideas would require no further reflection. It must
be conceded on the other side that the origin of roots
still contains much that is obscure, and that even
Noire"s clamor concomitans does not explain every
case. Only it is firmly established that a scientific
analysis of language leaves a certain number of roots
1 Science of Language, 1891, p. 499.

LANGUAGE AND MIND 135
which are not mere sound-imitations, such as " bow
wow," or "moo moo." There are people who have
taken much pains to discover whether the roots ever
had an independent existence, or if they have merely
been scientifically abstracted, or shelled out of the
words in which they occur. These are vain ques
tions, for we can never of course come at the matter
historically, and the attempt to prove the necessity of
the one or the other view is a useless undertaking.
It appears to be the most reasonable plan to assume
for the Aryan languages a period that approaches the
Chinese, in which roots had the same sound and the
same form as the corresponding noun, adjective, and
verb. Even in Sanskrit roots appear at times still
unchanged, although it is quite right that as soon as
they take on grammatical functions, they should no
longer be called roots. Much may be said in favour
of both views, without arriving one step nearer our
goal. If we now only remember that the whole San
skrit language has been reduced to 121 primitive
ideas, and that the roots denoting these (which
are of course much more numerous) are not imita
tions of sound in the strict sense of the word, but
sounds about whose origin we may say much but can
prove little, we have at least a 7roi> otco for our
researches. I myself, like my deceased friend Noire-,
have looked upon roots as clamor concomitans, that is,
not as sound-imitations, but as actual sounds, uttered
by men in common occupations, and to be heard even
now. Why, however, the Aryans used and retained

136 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
ad for eat, tan for stretch, mar for rub, as for breathe,
sta for stand, ga for go, no human thought can find
out ; we must be content with the fact that it was so,
and that a certain number of such roots — of course
much greater than the 121 ideas expressed by them
— constitute the kernels from which has sprouted
the entire flora of the Indian mind.
If we now return to our is, — Sanskrit as-ti,
Greek eon, Latin est, — we see that it originally meant
"to breathe out." This blowing or breathing was
then used for "life," as in as-u, breath of life, and
from life it lost its content until it could be applied
to everything existing, and meant nothing more than
the abstract " to be." There are languages that pos
sess no such pale word as " be " and could not form
such a sentence as " It is warm." The auxiliary verb
" to have " is also lacking in many languages, espe
cially the ancient, such as Sanskrit, Greek, and even
classical Latin. If the words failed, the ideas failed
as well, and such languages had to try and fulfil their
requirements in other ways. If there was no such
word as "be," "stand" was employed; where there
was no word for " have," then " hold," tenere, would
render the same, or at least similar service. But
this implied not only different speech, but different
thought. 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

LANGUAGE AND MIND 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 gharmd, depuos), and this meant at first to be
bright, to glitter, to shine, then to burn, to heat,
to be warm ; that is to say, the observing mind of
man was able to abstract brightness from the sense-
impressions produced by sun, fire, gold, and many
other objects, and, letting everything else drop, to
reach the idea of shining, then of being warm.
These ideas, of course, do not exist on their own
account anywhere in the world ; they must be and
have been constructed by man alone, never by an
animal. Why ? Because an animal does not possess
what man possesses : the faculty of grasping the
many as one, so as to form an idea and a word.
Light or lighting, warmth or warming, exist nowhere
in the world, and are nowhere given in sentient
experience. Every object of sense exists individu
ally, and is perceived as such individually, such as
the sun, a torch, a stove ; but heat in general, like
everything general, is the product of our thought ;
its name is made by us, and is not given us.
Of all this, of course, when we learn to speak as

138 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
children, we have no suspicion. We learn the lan
guage made by others who came before us, and pro
ceed 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, be
side 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 in
expressible feelings, or even thoughts. These are
chiefly obscure feelings, and the expression of feel
ings 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 expres
sion 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,

LANGUAGE AND MIND 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 main
tained, 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 re
verse, for a dog that is neither a spaniel, poodle,
dachshund, etc., is nowhere to be found, in rerum
natura, or in domestic life. These things, that
give us so much trouble, were often quite clear
to the ancient Hindus, for their usual word for
"thing" is paddrtha; that is, meaning or purpose
of the word. But men persist that they are able
to think without speaking aloud, or in silence.
They persist that thought comes first, and then
speech; they persist that they can speak without
thinking, — and that is often quite true, — and that
they can also think without speaking, which must
first be proved. Consider only what is necessary to
form so simple a word as "white." The idea of

140 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
white must be formed at the same time, and this
can only be done by dropping everything but the
colour from the sense-perceptions of such things as
snow, snowdrop, cloud, chalk, or sugar, then marking
this colour, and, by means of a sign (in this case a
vocal one), elevating it to a comprehensible idea,
and at the same time to a word. How this vocal
token originates it is often difficult, often quite im
possible, to say. The simplest mode is, for example,
if there be a word for snow, to take this and to
generalise it, and then to call sugar, for instance,
snow, or snowy, or snow-white. But the prior ques
tion, how snow was named, only recedes for a while,
and must of course be answered for itself. Given
a word for snow, it can easily be generalised. But
how did we name snow ? I believe that snow, which
forms into balls in melting and coheres, was named
nix nivis, from a root snigh or snu, denoting every
thing which melted and yet stuck together or cohered.
But these are mere possibilities that may be true or
false ; yet their truth or falsity leave undisturbed the
fundamental truth, that each individual perception, as,
for example, this snow or this ice, first had to be
brought under a general conception, before it could
be clearly marked, or elevated to a word. In such a
case men formed, by living and working together, a
general conception and a root, for an oft-repeated
action, such as forming into balls ; and under this
general concept they then conceived an individual
impression like snow ; that is, that which is formed

LANGUAGE AND MIND 141
into a ball, so that they had the sign, and with the
sign the concept of snow, both inseparable in reality,
distinguishable as they are in their origin. Having
this, they could extend the concept in the vocal sign
for snow, and speak of snowy things, just as they
spoke of rosy cheeks. Only we must not imagine
that it will ever be possible to make the origin of
root sounds perfectly clear. This goes back to times
that are entirely withdrawn from our observation. It
goes back to times in which the first general ideas
were formed, and thereby the first steps were taken
in the development of the human mind. How is it
possible that any recollection should have remained
of such early times, or even any understanding of
these mental processes ? We may settle many things,
but in the end nothing is left but to say : It is so, and
remains so, whether we can explain it or not. The
first general concept ma)' no doubt have been, as
Noire affirmed, an often repeated action, such as
striking, going, rubbing, chewing — acts that spon
taneously present themselves to consciousness, as
manifold and yet single, that is, as continually
repeated, in which the mind consequently found the
first natural stimulus to the formation of concepts.
Why, however, rub was denoted by mar, eat by ad,
go by ga, strike by tud, we may perhaps apprehend
by feeling, but we could not account for or even
conceive it. Here we must be content with the facts,
especially as in other families of languages we find
entirely different vocal signs. No doubt there was a

142 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
reason for all of them ; but this reason, even if we
could prove it historically, would always remain in
comprehensible to us, and only as fact would it have
any significance for science.
At any rate, we can now understand in what man
ner language offers us really historical documents of
the oldest stages which we can reach in the devel
opment of the human mind. I say, " which we can
reach," for what lies beyond language does not ex
ist for us. Nothing remains of the history of homo
alalus. But every word represents a deed, an acqui
sition of the mind. If we take such a word as the
Vedic deva, there may have been many older words
for god, but let us not imagine that a fetish or totem,
whose etymology is or should be known, belongs to
them. But at all events we know from deva and
the Latin deus, that even before the Aryan separa
tion a root dyu or div had been formed, as well as
the conception " shine." If this root was first used
actively for the act of shedding light, of striking a
spark, of shining, it was a step farther to transfer
this originally active root to the image which the
sky produces in us, and to call it a " shiner," dyu
(nom. dyaus), and then with a new upward tendency
to call all bright and shining beings, deva, deus.
Man started, therefore, from a generalisation, or an
idea, and then under this idea grouped other single
presentations, such as sun, moon, and stars, from which
"shining" had been withdrawn, or abstracted, and
thus obtained as a mental acquisition a sign for the

LANGUAGE AND MIND 143
idea " shine," and further formations such as Dyaus
(shiner) and deva (shining). Now observe how
Dyaus, as " shiner," at the same time assumed the sig
nificance of an otherwise unknown agent or author of
light, and developed into the ancient Dyaus, into Zeus
and Jove ; that is, into the oldest personal God of
the still united Aryans. These are the true stages
of the development of the human mind, which are
susceptible of documentary proof in the archives of
language. 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 lan
guages is not impossible, but it is and remains unde-
monstrable, and to science that is enough, sapienti sat.
If we analyse the Semitic and other languages, we
shall find in them as many ancient documents of the
development of the human mind as in the Aryan.
And just as we can clearly and plainly trace back the
French dieu, the Latin deus, the Sanskrit deva, divine,
to the physical idea div, "shine," so we can with
thousands of other words, of which each indicates
an act of will, and each gives us an insight into the
development of our mind. Whether the Aryans
were in possession of other ideas and sounds for

144 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
" shine," etc., before the formation of div, Dyaus, and
deva, must be left uncertain; at all events we see how
naturally the first consciousness of God developed
in them, how the idea conditioned the language, and
the language the idea, and both originated and con
tinued inseparable one from the other.
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 bhar with the simple meaning
to bear. This we see plainly in bhardmi, in bibharmi,
in bibharti (I bear, he bears), also in bhdras or
bhartdr (a bearer), and bhdrds (load) and bhdrman
and bharti (bearing), etc.
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 (peprn, in Latin
fero, in Gothic bairan, in English to bear. The prin
cipal meanings which this root assumes are, to carry,
carry hither, carry away, carry in, to support, to main
tain, to bring forth, etc. We find simple derivatives
such as the German Bahre, English bier (French
Mere, borrowed), and also (beperpov and feretrum,
as well as fereulum (a litter). On the other hand
there is (poperpov (a porter's wages), and <j>aperpa
(quiver). And barrow in wheel-barrow has the
same origin. Burden is that which is borne,

LANGUAGE AND MIND 145
then a load, as, for instance, the burden of years.
A step farther takes us to <pepr6s (bearable)
and a$e/3T0? (unbearable). We also find in Greek
hva(bopo<;, which corresponds exactly to the Sanskrit
durbhara, with the meaning "heavy to bear." In
Latin, however, fertus signifies fruitful, like fertilis,
ferax. We say, " The earth bears " (tragt), and
Getreide (grain) meant originally that borne (getra-
gen) by the earth (hence in Middle High German
Getragede). So we have also far, the oldest corn
grown by the Romans, derived from fero, and along
with it farina (flour), if it stands for farrina. Far
may originally, however, have also meant food, main
tenance, and the Anglo-Saxon bere, the English bar
ley, are again related to it. Of course we have the
same root in derivatives, such as lucifer, frugifer,
in Greek /capTrocl>dpo<; or $e/3e/ea/D7ro?. In German
it becomes a mere suffix, as fruchtbar, dankbar,
scheinbar, urbar. Like (popo';, <popd means also what
is carried or brought, hence specially tribute, duty,
tax. To bear a child was used in the sense of to
bring forth, and from this we have many derivatives
such as birth, born, and Gothic berusjos (parents),
parentes and barn (the child), like the Greek <f>ep/j,a.
If Sfypos (carriage) stands for Bi(p6po';, it means
originally a carriage for two persons, just as a/jL<popev<;,
Latin amphora, was a vessel with two handles. We
should scarcely believe that the same root is con
cealed in the German Zuber (tub) and Eimer
(bucket). But Zuber was originally Zwiber, a vessel

146 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
with two handles, and Eimer was Einber, a bucket
with one bail. We may compare manubrium (handle)
and derivatives like candelebrum, lugubris, as well as
luctifer. If bhartri meant bearer and then husband,
as bhdrya meant wife, i.e. the one to be maintained,
we are probably justified in seeing in bhrdtar (brother)
the original meaning of helper, protector. Although
the wife is to be maintained and sustained, she,
too, brings something to the household, and that is
the <pepvrj (dowry). The Middle Latin expression
paraphernalia is properly dowry, though it has now
assumed an entirely different meaning. "To be
carried " easily takes the meaning of being torn away,
s'emporter, and this we find in the Greek represented
by (pepeo-dat, in the Sanskrit in the secondary form
bhur (to hasten), yielding bhuranyti, bh&rni (hasty,
violent), and other derivatives.
We have already seen how <j>6po<: and <popd signi
fied that which is contributed, then duty, tribute.
This is the Gothic gabaur, that is, gebiihr (due), and
consequently all things that are proper or becoming.
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,1 the goddess who brings, although she takes
away as well. The ancients had no doubts of this
derivation, and to (pepov (fate) and to cpepouevov
(chance) seem to substantiate it. But the old
1 Cf. Biographies of Words, by M. M., 1888.

LANGUAGE AND MIND 147
divine character of Fors, Fortuna (as related to
Harit), points to other sources, which had already
entirely vanished from the consciousness of the
ancients. Yet the expression, es tragt sich zu (it
happens), the old gaburjan, Anglo-Saxon gebyrian,
and kipuri (zufdllig, casual), must be taken into
account, and forms such as forte, forsan, fortassis
(forte an si vis), fortuitus, are very remote from their
supposed mythological meaning. If ferre were the
root, we should have further proof of the immeasur
able fertility to which we owe such words as fortune
and misfortune.
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 preposi
tions. 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 cireumferre
we have circonfSrence, also pSriphSrie, from conferre
conference and also confortable, from deferre deference,
from differre difference, from praeferre preference,
from proferre profirer, from referre reference, each
word again with numerous offshoots. We are not at
the end yet, and still less when we keep in view also
the parallel formations tuli and latum, or portare.
We then see what a root in this language has to
signify, whether considered as a concrete word or as
a mere abstraction. This is prolific of contention
and has been much disputed; the main thing is to

148 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
know the facts. From these we may infer how in all
this multiplicity the unity of the root element can be
best explained.
I do not say that all ideas can be so clearly traced
to their origin as in this root. In some the interme
diate forms have been lost, and the etymologies be
come 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 gen
eral concepts, and mark them by the same vocal signs.
What we call derivative forms, such as deva besides
div, are originally varieties in the formation of words,
that in time proved useful, and through repeated em
ployment obtained their special application. Often,
too, there are real compounds, just as the German bar
in fruchtbar, furchtbar, etc., was originally the same
word that we have in Bahre (bier), but was very dif
ferent from bar in Nachbar (neighbour), which in spite
of the similarity in sound comes from an entirely dif
ferent root, seen in bauen (build), bebauen (cultivate),
bauer (peasant), and in the English neighbour.
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,

LANGUAGE AND MIND 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 mor
tal. Everything that man has ever thought, humili
ating 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 men
tal 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 de
velops continuously in language. The human mind
is human language, and as animals possess no lan
guage, they do not ipso facto possess what philosophers
understand by mind. We need not for this reason
ascribe any special faculty to men. Speech and
thought are only a wider development of the faculty
of presentation such as an animal may have ; but in an
animal it never develops any farther, for an animal
has no general ideas; it remains at the individual,
and never attains unity in plurality. It knows, as
Plato would say, a horse, but not "horsedom." If
we wish to say that the perceiving self is present in
animals as in men, there is no objection, though in all

150 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
such questions relating to animals we are always grop
ing in the dark. But the fact remains that the step,
whether small or vast, that leads from the individual
to the general, from the concrete to the abstract, from
perceiving (that is, being acted upon) to conceiving,
thinking, speaking, that is, to acting, is for the animal
impossible. An animal might speak, but it cannot ; a
stone might grow, but it cannot ; a tree might walk,
but it cannot. Why not? Because there are natural
boundaries that are apparently easy to pass, and yet
impassable. The tree grows up a tree, the animal
an animal, but no farther, just as man never surpasses
the human, and therefore can never think except
through language, which often is very imperfect.
In one sense, therefore, the Horseherd is quite right.
The mind is a development, an eternal, ceaseless de
velopment ; 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 ap
prised 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 inca
pacity is not as much the result of intention as every
other capacity and incapacity in nature ! If we trans
late this ability by facultas, that is facilitas, we need
not for that reason assume in man a faculty, or as the
Horseherd calls it, a phantom, but the thing remains
the same. We can speak, and an animal cannot ; we
can think, and an animal cannot.

LANGUAGE AND MIND 151
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 in
genious tricks of animals, even the most incredible,
we shall gladly believe, only not that bos locutus est,
or that an actual utterance lies hidden in the bark of a
dog. A man who sees no difference between language
and communication will of course continue to say
that a dog speaks, and explain in how many dialects
he barks, when he is hungry, when he wants to go
out with his master, when he hears burglars in the
house, or when he has been whipped and whines. It
would be more natural if scientists confined themselves
to facts, without asking for reasons, and primarily to
the great fact that no animal, with the exception of
man, speaks, or ever has spoken. The next duty of
the observer is to ask : Why is this ? There is no
physical impossibility. A parrot can imitate all words.
There must therefore be a non-physical cause why
there has never been a parrot or dog language. Is
that true or false? And if we now call that non-
physical cause mind, or still better the Logos, namely,
the gatherer of the many into the one, comprehend
ing, conceiving, is our argument so erroneous if we
seek the distinction between man and animal in the
Logos, in speech and thought, or in mind ? This mind
is no ghost, as the Horseherd asserts, nor is it a mere
phantom of the brain as is imagined by so many scien
tists. It is something real, for we see its effects. It
is born, like everything that belongs to our ego, of

152 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
the self-conscious Self, which alone really and eter
nally exists and abides.
So far I hope to have answered the second objec
tion 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
sine qua non of the other, and so far no goose has yet
spoken, but only cackled.

THE REASONABLENESS OF RELIGION
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 Deutsche Rundschau.
There are so many things that have been so long
settled among scholars that they are scarcely men
tioned, 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 out
side the realm of science or the knowable. Concern
ing 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
153

154 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
current theory of revelation is their greatest stum
bling block, and they continually direct their princi
pal 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 under
standing 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 con
ceded, 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 one
self 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

THE REASONABLENESS OF RELIGION 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 litera scripta of
the New Testament. This naturally led to a very
laborious and detailed criticism of these records, which
year by year assumed a wider scope, and was finally
absorbed in so many special investigations that its
original purpose of establishing the authority of the
Scriptures of the New Testament seems to have quite
passed out of sight. These critical investigations con
cerning the manuscripts of the New Testament, Codex
Sinaiticus, Alexandrimus, and Vaticanus, down to
Number 269, Bentley's Q, are probably of less inter
est to the Horseherd ; they are known to those who
make a special study of this subject, and are of no
interest outside.
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 ar
chives 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 treas
ure, 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

156 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
Christian scholars, to become acquainted with the
origins of Christianity, betook themselves to the manu
scripts of the New Testament. And as the manu
scripts 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 varioe lectiones in the New
Testament ; but since his time their number must
have increased fourfold. The manuscripts of the
New Testament are more numerous than those of
any classic. Two thousand are known and have
been described, and more yet may lie buried in
libraries. Now while this large number of manu
scripts and various readings have given the philolo
gists of the New Testament greater difficulties than
the classical philologist encounters, still on the other
hand the New Testament has the advantage over all
classical texts, in that some of its manuscripts are
much older than those of the majority of classical
writers. We have, for instance, no complete manu
scripts of Homer earlier than the thirteenth century,
while the oldest manuscripts of the New Testament
descend from the fourth and fifth centuries. It is fre
quently said that all these things are of no impor
tance for the understanding of the New Testament,
and that theologians need not trouble themselves
about them. But this is saying too much. There
are varioe lectiones, which are certainly not without
importance for the facts and the doctrines of Chris
tianity, and in which the last word belongs not to

THE REASONABLENESS OF RELIGION 157
the theologian, but to the philologist. No one would
say that it makes no difference if Mark xvi. 9-20
is omitted or not ; no one would declare that the
authenticity or spuriousness of the section on the
adulteress (John vii. 53-viii. 11) was entirely indif
ferent. When we consider what contention there
has been over the seventh verse of the fifth chapter
of the first Epistle of John, and how the entire doc
trine of the Trinity has been based on that (" For
there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are
one "), it will hardly be maintained that the manu
scripts are of no importance for Christian dogma.
Whether in the first Epistle to Timothy iii. 16, we
read OC for 0C, that is, Oeos, is also not quite immate
rial. Still I admit that in comparison to the problems
presented to me by the Horseherd and his com
rades, these varios lectiones will not rack our brains
nearly so badly. I have been reproached for still
owing my friends an answer to the attacks which
they directed exclusively against Christian religion.
It was, however, impossible to deal thoroughly with
these matters, without first taking into consideration
their objections against all religion.
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) ;

158 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
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 abso
lutely 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 in
telligible 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 Horse
herd, 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 re
ligious 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

THE REASONABLENESS OF RELIGION 159
which we are ourselves contending, it is safe to con
sider 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 with
out miracles, or if the Scriptures on which any reli
gion 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

160 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
difference of view becomes at once a difference of
aim. The moral element enters immediately, and
those who believe otherwise are designated unbe
lievers, 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 understand
ing 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 re
ligion. 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 " fortis
simo," 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 volumi
nous literature, treating of religion and philosophy,
and they draw a very sharp distinction between re
vealed and unrevealed works (/Sxuti and Snin'ti).
Here much depends upon the name. Revealed meant

THE REASONABLENESS OF RELIGION 161
originally nothing more than plain and clear, and
when we speak of a revelation, in ordinary life, this is
not much more than a communication. But erelong
" reveal " was used in the special sense of a commu
nication from a superhuman to a human being. The
question of the possibility of such a communication
raised little difficulty. But this possibility depends
naturally on the prior conception of superhuman be
ings and of their relationship to human beings. So
long as it was imagined that they occasionally assumed
human form, and could mingle in very human affairs,
a communication from a Not-man, I will not say a mon
ster, presents no great difficulties. The Greeks went
so far as to ascribe to men of earlier times a closer
intercourse with the gods. But even with them the
idea that man should not enter too closely into the
presence of the gods breaks forth here and there,
and Semele, who wished to be embraced by Zeus in
all his glory, found her destruction in this ecstasy.
As soon as the Deity was conceived in less human
fashion, as in the Old Testament, intercourse be
tween God and man became more and more difficult.
In Genesis this intercourse is still represented very
simply and familiarly, as when God walks about in
the Garden of Eden, and Adam and Eve are ashamed
of their nakedness before Him. Soon, however, a
higher conception of God enters, so that Moses, for
example (Exodus xxxiii. 23), may not see the face
of Jehovah, but still ventures at least to look upon
His back. The writer of the Fourth Gospel goes

162 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
still farther and declares (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."
Here we clearly see that the possibility of intercourse
between man and God, and a revelation of God to
man, depends chiefly or exclusively on the concep
tion which man has previously formed of God and
man. In all theological researches we must carefully
bear in mind that the idea of God is our idea, which
we have formed in part through tradition, and in part
by our own thinking ; and we must not forget that
existence formed an essential attribute of this idea,
whatever opposition may have been raised against
the ontological proof in later times. After what we
have seen of the true relationship between thought
and speech, it follows that the name, and with it
the idea of a divine being, can only proceed from
man. God is and remains our God. We can have
a knowledge of Him only through our inner con
sciousness, not through our senses. God Himself
has no more imparted His name to mankind than
the fixed stars and planets to which we have given
names, although we only see, but do not hear or
touch them. This must be absolutely clear to us
before we dare speak of the possibility or impossi
bility of a revelation.
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

THE REASONABLENESS OF RELIGION 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 — be
fore 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 disclos
ures 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 know
ledge 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 ob
scured 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

164 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
point of view be quite modern, and there are schol
ars 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 every
thing else in India, or even in the entire Aryan world,
and because they are mainly concerned with the an
cient gods of nature, appeared to the Hindus them
selves as apaurusheya, that is, not wrought by man.
They were called /Srati, (that which was heard), in
distinction from other literature, which was desig
nated as Smmi, or recollection.
All this is easily intelligible. There followed a
period, however, during which the true understand
ing of the hymns became considerably obscured, and
a new series of works, the so-called Br&hma?zas,
arose. These were very different from the hymns.
They are composed in a younger language and in
prose. They treat of the sacrifice, so full of signifi
cance in India, at which the hymns were employed,
and which seems to me to have been originally de
signed for measuring time, and thus served to mark
the progress of civilisation. They explain the mean-

THE REASONABLENESS OF RELIGION 165
ing of the hymns, often quite erroneously ; but they
contain some interesting information upon the condi
tion of India, long after the period when the hymns
first appeared, and yet before the rise of Buddhism in
the sixth century before Christ. It has been supposed
that, as the Bralimanas were composed in prose, they
were originally written, according to the hypothesis of
Wolf, that prose everywhere presupposes the know
ledge of writing. I cannot admit this in the case of
India; at any rate, there is no trace of any acquaint
ance with writing in the whole of this extensive mass
of literature. It was throughout a mnemonic litera
ture, and just because the art of writing was unknown,
the memory was cultivated in a manner of which we
have no idea. At all events, the Brahmans themselves
knew nothing of the Brahmawas in written form, and
included them with the hymns under the names Veda
and /SVuti ; that is, they regarded them, in our phrase
ology, as revealed, and not the work of men.
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 etymologi-
cally as " seer."
It is clear, therefore, that what the Brahmans un
derstood under $ruti was nothing more than literature
composed in an ancient language (for the Bralimawas
are also composed in an ancient language, though

166 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
not as ancient as that of the hymr>s ). and treating
of matters on which apparently man alone can estab
lish no authority. For how coold ordinary man take
on himself to speak about the gods or to give direc
tions for the sacrifice, to make promises for the re
ward of pious works, or even to decide what is morallv
right or wrong? More than human authority was
necessary for this, and so the Brahmanas, as well as
the hymns, were declared to be apaurusheya. that is.
not human, though by no means divine, in the
sense of having been imparted by one of the Devas.
We see, therefore, that the idea of the <Sruti. while
approaching to our idea of revelation as apauruihtua,
that is. not human, does not quite coincide with it
What was ancient and incomprehensible, was called
superhuman, and soon became infallible and beyond
assault. If we look at other religions, we find
that Buddhism denied the Veda every authority,
and in conformity with its own character especially
excluded every idea of superhuman revelation. In
China, too, we look in vain for revelation. In Pal
estine, however, we find the idea that the Lord Him
self spoke with Moses, who delivered His commands
to Israel, and the tables of the commandments were
even written by God's own fingers on both sides. But
this must not be confounded with written literature.
The idea that the entire Old Testament was written
or revealed by Jehovah is absolutely not of ancient
Jewish origin, whatever respect may have been shown
to the holy books as recognised in the Svnagogue.

THE REASONABLENESS OF RELIGION 167
As for Islam, the Koran is looked upon as com
municated to Mohammed by the angel Gabriel,
even as Zoroaster in the Avesta claims to have re
ceived certain communications in conversation with
Ahuramazda. In Christianity, in whose history the theory of reve
lation 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.1 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 Lo reason away the meaning
of KaTa, " according to," and interpret it as " by,"
but it is more natural to take it in its ordinary
sense. When Paul, in his second Epistle to Timothy
(iii. 16), says, " Every scripture inspired of God is
also profitable for teaching," this is the usual mode
of expression applied to the Scriptures of the Old,
not of tho New Testament (John v. 39), and would
1 This must of course be understood of authoritative or canonical
Scripture. — ed. J. E. C.

168 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
merely signify inspired, breathed in, not revealed in
each word and letter.
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 ex
traordinary, 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 indi
viduals. It is imagined, therefore, that the Deity
condescended to speak Hebrew or Greek in the dia
lect 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 Mo
hammed we know from himself that he could neither
read nor write. What we possess, therefore, in the

THE REASONABLENESS OF RELIGION 169
way of holy Scriptures is always the product of a
later generation, and subject to all the hazards in
volved in oral tradition. This was not to be avoided,
and ought not to surprise us. If we attempt our
selves 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 As
sembly 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
preeminent 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, et sic ad infinitum. These are for the
most part merely excuses for human unbelief. Noth
ing proves the veracity of the authors of the Gos-

170 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
pels so clearly as the natural, often derogatory words
which they use of themselves, or even more of the
apostles. These did not understand, as they say,
the simplest parables or teachings ; they were jealous
of one another ; Peter even denied the Lord ; in short,
the authors of the Gospels cannot be credited with
sinlessness and infallibility, supposing that they were
really the apostles.
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 con
tradictions, 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 neces
sity 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

THE REASONABLENESS OF RELIGION 171
natural process in answer to a natural and even irre
sistible 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 devi
ation, and simply exhibit what the historical condi
tions 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 revela
tions they would be difficult to explain.
But it becomes still more difficult when we come
to expressions which are really significant and essen
tial for Christianity, for even in these we find incon
sistencies. 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

172 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
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 pas
sage, 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 record
ing 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 Caia-
phas 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 sanc
tioned 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 trust
worthy for the writers to have communicated them
to us, as they knew and understood them (and that
they occasionally misunderstood them they them
selves quite honestly admit), than to have been super-
naturally inspired for the purpose, and even to have
received a revelation in the form of a theophany?

THE REASONABLENESS OF RELIGION 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 revela
tion 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 Gos
pels 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 move
ments 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

174 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
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 foot
stool ? 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 natu
ral 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 Gos
pels that which they profess to be — naiTatives of what
had long been told and believed in certain circles

THE REASONABLENESS OF RELIGION 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 whis
pered 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 con
cerning 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, hav
ing traced the course of all things accurately from the
first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theo-
philus, that thou mightest know the certainty con
cerning 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 Chris
tians. 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 im
parted to him, without asserting that he had himself
been from the beginning an eye-witness of them, or

176 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
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 mes
sage had first to pass through the colloquial process,
the leavening process of oral transmission ; then fol
lowed 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 undis
puted 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,

THE REASONABLENESS OF RELIGION 177
the community for which the first Gospel was intended
manifestly consisted of converted Jews, who had rec
ognised 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 per
vading 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 his
torical 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 sim-

178 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
ply 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 Bethle
hem, 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 tbe 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 suf
ficient 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 weep
ing for her children ; and she would not be comforted,
because they are not."
Later, when Joseph returns with the child and jour
neys to Nazareth, this too is explained by the words
o'f 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 every
thing which was expected of the Messiah. To us

THE REASONABLENESS OF RELIGION 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 im
mediately 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 con
trary, 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 con
strued 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

180 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
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 inspira
tion 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 son-
ship 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 to
gether, 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

THE REASONABLENESS OF RELIGION 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 clear
ness, for in their view the practical element in Chris
tianity 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 sig
nificant 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 per
secute 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

182 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
put my spirit upon him, and he shall declare judg
ment 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 return
ing to his own birthplace, the people would scarcely
believe that he was the same as the son of the car
penter, 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 Gos
pel 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 inter
pretation 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

THE REASONABLENESS OF RELIGION 183
have added the words, " But how then shall the scrip
tures 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 neces
sary, 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 harm
less; but how could it possibly occur in a revealed
gospel? At the crucifixion of Jesus the garments
are divided, and another passage is immediately re
called, this time in a Psalm (xxii. 19), in which the
poet says of himself that his enemies divided his gar
ments 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 con
temporary feeling of the Jewish people. Once con
vinced that Jesus was the Messiah or Christ, all the
incidents of his life and death must necessarily re
mind them of the prophecies which had been current
for years, and kept alive among them the hope of
their deliverer. Such details were probably em
ployed 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 in
spired by God, what must we say? First, in some

184 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
cases there are plain errors which would be impossi
ble in an infallible witness. Secondly, must we be
lieve 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 ful
filled? This would reduce the life of Christ to a
mere phantasm and rob it of its entire historical sig
nificance. 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 rec
ognise 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 Ju
daism. In this view everything that borders on in
tentional deceit drops away of itself. The facts
remain as before, as the people had explained and
arranged them. According to Matthew and his suc
cessors, 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 in
fluence, 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 ac-

THE REASONABLENESS OF RELIGION 185
cept 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 ex
pect 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 re
ligion, 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 revela
tion. 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 compari
son of the Gospels with one another. The only diffi
culty that seems to remain is this, that the Synop
tic Gospels are so often content to put the Jewish
conception of Jesus as the Messiah, as the son of

186 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
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
Judseus, the contemporary of Jesus. We cannot sup
pose that he stood alone, and other Jewish thinkers
must like him have accepted the Logos idea as a solu
tion 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 our
selves 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 re
alisation, 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 Christian
ity, 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

THE REASONABLENESS OF RELIGION 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 be
lieved, 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 for
get 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 can
not 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

188 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
word is in itself quite enough to indicate the Greek
origin of the idea. Word (Logos), however, signi
fied 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 com
ing 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 char
acter 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.

THE REASONABLENESS OF RELIGION 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. Reli
gion 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 philo
sophical 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 compre
hends everything, represents everything, realises
everything that exists for him; so God was conceived
as being in the beginning, and then expressing Him
self 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

190 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
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 simili
tude, to that which was in the beginning. A simili
tude 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 devel
oping 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 his-

THE REASONABLENESS OF RELIGION 191
torical 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 sig
nified more than we understand under the " ideal of
a man," although originally both expressions are de
rived from the same source. Nor was the designa
tion 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 per
sonality 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 understand
ing, still permeated with heathen ideas, it was cer
tainly 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 con-

192 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
sciousness was just that truth which Christ pro
claimed, the truth for which he laid down his human
life. If we enter into this thought, we shall under
stand 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 incompre
hensible. 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 mean
ing 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 unintel
ligible. 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."

THE REASONABLENESS OF RELIGION 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 our
selves 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 him
self declares, when Peter first called him the son of

194 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
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

THE REASONABLENESS OF RELIGION 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 su
preme truth of Christianity. To the woman of Sama
ria 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 blas
phemy (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

196 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
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 ex
plained 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 Giinther or Etzel of the Nibe-
lungen with the Gundicarius or Attila of history, or
Charles the Great crowned by the Pope with the
Charlemagne who besieged Jerusalem, or Hruod-
landus with Roland, or Arturus with Arthur. Or,
to come to later days, we need only recall the won
derful tales of the French journals during the last
Franco-German War, and we shall be astonished at

THE REASONABLENESS OF RELIGION 197
the manner in which, quite unintentionally, the
people adapt all tidings to their own views. Nine
teen 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 them
selves 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, indig
nantly 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

198 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
was originally nothing more than a human appeal
to a superhuman attestation? It must not be for
gotten 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 ?
Why should we contemptuously reject the tradition
which arose in the mouths of the people ? Should we
be worse Christians if it were clearly and plainly dem
onstrated that we only possess popular traditions, out
of which we must ourselves form a conception of the
career and teaching of Christ ? Is it not good for us,

THE REASONABLENESS OF RELIGION 199
that we are free in many points to decide for ourselves
what Jesus was and what he taught ?
And in a world in which everything develops,
everything grows and changes, why should religion
alone be an exception? Do we not all freely confess
that certain precepts which are ascribed to Jesus in
the Gospels are no longer adapted to our times and
to our circumstances ? Roes any Christian turn his
left cheek when he has been struck upon the right ?
Do we give our cloak when our coat has been taken
from us ? Do we hold everything that we possess in
common as the first Christians did ? Do we sell all
that we have and give it to the poor (Matthew
xix. 21)?
It is quite true that under this method a certain
personal freedom in the interpretation of the Gospels
is unavoidable, but is not this freedom at the same
time accompanied by a very important feeling of
personal responsibility, which is of the utmost signifi
cance for every religious conviction? It cannot be
denied, that this open and honest acknowledgment
of the undeniable influence of popular tradition has
far-reaching consequences, and will take from us
much to which we are accustomed, and that has be
come near and dear, even sacred, to us. But it has
this advantage, that we feel we are candid and honest
in our faith, to which we may add that we are never
forced in dealing with human hypotheses to give our
assent blindly, but may follow our own judgment.
We may adopt or reject the view that in the develop-

200 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
ment of the gospel story much must be ascribed to
popular tradition, and I can readily believe that many
who do not know, either through the study of legends
or their own experience, the transforming influence
which school and family traditions exercise on the
form of historical narratives, find it incredible that
such a carbonising process could have taken place
also in the evangelical tradition as related by the
men of the next generation. They must then con
tent themselves with the alternative, that the laws
of nature, which they themselves ascribe to the
Deity, must have been abrogated by their own
founder in order that the truth of the teaching of
Christ might gain a certain probability in the eyes
of the people by so-called miracles.
Let us take an example in order to see what
we shall gain on the one side and lose on the
other. The original meaning of making the blind
see, Jesus has himself told us (John ix. 39), "For
judgment I am come into this world, that they
which see not might see; and that they which
see might be made blind." This refers to spirit
ual, not physical blindness, and which is the more
difficult to heal, the spiritual or the physical?
But when Jesus was repeatedly said to have healed
this spiritual blindness, to have opened the eyes of
the blind and unbelieving, how was it possible that
the masses, especially the children, should not mis
understand such cures, and interpret and repeat them
as cures of physical blindness? Certainly such an

THE REASONABLENESS OF RELIGION 201
idea carries us a long way. We must then, for in
stance, explain such an expression as that placed in
the mouths of the Pharisees (John x. 21), " Can a
devil open the eyes of the blind ? " as a further
extension of a popular notion already in the field.
Nor can it be denied that cures of the physically
blind have this in their favour, that so exceptional a
personality as Jesus may also have possessed an
exceptional healing power. It then depends only
on the character of the blindness, whether it was
curable or incurable, and the solution of this question
we may be content to leave to the medical man. I
only remark, that if the medical man should deny
such a possibility, a true Christian would lose nothing
in consequence, for under all circumstances a spiritual
healing power in Christ would stand higher with all
of us than one merely physical.
This may be called shallow rationalism, but surely
the human ratio or reason cannot be entirely re
jected. Many know of their own experience that-
a man of high moral energy can even now drive
out devils and base thoughts. Why not also believe
that through his appearance and words Jesus made
such an impression upon those possessed, for instance,
upon the man or the two men who herded swine in
the country of the Gadarenes or Gergesenes, that
they came to themselves and began to lead new lives ?
That on such a conversion the swine-herds should
forget their swine which rushed headlong into the
lake, is easily understood, and when these two inci-

202 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
dents came to the ears of the people, what was more
natural than the story which we find in Matthew
(viii. 28), Mark (v. 1), and Luke (viii. 26), but not
in John? We need not now enter into the discrep
ancies between these three narratives, striking as
they would be in a divinely inspired book. Of
course it will be said again, that this is a shallow,
rationalistic explanation, as if the word " rationalist "
contained within itself something condemnatory. At
all events, no one can now demonstrate that Jesus
did not bewitch the unclean spirits out of the two
demoniacs into the two thousand swine ; but I con
fess that the shallow rationalistic explanation seems
to me far better calculated to bring clearly to light
the influence which Jesus could exercise over the
most abandoned men.
One more instance. How often does Jesus say
that he is the bread that really satisfies man, and the
water that quenches all thirst (vi. 48) : " I am the
bread of life. This is the bread which cometh down
from heaven, that a man may eat thereof and not
die. Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood
hath eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last
day." Would any one, even the woman of Samaria,
take these words literally? Does not Jesus himself
help us to a correct understanding of them when he
says (vi. 35), " I am the bread of life ; he that com
eth to me shall never hunger ; and he that believeth
on me shall never thirst," and again, (vii. 37), "If
any man thirst let him come unto me, and drink,"

THE REASONABLENESS OF RELIGION 203
And in order to shield his words against any mis
understanding he himself says (vi. 63), "It is the
spirit that quickeneth ; the flesh profiteth nothing ;
the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and
they are life." And are we resolved in spite of all
this not to understand the deep meaning of his words,
to remain blind and deaf; and do we, like the Pharisees,
prefer the story of how Jesus by magic means fed thou
sands with five or seven loaves and two fishes (vi. 9),
so that in the end twelve baskets of bread remained
after all were satisfied ? We can readily comprehend
how in the mouths of the people the great miracles of
Jesus, -the real mira wrought by his life and teach
ing, became small miracula. But if we surrender
these small miracula, is not something far better left
us, namely, that Jesus, who so often called himself
the bread and the wine, who even at the Last Supper,
as he broke bread with his disciples, commanded
them to eat the bread which was his body, and drink
the wine which was his blood, — that this teacher could
by his teaching satisfy, content, and convert thousands,
who came to him and believed in him ! It is true that
the story of the feeding of thousands with five loaves
of bread is more intelligible to women and children,
and makes a stronger impression than the metaphori
cal words of Christ ; but nothing is more easy to
understand than the transformation of a tale of the
conversion or spiritual satisfying of thousands, into
a parable of the feeding of thousands with five loaves.
But have not the truly devout and conscientious

204 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
thinkers rights of their own in the community?
Must they really hold themselves aloof from the
church, because they have too deep a reverence for
the true teaching of Christ? Grand and beautiful
as are St. Peter's in Rome, St. Mark's in Venice, or
the Cathedral at Milan, it is heartbreaking to ob
serve the so-called divine service in these buildings.
Let us not be deceived by the sayings, that the king
dom of heaven belongs to the children, or that a
childlike faith is best. That is quite true, but it
has absolutely nothing to do with our question. Of
course in every generation millions of children are
born, and milk must be provided for these as well ;
but this milk is not for men, and these should not
permit themselves to be frightened by mere words,
such as shallow enlightenment, rationalism, unbelief,
etc. The worst of it is that we have permitted our
ministri to become our masters instead of our ser
vants, and that the weak among them far outnum
ber the strong. In history, however, the minority
is always victorious. Popular legend has certainly
at times grievously obscured the gospel of Christ,
but not so much as to prevent those who are familiar
with its nature and effect from discovering the grains
of gold in the sand, the rays of truth behind the
clouds. At all events, popular legend refuses to be
ruled out. A knowledge of it and its influence on
historical events in other nations, and especially a
familiarity with the modes of expression in Oriental
languages, are of the greatest use in all these investi-

THE REASONABLENESS OF RELIGION 205
gations. Only let no one confound legend and meta
phor with mythology. When Jesus says that he is
the water, and that whoever drinks of this water
shall never thirst again, every one readily perceives
that he speaks metaphorically. And likewise when
he says that he is the vine or the good shepherd.
But here the transition from parable to reality very
soon begins. Among so many pictures of the good
shepherd it need occasion no surprise that it is com
monly imagined that Jesus actually was a shepherd
and carried a lamb on his shoulders. What occurs
now was of course equally possible in the earliest times.
When the common people saw daily, in old mosaic
pictures, a sword coming forth from the mouth of God,
they formed a representation of God corresponding to
these pictures (Rev. i. 20). And thus many readers
of the Gospel suppose that Jesus was really carried
up into the air by the devil and placed on the
summit of the temple or of a high mountain, that he
might show him all the kingdoms of the earth, and
tempt him to establish an earthly realm. Is it rever
ent to imagine Christ borne through the air by
the devil, instead of simply learning that Christ him
self, as we read, was not a stranger to inward trials,
and that he freely confessed them to his disciples?
Many parables are represented in the Gospels, as
though they had really occurred at the time. Thus,
in the parables of the kingdom of heaven, the phrase
always runs that it is like seed which a man sowed,
and while he slept an enemy came and sowed tares.

206 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
Or the kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a
woman took and hid in three measures of meal, or
like a treasure found by a man in a field, or like a
merchant seeking goodly pearls, etc. In listening to
these parables or looking at pictorial representations
of them, there develops almost unconsciously, es
pecially among the young, a belief in their reality,
in their actual occurrence at the time of Christ. In
many cases this belief is widely spread, as, for exam
ple, in the story of the good Samaritan. Now it is
quite possible that some such incident as Jesus re
lated had occurred in his time, or shortly before it ;
but it is just as likely to have been a parable invented
for a specific purpose. And why should not this be
true of other things, which the Gospels ascribe to
Jesus himself ?
Is it necessary to believe, that Jesus saw the
Pharisees casting their gifts into the treasury with
his own eyes (Luke xxi. 1), and the poor widow
who threw in two mites, or is it possible to consider
this, too, as a parable, without insisting that Jesus
really sat opposite the sacred chest, and counted the
alms, and knew that the widow had put in two
mites, and had really nothing left? Of many
things, as of the conversation between Jesus and
Nicodemus, or between Jesus and the woman of
Samaria, no one could have had any knowledge
except those who took part in it. We must there
fore assume that Jesus communicated these conver
sations to his disciples, and that these have reported

THE REASONABLENESS OF RELIGION 207
to us the ipsissima verba. In this manner we are
constantly involving ourselves in fresh difficulties
of our own making, which we may indeed leave out
of consideration, but which would never exist at all
if we would only consider the circumstances under
which the Gospels arose. I have previously expounded
this view of the popular origin of the evangelic nar
ratives in my Gifford lectures before an audience,
certainly very orthodox ; and although a small number
of theologians were much incensed against me, — it
was their duty, — the majority, even of the clergy,
were decidedly with me. The things themselves
and their lessons remain undiminished in value ; we
merely acknowledge a fact, quite natural from an
historical standpoint, viz. that the accounts of the life
and teachings of Jesus have not come to us direct
from Christ, nor from the apostles, but from men
who, as they themselves tell us, received the report
from others by tradition. Their narratives, conse
quently, are not perhaps fictitious, or prepared with
a certain object; but they do show traces of the
influence that was unavoidable in oral transmission,
especially at a time of great spiritual excitement.
This is a problem which in itself has nothing what
ever to do with religion. We have the Gospels as
they are. It remains with the historian alone to
pass judgment upon the origin, the transmission,
and the authenticity of these texts, just as the re
construction of the text lies solely with the philolo
gist. For this he need not even be a Christian,

208 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
merely an historian. Whatever may be the judg
ment of the historical inquirer, we must learn to be
content with what they leave us. In this, too, the
half is often better than the whole. Quite sufficient
remains, even when the critical historian assures us
that the Gospels as we possess them were neither
written by Christ nor the apostles, but contain the
traditions of the oldest Christian communities, and
that the manuscripts in which they have reached
us were not written till the fifth or at the earliest
the fourth century. We may deal with these mate
rials as with all other historical materials from that
period ; and we do so rather as independent histori
ans than as Christians.
The view that the four Gospels were miraculously
revealed to their authors, miraculously written, miracu
lously copied and finally printed, is a view no doubt
deserving of respect, but it leaves the contents of
the Gospels untouched. The difference between the
historical and the conventional interpretation of the
Gospels comes out most clearly in the doctrine of
eternal life. What Jesus understands by the eternal
life that he has brought to mankind, is as clear as the
sun. He repeats it again and again. Eternal life
consists in knowing that men have their Father
and their true being in the only true God, and that
as sons of this same Father, they are of like nature
with God and Christ (John xvii. 3).
This is the fundamental truth of Christianity, and
it holds good not only for the contemporaries of

THE REASONABLENESS OF RELIGION 209
Jesus, but for all times. Those who see in this view
an overestimate of human nature, need only ask
themselves what man could be, if he were not a par
taker of the divine nature. This excludes the differ
ence between human and divine nature as little as
the difference between the physical father and the
physical son. Even in this case we speak figuratively,
for how could we speak otherwise of what is super-
sensual ? The repetition of stories among the people,
narrating how Jesus raised one or another to life, to
eternal life, very soon led among women and children
to the misunderstanding that this referred only to
a resurrection from bodily death. Nay, this raising
passed with them, as it still does with many, for a
stronger proof of the divine nature and power of
Christ than the resurrection from that spiritual death,
which holds in captivity all who have not recognised
their own divine sonship and have not understood
the glad tidings which Jesus brought to all mankind.
Such misunderstandings we find everywhere, as when,
for instance, even a man like Nicodemus fails to com
prehend the new birth of which Jesus speaks, and
asks if a man can enter his mother's womb a second
time. If this was possible in a Scribe, how much more
so with the uneducated people. In the same way the
Jews misunderstand the saying of Jesus, that the
truth will make them free, and answer that they are
the seed of Abraham, aud free men, so that Jesus had
to repeat that whosoever commits sin is not free, but
a slave of sin (John viii. 33). Such misunderstand-

210 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
ings meet us everywhere, and their influence extends
much farther than we at first suppose. Naturally
the tradition also puts words into Jesus' mouth that
could only have issued out of the notions of the people,
and almost entirely conceal the depth of his own
words. While the revelation of the true divine son-
ship of man immediately bestows eternal life on him
who comprehends or believes in it, heals his blind
ness, and raises him from spiritual death, Jesus is
presented as not purposing to raise the dead un
til the last day (John vi. 40). Martha makes the
same mistake, when to the words of Jesus, "Thy
brother shall rise again," she answers, " I know that
he shall rise at the last day " (John xi. 24). Even
some of the works which are ascribed to Jesus are
plainly derived from the same source. A spiritual
resurrection is not sufficient, it even passes for less
than a bodily, and this is the very reason for the
numerous stories of the raising of the dead. These
are matters from which, even to this day, devout
Christians are loath to part, especially where the
details are given so minutely as in the raising of
Lazarus. Now there is absolutely no objection to
this, if we are resolved to cling to the historical
reality of the raising of Lazarus. Only in that case
the terms employed should be exactly defined. If
we give the name death to the condition which ex
cludes any return to life, especially when, as with
Lazarus, decay had already set in, the condition from
which Lazarus returned to life cannot be called death

THE REASONABLENESS OF RELIGION 211
without a contradiction. Jesus even says that his
sickness was not fatal (John xi. 4), and that he is
not dead, but merely sleeps (John xi. 11). Was he
mistaken ? Such words should at least not be entirely
disregarded, even though the other words follow im
mediately after, "Lazarus is dead" (John xi. 14).
That a highly gifted nature, like that of Jesus, may
have possessed wonderful healing powers, cannot be
denied, however difficult it may be to determine the
boundary between what is and is not possible here.
On the other hand, it is firmly established that when
once such an idea as the raising from physical death
becomes rooted in the popular mind, the details,
especially such as can serve as evidence, are provided
spontaneously. The nucleus of the story of the rais
ing of Lazarus lies of course in the words (John xi.
25, 26), "_Z" am the resurrection and the life, he that
believeth in me though he were dead, yet shall he live,
and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never
die." Here we have the true teaching of Christ, in
his own apparently contradictory language. The
saying, "Whoever believes in me shall never die,"
does not necessarily mean that his body will never die ;
and so the words, " Though he were dead, yet shall
he live," certainly do not signify that his dead and
decayed body shall receive new life. But the people
wanted something else. For the true miracles, for
the spiritual resurrection, they had no comprehension,
they wanted sensuous miracles, they wanted the
resurrection of a body already decayed, and this is

212 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
described in the Gospels in detail. Such is the reg
ular privilege of popular tradition, and it happens
without deliberate intention, except that of bringing
vividly before us the common interpretation of the
fact. Popular tradition is not intentional deception,
it is only an unavoidable fusion of facts with con
ventional ideas, whereby God becomes a laborer
wearied by six days' work ; his seat becomes Olympus
or a golden throne in some corner of the blue sky ;
the Son of God sinks to the level of a prince of the
house of David, the Saviour to a miracle doctor, and
his message of salvation to a promise of resurrection
from physical death. There are many good men and
women fulfilling in their daily walk the commands
of Christ, to whom the true historical conception of
the gospel story would be a terrible disillusion. Well,
such Christians are at liberty to remain in their own
views. Our own interpretation of many of the de
tails in the traditional representation of the Gospels,
though details certainly of very great significance,
makes no claim to papal authority. It gladly con
cedes the possibility of error, and only claims to give
an interpretation of the evangelic writings, founded
on nature and history. It should answer, and at the
same time appease, the very numerous and, at bottom,
honest men, who, like the Horseherd, declare the
gospel narratives, as ordinarily understood, full of
falsehood and fraud or even pure fancy, and who
have consequently broken with the Christian revela
tion from conscientious scruples. Their number is

THE REASONABLENESS OF RELIGION 213
greater than is generally supposed, and it must on no
account be supposed that they are necessarily wicked
or even immoral men. When they declare the Chris
tian revelation to be an absurdity, it is because they
do not know it in its historical origin and its divine
truth. To assume that every word, every letter, —
for it has been carried even so far, — that every
parable, every figure, was whispered to the authors
of the Gospels, is certainly an absurdity, and rests only
on human and often only on priestly authority. But
the true revelation, the real truth, as it was already
anticipated by the Greek philosophers, slowly ac
cepted by Jews like Philo and the contemporaries of
Jesus, taught by men like Clement and Origen in
the ancient Greek church, and, in fine, realised in the
life of Jesus and sealed by his death, is no absurdity ;
it is for every thinking Christian the eternal life or
the kingdom of God on earth, which Jesus wished
to establish, and in part did establish. To become a
citizen of this kingdom is the highest that man can
attain, but it is not attained merely through baptism
and confirmation ; it must be gained in earnest spiritual
conflict. In nearly all religions God remains far from man.
I say in nearly all religions ; for in Brahmanism the
unity, not the union, of the human soul with Brahman
is recognised as the highest aim. This unity with
Deity, together with phenomenal difference, Jesus ex
pressed in part through the Logos, in part through
the Son. There is nothing so closely allied as thought

214 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
and word, Father and Son. They can be distinguished,
but never separated, for they exist only through each
other. In this manner the Greek philosophers con
sidered all creation as the thought or the word of
God, and the thought " man " became naturally the
highest Logos, realised in millions of men, and raised
to the highest perfection in Jesus. As the thought
exists only through the word, and the word only
through the thought, so also the Father exists only
through the Son, and the Son through the Father,
and in this sense Jesus feels and declares himself
the Son of God, and all men who believe in him his
brethren. This revelation or inspiration came to
mankind through Jesus. No one knew the Father
except the Son, who is in the bosom of the Father,
and those to whom the Son willeth to reveal him.
This is the Christian revelation in the true sense of
the word. It has long been attempted to make an
essential difference between Jesus, the only begotten
Son, and his brethren, through an exaggerated feel
ing of affected reverence. But if this is carried too
far, the temple which Jesus himself erected for man
kind is destroyed. It is true that no one comes to
the Father except through Jesus, and that Jesus is the
only begotten Son, for he is in the Father and the
Father in him (John xiv. 10), nay, he and the Father
are one (John x. 30). The distinction is therefore
there, but the unity as well, for Jesus himself says
that he is in his disciples as the Father is in him, that
they all may be one, as he is one with God, and God

THE REASONABLENESS OF RELIGION 215
with him (John xvii. 21). To many there may be
no sense in this, because their ideas of God and
of the Son of God are altogether materialistic, but
to those who have learned to feel the divine, not
only without but also within, these words are the
light of the world. In this sense we need not be
ashamed of the gospel of Christ, and can be pre
pared to look all the Horseherds of the world in
the face as intellectually free, yet at the same time
as true Christians, in the way Jesus himself would
have desired; often in error, like the disciples of
old, but still loyal and honest followers of the Son
of God.
The main issue in all these questions is honesty,
honesty toward ourselves even more than toward
others. We know how easily we may all be deceived,
how easily we are put off with words, especially
when they are words of ancient use. It was the
sincere tone of the Horseherd that prompted me to
public discussion of his doubts, for doubts are gen
erally anticipations of truth, and to be true to one
self is better than to possess all truth. It gave me
pleasure to learn recently that he is still among the
living, although for an interval he was beyond the
range of the usual postal facilities, so that my letters
did not reach him. Whether he thinks me as honest
as himself, we must wait to know. I did not seek
either to persuade or to convince him. Such things
depend too much on circumstances and environment.
I merely wished to show him that others, who do

216 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
not agree with him, or with whom he does not agree,
are honest, and may honestly hold entirely different
views. To learn to understand each other is the
great art of life, and to " agree to differ " is the best
lesson of the comparative science of religion.

VI
CONCLUSION
The allusion in the foregoing page is to a very
long letter which the Horseherd wrote to my hus
band, dated September 10, 1897, eighteen months after
his first letter. This was followed three days later
by a short note, saying that the long letter was not
written for publication, and that it was the Horse-
herd's express wish that it should not be printed.
In this note he mentions that he was perfectly well,
and that he had been so successful in his trade, that
he no longer sat with an oil lamp by an iron stove,
but was " every inch a gentleman," as he expressed
it. The Pferdebiirla was brought out early in 1899,
and my husband sent a copy to the only address he
had, — "Pferdebiirla, Post-Office, Pittsburgh," — with
the following letter : —
(Translation.) "7 Norham Gardens, Feb. 10 /99.
" Dear far-off Friend : You see I have kept
my promise, and after many delays the book is ready.
How are you ? whether you are sitting by your iron
stove and oil light, or have become a great and rich
217

218 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
man. Well, all that is only external, the great thing,
the Self, remains unchanged. I am growing old —
past seventy -five — and have still so much to do, and
am now printing a big book, the Six Systems of Indian
Philosophy. That would please you, for those old
fellows saw deeper than our philosophers, though they
don't talk so much about it. Now write and tell me
how it is with you, and whether you are pleased or
not with your and my book. But make haste, for
who knows how long it may last. It is strange how
well one can know those whom one has never seen.
" With all good wishes,
"F. Max Muller."

The book and letter were returned as unclaimed
after three months. But on September 29, 1899, the
Horseherd wrote again, giving his real name, Fritz
Menzel, and the address Monangahela Hotel, Pitts
burgh. This letter I have been unable to find. On
October 17, 1899, I wrote by my husband's desire.
" Dear Sir : My husband, who is seriously ill,
wishes me to send you this letter from him, written
last February and returned late in April, and to say,
as he has now received your letter of September 29,
with your real name and address, he is sending you the
copy of his book, Das Pferdebiirla, which was also
returned to him."

CONCLUSION 219
After a few months both letter and book came back
unclaimed, and from that time nothing more has been
heard from the Horseherd. The book bears the in
scription : —
" To the Pferdebiirla, with greetings from his
Pardner."
A few words must be said about the translation.
In August, 1898, a translation of the first article on
Celsus, made by Mr. O. A. Fechter of North Yakima,
Washington, U.S.A., was sent to my husband by an
old friend, Mrs. Bartlett, wife of the Rev. H. M.
Bartlett, rector of the church in the same place. He
liked it and returned it at once, begging that the
other articles, which had appeared in the Deutsche
Rundschau, though not yet published as a book,
might be translated. For more than two years noth
ing was heard from North Yakima, though I wrote
more than once during my husband's illness, so anx
ious was he to see the translation carried out. At
length, just before Christmas, 1901, 1 wrote once more
and registered the letter, which was safely delivered,
and I then heard that my friend had not only written
repeatedly, but that the whole finished translation had
been sent, nearly two years before, and that she was
astonished at hearing nothing further. Some fault
in the post-office had caused the long silence on both
sides. A rough copy of the translation had been
kept, and was sent over after it had been clearly
written out.

220 THE SILESIAN HORSEHERD
I cannot sufficiently express my gratitude to the
Rev. J. Estlin Carpenter, who has revised the whole
work in the most thorough manner, devoting to it
much of his very valuable time.
Georgina Max Muller.

WORKS
BY THE
Rt. Hon. Friedrich Max Muller

NATURAL RELIGION : the Gifford Lectures, 1888.
PHYSICAL RELIGION : the Gifford Lectures, 1890.
ANTHROPOLOGICAL RELIGION : the Gifford Lectures, 1891.
THEOSOPHY ; or, Psychological Religion : the Gifford Lectures, 1892.
CHIPS FROM A GERMAN WORKSHOP. 4 volumes.
I. Recent Essays and Addresses.
II. Biographical Essays.
III. Essays on Language and Literature.
IV. Essays on Mythology and Folk-lore.
THE ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF RELIGION, as Illustrated by the
Religions of India : the Hibbert Lectures, 1878.
BIOGRAPHIES OF WORDS, AND THE HOME OF THE ARYAS.
THE SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE: Founded on Lectures delivered at the
Royal Institution in 1861 and 1863. 2 volumes.
INDIA : What can it Teach Us ?
INTRODUCTION TO THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION. Four Lectures, 1870.
RAMAKJB JSH-STA : His Life and Sayings.
THREE LECTURES ON THE VEDANTA PHILOSOPHY, 1894.
LAST ESSAYS. First Series. Essays on Language, Folk-lore, etc.
LAST ESSAYS. Second Series. Essays on the Science of Religion.
THE SCIENCE OF THOUGHT.
CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SCIENCE OF MYTHOLOGY. 2 vo nines.
THE SIX SYSTEMS OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY.
AULD LANG SYNE. First Series.
AULD LANG SYNE. Second Series. My Indian Friends.
DEUTSCHE LIEBE (GERMAN LOVE) : Fragments from the Papers of
an Alien. Collected by F. MAX MtJLLER. Translated from the German
by G. A. M.
MY AUTOBIOGRAPHY : A Fragment. With Portraits.
HANDBOOKS FOR THE STUDY OF SANSKRIT.
The Sanskrit Text of the First Book of the Hitopadeja.
The Second, Third, and Fourth Books of the Hitopadfja;
containing that Sanskrit Text, with Interlinear Translation,