Bible studies, contributions chiefly from papyri and ... - Predestination

14 BIBLE STUDIES. [200, 201
by a Faust, meanwhile sighing for a revelation ; or he is
driven about by the thought that something must be done
for his unbelief— yet he writes Discourses upon Religion.
And thus he realises that he is entangled in the contradic-
tion between the Infinite and the Finite,^ while the small
prosperous folks, whose sleepy souls reck not of his pain,
are lulled by him into the delightful dream that we only
need to build altars to truth, beauty, and eternity in order
to possess these things ; when they have awaked, they can
but reproach him for having deceived them. They discover
that he is one of themselves ; they whisper to each other
that the sage, the poet, the prophet, is but a man after all
—wiser, it may be, but not more clever, or better, than
others. He who might have been their guide— ^not in-
deed to his own poor hovel but to the city upon the hill,
not built by human hands—is compensated with some
polite-sounding phrase. The foolish ingrates !
Literature
presents us with the unreal, just because it subserves the
truth ; the literary man abandons himself, just because he
strives for the ends of humanity ; he is unnatural, just because
he would give to others something better than him-
self. What holds good of literature in general must also
be taken into account in regard to each of its characteristic
phenomena. Just as little as Plato's Socrates and Schiller's
Wallenstein are "forgeries," so little dare we so name the
whole "pseudonymous"^ literature. We may grant at
once, indeed, that some, at least, of the writings which go
under false names were intentionally forged by the writers
^ Of. the confession made by U. von Wilamowitz-MoellendorfE, Aristoteles
und Atlien, i., Berlin, 1893, Preface, p. vi. : " The task of authorship demands
an end attained—in irreconcilable antithesis to the investigations of science.
The Phnedrus has taught us that the book in general is a pitiful thing as
compared vyith living investigation, and it is to be hoped that we are wiser in
our class-rooms than in our books. But Plato, too, wrote books ; he spoke
forth freely each time what he knew as well as he knew it, assured that he
would contradict himself, and hopeful that he would correct himself, next
time he wrote."
- The term iKCudmiymoufi of itself certainly implies blame, but it has
become so much worn in the using, that it is also applied in quite an in-
nocent sense.