thinker. But to write a confession of one's faith cannot but be
regarded as a thousand times more pretentious, since it takes for
granted that the writer attaches worth, not only to the experiences
and investigations of his life, but also to his beliefs. Now, what the
nice thinker will require to know, above all else, is the kind of
faith which happens to be compatible with natures of the Straussian
order, and what it is they have "half dreamily conjured up" (p. 10)
concerning matters of which those alone have the right to speak who
are acquainted with them at first hand. Whoever would have desired to
possess the confessions, say, of a Ranke or a Mommsen? And these men
were scholars and historians of a very different stamp from David
Strauss. If, however, they had ever ventured to interest us in their
faith instead of in their scientific investigations, we should have
felt that they were overstepping their limits in a most irritating
fashion. Yet Strauss does this when he discusses his faith. Nobody
wants to know anything about it, save, perhaps, a few bigoted
opponents of the Straussian doctrines, who, suspecting, as they do, a
substratum of satanic principles beneath these doctrines, hope that he
may compromise his learned utterances by revealing the nature of those
principles. These clumsy creatures may, perhaps, have found what they
sought in the last book; but we, who had no occasion to suspect a
satanic substratum, discovered nothing of the sort, and would have
felt rather pleased than not had we been able to discern even a dash
of the diabolical in any part of the volume. But surely no evil spirit
could speak as Strauss speaks of his new faith. In fact, spirit in
general seems to be altogether foreign to the book-- more particularly
the spirit of genius. Only those whom Strauss designates as his "We,"
speak as he does, and then, when they expatiate upon their faith to
us, they bore us even more than when they relate their dreams; be they
"scholars, artists, military men, civil employes, merchants, or landed