VII.

As a matter of fact, our Philistine captain is brave, even audacious,
in words; particularly when he hopes by such bravery to delight his
noble colleagues--the "We," as he calls them. So the asceticism and
self-denial of the ancient anchorite and saint was merely a form of
Katzenjammer? Jesus may be described as an enthusiast who nowadays
would scarcely have escaped the madhouse, and the story of the
Resurrection may be termed a "world-wide deception." For once we will
allow these views to pass without raising any objection, seeing that
they may help us to gauge the amount of courage which our "classical
Philistine" Strauss is capable of. Let us first hear his confession:
"It is certainly an unpleasant and a thankless task to tell the world
those truths which it is least desirous of hearing. It prefers, in
fact, to manage its affairs on a profuse scale, receiving and spending
after the magnificent fashion of the great, as long as there is
anything left; should any person, however, add up the various items of
its liabilities, and anxiously call its attention to the sum-total, he
is certain to be regarded as an importunate meddler. And yet this has
always been the bent of my moral and intellectual nature." A moral and
intellectual nature of this sort might possibly be regarded as
courageous; but what still remains to be proved is, whether this
courage is natural and inborn, or whether it is not rather acquired
and artificial. Perhaps Strauss only accustomed himself by degrees to
the rôle of an importunate meddler, until he gradually acquired the
courage of his calling. Innate cowardice, which is the Philistine's
birthright, would not be incompatible with this mode of development,
and it is precisely this cowardice which is perceptible in the want of
logic of those sentences of Strauss's which it needed courage to
pronounce. They sound like thunder, but they do not clear the air. No