Otherwise, it is almost to be feared that modern men will pass on in
pursuit of their business without troubling themselves overmuch
concerning the new furniture of faith offered them by the apostle:
just as they have done heretofore, without the doctrine of the
rationality of the All. The whole of modern biological and historical
research has nothing to do with the Straussian belief in the All, and
the fact that the modern Philistine does not require the belief is
proved by the description of his life given by Strauss in the
chapter,"What is our Rule of Life?" He is therefore quite right in
doubting whether the coach to which his esteemed readers have been
obliged to trust themselves "with him, fulfils every requirement." It
certainly does not; for the modern man makes more rapid progress when
he does not take his place in the Straussian coach, or rather, he got
ahead much more quickly long before the Straussian coach ever existed.
Now, if it be true that the famous "minority" which is "not to be
overlooked," and of which, and in whose name, Strauss speaks,
"attaches great importance to consistency," it must be just as
dissatisfied with Strauss the Coachbuilder as we are with Strauss the
Logician.

Let us, however, drop the question of the logician. Perhaps, from the
artistic point of view, the book really is an example of a.
well-conceived plan, and does, after all, answer to the requirements
of the laws of beauty, despite the fact that it fails to meet with the
demands of a well-conducted argument. And now, having shown that he is
neither a scientist nor a strictly correct and systematic scholar, for
the first time we approach the question: Is Strauss a capable writer?
Perhaps the task he set himself was not so much to scare people away
from the old faith as to captivate them by a picturesque and graceful
description of what life would be with the new. If he regarded