Page:Dawn of the Day.pdf/30

xxvi in Luther, that other great pessimist who, with all his Lutheran boldness, urged it home to his friends: "Ifwe could conceive by force of reason how it is possible that God, who shows so much wrath and malice, can, at the same time, be merciful and just, should we then stand in need of faith?” Nothing has ever impressed the German mind more deeply, nothing has “tempted" it more, than that most dangerous conclusion of all, which, in the opinion of every true Roman, is an insult to the intellect: credo quia absurdum est; with this conclusion the German logic makes its first appearance in the history of the Christian dogma ; but even in our days, after a lapse of one thousand years, we modern Germans, late Germans in every respect, surmise some truth, sone possibility of truth, at the bottom of that famous, truly dialectic principle, by means of which Hegel secured to the German intellect the victory over Europe—"Contradiction moves the world; all things contradict themselves." We are true pessimists, even in respect of logies.

The logical valuations, however, are not the lowest and deepest to which our bold suspicion descends: the faith in reason, which balances the value of these judgments, is, as faith, a moral phenomenon. Should German pessimism yet have to take its final step? Should it once more have to draw up in a terrible