Page:On the Fourfold Root, and On the Will in Nature.djvu/175

 I have made an end of both, since, for them, both continue to exist, like deceased sovereigns who for political reasons are occasionally allowed to continue reigning for a few days after their death. These worthies simply pursue their tactics of old against my merciless demolition of those two antiquated fictions : silence, silence ; and so they glide past noiselessly, feigning ignorance, to make the public believe that I and the like of me are not worth listening to. Well, to be sure, their philosophical calling comes to them from the ministry, while mine only comes from Nature. True, we may at last perhaps discover that these heroes act upon the same principle as that idealistic bird, the ostrich, which imagines that by closing its eyes it does away with the huntsman. Ah well! we must bide our time ; if the public can only be brought to take up meantime with the barren twaddle, the unbearably tiresome repetitions, the arbitrary constructions of the Absolute, and the infant-school morality of these gentlemen—say, till I am dead and they can trim up my works as they like—we shall then see.

Morgen habe denn das Rechte Seine Freunde wohlgesinnet, Wenn nur heute noch das Scblechte Vollen Platz und Gunst gewinnet.
 * , West-Oestlicher Divan.

But do these gentlemen know what time of day it is? A long predicted epoch has set in ; the church is beginning to totter, nay it totters already to such a degree, that it is doubtful whether it will ever be able to recover its centre of gravity ; for faith is lost. The light of revelation, like other lights, requires a certain amount of darkness as an indispensable condition. The number of those who have been unfitted for belief by a certain degree and extent of knowledge, is already very large. Of this we have evident signs in the general diffusion of that shallow Rationalism which