The sovereign power which proclaims a law has the same power to abolish it. But the duty of the subordinate consists in the praise, in the consequential interpretation and the strict observance of the dictates of the higher will. 67 The Pharisee in the parable fulfilled all that religion demanded of him: kept his fasts, paid his tithes, etc. Had he a right to be pleased with his own piety, and to despise the erring publican? Everybody thought so, including the Pharisee himself. _The judgment of Christ came as the greatest surprise to him_. He had a clear conscience. He did not merely pretend before others to be righteous, he himself believed in his own righteousness. And suddenly he turns out guilty, awfully guilty. But if the conscience of a righteous man does not help him to distinguish between good and evil, how is he to avoid sin? What does Kant's moral law mean, that law which was as consoling as the starry sky? Kant lived his life in profound peace of soul, he met his death quietly, in the consciousness of his own purity. But if Christ came again, he might condemn the serene philosopher for his very serenity. For the Pharisee, we repeat, was righteous, if purity of intentions, together with a firm readiness to fulfil everything which appears, to him in the light of duty, be righteousness in a man. 68 We jeer and laugh at a man not because he is ridiculous, but because _we_ want to have a laugh out of him. In the same way we are indignant, not because this or the other act is revolting to us, but because we want to let off our steam. But it does not follow from this that we ought always to be calm and smooth. Woe to him who would try to realise the ideal of justice on earth. 69 We think with peculiar intensity during the hard moments of our life--we write when we have nothing else to do. So that a writer can only communicate something of importance in reproducing the past. When we are driven to think, we have unfortunately no mind to write, which accounts for the fact that books are never more than a feeble echo of what a man has gone through. 70