Everywhere we have imaginary, artificial existence, proclaimed to be real, and accepted as such. It is not at all necessary to confine ourselves to religion, where it is only too easy to discover Putois, whose huge shadow darkens theology in its entirety. Let us think of the illusions in politics, of the part played by titles in social life. Or let us remember the place occupied by imaginary existences in our own emotional life. Suppose that we could transfer to canvas the image of the beloved one which forms itself in the imagination of the lover at the moment when he sees all her supposed perfections, and afterwards place alongside of it the image of her which remains when love has evaporated and he has stripped her, one by one, of all the qualities which enchanted him--the description of the first picture would not seem less unreal than the description of Putois. The reader who muses over the little story will feel how many ideas it sets in motion, and will, like the inhabitants of Saint-Omer, find traces of Putois everywhere. The fault in most historical descriptions is that the pictures of the past are distorted in accordance with the significance which they have acquired for a later age. Gobineau makes Michael Angelo talk of Raphael as people did in the nineteenth century when they named them together. Wilde makes John the Baptist speak as he does in the Gospels, which were written, with an aim which led to distortion, long after his death. Wherever in modern poetry or art the figure of Jesus is treated, no matter in what spirit--let it be by Paul Heyse, by Sadakichi Hartmann the Japanese, or Edward Söderberg the Dane--He is the principal figure of His day, occupying the thoughts of all. France, in his story, _Judæas Procurator_, has, in an extremely clever manner, indicated the place occupied by Jesus in the consciousness of a contemporary Roman. To any one who can read, the fact that the life and death of Jesus interested only a little band of humble people in Jerusalem, is sufficiently established by the circumstance that Josephus, who knows everything that happens in the Palestine of his day, does not so much as name Him. The man who argues that such an event as the Crucifixion must have made some impression forgets what a common and unheeded incident a crucifixion was in troublous times. During the Jewish war of the year 70, in the course of which 13.000 Jews were killed at Skythopolis, 50.000 in Alexandria, 40,000 at Jotapata--1,100,000 in all--Titus crucified on an average 500 Jews every day. When, impelled by hunger, they crept under the walls of Jerusalem, they were captured, tortured, and crucified. At last there was no more wood for crosses left in Palestine.