experiment made is to see whether _mankind can change itself_ from a _moral_ into a _wise_ mankind. The sun of a new gospel throws its rays upon the highest point in the soul of each single individual, then the mists gather thicker than ever, and the brightest light and the dreariest shadow lie side by side. Everything is necessity--so says the new knowledge, and this knowledge itself is necessity. Everything is innocence, and knowledge is the road to insight into this innocence. Are pleasure, egoism, vanity _necessary_ for the production of the moral phenomena and their highest result, the sense for truth and justice in knowledge; were error and the confusion of the imagination the only means through which mankind could raise itself gradually to this degree of self-enlightenment and self-liberation--who would dare to undervalue these means? Who would dare to be sad if he perceived the goal to which those roads led? Everything in the domain of morality has evolved, is changeable, unstable, everything is dissolved, it is true; but _everything is also streaming towards one goal._ Even if the inherited habit of erroneous valuation, love and hatred, continue to reign in us, yet under the influence of growing knowledge it will become weaker; a new habit, that of comprehension, of not loving, not hating, of overlooking, is gradually implanting itself in us upon the same ground, and in thousands of years will perhaps be powerful enough to give humanity the strength to produce wise, innocent (consciously innocent) men, as it now produces unwise, guilt-conscious men,--_that is the necessary preliminary step, not its opposite._ [Footnote 1: Dr. Paul Rée.--J.M.K.] [Footnote 2: Dr. Paul Rée.--J.M.K.] [Footnote 3: This is the untranslatable word _Schadenfreude,_ which means joy at the misfortune of others.--J.M.K.] THIRD DIVISION. THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. 108.