“In Persia,” we are told by Count Gobineau, in a recently published book of great merit, “the _Soufys,_ that is to say the savants and philosophers, reject all dogmatic religion and believe in the reunion of the soul with God in trances only. When this union is complete, the soul is transformed and becomes itself a participant in the nature of the uncreated essence, and Man is God.” Human folly is always a disease produced by human pride. France, also, has produced a few gods of that kind; I do not mean to mention them, however, as belonging to the myths of the Rhine, which have special reference to Germany only. But among the Germans, also, there is a school of philosophers who without going as far as the Persians go, are utterly incredulous, and disregarding trances and immortal souls alike, have finally denied the existence of God altogether and made themselves gods. This shows how anxious savants as well as ignorant men are, in that beautiful country, to people the earth with deities of every kind! It is the history of one of these earth-born gods which I propose to give here, before I close this long chapter. Alas! he is dead now, and that is a great pity; but he did live once; on that essential point there is no lack of evidence. I could even, {394}like the Thuringian peasants when speaking of Frederick Barbarossa, say: “I have seen him!” In the year 1800 there was born in Düsseldorf, in Prussia, a child in a Jewish family recently converted to Christianity. This child might well have been looked upon as of supernatural origin, so entirely different was it, from its earliest days, from all that had ever been seen before. Martin Luther no doubt, if the child had been one of his own, would have pronounced him to be a Killecroff. He was not only noisy and troublesome, but he was also a pedant; he snubbed professors and listened to the advice of very young children. When his parents scolded him, he only laughed at them; when a grave event disturbed a neighbor’s household, he laughed; when the French took his native city, he laughed; in fine he was always laughing. However, as he grew up, he gorged himself with logic, with mathematics, with Greek and Latin and Hebrew and all kinds of good things besides. He became even a philosopher before he was of age, but his philosophy consisted mainly in a sarcastic laugh. When they spoke to him of the position he might occupy in Düsseldorf, and of the wealth he might acquire, his only answer was a grimace. A rabbi spread out before him heaps of gold, {395}promising to give him that and more, if he would be his slave only for a few years; he refused to listen to him. As he was a vain man, the demon of Fame endeavored to tempt him, but he laughed in his face. At last the devil, a real devil, I am sure (his name was George William Frederick Schlegel) whispered into his ear: “Would you like to be a god?”