And what an amount of _ignorance of human nature_ underlies these principles! It is the same complete misconception that has always characterized liberalism, and which it has also manifested in economical matters. There, too, it demanded boundless freedom for all economic sources, ignoring man’s disordered inclinations that will work disorder and destruction if not restrained by laws. In a similar manner they dream that man, if left to the unrestrained influence of his personality, will soar without fail to the heights of the pure truth. They know no longer the maxim once engraved by the wisdom of the ancient world upon Delphi’s sanctuary: “Know thyself”! They no longer know the beguiling and benumbing influence exerted upon reason by inclination, how it fetters the mind. _Amor premit oculos_, says Quintilian. The thing we like, we desire to establish as true; favourable arguments are decisive, counter arguments are ignored or belittled, inclinations guide the observation, determine the books and sources drawn from. If we meet with something unsympathetic, something that interferes with the liberties we have grown fond of, it takes a rare degree of unselfishness to love the painful truth more than one’s self. It is easy to leave cool reason in control in mathematical speculations: they seldom affect the heart; quite different, however, in questions of philosophy and religion that often have vexatious consequences. We have to concede that _D. F. Strauss_ was right when he wrote: “He who writes about the Rulers of Nineveh or the Pharaohs of Egypt, may pursue a purely historical interest: but Christianity is a power so alive, and the question of what occurred at its origin is involved in such vast consequences for the immediate present, that the inquirer would have to be dull-witted to be interested only in a purely historical way in the solution of these questions.” But we must also regret that this personal interest has misled him, for one, into pernicious ways.