When God’s authority steps before scientists and earnestly demands faith, they will talk excitedly about their human dignity that does not permit them to believe; about reason being their court of last resort that must not know of submission; and if the Church, in the name of God, steps before them, they become abusive. Men who have scarcely outgrown their minority often feel it incumbent upon themselves to furnish humanity with new thought and to discard the old. _D. F. Strauss_, a young under-master of twenty-seven years, writes his “Life of Jesus, critically analyzed” (1835); he tells the Christian world that everything it has hitherto held sacred is a delusion and a snare; he feels the vocation to “replace the old, obsolete, supernatural, method of contemplating the history of Jesus with a new one,” which changes all divine deeds into myths. Hardly out of knickerbockers and kilts, they feel experienced enough to come forth with novel and unheard-of propositions on the highest problems. In business and office, as in public service, sober-mindedness and maturity are demanded; but to work out the ultimate questions of humanity, inexperience and lack of the deeper knowledge of life do not disqualify in our time. If _Schiller’s_ complaint of the Kantians of his time was that, “What they have scarcely learned to-day, they want to teach to-morrow,” what is to be said of those who teach even before they have learned? And what superficial thinking do we meet in the philosophy of the day! Lacking all solid training, they proceed to construct new systems, or at least fragments of them. As regards their competence, one is often tempted to quote the harsh words of a modern writer: “I believe _Schopenhauer_ would have formed a better opinion of the human intellect, had he paid less attention to authors and newspaper-writers, and more to the common sense evinced by men in their work and business” (_Paulsen_).