“If the greatest of the ancient Greek natural scientists, physicians, and geographers should rise again they would be amazed at the progress made in their sciences; like beginners they would sit at the feet of teachers of our day, they would lack the most elementary ideas; they would first have to learn what every grammar-school boy knows, and much of what they once considered achievements would be disclosed to them as deception or mere hypothesis. On the other hand a _Plato_, an _Aristotle_, a _Zeno_ or _Epicurus_, might readily take part in our discussions about God and the soul, about virtue and immortality. And they could safely use their old weapons, the keenness of which has suffered but little from the rust of time and the attacks of opponents. They would be astonished at the little progress made, so that now, after two thousand years, the same answers are given to the same questions.” (Charakter und Weltanschauung, 1905, p. 24). A science which must make such a confession has no reason to reject with haughty self-confidence the intimations of a divine revelation. The _science of history_ again has not the duty of praising everything that has happened within the Catholic Church or else to repress it; no, only the truth is desired. But it must not start out with the assumption that God’s influence in the world, a divine revelation, miracles, and a supernatural guidance of the Church, are impossible; nor must it attempt to construe history according to that assumption. Hence it must not undertake to explain the religion of the Jewish nation, or the origin of Christianity, by unconditionally ignoring everything supernatural, and attempting to eliminate it by prejudiced research and by means of natural factors, whether they be called Babylonic myths or Greek philosophy or anything else; it must not impugn the credibility of the Gospel, claiming that reports of miracles must be false; it must not write the history of the Church and deliberately ignore its supernatural character, as if it were the violent struggle of a federation of priests for universal rule. Assured results undoubtedly are arrived at in history less frequently than in other sciences; it offers full play to suppositions, hypotheses, constructive fancy, the influence of ideas inculcated by education and personal views of the world, especially when summing up facts. Hence here more than anywhere else must moral character and unselfish love of the truth stand higher than the desire for freedom.