Quite a new mystical language is introduced, a language of which the synoptics had not the least idea ("world," "truth," "life," "light," "darkness," etc.). If Jesus had ever spoken in this style, which has nothing of Hebrew, nothing Jewish, nothing Talmudic in it, how, if I may thus express myself, is it that but a single one of his hearers should have so well kept the secret? [Footnote 1: The verses, chap. xx. 30, 31, evidently form the original conclusion.] [Footnote 2: Chap. vi. 2, 22, vii. 22.] [Footnote 3: For example, that which concerns the announcement of the betrayal by Judas.] [Footnote 4: See, for example, chaps. ii. 25, iii. 32, 33, and the long disputes of chapters vii., viii., and ix.] [Footnote 5: We feel often that the author seeks pretexts for introducing certain discourses (chaps. iii., v., viii., xiii., and following).] [Footnote 6: For example, chap. xvii.] [Footnote 7: Besides the synoptics, the Acts, the Epistles of St. Paul, and the Apocalypse, confirm it.] [Footnote 8: John iii. 3, 5.] Literary history offers, besides, another example, which presents the greatest analogy with the historic phenomenon we have just described, and serves to explain it. Socrates, who, like Jesus, never wrote, is known to us by two of his disciples, Xenophon and Plato, the first corresponding to the synoptics in his clear, transparent, impersonal compilation; the second recalling the author of the fourth Gospel, by his vigorous individuality. In order to describe the Socratic teaching, should we follow the "dialogues" of Plato, or the "discourses" of Xenophon? Doubt, in this respect, is not possible; every one chooses the "discourses," and not the "dialogues." Does Plato, however, teach us nothing about Socrates? Would it be good criticism, in writing the biography of the latter, to neglect the "dialogues"? Who would venture to maintain this? The analogy, moreover, is not complete, and the difference is in favor of the fourth Gospel. The author of this Gospel is, in fact, the better biographer; as if Plato, who, whilst attributing to his master fictitious discourses, had known important matters about his life, which Xenophon ignored entirely.