“In truth there can be no question of making distinction between transitory and permanent, but only of transposing the original constitutive thought of that _Weltanschauung_ into terms familiar to us. How would the Will of Jesus—apprehended in its immediateness, in its definiteness and in its whole [pg 049] compass—how would it vitalise our thought material and construct from it a _Weltanschauung_ of so moral and so mighty a sort that it could be counted the modern equivalent of that which he created in terms of the late-Jewish metaphysics and eschatology? “If one tries, as has been done hitherto almost invariably, to reconcile Jesus’ _Weltanschauung_ with ours any way it will go—which can be accomplished only by paring away all that is characteristic—this procedure strikes also at the will which is manifested in these conceptions. “It loses its originality and is no longer able to exert an elemental influence upon us. Hence it is that the Jesus of modern theology is so extraordinarily lifeless. Left in his eschatological world he is greater and, for all the strangeness, he affects us more elementally, more mightily than the modern Jesus. “Jesus’ deed consists in the fact that his original and profound moral nature took possession of the late-Jewish eschatology and so gives expression, in the thought material of the age, to the hope and the will which are intent upon the ethical consummation of the world. All attempts to avert one’s vision from this _Weltanschauung_ as a whole and to make Jesus’ significance for us to consist in [pg 050] his revelation of the “fatherhood of God,” the “brotherhood of man,” and so forth, must therefore of necessity lead to a narrow and peculiarly insipid conception of his religion. In reality he is an authority for us, not in the sphere of knowledge, but only in the matter of the will. His destined rôle can only consist in this, that he as a mighty spirit quickens the motives of willing and hoping which we and our fellowmen bear within us and brings them to such a height of intensity and clarity as we could not have attained if we were left to ourselves and did not stand under the impression of his personality, and that he thus conforms our _Weltanschauung_ to his own in its very nature, in spite of all the diversity of thought material, and awakens in it the energies which are active in his. “The last and deepest knowledge of things comes from the will. Hence the movement of thought which strives to frame the final synthesis of observations and knowledge in order to construct a _Weltanschauung_ is determined in its direction by the will, which constitutes the primary and the inexplicable ultimate essence of the persons and ages in question.