It was the same with regard to the State. The question which was put to him in the Jerusalem days had for him no practical importance. As he replied to the Pharisees’ question, whether one should give tribute to [pg 120] Cæsar, he had no thought of defining his attitude towards the State or determining that of his followers. How could any one be concerned at all about such things! The State was simply earthly, therefore ungodly, dominination [domination]. Its duration extended, therefore, only to the dawn of God’s dominion. As this was near at hand, what need had one to decide if one would be tributary to the world-power or no? One might as well submit to it, its end was in fact near. Give to Cæsar what is Cæsar’s and to God what is God’s (Mk 12:17)—this word is uttered with a sovereign irony against the Pharisees, who understood so little the signs of the time that this still appeared to them a question of importance. They are just as foolish in the matter of the Kingdom of God as the Sadducees with their catch-question to which husband the seven times married wife should belong at the resurrection; for they, too, leave one thing out of account—the power of God (Mk 12:24). 7. The Modern Element in Jesus’ Eschatology. “Let it be the maxim in every scientific investigation for one to pursue undisturbed the due course of it with all possible exactitude [pg 121] and frankness, not considering what it may collide with outside of its own field, but following it out, so far as one can, truly and completely for itself alone. Frequent observation has convinced me that when one has brought this task to an end, that which in the midst of it appeared to me for the time being very questionable with respect to other teaching outside, if only I closed my eyes to this questionableness and attended merely to my task till it was finished, finally in unexpected wise proved to be in perfect agreement with those very teachings,—though the truth had presented itself without the least reference to those teachings, without partiality and prejudice for them.”(Footnote. _Kritik der praktischen Vernunft. _ Ed. Reclam, p. 129.)