...Distinguished German philosophers who may accidentally cast a glance over these pages will superciliously shrug their shoulders at the meagreness and incompleteness of all that which I here offer. But they will be kind enough to bear in mind that the little which I say is expressed clearly and intelligibly, whereas their own works, although very profound, unfathomably profound--very deep, stupendously deep--are in the same degree unintelligible. Of what benefit to the people is the grain locked away in the granaries to which they have no key? The masses are famishing for knowledge, and will thank me for the portion of intellectual bread, small though it be, which I honestly share with them. I believe it is not lack of ability that holds back the majority of German scholars from discussing religion and philosophy in proper language. I believe it is a fear of the results of their own studies, which they dare not communicate to the masses. I do not share this fear, for I am not a learned scholar; I, myself, am of the people. I am not one of the seven hundred wise men of Germany. I stand with the great masses at the portals of their wisdom. And if a truth slips through, and if this truth falls in my way, then I write it with pretty letters on paper, and give it to the compositor, who sets it in leaden type and gives it to the printer; the latter prints it, and then it belongs to the whole world. The religion of Germany is Christianity. Therefore I shall have to relate what Christianity is, how it became Roman Catholicism, how out of this sprang Protestantism, and out of the latter German philosophy. Inasmuch as I am about to speak of religion, I beg beforehand of all pious souls not to be uneasy. Fear naught, ye pious ones! No profane witticisms shall offend your ears. It is true that these are yet necessary in Germany, where, at this juncture, it is important to neutralise ecclesiastical power. For there we are now in the same situation that you in France were before the Revolution, when Christianity was yet in the closest union with the old _régime_. The latter could not be overthrown so long as the former maintained its sway over the masses. Voltaire's keen ridicule was needed ere Samson could let his axe descend. But neither the ridicule nor the axe proved anything; they only effected something. Voltaire could only wound the body of Christianity. All his jests gathered from the annals of the Church, all his witticisms against the doctrines and public worship of the Church, against the Bible, this holiest book of humanity, against the Virgin Mary, that loveliest flower of poesy, the whole encylclopædia of philosophical shafts which he launched against the clergy and priesthood, wounded only the outward, mortal body of Christianity, not its inner being, not its profound spirit, nor its eternal soul. For Christianity is an idea, and as such is indestructible and immortal, like every idea. But what is this idea?