=Religious and Scientific Intuition.=--The pupil said: "The everlasting strife between Faith and Knowledge would have been stifled at the outset if some sharp wit had discovered in time that the problem is wrongly stated, for the two ideas form no real antithesis. What I know, that I believe; consequently faith presupposes knowledge, consequently knowledge is subsumed under faith. But the word 'belief' has received other significations. In religion it means reception or absorption. Science recognises the fact of intuition or rapid inference, _i.e._ the faculty of reaching certainty without sufficient reason and without a complete chain of proof. That is scientific belief, and is in complete analogy with religious belief. When a man arrives at the knowledge of God and of His laws by way of intuition, when he then tests this knowledge by observing his experiences and finds it confirmed, then the final outcome of his investigation is Belief. Belief is complete objective certainty, but on a higher plane, so that all scientific chatter that Knowledge is higher than Belief is mere nonsense. By 'knowledge' in this case one understands for the most part information about stones, plants, and animals, and historical facts such as the year in which a certain book was published, when Goethe was in Strasburg, whether Rebecca Ost's real name was Popoffsky or Johanna Hagelstrom, or whether an Apostle-mug is genuine or imitation. The antithesis 'Faith _or_ Knowledge' is the stupidest dispute about words which ever took place, and a disgrace to humanity." =The Freed Thinker.=--The teacher said: "In order to think rightly and in accordance with law, I must free my reason from fetters of rustic intelligence, from interests, passions, conventional considerations. One must go into deep solitude, and not be afraid of remaining alone, deserted by all. Above all, one must not belong to any party which regulates, inspects, and degrades. In order to be able to dare to give up the weak and hampering support of men, one must be able thoroughly to rely upon God. In order to do that one must keep one's conscience as clean as possible, must hate evil, strive after righteousness and goodness, bear everything except humiliation, exercise mercifulness, and take trials as such and not as persecutions. "The electric clock has contact and connection with a correctly-timed chronometer. And so my reason cannot think logically till I have opened connection with the Logos, and no longer discharge contrary currents of sterile denial and doubt. Only in life with God is there freedom of thought, freedom from impure impulses, selfish and ambitious interests, freedom from the wish to stand well with the crowd. That is the _freed_ thinker in contrast to the 'free-thinker,' who has left the rails and lost connection with the overhead wire; he will come to grief at the next street-corner, and is of no more use as a vehicle of traffic."