(which certainly were practised in the early days of Christianity, as the religion of a scholarly period steeped in philosophy) have led to that superstition of the _sensus allegoricus,_ but yet more the habits of the philosophers (especially the half-natures, the poetical philosophers and the philosophising artists), to treat all the sensations which they discovered in _themselves_ as the fundamental nature of man in general, and hence to allow their own religious feelings an important influence in the building up of their systems. As philosophers frequently philosophised under the custom of religious habits, or at least under the anciently inherited power of that "metaphysical need," they developed doctrinal opinions which really bore a great resemblance to the Jewish or Christian or Indian religious views,--a resemblance, namely, such as children usually bear to their mothers, only that in this case the fathers were not clear about that motherhood, as happens sometimes,--but in their innocence romanced about a family likeness between all religion and science. In reality, between religions and real science there exists neither relationship nor friendship, nor even enmity; they live on different planets. Every philosophy which shows a religious comet's tail shining in the darkness of its last prospects makes all the science it contains suspicious; all this is presumably also religion, even though in the guise of science. Moreover, if all nations were to agree about certain religious matters, for instance the existence of a God (which, it may be remarked, is not the case with regard to this point), this would only be an argument _against_ those affirmed matters, for instance the existence of a God; the _consensus gentium_ and _hominum_ in general can only take place in case of a huge folly. On the other hand, there is no _consensus omnium sapientium,_ with regard to any single thing, with that exception mentioned in Goethe's lines: "Alle die Weisesten aller der Zeiten Lächeln und winken und stimmen mit ein: Thöricht, auf Bess'rung der Thoren zu harren! Kinder der Klugheit, o habet die Narren Eben zum Narren auch, wie sich's gehört!"[2] Spoken without verse and rhyme and applied to our case, the _consensus sapientium_ consists in this: that the _consensus gentium_ counts as a folly. 111.