world that they might extend their sphere of vision; the Jews to this day pray with their faces turned towards Jerusalem. In the Israelites, monotheistic egoism excluded the free theoretic tendency. Solomon, it is true, surpassed “all the children of the East” in understanding and wisdom, and spoke (treated, agebat) moreover “of trees, from the cedar that is in Lebanon, even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall,” and also of “beasts and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes” (1 Kings iv. 30, 34). But it must be added that Solomon did not serve Jehovah with his whole heart; he did homage to strange gods and strange women; and thus he had the polytheistic sentiment and taste. The polytheistic sentiment, I repeat, is the foundation of science and art.
The significance which nature in general had for the Hebrews is one with their idea of its origin. The mode in which the genesis of a thing is explained is the candid expression of opinion, of sentiment respecting it. If it be thought meanly of, so also is its origin. Men used to suppose that insects, vermin, sprang from carrion, and other rubbish. It was not because they derived vermin from so uninviting a source, that they thought contemptuously of them; but, on the contrary, because they thought thus, because the nature of vermin appeared to them so vile, they imagined an origin corresponding to this nature, a vile origin. To the Jews Nature was a mere means towards achieving the end of egoism, a mere object of will. But the ideal, the idol of the egoistic will is that Will which has unlimited command, which requires no means in order to attain its end, to realize its object, which immediately by itself, i.e., by pure will, calls into existence whatever it pleases. It pains the egoist that the satisfaction of his wishes and need is only to be attained immediately, that for him there is a chasm between the wish and its realization, between the object in the imagination and the object in reality. Hence, in order to relieve this pain, to make himself free from the limits of reality, he supposes as the true, the highest being, one who brings forth an object by the mere I will. For this reason, Nature, the world, was to the Hebrews the product of a dictatorial word, of a categorical imperative, of a magic fiat.
To that which has no essential existence for me in theory, I assign no theoretic, no positive ground. By referring it to Will I only enforce its theoretic nullity. What we despise we do not honour with a glance: that which is observed has im-
