48 



DR. LUDWIG VOX GERDTELL^ ON 



Strong that horses and carts could be di^iven over it. But the 

 negroes thought it to be extravagant " brag." and laughed him 

 to scorn. They considered a " miracle " such as that to be 

 impossible, for it was altogether irreconcilable with the '•' un- 

 alterable Laws of Nature as known to them." 



In facts and occurrences such as these, facts which have been 

 declared impossible, there is no case of true miracle. Our 

 philosophic opponents really stand on the same ground as the 

 negroes. This statement is made neither as joke nor insult. 

 AVe desire only to help them to see their own position. The 

 fundamental difference between us and them is this : our 

 opponents think mediasvally and we think as moderns. Our 

 opponents subordinate the reliable and attested actuality of 

 early Christianity to a dogma of popular philosophy called 

 " the unalterable Laws of Xature as known to us." We, on the 

 contrary, subordinate our thought and philosophy to the 

 brilliantly proven facts of history. Our opponents have 

 respect, but lack the critical faculty for a current dogma. We, 

 on the other hand, approach this as we approach all dogma, 

 with a critical faculty devoid of respect. In reality it matters 

 little whether our opponents derive their dogma of the un- 

 alterability of the known laws of nature from the Catholicism 

 of the middle ages or from the philosophic enlightenment of the 

 twentieth century. Dogma remains dogma. And to play off 

 dogma against the united experience of the apostolic age is 

 nothing else but to think medirevally. The scientific instincts 

 of theological free thought are, in point of fact, mediaeval, even 

 though they may appropriate the set phrases of the modern 

 thinker. And the mediaeval mind represents something that 

 must eventually be outstripped by the modern mind. 



These two objections of our opponents represent the main 

 argument of the scientific superstition of modern culture. The 

 superstition is, indeed, only recognised as such by a few. The 

 modern world of culture, hypnotized by the phrases of an 

 enlightened age, languishes in a bondage of naturalistic dogma, 

 of which it is for the most part quite ignorant. We must 

 therefore penetrate more deeply into our subject. 



Our opponents really treat the " Laws of i^ature " as if they 

 were a mystic power, brooding over the individual occurrences 

 of Xature and determining the realisation of their changeless 

 course. They put this power in the place of the Godhead, and 

 see in it an object of almost divine dignity. Justly does such 

 a shrewd and learned observer of the modern world of culture 

 as the philosopher Eudolph Eucken say in his Geistigen 



