In addition he wrote Latin
treatises which were discovered a short time ago; I have not read them,
but I have no doubt that his profoundest convictions were expressed in
the German tongue. The Latin language has at all times fettered the
spirit far more successfully than the still untainted and living German.
The religious genius of a single individual had created Christianity.
But from the very beginning it was misunderstood; the salvation of the
world was linked to the person of a man who had aspired to be an example
to the whole race. The term, "Son of God," was understood in the sense
of the hero-cult of antiquity; possibly the Jewish faith in a Messiah,
the politico-national hope of the Children of Israel, was a good deal to
blame for this. A historical event was translated into metaphysic. The
only truly religious man was made the centre of a new mythology and
naively worshipped. It may sound like a paradox, but it is a fact that
the whole of the first millenary was inwardly irreligious; it concealed
its want of metaphysical intuition behind the falsification of
historical events.
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