Each truly swore that he'd received the ring
Directly from his father's hand, and swore —
Not the less true that also long before
He had by him been solemnly assured
That he one day the ring's prerogative
Should certainly enjoy. And each declared
The father ne'er could have been false to him.
Ere such a loving father he'd suspect,

He'd sooner charge his brothers with foul play,
Though hitherto of them the very best

He always had been ready to believe;

And now he wished to find the traitors out,
That he might on them be avenged.

And now

The judge? I long to hear what thou wilt make
The judge reply. Relate!

The judge spoke thus:-
"If you the father cannot soon produce,
Then I dismiss you from my judgment-seat.
Think you that to solve riddles I sit here?
Or wait you till the right ring opes its mouth?
Yet stay! I hear the right ring doth possess
The magic power of making one beloved,
To God and man well pleasing. That alone
Must now decide. For surely the false rings
Will fail in that. Now whom love two of you

The most? Make haste and speak! Why are you mute?
Is't only inward that the rings do work,

Not outward? Does each one love himself the most?

Deceived deceivers are you then all three!

And of your rings all three are not the true.
Presumably the true ring being lost,
The father to conceal or to repair
The loss had three rings made for one."

And thereupon the judge went on to say:
"If you'll, instead of sentence, take advice,
This is my counsel: Let the matter rest
Just as it lies. If each of you has had

A ring presented by his father, then

Let each believe his own the genuine ring.

'Tis possible the father did not wish

To suffer any longer in his house

The one ring's tyranny! And certainly,

Grand! grand!

As he all three did love, and all alike,
He would not willingly oppress the two
To favor one. Well, then! Let each one strive
To imitate that love, so pure and free
From prejudice! Let each one vie with each
In showing forth the virtue of the stone
That's in his ring! Let him assist its might
With gentleness, forbearance, love of peace,
And with sincere submission to his God!
And if the virtues of the stones remain,

And in your children's children prove their power,
After a thousand years have passed

Let them appear again before this seat.

A wiser man than I will then sit here

And speak. Depart!" Thus said the modest judge.

I

ON LOVE OF TRUTH

From Eine Duplik'

KNOW not whether it be a duty to offer up fortune and life to the truth: certainly the courage and resolution necessary to such a sacrifice are not gifts which we can bestow upon ourselves. But I know it is a duty, if one undertake to teach the truth, to teach the whole of it or none at all, to teach it clearly and roundly, without enigmas or reserves, and with perfect confidence in its efficacy and utility; and the gifts required for such a decision are in our power. Whoever will not acquire these, or when acquired will not use them, shows that he has a very poor opinion of the human intellect; and he deserves to lose the confidence of his hearers, who, while he frees them from some gross errors, yet withholds the entire truth, and thinks to satisfy them by a compromise with falsehood. For the greater the error, the shorter and straighter the way to the truth. On the other hand, subtle error can prevent our recognition of its nature, and forever blind us to the truth.

The man who is faithless to Truth in threatening dangers, may yet love her much; and Truth forgives him his infidelity for the sake of his love. But whosoever thinks of prostituting Truth under all sorts of masks and rouge, may indeed be her pimp, but he has never been her lover.

Not the truth of which any one is, or supposes himself to be, possessed, but the upright endeavor he has made to arrive at truth, makes the worth of the man. For not by the possession but by the pursuit of truth are his powers expanded, wherein alone his ever-growing perfection consists. Possession makes us easy, indolent, proud.

If God held all truth shut in his right hand, and in his left nothing but the ever-restless search after truth, although with the condition of for ever and ever erring, and should say to me, "Choose! I should bow humbly to his left hand and say,

"Father, give! pure truth is for Thee alone!"

WHA

THE MEANING OF HERESY

is called a heretic has a very good side. It is a man who wishes to see with his own eyes. The only question is whether he has good eyes. In certain ages the name of heretic is the best title that a scholar can transmit to posterity; far better than that of sorcerer, magian, exorcist, for these serve to conceal many an impostor.

THE EDUCATION OF THE HUMAN RACE

HAT education is to the individual, revelation is to the whole human race.

WHA

2. Education is revelation which is given to the individual; revelation is education which has been and is still given to the human race.

3. Whether education, regarded from this point of view, can be of any use in pedagogics, I will not discuss here; but in theology it can surely be of very great use and remove many difficulties, if revelation can be conceived of as an education of the human race.

4. Education does not give to man anything which he could not acquire of himself, but only gives it to him more quickly and more easily. So too revelation does not give anything to the human race which human reason, if left to itself, would not attain; but it has given and still gives the most important of these things earlier.

5. As in education it is not a matter of indifference in what order the powers of the individual are developed, and as it cannot impart to him everything at once, so God in his revelation. must observe a certain order and due moderation.

6. If the first man were immediately provided with the conception of one God, it would be impossible for the conception thus communicated and not acquired to preserve its original purity. As soon as human reason left to itself began to act upon it, it would divide the one infinite into several finites and give to each a designation.

7. It was thus that polytheism and idolatry naturally arose. And who knows how many millions of years human reason might have wandered in these erring ways, although some individuals in all lands and at all times knew them to be erring ways, if it had not pleased God by a new impulse to give it a better direction?

8. But since God could not or would not reveal himself any longer to each single individual, he chose a single people for special education, the rudest and most uncivilized, in order to train it from the very beginning.

[Paragraphs 9 to 52 show how monotheism, or the doctrine of one God, was revealed to the Jews, and this moral education promoted by a system of temporal rewards and punishments, according as they obeyed or transgressed the commands of the Almighty. But when the Hebrew Bible, as an elementary hornbook, became gradually unsuited to the growing intellect of the children of Israel, their teachers the Rabbins resorted to mystical and allegorical interpretations, and forced new ideas into the text wholly foreign to their original meaning. This course of instruction warped the mind of the pupil, making him petty, crafty, captious, fond of subtleties and sophistries, and incapable of seeing things in their true light-in short, cabalistic and superstitious.]

53. It was therefore necessary for a better teacher to come and snatch the obsolete primer from the hands of the child. Christ came.

[In paragraphs 54-77, Lessing discusses the tenets of this new teacher and his disciples, the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, and the dogmas of the Trinity, of Original Sin, and of the Atonement; and arrives at the conclusion that "the development of real truths into truths of the reason is absolutely necessary if they are to be of any help to the human race."]

78. It is not true that speculations concerning these things have ever wrought mischief or been hurtful to civil society.

This reproach should be made, not to the speculations themselves, but to the folly and tyranny that would hinder these speculations and grudge to men the free exercise of their thoughts.

79. On the contrary, such speculations, however they may result in individual cases, are incontestably the fittest exercises of the human mind, so long as the human heart is at most only capable of loving virtue for the sake of its consequences in conferring eternal happiness.

80. For since this selfishness of the human heart exists, the desire to exercise the mind exclusively on that which concerns our physical necessities would tend rather to dull it than to sharpen it. The mind must in sooth be exercised on intellectual objects, if it is to attain its full illumination and produce that purity of heart which makes us capable of loving virtue for its own sake.

81.

Or shall the human race never attain this highest degree of enlightenment and purity? Never?

82. Never? Let me not be guilty of such blasphemy even in my thoughts, All-gracious One! Education has its purpose in the race not less than in the individual. What is educated, is educated for something.

83. The flattering prospects which are offered to the youth, the honor and prosperity which are pictured to him,- what are these but means of training him up to be a man who will be able to do his duty, even when these prospects of honor and prosperity fail!

84. This is the aim of human education, and may not divine education attain as much? What art succeeds in doing with the individual, shall not nature succeed in doing with the whole? Blasphemy! Blasphemy! [In other words, it is blasphemy to doubt this.]

85. No! it will come, it will surely come, the time of perfect development: when man, the more firmly he feels convinced of an ever better future, will have less need of borrowing from this future the motives of his actions; when he will do good because it is good, not because he expects arbitrary rewards, which were formerly designed merely to fix and strengthen his inconstant recognition of the inner and better rewards of virtue.

86. It will surely come, the time of a new, eternal gospel, which is promised us even in the elementary books of the New Covenant.