96

'In hoc signo vinces'⁴⁹.  However much progress Europe may have made in other respects, in religious matters it has not yet attained to the free-minded naivety of the ancient Brahmins: a sign that there was more thinking, and that more pleasure in thinking was customarily inherited, four thousand years ago in India than is the case with us today. For those Brahmins believed, firstly that the priests were more powerful than the gods, and secondly that the power of the priests resided in the observances: which is why their poets never wearied of celebrating the observances (prayers, ceremonies, sacrifices, hymns, verses) as the real givers of all good things. However much poetising and superstition may have crept in here between the lines, these propositions are true! A step further, and one threw the gods aside  which is what Europe will also have to do one day! Another step further, and one no longer had need of the priests and mediators either, and the teacher of the religion of self-redemption, the Buddha⁵⁰, appeared:  how distant Europe still is from this level of culture! When, finally, all the observances and customs upon which the power of the gods and Of the priests and redeemers depends will have been abolished, when, that is to say, morality in the old sense will have died, then there will come  well, what will come then? But let us not speculate idly: let us first of all see to it that Europe overtakes what was done several thousands of years ago in India, among the nation of thinkers, in accordance with the commandments of reason! There are today among the various nations of Europe perhaps ten to twenty million people who no longer 'believe in God'  is it too much to ask that they should give a sign to one another? Once they have thus come to know one another, they will also have made themselves known to others  they will at once constitute a power in Europe and, happily, a power between the nations! Between the classes! Between rich and poor! Between rulers and subjects! Between the most unpeaceable and the most peaceable, peace-bringing people!