“Oh, countess, it is going to strike like a thunderbolt, a bolt which enlightens and kills. Ever since Moses dragged him out of Sinai’s thunder-cloud and put him on the throne of grace in the innermost sanctuary of the temple, ever since then he has sat secure, the old Jehovah; but now men shall see what he is: Imagination, emptiness, exhalation, the stillborn child of our own brain. He shall sink into nothingness,” said the old man, and laid his wrinkled hand on the pile of manuscript. “It stands here; and when people read this, they will have to believe. They will rise up and acknowledge their own stupidity; they will use crosses for kindling-wood, churches for storehouses, and clergymen will plough the earth.”
“Oh, Uncle Eberhard,” says the countess, with a slight shudder, “are you such a dreadful person? Do such dreadful things stand there?”
“Dreadful!” repeated the old man, “it is only the truth. But we are like little boys who hide their faces in a woman’s skirt as soon as they meet a stranger: we have accustomed ourselves to hide from the truth, from the eternal stranger. But now he shall come and dwell among us, now he shall be known by all.”
“By all?”
“Not only by philosophers, but by everybody; do you understand, countess, by everybody.”
“And so Jehovah shall die?”
“He and all angels, all saints, all devils, all lies.”
“Who shall then rule the world?”
“Do you believe that any one has ruled it before? Do you believe in that Providence which looks after sparrows and the hair of your head? No one has ruled it, no one shall rule it.”
“But we, we people, what will we become—”