criminal; Caesar, Narses, Napoleon, the greatest of the criminals, were epileptics.
The founder of a religion is the man who has lived without God and yet has struggled towards the greatest faith. How is it possible for a bad man to transform himself? As Kant, although he was compelled to admit the fact, asked in his " Philosophy of Religion," how can an evil tree bring forth good fruit? The inconceivable mystery of the transformation into a good man of one who has lived evilly all the days and years of his life has actually realised itself in the case of some six or seven historical personages. These have been the founders of religions.
Other men of genius are good from their birth; the religious founder acquires goodness. The old existence ceases utterly and is replaced by the new. The greater the man, the more must perish in him at the regeneration. I am inclined to think that Socrates, alone amongst the Greeks, approached closely to the founders of religion; perhaps he made the decisive struggle with evil in the twenty four hours during which he stood alone at Potidæa.
The founder of a religion is the man for whom no problem has been solved from his birth. He is the man with the least possible sureness of conviction, for whom everything is doubtful and uncertain, and who has to conquer everything for himself in this life. One has to struggle against illness and physical weakness, another trembles on the brink of the crimes which are possible for him, yet another has been in the bonds of sin from his birth. It is only a formal statement to say that original sin is the same in all persons; it differs materially for each person. Here one, there another, each as he was born, has chosen what is senseless and worthless, has preferred instinct to his will, or pleasure to love; only the founder of a religion has had original sin in its absolute form; in him everything is doubtful, everything is in question. He has to meet every problem and free himself from all guilt. He has to reach firm ground from the deepest abyss; he has to surmount the nothingness in him and bind himself to the utmost
