vols., 3d ed., vol. i. 5th ed. (English translation, 1868
_seq_.); three collections of _Addresses and Essays_, 1865, 1877, 1884.]

[Footnote 3: Volkelt: _The Phantasy in Dreams_, 1875; _Kant's Theory of
Knowledge_, 1879; _On the Possibility of Metaphysics_, inaugural address at
Basle, 1884; _Experience and Thought, Critical Foundation of the Theory of
Knowledge_, 1886; _Lectures Introductory to the Philosophy of the Present
Time_ (delivered in Frankfort on the Main), 1892.]

The leaders of the Hegelian left require more detailed consideration. In
David Friedrich Strauss[1] (1808-74, born and died at Ludwigsburg) the
philosophy of religion becomes a historical criticism of the Bible and of
dogmatics. The biblical narratives are, in great part, not history (this
has been the common error alike of the super-naturalistic and of the
rationalistic interpreters), but myths, that is, suprasensible facts
presented in the form of history and in symbolic language. It is evident
from the contradictions in the narratives and the impossibility of miracles
that we are not here concerned with actual events. The myths possess
(speculative, absolute) truth, but no (historical) reality. They are
unintentional creations of the popular imagination; the spirit of the
community speaks in the authors of the Gospels, using the historical factor
(the life-history of Jesus) with mythical embellishments as an investiture
for a supra-historical, eternal truth (the speculative Idea of
incarnation). The God become man, in which the infinite and the finite, the
divine nature and the human, are united, is the human race. The Idea of
incarnation manifests itself in a multitude of examples which supplement
one another, instead of pouring forth its whole fullness in a single one.
The (real) Idea of the race is to be substituted for a single individual
as the subject of the predicates (resurrection, ascension, etc.) which the
Church ascribes to Christ. The Son of God is _Humanity_.

[Footnote 1: Strauss: _The Life of Jesus_, 1835-36, 4th ed., 1840 [English
translation by George Eliot, 2d. ed., 1893]; the same "for the German
People," 1864 [English translation, 1865]; _Christian Dogmatics_, 1840-41;
_Voltaire_, 1870; _Collected Writings_, 12 vols., edited by Zeller,
1876-78. On Strauss cf. Zeller, 1874 [English, 1874], and Hausrath,
1876-78.]

In his second principal work Strauss criticises the dogmas of Christianity
as sharply as he had criticised the G