Chapter XXXV: Canto VIII

TUISKION. The god whom the Germans, according to Tacitus (vide "Germania," cap. II) regard as the original father of their race.

LUDWIG FEUERBACH (1804-1872). An honest thinker, who recognised that there was an unbridgable gulf between philosophy and theology. He left the Hegelian school, which can be so well adapted to the need of theologians, and considered as the only source of religion--the human brain. "The Gods are only the personified wishes of men," he used to say. He brought German philosophy down from the clouds to cookery by declaring: "Der Mensch ist, was er isst" ("Man is what he eats"). He was a believer in what he called "Healthy sensuality," which made him the philosopher of artists in the 'thirties and 'forties of the last century, amongst others of Richard Wagner. The latter, however, afterwards repented, and, by way of Schopenhauer, turned Christian.

Feuerbach came from a family that would have been the delight of Sir Francis Galton, author of "Hereditary Genius." Feuerbach's father was a famous jurist, who had five sons, all of whom attained the honour of appearing in the German Encyclopædias. The philosopher was the fourth son. Again: the famous painter Anselm Feuerbach was his nephew, the son of his eldest brother.

BRUNO BAUER (1809-1882). A destructive commentator of the New Testament. He belonged to the school of "higher" criticism which has done so much to "lower" Christianity in the eyes of savants and professors and so little in those of mankind at large. His "Critique of the Evangelistic History of Saint John" (1840) and his "Critique of the Evangelistic Synoptists" (1841-42) had just been published when Heine wrote "Atta Troll."