TOHU-VA-VOHU 20 Believe—or rather experience—that He saith unto thee: ‘ Thy sins are forgiven thee,’ and thou must love Him who saith it. And loving Him, thou canst sin no more. Sin will be quite another thing to thee than before; not only its power, but its character quite different. It is no longer a mortal disease; only the consequences of that which had been in thee before. In the world of thought and of life, neutrality is a moral impossibility ; it is moral death. Taken in one signification of the term, neuter is not either, nor yet both. Then whatisit? It is beyond my horizon, out of my sphere, a mere existence, but an existence without the attributes of existence, a substantive without adjectives, which is logically unthinkable and morally non-existent. Or take its other meaning: neuter, neither masculine nor feminine, not even that lusus nature, hermaphrodite. Then what is it? A thing, an zz, not even a force, but a dead weight! So true is it that this world of ours is dead without moral impulses. Hitzig beautifully compares the Jewish people to the pearl oyster, which in dying gives its treasure to the world.