It is true these expressions are known to me, for my professor used
them, but only as predicates of God, and as his philosophy had
exclusively to do with God, their use was quite appropriate. For
instance, if God was in the world, He was immanent; if He was somewhere
outside it, He was transcendent. That is clear and comprehensible. One
knows how things stand. But your old-fashioned Kantian doctrine is no
longer understood. There has been quite a succession of great men in the
metropolis of German learning----
_Phil. (aside)._ German philosophical nonsense!
_Thras._----such as the eminent Schleiermacher and that gigantic mind
Hegel; and to-day we have left all that sort of thing behind, or rather
we are so far ahead of it that it is out of date and known no more.
Therefore, what good is it?
_Phil._ Transcendental knowledge is that which, going beyond the
boundary of possible experience, endeavours to determine the nature of
things as they are in themselves; while immanent knowledge keeps itself
within the boundary of possible experience, therefore it can only apply
to phenomena. As an individual, with your death there will be an end of
you. But your individuality is not your true and final being, indeed it
is rather the mere expression of it; it is not the thing-in-itself but
only the phenomenon presented in the form of time, and accordingly has
both a beginning and an end. Your being in itself, on the contrary,
knows neither time, nor beginning, nor end, nor the limits of a given
individuality; hence no individuality can be without it, but it is there
in each and all. So that, in the first sense, after death you become
nothing; in the second, you are and remain everything. That is why I
said that after death you would be all and nothing. It is difficult to
give you a more exact answer to your question than this and to be brief
at the same time; but here we have undoubtedly another contradiction;
this is because your life is in time and your immortality in eternity.
Hence your immortality may be said to be something that is
indestructible and yet has no endurance--which is again contradictory,
you see. This is what happens when transcendental knowledge is brought
within the boundary of immanent knowledge; in doing this some sort of
violence is done to the latter, since it is used for things for which it
was not intended.
_Thras._ Listen; without I retain my individuality I shall not give a
_sou_ for your immortality.
_Phil._ Perhaps you will allow me to explain further. Suppose I
guarantee that you will retain your individuality, on condition,
however, that you spend three months in absolute unconsciousness before
you awaken.
_Thras._ I consent to that.
_Phil._ Well then, as we have no idea of time when in a perfectly
unconscious state, it is all the same to us when we are dead whether
three months or ten thousand years pass away in the world of
consciousness. For in the one case, as in the other, we must accept on
faith and trust what we are told when we awake. Accordingly it will be
all the same to you whether your individuality is restored to you after
the lapse of three months or ten thousand years.
_Thras._ At bottom, that cannot very well be denied.
_Phil._ But if, at the end of those ten thousand years, some one has
quite forgotten to waken you, I imagine that you would have become
accustomed to that long state of non-existence, following such a very
short existence, and that the misfortune would not be very great.
However, it is quite certain that you would know nothing about it. And
again, it would fully console you to know that the mysterious power
which gives life to your present phenomenon had never ceased for one
moment during the ten thousand years to produce other phenomena of a
like nature and to give them life.
_Thras._ Indeed! And so it is in this way that you fancy you can
quietly, and without my knowing, cheat me of my individuality? But you
cannot cozen me in this way. I have stipulated for the retaining of my
individuality, and neither mysterious forces nor phenomena can console
me for the loss of it. It is dear to me, and I shall not let it go.
_Phil._ That is to say, you regard your individuality as something so
very delightful, excellent, perfect, and incomparable that there is
nothing better than it; would you not exchange it for another, according
to what is told us, that is better and more lasting?
_Thras._ Look here, be my individuality what it may, it is myself,
"For God is God, and I am I."
I--I--I want to exist! That is what I care about, and not an existence
which has to be reasoned out first in order to show that it is mine.
_Phil._ Look what you are doing! When you say, _I--I--I want to exist_
you alone do not say this, but everything, absolutely everything, that
has only a vestige of consciousness. Consequently this desire of yours
is just that which is _not_ individual but which is common to all
without distinction. It does not proceed from individuality, but from
_existence_ in general; it is the essential in everything that exists,
nay, it is _that_ whereby anything has existence at all; accordingly it
is concerned and satisfied only with existence _in general_ and not with
any definite individual existence; this is not its aim. It has the
appearance of being so because it can attain consciousness only in an
individual existence, and consequently looks as if it were entirely
concerned with that. This is nothing but an illusion which has entangled
the individual; but by reflection, it can be dissipated and we ourselves
set free. It is only _indirectly_ that the individual has this great
longing for existence; it is the will to live in general that has this
longing directly and really, a longing that is one and the same in
everything. Since, then, existence itself is the free work of the will,
nay, the mere reflection of it, existence cannot be apart from will, and
the latter will be provisionally satisfied with existence in general, in
so far, namely, as that which is eternally dissatisfied can be
satisfied. The will is indifferent to individuality; it has nothing to
do with it, although it appears to, because the individual is _only_
directly conscious of will in himself. From this it is to be gathered
that the individual carefully guards his own existence; moreover, if
this were not so, the preservation of the species would not be assured.
From all this it follows that individuality is not a state of perfection
but of limitation; so that to be freed from it is not loss but rather
gain. Don't let this trouble you any further, it will, forsooth, appear
to you both childish and extremely ridiculous when you completely and
thoroughly recognise what you are, namely, that your own existence is
the universal will to live.
_Thras._ You are childish yourself and extremely ridiculous, and so are
all philosophers; and when a sedate man like myself lets himself in for
a quarter of an hour's talk with such fools, it is merely for the sake
of amusement and to while away the time. I have more important matters
to look to now; so, adieu!
RELIGION.
A DIALOGUE.
_Demopheles._ Between ourselves, dear old friend, I am sometimes
dissatisfied with you in your capacity as philosopher; you talk
sarcastically about religion, nay, openly ridicule it. The religion of
every one is sacred to him, and so it should be to you.
_Philalethes. Nego consequentiam!_ I don't see at all why I should have
respect for lies and frauds because other people are stupid. I respect
truth everywhere, and it is precisely for that reason that I cannot
respect anything that is opposed to it. My maxim is, _Vigeat veritas, et
pereat mundus_, the same as the lawyer's _Fiat justitia, et pereat
mundus._ Every profession ought to have an analogous device.
_Demop._ Then that of the medical profession would be, _Fiant pilulae,
et pereat mundus_, which would be the easiest to carry out.
_Phil._ Heaven forbid! Everything must be taken _cum grano salis_.
_Demop._ Exactly; and it is just for that reason that I want you to
accept religion _cum grano salis_, and to see that the needs of the
people must be met according to their powers of comprehension. Religion
affords the only means of proclaiming and making the masses of crude
minds and awkward intelligences, sunk in petty pursuits and material
work, feel the high import of life. For the ordinary type of man,
primarily, has no thought for anything else but what satisfies his
physical needs and longings, and accordingly affords him a little
amusement and pastime. Founders of religion and philosophers come into
the world to shake him out of his torpidity and show him the high
significance of existence: philosophers for the few, the emancipated;
founders of religion for the many, humanity at large. For φιλοσοφον
πληθος ἀδυνατον εἰναι, as your friend Plato has said, and you should not
forget it. Religion is the metaphysics of the people, which by all means
they must keep; and hence it must be eternally respected, for to
discredit it means taking it away. Just as there is popular poetry,
popular wisdom in proverbs, so too there must be popular metaphysics;
for mankind requires most certainly _an interpretation of life_, and it
must be in keeping with its power of comprehension. So that this
interpretation is at all times an allegorical investiture of the truth,
and it fulfils, as far as practical life and our feelings are
concerned--that is to say, as a guidance in our affairs, and as a
comfort and consolation in suffering and death--perhaps just as much as
truth itself could, if we possessed it. Don't be hurt at its unpolished,
baroque, and apparently absurd form, for you, with your education and
learning, cannot imagine the roundabout ways that must be used in order
to make people in their crude state understand deep truths. The various
religions are only various forms in which the people grasp and
understand the truth, which in itself they could not grasp, and which is
inseparable from these forms. Therefore, my dear fellow, don't be
displeased if I tell you that to ridicule these forms is both
narrow-minded and unjust.
_Phil._ But is it not equally narrow-minded and unjust to require that
there shall be no other metaphysics but this one cut out to meet the
needs and comprehension of the people? that its teachings shall be the
boundary of human researches and the standard of all thought, so that
the metaphysics of the few, the emancipated, as you call them, must aim
at confirming, strengthening, and interpreting the metaphysics of the
people? That is, that the highest faculties of the human mind must
remain unused and undeveloped, nay, be nipped in the bud, so that their
activity may not thwart the popular metaphysics? And at bottom are not
the claims that religion makes just the same? Is it right to have
tolerance, nay, gentle forbearance, preached by what is intolerance and
cruelty itself? Let me remind you of the heretical tribunals,
inquisitions, religious wars and crusades, of Socrates' cup of poison,
of Bruno's and Vanini's death in the flames. And is all this to-day
something belonging to the past? What can stand more in the way of
genuine philosophical effort, honest inquiry after truth, the noblest
calling of the noblest of mankind, than this conventional system of
metaphysics invested with a monopoly from the State, whose principles
are inculcated so earnestly, deeply, and firmly into every head in
earliest youth as to make them, unless the mind is of miraculous
elasticity, become ineradicable? The result is that the basis of healthy
reasoning is once and for all deranged--in other words, its feeble
capacity for thinking for itself, and for unbiassed judgment in regard
to everything to which it might be applied, is for ever paralysed and
ruined.
_Demop,_ Which really means that the people have gained a conviction
which they will not give up in order to accept yours in its place.
_Phil._ Ah! if it were only conviction based on insight, one would then
be able to bring forward arguments and fight the battle with equal
weapons. But religions admittedly do not lend themselves to conviction
after argument has been brought to bear, but to belief as brought about
by revelation. The capacity for belief is strongest in childhood;
therefore one is most careful to take possession of this tender age. It
is much more through this than through threats and reports of miracles
that the doctrines of belief take root. If in early childhood certain
fundamental views and doctrines are preached with unusual solemnity and
in a manner of great earnestness, the like of which has never been seen
before, and if, too, the possibility of a doubt about them is either
completely ignored or only touched upon in order to show that doubt is
the first step to everlasting perdition; the result is that the
impression will be so profound that, as a rule, that is to say in almost
every case, a man will be almost as incapable of doubting the truth of
those doctrines as he is of doubting his own existence. Hence it is
scarcely one in many thousands that has the strength of mind to honestly
and seriously ask himself--is that true? Those who are able to do this
have been more appropriately styled strong minds, _esprits forts_, than
is imagined. For the commonplace mind, however, there is nothing so
absurd or revolting but what, if inoculated in this way, the firmest
belief in it will take root. If, for example, the killing of a heretic
or an infidel were an essential matter for the future salvation of the
soul, almost every one would make it the principal object of his life,
and in dying get consolation and strength from the remembrance of his
having succeeded; just as, in truth, in former times almost every
Spaniard looked upon an _auto da fé_ as the most pious of acts and one
most pleasing to God.
We have an analogy to this in India in the _Thugs_, a religious body
quite recently suppressed by the English, who executed numbers of them.
They showed their regard for religion and veneration for the goddess
Kali by assassinating at every opportunity their own friends and
fellow-travellers, so that they might obtain their possessions, and they
were seriously convinced that thereby they had accomplished something
that was praiseworthy and would contribute to their eternal welfare. The
power of religious dogma, that has been inculcated early, is so great
that it destroys conscience, and finally all compassion and sense of
humanity. But if you wish to see with your own eyes, and close at hand,
what early inoculation of belief does, look at the English. Look at this
nation, favoured by nature before all others, endowed before all others
with reason, intelligence, power of judgment, and firmness of character;
look at these people degraded, nay, made despicable among all others by
their stupid ecclesiastical superstition, which among their other
capacities appears like a fixed idea, a monomania. For this they have to
thank the clergy in whose hands education is, and who take care to
inculcate all the articles, of belief at the earliest age in such a way
as to result in a kind of partial paralysis of the brain; this then
shows itself throughout their whole life in a silly bigotry, making even
extremely intelligent and capable people among them degrade themselves
so that they become quite an enigma to us. If we consider how essential
to such a masterpiece is inoculation of belief in the tender age of
childhood, the system of missions appears no longer merely as the height
of human importunity, arrogance, and impertinence, but also of
absurdity; in so far as it does not confine itself to people who are
still in the stage of _childhood_, such as the Hottentots, Kaffirs,
South Sea Islanders, and others like them, among whom it has been really
successful. While, on the other hand, in India the Brahmans receive the
doctrines of missionaries either with a smile of condescending approval
or refuse them with a shrug of their shoulders; and among these people
in general, notwithstanding the most favourable circumstances, the
missionaries' attempts at conversion are usually wrecked. An authentic
report in vol. xxi. of the _Asiatic Journal_ of 1826 shows that after so
many years of missionary activity in the whole of India (of which the
English possessions alone amount to one hundred and fifteen million
inhabitants) there are not more than three hundred living converts to be
found; and at the same time it is admitted that the Christian converts
are distinguished for their extreme immorality. There are only three
hundred venal and bribed souls out of so many millions. I cannot see
that it has gone better with Christianity in India since then, although
the missionaries are now trying, contrary to agreement, to work on the
children's minds in schools exclusively devoted to secular English
instruction, in order to smuggle in Christianity, against which,
however, the Hindoos are most jealously on their guard. For, as has been
said, childhood is the time, and not manhood, to sow the seeds of
belief, especially where an earlier belief has taken root. An acquired
conviction, however, that is assumed by matured converts serves,
generally, as only the mask for some kind of personal interest. And it
is the feeling that this could hardly be otherwise that makes a man, who
changes his religion at maturity, despised by most people everywhere; a
fact which reveals that they do not regard religion as a matter of
reasoned conviction but merely as a belief inoculated in early
childhood, before it has been put to any test. That they are right in
looking at religion in this way is to be gathered from the fact that it
is not only the blind, credulous masses, but also the clergy of every
religion, who, as such, have studied its sources, arguments, dogmas and
differences, who cling faithfully and zealously as a body to the
religion of their fatherland; consequently it is the rarest thing in the
world for a priest to change from one religion or creed to another. For
instance, we see that the Catholic clergy are absolutely convinced of
the truth of all the principles of their Church, and that the
Protestants are also of theirs, and that both defend the principles of
their confession with like zeal. And yet the conviction is the outcome
merely of the country in which each is born: the truth of the Catholic
dogma is perfectly clear to the clergy of South Germany, the Protestant
to the clergy of North Germany. If, therefore, these convictions rest on
objective reasons, these reasons must be climatic and thrive like
plants, some only here, some only there. The masses everywhere, however,
accept on trust and faith the convictions of those who are _locally
convinced_.
_Demop._ That doesn't matter, for essentially it makes no difference.
For instance, Protestantism in reality is more suited to the north,
Catholicism to the south.
_Phil._ So it appears. Still, I take a higher point of view, and have
before me a more important object, namely, the progress of the knowledge
of truth among the human race. It is a frightful condition of things
that, wherever a man is born, certain propositions are inculcated in his
earliest youth, and he is assured that under penalty of forfeiting
eternal salvation he may never entertain any doubt about them; in so
far, that is, as they are propositions which influence the foundation of
all our other knowledge and accordingly decide for ever our point of
view, and if they are false, upset it for ever. Further, as the
influences drawn from these propositions make inroads everywhere into
the entire system of our knowledge, the whole of human knowledge is
through and through affected by them. This is proved by every
literature, and most conspicuously by that of the Middle Age, but also,
in too great an extent, by that of the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries. We see how paralysed even the minds of the first rank of all
those epochs were by such false fundamental conceptions; and how
especially all insight into the true substance and working of Nature was
hemmed in on every side. During the whole of the Christian period Theism
lay like a kind of oppressive nightmare on all intellectual effort, and
on philosophical effort in particular, hindering and arresting all
progress. For the men of learning of those epochs, God, devil, angels,
demons, hid the whole of Nature; no investigation was carried out to the
end, no matter sifted to the bottom; everything that was beyond the most
obvious _causal nexus_ was immediately attributed to these; so that, as
Pomponatius expressed himself at the time, _Certe philosophi nihil
verisimile habent ad haec, quare necesse est, ad Deum, ad angelos et
daemones recurrere._ It is true that there is a suspicion of irony in
what this man says, as his malice in other ways is known, nevertheless
he has expressed the general way of thinking of his age. If any one, on
the other hand, possessed that rare elasticity of mind which alone
enabled him to free himself from the fetters, his writings, and he
himself with them, were burnt; as happened to Bruno and Vanini. But how
absolutely paralysed the ordinary mind is by that early metaphysical
preparation may be seen most strikingly, and from its most ridiculous
side, when it undertakes to criticise the doctrines of a foreign belief.
One finds the ordinary man, as a rule, merely trying to carefully prove
that the dogmas of the foreign belief do not agree with those of his
own; he labours to explain that not only do they not say the same, but
certainly do not mean the same thing as his. With that he fancies in his
simplicity that he has proved the falsity of the doctrines of the alien
belief. It really never occurs to him to ask the question which of the
two is right; but his own articles of belief are to him as _à priori_
certain principles. The Rev. Mr. Morrison has furnished an amusing
example of this kind in vol. xx. of the _Asiatic Journal_ wherein he
criticises the religion and philosophy of the Chinese.
_Demop._ So that's your higher point of view. But I assure you that
there is a higher still. _Primum vivere, deinde philosophari_ is of more
comprehensive significance than one supposes at first sight. Before
everything else, the raw and wicked tendencies of the masses ought to be
restrained, in order to protect them from doing anything that is
extremely unjust, or committing cruel, violent, and disgraceful deeds.
If one waited until they recognised and grasped the truth one would
assuredly come too late. And supposing they had already found truth, it
would surpass their powers of comprehension. In any case it would be a
mere allegorical investiture of truth, a parable, or a myth that would
be of any good to them. There must be, as Kant has said, a public
standard of right and virtue, nay, this must at all times flutter high.
It is all the same in the end what kind of heraldic figures are
represented on it, if they only indicate what is meant. Such an
allegorical truth is at all times and everywhere, for mankind at large,
a beneficial substitute for an eternally unattainable truth, and in
general, for a philosophy which it can never grasp; to say nothing of
its changing its form daily, and not having as yet attained any kind of
general recognition. Therefore practical aims, my good Philalethes, have
in every way the advantage of theoretical.
_Phil._ This closely resembles the ancient advice of Timaeus of Locrus,
the Pythagorean: τας ψυχας ἀπειργομες ψευδεσι λογοις, εἰ κα μη ἀγηται
ἀλαθεσι.[13] And I almost suspect that it is your wish, according to the
fashion of to-day, to remind me--
"Good friend, the time is near
When we may feast off what is good in peace."