THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CREATION IN JUDAISM.
The doctrine of the Creation sprang out of Judaism; indeed, it is the
characteristic, the fundamental doctrine of the Jewish religion. The
principle which lies at its foundation is, however, not so much the
principle of subjectivity as of egoism. The doctrine of the Creation
in its characteristic significance arises only on that stand-point
where man in practice makes Nature merely the servant of his will
and needs, and hence in thought also degrades it to a mere machine,
a product of the will. Now its existence is intelligible to him,
since he explains and interprets it out of himself, in accordance with
his own feelings and notions. The question, Whence is Nature or the
world? presupposes wonder that it exists, or the question, Why does
it exist? But this wonder, this question, arises only where man has
separated himself from Nature and made it a mere object of will. The
author of the Book of Wisdom says truly of the heathens, that, "for
admiration of the beauty of the world they did not raise themselves
to the idea of the Creator." To him who feels that Nature is lovely,
it appears an end in itself, it has the ground of its existence in
itself: in him the question, Why does it exist? does not arise. Nature
and God are identified in his consciousness, his perception, of the
world. Nature, as it impresses his senses, has indeed had an origin,
has been produced, but not created in the religious sense, is not
an arbitrary product. And by this origin he implies nothing evil;
originating involves for him nothing impure, undivine; he conceives
his gods themselves as having had an origin. The generative force
is to him the primal force: he posits, therefore, as the ground of
Nature, a force of Nature,--a real, present, visibly active force, as
the ground of reality. Thus does man think where his relation to the
world is æsthetic or theoretic (for the theoretic view was originally
the æsthetic view, the prima philosophia), where the idea of the world
is to him the idea of the cosmos, of majesty, of deity itself. Only
where such a theory was the fundamental principle could there be
conceived and expressed such a thought as that of Anaxagoras:--Man
is born to behold the world. [81] The standpoint of theory is the
standpoint of harmony with the world. The subjective activity, that
in which man contents himself, allows himself free play, is here
the sensuous imagination alone. Satisfied with this, he lets Nature
subsist in peace, and constructs his castles in the air, his poetical
cosmogonies, only out of natural materials. When, on the contrary,
man places himself only on the practical standpoint and looks at the
world from thence, making the practical standpoint the theoretical
one also, he is in disunion with Nature; he makes Nature the abject
vassal of his selfish interest, of his practical egoism. The theoretic
expression of this egoistical, practical view, according to which
Nature is in itself nothing, is this: Nature or the world is made,
created, the product of a command. God said, Let the world be, and
straightway the world presented itself at his bidding. [82]
Utilism is the essential theory of Judaism. The belief in a special
Divine Providence is the characteristic belief of Judaism; belief
in Providence is belief in miracle; but belief in miracle exists
where Nature is regarded only as an object of arbitrariness, of
egoism, which uses Nature only as an instrument of its own will and
pleasure. Water divides or rolls itself together like a firm mass,
dust is changed into lice, a staff into a serpent, rivers into blood,
a rock into a fountain; in the same place it is both light and dark
at once, the sun now stands still, now goes backward. And all these
contradictions of Nature happen for the welfare of Israel, purely at
the command of Jehovah, who troubles himself about nothing but Israel,
who is nothing but the personified selfishness of the Israelitish
people, to the exclusion of all other nations,--absolute intolerance,
the secret essence of monotheism.
The Greeks looked at Nature with the theoretic sense; they heard
heavenly music in the harmonious course of the stars; they saw Nature
rise from the foam of the all-producing ocean as Venus Anadyomene. The
Israelites, on the contrary, opened to Nature only the gastric sense;
their taste for Nature lay only in the palate; their consciousness
of God in eating manna. The Greek addicted himself to polite studies,
to the fine arts, to philosophy; the Israelite did not rise above the
alimentary view of theology. "At even ye shall eat flesh, and in the
morning ye shall be filled with bread; and ye shall know that I am
the Lord your God." [83] "And Jacob vowed a vow, saying, If God will
be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me
bread to eat and raiment to put on, so that I come again to my father's
house in peace, then shall the Lord be my God." [84] Eating is the
most solemn act or the initiation of the Jewish religion. In eating,
the Israelite celebrates and renews the act of creation; in eating,
man declares Nature to be an insignificant object. When the seventy
elders ascended the mountain with Moses, "they saw God; and when they
had seen God, they ate and drank." [85] Thus with them what the sight
of the Supreme Being heightened was the appetite for food.
The Jews have maintained their peculiarity to this day. Their
principle, their God, is the most practical principle in the
world,--namely, egoism; and moreover egoism in the form of
religion. Egoism is the God who will not let his servants come to
shame. Egoism is essentially monotheistic, for it has only one, only
self, as its end. Egoism strengthens cohesion, concentrates man on
himself, gives him a consistent principle of life; but it makes him
theoretically narrow, because indifferent to all which does not relate
to the well-being of self. Hence science, like art, arises only out of
polytheism, for polytheism is the frank, open, unenvying sense of all
that is beautiful and good without distinction, the sense of the world,
of the universe. The Greeks looked abroad into the wide world that they
might extend their sphere of vision; the Jews to this day pray with
their faces turned towards Jerusalem. In the Israelites, monotheistic
egoism excluded the free theoretic tendency. Solomon, it is true,
surpassed "all the children of the East" in understanding and wisdom,
and spoke (treated, agebat) moreover "of trees, from the cedar that
is in Lebanon, even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall,"
and also of "beasts and of fowl, and of creeping things and of fishes"
(1 Kings iv. 30, 34). But it must be added that Solomon did not serve
Jehovah with his whole heart; he did homage to strange gods and strange
women; and thus he had the polytheistic sentiment and taste. The
polytheistic sentiment, I repeat, is the foundation of science and art.
The significance which Nature in general had for the Hebrews is one
with their idea of its origin. The mode in which the genesis of a
thing is explained is the candid expression of opinion, of sentiment
respecting it. If it be thought meanly of, so also is its origin. Men
used to suppose that insects, vermin, sprang from carrion and other
rubbish. It was not because they derived vermin from so uninviting a
source that they thought contemptuously of them, but, on the contrary,
because they thought thus, because the nature of vermin appeared to
them so vile, they imagined an origin corresponding to this nature,
a vile origin. To the Jews Nature was a mere means towards achieving
the end of egoism, a mere object of will. But the ideal, the idol
of the egoistic will is that Will which has unlimited command, which
requires no means in order to attain its end, to realise its object,
which immediately by itself, i.e., by pure will, calls into existence
whatever it pleases. It pains the egoist that the satisfaction of
his wishes and need is only to be attained immediately, that for him
there is a chasm between the wish and its realisation, between the
object in the imagination and the object in reality. Hence, in order
to relieve this pain, to make himself free from the limits of reality,
he supposes as the true, the highest being, One who brings forth an
object by the mere I will. For this reason, Nature, the world, was
to the Hebrews the product of a dictatorial word, of a categorical
imperative, of a magic fiat.
To that which has no essential existence for me in theory I assign
no theoretic, no positive ground. By referring it to Will I only
enforce its theoretic nullity. What we despise we do not honour with
a glance: that which is observed has importance: contemplation is
respect. Whatever is looked at fetters by secret forces of attraction,
overpowers by the spell which it exercises upon the eye, the criminal
arrogance of that Will which seeks only to subject all things to
itself. Whatever makes an impression on the theoretic sense, on the
reason, withdraws itself from the dominion of the egoistic Will:
it reacts, it presents resistance. That which devastating egoism
devotes to death, benignant theory restores to life.
The much-belied doctrine of the heathen philosophers concerning
the eternity of matter, or the world, thus implies nothing more
than that Nature was to them a theoretic reality. [86] The heathens
were idolaters, that is, they contemplated Nature; they did nothing
else than what the profoundly Christian nations do at this day
when they make Nature an object of their admiration, of their
indefatigable investigation. "But the heathens actually worshipped
natural objects." Certainly; for worship is only the childish,
the religious form of contemplation. Contemplation and worship are
not essentially distinguished. That which I contemplate I humble
myself before, I consecrate to it my noblest possession, my heart,
my intelligence, as an offering. The natural philosopher also falls
on his knees before Nature when, at the risk of his life, he snatches
from some precipice a lichen, an insect, or a stone, to glorify it in
the light of contemplation, and give it an eternal existence in the
memory of scientific humanity. The study of Nature is the worship of
Nature--idolatry in the sense of the Israelitish and Christian God;
and idolatry is simply man's primitive contemplation of Nature; for
religion is nothing else than man's primitive, and therefore childish,
popular, but prejudiced, unemancipated consciousness of himself and
of Nature. The Hebrews, on the other hand, raised themselves from
the worship of idols to the worship of God, from the creature to
the Creator; i.e., they raised themselves from the theoretic view
of Nature, which fascinated the idolaters, to the purely practical
view which subjects Nature only to the ends of egoism. "And lest
thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven, and when thou seest the sun,
the moon, and the stars, even all the host of heaven, shouldst be
driven to worship them and serve them, which the Lord thy God hath
divided unto (i.e., bestowed upon, largitus est) all nations under
the whole heaven." [87] Thus the creation out of nothing, i.e.,
the creation as a purely imperious act, had its origin only in the
unfathomable depth of Hebrew egoism.
On this ground, also, the creation out of nothing is no object of
philosophy;--at least in any other way than it is so here;--for it cuts
away the root of all true speculation, presents no grappling-point
to thought, to theory; theoretically considered, it is a baseless
air-built doctrine, which originated solely in the need to give
a warrant to utilism, to egoism, which contains and expresses
nothing but the command to make Nature--not an object of thought,
of contemplation, but--an object of utilisation. The more empty
it is, however, for natural philosophy, the more profound is its
"speculative" significance; for just because it has no theoretic
fulcrum, it allows to the speculatist infinite room for the play of
arbitrary, groundless interpretation.
It is in the history of dogma and speculation as in the history of
states. World-old usages, laws, and institutions continue to drag out
their existence long after they have lost their true meaning. What
has once existed will not be denied the right to exist for ever; what
was once good, claims to be good for all times. At this period of
superannuation come the interpreters, the speculatists, and talk of
the profound sense, because they no longer know the true one. [88]
Thus religious speculation deals with the dogmas torn from the
connection in which alone they have any true meaning; instead of
tracing them back critically to their true origin, it makes the
secondary primitive, and the primitive secondary. To it God is
the first, man the second. Thus it inverts the natural order of
things. In reality, the first is man, the second the nature of man
made objective, namely, God. Only in later times, in which religion
is already become flesh and blood, can it be said--As God is, so is
man; although, indeed, this proposition never amounts to anything
more than tautology. But in the origin of religion it is otherwise;
and it is only in the origin of a thing that we can discern its true
nature. Man first unconsciously and involuntarily creates God in his
own image, and after this God consciously and voluntarily creates man
in his own image. This is especially confirmed by the development
of the Israelitish religion. Hence the position of theological
one-sidedness, that the revelation of God holds an even pace with
the development of the human race. Naturally; for the revelation of
God is nothing else than the revelation, the self-unfolding of human
nature. The supranaturalistic egoism of the Jews did not proceed
from the Creator, but conversely, the latter from the former; in the
creation the Israelite justified his egoism at the bar of his reason.
It is true, and it may be readily understood on simply practical
grounds, that even the Israelite could not, as a man, withdraw himself
from the theoretic contemplation and admiration of Nature. But in
celebrating the power and greatness of Nature, he celebrates only
the power and greatness of Jehovah. And the power of Jehovah has
exhibited itself with the most glory in the miracles which it has
wrought in favour of Israel. Hence, in the celebration of this power,
the Israelite has always reference ultimately to himself; he extols
the greatness of Nature only for the same reason that the conqueror
magnifies the strength of his opponent, in order thereby to heighten
his own self-complacency, to make his own fame more illustrious. Great
and mighty is Nature, which Jehovah has created, but yet mightier,
yet greater, is Israel's self-estimation. For his sake the sun stands
still; for his sake, according to Philo, the earth quaked at the
delivery of the law; in short, for his sake all Nature alters its
course. "For the whole creature in his proper kind was fashioned again
anew, serving the peculiar commandments that were given unto them,
that thy children might be kept without hurt." [89] According to Philo,
God gave Moses power over the whole of Nature; all the elements obeyed
him as the Lord of Nature. [90] Israel's requirement is the omnipotent
law of the world, Israel's need the fate of the universe. Jehovah is
Israel's consciousness of the sacredness and necessity of his own
existence,--a necessity before which the existence of Nature, the
existence of other nations, vanishes into nothing; Jehovah is the salus
populi, the salvation of Israel, to which everything that stands in its
way must be sacrificed; Jehovah is exclusive, monarchical arrogance,
the annihilating flash of anger in the vindictive glance of destroying
Israel; in a word, Jehovah is the ego of Israel, which regards itself
as the end and aim, the Lord of Nature. Thus, in the power of Nature
the Israelite celebrates the power of Jehovah, and in the power of
Jehovah the power of his own self-consciousness. "Blessed be God! God
is our help, God is our salvation."--"Jehovah is my strength."--"God
himself hearkened to the word of Joshua, for Jehovah himself fought
for Israel."--"Jehovah is a God of war."
If, in the course of time, the idea of Jehovah expanded itself in
individual minds, and his love was extended, as by the writer of the
Book of Jonah, to man in general, this does not belong to the essential
character of the Israelitish religion. The God of the fathers, to whom
the most precious recollections are attached, the ancient historical
God, remains always the foundation of a religion. [91]