THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN CHRISTIANITY AND HEATHENISM.
Christ is the omnipotence of subjectivity, the heart released from
all the bonds and laws of Nature, the soul excluding the world,
and concentrated only on itself, the reality of all the heart's
wishes, the Easter festival of the heart, the ascent to heaven of
the imagination:--Christ therefore is the distinction of Christianity
from heathenism.
In Christianity, man was concentrated only on himself, he unlinked
himself from the chain of sequences in the system of the universe,
he made himself a self-sufficing whole, an absolute, extra- and
supra-mundane being. Because he no longer regarded himself as a being
immanent in the world, because he severed himself from connection
with it, he felt himself an unlimited being--(for the sole limit
of subjectivity is the world, is objectivity),--he had no longer
any reason to doubt the truth and validity of his subjective wishes
and feelings.
The heathens, on the contrary, not shutting out Nature by retreating
within themselves, limited their subjectivity by the contemplation
of the world. Highly as the ancients estimated the intelligence, the
reason, they were yet liberal and objective enough, theoretically as
well as practically, to allow that which they distinguished from mind,
namely, matter, to live, and even to live eternally; the Christians
evinced their theoretical as well as practical intolerance in their
belief that they secured the eternity of their subjective life
only by annihilating, as in the doctrine of the destruction of the
world, the opposite of subjectivity--Nature. The ancients were free
from themselves, but their freedom was that of indifference towards
themselves; the Christians were free from Nature, but their freedom
was not that of reason, not true freedom, which limits itself by
the contemplation of the world, by Nature,--it was the freedom of
feeling and imagination, the freedom of miracle. The ancients were so
enraptured by the cosmos, that they lost sight of themselves, suffered
themselves to be merged in the whole; the Christians despised the
world;--what is the creature compared with the Creator? what are sun,
moon, and earth compared with the human soul? [119] The world passes
away, but man, nay, the individual, personal man, is eternal. If the
Christians severed man from all community with Nature, and hence fell
into the extreme of an arrogant fastidiousness, which stigmatised the
remotest comparison of man with the brutes as an impious violation
of human dignity; the heathens, on the other hand, fell into the
opposite extreme, into that spirit of depreciation which abolishes
the distinction between man and the brute, or even, as was the case,
for example, with Celsus, the opponent of Christianity, degrades man
beneath the brute.
But the heathens considered man not only in connection with the
universe; they considered the individual man, in connection with other
men, as member of a commonwealth. They rigorously distinguished the
individual from the species, the individual as a part from the race as
a whole, and they subordinated the part to the whole. Men pass away,
but mankind remains, says a heathen philosopher. "Why wilt thou grieve
over the loss of thy daughter?" writes Sulpicius to Cicero. "Great,
renowned cities and empires have passed away, and thou behavest thus
at the death of an homunculus, a little human being! Where is thy
philosophy?" The idea of man as an individual was to the ancients a
secondary one, attained through the idea of the species. Though they
thought highly of the race, highly of the excellences of mankind,
highly and sublimely of the intelligence, they nevertheless thought
slightly of the individual. Christianity, on the contrary, cared
nothing for the species, and had only the individual in its eye and
mind. Christianity--not, certainly, the Christianity of the present
day, which has incorporated with itself the culture of heathenism,
and has preserved only the name and some general positions of
Christianity--is the direct opposite of heathenism, and only when
it is regarded as such is it truly comprehended, and untravestied
by arbitrary speculative interpretation; it is true so far as its
opposite is false, and false so far as its opposite is true. The
ancients sacrificed the individual to the species; the Christians
sacrificed the species to the individual. Or, heathenism conceived
the individual only as a part in distinction from the whole of the
species; Christianity, on the contrary, conceived the individual only
in immediate, undistinguishable unity with the species.
To Christianity the individual was the object of an immediate
providence, that is, an immediate object of the Divine Being. The
heathens believed in a providence for the individual only through his
relation to the race, through law, through the order of the world,
and thus only in a mediate, natural, and not miraculous providence;
[120] but the Christians left out the intermediate process, and placed
themselves in immediate connection with the prescient, all-embracing,
universal Being; i.e., they immediately identified the individual
with the universal Being.
But the idea of deity coincides with the idea of humanity. All divine
attributes, all the attributes which make God God, are attributes of
the species--attributes which in the individual are limited, but the
limits of which are abolished in the essence of the species, and even
in its existence, in so far as it has its complete existence only in
all men taken together. My knowledge, my will, is limited; but my limit
is not the limit of another man, to say nothing of mankind; what is
difficult to me is easy to another; what is impossible, inconceivable,
to one age, is to the coming age conceivable and possible. My life is
bound to a limited time; not so the life of humanity. The history of
mankind consists of nothing else than a continuous and progressive
conquest of limits, which at a given time pass for the limits of
humanity, and therefore for absolute insurmountable limits. But
the future always unveils the fact that the alleged limits of the
species were only limits of individuals. The most striking proofs
of this are presented by the history of philosophy and of physical
science. It would be highly interesting and instructive to write a
history of the sciences entirely from this point of view, in order to
exhibit in all its vanity the presumptuous notion of the individual
that he can set limits to his race. Thus the species is unlimited;
the individual alone limited.
But the sense of limitation is painful, and hence the individual
frees himself from it by the contemplation of the perfect Being;
in this contemplation he possesses what otherwise is wanting to
him. With the Christians God is nothing else than the immediate
unity of species and individuality, of the universal and individual
being. God is the idea of the species as an individual--the idea
or essence of the species, which as a species, as universal being,
as the totality of all perfections, of all attributes or realities,
freed from all the limits which exist in the consciousness and feeling
of the individual, is at the same time again an individual, personal
being. Ipse suum esse est. Essence and existence are in God identical;
which means nothing else than that he is the idea, the essence of the
species, conceived immediately as an existence, an individual. The
highest idea on the standpoint of religion is: God does not love,
he is himself love; he does not live, he is life; he is not just, but
justice itself; not a person, but personality itself,--the species,
the idea, as immediately a concrete existence. [121]
Because of this immediate unity of the species with individuality,
this concentration of all that is universal and real in one personal
being, God is a deeply moving object, enrapturing to the imagination;
whereas, the idea of humanity has little power over the feelings,
because humanity is only an abstraction; and the reality which
presents itself to us in distinction from this abstraction is the
multitude of separate, limited individuals. In God, on the contrary,
feeling has immediate satisfaction, because here all is embraced in
one, i.e., because here the species has an immediate existence,--is
an individuality. God is love, is justice, as itself a subject; he
is the perfect universal being as one being, the infinite extension
of the species as an all-comprehending unity. But God is only man's
intuition of his own nature; thus the Christians are distinguished from
the heathens in this, that they immediately identify the individual
with the species--that with them the individual has the significance
of the species, the individual by himself is held to be the perfect
representative of the species--that they deify the human individual,
make him the absolute being.
Especially characteristic is the difference between Christianity
and heathenism concerning the relation of the individual to the
intelligence, to the understanding, to the nous. The Christians
individualised the understanding, the heathens made it a universal
essence. To the heathens, the understanding, the intelligence, was the
essence of man; to the Christians, it was only a part of themselves. To
the heathens therefore only the intelligence, the species, to the
Christians, the individual, was immortal, i.e., divine. Hence follows
the further difference between heathen and Christian philosophy.
The most unequivocal expression, the characteristic symbol of this
immediate identity of the species and individuality in Christianity is
Christ, the real God of the Christians. Christ is the ideal of humanity
become existent, the compendium of all moral and divine perfections
to the exclusion of all that is negative; pure, heavenly, sinless
man, the typical man, the Adam Kadmon; not regarded as the totality
of the species, of mankind, but immediately as one individual, one
person. Christ, i.e., the Christian, religious Christ, is therefore
not the central, but the terminal point of history. The Christians
expected the end of the world, the close of history. In the Bible,
Christ himself, in spite of all the falsities and sophisms of our
exegetists, clearly prophesies the speedy end of the world. History
rests only on the distinction of the individual from the race. Where
this distinction ceases, history ceases; the very soul of history is
extinct. Nothing remains to man but the contemplation and appropriation
of this realised Ideal, and the spirit of proselytism, which seeks
to extend the prevalence of a fixed belief,--the preaching that God
has appeared, and that the end of the world is at hand.
Since the immediate identity of the species and the individual
oversteps the limits of reason and Nature, it followed of course that
this universal, ideal individual was declared to be a transcendent,
supernatural, heavenly being. It is therefore a perversity to
attempt to deduce from reason the immediate identity of the species
and individual, for it is only the imagination which effects this
identity, the imagination to which nothing is impossible, and which
is also the creator of miracles; for the greatest of miracles is the
being who, while he is an individual, is at the same time the ideal,
the species, humanity in the fulness of its perfection and infinity,
i.e., the Godhead. Hence it is also a perversity to adhere to the
biblical or dogmatic Christ, and yet to thrust aside miracles. If
the principle be retained, wherefore deny its necessary consequences?
The total absence of the idea of the species in Christianity is
especially observable in its characteristic doctrine of the universal
sinfulness of men. For there lies at the foundation of this doctrine
the demand that the individual shall not be an individual, a demand
which again is based on the presupposition that the individual by
himself is a perfect being, is by himself the adequate presentation
or existence of the species. [122] Here is entirely wanting the
objective perception, the consciousness, that the thou belongs to the
perfection of the I, that men are required to constitute humanity,
that only men taken together are what man should and can be. All
men are sinners. Granted; but they are not all sinners in the same
way; on the contrary, there exists a great and essential difference
between them. One man is inclined to falsehood, another is not; he
would rather give up his life than break his word or tell a lie; the
third has a propensity to intoxication, the fourth to licentiousness;
while the fifth, whether by favour of Nature, or from the energy of
his character, exhibits none of these vices. Thus, in the moral as
well as the physical and intellectual elements, men compensate for
each other, so that, taken as a whole, they are, as they should be,
they present the perfect man.
Hence intercourse ameliorates and elevates; involuntarily and
without disguise, man is different in intercourse from what he is
when alone. Love especially works wonders, and the love of the sexes
most of all. Man and woman are the complement of each other, and
thus united they first present the species, the perfect man. [123]
Without species, love is inconceivable. Love is nothing else than the
self-consciousness of the species as evolved within the difference
of sex. In love, the reality of the species, which otherwise is
only a thing of reason, an object of mere thought, becomes a matter
of feeling, a truth of feeling; for in love, man declares himself
unsatisfied in his individuality taken by itself, he postulates the
existence of another as a need of the heart; he reckons another as
part of his own being; he declares the life which he has through
love to be the truly human life, corresponding to the idea of man,
i.e., of the species. The individual is defective, imperfect, weak,
needy; but love is strong, perfect, contented, free from wants,
self-sufficing, infinite; because in it the self-consciousness of the
individuality is the mysterious self-consciousness of the perfection
of the race. But this result of love is produced by friendship also,
at least where it is intense, where it is a religion, [124] as it was
with the ancients. Friends compensate for each other; friendship is
a means of virtue, and more: it is itself virtue, dependent however
on participation. Friendship can only exist between the virtuous,
as the ancients said. But it cannot be based on perfect similarity;
on the contrary, it requires diversity, for friendship rests on a
desire for self-completion. One friend obtains through the other what
he does not himself possess. The virtues of the one atone for the
failings of the other. Friend justifies friend before God. However
faulty a man may be, it is a proof that there is a germ of good in him
if he has worthy men for his friends. If I cannot be myself perfect,
I yet at least love virtue, perfection in others. If therefore I am
called to account for any sins, weaknesses, and faults, I interpose
as advocates, as mediators, the virtues of my friend. How barbarous,
how unreasonable would it be to condemn me for sins which I doubtless
have committed, but which I have myself condemned in loving my friends,
who are free from these sins!
But if friendship and love, which themselves are only subjective
realisations of the species, make out of singly imperfect beings an at
least relatively perfect whole, how much more do the sins and failings
of individuals vanish in the species itself, which has its adequate
existence only in the sum total of mankind, and is therefore only
an object of reason! Hence the lamentation over sin is found only
where the human individual regards himself in his individuality as
a perfect, complete being, not needing others for the realisation of
the species, of the perfect man; where instead of the consciousness
of the species has been substituted the exclusive self-consciousness
of the individual; where the individual does not recognise himself
as a part of mankind, but identifies himself with the species, and
for this reason makes his own sins, limits and weaknesses, the sins,
limits, and weaknesses of mankind in general. Nevertheless man cannot
lose the consciousness of the species, for his self-consciousness is
essentially united to his consciousness of another than himself. Where
therefore the species is not an object to him as a species, it
will be an object to him as God. He supplies the absence of the
idea of the species by the idea of God, as the being who is free
from the limits and wants which oppress the individual, and, in
his opinion (since he identifies the species with the individual),
the species itself. But this perfect being, free from the limits of
the individual, is nothing else than the species, which reveals the
infinitude of its nature in this, that it is realised in infinitely
numerous and various individuals. If all men were absolutely alike,
there would then certainly be no distinction between the race and
the individual. But in that case the existence of many men would be
a pure superfluity; a single man would have achieved the ends of the
species. In the one who enjoyed the happiness of existence all would
have had their complete substitute.
Doubtless the essence of man is one, but this essence is infinite;
its real existence is therefore an infinite, reciprocally compensating
variety, which reveals the riches of this essence. Unity in essence is
multiplicity in existence. Between me and another human being--and this
other is the representative of the species, even though he is only one,
for he supplies to me the want of many others, has for me a universal
significance, is the deputy of mankind, in whose name he speaks to me,
an isolated individual, so that, when united only with one, I have a
participated, a human life;--between me and another human being there
is an essential, qualitative distinction. The other is my thou,--the
relation being reciprocal,--my alter ego, man objective to me, the
revelation of my own nature, the eye seeing itself. In another I
first have the consciousness of humanity; through him I first learn,
I first feel, that I am a man: in my love for him it is first clear to
me that he belongs to me and I to him, that we two cannot be without
each other, that only community constitutes humanity. But morally,
also, there is a qualitative, critical distinction between the I and
thou. My fellow-man is my objective conscience; he makes my failings
a reproach to me; even when he does not expressly mention them, he
is my personified feeling of shame. The consciousness of the moral
law, of right, of propriety, of truth itself, is indissolubly united
with my consciousness of another than myself. That is true in which
another agrees with me,--agreement is the first criterion of truth;
but only because the species is the ultimate measure of truth. That
which I think only according to the standard of my individuality
is not binding on another; it can be conceived otherwise; it is an
accidental, merely subjective view. But that which I think according
to the standard of the species, I think as man in general only can
think, and consequently as every individual must think if he thinks
normally, in accordance with law, and therefore truly. That is true
which agrees with the nature of the species, that is false which
contradicts it. There is no other rule of truth. But my fellow-man is
to me the representative of the species, the substitute of the rest,
nay, his judgment may be of more authority with me than the judgment
of the innumerable multitude. Let the fanatic make disciples as the
sand on the sea-shore; the sand is still sand; mine be the pearl--a
judicious friend. The agreement of others is therefore my criterion
of the normalness, the universality, the truth of my thoughts. I
cannot so abstract myself from myself as to judge myself with perfect
freedom and disinterestedness; but another has an impartial judgment;
through him I correct, complete, extend my own judgment, my own
taste, my own knowledge. In short, there is a qualitative, critical
difference between men. But Christianity extinguishes this qualitative
distinction; it sets the same stamp on all men alike, and regards
them as one and the same individual, because it knows no distinction
between the species and the individual: it has one and the same means
of salvation for all men, it sees one and the same original sin in all.
Because Christianity thus, from exaggerated subjectivity, knows nothing
of the species, in which alone lies the redemption, the justification,
the reconciliation and cure of the sins and deficiencies of the
individual, it needed a supernatural and peculiar, nay, a personal,
subjective aid in order to overcome sin. If I alone am the species,
if no other, that is, no qualitatively different men exist, or, which
is the same thing, if there is no distinction between me and others,
if we are all perfectly alike, if my sins are not neutralised by
the opposite qualities of other men: then assuredly my sin is a
blot of shame which cries up to heaven; a revolting horror which
can be exterminated only by extraordinary, superhuman, miraculous
means. Happily, however, there is a natural reconciliation. My
fellow-man is per se the mediator between me and the sacred idea of
the species. Homo homini Deus est. My sin is made to shrink within
its limits, is thrust back into its nothingness, by the fact that it
is only mine, and not that of my fellows.