THE CHRISTIAN HEAVEN, OR PERSONAL IMMORTALITY.
The unwedded and ascetic life is the direct way to the heavenly,
immortal life, for heaven is nothing else than life liberated from
the conditions of the species, supernatural, sexless, absolutely
subjective life. The belief in personal immortality has at its
foundation the belief that difference of sex is only an external
adjunct of individuality, that in himself the individual is a sexless,
independently complete, absolute being. But he who belongs to no sex
belongs to no species; sex is the cord which connects the individuality
with the species, and he who belongs to no species, belongs only to
himself, is an altogether independent, divine, absolute being. Hence
only when the species vanishes from the consciousness is the heavenly
life a certainty. He who lives in the consciousness of the species,
and consequently of its reality, lives also in the consciousness of
the reality of sex. He does not regard it as a mechanically inserted,
adventitious stone of stumbling, but as an inherent quality, a chemical
constituent of his being. He indeed recognises himself as a man in
the broader sense, but he is at the same time conscious of being
rigorously determined by the sexual distinction, which penetrates not
only bones and marrow, but also his inmost self, the essential mode
of his thought, will, and sensation. He therefore who lives in the
consciousness of the species, who limits and determines his feelings
and imagination by the contemplation of real life, of real man, can
conceive no life in which the life of the species, and therewith the
distinction of sex, is abolished; he regards the sexless individual,
the heavenly spirit, as an agreeable figment of the imagination.
But just as little as the real man can abstract himself from the
distinction of sex, so little can he abstract himself from his moral or
spiritual constitution, which indeed is profoundly connected with his
natural constitution. Precisely because he lives in the contemplation
of the whole, he also lives in the consciousness that he is himself
no more than a part, and that he is what he is only by virtue of the
conditions which constitute him a member of the whole, or a relative
whole. Every one, therefore, justifiably regards his occupation, his
profession, his art or science, as the highest; for the mind of man
is nothing but the essential mode of his activity. He who is skilful
in his profession, in his art, he who fills his post well, and is
entirely devoted to his calling, thinks that calling the highest and
best. How can he deny in thought what he emphatically declares in act
by the joyful devotion of all his powers? If I despise a thing, how can
I dedicate to it my time and faculties? If I am compelled to do so in
spite of my aversion, my activity is an unhappy one, for I am at war
with myself. Work is worship. But how can I worship or serve an object,
how can I subject myself to it, if it does not hold a high place in
my mind? In brief, the occupations of men determine their judgment,
their mode of thought, their sentiments. And the higher the occupation,
the more completely does a man identify himself with it. In general,
whatever a man makes the essential aim of his life, he proclaims to
be his soul; for it is the principle of motion in him. But through
his aim, through the activity in which he realises this aim, man
is not only something for himself, but also something for others,
for the general life, the species. He therefore who lives in the
consciousness of the species as a reality, regards his existence
for others, his relation to society, his utility to the public, as
that existence which is one with the existence of his own essence--as
his immortal existence. He lives with his whole soul, with his whole
heart, for humanity. How can he hold in reserve a special existence
for himself, how can he separate himself from mankind? How shall he
deny in death what he has enforced in life? And in life his faith is
this: Nec sibi sed toti genitum se credere mundo.
The heavenly life, or what we do not here distinguish from it--personal
immortality, is a characteristic doctrine of Christianity. It is
certainly in part to be found among the heathen philosophers; but
with them it had only the significance of a subjective conception,
because it was not connected with their fundamental view of things. How
contradictory, for example, are the expressions of the Stoics on this
subject! It was among the Christians that personal immortality first
found that principle, whence it follows as a necessary and obvious
consequence. The contemplation of the world, of Nature, of the race,
was always coming athwart the ancients; they distinguished between the
principle of life and the living subject, between the soul, the mind,
and self: whereas the Christian abolished the distinction between soul
and person, species and individual, and therefore placed immediately
in self what belongs only to the totality of the species. But the
immediate unity of the species and individuality is the highest
principle, the God of Christianity,--in it the individual has the
significance of the absolute being,--and the necessary, immanent
consequence of this principle is personal immortality.
Or rather: the belief in personal immortality is perfectly identical
with the belief in a personal God;--i.e., that which expresses the
belief in the heavenly, immortal life of the person, expresses God
also, as he is an object to Christians, namely, as absolute, unlimited
personality. Unlimited personality is God; but heavenly personality, or
the perpetuation of human personality in heaven, is nothing else than
personality released from all earthly encumbrances and limitations;
the only distinction is, that God is heaven spiritualised, while heaven
is God materialised, or reduced to the forms of the senses: that what
in God is posited only in abstracto is in heaven more an object of
the imagination. God is the implicit heaven; heaven is the explicit
God. In the present, God is the kingdom of heaven; in the future,
heaven is God. God is the pledge, the as yet abstract presence and
existence of heaven; the anticipation, the epitome of heaven. Our own
future existence, which, while we are in this world, in this body, is a
separate, objective existence,--is God: God is the idea of the species,
which will be first realised, individualised in the other world. God
is the heavenly, pure, free essence, which exists there as heavenly
pure beings, the bliss which there unfolds itself in a plenitude of
blissful individuals. Thus God is nothing else than the idea or the
essence of the absolute, blessed, heavenly life, here comprised in
an ideal personality. This is clearly enough expressed in the belief
that the blessed life is unity with God. Here we are distinguished and
separated from God, there the partition falls; here we are men, there
gods; here the Godhead is a monopoly, there it is a common possession;
here it is an abstract unity, there a concrete multiplicity. [140]
The only difficulty in the recognition of this is created by
the imagination, which, on the one hand by the conception of the
personality of God, on the other by the conception of the many
personalities which it places in a realm ordinarily depicted in the
hues of the senses, hides the real unity of the idea. But in truth
there is no distinction between the absolute life which is conceived
as God and the absolute life which is conceived as heaven, save that
in heaven we have stretched into length and breadth what in God is
concentrated in one point. The belief in the immortality of man is the
belief in the divinity of man, and the belief in God is the belief
in pure personality, released from all limits, and consequently eo
ipso immortal. The distinctions made between the immortal soul and
God are either sophistical or imaginative; as when, for example, the
bliss of the inhabitants of heaven is again circumscribed by limits,
and distributed into degrees, in order to establish a distinction
between God and the dwellers in heaven.
The identity of the divine and heavenly personality is apparent even
in the popular proofs of immortality. If there is not another and a
better life, God is not just and good. The justice and goodness of God
are thus made dependent on the perpetuity of individuals; but without
justice and goodness God is not God;--the Godhead, the existence of
God, is therefore made dependent on the existence of individuals. If
I am not immortal, I believe in no God; he who denies immortality
denies God. But that is impossible to me: as surely as there is a God,
so surely is there an immortality. God is the certainty of my future
felicity. The interest I have in knowing that God is, is one with the
interest I have in knowing that I am, that I am immortal. God is my
hidden, my assured existence; he is the subjectivity of subjects,
the personality of persons. How then should that not belong to
persons which belongs to personality? In God I make my future into a
present, or rather a verb into a substantive; how should I separate
the one from the other? God is the existence corresponding to my
wishes and feelings: he is the just one, the good, who fulfils my
wishes. Nature, this world, is an existence which contradicts my
wishes, my feelings. Here it is not as it ought to be; this world
passes away; but God is existence as it ought to be. God fulfils my
wishes;--this is only a popular personification of the position: God is
the fulfiller, i.e., the reality, the fulfilment of my wishes. [141]
But heaven is the existence adequate to my wishes, my longing; [142]
thus there is no distinction between God and heaven. God is the power
by which man realises his eternal happiness; God is the absolute
personality in which all individual persons have the certainty of
their blessedness and immortality; God is to subjectivity the highest,
last certainty of its absolute truth and essentiality.
The doctrine of immortality is the final doctrine of religion; its
testament, in which it declares its last wishes. Here therefore it
speaks out undisguisedly what it has hitherto suppressed. If elsewhere
the religious soul concerns itself with the existence of another
being, here it openly considers only its own existence; if elsewhere
in religion man makes his existence dependent on the existence of God,
he here makes the reality of God dependent on his own reality; and
thus what elsewhere is a primitive, immediate truth to him, is here
a derivative, secondary truth: if I am not immortal, God is not God;
if there is no immortality, there is no God;--a conclusion already
drawn by the Apostle Paul. If we do not rise again, then Christ is
not risen, and all is vain. Let us eat and drink. It is certainly
possible to do away with what is apparently or really objectionable
in the popular argumentation, by avoiding the inferential form; but
this can only be done by making immortality an analytic instead of a
synthetic truth, so as to show that the very idea of God as absolute
personality or subjectivity is per se the idea of immortality. God
is the guarantee of my future existence, because he is already the
certainty and reality of my present existence, my salvation, my
trust, my shield from the forces of the external world; hence I need
not expressly deduce immortality, or prove it as a separate truth,
for if I have God, I have immortality also. Thus it was with the
more profound Christian mystics; to them the idea of immortality was
involved in the idea of God; God was their immortal life,--God himself
their subjective blessedness: he was for them, for their consciousness,
what he is in himself, that is, in the essence of religion.
Thus it is shown that God is heaven; that the two are identical. It
would have been easier to prove the converse, namely, that heaven is
the true God of men. As man conceives his heaven, so he conceives his
God; the content of his idea of heaven is the content of his idea of
God, only that what in God is a mere sketch, a concept, is in heaven
depicted and developed in the colours and forms of the senses. Heaven
is therefore the key to the deepest mysteries of religion. As heaven
is objectively the displayed nature of God, so subjectively it is the
most candid declaration of the inmost thoughts and dispositions of
religion. For this reason, religions are as various as are the kingdoms
of heaven, and there are as many different kingdoms of heaven as there
are characteristic differences among men. The Christians themselves
have very heterogeneous conceptions of heaven. [143]
The more judicious among them, however, think and say nothing definite
about heaven or the future world in general, on the ground that it is
inconceivable, that it can only be thought of by us according to the
standard of this world, a standard not applicable to the other. All
conceptions of heaven here below are, they allege, mere images,
whereby man represents to himself that future, the nature of which
is unknown to him, but the existence of which is certain. It is just
so with God. The existence of God, it is said, is certain; but what
he is, or how he exists, is inscrutable. But he who speaks thus has
already driven the future world out of his head; he still holds it
fast, either because he does not think at all about such matters, or
because it is still a want of his heart; but, preoccupied with real
things, he thrusts it as far as possible out of his sight; he denies
with his head what he affirms with his heart; for it is to deny the
future life, to deprive it of the qualities by which alone it is a real
and effective object for man. Quality is not distinct from existence;
quality is nothing but real existence. Existence without quality is a
chimera, a spectre. Existence is first made known to me by quality;
not existence first, and after that quality. The doctrines that God
is not to be known or defined, and that the nature of the future life
is inscrutable, are therefore not originally religious doctrines;
on the contrary, they are the products of irreligion while still in
bondage to religion, or rather hiding itself behind religion; and
they are so for this reason, that originally the existence of God is
posited only with a definite conception of God, the existence of a
future life only with a definite conception of that life. Thus to the
Christian, only his own paradise, the paradise which has Christian
qualities, is a certainty, not the paradise of the Mahometan or the
Elysium of the Greeks. The primary certainty is everywhere quality;
existence follows of course when once quality is certain. In the New
Testament we find no proofs or general propositions such as: there
is a God, there is a heavenly life; we find only qualities of the
heavenly life adduced;--"in heaven they marry not." Naturally;--it
may be answered,--because the existence of God and of heaven is
presupposed. But here reflection introduces a distinction of which
the religious sentiment knows nothing. Doubtless the existence is
presupposed, but only because the quality is itself existence, because
the inviolate religious feeling lives only in the quality, just as to
the natural man the real existence, the thing in itself, lies only in
the quality which he perceives. Thus in the passage above cited from
the New Testament, the virgin or rather sexless life is presupposed
as the true life, which, however, necessarily becomes a future one,
because the actual life contradicts the ideal of the true life. But
the certainty of this future life lies only in the certainty of its
qualities, as those of the true, highest life, adequate to the ideal.
Where the future life is really believed in, where it is a certain
life, there, precisely because it is certain, it is also definite. If
I know not now what and how I shall be; if there is an essential,
absolute difference between my future and my present; neither shall I
then know what and how I was before, the unity of consciousness is at
an end, personal identity is abolished, another being will appear in my
place; and thus my future existence is not in fact distinguished from
non-existence. If, on the other hand, there is no essential difference,
the future is to me an object that may be defined and known. And so
it is in reality. I am the abiding subject under changing conditions;
I am the substance which connects the present and the future into a
unity. How then can the future be obscure to me? On the contrary,
the life of this world is the dark, incomprehensible life, which
only becomes clear through the future life; here I am in disguise;
there the mask will fall; there I shall be as I am in truth. Hence the
position that there indeed is another, a heavenly life, but that what
and how it is must here remain inscrutable, is only an invention of
religious scepticism, which, being entirely alien to the religious
sentiment, proceeds upon a total misconception of religion. That
which irreligious-religious reflection converts into a known image
of an unknown yet certain thing, is originally, in the primitive,
true sense of religion, not an image, but the thing itself. Unbelief,
in the garb of belief, doubts the existence of the thing, but it is too
shallow or cowardly directly to call it in question; it only expresses
doubt of the image or conception, i.e., declares the image to be only
an image. But the untruth and hollowness of this scepticism has been
already made evident historically. Where it is once doubted that the
images of immortality are real, that it is possible to exist as faith
conceives, for example, without a material, real body, and without
difference of sex; there the future existence in general is soon a
matter of doubt. With the image falls the thing, simply because the
image is the thing itself.
The belief in heaven, or in a future life in general, rests on a mental
judgment. It expresses praise and blame; it selects a wreath from the
flora of this world, and this critical florilegium is heaven. That
which man thinks beautiful, good, agreeable, is for him what alone
ought to be; that which he thinks bad, odious, disagreeable, is
what ought not to be; and hence, since it nevertheless exists, it is
condemned to destruction, it is regarded as a negation. Where life is
not in contradiction with a feeling, an imagination, an idea, and where
this feeling, this idea, is not held authoritative and absolute, the
belief in another and a heavenly life does not arise. The future life
is nothing else than life in unison with the feeling, with the idea,
which the present life contradicts. The whole import of the future
life is the abolition of this discordance, and the realisation of a
state which corresponds to the feelings, in which man is in unison
with himself. An unknown, unimagined future is a ridiculous chimera:
the other world is nothing more than the reality of a known idea,
the satisfaction of a conscious desire, the fulfilment of a wish;
[144] it is only the removal of limits which here oppose themselves
to the realisation of the idea. Where would be the consolation, where
the significance of a future life, if it were midnight darkness to
me? No! from yonder world there streams upon me with the splendour
of virgin gold what here shines only with the dimness of unrefined
ore. The future world has no other significance, no other basis of
its existence, than the separation of the metal from the admixture
of foreign elements, the separation of the good from the bad,
of the pleasant from the unpleasant, of the praiseworthy from the
blamable. The future world is the bridal in which man concludes
his union with his beloved. Long has he loved his bride, long has
he yearned after her; but external relations, hard reality, have
stood in the way of his union to her. When the wedding takes place,
his beloved one does not become a different being; else how could he
so ardently long for her? She only becomes his own; from an object
of yearning and affectionate desire she becomes an object of actual
possession. It is true that here below, the other world is only an
image, a conception; still it is not the image of a remote, unknown
thing, but a portrait of that which man loves and prefers before all
else. What man loves is his soul. The heathens enclosed the ashes of
the beloved dead in an urn; with the Christian the heavenly future
is the mausoleum in which he enshrines his soul.
In order to comprehend a particular faith, or religion in general,
it is necessary to consider religion in its rudimentary stages,
in its lowest, rudest condition. Religion must not only be traced
in an ascending line, but surveyed in the entire course of its
existence. It is requisite to regard the various earlier religions as
present in the absolute religion, and not as left behind it in the
past, in order correctly to appreciate and comprehend the absolute
religion as well as the others. The most frightful "aberrations,"
the wildest excesses of the religious consciousness, often afford the
profoundest insight into the mysteries of the absolute religion. Ideas,
seemingly the rudest, are often only the most childlike, innocent, and
true. This observation applies to the conceptions of a future life. The
"savage," whose consciousness does not extend beyond his own country,
whose entire being is a growth of its soil, takes his country with him
into the other world, either leaving Nature as it is, or improving it,
and so overcoming in the idea of the other life the difficulties he
experiences in this. [145] In this limitation of uncultivated tribes
there is a striking trait. With them the future expresses nothing
else than home-sickness. Death separates man from his kindred, from
his people, from his country. But the man who has not extended his
consciousness, cannot endure this separation; he must come back again
to his native land. The negroes in the West Indies killed themselves
that they might come to life again in their fatherland. And, according
to Ossian's conception, "the spirits of those who die in a strange
land float back towards their birthplace." [146] This limitation is
the direct opposite of imaginative spiritualism, which makes man a
vagabond, who, indifferent even to the earth, roams from star to star;
and certainly there lies a real truth at its foundation. Man is what
he is through Nature, however much may belong to his spontaneity;
for even his spontaneity has its foundation in Nature, of which his
particular character is only an expression. Be thankful to Nature! Man
cannot be separated from it. The German, whose God is spontaneity,
owes his character to Nature just as much as the Oriental. To find
fault with Indian art, with Indian religion and philosophy, is to find
fault with Indian Nature. You complain of the reviewer who tears a
passage in your works from the context that he may hand it over to
ridicule. Why are you yourself guilty of that which you blame in
others? Why do you tear the Indian religion from its connection,
in which it is just as reasonable as your absolute religion?
Faith in a future world, in a life after death, is therefore with
"savage" tribes essentially nothing more than direct faith in the
present life--immediate unbroken faith in this life. For them,
their actual life, even with its local limitations, has all, has
absolute value; they cannot abstract from it, they cannot conceive its
being broken off; i.e., they believe directly in the infinitude, the
perpetuity of this life. Only when the belief in immortality becomes a
critical belief, when a distinction is made between what is to be left
behind here, and what is in reserve there, between what here passes
away, and what there is to abide, does the belief in life after death
form itself into the belief in another life; but this criticism, this
distinction, is applied to the present life also. Thus the Christians
distinguish between the natural and the Christian life, the sensual or
worldly and the spiritual or holy life. The heavenly life is no other
than that which is, already here below, distinguished from the merely
natural life, though still tainted with it. That which the Christian
excludes from himself now--for example, the sexual life--is excluded
from the future: the only distinction is, that he is there free from
that which he here wishes to be free from, and seeks to rid himself
of by the will, by devotion, and by bodily mortification. Hence this
life is, for the Christian, a life of torment and pain, because he
is here still beset by a hostile power, and has to struggle with the
lusts of the flesh and the assaults of the devil.
The faith of cultured nations is therefore distinguished from
that of the uncultured in the same way that culture in general is
distinguished from inculture: namely, that the faith of culture is
a discriminating, critical, abstract faith. A distinction implies a
judgment; but where there is a judgment there arises the distinction
between positive and negative. The faith of savage tribes is a
faith without a judgment. Culture, on the contrary, judges: to the
cultured man only cultured life is the true life; to the Christian
only the Christian life. The rude child of Nature steps into the other
life just as he is, without ceremony: the other world is his natural
nakedness. The cultivated man, on the contrary, objects to the idea of
such an unbridled life after death, because even here he objects to
the unrestricted life of Nature. Faith in a future life is therefore
only faith in the true life of the present; the essential elements of
this life are also the essential elements of the other: accordingly,
faith in a future life is not faith in another unknown life; but in
the truth and infinitude, and consequently in the perpetuity, of that
life which already here below is regarded as the authentic life.
As God is nothing else than the nature of man purified from that
which to the human individual appears, whether in feeling or thought,
a limitation, an evil; so the future life is nothing else than the
present life freed from that which appears a limitation or an evil. The
more definitely and profoundly the individual is conscious of the limit
as a limit, of the evil as an evil, the more definite and profound is
his conviction of the future life, where these limits disappear. The
future life is the feeling, the conception of freedom from those
limits which here circumscribe the feeling of self, the existence of
the individual. The only difference between the course of religion and
that of the natural or rational man is, that the end which the latter
arrives at by a straight line, the former only attains by describing
a curved line--a circle. The natural man remains at home because he
finds it agreeable, because he is perfectly satisfied; religion which
commences with a discontent, a disunion, forsakes its home and travels
far, but only to feel the more vividly in the distance the happiness
of home. In religion man separates himself from himself, but only to
return always to the same point from which he set out. Man negatives
himself, but only to posit himself again, and that in a glorified form:
he negatives this life, but only, in the end, to posit it again in
the future life. [147] The future life is this life once lost, but
found again, and radiant with all the more brightness for the joy of
recovery. The religious man renounces the joys of this world, but only
that he may win in return the joys of heaven; or rather he renounces
them because he is already in the ideal possession of heavenly joys;
and the joys of heaven are the same as those of earth, only that they
are freed from the limits and contrarieties of this life. Religion
thus arrives, though by a circuit, at the very goal, the goal of joy,
towards which the natural man hastens in a direct line. To live in
images or symbols is the essence of religion. Religion sacrifices
the thing itself to the image. The future life is the present in the
mirror of the imagination: the enrapturing image is in the sense of
religion the true type of earthly life,--real life only a glimmer of
that ideal, imaginary life. The future life is the present embellished,
contemplated through the imagination, purified from all gross matter;
or, positively expressed, it is the beauteous present intensified.
Embellishment, emendation, presupposes blame, dissatisfaction. But
the dissatisfaction is only superficial. I do not deny the thing to
be of value; just as it is, however, it does not please me; I deny
only the modification, not the substance, otherwise I should urge
annihilation. A house which absolutely displeases me I cause to be
pulled down, not to be embellished. To the believer in a future
life joy is agreeable--who can fail to be conscious that joy is
something positive?--but it is disagreeable to him that here joy
is followed by opposite sensations, that it is transitory. Hence he
places joy in the future life also, but as eternal, uninterrupted,
divine joy (and the future life is therefore called the world of joy),
such as he here conceives it in God; for God is nothing but eternal,
uninterrupted joy, posited as a subject. Individuality or personality
is agreeable to him, but only as unencumbered by objective forces;
hence, he includes individuality also, but pure, absolutely subjective
individuality. Light pleases him; but not gravitation, because this
appears a limitation of the individual; not night, because in it man
is subjected to Nature: in the other world, there is light, but no
weight, no night,--pure, unobstructed light. [148]
As man in his utmost remoteness from himself, in God, always returns
upon himself, always revolves round himself; so in his utmost
remoteness from the world, he always at last comes back to it. The
more extra- and supra-human God appears at the commencement, the more
human does he show himself to be in the subsequent course of things,
or at the close: and just so, the more supernatural the heavenly life
looks in the beginning or at a distance, the more clearly does it,
in the end or when viewed closely, exhibit its identity with the
natural life,--an identity which at last extends even to the flesh,
even to the body. In the first instance the mind is occupied with the
separation of the soul from the body, as in the conception of God
the mind is first occupied with the separation of the essence from
the individual;--the individual dies a spiritual death, the dead
body which remains behind is the human individual; the soul which
has departed from it is God. But the separation of the soul from
the body, of the essence from the individual, of God from man, must
be abolished again. Every separation of beings essentially allied
is painful. The soul yearns after its lost half, after its body;
as God, the departed soul yearns after the real man. As, therefore,
God becomes a man again, so the soul returns to its body, and the
perfect identity of this world and the other is now restored. It
is true that this new body is a bright, glorified, miraculous body,
but--and this is the main point--it is another and yet the same body,
[149] as God is another being than man, and yet the same. Here we
come again to the idea of miracle, which unites contradictories. The
supernatural body is a body constructed by the imagination, for which
very reason it is adequate to the feelings of man: an unburdensome,
purely subjective body. Faith in the future life is nothing else than
faith in the truth of the imagination, as faith in God is faith in
the truth and infinity of human feeling. Or: as faith in God is only
faith in the abstract nature of man, so faith in the heavenly life
is only faith in the abstract earthly life.
But the sum of the future life is happiness, the everlasting bliss of
personality, which is here limited and circumscribed by Nature. Faith
in the future life is therefore faith in the freedom of subjectivity
from the limits of Nature; it is faith in the eternity and infinitude
of personality, and not of personality viewed in relation to the idea
of the species, in which it for ever unfolds itself in new individuals,
but of personality as belonging to already existing individuals:
consequently, it is the faith of man in himself. But faith in the
kingdom of heaven is one with faith in God--the content of both
ideas is the same; God is pure absolute subjectivity released from
all natural limits; he is what individuals ought to be and will be:
faith in God is therefore the faith of man in the infinitude and truth
of his own nature; the Divine Being is the subjective human being in
his absolute freedom and unlimitedness.
Our most essential task is now fulfilled. We have reduced the
supermundane, supernatural, and superhuman nature of God to the
elements of human nature as its fundamental elements. Our process
of analysis has brought us again to the position with which we set
out. The beginning, middle and end of religion is Man.
PART II.
THE FALSE OR THEOLOGICAL ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE ESSENTIAL STANDPOINT OF RELIGION.
The essential standpoint of religion is the practical or
subjective. The end of religion is the welfare, the salvation, the
ultimate felicity of man; the relation of man to God is nothing else
than his relation to his own spiritual good; God is the realised
salvation of the soul, or the unlimited power of effecting the
salvation, the bliss of man. [150] The Christian religion is specially
distinguished from other religions in this,--that no other has given
equal prominence to the salvation of man. But this salvation is not
temporal earthly prosperity and well-being. On the contrary, the most
genuine Christians have declared that earthly good draws man away from
God, whereas adversity, suffering, afflictions lead him back to God,
and hence are alone suited to Christians. Why? Because in trouble
man is only practically or subjectively disposed; in trouble he has
resource only to the one thing needful; in trouble God is felt to be a
want of man. Pleasure, joy, expands man; trouble, suffering, contracts
and concentrates him; in suffering man denies the reality of the world;
the things that charm the imagination of the artist and the intellect
of the thinker lose their attraction for him, their power over him; he
is absorbed in himself, in his own soul. The soul thus self-absorbed,
self-concentrated, seeking satisfaction in itself alone, denying the
world, idealistic in relation to the world, to Nature in general,
but realistic in relation to man, caring only for its inherent need
of salvation,--this soul is God. God, as the object of religion,--and
only as such is he God,--God in the sense of a nomen proprium, not of a
vague, metaphysical entity, is essentially an object only of religion,
not of philosophy,--of feeling, not of the intellect,--of the heart's
necessity, not of the mind's freedom: in short, an object which is
the reflex not of the theoretical but of the practical tendency in man.
Religion annexes to its doctrines a curse and a blessing, damnation
and salvation. Blessed is he that believeth, cursed is he that
believeth not. Thus it appeals not to reason, but to feeling, to
the desire of happiness, to the passions of hope and fear. It does
not take the theoretic point of view; otherwise it must have been
free to enunciate its doctrines without attaching to them practical
consequences, without to a certain extent compelling belief in them;
for when the case stands thus: I am lost if I do not believe,--the
conscience is under a subtle kind of constraint; the fear of hell urges
me to believe. Even supposing my belief to be in its origin free,
fear inevitably intermingles itself; my conscience is always under
constraint; doubt, the principle of theoretic freedom, appears to me
a crime. And as in religion the highest idea, the highest existence
is God, so the highest crime is doubt in God, or the doubt that God
exists. But that which I do not trust myself to doubt, which I cannot
doubt without feeling disturbed in my soul, without incurring guilt;
that is no matter of theory, but a matter of conscience, no being of
the intellect, but of the heart.
Now as the sole standpoint of religion is the practical or subjective
standpoint, as therefore to religion the whole, the essential man is
that part of his nature which is practical, which forms resolutions,
which acts in accordance with conscious aims, whether physical or
moral, and which considers the world not in itself, but only in
relation to those aims or wants: the consequence is that everything
which lies behind the practical consciousness, but which is the
essential object of theory--theory in its most original and general
sense, namely, that of objective contemplation and experience, of
the intellect, of science [151]--is regarded by religion as lying
outside man and Nature, in a special, personal being. All good, but
especially such as takes possession of man apart from his volition,
such as does not correspond with any resolution or purpose, such as
transcends the limits of the practical consciousness, comes from God;
all wickedness, evil, but especially such as overtakes him against
his will in the midst of his best moral resolutions, or hurries him
along with terrible violence, comes from the devil. The scientific
knowledge of the essence of religion includes the knowledge of the
devil, of Satan, of demons. [152] These things cannot be omitted
without a violent mutilation of religion. Grace and its works
are the antitheses of the devil and his works. As the involuntary,
sensual impulses which flash out from the depths of the nature, and,
in general, all those phenomena of moral and physical evil which are
inexplicable to religion, appear to it as the work of the Evil Being;
so the involuntary movements of inspiration and ecstasy appear to it as
the work of the Good Being, God, of the Holy Spirit or of grace. Hence
the arbitrariness of grace--the complaint of the pious that grace at
one time visits and blesses them, at another forsakes and rejects
them. The life, the agency of grace, is the life, the agency of
emotion. Emotion is the Paraclete of Christians. The moments which
are forsaken by divine grace are the moments destitute of emotion
and inspiration.
In relation to the inner life, grace may be defined as religious
genius; in relation to the outer life as religious chance. Man is
good or wicked by no means through himself, his own power, his
will; but through that complete synthesis of hidden and evident
determinations of things which, because they rest on no evident
necessity, we ascribe to the power of "chance." Divine grace is the
power of chance beclouded with additional mystery. Here we have again
the confirmation of that which we have seen to be the essential law
of religion. Religion denies, repudiates chance, making everything
dependent on God, explaining everything by means of him; but this
denial is only apparent; it merely gives chance the name of the
divine sovereignty. For the divine will, which, on incomprehensible
grounds, for incomprehensible reasons, that is, speaking plainly,
out of groundless, absolute arbitrariness, out of divine caprice, as
it were, determines or predestines some to evil and misery, others
to good and happiness, has not a single positive characteristic to
distinguish it from the power of chance. The mystery of the election
of grace is thus the mystery of chance. I say the mystery of chance;
for in reality chance is a mystery, although slurred over and ignored
by our speculative religious philosophy, which, as in its occupation
with the illusory mysteries of the Absolute Being, i.e., of theology,
it has overlooked the true mysteries of thought and life, so also
in the mystery of divine grace or freedom of election, has forgotten
the profane mystery of chance. [153]
But to return. The devil is the negative, the evil, that springs from
the nature, but not from the will; God is the positive, the good, which
comes from the nature, but not from the conscious action of the will;
the devil is involuntary, inexplicable wickedness; God involuntary,
inexplicable goodness. The source of both is the same, the quality only
is different or opposite. For this reason, the belief in a devil was,
until the most recent times, intimately connected with the belief
in God, so that the denial of the devil was held to be virtually as
atheistic as the denial of God. Nor without reason; for when men once
begin to derive the phenomena of evil from natural causes, they at
the same time begin to derive the phenomena of good, of the divine,
from the nature of things, and come at length either to abolish the
idea of God altogether, or at least to believe in another God than
the God of religion. In this case it most commonly happens that they
make the Deity an idle inactive being, whose existence is equivalent
to non-existence, since he no longer actively interposes in life,
but is merely placed at the summit of things, at the beginning of
the world, as the First Cause. God created the world: this is all
that is here retained of God. The past tense is necessary; for since
that epoch the world pursues its course like a machine. The addition:
He still creates, he is creating at this moment, is only the result
of external reflection; the past tense adequately expresses the
religious idea in this stage; for the spirit of religion is gone
when the operation of God is reduced to a fecit or creavit. It is
otherwise when the genuine religious consciousness says: The fecit
is still to-day a facit. This, though here also it is a product of
reflection, has nevertheless a legitimate meaning, because by the
religious spirit God is really thought of as active.
Religion is abolished where the idea of the world, of so-called
second causes, intrudes itself between God and man. Here a foreign
element, the principle of intellectual culture, has insinuated itself,
peace is broken, the harmony of religion, which lies only in the
immediate connection of man with God, is destroyed. Second causes are
a capitulation of the unbelieving intellect with the still believing
heart. It is true that, according to religion also, God works on man
by means of other things and beings. But God alone is the cause, he
alone is the active and efficient being. What a fellow-creature does
is in the view of religion done not by him, but by God. The other
is only an appearance, a medium, a vehicle, not a cause. But the
"second cause" is a miserable anomaly, neither an independent nor a
dependent being: God, it is true, gives the first impulse, but then
ensues the spontaneous activity of the second cause. [154]
Religion of itself, unadulterated by foreign elements, knows nothing
of the existence of second causes; on the contrary, they are a stone
of stumbling to it; for the realm of second causes, the sensible
world, Nature, is precisely what separates man from God, although
God as a real God, i.e., an external being, is supposed himself to
become in the other world a sensible existence. [155] Hence religion
believes that one day this wall of separation will fall away. One day
there will be no Nature, no matter, no body, at least none such as
to separate man from God: then there will be only God and the pious
soul. Religion derives the idea of the existence of second causes,
that is, of things which are interposed between God and man, only
from the physical, natural, and hence the irreligious or at least
non-religious theory of the universe: a theory which it nevertheless
immediately subverts by making the operations of Nature operations
of God. But this religious idea is in contradiction with the natural
sense and understanding, which concedes a real, spontaneous activity
to natural things. And this contradiction of the physical view with
the religious theory, religion resolves by converting the undeniable
activity of things into an activity of God. Thus, on this view,
the positive idea is God; the negative, the world.
On the contrary, where second causes, having been set in motion, are,
so to speak, emancipated, the converse occurs; Nature is the positive,
God a negative idea. The world is independent in its existence, its
persistence; only as to its commencement is it dependent. God is here
only a hypothetical Being, an inference, arising from the necessity of
a limited understanding, to which the existence of a world viewed by
it as a machine is inexplicable without a self-moving principle;--he
is no longer an original, absolutely necessary Being. God exists not
for his own sake, but for the sake of the world,--merely that he may,
as a First Cause, explain the existence of the world. The narrow
rationalising man takes objection to the original self-subsistence
of the world, because he looks at it only from the subjective,
practical point of view, only in its commoner aspect, only as a piece
of mechanism, not in its majesty and glory, not as the Cosmos. He
conceives the world as having been launched into existence by an
original impetus, as, according to mathematical theory, is the case
with matter once set in motion and thenceforth going on for ever:
that is, he postulates a mechanical origin. A machine must have a
beginning; this is involved in its very idea; for it has not the
source of motion in itself.
All religious speculative cosmogony is tautology, as is apparent from
this example. In cosmogony man declares or realises the idea he has
of the world; he merely repeats what he has already said in another
form. Thus here, if the world is a machine, it is self-evident that it
did not make itself, that, on the contrary, it was created, i.e., had
a mechanical origin. Herein, it is true, the religious consciousness
agrees with the mechanical theory, that to it also the world is a mere
fabric, a product of Will. But they agree only for an instant, only
in the moment of creation; that moment past, the harmony ceases. The
holder of the mechanical theory needs God only as the creator of
the world; once made, the world turns its back on the Creator,
and rejoices in its godless self-subsistence. But religion creates
the world only to maintain it in the perpetual consciousness of its
nothingness, its dependence on God. [156] To the mechanical theorist,
the creation is the last thin thread which yet ties him to religion;
the religion to which the nothingness of the world is a present truth
(for all power and activity is to it the power and activity of God),
is with him only a surviving reminiscence of youth; hence he removes
the creation of the world, the act of religion, the non-existence
of the world (for in the beginning, before the creation, there was
no world, only God), into the far distance, into the past, while
the self-subsistence of the world, which absorbs all his senses and
endeavours, acts on him with the force of the present. The mechanical
theorist interrupts and cuts short the activity of God by the activity
of the world. With him God has indeed still an historical right,
but this is in contradiction with the right he awards to Nature;
hence he limits as much as possible the right yet remaining to God,
in order to gain wider and freer play for his natural causes, and
thereby for his understanding.
With this class of thinkers the creation holds the same position as
miracles, which also they can and actually do acquiesce in, because
miracles exist, at least according to religious opinion. But not
to say that he explains miracles naturally, that is, mechanically,
he can only digest them when he relegates them to the past; for the
present he begs to be excused from believing in them, and explains
everything to himself charmingly on natural principles. When a
belief has departed from the reason, the intelligence, when it is no
longer held spontaneously, but merely because it is a common belief,
or because on some ground or other it must be held; in short, when
a belief is inwardly a past one; then externally also the object
of the belief is referred to the past. Unbelief thus gets breathing
space, but at the same time concedes to belief at least an historical
validity. The past is here the fortunate means of compromise between
belief and unbelief: I certainly believe in miracles, but, nota bene,
in no miracles which happen now--only in those which once happened,
which, thank God! are already plus quam perfecta. So also with
the creation. The creation is an immediate act of God, a miracle,
for there was once nothing but God. In the idea of the creation man
transcends the world, he rises into abstraction from it; he conceives
it as non-existent in the moment of creation; thus he dispels from
his sight what stands between himself and God, the sensible world;
he places himself in immediate contact with God. But the mechanical
thinker shrinks from this immediate contact with God; hence he at
once makes the præsens, if indeed he soars so high, into a perfectum;
he interposes millenniums between his natural or materialistic view
and the thought of an immediate operation of God.
To the religious spirit, on the contrary, God alone is the cause
of all positive effects, God alone the ultimate and also the sole
ground wherewith it answers, or rather repels, all questions which
theory puts forward; for the affirmative of religion is virtually
a negative; its answer amounts to nothing, since it solves the
most various questions always with the same answer, making all the
operations of Nature immediate operations of God, of a designing,
personal, extra-natural or supranatural Being. God is the idea which
supplies the lack of theory. The idea of God is the explanation of
the inexplicable,--which explains nothing because it is supposed to
explain everything without distinction; he is the night of theory,
a night, however, in which everything is clear to religious feeling,
because in it the measure of darkness, the discriminating light of the
understanding, is extinct; he is the ignorance which solves all doubt
by repressing it, which knows everything because it knows nothing
definite, because all things which impress the intellect disappear
before religion, lose their individuality, in the eyes of divine
power are nothing. Darkness is the mother of religion.
The essential act of religion, that in which religion puts into
action what we have designated as its essence, is prayer. Prayer
is all-powerful. What the pious soul entreats for in prayer God
fulfils. But he prays not for spiritual gifts [157] alone, which
lie in some sort in the power of man; he prays also for things which
lie out of him, which are in the power of Nature, a power which it
is the very object of prayer to overcome; in prayer he lays hold
on a supernatural means, in order to attain ends in themselves
natural. God is to him not the causa remota but the causa proxima,
the immediate, efficient cause of all natural effects. All so-called
secondary forces and second causes are nothing to him when he prays;
if they were anything to him, the might, the fervour of prayer would
be annihilated. But in fact they have no existence for him; otherwise
he would assuredly seek to attain his end only by some intermediate
process. But he desires immediate help. He has recourse to prayer in
the certainty that he can do more, infinitely more, by prayer, than
by all the efforts of reason and all the agencies of Nature,--in
the conviction that prayer possesses superhuman and supernatural
powers. [158] But in prayer he applies immediately to God. Thus God
is to him the immediate cause, the fulfilment of prayer, the power
which realises prayer. But an immediate act of God is a miracle;
hence miracle is essential to the religious view. Religion explains
everything miraculously. That miracles do not always happen is indeed
obvious, as that man does not always pray. But the consideration that
miracles do not always happen lies outside the nature of religion, in
the empirical or physical mode of view only. Where religion begins,
there also begins miracle. Every true prayer is a miracle, an act
of the wonder-working power. External miracles themselves only make
visible internal miracles, that is, they are only a manifestation in
time and space, and therefore as a special fact, of what in and by
itself is a fundamental position of religion, namely, that God is,
in general, the supernatural, immediate cause of all things. The
miracle of fact is only an impassioned expression of religion, a
moment of inspiration. Miracles happen only in extraordinary crises,
in which there is an exaltation of the feelings: hence there are
miracles of anger. No miracle is wrought in cold blood. But it
is precisely in moments of passion that the latent nature reveals
itself. Man does not always pray with equal warmth and power. Such
prayers are therefore ineffective. Only ardent prayer reveals the
nature of prayer. Man truly prays when he regards prayer as in itself
a sacred power, a divine force. So it is with miracles. Miracles
happen--no matter whether few or many--wherever there is, as a basis
for them, a belief in the miraculous. But the belief in miracle
is no theoretic or objective mode of viewing the world and Nature;
miracle realises practical wants, and that in contradiction with the
laws which are imperative to the reason; in miracle man subjugates
Nature, as in itself a nullity, to his own ends, which he regards
as a reality; miracle is the superlative expression of spiritual or
religious utilitarianism; in miracle all things are at the service
of necessitous man. It is clear from this, that the conception of
the world which is essential to religion is that of the practical
or subjective standpoint, that God--for the miracle-working power
is identical with God--is a purely practical or subjective Being,
serving, however, as a substitute for a theoretic view, and is thus
no object of thought, of the knowing faculty, any more than miracle,
which owes its origin to the negation of thought. If I place myself
in the point of view of thought, of investigation, of theory, in
which I consider things in themselves, in their mutual relations,
the miracle-working being vanishes into nothing, miracle disappears;
i.e., the religious miracle, which is absolutely different from the
natural miracle, though they are continually interchanged, in order
to stultify reason, and, under the appearance of natural science, to
introduce religious miracle into the sphere of rationality and reality.
But for this very reason--namely, that religion is removed from the
standpoint, from the nature of theory--the true, universal essence
of Nature and humanity, which as such is hidden from religion and
is only visible to the theoretic eye, is conceived as another, a
miraculous and supernatural essence; the idea of the species becomes
the idea of God, who again is himself an individual being, but is
distinguished from human individuals in this, that he possesses their
qualities according to the measure of the species. Hence, in religion
man necessarily places his nature out of himself, regards his nature
as a separate nature; necessarily, because the nature which is the
object of theory lies outside of him, because all his conscious
existence spends itself in his practical subjectivity. God is his
alter ego, his other lost half; God is the complement of himself;
in God he is first a perfect man. God is a need to him; something is
wanting to him without his knowing what it is--God is this something
wanting, indispensable to him; God belongs to his nature. The world
is nothing to religion, [159]--the world, which is in truth the sum
of all reality, is revealed in its glory only by theory. The joys of
theory are the sweetest intellectual pleasures of life; but religion
knows nothing of the joys of the thinker, of the investigator of
Nature, of the artist. The idea of the universe is wanting to it,
the consciousness of the really infinite, the consciousness of the
species. God only is its compensation for the poverty of life, for
the want of a substantial import, which the true life of rational
contemplation presents in unending fulness. God is to religion the
substitute for the lost world,--God is to it in the stead of pure
contemplation, the life of theory.
That which we have designated as the practical or subjective view
is not pure, it is tainted with egoism, for therein I have relation
to a thing only for my own sake; neither is it self-sufficing,
for it places me in relation to an object above my own level. On
the contrary, the theoretic view is joyful, self-sufficing, happy;
for here the object calls forth love and admiration; in the light of
the free intelligence it is radiant as a diamond, transparent as a
rock-crystal. The theoretic view is æsthetic, whereas the practical
is unæsthetic. Religion therefore finds in God a compensation for
the want of an æsthetic view. To the religious spirit the world
is nothing in itself; the admiration, the contemplation of it is
idolatry; for the world is a mere piece of mechanism. [160] Hence
in religion it is God that serves as the object of pure, untainted,
i.e., theoretic or æsthetic contemplation. God is the existence to
which the religious man has an objective relation; in God the object
is contemplated by him for its own sake. God is an end in himself;
therefore in religion he has the significance which in the theoretic
view belongs to the object in general. The general being of theory
is to religion a special being. It is true that in religion man,
in his relation to God, has relation to his own wants as well in a
higher as in the lower sense: "Give us this day our daily bread;"
but God can satisfy all wants of man only because he in himself has
no wants,--because he is perfect blessedness.
CHAPTER XX.
THE CONTRADICTION IN THE EXISTENCE OF GOD.
Religion is the relation of man to his own nature,--therein lies
its truth and its power of moral amelioration;--but to his nature
not recognised as his own, but regarded as another nature, separate,
nay, contradistinguished from his own: herein lies its untruth, its
limitation, its contradiction to reason and morality; herein lies
the noxious source of religious fanaticism, the chief metaphysical
principle of human sacrifices, in a word, the prima materia of all
the atrocities, all the horrible scenes, in the tragedy of religious
history.
The contemplation of the human nature as another, a separately
existent nature, is, however, in the original conception of religion
an involuntary, childlike, simple act of the mind, that is, one which
separates God and man just as immediately as it again identifies
them. But when religion advances in years, and, with years, in
understanding; when, within the bosom of religion, reflection on
religion is awakened, and the consciousness of the identity of the
divine being with the human begins to dawn,--in a word, when religion
becomes theology, the originally involuntary and harmless separation
of God from man becomes an intentional, excogitated separation, which
has no other object than to banish again from the consciousness this
identity which has already entered there.
Hence the nearer religion stands to its origin, the truer, the more
genuine it is, the less is its true nature disguised; that is to
say, in the origin of religion there is no qualitative or essential
distinction whatever between God and man. And the religious man is
not shocked at this identification; for his understanding is still
in harmony with his religion. Thus in ancient Judaism, Jehovah
was a being differing from the human individual in nothing but in
duration of existence; in his qualities, his inherent nature, he was
entirely similar to man,--had the same passions, the same human, nay,
even corporeal properties. Only in the later Judaism was Jehovah
separated in the strictest manner from man, and recourse was had
to allegory in order to give to the old anthropomorphisms another
sense than that which they originally had. So again in Christianity:
in its earliest records the divinity of Christ is not so decidedly
stamped as it afterwards became. With Paul especially, Christ is
still an undefined being, hovering between heaven and earth, between
God and man, or in general, one amongst the existences subordinate to
the highest,--the first of the angels, the first created, but still
created; begotten indeed for our sake; but then neither are angels and
men created, but begotten, for God is their Father also. The Church
first identified him with God, made him the exclusive Son of God,
defined his distinction from men and angels, and thus gave him the
monopoly of an eternal, uncreated existence.
In the genesis of ideas, the first mode in which reflection on
religion, or theology, makes the divine being a distinct being,
and places him outside of man, is by making the existence of God the
object of a formal proof.
The proofs of the existence of God have been pronounced contradictory
to the essential nature of religion. They are so, but only in their
form as proofs. Religion immediately represents the inner nature of
man as an objective, external being. And the proof aims at nothing
more than to prove that religion is right. The most perfect being is
that than which no higher can be conceived: God is the highest that man
conceives or can conceive. This premiss of the ontological proof--the
most interesting proof, because it proceeds from within--expresses
the inmost nature of religion. That which is the highest for man,
from which he can make no further abstraction, which is the positive
limit of his intellect, of his feeling, of his sentiment, that is to
him God--id quo nihil majus cogitari potest. But this highest being
would not be the highest if he did not exist; we could then conceive
a higher being who would be superior to him in the fact of existence;
the idea of the highest being directly precludes this fiction. Not to
exist is a deficiency; to exist is perfection, happiness, bliss. From
a being to whom man gives all, offers up all that is precious to him,
he cannot withhold the bliss of existence. The contradiction to the
religious spirit in the proof of the existence of God lies only in
this, that the existence is thought of separately, and thence arises
the appearance that God is a mere conception, a being existing in
idea only,--an appearance, however, which is immediately dissipated;
for the very result of the proof is, that to God belongs an existence
distinct from an ideal one, an existence apart from man, apart from
thought,--a real self-existence.
The proof therefore is only thus far discordant with the spirit of
religion, that it presents as a formal deduction the implicit enthymeme
or immediate conclusion of religion, exhibits in logical relation,
and therefore distinguishes, what religion immediately unites; for to
religion God is not a matter of abstract thought,--he is a present
truth and reality. But that every religion in its idea of God makes
a latent, unconscious inference, is confessed in its polemic against
other religions. "Ye heathens," says the Jew or the Christian, "were
able to conceive nothing higher as your deities because ye were sunk
in sinful desires. Your God rests on a conclusion, the premisses of
which are your sensual impulses, your passions. You thought thus: the
most excellent life is to live out one's impulses without restraint;
and because this life was the most excellent, the truest, you made it
your God. Your God was your carnal nature, your heaven only a free
theatre for the passions which, in society and in the conditions
of actual life generally, had to suffer restraint." But, naturally,
in relation to itself no religion is conscious of such an inference,
for the highest of which it is capable is its limit, has the force of
necessity, is not a thought, not a conception, but immediate reality.
The proofs of the existence of God have for their aim to make the
internal external, to separate it from man. [161] His existence being
proved, God is no longer a merely relative, but a noumenal being
(Ding an sich): he is not only a being for us, a being in our faith,
our feeling, our nature, he is a being in himself, a being external
to us,--in a word, not merely a belief, a feeling, a thought, but
also a real existence apart from belief, feeling, and thought. But
such an existence is no other than a sensational existence; i.e.,
an existence conceived according to the forms of our senses.
The idea of sensational existence is indeed already involved in
the characteristic expression "external to us." It is true that a
sophistical theology refuses to interpret the word "external" in
its proper, natural sense, and substitutes the indefinite expression
of independent, separate existence. But if the externality is only
figurative, the existence also is figurative. And yet we are here
only concerned with existence in the proper sense, and external
existence is alone the definite, real, unshrinking expression for
separate existence.
Real, sensational existence is that which is not dependent on my
own mental spontaneity or activity, but by which I am involuntarily
affected, which is when I am not, when I do not think of it or feel
it. The existence of God must therefore be in space--in general, a
qualitative, sensational existence. But God is not seen, not heard,
not perceived by the senses. He does not exist for me, if I do not
exist for him; if I do not believe in a God, there is no God for me. If
I am not devoutly disposed, if I do not raise myself above the life
of the senses, he has no place in my consciousness. Thus he exists
only in so far as he is felt, thought, believed in;--the addition
"for me" is unnecessary. His existence therefore is a real one, yet
at the same time not a real one;--a spiritual existence, says the
theologian. But spiritual existence is only an existence in thought,
in feeling, in belief; so that his existence is a medium between
sensational existence and conceptional existence, a medium full of
contradiction. Or: he is a sensational existence, to which however all
the conditions of sensational existence are wanting:--consequently an
existence at once sensational and not sensational, an existence which
contradicts the idea of the sensational, or only a vague existence in
general, which is fundamentally a sensational one, but which, in order
that this may not become evident, is divested of all the predicates
of a real, sensational existence. But such an "existence in general"
is self-contradictory. To existence belongs full, definite reality.
A necessary consequence of this contradiction is Atheism. The existence
of God is essentially an empirical existence, without having its
distinctive marks; it is in itself a matter of experience, and yet
in reality no object of experience. It calls upon man to seek it
in Reality: it impregnates his mind with sensational conceptions
and pretensions; hence, when these are not fulfilled--when, on the
contrary, he finds experience in contradiction with these conceptions,
he is perfectly justified in denying that existence.
Kant is well known to have maintained, in his critique of the proofs
of the existence of God, that that existence is not susceptible of
proof from reason. He did not merit, on this account, the blame
which was cast on him by Hegel. The idea of the existence of God
in those proofs is a thoroughly empirical one; but I cannot deduce
empirical existence from an à priori idea. The only real ground of
blame against Kant is, that in laying down this position he supposed
it to be something remarkable, whereas it is self-evident. Reason
cannot constitute itself an object of sense. I cannot, in thinking,
at the same time represent what I think as a sensible object, external
to me. The proof of the existence of God transcends the limits of the
reason; true; but in the same sense in which sight, hearing, smelling
transcend the limits of the reason. It is absurd to reproach reason
that it does not satisfy a demand which can only address itself
to the senses. Existence, empirical existence, is proved to me by
the senses alone; and in the question as to the being of God, the
existence implied has not the significance of inward reality, of truth,
but the significance of a formal, external existence. Hence there is
perfect truth in the allegation that the belief that God is or is not
has no consequence with respect to inward moral dispositions. It is
true that the thought: There is a God, is inspiring; but here the is
means inward reality; here the existence is a movement of inspiration,
an act of aspiration. Just in proportion as this existence becomes
a prosaic, an empirical truth, the inspiration is extinguished.
Religion, therefore, in so far as it is founded on the existence of
God as an empirical truth, is a matter of indifference to the inward
disposition. As, necessarily, in the religious cultus, ceremonies,
observances, sacraments, apart from the moral spirit or disposition,
become in themselves an important fact: so also, at last, belief in
the existence of God becomes, apart from the inherent quality, the
spiritual import of the idea of God, a chief point in religion. If
thou only believest in God--believest that God is, thou art already
saved. Whether under this God thou conceivest a really divine being
or a monster, a Nero or a Caligula, an image of thy passions, thy
revenge, or ambition, it is all one,--the main point is that thou
be not an atheist. The history of religion has amply confirmed
this consequence which we here draw from the idea of the divine
existence. If the existence of God, taken by itself, had not rooted
itself as a religious truth in minds, there would never have been
those infamous, senseless, horrible ideas of God which stigmatise the
history of religion and theology. The existence of God was a common,
external, and yet at the same time a holy thing:--what wonder, then,
if on this ground the commonest, rudest, most unholy conceptions and
opinions sprang up!
Atheism was supposed, and is even now supposed, to be the negation
of all moral principle, of all moral foundations and bonds: if
God is not, all distinction between good and bad, virtue and vice,
is abolished. Thus the distinction lies only in the existence of
God; the reality of virtue lies not in itself, but out of it. And
assuredly it is not from an attachment to virtue, from a conviction
of its intrinsic worth and importance, that the reality of it is
thus bound up with the existence of God. On the contrary, the belief
that God is the necessary condition of virtue is the belief in the
nothingness of virtue in itself.
It is indeed worthy of remark that the idea of the empirical
existence of God has been perfectly developed in modern times,
in which empiricism and materialism in general have arrived at
their full blow. It is true that even in the original, simple
religious mind, God is an empirical existence to be found in a place,
though above the earth. But here this conception has not so naked,
so prosaic a significance; the imagination identifies again the
external God with the soul of man. The imagination is, in general,
the true place of an existence which is absent, not present to
the senses, though nevertheless sensational in its essence. [162]
Only the imagination solves the contradiction in an existence which
is at once sensational and not sensational; only the imagination
is the preservative from atheism. In the imagination existence has
sensational effects,--existence affirms itself as a power; with the
essence of sensational existence the imagination associates also the
phenomena of sensational existence. Where the existence of God is a
living truth, an object on which the imagination exercises itself,
there also appearances of God are believed in. [163] Where, on the
contrary, the fire of the religious imagination is extinct, where
the sensational effects or appearances necessarily connected with an
essentially sensational existence cease, there the existence becomes
a dead, self-contradictory existence, which falls irrecoverably into
the negation of atheism.
The belief in the existence of God is the belief in a special
existence, separate from the existence of man and Nature. A special
existence can only be proved in a special manner. This faith is
therefore only then a true and living one when special effects,
immediate appearances of God, miracles, are believed in. Where, on the
other hand, the belief in God is identified with the belief in the
world, where the belief in God is no longer a special faith, where
the general being of the world takes possession of the whole man,
there also vanishes the belief in special effects and appearances
of God. Belief in God is wrecked, is stranded on the belief in the
world, in natural effects as the only true ones. As here the belief
in miracles is no longer anything more than the belief in historical,
past miracles, so the existence of God is also only an historical,
in itself atheistic conception.
CHAPTER XXI.
THE CONTRADICTION IN THE REVELATION OF GOD.
With the idea of the existence of God is connected the idea of
revelation. God's attestation of his existence, the authentic testimony
that God exists, is revelation. Proofs drawn from reason are merely
subjective; the objective, the only true proof of the existence of God,
is his revelation. God speaks to man; revelation is the word of God;
he sends forth a voice which thrills the soul, and gives it the joyful
certainty that God really is. The word is the gospel of life,--the
criterion of existence and non-existence. Belief in revelation is the
culminating point of religious objectivism. The subjective conviction
of the existence of God here becomes an indubitable, external,
historical fact. The existence of God, in itself, considered simply
as existence, is already an external, empirical existence; still,
it is as yet only thought, conceived, and therefore doubtful; hence
the assertion that all proofs produce no satisfactory certainty. This
conceptional existence converted into a real existence, a fact, is
revelation. God has revealed himself, has demonstrated himself: who
then can have any further doubt? The certainty of the existence of God
is involved for me in the certainty of the revelation. A God who only
exists without revealing himself, who exists for me only through my own
mental act, such a God is a merely abstract, imaginary, subjective God;
a God who gives me a knowledge of himself through his own act is alone
a God who truly exists, who proves himself to exist,--an objective
God. Faith in revelation is the immediate certainty of the religious
mind, that what it believes, wishes, conceives, really is. Religion
is a dream, in which our own conceptions and emotions appear to us as
separate existences, beings out of ourselves. The religious mind does
not distinguish between subjective and objective,--it has no doubts;
it has the faculty, not of discerning other things than itself, but of
seeing its own conceptions out of itself as distinct beings. What is
in itself a mere theory is to the religious mind a practical belief,
a matter of conscience,--a fact. A fact is that which from being an
object of the intellect becomes a matter of conscience; a fact is that
which one cannot criticise or attack without being guilty of a crime;
[164] a fact is that which one must believe nolens volens; a fact is a
physical force, not an argument,--it makes no appeal to the reason. O
ye shortsighted religious philosophers of Germany, who fling at our
heads the facts of the religious consciousness, to stun our reason and
make us the slaves of your childish superstition,--do you not see that
facts are just as relative, as various, as subjective, as the ideas
of the different religions? Were not the gods of Olympus also facts,
self-attesting existences? [165] Were not the ludicrous miracles of
paganism regarded as facts? Were not angels and demons historical
persons? Did they not really appear to men? Did not Balaam's ass
really speak? Was not the story of Balaam's ass just as much believed
even by enlightened scholars of the last century, as the Incarnation
or any other miracle? A fact, I repeat, is a conception about the
truth of which there is no doubt, because it is no object of theory,
but of feeling, which desires that what it wishes, what it believes,
should be true. A fact is that, the denial of which is forbidden,
if not by an external law, yet by an internal one. A fact is every
possibility which passes for a reality, every conception which,
for the age wherein it is held to be a fact, expresses a want, and
is for that reason an impassable limit of the mind. A fact is every
wish that projects itself on reality: in short, it is everything that
is not doubted simply because it is not--must not be--doubted.
The religious mind, according to its nature as hitherto unfolded,
has the immediate certainty that all its involuntary, spontaneous
affections are impressions from without, manifestations of another
being. The religious mind makes itself the passive, God the active
being. God is activity; but that which determines him to activity,
which causes his activity (originally only omnipotence, potentia)
to become real activity, is not himself,--he needs nothing,--but man,
the religious subject. At the same time, however, man is reciprocally
determined by God; he views himself as passive; lie receives from God
determinate revelations, determinate proofs of his existence. Thus in
revelation man determines himself as that which determines God, i.e.,
revelation is simply the self-determination of man, only that between
himself the determined, and himself the determining, he interposes an
object--God, a distinct being. God is the medium by which man brings
about the reconciliation of himself with his own nature: God is the
bond, the vinculum substantiale, between the essential nature--the
species--and the individual.
The belief in revelation exhibits in the clearest manner the
characteristic illusion of the religious consciousness. The general
premiss of this belief is: man can of himself know nothing of God; all
his knowledge is merely vain, earthly, human. But God is a superhuman
being; God is known only by himself. Thus we know nothing of God beyond
what he reveals to us. The knowledge imparted by God is alone divine,
superhuman, supernatural knowledge. By means of revelation, therefore,
we know God through himself; for revelation is the word of God--God
declaring himself. Hence, in the belief in revelation man makes himself
a negation, he goes out of and above himself; he places revelation
in opposition to human knowledge and opinion; in it is contained a
hidden knowledge, the fulness of all supersensuous mysteries; here
reason must hold its peace. But nevertheless the divine revelation is
determined by the human nature. God speaks not to brutes or angels,
but to men; hence he uses human speech and human conceptions. Man
is an object to God, before God perceptibly imparts himself to man;
he thinks of man; he determines his action in accordance with the
nature of man and his needs. God is indeed free in will; he can
reveal himself or not; but he is not free as to the understanding;
he cannot reveal to man whatever he will, but only what is adapted to
man, what is commensurate with his nature such as it actually is; he
reveals what he must reveal, if his revelation is to be a revelation
for man, and not for some other kind of being. Now what God thinks in
relation to man is determined by the idea of man--it has arisen out of
reflection on human nature. God puts himself in the place of man, and
thinks of himself as this other being can and should think of him; he
thinks of himself, not with his own thinking power, but with man's. In
the scheme of his revelation God must have reference not to himself,
but to man's power of comprehension. That which comes from God to man,
comes to man only from man in God, that is, only from the ideal nature
of man to the phenomenal man, from the species to the individual. Thus,
between the divine revelation and the so-called human reason or nature,
there is no other than an illusory distinction;--the contents of the
divine revelation are of human origin, for they have proceeded not
from God as God, but from God as determined by human reason, human
wants, that is, directly from human reason and human wants. And so in
revelation man goes out of himself, in order, by a circuitous path, to
return to himself! Here we have a striking confirmation of the position
that the secret of theology is nothing else than anthropology--the
knowledge of God nothing else than a knowledge of man!
Indeed, the religious consciousness itself admits, in relation to past
times, the essentially human quality of revelation. The religious
consciousness of a later age is no longer satisfied with a Jehovah
who is from head to foot a man, and does not shrink from becoming
visible as such. It recognises that those were merely images in which
God accommodated himself to the comprehension of men in that age,
that is, merely human images. But it does not apply this mode of
interpretation to ideas accepted as revelation in the present age,
because it is yet itself steeped in those ideas. Nevertheless,
every revelation is simply a revelation of the nature of man to
existing men. In revelation man's latent nature is disclosed to
him, because an object to him. He is determined, affected by his
own nature as by another being; he receives from the hands of God
what his own unrecognised nature entails upon him as a necessity,
under certain conditions of time and circumstance. Reason, the mind
of the species, operates on the subjective, uncultured man only under
the image of a personal being. Moral laws have force for him only
as the commandments of a Divine Will, which has at once the power
to punish and the glance which nothing escapes. That which his own
nature, his reason, his conscience says to him, does not bind him,
because the subjective, uncultured man sees in conscience, in reason,
so far as he recognises it as his own, no universal objective power;
hence he must separate from himself that which gives him moral laws,
and place it in opposition to himself, as a distinct personal being.
Belief in revelation is a childlike belief, and is only respectable so
long as it is childlike. But the child is determined from without, and
revelation has for its object to effect by God's help what man cannot
attain by himself. Hence revelation has been called the education of
the human race. This is correct; only revelation must not be regarded
as outside the nature of man. There is within him an inward necessity
which impels him to present moral and philosophical doctrines in the
form of narratives and fables, and an equal necessity to represent that
impulse as a revelation. The mythical poet has an end in view--that of
making men good and wise; he designedly adopts the form of fable as
the most appropriate and vivid method of representation; but at the
same time, he is himself urged to this mode of teaching by his love
of fable, by his inward impulse. So it is with a revelation enunciated
by an individual. This individual has an aim; but at the same time he
himself lives in the conceptions by means of which he realises this
aim. Man, by means of the imagination, involuntarily contemplates his
inner nature; he represents it as out of himself. The nature of man,
of the species--thus working on him through the irresistible power
of the imagination, and contemplated as the law of his thought and
action--is God.
Herein lie the beneficial moral effects of the belief in revelation.
But as Nature "unconsciously produces results which look as if they
were produced consciously," so revelation generates moral actions,
which do not, however, proceed from morality;--moral actions, but
no moral dispositions. Moral rules are indeed observed, but they are
severed from the inward disposition, the heart, by being represented
as the commandments of an external lawgiver, by being placed in the
category of arbitrary laws, police regulations. What is done is done
not because it is good and right, but because it is commanded by
God. The inherent quality of the deed is indifferent; whatever God
commands is right. [166] If these commands are in accordance with
reason, with ethics, it is well; but so far as the idea of revelation
is concerned, it is accidental. The ceremonial laws of the Jews were
revealed, divine, though in themselves adventitious and arbitrary. The
Jews received from Jehovah the command to steal;--in a special case,
it is true.
But the belief in revelation not only injures the moral sense
and taste,--the æsthetics of virtue; it poisons, nay it destroys,
the divinest feeling in man--the sense of truth, the perception and
sentiment of truth. The revelation of God is a determinate revelation,
given at a particular epoch: God revealed himself once for all in the
year so and so, and that, not to the universal man, to the man of all
times and places, to the reason, to the species, but to certain limited
individuals. A revelation in a given time and place must be fixed in
writing, that its blessings may be transmitted uninjured. Hence the
belief in revelation is, at least for those of a subsequent age, belief
in a written revelation; but the necessary consequence of a faith in
which an historical book, necessarily subject to all the conditions
of a temporal, finite production, is regarded as an eternal, absolute,
universally authoritative word, is--superstition and sophistry.
Faith in a written revelation is a real, unfeigned, and so far
respectable faith, only where it is believed that all in the sacred
writings is significant, true, holy, divine. Where, on the contrary,
the distinction is made between the human and divine, the relatively
true and the absolutely true, the historical and the permanent,--where
it is not held that all without distinction is unconditionally true;
there the verdict of unbelief, that the Bible is no divine book, is
already introduced into the interpretation of the Bible,--there, at
least indirectly, that is, in a crafty, dishonest way, its title to the
character of a divine revelation is denied. Unity, unconditionality,
freedom from exceptions, immediate certitude, is alone the character of
divinity. A book that imposes on me the necessity of discrimination,
the necessity of criticism, in order to separate the divine from
the human, the permanent from the temporary, is no longer a divine,
certain, infallible book,--it is degraded to the rank of profane
books; for every profane book has the same quality, that together
with or in the human it contains the divine, that is, together with
or in the individual it contains the universal and eternal. But that
only is a truly divine book in which there is not merely something
good and something bad, something permanent and something temporary,
but in which all comes as it were from one crucible, all is eternal,
true and good. What sort of a revelation is that in which I must
first listen to the apostle Paul, then to Peter, then to James,
then to John, then to Matthew, then to Mark, then to Luke, until
at last I come to a passage where my soul, athirst for God, can cry
out: Eureka! here speaks the Holy Spirit himself! here is something
for me, something for all times and men. How true, on the contrary,
was the conception of the old faith, when it extended inspiration
to the very words, to the very letters of Scripture! The word is
not a matter of indifference in relation to the thought; a definite
thought can only be rendered by a definite word. Another word, another
letter--another sense. It is true that such faith is superstition;
but this superstition is alone the true, undisguised, open faith,
which is not ashamed of its consequences. If God numbers the hairs
on the head of a man, if no sparrow falls to the ground without his
will, how could he leave to the stupidity and caprice of scribes his
Word--that Word on which depends the everlasting salvation of man? Why
should he not dictate his thoughts to their pen in order to guard
them from the possibility of disfiguration? "But if man were a mere
organ of the Holy Spirit, human freedom would be abolished!" [167] Oh,
what a pitiable argument! Is human freedom, then, of more value than
divine truth? Or does human freedom consist only in the distortion
of divine truth?
And just as necessarily as the belief in a determinate historical
revelation is associated with superstition, so necessarily is it
associated with sophistry. The Bible contradicts morality, contradicts
reason, contradicts itself, innumerable times; and yet it is the Word
of God, eternal truth, and "truth cannot contradict itself." [168]
How does the believer in revelation elude this contradiction between
the idea in his own mind of revelation as divine, harmonious truth,
and this supposed actual revelation? Only by self-deception, only
by the silliest subterfuges, only by the most miserable, transparent
sophisms. Christian sophistry is the necessary product of Christian
faith, especially of faith in the Bible as a divine revelation.
Truth, absolute truth, is given objectively in the Bible, subjectively
in faith; for towards that which God himself speaks I can only be
believing, resigned, receptive. Nothing is left to the understanding,
the reason, but a formal, subordinate office; it has a false position,
a position essentially contradictory to its nature. The understanding
in itself is here indifferent to truth, indifferent to the distinction
between the true and the false; it has no criterion in itself;
whatever is found in revelation is true, even when it is in direct
contradiction with reason. The understanding is helplessly given
over to the haphazard of the most ignoble empiricism;--whatever
I find in divine revelation I must believe, and if necessary, my
understanding must defend it; the understanding is the watchdog of
revelation; it must let everything without distinction be imposed
on it as truth,--discrimination would be doubt, would be a crime:
consequently, nothing remains to it but an adventitious, indifferent,
i.e., disingenuous, sophistical, tortuous mode of thought, which
is occupied only with groundless distinctions and subterfuges, with
ignominious tricks and evasions. But the more man, by the progress of
time, becomes estranged from revelation, the more the understanding
ripens into independence,--the more glaring, necessarily, appears the
contradiction between the understanding and belief in revelation. The
believer can then prove revelation only by incurring contradiction
with himself, with truth, with the understanding, only by the most
impudent assumptions, only by shameless falsehoods, only by the sin
against the Holy Ghost.
CHAPTER XXII.
THE CONTRADICTION IN THE NATURE OF GOD IN GENERAL.
The grand principle, the central point of Christian sophistry, is
the idea of God. God is the human being, and yet he must be regarded
as another, a superhuman being. God is universal, abstract Being,
simply the idea of Being; and yet he must be conceived as a personal,
individual being;--or God is a person, and yet he must be regarded as
God, as universal, i.e., not as a personal being. God is; his existence
is certain, more certain than ours; he has an existence distinct from
us and from things in general, i.e., an individual existence; and yet
his existence must be held a spiritual one, i.e., an existence not
perceptible as a special one. One half of the definition is always in
contradiction with the other half: the statement of what must be held
always annihilates the statement of what is. The fundamental idea is
a contradiction which can be concealed only by sophisms. A God who
does not trouble himself about us, who does not hear our prayers,
who does not see us and love us, is no God; thus humanity is made
an essential predicate of God;--but at the same time it is said:
A God who does not exist in and by himself, out of men, above men,
as another being, is a phantom; and thus it is made an essential
predicate of God that he is non-human and extra-human. A God who is
not as we are, who has not consciousness, not intelligence, i.e., not
a personal understanding, a personal consciousness (as, for example,
the "substance" of Spinoza), is no God. Essential identity with us is
the chief condition of deity; the idea of deity is made dependent on
the idea of personality, of consciousness, quo nihil majus cogitari
potest. But it is said in the same breath, a God who is not essentially
distinguished from us is no God.
The essence of religion is the immediate, involuntary, unconscious
contemplation of the human nature as another, a distinct nature. But
when this projected image of human nature is made an object of
reflection, of theology, it becomes an inexhaustible mine of
falsehoods, illusions, contradictions, and sophisms.
A peculiarly characteristic artifice and pretext of Christian sophistry
is the doctrine of the unsearchableness, the incomprehensibility
of the divine nature. But, as will be shown, the secret of this
incomprehensibility is nothing further than that a known quality
is made into an unknown one, a natural quality into a supernatural,
i.e., an unnatural one, so as to produce the appearance, the illusion,
that the divine nature is different from the human, and is eo ipso
an incomprehensible one.
In the original sense of religion, the incomprehensibility of
God has only the significance of an impassioned expression. Thus,
when we are affected by a surprising phenomenon, we exclaim: It
is incredible, it is beyond conception! though afterwards, when we
recover our self-possession, we find the object of our astonishment
nothing less than incomprehensible. In the truly religious sense,
incomprehensibility is not the dead full stop which reflection places
wherever understanding deserts it, but a pathetic note of exclamation
marking the impression which the imagination makes on the feelings. The
imagination is the original organ of religion. Between God and man,
in the primitive sense of religion, there is on the one hand only a
distinction in relation to existence, according to which God, as a
self-subsistent being, is the antithesis of man as a dependent being;
on the other hand, there is only a quantitative distinction, i.e.,
a distinction derived from the imagination, for the distinctions
of the imagination are only quantitative. The infinity of God in
religion is quantitative infinity; God is and has all that man has,
but in an infinitely greater measure. The nature of God is the nature
of the imagination unfolded, made objective. [169] God is a being
conceived under the forms of the senses, but freed from the limits
of sense,--a being at once unlimited and sensational. But what is the
imagination?--limitless activity of the senses. God is eternal, i.e.,
he exists at all times; God is omnipresent, i.e., he exists in all
places; God is the omniscient being, i.e., the being to whom every
individual thing, every sensible existence, is an object without
distinction, without limitation of time and place.
Eternity and omnipresence are sensational qualities, for in them
there is no negation of existence in time and space, but only of
exclusive limitation to a particular time, to a particular place. In
like manner omniscience is a sensational quality, a sensational
knowledge. Religion has no hesitation in attributing to God himself
the nobler senses: God sees and hears all things. But the divine
omniscience is a power of knowing through the senses while yet the
necessary quality, the essential determination of actual knowledge
through the senses is denied to it. My senses present sensible
objects to me only separately and in succession; but God sees all
sensible things at once, all locality in an unlocal manner, all
temporal things in an untemporal manner, all objects of sense in an
unsensational manner. [170] That is to say: I extend the horizon of
my senses by the imagination; I form to myself a confused conception
of the whole of things; and this conception, which exalts me above the
limited standpoint of the senses, and therefore affects me agreeably,
I posit as a divine reality. I feel the fact that my knowledge is tied
to a local standpoint, to sensational experience, as a limitation;
what I feel as a limitation I do away with in my imagination, which
furnishes free space for the play of my feelings. This negativing of
limits by the imagination is the positing of omniscience as a divine
power and reality. But at the same time there is only a quantitative
distinction between omniscience and my knowledge; the quality of
the knowledge is the same. In fact, it would be impossible for me
to predicate omniscience of an object or being external to myself,
if this omniscience were essentially different from my own knowledge,
if it were not a mode of perception of my own, if it had nothing in
common with my own power of cognition. That which is recognised by the
senses is as much the object and content of the divine omniscience as
of my knowledge. Imagination does away only with the limit of quantity,
not of quality. The proposition that our knowledge is limited, means:
we know only some things, a few things, not all.
The beneficial influence of religion rests on this extension of the
sensational consciousness. In religion man is in the open air, sub
deo; in the sensational consciousness he is in his narrow confined
dwelling-house. Religion has relation essentially, originally--and
only in its origin is it something holy, true, pure, and good--to the
immediate sensational consciousness alone; it is the setting aside of
the limits of sense. Isolated, uninstructed men and nations preserve
religion in its original sense, because they themselves remain in
that mental state which is the source of religion. The more limited
a man's sphere of vision, the less he knows of history, Nature,
philosophy--the more ardently does he cling to his religion.