wartolg I
No. VI.
THE
ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
BY
LUDWIG FEUEEBACH.
ton % fSwrnto German (Bbitww,
BY
MARIAN EYANS,
TEANSLATOB OB 1 "STBAUSS'8 LIFE OF JESUS."
LONDON:
JOHN CHAPMAN,
8, KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND.
MDCCCLIV.
LONDON :
SAVILL AND EDWARDS, PRINTERS, CHANDOS STREET,
CO VENT GARDEN.
PREFACE
THE SECOND EDITION.*
THE clamour excited by the present work has not surprised
me, and hence it has not in the least moved me from my
position. On the contrary, I have once more, in all calmness,
subjected my work to the severest scrutiny, both historical and
philosophical; I have, as far as possible, freed it from its
defects of form, and enriched it with new developments, illustra
tions and historical testimonies, testimonies in the highest
degree striking and irrefragable. Now that I have thus verified
my analysis by historical proofs, it is to be hoped that readers
whose eyes are not sealed will be convinced and will admit, even
though reluctantly, that my work contains a faithful, correct
translation of the Christian religion out of the oriental language
.of imagery into plain speech. And it has no pretension to be
anything more than a close translation, or, to speak literally,
an empirical or historico-philosophical analysis, a solution of
the enigma of the Christian religion. The general propositions
which 1 premise in the Introduction are no a priori, excogi
tated propositions, no products of speculation ; they have
arisen out of the analysis of religion; they are only, as in
deed are all the fundamental ideas of the work, generalizations
* The opening paragraphs of this Preface are omitted, as having too
specific a reference to transient German polemics to interest the English
reader.
VI PREFACE.
from the known manifestations of human nature, and in par
ticular of the religious consciousness, facts converted into
thoughts, i. e., expressed in general terms, and thus made the
property of the understanding. The ideas of my work are only
conclusions, consequences, drawn from premises which are not
themselves mere ideas, hut objective facts either actual or
historical facts which had not their place in my head simply
in virtue of their ponderous existence in folio . I unconditionally
repudiate absolute, immaterial, self-sufficing speculation, that
speculation which draws its material from within. I differ toto
ccelo from those philosophers who pluck out their eyes that
they may see better; for my thought I require the senses,
especially sight ; I found my ideas on materials which can be
appropriated only through the activity of the senses. I do not
generate the object from the thought, but the thought from the
object; and I hold that alone to be an object which has an exist
ence beyond one's own brain. I am an idealist only in the region
of practical philosophy, that is, I do not regard the limits of
the past and present as the limits of humanity, of the future ;
on the contrary, I firmly believe that many things yes, many
things which with the short-sighted, pusillanimous practical
men of to-day, pass for flights of imagination, for ideas never
to be realized, for mere chimeras, will to-morrow, i.e., in the
next century, centuries in individual life are days in the life
of humanity, exist in full reality. Briefly, the "Idea" is
to me only faith in the historical future, in the triumph of
truth and virtue ; it has for me only a political and moral sig
nificance ; for in the sphere of strictly theoretical philosophy,
I attach myself, in direct opposition to the Hegelian philosophy,
only to realism, to materialism in the sense above indicated.
The maxim hitherto adopted by speculative philosophy: all
that is mine I carry with me, the old omnia mea mecum porto,
I cannot, alas ! appropriate. I have many things outside my
self, which I cannot convey either in my pocket or my head,
but which nevertheless I look upon as belonging to me, not
indeed as a mere man a view not now in question but as a
philosopher. I am nothing but a natural philosopher in the
PREFACE. vii
domain of mind; and the natural philosopher can do nothing
without instruments, without material means. In this character
I have written the present work, which consequently contains
nothing else than the principle of a new philosophy verified
practically, i. e., in concreto, in application to a special object, but
an object which has a universal significance: namely, to religion,
in which this principle is exhibited, developed and thoroughly
carried out. This philosophy is essentially distinguished from
the systems hitherto prevalent, in that it corresponds to the real,
complete nature of man; but for that very reason it is antagonistic
to minds perverted and crippled by a superhuman, i. e., anti-
human, anti-natural religion and speculation. It does not, as I
have already said elsewhere, regard the pen as the only fit organ
for the revelation of truth, but the eye and ear, the hand and foot ;
it does not identify the idea of the fact with the fact itself, so as
to reduce real existence to an existence on paper, but it separates
the two, and precisely by this separation attains to the fact itself;
it recognises as the true thing, not the thing as it is an object
of the abstract reason, but as it is an object of the real, complete
man, and hence as it is itself a real, complete thing. This
philosophy does not rest on an Understanding per se, on an
absolute, nameless understanding, belonging one knows not to
whom, but on the understanding of man ; though not, I grant,
on that of man enervated by speculation and dogma ; and it
speaks the language of men, not an empty, unknown tongue.
Yes, both in substance and in speech, it places philosophy in
the negation of philosophy, i. e., it declares that alone to be the
true philosophy which is converted in succwn et sanguinem,
which is incarnate in Man ; and hence it finds its highest
triumph in the fact that to all dull and pedantic minds, which
place the essence of philosophy in the show of philosophy, it
appears to be no philosophy at all.
This philosophy has for its principle, not the Substance of
Spinoza, not the ego of Kant and Fichte, not the Absolute
Identity of Schelling, not the Absolute Mind of Hegel, in short,
no abstract, merely conceptional being, but a real being, the
true Ens rcalissimum man ; its principle, therefore, is in the
Vlll PREFACE.
highest degree positive and real. It generates thought from
the opposite of thought, from Matter, from existence, from the
senses ; it has relation to its ohject first through the senses, i. e.,
passively, hefore defining it in thought. Hence my work, as a
specimen of this philosophy, so far from being a production to
be placed in the category of Speculation, although in another
point of view it is the true, the incarnate result of prior philo
sophical systems, is the direct opposite of speculation, nay,
puts an end to it by explaining it. Speculation makes religion
say only what it has itself thought, and expressed far better
than religion; it assigns a meaning to religion without any refer
ence to the actual meaning of religion; it does not look beyond
itself. I, on the contrary, let religion itself speak; I constitute
myself only its listener and interpreter, not its prompter. Not to
invent, but to discover, "to unveil existence," has been my sole
object; to see correctly, my sole endeavour. It is not I, but re
ligion that worships man, although religion, or rather theology,
denies this ; it is not I, an insignificant individual, but religion it
self that says: God is man, man is God; it is not I, but religion
that denies the God who is not man, but only an ens rationis,
since it makes God become man, and then constitutes this God,
not distinguished from man, having a human form, human feel
ings and human thoughts, the object of its worship and veneration.
I have only found the key to the cipher of the Christian religion,
only extricated its true meaning from the web of contradictions
and delusions called theology ; but in doing so I have certainly
committed a sacrilege. If therefore my work is negative,
irreligious, atheistic, let it be remembered that atheism at
least in the sense of this work is the secret of religion itself;
that religion itself, not indeed on the surface, but fundamentally,
not in intention or according to its own supposition, but in its
heart, in its essence, believes in nothing else than the truth and
divinity of human nature. Or let it be proved that the his
torical as well as the rational arguments of my work are false;
let them be refuted not, however, I entreat, by judicial
denunciations, or theological jeremiads, by the trite phrases
of speculation, or other pitiful expedients for which I have no
PEEFACK ix
name, but by reasons, and such reasons as I have not already
thoroughly answered.
Certainly, my work is negative, destructive; but, be it observed,
only in relation to the inhuman, not to the human elements
of religion. It is therefore divided into two parts, of which
the first is, as to its main idea, positive, the second, including
the appendix, not wholly but in the main, negative; in both,
however, the same positions are proved, only in a different or
rather opposite manner. The first exhibits religion in its essence,
its truth, the second exhibits it in its contradictions; the first
is development, the second polemic ; thus the one is, according
to the nature of the case, calmer, the other more vehement.
Development advances gently, contest impetuously; for de
velopment is self- contented at every stage, contest only at the
last blow. Development is deliberate, but contest resolute.
Development is light, contest fire. Hence results a difference
between the two parts even as to their form. Thus in the first
part I show that the true sense of Theology is Anthropology,
that there is no distinction between the predicates of the divine
and human nature, and, consequently, no distinction between
the divine and human subject: I say consequently, for wherever,
as is especially the case in theology, the predicates are not acci
dents, but express the essence of the subject, there is no distinc
tion between subject and predicate, the one can be put in the
place of the other ; on which point I refer the reader to the
Analytics of Aristotle, or even merely to the Introduction of
Porphyry. In the second part, on the other hand, I show that
the distinction which is made, or rather supposed to be made,
between the theological and anthropological predicates, resolves
itself into an absurdity. Here is a striking example. In the
first part I prove that the Son of God is in religion a real son,
the son of God in the same sense in which man is the son of
man, and I find therein the truth, the essence of religion, that
it conceives and affirms a profoundly human relation as a divine
relation ; on the other hand, in the second part I show that the
Son of God not indeed in religion, but in theology, which is
the reflection of religion upon itself, is not a son in the natural,
A3
X PREFACE.
human sense, but in an entirely different manner, contradictory
to Nature and reason, and therefore absurd, and I find in this
negation of human sense and the human understanding, the
negation of religion. Accordingly the first part is the direct,
the second the indirect proof, that theology is anthropology :
hence the second part necessarily has reference to the first ; it
has no independent significance ; its only aim is to show, that
the sense in which religion is interpreted in the previous part
of the work must be the true one, because the contrary is ab
surd. In brief, in the first part I am chiefly concerned with
religion, in the second with theology : I say chiefly, for it was
impossible to exclude theology from the first part, or religion
from the second. A mere glance will show that my investigation
includes speculative theology or philosophy, and not, as has been
here and there erroneously supposed, common theology only, a
kind of trash from which I rather keep as clear as possible,
(though, for the rest, I am sufficiently well acquainted with it,)
confining myself always to the most essential, strict and neces
sary definition of the object,* and hence to that definition which
gives to an object the most general interest, and raises it above
the sphere of theology. But it is with theology that I have to
do, not with theologians ; for I can only undertake to charac
terize what is primary, the original, not the copy, principles,
not persons, species, not individuals, objects of history, not
objects of the chronique scandaleuse.
If my work contained only the second part, it would be per
fectly just to accuse it of a negative tendency, to represent the
proposition : Eeligion is nothing, is an absurdity, as its essen
tial purport. But I by no means say (that were an easy task !) :
God is nothing, the Trinity is nothing, the Word of God is
nothing, &c. ; I only show that they are not that which the
illusions of theology make them, not foreign, but native mys
teries, the mysteries of human nature ; I show that religion
takes the apparent, the superficial in Nature and humanity, for
* For example, in considering the sacraments, I limit myself to two ;
for, in the strictest sense (see Luther, t. xvii. p. 558), there are no more.
PEEFACE. XI
the essential, and hence conceives their true essence as a sepa
rate, special existence : that consequently, religion, in the
definitions which it gives of God, e. g., of the Word of God,
at least in those definitions which are not negative in the sense
ahove alluded to, only defines or makes objective the true
nature of the human word. The reproach that according to my
book, religion is an absurdity, a nullity, a pure illusion, would
be well-founded only if, according to it, that into which I re
solve religion, which I prove to be its true object and substance,
namely man, anthropology, were an absurdity, a nullity, a
pure illusion. But so far from giving a trivial or even a sub
ordinate significance to anthropology, a significance which is
assigned to it only just so long as a theology stands above it
and in opposition to it, I, on the contrary, while reducing
theology to anthropology, exalt anthropology into theology,
very much as Christianity, while lowering God into man, made
man into God ; though, it is true, this human God was by a
further process made a transcendental, imaginary God, remote
from man. Hence it is obvious that I do not take the word
anthropology in the sense of the Hegelian or of any other philo
sophy, but in an infinitely higher and more general sense.
Religion is the dream of the human mind. But even in
dreams we do not find ourselves in emptiness or in heaven, but
on earth, in the realm of reality ; we only see real things in the
entrancing splendour of imagination and caprice, instead of in
the simple daylight of reality and necessity. Hence I do
nothing more to religion and to speculative philosophy and
theology also than to open its eyes, or rather to turn its gaze
from the internal towards the external, i.e., I change the object
as it is in the imagination into the object as it is in reality.
But certainly for the present age, which prefers the sign to
the thing signified, the copy to the original, fancy to reality,
the appearance to the essence, this change, inasmuch as it does
away with illusion, is an absolute annihilation, or at least a
reckless profanation ; for in these days illusion only is sacred,
truth profane. Nay, sacredness is held to be enhanced in pro
portion as truth decreases and illusion increases, so that the
xii
highest degree of illusion comes to be the highest degree of
sacredness. Religion has disappeared, and for it has been sub
stituted, even among Protestants, the appearance of religion
the Church in order at least that " the faith" may be imparted
to the ignorant and indiscriminating multitude; that faith
being still the Christian, because the Christian churches stand
now as they did a thousand years ago, and now, as formerly,
the external signs of the faith are in vogue. That which has
no longer any existence in faith (the faith of the modern world
is only an ostensible faith, a faith which does not believe what
it fancies that it believes, and is only an undecided, pusillani
mous unbelief ) is still to pass current as opinion : that which
is no longer sacred in itself and in truth, is still at least to seem
sacred. Hence the simulated religious indignation of the pre
sent age, the age of shows and illusion, concerning my analysis,
especially of the Sacraments. But let it not be demanded of
an author who proposes to himself as his goal not the favour
of his contemporaries, but only the truth, the unveiled, naked
truth, that he should have or feign respect towards an empty
appearance, especially as the object which underlies this appear
ance is in itself the culminating point of religion, i. e., the point
at which the religious slides into the irreligious. Thus much in
justification, not in excuse, of my analysis of the Sacraments.
With regard to the true bearing of my analysis of the sacra
ments, especially as presented in the concluding chapter, I only
remark, that I therein illustrate by a palpable and visible ex
ample the essential purport, the peculiar theme of my work, that
I therein call upon the senses themselves to witness to the truth
of my analysis and my ideas, and demonstrate ad oculos, ad tac-
tum, ad gustum, what I have taught ad captum throughout the
previous pages. As, namely, the water of Baptism, the wine and
bread of the Lord's Supper, taken in their natural power and
significance, are and effect infinitely more than in a superna-
turalistic, illusory significance; so the object of religion in
general, conceived in the sense of this work, i. e., the anthropo
logical sense, is infinitely more productive and real, both in
theory and practice, than when accepted in the sense of theo-
PREFACE. Xlll
logy. For as that which is or is supposed to be imparted in the
water, hread, and wine, over and above these natural substances
themselves, is something in the imagination only, but in truth,
in reality, nothing; so also the object of religion in general,
the Divine essence, in distinction from the essence of Nature
and Humanity, that is to say, if its attributes, as understand
ing, love, &c., are and signify something else than these attri
butes as they belong to man and Nature, is only something in
the imagination, but in truth and reality nothing. Therefore
this is the moral of the fable we should not, as is the case
in theology and speculative philosophy, make real beings and
things into arbitrary signs, vehicles, symbols, or predicates of
a distinct, transcendant, absolute, i. e., abstract being ; but we
should accept and understand them in the significance which
they have in themselves, which is identical with their qualities,
with those conditions which make them what they are : thus
only do we obtain the key to a real theory and practice. I, in
fact, put in the place of the barren baptismal water, the bene
ficent effect of real water. How "watery," how trivial! Yes,
indeed, very trivial. But so Marriage, in its time, was a very
trivial truth, which Luther, on the ground of his natural good
sense, maintained in opposition to the seemingly holy illusion
of celibacy. But while I thus view water as a real thing, I at
the same time intend it as a vehicle, an image, an example, a
symbol, of the "unholy" spirit of my work, just as the water
of Baptism the object of my analysis is at once literal
and symbolical water. It is the same with bread and wine.
Malignity has hence drawn the conclusion that bathing, eating
and drinking are the summa summarum, the positive result of
my work. I make no other reply than this : if the whole of
religion is contained in the Sacraments, and there are conse
quently no other religious acts than those which are performed
in Baptism and the Lord's Supper; then I grant that the entire
purport and positive result of my work are bathing, eating and
drinking, since this work is nothing but a faithful, rigid histo-
rico-philosophical analysis of religion the revelation of reli
gion to itself, the awakening of religion to self -consciousness.
XIV PREFACE.
I say an historico -philosophical analysis, in distinction from
a merely historical analysis of Christianity. The historical
critic such a one, for example, as Daumer or Ghillany shows
that the Lord's Supper is a rite lineally descended from the
ancient Cultus of human sacrifice ; that once, instead of bread
and wine, real human flesh and blood were partaken. I, on
the contrary, take as the object of my analysis and reduction
only the Christian significance of the rite, that view of it which
is sanctioned in Christianity, and I proceed on the supposition
that only that significance w r hich a dogma or institution has in
Christianity (of course in ancient Christianity, not in modern),
whether it may present itself in other religions or not, is also
the true origin of that dogma or institution in so far as it is
Christian. Again, the historical critic, as, for example, Lutz-
elberger, shows that the narratives of the miracles of Christ
resolve themselves into contradictions and absurdities, that
they are later fabrications, and that consequently Christ was no
miracle- worker nor, in general, that which he is represented to
be in the Bible. I, on the other hand, do not inquire what the
real, natural Christ was or may have been in distinction from
what he has been made or has become in Supernaturalism ; on
the contrary, I accept the Christ of religion, but I show that
this superhuman being is nothing else than a product and reflex
of the supernatural human mind. I do not ask whether this
or that, or any miracle can happen or not ; I only show what
miracle is, and I show it not a priori, but by examples of
miracles, narrated in the Bible as real events ; in doing so,
however, I answer or rather preclude the question as to the
possibility or reality or necessity of miracle. Thus much con
cerning the distinction between me and the historical critics
who have attacked Christianity. As regards my relation to
Strauss and Bruno Bauer, in company with whom I am con
stantly named, I merely point out here that the distinction
between our works is sufficiently indicated by the distinction
between their objects, which is implied even in the title-page.
Bauer takes for the object of his criticism the evangelical his
tory, i.e., biblical Christianity, or rather biblical theology;
PKEFACE. XV
Strauss, the System of Christian Doctrine and the Life of Jesus,
(which may also be included under the title of Christian Doc
trine,) i.e., dogmatic Christianity or rather dogmatic theology;
I, Christianity in general, i. e., the Christian religion, and
consequently, only Christian philosophy or theology. Hence I
take my citations chiefly from men in whom Christianity was
not merely a theory or a dogma, not merely theology, but re
ligion. My principal theme is Christianity, is Religion, as it is
the immediate object, the immediate nature, of man. Erudi
tion and philosophy are to me only the means by which I bring
to light the treasure hid in man.
I must further mention that the circulation which my work
has had amongst the public at large, was neither desired nor
expected by me. It is true that I have always taken as the
standard of the mode of teaching and writing, not the abstract,
particular, professional philosopher, but universal man, that I
have regarded man as the criterion of truth, and not this or
that founder of a system, and have from the first placed the
highest excellence of the philosopher in this, that he abstains,
both as a man and as an author, from the ostentation of philo
sophy, i. e., that he is a philosopher only in reality, not formally,
that he is a quiet philosopher, not a loud and still less a brawling
one. Hence, in all my works as well as in the present one, I
have made the utmost clearness, simplicity and definiteness, a
law to myself, so that they may be understood, at least in the
main, by every cultivated and thinking man. But notwith
standing this, my work can be appreciated and fully understood
only by the scholar, that is to say, by the scholar who loves
truth, who is capable of forming a judgment, who is above the
notions and prejudices of the learned and unlearned vulgar ; for
although a thoroughly independent production, it has yet its
necessary logical basis in history. I very frequently refer to
this or that historical phenomenon without expressly designating
it, thinking this superfluous ; and such references can be under
stood by the scholar alone. Thus, for example, in the very
first chapter, where I develope the necessary consequences of
the stand -point of Feeling,! allude to Jacobi and Schleiermacher ;
XVI PREFACE.
in the second chapter I allude chiefly to Kantism, Scepticism,
Theism, Materialism and Pantheism; in the chapter on the
" Stand-point of Beligion," where I discuss the contradictions
between the religious or theological and the physical or natural-
philosophical view of Nature, I refer to philosophy in the age
of orthodoxy, and especially to the philosophy of Descartes
and Leibnitz, in which this contradiction presents itself in a
peculiarly characteristic manner. The reader, therefore, who is
unacquainted with the historical facts and ideas presupposed in
my work, will fail to perceive on what my arguments and ideas
hinge ; no wonder if my positions often appear to him baseless,
however firm the footing on which they stand. It is true that
the subject of my work is of universal human interest; more
over, its fundamental ideas, though not in the form in which
they are here expressed, or in which they could be expressed
under existing circumstances, will one day become the common
property of mankind : for nothing is opposed to them in the pre
sent day but empty, powerless illusions and prejudices in contra
diction with the true nature of man. But in considering this
subject in the first instance, I was under the necessity of treating
it as a matter of science, of philosophy ; and in rectifying the aber
rations of Beligion, Theology, and Speculation, I was naturally
obliged to use their expressions, and even to appear to speculate,
or which is the same thing to turn theologian myself, while I
nevertheless only analyse speculation, i. e., reduce theology to
anthropology. My work, as I said before, contains, and ap
plies in the concrete, the principle of a new philosophy suited
not to the schools, but to man. Yes, it contains that principle,
but only by evolving it out of the very core of religion ; hence,
be it said in passing, the new philosophy can no longer, like
the old Catholic and modern Protestant scholasticism, fall into
the temptation to prove its agreement with religion by its
agreement with Christian dogmas ; on the contrary, being
evolved from the nature of religion, it has in itself the true
essence of religion, is, in its very quality as a philosophy, a
religion also. But a work which considers ideas in their genesis
and explains and demonstrates them in strict sequence, is, by
PEEFACE. XVli
the very form which this purpose imposes upon it, unsuited to
popular reading.
Lastly, as a supplement to this work with regard to many
apparently unvindicated positions, I refer to my articles in the
Deutsches Jahrluch, January and February, 1842, to my cri
tiques and Charakteristiken des modernen After-christenthums,
in previous numbers of the same periodical, and to my earlier
works, especially the following : P. Bayle. Ein Beitrag zur
Geschichte der Philosophic und Menschheit, Ausbach, 1838,
and Philosophic und Christenthum, Mannheim, 1839. In
these works I have sketched, with a few sharp touches, the
historical solution of Christianity, and have shown that Chris
tianity has in fact long vanished, not only from the Keason but
from the Life of mankind, that it is nothing more than a fixed
idea, in flagrant contradiction with our Fire and Life Assurance
companies, our rail-roads and steam-carriages, our picture and
sculpture galleries, our military and industrial schools, our
theatres and scientific museums.
LUDWIG FEUEEBACH.
Bruckberg, Feb. 14, 1843.
CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION.
CHAPTEB PAGB
I. 1, The Essential Nature of Man 1
I. 2. The Essence of Eeligion considered generally .... 12
PAET I.
THE TEUE OE ANTHEOPOLOGICAL ESSENCE OF EELIGION.
II. God as a Being of the Understanding 32
III. God as a^Moral Being, or Law 43
IV. The Mystery of the Incarnation; or, God as Love, as a Being
of the Heart . , .. 49
V. The Mystery of the Suffering God 58
VI. TheMystery of the Trinity and the Mother of God. ... 64
VII. The Mystery of the Logos and Divine Image 73
VIII. The Mystery of the Cosmogonical Principle in God .... 79
IX. The Mystery of Mysticism* or Nature in God 86
X. The Mystery of Providence and Creation out of Nothing . . 100
XI. The Significance of the Creation in Judaism Ill
XII. The Omnipotence of Feeling, or the Mystery of Prayer 1 . . 119
XIII. TheMystery of Faith the Mystery of Miracle 125
XIV. The Mystery of the Eesurrection and of the Miraculous Con
ception . 134
XV. The Mystery of the Christian Christ, or the Personal God . 139
XVI. The Distinction between Christianity and Heathenism . . 149
XVII. The Significance of Voluntary Celibacy and Monachism . . 159
XVIIL The Christian Heaven, or Personal Immortality .... 169
XX CONTENTS.
PART II.
THE FALSE OR THEOLOGICAL ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
CHAPTEB PAGB
XIX. The Essential Stand-point of Religion 184
XX. The Contradiction in the Existence of God 196
XXI. The Contradiction in the Revelation of God 203
XXII. The Contradiction in the Nature of God in general .... 211
XXIII. The Contradiction in the Speculative Doctrine of God . . .224
XXIV. The Contradiction in the Trinity 230
XXV. The Contradiction in the Sacraments 234
XXVI. The Contradiction of Faith and Love 245
XXVII. Concluding Application 267
APPENDIX.
SECTION
1. The Religious Emotions purely Human 275
2. God is Feeling released from Limits 277
3. God is the highest Feeling of Self 278
4. Distinction between the Pantheistic and Personal God . . . 279
5. Nature without interest for Christians 282
6. In God Man is his own Object . .^ 284
7. Christianity the Religion of Suffering ; 287
8. Mystery of the Trinity . . . "7~~/ 288
9. Creation out of Nothing 293
10. Egoism of the Israelitish Religion 294
11. The Idea of Providence 295
12. Contradiction of Faith and Reason 300
13. The Resurrection of Christ 304
14. The Christian a Supermundane Being 304
15. The Celibate and Monachism . 305
16. The Christian Heaven 313
17. What Faith denies on Earth it affirms in Heaven . . . . . 315
18. Contradictions in the Sacraments ... 316
19. Contradiction of Faith and Love 319
20. Results of the Principle of Faith 325
2J. Contradiction of the God-Man 332
2. Anthropology the Mystery of Theology 337
THE
ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY
CHAPTER I.
INTBODUCTION.
1 . The Essential Nature of Man.
EELIGION has its "basis in the essential difference hetween man
and the brute the hrutes have no religion. It is true that
the old uncritical writers on natural history attributed to the
elephant, among other laudable qualities, the virtue of religi
ousness ; but the religion of elephants belongs to the realm of
fable. Cuvier, one of the greatest authorities on the animal
kingdom, assigns, on the strength of his personal observa
tions, no higher grade of intelligence to the elephant than to
the dog.
But what is this essential difference between man and the
brute ? The most simple, general, and also the most popular
answer to this question is consciousness : but consciousness
in the strict sense ; for the consciousness implied in the feeling
of self as an individual, in discrimination by the senses, in
the perception and even judgment of outward things accord
ing to definite sensible signs, cannot be denied to the brutes.
Consciousness in the strictest sense is present only in a being
to whom his species, his essential nature, is an object of
thought. The brute is indeed conscious of himself as an
individual and he has accordingly the feeling of self as the
common centre of successive sensations but not as a species :
hence, he is without that consciousness which in its nature, as
in its name, is akin to science. Where there is this higher
consciousness there is a capability of science. Science is the
cognizance of species. In practical life we have to do with
individuals ; in science, with species. But only a being to
B
2 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
whom his own species, his own nature, is an object of thought,
can make the essential nature of other things or beings an
object of thought.
Hence the brute has only a simple, man a twofold life : in
the brute, the inner life is one with the outer ; man has both an
inner and an outer life. The inner life of man is the life which
has relation to his species, to his general, as distinguished from
his individual, nature. Man thinks that is, he converses with
himself. The brute can exercise no function which has rela
tion to its species without another individual external to
itself; but man can perform the functions of thought and
speech, which strictly imply such a relation, apart from another
individual. Man is himself at once I and thou ; he can put
himself in the place of another, for this reason, that to him his
species, his essential nature, and not merely his individuality,
is an object of thought.
Religion being identical with the distinctive characteristic of
man, is then identical with self-consciousness with the con
sciousness which man has of his nature. But religion, ex
pressed generally, is consciousness of the infinite ; thus it is
and can be nothing else than the consciousness which man has
of his own not finite and limited, but infinite nature. A
really finite being has not even the faintest adumbration, still
less consciousness, of an infinite being, for the limit of the
nature is also the limit of the consciousness. The conscious
ness of the caterpillar, whose life is confined to a particular
species of plant, does not extend itself beyond this narrow
domain. It does, indeed, discriminate between this plant and
other plants, but more it knows not. A consciousness so
limited, but on account of that very limitation so infallible, we do
not call consciousness, but instinct. Consciousness, in the
strict or proper sense, is identical with consciousness of the
infinite; a limited consciousness is no consciousness; con
sciousness is essentially infinite in its nature.* The conscious
ness of the infinite is nothing else than the consciousness of
the infinity of the consciousness ; or, in the consciousness of
* Objectum intellectus esse illimitatum sive omne verum ac, ut
loquimtur, omne ens ut ens, ex eo constat, quod ad nullum non ^ genus
rerum extenditur, nullumque est, cujus cognoscendi capax non sit, licet ob
varia obstacula multa sint, quse re ipsa non norit. Gassendi, (Opp. Omn.
Phys.)
THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF MAN. 3
the infinite, the conscious subject has for his object the infinity
of his own nature.
What, then, is the nature of man, of which he is conscious,
or what constitutes the specific distinction, the proper humanity
of man ?* Reason, Will, Affection. To a complete man belong
the power of thought, the power of will, the power of affection.
The power of thought is the light of the intellect, the power of
will is energy of character, the power of affection is love.
Eeason, love, force of will, are perfections the perfections of
the human being nay, more, they are absolute perfections of
being. To will, to love, to think, are the highest powers, are
the absolute nature of man as man, and the basis of his ex
istence. Man exists to think, to love, to will. Now that
which is the end, the ultimate aim, is also the true basis and
principle of a being. But what is the end of reason ? Reason.
Of love ? Love. Of will ? Freedom of the will. We think
for the sake of thinking; love for the sake of loving; will for
the sake of willing i.e., that we maybe free. True existence
is thinking, loving, willing existence. That alone is true, per
fect, divine, which exists for its own sake. But such is love,
such is reason, such is will. The divine trinity in man, above
the individual man, is the unity of reason, love, will. Reason,
Will, Love, are not powers which man possesses, for he is
nothing without them, he is what he is only by them ; they are
the constituent elements of his nature, which he neither has
nor makes, the animating, determining, governing powers
divine, absolute powers to which he can oppose no resistance. f
How can the feeling man resist feeling, the loving one love,
the rational one reason ? Who has not experienced the over
whelming power of melody ? And what else is the -power of
melody but the power of feeling ? Music is the language of
feeling ; melody is audible feeling feeling communicating
itself. Who has not experienced the power of love, or at least
heard of it ? Which is the stronger love or the individual
* The obtuse materialist says : " Man is distinguished from the brute
only by consciousness he is an animal with consciousness superadded ;"
not reflecting, that in a being which awakes to consciousness, there takes
place a qualitative change, a differentiation of the entire nature. For the
rest, our words are by no means intended to depreciate the nature of the
lower animals. This is not the place to enter further into that question.
f " Toute opinion est assez forte pour se faire exposer au prix de la
vie." Montaigne.
B 2
4 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
man ? Is it man that possesses love, or is it not much rather
love that possesses man ? When love impels a man to suffer
death even joyfully for the beloved one, is this death- conquer
ing power his own individual power, or is it not rather the
power of love ? And who that e?er truly thought has not
experienced that quiet, subtle power the power of thought ?
When thou sinkest into deep reflection, forgetting thyself and
what is around thee, dost thou govern reason, or is it not
reason which governs and absorbs thee? Scientific enthu
siasm is it not the most glorious triumph of intellect over
thee ? The desire of knowledge is it not a simply irresistible,
and all-conquering power ? And when thou suppressest a
passion, renouncest a habit, in short, achievest a victory over
thyself, is this victorious power thy own personal power, or is
it not rather the energy of will, the force of morality, which
seizes the mastery of thee, and fills thee with indignation
against thyself and thy individual weaknesses ?
Man is nothing without an object. The great models of
humanity, such men as reveal to us what man is capable of,
have attested the truth of this proposition by their lives. They
had only one dominant passion the realization of the aim
which was the essential object of their activity. But the
object to which a subject essentially, necessarily relates, is
nothing else than this subject's own, but objective, nature. If
it be an object common to several individuals of the same
species, but under various conditions, it is still, at least as to
the form under which it presents itself to each of them accord
ing to their respective modifications, their own, but objective,
nature.
Thus the Sun is the common object of the planets, but it is
an object to Mercury, to Venus, to Saturn, to Uranus, under
other conditions than to the Earth. Each planet has its own
sun. The Sun which lights and warms Uranus has no physical
(only an astronomical, scientific) existence for the earth; and
not only does the Sun appear different, but it really is another
sun on Uranus than on the Earth. The relation of the Sun
to the Earth is therefore at the same time a relation of the
Earth to itself, or to its own nature, for the measure of the
size and of the intensity of light which the Sun possesses as
the object of the Earth, is the measure of the distance, which
determines the peculiar nature of the Earth. Hence each
planet has in its sun the mirror of its own nature.
THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF MAN. 5
In the object which he contemplates, therefore, man "becomes
acquainted with himself; consciousness of the objective is the
self- consciousness of man. We know the man by the object,
by his conception of what is external to himself; in it his
nature becomes evident; this object is his manifested nature,
his true objective ego. And this is true not merely of spiritual,
but also of sensuous objects. Even the objects which are
the most remote from man, because they are objects to him,
and to the extent to which they are so, are revelations of human
nature. Even the moon, the sun, the stars, call to man Tv^Oi
veavrov. That he sees them, and so sees them, is an evidence
of his own nature. The animal is sensible only of the beam
which immediately affects life ; while man perceives the ray,
to him physically indifferent, of the remotest star. Man alone
has purely intellectual, disinterested joys and passions; the
eye of man alone keeps theoretic festivals. The eye which
looks into the starry heavens, which gazes at that light, alike
useless and harmless, having nothing in common with the
earth and its necessities this eye sees in that light its own
nature, its own origin. The eye is heavenly in its nature.
Hence man elevates himself above the earth only with the eye ;
hence theory begins with the contemplation of the heavens.
The first philosophers were astronomers. It is the heavens
that admonish man of his destination, and remind him that he
is destined not merely to action, but also to contemplation.
The absolute to man is his own nature. The power
of the object over him is therefore the power of his own
nature. Thus the power of the object of feeling is the power
of feeling itself; the power of the object of the intellect is the
power of the intellect itself; the power of the object of the will
is the power of the will itself. The man who is affected by
musical sounds, is governed by feeling; by the feeling, that is,
which finds its corresponding element in musical sounds. But
it is not melody as such, it is only melody pregnant with
meaning and emotion, which has power over feeling. Feeling
is only acted on by that which conveys feeling, i. e., by itself,
its own nature. Thus also the will; thus, and infinitely more,
the intellect. . Whatever kind of object, therefore, we are at
any time conscious of, we are always at the same time conscious
of our own nature; w r e can affirm nothing without affirming
ourselves. And since to will, to feel, to think, are perfections,
essences, realities, it is impossible that intellect, feeling, and
6 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
will should feel or perceive themselves as limited, finite powers,
i. e., as worthless, as nothing. For finiteness and nothingness
are identical; finiteness is only a euphemism for nothingness.
Finiteness is the metaphysical, the theoretical nothingness
the pathological, practical expression. What is finite to the
understanding is nothing to the heart. But it is impossible
that we should he conscious of will, feeling, and intellect, as
finite powers, because every perfect existence, every original
power and essence, is the immediate verification and affirmation
of itself. It is impossible to love, will, or think, without per
ceiving these activities to be perfections impossible to feel
that one is a loving, willing, thinking being, without expe
riencing an infinite joy therein. Consciousness consists in a
being becoming objective to itself; hence it is nothing apart,
nothing distinct from the being which is conscious of itself.
How could it otherwise become conscious of itself? It is
therefore impossible to be conscious of a perfection as an
imperfection, impossible t feel feeling limited, to think thought
limited.
Consciousness is self- verification, self-affirmation, self-love,
joy in one's own perfection. Consciousness is the charac
teristic mark of a perfect nature ; it exists only in a self-suf
ficing, complete being. Even human vanity attests this truth.
A man looks in the glass ; he has complacency in his appear
ance. This complacency is a necessary, involuntary conse
quence of the completeness, the beauty of his form. A beau
tiful form is satisfied in itself; it has necessarily joy in itself
in self-contemplation. This complacency becomes vanity
only when a man piques himself on his form as being his
individual form, not when he admires it as a specimen of
human beauty in general. It is fitting that he should admire
it thus ; he can conceive no form more beautiful, more sublime
than the human.* Assuredly every being loves itself, its exist
ence and fitly so. To exist is a good. Quidquid essentia
dignum est, scientia dignum est. Everything that exists has
value, is a being of distinction at least this is true of the
* Homini homine nihil pulchrius. (Cic. de Nat. D. 1. i ) And this is
no sign of limitation, for he regards other beings as beautiful besides him
self; he delights in the beautiful forms of animals, in the beautiful forms
of plants, in the beauty of nature in general. But only the absolute, the
perfect form, can delight without envy in the forms of other beings.
THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF MAN. 7
species: hence it asserts, maintains itself. But the highest
form of self-assertion, the form which is itself a superiority, a
perfection, a hliss, a good, is consciousness.
Every limitation of the reason, or in general of the nature
of man, rests on a delusion, an error. It is true that the
human being, as an individual, can and must herein consists
his distinction from the brute feel and recognise himself to
be limited ; but he can become conscious of his limits, his
finiteness, only because the perfection, the infinitude of his
species is perceived by him, whether as an object of feeling,
of conscience, or of the thinking consciousness. If he makes
his own limitations the limitations of the species, this arises
from the mistake that he identifies himself immediately with
the species a mistake which is intimately connected with the
individual's love of ease, sloth, vanity, and egoism. For a
limitation which I know to be merely mine humiliates,
shames, and perturbs me. Hence to free myself from this
feeling of shame, from this state of dissatisfaction, I convert
the limits of my individuality into the limits of human nature
in general. What is incomprehensible to me is incomprehen
sible to others ; why should I trouble myself further ? it is no
fault of mine ; my understanding is not to blame, but the under
standing of the race. But it is a ludicrous and even culpable
error to define as finite and limited what constitutes the essence
of man, the nature of the species, which is the absolute nature
of the individual. Every being is sufficient to itself. No
being can deny itself, i.e., its own nature ; no being is a
limited one to itself. Rather, every being is in and by itself
infinite has its God, its highest conceivable being, in itself.
Every limit of a being is cognisable only by another being out
of and above him. The life of the ephemera is extraordinarily
short in comparison with that of longer lived creatures; but
nevertheless, for the ephemera this short life is as long as a
life of years to others. The leaf on which the caterpillar lives
is for it a world, an infinite space.
That which makes a being what it is is its talent, its power,
its wealth, its adornment. How can it possibly hold its existence
non-existence, its wealth poverty, its talent incapacity? If the
plants had eyes, taste and judgment, each plant would declare
its own flower the most beautiful; for its comprehension, its taste,
would reach no farther than its natural power of production.
What the productive power of its nature has brought forth
8 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
as the highest, that must also its taste, its judgment, recognise
and affirm as the highest. What the nature affirms, the under
standing, the taste, the judgment, cannot deny ; otherwise
the understanding, the judgment, would no longer he the un
derstanding and judgment of this particular being, hut of some
other. The measure of the nature is also the measure of the
understanding. If the nature is limited, so also is the feel
ing, so also is the understanding. But to a limited heing its
limited understanding is not felt to he a limitation ; on the
contrary, it is perfectly happy and contented with this under
standing ; it regards it, praises and values it, as a glorious,
divine power ; and the limited understanding, on its part, values
the limited nature whose understanding it is. Each is exactly
adapted to the other ; how should they he at issue with each
other ? A being's understanding is its sphere of vision. As
far as thou seest, so far extends thy nature ; and conversely.
The eye of the brute reaches no farther than its needs, and its
nature no farther than its needs. And so far as thy nature
reaches, so far reaches thy unlimited self-consciousness, so far
art thou God. The discrepancy between the understanding and
the nature, between the power of conception and the power of
production in the human consciousness, on the one hand is
merely of individual significance and has not a universal appli
cation ; and, on the other hand, it is only apparent. He who
having written a bad poem knows it to be bad, is in his intel
ligence, and therefore in his nature, not so limited as he who,
having written a bad poem, admires it and thinks it good.
It follows, that if thou thinkest the infinite, thou perceivest
and affirmest the infinitude of the power of thought ; if thou
feelest the infinite, thou feelest and affirmest the infinitude of
the power of feeling. The object of the intellect is intellect
objective to itself; the object of feeling is feeling objective to
itself. If thou hast no sensibility, no feeling for music, thou
perceivest in the finest music nothing more than in the wind
that whistles by thy ear, or than in the brook which rushes
past thy feet. What then is it which acts on thee when thou
art affected by melody? What dost thou perceive in it? What
else than the voice of thy own heart ? Feeling speaks only to
feeling ; feeling is comprehensible only by feeling, that is, by
itself for this reason, that the object of feeling is nothing else
than feeling. Music is a monologue of emotion. But the
dialogue of philosophy also is in truth only a monologue of
THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF MAN. 9
the intellect; thought speaks only to thought. The splendours
of the crystal charm the sense ; but the intellect is interested
only in the laws of crystallization. The intellectual only is the
object of the intellect.*
All therefore which, in the point of view of metaphysical,
transcendental speculation and religion, has the significance
only of the secondary, the subjective, the medium, the organ,
has in truth the significance of the primary, of the essence, of
the object itself. If, for example, feeling is the essential organ
of religion, the nature of God is nothing else than an expression
of the nature of feeling. The true but latent sense of the
phrase, " Feeling is the organ of the divine," is, feeling is
the noblest, the most excellent, i.e., the divine, in man. How
couldst thou perceive the divine by feeling, if feeling were not
itself divine in its nature ? The divine assuredly is known only
by means of the divine God is known only by himself. The
divine nature which is discerned by feeling, is in truth nothing
else than feeling enraptured, in ecstasy with itself feeling
intoxicated with joy, blissful in its own plenitude.
It is already clear from this that where feeling is held to be
the organ of the infinite, the subjective essence of religion,
the external data of religion lose their objective value. And
thus, since feeling has been held the cardinal principle in
religion, the doctrines of Christianity, formerly so sacred, have
lost their importance. If from this point of view some value is
still conceded to Christian ideas, it is a value springing
entirely from the relation they bear to feeling; if another
object would excite the same emotions, it would be just as
welcome. But the object of religious feeling is become a
matter of indifference, only because when once feeling has
been pronounced to be the subjective essence of religion, it in
fact is also the objective essence of religion, though it may not
be declared, at least directly, to be such. I say directly; for
indirectly this is certainly admitted, when it is declared that
feeling, as such, is religious, and thus the distinction between
specifically religious and irreligious, or at least non-reli
gious, feelings, is abolished, a necessary consequence of the
point of view in which feeling only is regarded as the organ of
the divine. For on what other ground than that of its essence,
* " The understanding is percipient only of understanding, and what
proceeds thence." Reimarus (Wahrh. der Natiirl. Religion, iv. Abth. 8.)
B 3
10 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
its nature, dost them hold feeling to be the organ of the infi
nite, the divine heing ? And is not the nature of feeling in
general, also the nature of every special feeling, he its object
what it may? What, then, makes this feeling religious? A
given object? Not at all; for this object is itself a religious
one only when it is not an object of the cold understanding
or memory, but of feeling. What then ? The nature of
feeling a nature of which every special feeling, without dis
tinction of objects, partakes. Thus, feeling is pronounced to
be religious, simply because it is feeling ; the ground of its
religiousness is its own nature lies in itself. But is not
feeling thereby declared to be itself the absolute, the divine ?
If feeling in itself is good, religious, i.e., holy, divine, has not
feeling its God in itself?
But if, notwithstanding, thou wilt posit an object of feel
ing, but at the same time seekest to express thy feeling truly,
without introducing by thy reflection any foreign element,
what remains to thee but to distinguish between thy individual
feeling and the general nature of feeling; to separate the
universal in feeling from the disturbing, adulterating influ
ences with which feeling is bound up in thee, under thy indi
vidual conditions ? Hence what thou canst alone contem
plate, declare to be the infinite, and define as its essence, is
merely the nature of feeling. Thou hast thus no other defi
nition of God than this ; God is pure, unlimited, free Feeling.
Every other God, whom thou supposest, is a God thrust
upon thy feeling from without. Feeling is atheistic in the
sense of the orthodox belief, which attaches religion to
an external object ; it denies an objective God it is itself
God. In this point of view, only the negation of feeling is
the negation of God. Thou art simply too cowardly or too narrow
to confess in words what thy feeling tacitly affirms. Fettered
by outward considerations, still in bondage to vulgar empiricism,
incapable of comprehending the spiritual grandeur of feeling,
thou art terrified before the religious atheism of thy heart. By
this fear thou destroyest the unity of thy feeling with itself,
in imagining to thyself an objective being distinct from thy
feeling, and thus necessarily sinking back into the old questions
and doubts is there a God or not? questions and doubts which
vanish, nay, are impossible, where feeling is defined as the
essence of religion. Feeling is thy own inward power, but
at the same time a power distinct from thee, and independent
THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF MAN. ] 1
of thee ; it is in thee, above thee : it is itself that which con
stitutes the objective in thee thy own being which impresses
thee as another being ; in short, thy God. How wilt thou then
distinguish from this objective being within thee another objec
tive being? how wilt thou get beyond thy feeling?
But feeling has here been adduced only as an example. It is
the same with every other power, faculty, potentiality, reality,
activity the name is indifferent which is denned as the
essential organ of any object. Whatever is a subjective
expression of a nature is simultaneously also its objective
expression. Man cannot get beyond his true nature. He
may indeed by means of the imagination conceive individuals
of another so-called higher kind, but he can never get loose
from his species, his nature; the conditions of being, the
positive final predicates which he gives to these other indivi
duals, are always determinations or qualities drawn from
his own nature qualities in which he in truth only images
and projects himself. There may certainly be thinking beings
besides men on the other planets of our solar system. But by
the supposition of such beings we do not change our standing
point we extend our conceptions quantitatively, not qualita
tively. For as surely as on the other planets there are the same
laws of motion, so surely are there the same laws of percep
tion and thought as here. In fact, we people the other planets,
not that we may place there different beings from ourselves,
but more beings of our own or of a similar nature.*
* Verisimile est, noil minus quam geometrise, etiam musicae oblecta-
tionem ad plures quam ad nos pertinere. Positis enim aliis terris atque
animalibus ratione et auditu pollentibus, cur tantum his nostris conti-
gisset ea voluptas, quse sola ex sono percipi potest ? Christ. Hugenius,
(Cosmotheor, 1, i.)
12 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
2. The Essence of Religion considered generally.
WHAT we have hitherto been maintaining generally, even
with regard to sensational impressions, of the relation between
subject and object, applies especially to the relation between
the subject and the religious object.
In the perceptions of the senses consciousness of the object
is distinguishable from consciousness of self; but in religion,
consciousness of the object and self-consciousness coincide.
The object of the senses is out of man, the religious object is
within him, and therefore as little forsakes him as his self-
consciousness or his conscience; it is the intimate, the closest
object. "God," says Augustine, for example, "is nearer,
more related to us, and therefore more easily known by us,
than sensible, corporeal things."* The object of the senses is
in itself indifferent independent of the disposition or of the
judgment; but the object of religion is a selected object; the
most excellent, the first, the supreme being ; it essentially pre
supposes a critical judgment, a discrimination between the
divine and the non-divine, between that which is worthy of
adoration and that which is not worthy. f And here may be
applied, without any limitation, the proposition: the object of
any subject is nothing else than the subject's own nature
taken objectively. Such as are a man's thoughts and disposi
tions, such is his God; so much worth as a man has, so much
and no more has his God. Consciousness of God is self-
consciousness, knowledge of God is self-knowledge. By his
God thou knowest the man, and by the man his God; the two
are identical. Whatever is God to a man, that is his heart
and soul; and conversely, God is the manifested inwa/d
nature, the expressed self of a man, religion the solemn un
veiling of a man's hidden treasures, the revelation of his inti
mate thoughts, the open confession of his love- secrets.
* De Genesi ad litteram, 1. v. c. 16.
f Unusquisque vestrum non cogitat, prius se debere Deum nosse,
quam colere. M. Minucii Felicis Octavianus, c. 24.
THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION. 13
But when religion consciousness of God is designated as
the self- consciousness of man, this is not to be understood as
affirming that the religious man is directly aware of this
identity ; for, on the contrary, ignorance of it is fundamental
to the peculiar nature of religion. To preclude this miscon
ception, it is better to say, religion is man's earliest and also
indirect form of self-knowledge. Hence, religion everywhere
precedes philosophy, as in the history of the race, so also in
that of the individual. Man first of all sees his nature as if
out of himself, before he finds it in himself. His own nature
is in the first instance contemplated by him as that of another
being. Keligion is the childlike condition of humanity; but
the child sees his nature man out of himself; in childhood
a man is an object to himself, under the form of another man.
Hence the historical progress of religion consists in this :
that what by an earlier religion was regarded as objective, is
now recognised as subjective ; that is, what was formerly con
templated and worshipped as God is now perceived to be
something human. What was at first religion becomes at a
later period idolatry; man is seen to have adored his own
nature. Man has given objectivity to himself, but has not
recognised the object as his own nature : a later religion takes
this forward step; every advance in religion is therefore a
deeper self-knowledge. But every particular religion, while
it pronounces its predecessors idolatrous, excepts itself and
necessarily so, otherwise it would no longer be religion from
the fate, the common nature of all religions : it imputes only
to other religions what is the fault, if fault it be, of religion in
general. Because it has a different object, a different tenour,
because it has transcended the ideas of preceding religions, it
erroneously supposes itself exalted above the necessary eternal
laws which constitute the essence of religion it fancies its
object, its ideas, to be superhuman. But the essence of reli
gion, thus hidden from the religious, is evident to the thinker,
by whom religion is viewed objectively, which it cannot be by
its votaries. And it is our task to show that the antithesis of
divine and human is altogether illusory, that it is nothing
else than the antithesis between the human nature in general,
and the human individual: that, consequently, the object and
contents of the Christian religion are altogether human.
Eeligion, at least the Christian, is the relation of man to
14 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
liimself, or more correctly to his own nature (i.e., his sub
jective nature) ;* hut a relation to it, viewed as a nature apart
from his own. The divine being is nothing else than the
human being, or, rather the human nature purified, freed from
the limits of the individual man, made objective i.e., contem
plated and revered as another, a distinct being. All the
attributes of the divine nature are, therefore, attributes of the
human nature. f
In relation to the attributes, the predicates, of the Divine
Being, this is admitted without hesitation, but by no means in
relation to the subject of these predicates. The negation of
the subject is held to be irreligion, nay, atheism; though not
so the negation of the predicates. But that which has no
predicates or qualities, has no effect upon me ; that which has
no effect upon me, has no existence for me. To deny all the
qualities of a being is equivalent to denying the being himself.
A being without qualities is one which cannot become an object
to the mind ; and such a being is virtually non-existent.
Where man deprives God of all qualities, God is no longer
anything more to him than a negative being. To the truly
religious man, God is not a being without qualities, because
to him he is a positive, real being. The theory that God
cannot be denned, and consequently cannot be known by man,
is therefore the offspring of recent times, a product of modern
unbelief.
As reason is and can be pronounced finite only where man
regards sensual enjoyment, or religious emotion, or aesthetic
contemplation, or moral sentiment, as the absolute, the true; so
the proposition that God is unknowable or (indefinable can
only be enunciated and become fixed as a dogma, where this
object has no longer any interest for the intellect ; where the
real, the positive, alone has any hold on man, where the real
* The meaning of this parenthetic limitation will be clear in the
sequel.
j" Les perfections de Dieu sont celles de nos ames, mais il les possede
sans bornes il y a en nous quelque puissance, quelque connaissance,
quelque bonte, mais elles sont toutes entieres en Dieu. Leibnitz, (Theod.
Preface.) Nihil in anima esse putemus eximium, quod non etiam divinae
naturae proprium sit Quidquid a Deo alienum extra definitionem animse.
S. Gregorius Nyss. Est ergo, ut videtur, disciplinarum omnium pulcher-
rima et maxima se ipsum nosse ; si quis enim se ipsum norit, Deum cog-
noscet. Clemens Alex. (Psed. 1, iii. c. 1.)
THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION. 15
alone has for him the significance of the essential, of the
absolute, divine object, but where at the same time, in contra
diction with this purely worldly tendency, there yet exist some
old remains of religiousness. On the ground that God is
unknowable, man excuses himself to what is yet remaining of
his religious conscience for his forgetfulness of God, his
absorption in the world : he denies God practically by his
conduct, the world has possession of all his thoughts and
inclinations, but he does not deny him theoretically, he does
not attack his existence ; he lets that rest. But this existence
does not affect or incommode him ; it is a merely negative
existence, an existence without existence, a self-contradictory
existence, a state of being, which, as to its effects, is not
distinguishable from non-being. The denial of determinate,
positive predicates concerning the divine nature, is nothing
else than a denial of religion, with, however, an appearance of
religion in its favour, so that it is not recognised as a denial ;
it is simply a subtle, disguised atheism. The alleged religious
horror of limiting God by positive predicates, is only the
irreligious wish to know nothing more of God, to banish God
from the mind. Dread of limitation is dread of existence.
All real existence, i.e., all existence which is truly such,
is qualitative, determinate existence. He who earnestly be
lieves in the Divine existence, is not shocked at the attribut
ing even of gross sensuous qualities to God. He who dreads
an existence that may give offence, who shrinks from the
grossness of a positive predicate, may as well renounce exis
tence altogether. A God who is injured by determinate quali
ties has not the courage and the strength to exist. Qualities
are the fire, the vital breath, the oxygen, the salt of existence.
An existence in general, an existence without qualities, is an
insipidity, an absurdity. But there can be no more in God,
than is supplied by religion. Only where man loses his taste
for religion, and thus religion itself becomes insipid, does the
existence of God become an insipid existence an existence
without qualities.
There is, however, a still milder way of denying the Divine
predicates than the direct one just described. It is admitted
that the predicates of the divine nature are finite, and, more
particularly, human qualities, but their rejection is rejected;
they are even taken under protection, because it is necessary
to man to have a definite conception of God, and since he is
16 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
man, he can form no other than a human conception of him.
In relation to God, it is said, these predicates are certainly
without any objective validity ; but to me, if he is to exist
for me, he cannot appear otherwise than as he does appear to
me, namely, as a being with attributes analogous to the
human. But this distinction between what God is in himself,
and what he is for me, destroys the peace of religion, and is
besides in itself an unfounded and untenable distinction.
I cannot know whether God is something else in himself or
for himself, than he is for me ; what he is to me, is to me all
that he is. For me, there lies in these predicates under w T hich
he exists for me, what he is in himself, his very nature ; he
is for me what he can alone ever be for me. The religious
man finds perfect satisfaction in that which God is in relation
to himself; of any other relation he knows nothing, for God
is to him what he can alone be to man. In the distinction
above stated, man takes a point of view above himself, i.e.
above his nature, the absolute measure of his being ; but this
transcendentalism is only an illusion ; for I can make the
distinction between the object as it is in itself, and the object
as it is for me, only where an object can really appear other
wise to me, not where it appears to me such as the absolute
measure of my nature determines it to appear such as it
must appear to me. It is true that I may have a merely
subjective conception, i.e. one which does not arise out of
the general constitution of my species; but if my conception
is determined by the constitution of my species, the distinction
between what an object is in itself, and what it is for me
ceases; for this conception is itself an absolute one. The
measure of the species is the absolute measure, law, and
criterion of man. And, indeed, religion has the conviction
that its conceptions, its predicates of God, are such as every
man ought to have, and must have, if he would have the true
ones that they are the conceptions necessary to human
nature ; nay, further, that they are objectively true, repre
senting God as he is. To every religion the gods of other
religions are only notions concerning God, but its own con
ception of God is to it God himself, the true God God such
as he is in himself. Religion is satisfied only with a complete
Deity, a God without reservation ; it will not have a mere
phantasm of God ; it demands God himself. Religion gives
up its own existence when it gives up the nature of God;
THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION. 17
it is no longer a truth, when it renounces the possession of
the true God. Scepticism is the arch-enemy of religion;
but the distinction between object and conception between
God as he is in himself, and God as he is for me, is a
sceptical distinction, and therefore an irreligious one.
That which is to man the self- existent, the highest being,
to which he can conceive nothing higher that is to him the
Divine being. How then should he inquire concerning this
being, what He is in himself? If God were an object to the
bird, he would be a winged being : the bird knows nothing
higher, nothing more blissful, than the winged condition.
How ludicrous would it be if this bird pronounced : to me God
appears as a bird, but what he is in himself I know not. To
the bird the highest nature is the bird-nature ; take from him
the conception of this, and you take from him the conception
of the highest being. How, then, could he ask whether God
in himself were winged ? To ask whether God is in himself
what he is for me, is to ask whether God is God, is to lift
oneself above one's God, to rise up against him.
Wherever, therefore, this idea, that the religious predicates
are only anthropomorphisms, has taken possession of a man,
there has doubt, has unbelief obtained the mastery of faith.
And it is only the inconsequence of faint-heartedness and
intellectual imbecility which does not proceed from this idea
to the formal negation of the predicates, and from thence to
the negation of the subject to which they relate. If thou
doubtest the objective truth of the predicates, thou must also
doubt the objective truth of the subject whose predicates they
are. If thy predicates are anthropomorphisms, the subject of
of them is an anthropomorphism too. If love, goodness, per
sonality, &c., are human attributes, so also is the subject
which thou pre-supposest, the existence of God, the belief
that there is a God, an anthropomorphism a pre-supposition
purely human. Whence knowest thou that the belief in a God
at all is not a limitation of man's mode of conception ? Higher
beings and thou supposest such are perhaps so blest in
themselves, so at unity with themselves, that they are not
hi ino- in suspense between themselves and a yet higher being.
To know God and not oneself to be God, to know blessed
ness, and not oneself to enjoy it, is a state of disunity, of
unhappiness. Higher beings know nothing of this unhappi-
ness ; they have no conception of that which they are not.
18 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
Thou believest in love as a divine attribute because thou
thyself lovest; thou believest that God is a wise, benevolent
being, because thou knowest nothing better in thyself than
benevolence and wisdom ; and thou believest that God exists,
that therefore he is a subject whatever exists is a subject,
whether it be denned as substance, person, essence, or other
wise because thou thyself existest, art thyself a subject. Thou
knowest no higher human good, than to love, than to be good
and wise ; and even so thou knowest no higher happiness than
to exist, to be a subject; for the consciousness of all reality,
of all bliss, is for thee bound up in the consciousness of being
a subject, of existing. God is an existence, a subject to thee,
for the same reason that he is to thee a wise, a blessed, a per
sonal being. The distinction between the divine predicates
and the divine subject is only this, that to thee the subject,
the existence, does not appear an anthropomorphism, because
the conception of it is necessarily involved in thy own exist
ence as a subject, whereas the predicates do appear anthropo
morphisms, because their necessity the necessity that God
should be conscious, wise, good, &c. is not an immediate
necessity, identical with the being of man, but is evolved by
his self- consciousness, by the activity of his thought. I am a
subject, I exist, whether I be wise or unwise, good .or bad. To
exist is to man the first datum; it constitutes the very idea
of the subject; it is presupposed by the predicates. Hence, man
relinquishes the predicates, but the existence of God is to him
a settled, irrefragable, absolutely certain, objective truth. But,
nevertheless, this distinction is merely an apparent one. The
necessity of the subject lies only in the necessity of the predi
cate. Thou art a subject only in so far as thou art a human
subject; the certainty and reality of thy existence lie only in
the certainty and reality of thy human attributes. What the
subject is, lies only in the predicate; the predicate is the truth
of the subject the subject only the personified, existing predi
cate, the predicate conceived as existing. Subject and predi
cate are distinguished only as existence and essence. The
negation of the predicates is therefore the negation of the sub
ject. What remains of the human subject when abstracted
from the human attributes ? Even in the language of common
life the divine predicates Providence, Omniscience, Omni
potence are put for the divine subject.
The certainty of the existence of God, of which it has been
said that it is as certain, nay, more certain to man than his
THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION. ]9
own existence, depends only on the certainty of the qualities
of God it is in itself no immediate certainty. To the Chris
tian the existence of the Christian God only is a certainty ; to
the heathen that of the heathen God only. The heathen did
not doubt the existence of Jupiter, because he took no offence
at the nature of Jupiter, because he could conceive of God
under no other qualities, because to him these qualities were a
certainty, a divine reality. The reality of the predicate is the
sole guarantee of existence.
Whatever man conceives to be true, he immediately conceives
to be real (that is, to have an objective existence), because,
originally, only the real is true to him true in opposition to
what is merely conceived, dreamed, imagined. The idea of
being, of existence, is the original idea of truth; or, originally,
man makes truth dependent on existence, subsequently, exist-
tence dependent on truth. Now God is the nature of man
regarded as absolute truth, the truth of man; but God, or,
what is the same thing, religion, is as various as are the con
ditions under which man conceives this his nature, regards it
as the highest being. These conditions, then, under which
man conceives God, are to him the truth, and for that
reason they are also the highest existence, or rather they are
existence itself; for only the emphatic, the highest existence,
is existence, and deserves this name. Therefore, God is an
existent, real being, on the very same ground that he is a
particular, definite being; for the qualities of God are nothing
else than the essential qualities of man himself, and a
particular man is what he is, has his existence, his reality,
only in his particular conditions. Take away from the Greek
the quality of being Greek, and you take away his existence.
On this ground, it is true that for a definite positive
religion that is, relatively the certainty of the existence of
God is immediate; for just as involuntarily, as necessarily,
as the Greek was a Greek, so necessarily were his gods
Greek beings, so necessarily were they real, existent beings.
Religion is that conception of the nature of the world and
of man which is essential to, i. e., identical with, a man's
nature. But man does not stand above this his necessary
conception; on the contrary, it stands above him; it animates,
determines, governs him. The necessity of a proof, of a
middle term -to unite qualities with existence, the possibility
of a doubt, is abolished. Only that which is apart from
my own being is capable of being doubted by me. How then
20 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
can I doubt of God, who is my being ? To doubt of God is
to doubt of myself. Only when God is thought of abstractly,
w r hen his predicates are the result of philosophic abstraction,
arises the distinction or separation between subject and predi
cate, existence and nature arises the fiction that the existence
or the subject is something else than the predicate, something
immediate, indubitable, in distinction from the predicate, which
is held to be doubtful. But this is only a fiction. A God who has
abstract predicates has also an abstract existence. Existence,
being, varies with varying qualities.
The identity of the subject and predicate is clearly evidenced
by the progressive development of religion, which is identical
with the progressive development of human culture. So long
as man is in a mere state of nature, so long is his god a mere
nature-god a personification of some natural force. Where
man inhabits houses, he also encloses his gods in temples.
The temple is only a manifestation of the value which man
attaches to beautiful buildings. Temples in honour of reli
gion are in truth temples in honour of architecture. With
the emerging of man from a state of savagery and wildness to
one of culture, with the distinction between what is fitting for
man and what is not fitting, arises simultaneously the dis
tinction between that which is fitting and that which is not
fitting for God. God is the idea of majesty, of the highest
dignity : the religious sentiment is the sentiment of supreme
fitness. The later more cultured artists of Greece were the
first to embody in the statues of the gods the ideas of dignity,
of spiritual grandeur, of imperturbable repose and serenity.
But why were these qualities in their view attributes, predicates
of God ? Because they were in themselves regarded by the
Greeks as divinities. Why did those artists exclude all disgust
ing and low passions ? Because they perceived them to be un
becoming, unworthy, unhuman, and consequently ungodlike.
The Homeric gods eat and drink; that implies: eating and
drinking is a divine pleasure. Physical strength is an attri
bute of the Homeric gods : Zeus is the strongest of the gods.
Why ? Because physical strength, in and by itself, was regarded
as something glorious, divine. To the ancient Germans the
highest virtues were those of the warrior ; therefore, their
supreme god was the god of war, Odin, war, " the original or
oldest law." Not the attribute of the divinity, but the divine-
ness or deity of the attribute, is the first true Divine Being.
THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION. 21
Thus what theology and philosophy have held to he God, the
Absolute, the Infinite, is not God ; hut that which they have
held not to be God, is God : namely, the attribute, the quality,
whatever has reality. Hence, he alone is the true atheist to
whom the predicates of the Divine Being, for example, love,
wisdom, justice, are nothing; not he to whom merely the sub
ject of these predicates is nothing. And in no wise is the
negation of the subject necessarily also a negation of the
predicates considered in themselves. These have an intrinsic,
independent reality ; they force their recognition upon man by
their very nature ; they are self-evident truths to him ; they
prove, they attest themselves. It does not follow that good
ness, justice, wisdom, are chimseras, because the existence of
God is a chimsera, nor truths because this is a truth. The idea
of God is dependent on the idea of justice, of benevolence ; a
God who is not benevolent, not just, not wise, is no God ; but
the converse does not hold. The fact is not that a quality is
divine because God has it, but that God has it because it is in
itself divine : because without it God would be a defective
being. Justice, wisdom, in general every quality which con
stitutes the divinity of God, is determined and known by itself,
independently, but the idea of God is determined by the quali
ties which have thus been previously judged to be worthy of
the divine nature ; only in the case in which I identify God
and justice, in which I think of God immediately as the reality
of the idea of justice, is the idea of God self-determined. But
if God as a subject is the determined, while the quality, the
predicate is the determining, then in truth the rank of the god
head is due not to the subject, but to the predicate.
Not until several, and those contradictory, attributes are
united in one being, and this being is conceived as personal
the personality being thus brought into especial promi
nence not until then is the origin of religion lost sight of, is
it forgotten that what the activity of the reflective power has
converted into a predicate distinguishable or separable from
the subject, was originally the true subject. Thus the Greeks
and Romans deified accidents as substances : virtues, states of
mind, passions, as independent beings. Man, especially the
religious man, is to himself the measure of all things, of all
reality. Whatever strongly impresses a man, whatever pro
duces an unusual effect on his mind, if it be only a peculiar,
inexplicable sound or note, he personifies as a divine being.
22 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
Eeligion embraces all the objects of the world ; everything ex
isting has been an object of religious reverence ; in the nature
and consciousness of religion there is nothing else than what
lies in the nature of man and in his consciousness of himself
and of the world. Religion has no material exclusively its
own. In Rome even the passions of fear and terror had their
temples. The Christians also made mental phenomena into
independent beings, their own feelings into qualities of things,
the passions which governed them into powers which governed
the world, in short, predicates of their own nature, whether reco
gnized as such or not, into independent subjective existences.
Devils, cobolds, witches, ghosts, angels, were sacred truths as
long as the religious spirit held undivided sway over mankind.
In order to banish from the mind the identity of the divine
and human predicates, and the consequent identity of the divine
and human nature, recourse is had to the idea that God, as the
absolute, real Being, has an infinite fulness of various predi
cates, of which we here know only a part, and those such as
are analogous to our own ; while the rest, by virtue of which
God must thus have quite a different nature from the human
or that which is analogous to the human, we shall only know
in the future that is, after death. But an infinite plenitude
or multitude of predicates which are really different, so different
that the one does not immediately involve the other, is realized
only in an infinite plenitude or multitude of different beings or
individuals. Thus the human nature presents an infinite abun
dance of different predicates, and for that very reason it presents
an infinite abundance of different individuals. Each new man
is a new predicate, a new phasis of humanity. As many as are
the men, so many are the powers, the properties of humanity.
It is true that there are the same elements in every individual,
but under such various conditions and modifications that they
appear new and peculiar. The mystery of the inexhaustible ful
ness of the divine predicates is therefore nothing else than the
mystery of human nature considered as an infinitely varied, in
finitely modifiable, but, consequently, phenomenal being. Only
in the realm of the senses, only in space and time, does there
exist a being of really infinite qualities or predicates. Where
there are really different predicates, there are different times.
One man is a distinguished musician, a distinguished author,
a distinguished physician ; but he cannot compose music, write
books, and perform cures in the same moment of time. Time,
THE ESSENCE OF KELIGION. 23
and not the Hegelian dialectic, is the medium of uniting op-
posites, contradictories, in one and the same subject. But
distinguished and detached from the nature of man, and com
bined with the idea of God, the infinite fulness of various
predicates is a conception without reality, a mere phantasy,
a conception derived from the sensible world, but without the
essential conditions, without the truth of sensible existence, a
conception which stands in direct contradiction with the Divine
Being considered as a spiritual, i.e., an abstract, simple, single
being ; for the predicates of God are precisely of this character,
that one involves all the others, because there is no real dif
ference between them. If, therefore, in the present predicates
I have not the future, in the present God not the future God,
then the future God is not the present, but they are two dis
tinct beings.* But this distinction is in contradiction with
the unity and simplicity of the theological God. Why is a
given predicate a predicate of God ? Because it is divine in
its nature ; i.e., because it expresses no limitation, no defect,
Why are other predicates applied to Him ? Because, however
various in themselves, they agree in this, that they all alike ex
press perfection, unlimitedness. Hence I can conceive innu
merable predicates of God, because they must all agree with
the abstract idea of the Godhead, and must have in common
that which constitutes every single predicate a divine attribute.
Thus it is in the system of Spinoza. He speaks of an infinite
number of attributes of the divine substance, but he specifies
none except Thought and Extension. Why? because itis a matter
of indifference to know them; nay, becausethey are in themselves
indifferent, superfluous : for with all these innumerable predi
cates, I yet always mean to say the same thing as when I speak
of thought and extension. Why is Thought an attribute of sub
stance ? Because, according to Spinoza, it is capable of being
conceived by itself, because it expresses something indivisible,
perfect, infinite. Why Extension or Matter? For the same
reason. Thus, substance can have an indefinite number of predi-
dicates, because it is not their specific definition, their difference,
* For religious faith there is no other distinction between the present
and future God than that the former is an object of faith, of conception, of
imagination, while the latter is to be an object of immediate, that is, personal,
sensible perception. In this life, and in the next, he is the same God j
but in the one lie is incomprehensible, in the other, comprehensible.
24} THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
but their identity, their equivalence, which makes them attributes
of substance. Or rather, substance has innumerable predicates
only because (how strange!) it has properly no predicate; that
is, no definite, real predicate. The indefinite unity which is the
product of thought, completes itself by the indefinite multi
plicity which is the product of the imagination. Because the
predicate is not multum, it is multa. In truth, the positive pre
dicates are Thought and Extension. In these two, infinitely
more is said than in the nameless innumerable predicates;
for they express something definite, in them I have something.
But substance is too indifferent, too apathetic, to be some
thing ; that is, to have qualities and passions; that it may
not be something, it is rather nothing.
Now, when it is shown that what the subject is, lies entirely
in the attributes of the subject; that is, that the predicate is the
true subject; it is also proved that if the divine predicates are
attributes of the human nature, the subject of those predicates
is also of the human nature. But the divine predicates are
partly general, partly personal. The general predicates are
the metaphysical, but these serve only as external points of
support to religion; they are not the characteristic definitions
of religion. It is the personal predicates alone which con
stitute the essence of religion in which the Divine Being is
the object of religion. Such are, for example, that God is a
Person, that he is the moral Law- giver, the Father of man
kind, the Holy One, the Just, the Good, the Merciful. It is
however at once clear, or it will at least be clear in the sequel,
with regard to these and other definitions, that, especially as
applied to a personality, they are purely human definitions, and
that consequently man in religion in his relation to God is
in relation to his own nature; for to the religious sentiment
these predicates are not mere conceptions, mere images, which
man forms of God, to be distinguished from that which God
is in himself, but truths, facts, realities. Eeligion knows
nothing of anthropomorphisms; to it they are not anthropo
morphisms. It is the very essence of religion, that to it these
definitions express the nature of God. They are pronounced
to be images only by the understanding, which reflects on
religion, and which while defending them yet before its own
tribunal denies them. But to the religious sentiment God is
a real Father, real Love and Mercy; for to it he is a real,
living, personal being, and therefore his attributes are also
THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION. 25
living and personal. Nay, the definitions which are the most
sufficing to the religious sentiment, are precisely those which
give the most offence to the understanding, and which in the
process of reflection on religion it denies. Religion is essen
tially emotion; hence, objectively also, emotion is to it neces
sarily of a divine nature. Even anger appears to it an
emotion not unworthy of God, provided only there he a reli
gious motive at the foundation of this anger.
But here it is also essential to observe, and this phenomenon
is an extremely remarkable one, characterising the very core
of religion, that in proportion as the divine subject is in
reality human, the greater is the apparent difference between
God and man; that is, the more, by reflection on religion, by
theology, is the identity of the divine and human denied,
and the human, considered as such, is depreciated.* The
reason of this is, that as what is positive in the conception of
the divine being can only be human, the conception of man,
as an object of consciousness can only be negative. To
enrich God, man must become poor; that God may be all,
man must be nothing. But he desires to be nothing in him
self, because what he takes from himself is not lost to him,
since it is preserved in God. Man has his being in God;
why then should he have it in himself? Where is the- neces
sity of positing the same thing twice, of having it twice? What
man withdraws from himself, what he renounces in .himself, he
only enjoys in an incomparably higher and fuller measure in God.
The monks made a vow of chastity to God ; they morti
fied the sexual passion in themselves, but therefore they
had in Heaven, in the Virgin Mary, the image of woman
an image of love. They could the more easily dispense
with real woman, in proportion as an ideal woman was an
object of love to them. The greater the importance they
attached to the denial of sensuality, the greater the import
ance of the Heavenly Virgin for them : she was to them in
the place of Christ, in the stead of God. The more the
* Inter creatorem et creaturam non potest tanta similitude notari, quin
inter eos major sit dissimilitude notanda. Later. Cone. can. 2. (Summa
Omn. Cone. Carranza. Antw. 1559. p. 326.) The last distinction
between man and God, between the finite and infinite nature, to which the
religious speculative imagination soars, is the distinction between Some
thing and Nothing, Ens and Non-Ens ; for only in Nothing is all com
munity with other beings abolished.
C
26 THE ESSENCE OF CHEISTIANITY.
sensual tendencies are renounced, the more sensual is the
God to whom they are sacrificed. For whatever is made an
offering to God has an especial value attached to it ; in it God
is supposed to have especial pleasure. That which is the
highest in the estimation of man, is naturally the highest in
the estimation of his God what pleases man, pleases God
also. The Hebrews did not offer to Jehovah unclean, ill-
conditioned animals; on the contrary, those which they most
highly prized, which they themselves ate, were also the food
of God (cibus Dei, Levit. iii. 2.) Wherever, therefore, the
denial of the sensual delights is made a special offering, a
sacrifice well-pleasing to God, there the highest value is
attached to the senses, and the sensuality which has been
renounced is unconsciously restored, in the fact that God
takes the place of the material delights which have "been
renounced. The nun weds herself to God ; she has a heavenly
bridegroom, the monk a heavenly bride. But the heavenly
virgin is only a sensible presentation of a general truth, having
relation to the essence of religion. Man denies as to himself
only what he attributes to God. Eeligion abstracts from man,
from the world ; but it can only abstract from the limitations,
from the phenomena, in short, from the negative, not from the
essence, the positive, of the world and humanity: hence, in the
very abstraction and negation it must recover that from which
it abstracts, or believes itself to abstract. And thus, in reality,
whatever religion consciously denies always supposing that
what is denied by it is something essential, true, and conse
quently incapable of being ultimately denied it unconsciously
restores in God. Thus, in religion man denies his reason ; of him
self he knows nothing of God, his thoughts are only worldly,
earthly; he can only believe what God reveals to him. But
on this account the thoughts of God are human, earthly
thoughts: like man, He has plans in His mind, he accommo
dates himself to circumstances and grades of intelligence, like
a tutor with his pupils ; he calculates closely the effect of his
gifts and revelations; he observes man in all his doings; he
knows all things, even the most earthly, the commonest, the
most trivial. In brief, man in relation to God denies his own
knowledge, his own thoughts, that he may place them in God.
Man gives up his personality; but in return, God, the Al
mighty, infinite, unlimited being, is a person ; he denies
human dignity, the human ego; but in return God is to him
THE ESSENCE OF EELIGION. 27
a selfish, egoistical being, who in all things seeks only Him
self, his own honour, his own ends; he represents God as
simply seeking the satisfaction of his own selfishness, while
yet He frowns on that of every other being; his God is the
very luxury of egoism.* Religion further denies goodness as
a quality of human nature; man is wicked, corrupt, incapable
of good ; but on the other hand, God is only good the Good
Being. Man's nature demands as an object goodness, personi
fied as God; but is it not hereby declared that goodness is an
essential tendency of man ? If my heart is wicked, my
understanding perverted, how can I perceive and feel the holy
to be holy, the good to be good? Could I perceive the
beauty of a fine picture, if my mind were resthetically an
absolute piece of perversion ? Though I may not be a painter,
though I may not have the power of producing what is beau
tiful myself, I must yet have esthetic feeling, aBsthetic com
prehension, since I perceive the beauty that is presented
to me externally. Either goodness does not exist at all
for man, or, if it does exist, therein is revealed to the indi
vidual man the holiness and goodness of human nature. That
which is absolutely opposed to my nature, to which I am
united by no bond of sympathy, is not even conceivable or
perceptible by me. The Holy is in opposition to me only as
regards the modifications of my personality, but as regards my
fundamental nature it is in unity with me. The Holy is a
reproach to my sinfulness; in it I recognise myself as a sinner;
but in so doing, while I blame myself, I acknowledge what I
am not, but ought to be, and what, for that very reason, I,
according to my destination, can be; for an "ought" which
has no corresponding capability, does not affect me, is a
ludicrous chimsera without any true relation to my mental
constitution. But when I acknowledge goodness as my desti
nation, as my law, I acknowledge it, whether consciously or
unconsciously, as my own nature. Another nature than my
own, one different in quality, cannot touch me. I can per
ceive sin as sin, only when I perceive it to be a contradiction
of myself with myself that is, of my personality with my
* Gloriam suam plus amat Deus quam omnes creaturas. " God can only
love himself, can only think of himself, can only work for himself. In
creating man, God seeks his own ends, his own glory,"&c. Yid. P. Bayle.
Ein Beit-rag zur Geschichte der Philos. u. Menschh. p. 104 107.
c 2
28 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
fundamental nature. As a contradiction of the absolute, con
sidered as another being, the feeling of sin is inexplicable,
unmeaning.
The distinction between Augustinianism and Pelagianism
consists only in this, that the former expresses after the manner
of religion what the latter expresses after the manner of ra
tionalism. Both say the same thing, both vindicate the good
ness of man; but Pelagianism does it directly, in a rationalistic
and moral form, Augustinianism indirectly, in a mystical, that
is, a religious form.* For that which is given to man's God,
is in truth given to man himself; what a man declares con
cerning God, he in truth declares concerning himself. Augus
tinianism would be a truth, and a truth opposed to Pela
gianism, only if man had the devil for his God, and with
the consciousness that he was the devil, honoured, reverenced,
and worshipped him as the highest being. But so long as
man adores a good being as his God, so long does he con
template in God the goodness of his own nature.
As with the "doctrine of the radical corruption of human na
ture, so is it with the identical doctrine, that man can do
nothing good, i. e., in truth, nothing of himself by his own
strength. For the denial of human strength and spontaneous
moral activity to be true, the moral activity of God must also
be denied ; and we must say, with the oriental nihilist or pan
theist : the Divine being is absolutely without will or action,
indifferent, knowing nothing of the discrimination between evil
and good. But he who defines God as an active being, and
not only so, but as morally active and morally critical, as a
being who loves, works, and rewards good, punishes, rejects, and
condemns evil, he who thus defines God, only in appearance
denies human activity, in fact making it the highest, the most
* Pelagianism denies God, religion isti tantam tribuunt potestatem
voluntati, ut pietati auferant orationem. (Augustin de Nat. et Grat. cont.
Pelagium, c, 58.) It has only the Creator, i. e., Nature, as a "basis, not the
Saviour, the true God of the religious sentiment in a word, it denies God ;
but, as a consequence of this, it elevates man into a God, since it makes
him a being not needing God, self-sufficing, independent. (See on this
subject Luther against Erasmus and Augustine, 1. c. c. 33.) Augusti
nianism denies man ; but, as a consequence of this, it reduces God to the
level of man, even to the ignominy of the cross, for the sake of man.
The former puts man in the place of God, the latter puts God in the place
of man ; both lead to the same result the distinction is only apparent, a
pious illusion. Augustinianism is only an inverted Pelagianism ; what to
the latter" is a subject, is to the former an object.
THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION. 29
real activity. He who makes God act humanly, declares human
activity to be divine; he says: a god who is not active, and
not morally or humanly active, is no god; and thus he makes
the idea of the Godhead dependent on the idea of activity, that
is, of human activity, for a higher he knows not.
Man this is the mystery of religion projects his being into
objectivity,* and then again makes himself an object to this
projected image of himself thus converted into a subject; he
thinks of himself, is an object to himself, but as the object of
an object, of another being than himself. Thus here. Alan
is an object to God. That man is good or evil is not indif
ferent to God ; no ! He has a lively, profound interest in
man's being good ; he wills that man should be good, happy
for without goodness there is no happiness. Thus the
religious man virtually retracts the nothingness of human
activity, by making his dispositions and actions an object to
God, by making man the end of God for that which is an
object to the mind is an end in action ; by making the divine
activity a means of human salvation. God acts, that man may
be good and happy. Thus man, while he is apparently
humiliated to the lowest degree, is in truth exalted to the
highest. Thus, in and through God, man has in view himself
alone. It is true that man places the aim of his action in
God, but God has no other aim of action than the moral and
eternal salvation of man: thus man has in fact no other aim
than himself. The divine activity is not distinct from the
human.
How could the divine activity work on me as its object, nay,
work in me, if it were essentially different from me ; how could
it have a human aim, the aim of ameliorating and blessing
man, if it were not itself human ? Does not the purpose
determine the nature of the act ? When man makes his moral
improvement an aim to himself, he has divine resolutions,
divine projects; but also, when God seeks the salvation of
man, He has human ends and a human mode of activity, corre-
* The religious, the original mode in which man becomes objective to
himself, is (as is clearly enough explained in this work) to be distinguished
from the mode in which this occurs in reflection and speculation ; the latter
is voluntary, the former involuntary, necessary as necessary as art, as
speech. With the progress of time, it is true, theology coincides with
religion.
30 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
spending to these ends. Thus in God manh as only his own
activity as an object. But, for the very reason that he regards
his own activity as objective, goodness only as an object, he
necessarily receives the impulse, the motive, not from himself,
but from this object. He contemplates his nature as external
to himself, and this nature as goodness; thus it is self-evident,
it is mere tautology to say, that the impulse to good comes
only from thence where he places the good.
God is the highest subjectivity of man abstracted from him
self; hence man can do nothing of himself, all goodness
comes from God. The more subjective God is, the more
completely does man divest himself of his subjectivity, because
God is, per se, his relinquished self, the possession of
which he however again vindicates to himself. As the
action of the arteries drives the blood into the extremities,
and the action of the veins brings it back again, as life in
general consists in a perpetual systole and diastole ; so is it in
religion. In the religious systole man propels his own nature
from himself, he throws himself outward; in the religious
diastole he receives the rejected nature into his heart again.
God alone is the being who acts of himself, this is the force
of repulsion in religion ; God is the being who acts in me,
with me, through me, upon me, for me, is the principle of my
salvation, of my good dispositions and actions, consequently
my own good principle and nature, this is the force of attrac
tion in religion. t
The course of religious development which has been generally
indicated, consists specifically in this, that man abstracts more
and more from God, and attributes more and more to himself.
This is especially apparent in the belief in revelation. That
which to a later age or a cultured people is given by nature or
reason, is to an earlier age, or to a yet uncultured people, given
by God. Every tendency of man, however natural even the
impulse to cleanliness, w T as conceived by the Israelites as a
positive divine ordinance. From this example we again see
that God is lowered, is conceived more entirely on the type of
ordinary humanity, in proportion as man detracts from himself.
How can the self-humiliation of man go further than when he
disclaims the capability of fulfilling spontaneously the require
ments of common decency ?* The Christian religion, on the
* Deut. xxiii. 12, 13.
THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION. 31
other hand, distinguished the impulses and passions of man ac
cording to their quality, their character ; it represented only
good emotions, good dispositions, good thoughts, as revela
tions, operations that is, as dispositions, feelings, thoughts,
of God; for what God reveals is a quality of God himself: that
of which the heart is full, overflows the lips, as is the effect
such is the cause, as the revelation, such the "being who re
veals himself. A God who reveals himself in good dispositions
is a God whose essential attribute is only moral perfection.
The Christian religion distinguishes inward moral purity from
external physical purity; the Israelites identified the two.* In
relation to the Israelitish religion, the Christian religion is one
of criticism and freedom. The Israelite trusted himself to do
nothing except what was commanded by God ; he was without
will even in external things ; the authority of religion extended
itself even to his food. The Christian religion, on the other
hand, in all these external things, made man dependent on
himself, i. e., placed in man what the Israelite placed out of
himself, in God. Israel is the most complete presentation of
positivism in religion. In relation to the Israelite, the Chris
tian is an esprit fort, a free-thinker. Thus do things change.
What yesterday was still religion, is no longer such to-day;
and what to-day is atheism, to-morrow will be religion.
* See, for example, Gen. xxxv. 2; Levit. xi. 44; xx. 26; and the
Commentary of Le Clerc on these passages.
32 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
PART I.
THE TRUE OK ANTHROPOLOGICAL ESSENCE OF
RELIGION.
CHAPTER II.
GOD AS A BEING OF THE UNDERSTANDING.
RELIGION is the disuniting of man from himself: he sets
God before him as the antithesis of himself. God is not what
man is man is not what God is. God is the infinite, man
the finite being ; God is perfect, man imperfect ; God eternal,
man temporal ; God almighty, man weak; God holy, man sin
ful. God and man are extremes : God is the absolutely posi
tive, the sum of all realities ; man the absolutely negative,
comprehending all negations.
But in religion man contemplates his own latent nature.
Hence it must be shown that this antithesis, this differencing
of God and man, with which religion begins, is a differencing
of man with his own nature.
The inherent necessity of this proof is at once apparent
from this, that if the divine nature, which is the object of
religion, were really different from the nature of man, a
division, a disunion could not take place. If God is really a
different being from myself, why should his perfection trouble
me ? Disunion exists only between beings who are at variance,
but who ought to be one, who can be one, and who conse
quently in nature, in truth, are one. On this general ground,
then, the nature with which man feels himself in disunion,
must be inborn, immanent in himself, but at the same time it
must be of a different character from that nature or power
which gives him the feeling, the consciousness of reconciliation,
of union with God, or, what is the same thing, with himself.
GOD AS A BEING OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 33
This nature is nothing else than the intelligence the reason
or the understanding. God as the antithesis of man, as a
being not human, i.e., not personally human, is the objective
nature of the understanding. The pure, perfect divine nature
is the self- consciousness of the understanding, the conscious
ness which the understanding has of its own perfection. The
understanding knows nothing of the sufferings of the heart ;
it has no desires, 110 passions, no wants, and for that reason,
no deficiencies and weaknesses, as the heart has. Men in
whom the intellect predominates, who with one-sided but all
the more characteristic definiteness, embody and personify for
us the nature of the understanding, are free from the anguish
of the heart, from the passions, the excesses of the man who
has strong emotions ; they are not passionately interested in
any finite, i.e., particular object; they do not give themselves
in pledge; they are free. "To want nothing, and by this
freedom from wants to become like the immortal Gods ;"
"not to subject ourselves to things but things to us;'
" all is vanity ;" these and similar sayings are the mottoes
of the men who are governed by abstract understanding. The
understanding is that part of our nature which is neutral, im
passible, not to be bribed, not subject to illusions the pure,
passionless light of the intelligence. It is the categorical,
impartial consciousness of the fact as fact, because it is itself
of an objective nature. It is the consciousness of the uncon-
tradictory, because it is itself the uncontradictory unity, the
source of logical identity. It is the consciousness of law,
necessity, rule, measure, because it is itself the activity of law,
the necessity of the nature of things under the form of spon
taneous activity, the rule of rules, the absolute measure, the
measure of measures. Only by the understanding can man
judge and act in contradiction with his dearest human, that is,
personal feelings, when the God of the understanding, law,
necessity, right, commands it. The father who as a judge
condemns his own son to death because he knows him to be
guilty, can do this only as a rational not as an emotional being.
The understanding shews us the faults and weaknesses even of
our beloved ones ; it shews us even our own. It is for this reason
that it so often throws us into painful collision with ourselves,
with our own hearts. AVe do not like to give reason the upper
hand : we are too tender to ourselves to carry out the true, but
hard, relentless verdict of the understanding. The under
c 3
THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
standing is the power which has relation to species : the heart
represents particular circumstances, individuals, the under
standing, general circumstances, universals ; it is the super
human, i.e., the impersonal power in man. Only by and in
the understanding has man the power of abstraction from
himself, from his subjective being, of exalting himself to
general ideas and relations, of distinguishing the object from
the impressions which it produces on his feelings, of regarding
it in and by itself without reference to human personality.
Philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, physics, in short, science
in general, is the practical proof, because it is the product, of
this truly infinite and divine activity. Religious anthropomor
phisms, therefore, are in contradiction with the understanding;
it repudiates their application to God : it denies them. But
this God, free from anthropomorphisms, impartial, passionless,
is nothing else than the nature of the understanding itself
regarded as objective.
God as God, that is, as a being not finite, not human, not
materially conditioned, not phenomenal, is only an object of
thought. He is the incorporeal, formless, incomprehensible
the abstract, negative being: he is known, i.e., becomes an
object, only by abstraction and negation (via negationis).
Why ? Because he is nothing but the objective nature of the
thinking power, or in general, of the power or activity, name
it what you will, whereby man is conscious of reason, of mind,
of intelligence. There is no other spirit, that is, (for the idea
of spirit is simply the idea of thought, of intelligence, of
understanding, every other spirit being a spectre of the imagi
nation,) no other intelligence which man can believe in or con
ceive, than that intelligence which enlightens him, which is
active in him. He can do nothing more than separate the in
telligence from the limitations of his own individuality. The
"infinite spirit," in distinction from the finite, is therefore
nothing else than the intelligence disengaged from the limits
of individuality and corporeality, for individuality and cor
poreality are inseparable, intelligence posited in and by itself.
God, said the schoolmen, the Christian fathers, and long before
them the heathen philosophers, God is immaterial essence,
intelligence, spirit, pure understanding. Of God as God, no
image can be made ; but canst thou frame an image of mind ?
Has mind a form ? Is not its activity the most inexplicable, the
most incapable of representation ? God is incomprehensible ;
GOD AS A BEING OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 35
but knowest thou the nature of the intelligence ? Hast thou
searched out the mysterious operation of thought, the hidden
nature of self-consciousness ? Is not self-consciousness the
enigma of enigmas ? Did not the old mystics, schoolmen,
and fathers, long ago compare the incomprehensibility of the
divine nature with that of the human intelligence, and thus,
in truth, identify the nature of God with the nature of man ?*
God as God as a purely thinkable being, an object of the in
tellect, is thus nothing else than the reason in its utmost
intensification become objective to itself. It is asked what is the
understanding or the reason? The answer is found in the idea
of God. Everything must express itself, reveal itself, make itself
objective, affirm itself. God is the reason expressing, affirming
itself as the highest existence. To the imagination, the reason
is the revelation of God ; but to the reason, God is the reve
lation of the reason; since what reason is, what it can do, is first
made objective in God. God is a need of the intelligence, a neces
sary thought the highest degree of the thinking power. " The
reason cannot rest in sensuous things ;" it can find contentment
only when it penetrates to the highest, first, necessary being,
which can be an object to the reason alone. Why ? Because with
the conception of this being it first completes itself, because only
in the idea of the highest nature is the highest nature of reason
existent, the highest step of the thinking power attained; and it
is a general truth, that we feel a blank, a void, a want in our
selves, and are consequently unhappy and unsatisfied, so long as
we have not come to the last degree of a power, to that quo nili'd
majus coqitarl potest, so long as we cannot bring our inborn
capacity for this or that art, this or that science, to the utmost
proficiency. For only in the highest proficiency is art truly
art ; only in its highest degree is thought truly thought, reason.
Only when thy thought is God, dost thou truly think, rigorously
speaking; for only God is the realized, consummate, exhausted
thinking power. Thus in conceiving God, man first conceives
* Augustine, in his work Contra Academicos, which he wrote when he
was still in some measure a heathen, says (1. iii. o. 12), that the highest
good of man consists in the mind, or in the reason. On the other hand, in
his Libr. Retractationum, which he wrote as a distinguished Christian and
theologian, he revises (1. i. c. 1) this declaration as follows : Verius dk-
issem in Deo. Ipso enim mens fruitur, ut beata sit, tanquam suinmo
bono suo. Bat is there any distinction here ? Where my highest good is,
is not there my nature also ?
36 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
reason as it truly is, though, by means of the imagination he
conceives this divine nature as distinct from reason, because as
a being affected by external things he is accustomed always to
distinguish the object from the conception of it. And here he
applies the same process to the conception of the reason, thus,
for an existence in reason, in thought, substituting an exis
tence in space and time, from which he had, nevertheless, pre
viously abstracted it. God, as a metaphysical being, is the
intelligence satisfied in itself, or rather, conversely, the intelli
gence satisfied in itself, thinking itself as the absolute being,
is God as a metaphysical being. Hence all metaphysical
predicates of God are real predicates only when they are re
cognised as belonging to thought, to intelligence, to the un
derstanding.
The understanding is that which conditionates and co
ordinates all things, that which places all things in reciprocal
dependence and connexion, because it is itself immediate and
unconditioned ; it inquires for the cause of all things, because
it has its own ground and end in itself. Only that which itself
is nothing deduced, nothing derived, can deduce and cooi-
s tract, can regard all besides itself as derived ; just as only
that which exists for its own sake can view and treat other
things as means and instruments. The understanding is thus
the original, primitive being. The understanding derives all
things from God, as the first cause , it finds the world, with
out an intelligent cause, given over to senseless, aimless
chance ; that is, it finds only in itself, in its own nature, the
efficient and the final cause of the w r oiid the existence of the
world is only then clear and comprehensible when it sees the
explanation of that existence in the source of all clear and
intelligible ideas, i.e. in itself. The being that works with
design, towards certain ends, i.e. with understanding, is alone
the being that to the understanding has immediate certitude,
self- evidence. Hence that which of itself has no designs, no
purpose, must have tbe cause of its existence in the design of
another, and that an intelligent being. And thus the under
standing posits its own nature as the causal, first, premun-
dane existence : i.e. being in rank the first, but in time the
last, it makes itself the first in time also.
The understanding is to itself the criterion of all reality.
That which is opposed to the understanding, that which is
self-contradictory, is nothing; that which contradicts reason,
GOD AS A BEING OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 37
contradicts God. For example, it is a contradiction of reason
to connect with the idea of the highest reality the limitations
of definite time and place; and hence reason denies these of God,
as contradicting his nature. The reason can only believe in a
God who is accordant with its own nature, in a God who is not
beneath its own dignity, who on the contrary is a realization of
its own nature : i.e., the reason believes only in itself, in the
absolute reality of its own nature. The reason is not dependent
on God, but God on the reason. Even in the age of miracles
and faith in authority, the understanding constitutes itself, at
least formally, the criterion of divinity. God is all and can
do all, it was said, by virtue of his omnipotence ; but never
theless he is nothing and he can do nothing which contradicts
himself, i.e. reason. Even omnipotence cannot do what is
contrary to reason. Thus above the divine omnipotence
stands the higher power of reason ; above the nature of God
the nature of the understanding, as the criterion of that which
is to be affirmed and denied of God, the criterion of the posi
tive and negative. Canst thou believe in a God who is an
unreasonable and wicked being ? No, indeed ; but why not ?
Because it is in contradiction wdth thy understanding to accept
a wicked and unreasonable being as divine. What then dost
thou affirm, what is an object to thee, in God ? Thy own
understanding. God is thy highest idea, the supreme effort
of thy understanding, thy highest power of thought. God is
the sum of all realities, i.e. the sum of all affirmations of the
understanding. That which I recognise in the understanding
as essential, I place in God as existent : God is, what the
understanding thinks as the highest. But in what I per
ceive to be essential, is revealed the nature of my under
standing, is shown the power of my thinking faculty.
Thus the understanding is the ens realissimum, the most
real being of the old onto- theology. " Fundamentally," says
onto-theology, "we cannot conceive God otherwise than by
attributing to him without limit all the real qualities which we
find in ourselves."* Our positive, essential qualities, our
realities, are therefore the realities of God, but in us they
exist with, in God without, limits. But what then withdraws
the limits from the realities, what does away with the limits ?
The understanding. What, according to this, is the nature
* Kant Yorles. iiber d. philos. Eeligionsl. Leipzig. 1817. p. 39.
38 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
conceived without limits, but the nature of the understanding
releasing, abstracting itself from all limits ? As thou thiiikest
God, such is thy thought ; the measure of thy God is the
measure of thy understanding. If thou conceivest God as
limited, thy understanding is limited ; if thou conceivest God
as unlimited, thy understanding is unlimited. If, for example,
thou conceivest God as a corporeal being, corporeality is the
boundary, the limit of thy understanding, thou canst con
ceive nothing without a body ; if on the contrary thou deniest
corporeality of God, this is a corroboration and proof of the
freedom of thy understanding from the limitation of corpo
reality. In the unlimited divine nature thou representest only
thy unlimited understanding. And when thou deelarest this
unlimited being the ultimate essence, the highest being, thou
sayest in reality nothing else than this : the etre supreme, the
highest being, is the understanding.
The understanding is further the self-subsistent and indepen
dent being. That which has no understanding is not self-
subsistent, is dependent. A man without understanding is a
man without will. He who has no understanding allows
himself to be deceived, .imposed upon, used as an instrument
by others. How shall he whose understanding is the tool of
another, have an independent will ? Only he who thinks, is
free and independent. It is only by the understanding that
man reduces the things around and beneath him to mere
means of his own existence. In general : that only is self-
subsistent and independent which is an end to itself, an object
to itself. That which is an end and object to itself, is for
that very reason in so far as it is an object to itself no
longer a means and object for another being. To be without
understanding is, in one word, to exist for another, to be an
object: to have understanding is to exist for oneself, to be a
subject. But that which 110 longer exists for another, but for
itself, rejects all dependence on another being. It is true, we,
as physical beings, depend on the beings external to us, even
as to the modifications of thought ; but in so far as we think,
in the activity of the understanding as such, we are depen
dent on no other being. Activity of thought is spontaneous
activity. " When I think, I am conscious that my ego in me
thinks, and not some other thing. I conclude, therefore, that
this thinking in me does not inhere in another thing outside
of me, but in myself, consequently that I am a substance, i.e.
GOD AS A BEING OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 39
that I exist by myself, without being a predicate of another
being."* Although we always need the air, yet as natural
philosophers we convert the air from an object of our physical
need into an object of the self-sufficing activity of thought, i.e.
into a mere thing for us. In breathing I am the object of the
air, the air the subject ; but when I make the air an object of
thought, of investigation, when I analyze it, I reverse this
relation, I make myself the subject, the air an object. But
that which is the object of another being is dependent. Thus
the plant is dependent on air and light, that is, it is an object
for air and light, not for itself. It is true that air and light
are reciprocally an object for the plant. Physical life, in
general, is nothing else than this perpetual interchange of the
objective and subjective relation. We consume the air, and
are consumed by it; we enjoy, and are enjoyed. The
understanding alone enjoys all things without being itself
enjoyed ; it is the self- enjoying, self-sufficing existence the
absolute subject the subject which cannot be reduced to the
object of another being, because it makes all things objects,
predicates of itself, which comprehends all things in itself
because it is itself not a thing, because it is free from all things.
That is dependent, the possibility of whose existence lies
out of itself; that is independent which has the possibility of
its existence in itself. Life therefore involves the contradic
tion of an existence at once dependent and independent, the
contradiction that its possibility lies both in itself and out of
itself. The understanding alone is free from this and other
contradictions of life ; it is the essence perfectly self-subsistent,
perfectly at one with itself, perfectly self-existentf Thinking
is existence in self; life, as differenced from thought, exist
ence out of self; life is to give from oneself, thought is to
take into oneself. Existence out of self is the world, exist
ence in self is God. To think is to be God. The act of
thought, as such, is the freedom of the immortal gods from
all external limitations and necessities of life.
* Kant, 1. c. p. 80.
f To guard against mistake I observe, that I do not apply to the un
derstanding the expression, self-subsistent essence, and other terms of a like
character, in my own sense, but that I am here placing myself on the
stand-point of onto-theology, of metaphysical theology in general, in
order to shew that metaphysics is resolvable into psychology, that the onto-
theological predicates are merely predicates of the understanding.
40 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
The unity of the understanding is the unity of God. To
the understanding the consciousness of its unity and universality
is essential; the understanding is itself nothing else than the
consciousness of itself as absolute identity, i.e. that which is
accordant with the understanding is to it an absolute, universally
valid, law ; it is impossible to the understanding to think that
what is self- contradictory, false, irrational, can anywhere be
true, and, conversely, that what is true, rational, can anywhere
be false and irrational. " There may be intelligent beings
who are not like me, and yet I am certain that there are no
intelligent beings who know laws and truths different from
those which I recognise ; for every mind necessarily sees that
two and two make four, and that one must prefer one's fiiend
to one's dog."* Of an essentially different understanding from
that which affirms itself in man, I have not the remotest
conception, the faintest adumbration. On the contrary, every
understanding which I posit as different from my own, is only
a position of my own understanding, i.e. an idea of my own,
a conception which falls within my power of thought, and thus
expresses my understanding. What I think, that I myself
do, of course only in purely intellectual matters ; what I think
of as united, I unite ; what I think of as distinct, I distinguish ;
what I think of as abolished, as negatived, that I myself
abolish and negative. For example, if I conceive an under
standing in which the intuition or reality of the object is
immediately united with the thought of it, I actually unite
it ; my understanding or my imagination is itself the power
of uniting these distinct or opposite ideas. How would it be
possible for me to conceive them united whether this con
ception be clear or confused if I did not unite them in
myself? But whatever may be the conditions of the under
standing which a given human individual may suppose as
distinguished from his own, this other understanding is only
the understanding which exists in man in general the under
standing conceived apart from the limits of this particular indi
vidual. Unity is involved in the idea of the understanding.
* Malebranche. (See the author's Geschichte der Philos. I. Bd.
p. 322.) Exstaretne alibi di versa ab hac ratio ? censereturque injustum
aut scelestum in Jove aut Marte, quod apud nos justum ac pra9clarum
habetur ? Certe uec verisimile nee omnino possibile. Chr. Hugenii.
(Cosmotheoros, lib. i.)
GOD AS A BEING OF THE UNDERSTANDING. 41
The impossibility for the understanding to think two supreme
beings, two infinite substances, two Gods, is the impossibility
for the understanding to contradict itself, to deny its own
nature, to think of itself as divided.
The understanding is the infinite being. Infinitude is
immediately involved in unity, and finiteness in plurality.
Finiteness in the metaphysical sense rests on the distinction
of the existence from the essence, of the individual from the
species ; infinitude, on the unity of existence and essence.
Hence, that is finite which can be compared with other beings
of the same species ; that is infinite which has nothing like
itself, which consequently does not stand as an individual
under a species, but is species and individual in one, essence
and existence in one. But such is the understanding ; it has
its essence in itself, consequently, it has nothing together with
or external to itself which can be ranged beside it ; it is
incapable of being compared, because it is itself the source of
all combinations and comparisons ; immeasurable, because it is
the measure of all measures, we measure all things by the
understanding alone ; it can be circumscribed by no higher
generalization, it can be ranged under no species, because it
is itself the principle of all generalizing, of all classification,
because it circumscribes all things and beings. The definitions
which the speculative philosophers and theologians give of
God, as the being in whom existence and essence are not
separable, who himself is all the attributes which he has, so
that predicate and subject are with him identical, all these
definitions are thus ideas drawn solely from the nature of the
understanding.
Lastly, the understanding or the reason is the necessary
being. Reason exists because only the existence of the reason
is reason ; because, if there were no reason, no consciousness,
all would be nothing; existence would be equivalent to non-
existence. Consciousness first founds the distinction between
existence and non-existence. In consciousness is first revealed
the value of existence, the value of nature. Why, in general,
does something exist? why does the world exist? on the
simple ground that if something did not exist, nothing would
exist; if reason did not exist, there would be only unreason;
thus the world exists because it is an absurdity that the w r orld
should not exist. In the absurdity of its non-existence is
found the true reason of its existence, in the groundlessness
42 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
of the supposition that it were not, the reason that it is.
Nothing, non-existence, is aimless, nonsensical, irrational.
Existence alone has an aim, a foundation, rationality; exist
ence is, because only existence is reason and truth ; existence
is the absolute necessity. What is the cause of conscious
existence, of life ? The need of life. But to whom is it a
need ? To that which does not live. It is not a being who
saw that made the eye : to one who saw already, to what
purpose would be the eye ? No ! only the being who saw
not needed the eye. We are all come into the world without
the operation of knowledge and will ; but we are come that
knowledge and will may exist. Whence, then, came the
world ? Out of necessity ; not out of a necessity which lies
in another being distinct from itself that is a pure contra
diction, but out of its own inherent necessity ; out of the
necessity of necessity; because without the world there would
be no necessity ; without necessity, no reason, no under
standing. The nothing, out of which the world came, is
nothing without the world. It is true that thus, negativity,
as the speculative philosophers express themselves nothing
is the cause of the world ; but a nothing which abolishes
itself, i.e. a nothing which could not have existed if there had
been no world. It is true that the world springs out of a
want, out of privation, but it is false speculation to make
this privation an ontological being : this want is simply the
want which lies in the supposed non-existence of the world.
Thus the world is only necessary out of itself and through
itself. But the necessity of the world is the necessity of
reason. The reason, as the sum of all realities, for what are
all the glories of the world without light, much more external
light without internal light ? the reason is the most indispen
sable being the profoundest and most essential necessity. In
the reason first lies the self-consciousness of existence, self-
conscious existence ; in the reason is first revealed the end,
the meaning of existence. Reason is existence objective to
itself as its own end; the ultimate tendency of things. That
which is an object to itself is the highest, the final being :
that which has power over itself is almighty.
GOD AS A MOKAL BEING, OR LAW. 43
CHAPTEK III.
GOD AS A MOBAL BEING, OR LAW.
GOD as God the infinite, universal, non- anthropomorphic
being of the understanding, has no more significance for reli
gion than a fundamental general principle has for a special
science; it is merely the ultimate point of support, as it were,
the mathematical point, of religion. The consciousness of
human limitation or nothingness which is united with the idea
of this being, is by no means a religious consciousness; on
the contrary, it characterizes sceptics, materialists, and pan
theists. The belief in God at least in the God of religion
33 only lost where, as in scepticism, pantheism, and mate
rialism, the belief in man is lost, at least in man such as
he is presupposed in religion. As little then as religion has
any influential belief in the nothingness of man,* so little has
it any influential belief in that abstract being with which the
consciousness of this nothingness is united. The vital ele
ments of religion are those only which make man an object to
man. To deny man, is to deny religion.
It certainly is the interest of religion that its object should
be distinct from man; but it is also, nay, yet more its in
terest, that this object should have human attributes. That
he should be a distinct being concerns his existence only; but
that he should be human concerns his essence. If he be of a
different nature, how can his existence or non-existence be of
any importance to man ? How can he take so profound an
interest in an existence in which his own nature has no par
ticipation ?
To give an example. "When I believe that the human
* In religion, the representation or expression of the nothingness of man
before God, is the anger of God ; for as the love of God is the affirmation,
his anger is the negation of man. But even this anger is not taken in
earnest. " God ... is not really angry. He is not thoroughly in earnest
even when we think that he is angry, and punishes."- Luther (T. viii.
p. 208).
44 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
nature alone has suffered for me, Christ is a poor Saviour to
me; in that case, he needs a Saviour himself." And thus, out
of the need for salvation, is postulated something transcending
human nature, a being different from man. But no sooner is
this being postulated than there arises the yearning of man
after himself, after his own nature, and man is immediately
re-established. " Here is God, who is not man and never yet
became man. But this is not a God for me That would
be a miserable Christ to me, who should be nothing but
a purely separate God and divine person without hu
manity. No, my friend, where thou givest me God, thou must
give me humanity too."*
In religion man seeks contentment; religion is his highest
good. But how could he find consolation and peace in God,
if God were an essentially different being ? How can I share
the peace of a being if I am not of the same nature with him ?
If his nature is different from mine, his peace is essentially
different, it is no peace for me. How then can I become a
partaker of his peace, if I am not a partaker of his nature; but
how can I be a partaker of his nature if I am really of a dif
ferent nature ? Every being experiences peace only in its
own element, only in the conditions of its own nature. Thus,
if man feels peace in God, he feels it only because in God he
first attains his true nature, because here, for the first time, he
is with himself, because everything in which he hitherto sought
peace, and which he hitherto mistook for his nature, was alien
to him. Hence, if man is to find contentment in God, he must
find himself in God. " No one will taste of God, but as He
wills, namely in the humanity of Christ; and if thou dost
not find God thus, thou wilt never have rest."f " Everything
finds rest on the place in which it was born. The place where
I was born is God. God is my father-land. Have I a father
in God ? Yes, I have not only a father, but I have myself in
Him ; before I lived in myself, I lived already in God."J
A God, therefore, who expresses only the nature of the un
derstanding, does not satisfy religion, is not the God of religion.
* Luther, Concordienbuch, Art. 8. Erklar.
f Luther. (Sammtliche Schriften und Werke. Leipzig, 1729, fol.
T. iii. p. 589. It is according to this edition that references are given
throughout the present work.)
Predigten etzlicher Lehrer vor und zu Tauleri Zeiten. Hamburg,
1621, p. 81.
GOD AS A MORAL BEING, OR LAW. 45
The understanding is interested not only in man, but in the
things out of man, in universal Nature. The intellectual man
forgets even himself in the contemplation of Nature. The Chris
tians scorned the pagan philosophers because, instead of think
ing of themselves, of their own salvation, they had thought
only of things out of themselves. The Christian thinks only
of himself. By the understanding an insect is contemplated
with as much enthusiasm as the image of God man. The
understanding is the absolute indifference and identity of all
things and beings. It is not Christianity, not religious enthu
siasm, but the enthusiasm of the understanding that we have
to thank for botany, mineralogy, zoology, physics, and astro
nomy. The understanding is universal, pantheistic, the
love of the universe ; but the grand characteristic of reli
gion, and of the Christian religion especially, is, that it is
thoroughly anthropotheistic, the exclusive love of man for him
self, the exclusive self-affirmation of the human nature, that
is, of subjective human nature; for it is true that the under
standing also affirms the nature of man, but it is his
objective nature, which has reference to the object for the
sake of the object, and the manifestation of w r hich is science.
Hence it must be something entirely different from the nature
of the understanding which is an object to man in religion, if
he is to find contentment therein, and this something will neces
sarily be the very kernel of religion.
Of all the attributes which the understanding assigns to God,
that which in religion, and especially in the Christian religion, has
the pre-eminence, is moral perfection. But God as a morally
perfect being is nothing else than the realized idea, the ful
filled law of morality, the moral nature of man posited as
the absolute being ; man's own nature, for the moral God re
quires man to be as He himself is : Be ye holy for I am holy;
man's own conscience, for how could he otherwise tremble
before the divine Being, accuse himself before him, and make
him the judge of his inmost thoughts and feelings?
But the consciousness of the absolutely perfect moral nature,
especially as an abstract being separate from man, leaves us
cold and empty, because we feel the distance, the chasm between
ourselves and this being ; it is a dispiriting consciousness, for
it is the consciousness of our personal nothingness, and of the
kind which is the most acutely felt moral nothingness. The
consciousness of the divine omnipotence and eternity in oppo-
46 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
*
sition to my limitation in space and time does not afflict me :
for omnipotence does not command me to be myself omnipo
tent, eternity, to be myself eternal. But I cannot have the
idea of moral perfection without at the same time being con
scious of it as a law for me. Moral perfection depends, at
least for the moral consciousness, not on the nature, but on the
will it is a perfection of will, perfect will. I cannot conceive
perfect will, the will which is in unison with law, which is
itself law, without at the same time regarding it as an
object of will, i.e., as an obligation for myself. The conception
of the morally perfect being, is no merely theoretical, inert
conception, but a practical one, calling me to action, to imita
tion, throwing me into strife, into disunion with myself; for
while it proclaims to me what I ought to be, it also tells me to
my face, without any flattery, what I am not.* And religion
renders this disunion all the more painful, all the more terrible,
that it sets man's own nature before him as a separate nature,
and moreover as a personal being, who hates and curses sinners,
and excludes them from his grace, the source of all salvation
and happiness.
Now, by what means does man deliver himself from this
state of disunion between himself and the perfect being, from
the painful consciousness of sin, from the distressing sense of
his own nothingness? How does he blunt the fatal sting of
sin ? Only by this ; that he is conscious of love as the
highest, the absolute power and truth, that he regards the
Divine Being not only as a law, as a moral being, as a being
of the understanding; but also as a loving, tender, even sub
jective human being (that is, as having sympathy with indi
vidual man.)
The understanding judges only according to the stringency
of law; the heart accommodates itself, is considerate, lenient,
relenting, KCIT avOpuTrov. No man is sufficient for the law
which moral perfection sets before us; but for that reason,
neither is the law sufficient for man, for the heart. The law
condemns ; the heart has compassion even on the sinner. The
law affirms me only as an abstract being, love, as a real
* " That which, in our own judgment, derogates from our self-conceit,
humiliates us. Thus the moral law inevitably humiliates every man,
when he compares with it the sensual tendency of his nature." Kant,
Kritik der prakt. Yernunft. Fourth edition, p. 132.
GOD AS A MORAL BEING, OR LAW. 47
being. Love gives me the consciousness that I am a man;
the law only the consciousness that I am a sinner, that I am
worthless.* The law holds man in bondage; love makes him
free.
Love is the middle term, the substantial bond, the principle
of reconciliation between the perfect and the imperfect, the
sinless and sinful being, the universal and the individual, the
divine and the human. Love is God himself, and apart from
it there is no God. Love makes man God, and God man.
Love strengthens the weak, and weakens the strong, abases
the high and raises the lowly, idealizes matter and materializes
spirit. Love is the true unity of God and man, of spirit
and nature. In love common nature is spirit, and the pre
eminent spirit is nature. Love is to deny spirit from the
point of view of spirit, to deny matter from the point of view
of matter. Love is materialism ; immaterial love is a
chimsera. In the longing of love after the distant object, the
abstract idealist involuntarily confirms the truth of sensuousness.
But love is also the idealism of nature, love is also spirit,
esprit. Love alone makes the nightingale a songstress; love
alone gives the plant its corolla. And what wonders does not
love work in our social life ! What faith, creed, opinion
separates, love unites. Love even, humorously enough,
identifies the high noblesse with the people. What the old
mystics said of God, that he is the highest and yet the com
monest being, applies in truth to love, and that not a visionary,
imaginary love no! a real love, a love which has flesh and
blood, which vibrates as an almighty force through all living.
Yes, it applies only to the love which has flesh and blood,
for only this can absolve from the sins which flesh and blood
commit. A merely moral being cannot forgive what is con
trary to the law of morality. That which denies the law, is
denied by the law. The moral judge, who does not infuse
human blood into his judgment, judges the sinner relentlessly,
inexorably. Since, then, God is regarded as a sin-pardoning
being, he is posited, not indeed as an unmoral, but as more than
a moral being in a word, as a human being. The negation or
annulling of sin is the negation of abstract moral rectitude, the
* Omnes peccavimus ..... . Parricidse cum lege cseperunt et illis
facinus pcena monstravit. Seneca. "The law destroys us." Luther,
(Th. xvi. s. 320).
48 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
positing of love, mercy, sensuous life. Not abstract beings
no! only sensuous, living beings, are merciful. Mercy is
the justice of sensuous life.* Hence, God does not forgive
the sins of men as the abstract God of the understanding, but
as man, as the God made flesh, the visible God. God as man
sins not, it is true, but he knows, he takes on himself, the
sufferings, the wants, the needs of sensuous beings. The
blood of Christ cleanses us from our sins in the eyes of God;
it is only his human blood that makes God merciful, allays
his anger; that is, our sins are forgiven us, because we are no
abstract beings, but creatures of flesh and blood.f
* " Das Rechtsgefiihl der Sinnlichkeit."
f " This, my God and Lord, has taken upon him my nature, flesh and
blood such as I have, and has been tempted and has suffered in all things
like me, but without sin ; therefore he can have pity on my weakness.
Hebrews v. Luther (Th. xvi. s. 533). "The deeper we can bring Christ
into the flesh the better." (Ibid. s. 565). " God himself, when he is dealt
with out of Christ, is a terrible God, for no consolation is found in him,
but pure anger and disfavour." (Th. xv. s. 298.)
THE MYSTERY OF THE INCARNATION. 49
CHAPTEK IV.
THE MYSTEEY OF THE INCARNATION; OR, GOD AS LOVE,
AS A BEING OF THE HEART.
IT is the consciousness of love by which man reconciles him
self with God, or rather with his own nature as represented in
the moral law. The consciousness of the divine love, or what
is the same thing, the contemplation of God as human, is the
mystery of the Incarnation. The Incarnation is nothing else
than the practical, material manifestation of the human nature
of God. God did not "become man for his own sake; the need,
the want of man a want which still exists in the religious
sentiment was the cause of the Incarnation. God became
man out of mercy: thus he was in himself already a human
God before he became an actual man; for human want, human
misery, went to his heart. The Incarnation was a tear of the
divine compassion, and hence it was only the visible advent of
a Being having human feelings, and therefore essentially
human.
If in the Incarnation we stop short at the fact of God becom
ing man, it certainly appears a surprising, inexplicable, mar
vellous event. But the incarnate God is only the apparent
manifestation of deified man ; for the descent of God to man
is necessarily preceded by the exaltation of man to God. Man
was already in God, was already God himself, before God
became man, i. e., showed himself as man.* How otherwise
could God have become man? The old maxim, ex nihilo
niliilfit, is applicable here also. A king who has not the wel-
* " Such descriptions as those in which the Scriptures speak of God as of
a man, and ascribe to him all that is human, are very sweet and comforting
namely, that he talks with us as a friend, and of such things as men are
wont to talk of with each other, that he rejoices, sorrows, and suffers, like
a man, for the sake of the mystery of the future humanity of Christ."-
Luther (T. ii. p. 334).
D
50 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
fare of his subjects at heart, who while seated on his throne
does not mentally live with them in their dwellings, who, in
feeling, is not, as the people say, " a common man," such a
king will not descend bodily from his throne to make his
people happy by his personal presence. Thus, has not the
subject risen to be a king, before the king descends to be a
subject? And if the subject feels himself honoured and made
happy by the personal presence of his king, does this feeling
refer merely to the bodily presence, and not rather to the mani
festation of the disposition, of the philanthropic nature which
is the cause of the appearance ? But that which in the truth
of religion is the cause, takes in the consciousness of religion
the form of a consequence ; and so here the raising of man to
God is made a consequence of the humiliation or descent of
God to man. God, says religion, made himself human that
he might make man divine.*
That which is mysterious and incomprehensible, i. e., con
tradictory, in the proposition, " God is or becomes a man,"
arises only from the mingling or confusion of the idea or defi
nitions of the universal, unlimited, metaphysical being with
the idea of the religious God, i. e., the conditions of the under
standing with the conditions of the heart, the emotive nature ;
a confusion which is the greatest hinderance to the correct
knowledge of religion. But in fact the idea of the Incarnation
is nothing more than the human form of a God, who already
in his nature, in the profoundest depths of his soul, is a merciful
and therefore a human God.
The form given to this truth in the doctrine of the church
is, that it was not the first person of the Godhead who was
incarnate, but the second, who is the representative of man
in and before God; the second person being however in
reality, as will be shown, the sole, true, first person in religion.
And it is only apart from this distinction of persons, that the
God-man appears mysterious, incomprehensible, " speculative ;"
for, considered in connexion with it, the Incarnation is a
* " Deus homo factus est, ut homo Deus fieret." Augustinus (Serm.
ad Pop. p. 371, c. 1). In Luther, however, (T. i. p. 334,) there is a passage
which indicates the true relation. When Moses called man " the image of
God, the likeness of God," he meant, says Luther, obscurely to intimate
that " God was to become man." Thus here the incarnation of God is
clearly enough represented as a consequence of the deification of man.
THE MYSTERY OF THE INCARNATION. 51
necessary, nay, a self-evident consequence. The allegation,
therefore, that the Incarnation is a purely empirical fact, which
could be made known only by means of a revelation in the
theological sense, betrays the most crass religious materialism ;
for the Incarnation is a conclusion which rests on a very com
prehensible premiss. But it is equally perverse to attempt to
deduce the Incarnation from purely speculative, i. e., metaphy
sical, abstract grounds ; for metaphysics apply only to the first
person of the Godhead, who does not become incarnate, who is
not a dramatic person. Such a deduction would at the utmost
be justifiable if it were meant consciously to deduce from meta
physics the negation of metaphysics.
This example clearly exhibits the distinction between the
method of our philosophy and that of the old speculative
philosophy. The former does not philosophize concerning the
Incarnation as a peculiar, stupendous mystery, after the manner
of speculation dazzled by mystical splendour; on the contrary it
destroys the illusive supposition of a peculiar supernatural
mystery ; it criticises the dogma and reduces it to its natural
elements, immanent in man, to its originating principle and
central point love.
The dogma presents to us two things God and love. God
is love : but what does that mean ? Is God something besides
love ? a being distinct from love ? Is it as if I said of an
affectionate human being, he is love itself? Certainly; other
wise I must give up the name God, which expresses a special
personal being, a subject in distinction from the predicate.
Thus love is made something apart : God out of love sent his
only-begotten Son. Here love recedes and sinks into insigni
ficance in the dark background God. It becomes merely a
personal, though an essential, attribute; hence it receives
both in theory and in feeling, both objectively and subjectively,
the rank simply of a predicate, not that of a subject, of the
substance ; it shrinks out of observation as a collateral, an
accident; at one moment it presents itself to me as some
thing essential, at another, it vanishes again. God appears
to me in another form besides that of love; in the form
of omnipotence, of a severe power not bound by love, a
power in which, though in a smaller degree, the devils
participate.
So long as love is not exalted into a substance, into an essence,
so long there lurks in the background of love a subject, who
D 2
52 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
even without love is something "by himself, an unloving monster,
a diaholical being, whose personality separable and actually
separated from love, delights in the blood of heretics and unbe
lievers, the phantom of religious fanaticism. Nevertheless
the essential idea of the Incarnation, though enveloped in the
night of the religious consciousness, is love. Love determined
God to the renunciation of his divinity.* Not because of his
Godhead as such, according to which he is the subject in the
proposition God is love, but because of his love, of the pre
dicate, is it that he renounced his Godhead ; thus love is a
higher power and truth than Deity. Love conquers God. It
was love to which God sacrificed his divine majesty. And
what sort of love was that ? another than ours ? than that to
which we sacrifice life and fortune ? Was it the love of him
self? of himself as God? No ! it was love to man. But is
not love to man human love ? Can I love man without loving
him humanly, without loving him as he himself loves, if he
truly loves ? Would not love be otherwise a devilish love ?
The devil too loves man, but not for man's sake for his own ;
thus he loves man out of egotism, to aggrandize himself, to
extend his power. But God loves man for man's sake, i. e.,
that he may make him good, happy, blessed. Does he not
then love man, as the true man loves his fellow ? Has love a
plural? Is it not everywhere like itself? What then is the
true unfalsified import of the Incarnation, but absolute, pure
love, without adjunct, without a distinction between divine and
human love ? For though there is also a self-interested love
among men, still the true human love, which is alone worthy
of this name, is that which impels the sacrifice of self to another.
Who then is our Saviour and Redeemer? God or Love?
Love ; for God as God has not saved us, but Love, which
* It was in this sense that the old uncompromising enthusiastic faith
celebrated the Incarnation. Amor triumphat de Deo, says St. Bernard.
And only in the sense of a real self-renunciation, self-negation of the God
head, lies the reality, the vis of the Incarnation ; although this self-nega
tion is in itself merely a conception of the imagination, for, looked at in
broad daylight, God does not negative himself 'in the Incarnation, but he
shews himself as that which he is, as a human being. The fabrications
which modem rationalistic orthodoxy and pietistic rationalism have ad
vanced concerning the Incarnation, in opposition to the rapturous concep
tions and expressions of ancient faith, do not deserve to be mentioned, still
less controverted.
THE MYSTERY OF THE INCARNATION. 53
transcends the difference between the divine and human per
sonality. As God has renounced himself out of love, so we,
out of love, should renounce God ; for if we do not sacrifice
God to love, we sacrifice love to God, and, in spite of the pre
dicate of love, we have the God the evil being of religious
fanaticism.
While, however, we have laid open this nucleus of truth in
the Incarnation, we have at the same time exhibited the
dogma in its falsity, we have reduced the apparently super
natural and super-rational mystery to a simple truth inherent
in human nature : a truth which does not belong to the
Christian religion alone, but which, implicitly at least, belongs
more or less to every religion as such. For every religion
which has any claim to the name, presupposes that God is
not indifferent to the beings who worship him, that therefore
what is human is not alien to him, that, as an object of
human veneration, he is a human God. Every prayer dis
closes the secret of the Incarnation, every prayer is in fact
an incarnation of God. In prayer I involve God in human
distress, I make him a participator in my sorrows and wants.
God is not deaf to my complaints; he has compassion on
me; hence he renounces his divine majesty, his exaltation
above all that is finite and human; he becomes a man with
man; for if he listens to me, and pities me, he is affected
by my sufferings. God loves man i.e. God suffers from
man. Love does not exist without sympathy, sympathy does
not exist without suffering in common. Have I any sympathy
for a being without feeling ? No ! I feel only for that
which has feeling only for that which partakes of my nature,
for that in which I feel myself, whose sufferings I myself suffer.
Sympathy presupposes a like nature. The Incarnation Provi
dence, prayer, are the expression of this identity of nature in
God and man.*
It is true that theology, which is pre- occupied with the
metaphysical attributes of eternity, unconditionedness, un-
changeableness, and the like abstractions, which express the
nature of the understanding, theology denies the possibility
* " Nos scimus affici Deum misericordia nostri et non solum respicere
lacrymas nostras, sed etiam numerare stillulas, sicut scriptum in Psalmo LVI.
Filius Dei vere afficitur sensu miseriarum nostraruui." Melancthonis et
aliorum (Declam. T. iii. p. 286, p. 450).
54 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
that God should suffer, but in so doing it denies the truth of
religion.* For religion the religious man in the act of
devotion, believes in a real sympathy of the divine being in
his sufferings and wants, believes that the will of God can be
determined by the fervour of prayer, i.e. by the force of feel
ing, believes in a real, present fulfilment of his desire, wrought
by prayer. The truly religious man unhesitatingly assigns
his own feelings to God; God is to him a heart susceptible to
all that is human. The heart can betake itself only to the
heart; feeling can appeal only to feeling; it finds consolation
in itself, in its own nature alone.
The notion that the fulfilment of prayer has been deter
mined from eternity, that it was originally included in the
plan of creation, is the empty, absurd fiction of a mechanical
mode of thought, which is in absolute contradiction with the
nature of religion. " We need," says Lavater somewhere,
and quite correctly according to the religious sentiment, " an
arbitrary God." Besides, even according to this fiction, God
is just as much a being determined by man, as in the real,
present fulfilment consequent on the power of prayer; the
only difference is, that the contradiction with the unchange-
ableness and unconditionedness of God that which con
stitutes the difficulty is thrown back into the deceptive
distance of the past or of eternity. Whether God decides
on the fulfilment of my prayer now, on the immediate occasion
of my offering it, or whether he did decide on it long ago,
is fundamentally the same thing.
It is the greatest inconsequence to reject the idea of a God
who can be determined by prayer, that is, by the force of
feeling, as an unworthy anthropomorphic idea. If we once
believe in a being who is an object of veneration, an object of
prayer, an object of affection, who is providential, who
takes care of man, in a Providence, which is not conceivable
without love, in a being, therefore, who is loving, whose motive
* St. Bernard resorts to a charmingly sophistical play of words :
" Impassibilis est Deus, sed non incompassibilis, cui proprium est misereri
semper et parcere." (Sup. Cant. Sermo 26.) As if compassion were not
suffering the suffering of love, it is true, the suffering of the heart. But
what does suffer, if not thy sympathising heart ? No love, no suffering.
The material, the source of suffering, is the universal heart, the common
bond of all beings.
THE MYSTERY OF THE INCARNATION. 55
of action is love: we also believe in a being, who lias, if not
an anatomical, yet a psychical human heart. The religious
mind, as has been said, places everything in God, excepting
that alone which it despises. The Christians certainly gave
their God no attributes which contradicted their own moral
ideas, but they gave him without hesitation, and of necessity,
the emotions of love, of compassion. And the love which the
religious mind places in God is not an illusory, imaginary
love, but a real, true love. God is loved and loves again;
the divine love is only human love made objective, affirming
itself. In God love is absorbed in itself as its own ultimate
truth.
It may be objected to the import here assigned to the Incar
nation, that the Christian Incarnation is altogether peculiar,
that at least it is different (which is quite true in certain
respects, as will hereafter be apparent) from the incarnations
of the heathen deities, whether Greek or Indian. These latter
are mere products of men or deified men; but in Christianity
is given the idea of the true God ; here the union of the divine
nature with the human is first significant and " speculative."
Jupiter transforms himself into a bull; the heathen incar
nations are mere fancies. In paganism there is no more in
the nature of God than in his incarnate manifestation; in
Christianity, on the contrary, it is God, a separate, super
human being, who appears as man. But this objection is
refuted by the remark already made, that even the premiss of
the Christian Incarnation contains the human nature. God
loves man; moreover God has a Son; God is a father; the
relations of humanity are not excluded from God; the human
is not remote from God, not unknown to him. Thtfs here
also there is nothing more in the nature of God than in
the incarnate manifestation of God. In the Incarnation
religion only confesses, what in reflection on itself, as theo
logy, it will not admit; namely, that God is an altogether
human being. The Incarnation, the mystery of the " God-
man," is therefore no mysterious composition of contraries,
no synthetic fact, as it is regarded by the speculative re
ligious philosophy, which has a particular delight in con
tradiction; it is an analytic fact, a human word with a
human meaning. If there be a contradiction here, it lies
before the incarnation and out of it; in the union of provi
dence, of love, with deity ; for if this love is a real love, it is
56 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
not essentially different from our love, there are only our
limitations to be abstracted from it; and thus the Incarnation
is only the strongest, deepest, most palpable, open-hearted
expression of this providence, this love. Love knows not
how to make its object happier than by rejoicing it with its
personal presence, by letting itself be seen. To see the invi
sible benefactor face to face is the most ardent desire of love.
To see is a divine act. Happiness lies in the mere sight of
the beloved one. The glance is the certainty of love. And
the Incarnation has no other significance, no other effect, than
the indubitable certitude of the love of God to man. Love
remains, but the incarnation upon the earth passes away: the
appearance was limited by time and place, accessible to few;
but the essence, the nature which was manifested, is eternal
and universal. We can no longer believe in the manifestation
for its own sake, but only for the sake of the thing manifested ;
for to us there remains no immediate presence but that of
love.
The clearest, most irrefragable proof, that man in religion
contemplates himself as the object of the divine Being, as the
end of the divine activity, that thus in religion he has relation
only to his own nature, only to himself, the clearest, most
irrefragable proof of this is the love of God to man, the
basis and central point of religion. God for the sake of man
empties himself of his Godhead, lays aside his Godhead.
Herein lies the elevating influence of the Incarnation ; the
highest, the perfect being humiliates, lowers himself for the
sake of man. Hence, in God I learn to estimate my own
nature ; I have value in the sight of God ; the divine sig-
nifican'ce of my nature is become evident to me. How
can the worth of man be more strongly expressed than when
God, for man's sake, becomes a man, when man is the end,
the object of the divine love ? The love of God to man
is an essential condition of the divine Being : God is a
God who loves me who loves man in general. Here lies
the emphasis, the fundamental feeling of religion. The
love of God makes me loving ; the love of God to man
is the cause of man's love to God ; the divine love causes,
awakens human love. " We love God because he first loved
us." What, then, is it that I love in God ? Love : love to
man. But when I love and worship the love with which God
loves man, do I not love man ; is not my love of God, though
THE MYSTERY OF THE INCARNATION. 57
indirectly, love of man ? Tf God loves man, is not man, then,
the very substance of God ? That which I love is it not
my inmost being ? Have I a heart when I do not love ?
No ! love only is the heart of man. But w T hat is love without
the thing loved ? Thus what I love is my heart, the substance
of my being, my nature. Why does man grieve why does
he lose pleasure in life, when he has lost the beloved
object ? Why ? because with the beloved object he has lost
his heart, the activity of his affections, the principle of life.
Thus, if God loves man, man is the heart of God the welfare
of man his deepest anxiety. If man, then, is the object of
God, is not man, in God, an object to himself? is not the con
tent of the divine nature the human nature ? If God is love,
is not the essential content of this love, man ? Is not the love
of God to man the basis and central point of religion the
love of man to himself made an object, contemplated as the
highest objective truth, as the highest Being to man ? Is not
then the proposition, "God loves man" an orientalism (religion
is essentially oriental), which in plain speech means, the highest
is the love of man ?
The truth to which, by means of analysis, we have here
reduced the mystery of the Incarnation, has also been recognised
even in the religious consciousness. Thus Luther, for example,
says, " He who can truly conceive such a thing (namely, the
incarnation of God) in his heart, should, for the sake of the
flesh and blood which sits at the right hand of God, bear love
to all flesh and blood here upon the earth, and never more be
able to be angry with any man. The gentle manhood of
Christ our God, should at a glance fill all hearts with joy, so
that never more could an angry, unfriendly thought come
therein yea, every man ought, out of great joy, to be tender
to his fellow-man, for the sake of that our flesh and blood."
" This is a fact which should move us to great joy and blissful
hope, that we are thus honoured above all creatures, even above
the angels, so that we can with truth boast, my own flesh and
blood sits at the right hand of God, and reigns over all. Such
honour has no creature, not even an angel. This ought to
be a furnace that should melt us all into one heart, and should
create such a fervour in us men that we should heartily love
each other." But that which in the truth of religion is the
essence of the fable, the chief thing, is to the religious con*
sciousness only the moral of the fable, a collateral thing.
D 3
58 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
CHAPTER V.
THE MYSTEEY OF THE SUFFEKING GOD.
AN essential condition of the incarnate, or, what is the same
thing, the human God, namely, Christ, is the Passion. Love
attests itself hy suffering. All thoughts and feelings which
are immediately associated with Christ, concentrate themselves
in the idea of the Passion. God as God is the sum of all
human perfection ; God as Christ is the sum of all human
misery. The heathen philosophers celebrated activity, especially
the spontaneous activity of the intelligence, as the highest, the
divine ; the Christians consecrated passivity, even placing
it in God. If God as actus purus, as pure activity, is the
God of abstract philosophy; so, on the other hand, Christ,
the God of the Christians, is the passio pura, pure suffering
the highest metaphysical thought, the etre supreme, of the heart.
For what makes more impression on the heart than suffering ?
especially the suffering of one who considered in himself is
free from suffering, exalted above it ; the suffering of the in
nocent, endured purely for the good of others, the suffering of
love, self-sacrifice ? But for the very reason that the history
of the Passion is the history which most deeply affects the
human heart, or let us rather say the heart, in general for it
would be a ludicrous mistake in man to attempt to conceive any
other heart than the human, it follows undeniably that
nothing else is expressed in that history, nothing else is made
an object in it, but the nature of the heart, that it is not an
invention of the understanding or the poetic faculty, but of the
heart. The heart, however, does not invent in the same way
as the free imagination or intelligence ; it has a passive, recep
tive relation to what it produces ; all that proceeds from it
seems to it given from without, takes it by violence, works
with the force of irresistible necessity. The heart overcomes,
masters man ; he who is once in its power is possessed as it
were by his demon, by his God. The heart knows no other
THE MYSTERY OF THE SUFFERING GOD. 59
God, no more excellent being than itself, than a God whose
name may indeed be another, but whose nature, whose sub
stance, is the nature of the heart. And out of the heart, out
of the inward impulse to do good, to live and die for man, out
of the divine instinct of benevolence which desires* to make all
happy, and excludes none, not even the most abandoned and
abject, out of the moral duty of benevolence in the highest
sense, as having become an inward necessity, i.e., a movement
of the heart, out of the human nature, therefore, as it reveals
itself through the heart, has sprung what is best, what is true
in Christianity its essence purified from theological dogmas
and contradictions.
For, according to the principles which we have already
developed, that which in religion is the predicate, we must
make the subject, and that which in religion is a subject we
must make a predicate, thus inverting the oracles of religion ;
and by this means we arrive at the truth. God suffers
suffering is the predicate but for men, for others, not for
himself. What does that mean in plain speech ? nothing else
than this: to suffer for others is divine; he who suffers for
others, who lays down his life for them, acts divinely, is a God
to men.*
The passion of Christ, however, represents not only moral,
voluntary suffering, the suffering of love, the power of sacrificing
self for the good of others ; it represents also suffering as such,
suffering in so far as it is an expression of passibility in
general. The Christian religion is so little superhuman, that
it even sanctions human weakness. The heathen philosopher,
on hearing tidings of the death of his child, exclaims : " I
knew that he was mortal." Christ, on the contrary, at least
in the Bible, sheds tears over the death of Lazarus, a death
which he nevertheless knew to be only an apparent one. While
Socrates empties the cup of poison with unshaken soul, Christ
* Eeligion speaks by example. Example is the law of religion. What
Christ did, is law. Christ suffered for others ; therefore, we should do
likewise. " Quse necessitas fuit ut sic exinaniret se, sic humiliaret se, sic
abbreviaret se Dominus majestatis ; nisi ut vos similiterfaciatis?" Bernardus
(in Die nat. Domini). " We ought studiously to consider the example of
Christ That would move us and incite us, so that we from our
hearts should willingly help and serve other people, even though it might
be hard, and we must suffer on account of it." Luther (T. xv. p. 40).
60 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
exclaims : " If it be possible, let tbis cup pass from me."*
Christ is in tbis respect the self- confession of human sensibility.
In opposition to the heathen, and in particular the stoical
principle, with its rigorous energy of will and self-sustainedness,
the Christiaii involves the consciousness of his own sensitive
ness and susceptibility in the consciousness of God; he finds
it, if only it be no sinful weakness, not denied, not condemned
in God.
To suffer is the highest command of Christianity the
history of Christianity is the history of the Passion of
Humanity. While amongst the heathens the shout of sensual
pleasure mingled itself in the worship of the gods, amongst
the Christians, we mean of course the ancient Christians,
God is served with sighs and tears.f But as where sounds
of sensual pleasure make a part of the cultus, it is a sensual
God, a God of life, who is worshipped, as indeed these shouts
of joy are only a symbolical definition of the nature of the
gods to whom this jubilation is acceptable; so also the sighs
of Christians are tones which proceed from the inmost soul,
the inmost nature of their God. The God expressed by the
cultus, whether this be an external, or, as with the Christians,
an inward spiritual worship, not the God of sophistical
theology, is the true God of man. But the Christians, we
mean of course the ancient Christians, believed that they
rendered the highest honour to their God by tears, the tears of
repentance and yearning. Thus tears are the light-reflecting
drops which mirror the nature of the Christian's God. But a
God who has pleasure in tears, expresses nothing else than
the nature of the heart. It is true that the theory of the
Christian religion says : Christ has done all for us, has redeemed
us, has reconciled us with God; and from hence the inference
may be drawn: Let us be of a joyful mind and disposition;
what need have we to trouble ourselves as to how we shall
reconcile ourselves with God ? we are reconciled already. But
the imperfect tense in which the fact of suffering is expressed,
* " Haevent plerique hoc loco. Ego autem non solum excusandum non
puto, sed etiam nusquam magis pietatem ejus majestatemque demiror.
Minus enim contulerat mihi, nisi meum suscepisset affectum. Ergo pro
me doluit, qui pro se iiihil habu.it, quod doleret." Ambrosius (Exposit. in
Lucas Ev. 1. x. c. 22).
t " Quando enim illi (Deo) appropinquare auderemus in sua impassi-
bilitate mauenti ?" Bernardus (Tract, de xii. Grad. Humil. et Superb.).
THE MYSTERY OF THE SUFFERING GOD. 61
makes a deeper, a more enduring impression, than the perfect
tense which expresses the fact of redemption. The redemption
is only the result of the suffering ; the suffering is the cause
of the redemption. Hence the suffering takes deeper root in
the feelings ; the suffering makes itself an object of imitation ;
not so the redemption. If God himself suffered for my sake,
how can I be joyful, how can I allow myself any gladness, at
least on this corrupt earth, which was the theatre of his suffer
ing ?* Ought I to fare better than God ? Ought I not,
then, to make his sufferings my own ? Is not what God my
Lord does, my model ? Or shall I share only the gain, and
not the cost also ? Do I know merely that he has redeemed
me ? Do I not also know the history of his suffering ?
Should it be an object of cold remembrance to me, or even an
object of rejoicing, because it has purchased my salvation ?
Who can think so who can wish to be exempt from the
sufferings of his God ?
The Christian religion is the religion of suffering.f The
images of the crucified one which we still meet with in all
churches, represent not the Saviour, but only the crucified, the
suffering Christ. Even the self- crucifixions among the Chris
tians are, psychologically, a deep-rooted consequence of their
religious views. How should not he who has always the image
of the crucified one in his mind, at length contract the desire
to crucify either himself or another ? At least w r e have as
good a warrant for this conclusion as Augustine and other
fathers of the church for their reproach against the heathen
religion, that the licentious religious images of the heathens
provoked and authorized licentiousness.
God suffers, means in truth nothing else than : God is a
heart. The heart is the source, the centre of all suffering.
A being without suffering is a being without a heart. The
mystery of the suffering God is therefore the mystery of
feeling, sensibility. A suffering God is a feeling, sensitive
God.J But the proposition : God is a feeling Being, is only
* " Deus meus pendet in patibulo et ego voluptati operam dabo ?" (Form.
Hon. Vitse. Among the spurious writings of St. Bernard.) " Memoriacrucifixi
crucifigat in te carnem tuam/' Joh. Gerhard (Medit. sacrse, M. 37).
f " It is better to suffer evil, than to do good." Luther (T. iv. s. 15).
J " Pati voluit, ut compati disceret, miser fieri, ut misereri disceret."
Bernhard (de Grad.). " Miserere iiostri, quoniam camis imbecillitatem, tu ipse
earn passus, expertus es." Clemens Alex. Psedag. 1. i. c. 8.
62 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
the religious periphrase of the proposition : feeling is absolute,
divine in its nature.
Man has the consciousness not only of a spring of activity,
but also of a spring of suffering in himself. I feel ; and I
feel feeling (not merely will and thought, which are only too
often in opposition to me and my feelings), as belonging to
my essential being, and, though the source of all suffer
ings and sorrows, as a glorious, divine power and perfection.
What would man be without feeling ? It is the musical
power in man. But what would man be without music ?
Just as man has a musical faculty and feels an inward necessity
to breathe out his feelings in song ; so, by a like necessity, he
in religious sighs and tears, streams forth the nature of
feeling as an objective, divine nature.
Religion is human nature reflected, mirrored in itself. That
which exists has necessarily a pleasure, a joy in itself, loves
itself, and loves itself justly ; to blame it because it loves itself
is to reproach it because it exists. To exist is to assert one
self, to affirm oneself, to love oneself; he to whom life is a
burthen, rids himself of it. Where, therefore, feeling is not
depreciated and repressed, as with the Stoics, where existence
is awarded to it, there also is religious power and significance
already conceded to it, there also is it already exalted to that
stage in which it can mirror and reflect itself, in which it can
project its own image as God. God is the mirror of man.
That which has essential value for man, which he esteems
the perfect, the excellent, in which he has true delight, that
alone is God to him. If feeling seems to thee a glorious
attribute, it is then, per se, a divine attribute to thee. There
fore, the feeling, sensitive man believes only in a feeling, sensi
tive God, i.e., he believes only in the truth of his own existence
and nature, for he can believe in nothing else than that which
is involved in his own nature. His faith is the consciousness
of that which is holy to him ; but that alone is holy to man
which lies deepest within him, which is most peculiarly his
own, the basis, the essence of his individuality. To the
feeling man a God without feeling is an empty, abstract,
negative God, i.e., nothing ; because that is wanting to him
which is precious and sacred to man. God is for man the
common-place book where he registers his highest feelings and
thoughts, the genealogical tree on which are entered the
names that are dearest and most sacred to him.
THE MYSTERY OF THE SUFFERING GOD. 63
It is a sign of an undiscriminating good-nature, a womanish
instinct, to gather together and then to preserve tenaciously all
that we have gathered, not to trust anything to the waves of
forgetfulness, to the chance of memory, in short not to trust
ourselves and learn to know what really has value for us. The
freethinker is liahle to the danger of an unregulated, dissolute
life. The religious man, who binds together all things in one,
does not lose himself in sensuality ; but for that reason he is
exposed to the danger of illiberality, of spiritual selfishness
and greed. Therefore, to the religious man at least, the irre
ligious or un-religious man appears lawless, arbitrary, haughty,
frivolous ; not because that which is sacred to the former is
not also in itself sacred to the latter, but only because that
which the un-religious man holds in his head merely, the reli
gious man places out of and above himself as an object, and
hence recognises in himself the relation of a formal subordi
nation. The religious man, having a common-place book,
a nucleus of aggregation, has an aim, and having an aim
he has firm standing-ground. Not mere will as such, not
vague knowledge only activity with a purpose, which is the
union of theoretic and practical activity, gives man a moral
basis and support, i.e., character. Every man, therefore, must
place before himself a God, i.e., an aim, a purpose. The aim
is the conscious, voluntary, essential impulse of life, the glance
of genius, the focus of self-knowledge, the unity of the
material and spiritual in the individual man. He who has
an aim, has a law over him ; he does not merely guide himself;
he is guided. He who has no aim, has no home, no sanctuary ;
aimlessness is the greatest unhappiness. Even he who has
only common aims, gets on better, though he may not be better,
than he who has no aim. An aim sets limits ; but limits are
the mentors of virtue. He who has an aim, an aim which is
in itself true and essential, has, eo ipso, a religion, if not in
the narrow sense of common pietism, yet and this is the
only point to be considered in the sense of reason, in the
sense of the universal, the only true love.
64- THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
CHAPTER VI.
THE MYSTERY OF THE TRINITY AND THE MOTHER
OF GOD.
IF a God without feeling, without a capability of suffering, will
not suffice to man as a feeling, suffering being, neither will a
God with feeling only, a God without intelligence and will.
Only a being who comprises in himself the whole man can
satisfy the whole man. Man's consciousness of himself in his
totality is the consciousness of the Trinity. The Trinity knits
together the qualities or powers, which were before regarded
separately, into unity, and thereby reduces the universal
being of the understanding, i. e., God as God, to a special
being, a special faculty.
That which theology designates as the image, the simi
litude of the Trinity, we must take as the thing itself, the
essence, the archetype, the original; by this means we shall
solve the enigma. The so-called images by which it has been
sought to illustrate the Trinity, and make it comprehensible,
are, principally: mind, understanding, memory, will, love
mens, intellectus, memoria, voluntas, amor or caritas.
God thinks, God loves; and, moreover, he thinks, he loves
himself; the object thought, known, loved, is God himself.
The objectivity of self- consciousness is the first thing we
meet with in the Trinity. Self-consciousness necessarily urges
itself upon man as something absolute. Existence is for him
one with self-consciousness; existence with self-consciousness
is for him existence simply. If I do not know that I exist,
it is all one whether I exist or not. Self-consciousness is for
man is, in fact, in itself absolute. A God who knows not
his own existence, a God without consciousness, is no God.
Man cannot conceive himself as without consciousness ; hence
he cannot conceive God as without it. The divine self-con-
THE MYSTERY OF THE TRINITY. 65
sciousness is nothing else than the consciousness of con
sciousness as an absolute or divine essence.
But this explanation is by no means exhaustive. On the
contrary, we should be proceeding very arbitrarily if we sought
to reduce and limit the mystery of the Trinity to the proposi
tion just laid down. Consciousness, understanding, will, love,
in the sense of abstract essences or qualities, belong only to
abstract philosophy. But religion is man's consciousness of
himself in his concrete or living totality, in which the identity
of self-consciousness exists only as the pregnant, complete
unity of I and thou.
Religion, at least the Christian, is abstraction from the
world ; it is essentially inward. The religious man leads a life
withdrawn from the world, hidden in God, still, void of worldly
joy. He separates himself from the world, not only in the
ordinary sense, according to which the renunciation of the
world belongs to every true, earnest man, but also in that
wider sense which science gives to the word, when it calls
itself world-wisdom (welt-weisheit) ; but he thus separates
himself, only because God is a Being separate from the world,
an extra and supramundane Being, i. e., abstractly and
philosophically expressed, the non-existence of the world.
God as an extramundane being, is however nothing else
than the nature of man, withdrawn from the world and
concentrated in itself, freed from all worldly ties and entangle
ments, transporting itself above the world, and positing itself
in this condition as a real objective being; or, nothing else
than the consciousness of the power to abstract oneself from
all that is external; and to live for and with oneself alone,
under the form which this power takes in religion, namely,
that of a being distinct, apart from man.* God as God, as
a simple being, is the being absolutely alone, solitary absolute
* " Dei essentia est extra omnes creaturas, sicut ab seterno fuit Deus in se
ipso ; ab omnibus ergo creaturis amorem tuum abstrahas," John Gerhard
(Medit. sacrae, M. 31). " If thou wouldst have the Creator, thou must do
without the creature. The less of the creature, the more of God. There
fore, abjure all creatures, with all their consolations." J. Tauler (Postilla.
Hamburg, 1621. p. 312). " If a man cannot say in his heart with truth :
God and I are alone in the world there is nothing else, he has no peace
in himself." G. Arnold (Von Verschmahung der Welt. Wahre Abbild
der Ersten Christen, L. 4, c. 2, 7).
66 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
solitude and self-sufficingness; for that only can be solitary
which is self- sufficing. To be able to be solitary is a sign
of character and thinking power. Solitude is the want of the
thinker, society the want of the heart. We can think alone,
but we can love only with another. In love we are dependent,
for it is the need of another being; we are independent only
in the solitary act of thought. Solitude is self-sufficing-
ness.
But from a solitary God the essential need, of duality, of
love, of community, of the real, completed self -consciousness,
of the alter ego, is excluded. This want is therefore satisfied
by religion thus: in the still solitude of the divine being is
placed another, a second, different from God as to personality,
but identical with him in essence, God the Son, in distinc
tion from God the Father. God the Father is I, God the Son
Thou. The / is understanding, the Thou love. But Love
with understanding and understanding with love, is mind, and
mind is the totality of man as such the total man.
Participated life is alone true, self- satisfying, divine life :
this simple thought, this truth, natural, immanent in man, is the
secret, the supernatural mystery of the Trinity. But religion
expresses this truth, as it does every other, in an indirect man
ner, i. e., inversely, for it here makes a general truth into a
particular one, the true subject into a predicate, when it says:
God is a participated life, a life of love and friendship. The
third person in the Trinity expresses nothing further than the
love of the two divine Persons towards each other ; it is the
unity of the Son and the Father, the idea of community,
strangely enough regarded in its turn as* a special personal
being.
The Holy Spirit owes its personal existence only to a name,
a word. The earliest Fathers of the Church are well known to
have identified the Spirit with the Son. Even later, its dog
matic personality wants consistency. He is the love with which
God loves himself and man, and on the other hand, he is the
love with which man loves God and men. Thus he is the
identity of God and man, made objective according to the usual
mode of thought in religion, namely, as in itself a distinct being.
But for us this unity or identity is already involved in the idea
of the Father, and yet more in that of the Son. Hence we need
not make the Holy Spirit a separate object of our analysis.
Only this one remark further. In so far as the Holy Spirit
represents the subjective phase, he is properly the representa-
THE MYSTERY OF THE TKINITY. 67
tion of the religious sentiment to itself, the representation
of religious emotion, of religious enthusiasm, or the personifi
cation, the rendering objective of religion in religion. The
Holy Spirit is therefore the sighing creature, the yearning of
the creature after God.
But that there are in fact only two Persons in the Trinity,
the third representing, as has heen said, only love, is involved
in this, that to the strict idea of love two suffice. With two
we have the principle of multiplicity and all its essential results.
Two is the principle of multiplicity, and can therefore stand as
its complete substitute. If several Persons were posited, the
force of love would only be weakened it would be dispersed.
But love and the heart are identical; the heart is no special
power ; it is the man who loves, and in so far as he loves. The
second Person is therefore the self-assertion of the human heart
as the principle of duality, of participated life, it is warmth ;
the Father is light, although light was chiefly a predicate of the
Son, because in him the Godhead first became clear, compre
hensible. But notwithstanding this, light as a super- terrestrial
element may be ascribed to the Father, the representative of the
Godhead as such, the cold being of the intelligence; and
warmth, as a terrestrial element, to the Son. God as the Son
first gives warmth to man ; here God, from an object of the
intellectual eye, of the indifferent sense of light, becomes an
object of feeling, of affection, of enthusiasm, of rapture ; but
only because the Son is himself nothing else than the glow of
love, enthusiasm.* God as the Son- is the primitive incarna
tion, the primitive self-renunciation of God, the negation of
God in God ; for as the Son he is a finite being, because he exists
a b alio, he has a source, whereas the Father has no source, he
exists a se. Thus in the second Person the essential attribute
of the Godhead, the attribute of self- existence, is given up.
But God the . Father himself begets the Son ; thus he re
nounces his rigorous, exclusive divinity ; he humiliates, lowers
himself, evolves within himself the principle of finiteness, of
dependent existence ; in the Son he becomes man, not
indeed, in the first instance, as to the outward form, but as to
the inward nature. And for this reasou. it is as the Son
* " Exigit ergo Deus timeri ut Dominus, honorari ut pater, ut sponsus
amari. Quid in his praestat, quid eminet? Amor." Bernardus (Sup.
Cant. Serm. 83).
68 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
that God first becomes the object of man, the object of feeling,
of the heart.
The heart comprehends only what springs from the heart.
From the character of the subjective disposition and impres
sions the conclusion is infallible as to the character of the
object. The pure, free understanding denies the Son, not so
the understanding determined by feeling, overshadowed by the
heart ; on the contrary, it finds in the Son the depths of the
Godhead, because in him it finds feeling, which in and by itself
is something dark, obscure, and therefore appears to man a
mystery. The Son lays hold on the heart, because the true
Father of the divine Son is the human heart,* and the Son
himself nothing else than the divine heart, i. e., the human
heart become objective to itself as a divine Being.
A God, who has not in himself the quality of finiteness, the
principle of concrete existence, the essence of the feeling of
dependence, is no God for a finite, concrete being. The reli
gious man cannot love a God who has not the essence of love
in himself, neither can man, or, in general, any finite being be
an object to a God who has not in himself the ground, the
-principle of finiteness. To such a God there is wanting the
sense, the understanding, the sympathy for finiteness. How
can God be the Father of men, how can he love other beings
subordinate to himself, if he has not in himself a subordinate
being, a Son, if he does not know what love is, so to speak,
from his own experience, in relation to himself ? The single
man takes far less interest in the family sorrows of another than
he who himself has family ties. Thus God the Father loves
men only in the Son and for the sake of the Son. The love to
man is derived from the love to the Son.
The Father and Son in the Trinity are therefore father and
son not in a figurative sense, but in a strictly literal sense.
The Father is a real father in relation to the Son, the Son is
a real son in relation to the Father, or to God as the Father.
The essential personal distinction between them consists only
in this, that the one begets, the other is begotten. If this na
tural empirical condition is taken away, their personal exist
ence and reality are annihilated. The Christians we mean
* Just as the feminine spirit of Catholicism in distinction from Pro
testantism, whose principle is the masculine God, the masculine spirit
is the mother of God.
THE MYSTERY OF THE TRINITY. 69
of course the Christians of former days, who would with diffi
culty recognise the worldly, frivolous, pagan Christians of the
modern world as their brethren in Christ substituted for
the natural love and unity immanent in man, a purely
religious love and unity; they rejected the real life of
the family, the intimate bond of love which is naturally moral,
as an undivine, unheavenly, i. e., in truth, a worthless thing. But
in compensation they had a Father and Son in God, who em
braced each other with heartfelt love, with thati ntense love
which natural relationship alone inspires. On this account the
mystery of the Trinity was to the ancient Christians an object of
unbounded wonder, enthusiasm and rapture, because here the
satisfaction of those profoundest human wants which in reality,
in life, they denied, became to them an object of contemplation
in God.*
It was therefore quite in order, that to complete the divine
family, the bond of love between Father and Son, a third, and
that a feminine person, was received into heaven ; for the
personality of the Holy Spirit is a too vague and precarious
a too obviously poetic personification of the mutual love of
the Father and Son, to serve as the third complementary being^
It is true that the Virgin Mary was not so placed between the
Father and Son as to imply that the Father had begotten the
Son through her, because the sexual relation was regarded by
the Christians as something unholy and sinful; but it is
enough that the maternal principle was associated with the
Father and Son.
It is in fact difficult to perceive why the Mother should be
something unholy, i. e., unworthy of God, when once God is
Father and Son. Though it is held that the Father is not a
Father in the natural sense that, on the contrary, the Divine
generation is quite different from the natural and human still
he remains a Father, and a real, not a nominal or symbolical
Father, in relation to the Son. And the idea of the Mother of
God, which now appears so strange to us, is therefore not
really more strange or paradoxical, than the idea of the Son of
God, is not more in contradiction with the general, abstract
definition of God than the Sonship. On the contrary, the
* " Dum Patris et Filii proprietates communionemque delectabilem iiitueor,
nihil delectabilius in illis invenio, quam mutuum amoris affectum." An-
selmus (in Eisner's Gesch. d. Phil. II. B. Anh. p. 18).
70 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
Virgin Mary fits in perfectly with the relations of the Trinity,
since she conceives without man the Son whom the Father
begets without woman ;* so that thus the Holy Virgin is a
necessary, inherently requisite antithesis to the Father in the
bosom of the Trinity. Moreover we have, if not in concrete)
and explicitly, yet in abstracto and implicitly, the feminine
principle already in the Son. The Son is the mild, gentle,
forgiving, conciliating being the womanly sentiment of God.
God, as the Father, is the generator, the active, the principle
of masculine spontaneity ; but the Son is begotten, without
himself begetting, Deus genitus, the passive, suffering, receptive
being ; he receives his existence from the Father. The Son,
as a Son, of course not as God, is dependent on the Father,
subject to his authority. The Son is thus the feminine feeling
of dependence in the Godhead ; the Son implicitly urges upon
us the need of a real feminine being.f
The son I mean the natural, human son considered as
such, is an intermediate being between the masculine nature of
the father and the feminine nature of the mother ; he is, as it
were, still half a man, half a woman, inasmuch as he has not the
full, rigorous consciousness of independence which characterizes
the man, and feels himself drawn rather to the mother than to
the father. The love of the son to the mother is the first
love of the masculine being for the feminine. The love of
man to woman, the love of the youth for the maiden, receives
its religious its sole truly religious consecration in the love
of the son to the mother ; the son's love for his mother is
the first yearning of man towards woman his first humbling
of himself before her.
Necessarily, therefore, the idea of the Mother of God is
associated with the idea of the Son of God, the same
heart that needed the one needed the other also. Where
the Son is, the Mother cannot be absent ; the Son is
* " Natus est de Patre semper et matre semel ; de Patre sine sexu, de matre
sine usu. Apud patrem quippe defuit concipientis uterus ; apud matrem
defuit seminantis amplexus." Augustinus (Serm. ad. Pop. p. 372, c. 1, Ed.
Bened. Antw. 1701).
f In Jewish mysticism, God, according to one school, is a masculine,
the Holy Spirit a feminine principle, out of whose intermixture arose the
Son, and with him the world. Gfrorer, Jahrb., d. H. i. Abth. p. 332-34.
The Herrnhuters also called the Holy Spirit the mother of the Saviour.
THE MYSTERY OF THE TRINITY. 71
the only begotten of the Father, but the Mother is the con
comitant of the Son. The Son is a substitute for the Mother
to the Father, but not so the Father to the Son. To the Son
the Mother is indispensable ; the heart of the Son is the heart
of the Mother. Why did God become man only through
woman ? Could not the Almighty have appeared as a man
amongst men in another manner immediately ? Why did
the Son betake himself to the bosom of the Mother ?* For
what other reason, than because the Son is the yearning after
the Mother, because his womanly, tender heart, found a
corresponding expression only in a feminine body ? It is true
that the Son, as a natural man, dwells only temporarily in the
shrine of this body, but the impressions which he here receives
are inextinguishable ; the Mother is never out of the mind and
heart of the son. If then the worship of the Son of God is
no idolatry, the worship of the Mother of God is no idolatry.
If herein we perceive the love of God to us, that he gave us his
only begotten Son, i.e., that which was dearest to him, for our
salvation, we can perceive this love still better when we find
in God the beating of a mother's heart. The highest and
deepest love is the mother's love. The father consoles himself
for the loss of his son ; he has a stoical principle within him.
The mother, on the contrary, is inconsolable ; she is the
sorrowing element, that which cannot be indemnified the true
in love.
Where faith in the Mother of God sinks, there also sinks
faith in the Son of God, and in God as the Father. The
Father is a truth only where the Mother is a truth. Love is in
and by itself essentially feminine in its nature. The belief in
the love of God is the belief in the feminine principle as
divine.* Love apart from living nature is an anomaly, a
phantom. Behold in love the holy necessity and depth of
Nature !
Protestantism has set aside the Mother of God ; but this
deposition of woman has been severely avenged.f The arms
* " For it could not have been difficult or impossible to God to bring his
Son into the world without a mother; but it was His will to use the
woman for that end." Luther (T. ii. p. 348). ^
f In the Concordienbuch, Erklar. Art. 8, and in the Apol. of the Augsburg
Confession, Mary is nevertheless still called the " Blessed Virgin, who
72 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
which it has used against the Mother of God have turned
against itself, against the Son of God, against the whole
Trinity. He who has once offered up the Mother of God to
the understanding, is not far from sacrificing the mystery of
the Son of God as an anthropomorphism. The anthropomor
phism is certainly veiled when the feminine "being is excluded,
but only veiled not removed. It is true that Protestantism
had no need of the heavenly bride, because it received with
open arms the earthly bride. But for that very reason it
ought to have been consequent and courageous enough to give
up not only the Mother, but the Son and the Father. Only
he who has no earthly parents needs heavenly ones. The
triune God is the God of Catholicism; he has a profound,
heartfelt, necessary, truly religious significance, only in anti
thesis to the negation of all substantial bonds, in antithesis to
the life of the anchorite, the monk, and the nun.* The triune
God has a substantial meaning only where there is an abstrac
tion from the substance of real life. The more empty life is,
the fuller, the more concrete is God. The impoverishing of
the real world, and the enriching of God, is one act. Only the
poor man has a rich God,, God springs out of the feeling of a
want; what man is in need of, whether this be a definite and
therefore conscious, or an unconscious need, that is God.
Thus the disconsolate feeling of a void, of loneliness, needed
a God in whom there is society, a union of beings fervently
loving each other.
Here we have the true explanation of the fact, that the
Trinity has in modern times lost first its practical, and ulti
mately its theoretical significance.
was truly the mother of God, and yet remained a virgin," "worthy of all
honour."
* "Sit monachus quasi Melchisedec sine patre, sine matre, sine genealogia:
neque patrem sibi vocet super terram. Imo sic existimet, quasi ipse sit
solus et Deus. (Specul. Monach. Pseudo-Bernard.) Melchisedec
refeitur ad exemplum, ut tanquam sine patre et sine matre sacerdos esse
debeat. ' ' Ambrosius .
THE MYSTERY OF THE LOGOS. 73
CHAPTER VII.
THE MYSTEEY OF THE LOGOS AND DIVINE IMAGE.
THE essential significance of the Trinity is, however, concen
trated in the idea of the second Person. The warm interest
of Christians in the Trinity has heen, in the main, only an
interest in the Son of God.* The fierce contention concerning
the Homousios and Homoiousios was not an empty one,
although it turned upon a letter. The point in question was
the co -equality and divine dignity of the second Person, and
therefore the honour of the Christian religion itself; for its
essential, characteristic ohject is the second Person; and that
which is essentially the ohject of a religion is truly, essentially
its God. The real God of any religion is the so-called Medi
ator, because he alone is the immediate ohject of religion. He
who, instead of applying to God, applies to a saint, does so only
on the assumption that the saint has all power with God,
that what he prays for, i.e., wishes and wills, God readily per
forms ; that thus God is entirely in the hands of the saint.
Supplication is the means, under the guise of humility and
submission, of exercising one's power and superiority over
another being. That to which my mind first turns, is also in
truth the first being to me. I turn to the saint, not because
the saint is dependent on God, but because God is dependent
on the saint, because God is determined and ruled by the
prayers, i. e., by the wish or heart of the saint. The distinc
tions which the Catholic theologians made between latreia,
doulia, and hyperdoulia, are absurd, groundless sophisms.
The God in the background of the Mediator is only an
abstract, inert conception, the conception or idea of the God
head in general ; and it is not to reconcile us with this idea,
* " Negas ergo Deum, si non omnia filio, quaB Dei sunt, deferentur." Am-
brosius de Fide ad Gratianum, 1. iii. c. 7. On the same ground the Latin
Church adhered so tenaciously to the dogma that the Holy Spirit proceeded
not from the Father alone, as the Greek Church maintained, but from the
Son also. See on this subject J. G. Walchii, Hist. Contr. Gr. et Lat. de
Proc. Spir. S. Jenae, 1751.
E
74 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
but to remove it to a distance, to negative it, because it is no
object for religion, that the Mediator interposes.* God above
the Mediator is nothing else than the cold understanding above
the heart, like Fate above the Olympic gods.
Man, as an emotional and sensuous being, is governed and
made happy only by images, by sensible representations. Mind
presenting itself as at once type-creating, emotional, and sen
suous, is the imagination. The second Person in God, who
is in truth the first person in religion, is the nature of the
imagination made objective. The definitions of the second
Person are principally images or symbols; and these images
do not proceed from man's incapability of conceiving the
object otherwise than symbolically, which is an altogether
false interpretation, but the thing cannot be conceived other
wise than symbolically because the thing itself is a symbol or
image. The Son is therefore expressly called the Image of
God ; his essence is that he is an image the representation of
God, the visible glory of the invisible God. The Son is the
satisfaction of the need for mental images, the nature of the
imaginative activity in man made objective as an absolute,
divine activity. Man makes to himself an image of God, i. e. }
he converts the abstract Being of the reason, the Being of the
thinking power, into an object of sense, or imagination. f But
he places this image in God himself, because his want would
not be satisfied if he did not regard this image as an objective
reality, if it were nothing more for him than a subjective
image, separate from God, a mere figment devised by man.
And it is in fact no devised, no arbitrary image ; for it
expresses the necessity of the imagination, the necessity of
affirming the imagination as a divine power. The Son is the
reflected splendour of the imagination, the image dearest to
the heart; but for the very reason that he is only an object
* This is expressed very significantly in the Incarnation. God renounces,
denies his majesty, power, and infinity, in order to become a man; i.e.,
man denies the God who is not himself a man, and only affirms the God
who affirms man. Exinanivit, says St. Bernard, majestate et potentia,
non bonitate et misericordia. That which cannot be renounced, cannot be
denied, is thus the Divine goodness and mercy, i.e., the self-affirmation of
the human heart,
f It is obvious that the Image of God has also another signification,
namely, that the personal, visible man is God himself. But here the image
is considered simply as an image.
THE MYSTERY OF THE LOGOS. 75
of the imagination, he is only the nature of the imagination
made objective.*
It is clear from this, how hlinded hy prejudice dogmatic
speculation is, when, entirely overlooking the inward genesis
of the Son of God as the Image of God, it demonstrates the
Son as a metaphysical ens, as an ohject of thought, whereas
the Son is a declension, a falling off from the metaphysical
idea of the Godhead ; a falling off, however, which religion
naturally places in God himself, in order to justify it, and
not to feel it as a falling off. The Son is the chief and ultimate
principle of image worship, for he is the image of God; and
the image necessarily takes the place of the thing. The adora
tion of the saint in his image, is the adoration of the image as
the saint. Wherever the image is the essential expression,
the organ of religion, there also it is the essence of religion.
The Council of Nice adduced amongst other grounds for the
religious use of images, the authority of Gregory of Nyssa,
who said that he could never look at an image which repre
sented the sacrifice of Isaac without heing moved to tears,
because it so vividly brought before him that event in sacred
history. But the effect of the represented object is not the
effect of the object as such, but the effect of the representation.
The holy object is simply the haze of holiness in which the
image veils its mysterious power. The religious object is only
a pretext, by means of which art or imagination can exercise
its dominion over men unhindered. For the religious con
sciousness, it is true, the sacredness of the image is associated,
and necessarily so, only with the sacredness of the object; but
the religious consciousness is not the measure of truth. In
deed, the Church itself, while insisting on the distinction
between the image and the object of the image, and denying
that the worship is paid to the image, has at the same time
made at least an indirect admission of the truth, by itself
declaring the sacredness of the image. f
But the ultimate, highest principle of image-worship is the
* Let the reader only consider, for example, the Transfiguration, the
Resurrection, and the Ascension of Christ.
f " Sacram imaginem Domini nostri Jesu Christi et omnium Salvatoris
sequo honore cum libro sanctorum evangeliorum adorari decernimus ....
Dignum est enim ut . , . . propter hoiiorem qui ad principia refertur,
etiam derivative imagines honorentur et adorentur." Gener. Const Cone,
viii. Art. 10. Can. 3.
E2
76 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
worship of the Image of God in God. The Son, who is the
" brightness of His glory, the express image of His person,"
is the entrancing splendour of the imagination, which only
manifests itself in visible images. Both to inward and out
ward contemplation the representation of Christ, the Image
of God, was the image of images. The images of the saints
are only optical multiplications of one and the same image.
The speculative deduction of the Image of God is therefore
nothing more than an unconscious deduction and establishing
of image-worship : for the sanction of the principle is also the
sanction of its necessary consequences ; the sanction of the
archetype is the sanction of its semblance. If God has an
image of himself, why should not I have an image of God ?
If God loves his Image as himself, why should not I also love
the Image of God as I love God himself? If the Image of
God is God himself, why should not the image of the saint
be the saint himself? If it is no superstition to believe that
the image which God makes of himself, is no image, no mere
conception, but a substance, a person, why should it be a
superstition to believe that the image of the saint is the sensi
tive substance of the saint ? The Image of God weeps and
bleeds ; why then should not the image of a saint also weep
and bleed ? Does the distinction lie in the fact that the image
of the saint is a product of the hands ? Why, the hands
did not make this image, but the mind which animated the
hands, the imagination ; and if God makes an image of himself,
that also is only a product of the imagination. Or does the
distinction proceed from this, that the Image of God is produced
by God himself, whereas the image of the saint is made by
another ? Why, the image of the saint is also a product of
the saint himself : for he appears to the artist ; the artist only
represents him as he appears.
Connected with the nature of the image is another definition
of the Second Person, namely, that he is the Word of God.
A Word is an abstract image, the imaginary thing, or, in so
far as everything is ultimately an object of the thinking power,
it is the imagined thought : hence, men when they know the
word, the name for a thing, fancy that they know the thing
also. Words are a result of the imagination. Sleepers who
dream vividly, and invalids who are delirious, speak. The
power of speech is a poetic talent. Brutes do not speak
Because they have no poetic faculty. Thought expresses itself
only by images; the power by which thought expresses itself
THE MYSTERY OF THE LOGOS. 77
is the imagination ; the imagination expressing itself is speech.
He who speaks, lays under a spell, fascinates those to whom
he speaks ; hut the power of words is the power of the imagi
nation. Therefore to the ancients, as children of the imagina
tion, the Word was a heing a mysterious, magically powerful
heing. Even the Christians, and not only the vulgar among
them, but also the learned, the Fathers of the Church, attached
to the mere name Christ, mysterious powers of healing.* And
in the present day the common people still helieve that it is
possible to bewitch men by mere words. Whence comes this
ascription of imaginary influences to words ? Simply from
this, that words themselves are only a result of the imagination,
and hence have the effect of a narcotic on man, imprison him
under the power of the imagination. Words possess a revolution
izing force ; words govern mankind. Words are held sacred ;
while the things of reason and truth are decried.
The affirming or making objective of the nature of the
imagination is therefore directly connected with the affirming or
making objective of the nature of speech, of the Word. Man
has not only an instinct, an internal necessity, which impels
him to think, to perceive, to imagine; he has also the impulse
to speak, to utter, impart his thoughts. A divine impulse this
a divine power, the power of words. The word is the imaged,
revealed, radiating, lustrous, enlightening thought. The word
is the light of the world. The word guides to all truth, un
folds all mysteries, reveals the unseen, makes present the past
and the future, defines the infinite, perpetuates the transient.
Men pass away, the word remains ; the word is life and truth.
All power is given to the word : the word makes the blind
see and the lame walk, heals the sick, and brings the dead to
life; the word works miracles, and the only rational miracles.
The word is the gospel, the paraclete of mankind. To con
vince thyself of the divine nature of speech, imagine thyself
alone and forsaken, yet acquainted with language; and imagine
thyself further hearing for the first time the word of a human
being : would not this word seem to thee angelic, would it not
sound like the voice of God himself, like heavenly music ?
Words are not really less rich, less pregnant than music, though
music seems to say more, and appears deeper and richer than
words, for this reason simply, that it is invested with that
prepossession, that illusion.
* " Tanta certe vis nomini Jesu inest contra dsemones,ut nonnunquam etiam
a malis nominatum sit efficax." Origenes adv. Celsuni, 1. i. ; see also 1. iii.
78 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
The Word has power to redeem, to reconcile, to bless, to
make free. The sins which we confess are forgiven us by
virtue of the divine power of the word. The dying man who
gives forth in speech his long-concealed sins, departs recon
ciled. The forgiveness of sins lies in the confession of sins.
The sorrows which we confide to our friend are already half
healed. Whenever we speak of a subject, the passions which
it has excited in us are allayed ; we see more clearly ; the
object of anger, of vexation, of sorrow, appears to us in a
light in which we perceive the unworthiness of those passions.
If we are in darkness and doubt on any matter, we need only
speak of it ; often in the very moment in which we open our
lips to consult a friend, the doubts and difficulties disappear.
The word makes man free. He who cannot express himself is
a slave. Hence, excessive passion, excessive joy, excessive
grief, are speechless. To speak is an act of freedom ; the word
is freedom. Justly therefore is language held to be the root
of culture ; where language is cultivated, man is cultivated.
The barbarism of the middle ages disappeared before the re
vival of language.
As we can conceive nothing else as a Divine Being than the
Rational which we think, the Good which we love, the Beau
tiful which we perceive ; so we know no higher spiritually
operative power and expression of power, than the power of the
Word.* God is the sum of all reality. All that man feels or
knows as a reality, he must place in God or regard as God.
Religion must therefore be conscious of the power of the
word as a divine power. The Word of God is the divinity of
the word, as it becomes an object to man within the sphere of
religion, the true nature of the human word. The Word of
God is supposed to be distinguished from the human word in
that it is no transient breath, but an imparted being. But
does not the word of man also contain the being of man, his
imparted self, at least when it is a true word ? Thus religion
takes the appearance of the human word for its essence ; hence
it necessarily conceives the true nature of the Word to be a
special being, distinct from the human word.
" God reveals himself to us, as the Speaker, who has, in himself, an
eternal uncreated Word, whereby he created the world and all things, with
slight labour, namely with speech, so that to God it is not more difficult
to create than it is to^us to name." Luther, t. i. p. 302.
THE MYSTERY OF THE COSMOGONICAL PRINCIPLE. 79
CHAPTER VIII.
THE MYSTERY OF THE COSMOGONICAL PRINCIPLE
IN GOD.
THE second Person, as God revealing, manifesting, declaring
himself (Deus se elicit), is the world-creating principle in God.
But this means nothing else than that the second Person is inter
mediate between the noumenal nature of God and the phenomenal
nature of the world, that he is the divine principle of the finite,
of that which is distinguished from God. The second Person
as begotten, as not a se, not existing of himself, has the funda
mental condition of the finite in himself."* But at the same
time, he is not yet a real finite Being, posited out of God ; on
the contrary, he is still identical with God, as identical as
the son is with the father, the son being indeed another person,
but still of like nature with the father. The second Person,
therefore, does not represent to us the pure idea of the God
head, but neither does he represent the pure idea of humanity,
or of reality in general : he is an intermediate Being between
the two opposites. The opposition of the noumenal or invi
sible divine nature and the phenomenal or visible nature of the
world, is however nothing else than the opposition between
the nature of abstraction and the nature of perception ; but
that which connects abstraction with perception is the imagi
nation : consequently, the transition from God to the world by
means of the second Person, is only the form in which religion
makes objective the transition from abstraction to perception
by means of the imagination. It is the imagination alone by
which man neutralizes the opposition between God and
the world. All religious cosmogonies are products of the
imagination. Every being, intermediate between God and the
world, let it be defined how it may, is a being of the imagina-
* " Hylarius. . , . . Si quis innascibilem et sine initio dicat filium, quasi
duo sine principle et duo innascibilia, et duo innata dicens, duos fac-iat
Deos, anathema sit. Caput autem quod est principium Christi, Deus. . . .
Filium innascibilem confiteri impiissimum est." Petrus Lomb. Sent. 1. i.
disk 31. c. 4
80 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
tion. The psychological truth and necessity which lies at the
foundation of all these theogonies and cosmogonies, is the
truth and necessity of the imagination as a middle term between
the abstract and concrete. And the task of philosophy, in
investigating this subject, is to comprehend the relation of the
imagination to the reason, the genesis of the image by means
of which an object of thought becomes an object of sense, of
feeling.
But the nature of the imagination is the complete, exhaus
tive truth of the cosmogonic principle, only where the antithesis
of God and the world expresses nothing but the indefinite an
tithesis of the noumenal, invisible, incomprehensible Being,
God, and the visible, tangible existence of the world. If, on
the other hand, the cosmogonic being is conceived and ex
pressed abstractly, as is the case in religious speculation, we
have also to recognise a more abstract psychological truth as
its foundation.
The world is not God ; it is other than God, the opposite
of God, or at least that which is different from God. But
that which is different from God, cannot have come immedi
ately from God, but only from a distinction of God in God.
The second Person is God distinguishing himself from himself
in himself, setting himself opposite to himself, hence being an
object to himself. The self- distinguishing of God from himself
is the ground of that which is different from himself, and thus
self-consciousness is the origin of the world. God first thinks
the world in thinking himself: to think oneself is to beget
oneself, to think the world is to create the world. Begetting
precedes creating. The idea of the production of the world, of
another being who is not God, is attained through the idea of
the production of another being who is like God.
This cosmogonical process is nothing else than the mystic
paraphrase of a psychological process, nothing else than the
unity of consciousness and self-consciousness, made objec
tive. God thinks himself: thus he is self-conscious. God is
self-consciousness posited as an object, as a being ; but
inasmuch as he knows himself, thinks himself, he also thinks
another than himself; for to know oneself is to distinguish
oneself from another, whether this be a possible, merely con
cept] on al, or a real being. Thus the world at least the possi
bility, the idea of the world is posited with consciousness, or
rather conveyed in it. The Son, i.e., God thought by himself,
THE MYSTERY OF THE COSMO GOXICAL PRINCIPLE. 81
objective to himself, the original reflection of God, the other
God, is the principle of Creation. The truth which lies at the
foundation of this is the nature of man : the identity of his
self-consciousness with his consciousness of another who is
identical with himself, and of another who is not identical with
himself. And the second, the other who is of like nature, is
necessarily the middle term between the first and third. The
idea of another in general, of one who is essentially different
from me arises to me first through the idea of one who is
essentially like me.
Consciousness of the world is the consciousness of my limi
tation ; if I knew nothing of a world, I should know nothing
of limits : hut the consciousness of my limitation stands in
contradiction with the impulse of my egoism towards unli-
mitedness. Thus from egoism conceived as absolute (God is
the absolute Self) I cannot pass immediately to its opposite ;
I must introduce, prelude, moderate this contradiction by the
consciousness of a being who is indeed another, and in so far
gives me the perception of my limitation, but in such a way as
at the same time to affirm my own nature, make my nature
objective to me. The consciousness of the world is a humili
ating consciousness; the Creation was an "act of humility;"
but the first stone against which the pride of egoism stumbles,
is the thou, the alter ego. The ego first steels its glance in
the eye of a thou, before it endures the contemplation of a
being which does not reflect its own image. My fellow-man
is the bond between me and the world. I am, and I feel myself,
dependent on the world, because I first feel myself dependent
on other men. If I did not need man, I should not need the
world. I reconcile myself with the world only through my
fellow-man. Without other men, the world Avould be for me
not only dead and empty, but meaningless. Only through his
fellow does man become clear to himself and self-conscious;
but only when I am clear to myself, does the world become
clear to me. A man existing absolutely alone, would lose
himself without any sense of his individuality in the ocean of
Nature ; he would neither comprehend himself as man, nor
Nature as Nature. The first object of man is man. The sense
of Nature, which opens to us the consciousness of the world as
a world, is a later product ; for it first arises through the dis
tinction of man from himself. The natural philosophers of
Greece were preceded by the so-called seven Sages, whose
wisdom had immediate reference to human life only.
E 3
82 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
The ego, then, attains to consciousness of the world
through consciousness of the thou. Thus man is the God
of man. That he is, he has to thank Nature ; that he is
man, he has to thank man ; spiritually as well as physically,
he can achieve nothing without his fellow-man. Four hands
can do more than two ; hut also, four eyes can see more than
two. And this combined power is distinguished not only in
quantity hut also in quality from that which is solitary. In
isolation human power is limited, in combination it is infinite.
The knowledge of a single man is limited, hut reason, science,
is unlimited, for it is a common act of mankind ; and it is so,
not only because innumerable men co-operate in the con
struction of science, hut also in the more profound sense, that
the scientific genius of a particular age comprehends in itself
the thinking powers of the preceding age, though it modifies
them in accordance with its own special character. Wit,
acumen, imagination, feeling as distinguished from sensation,
reason as a subjective faculty, all these so-called powers of
the soul, are powers of humanity, not of man as an individual ;
they are products of culture, products of human society.
Only where man has contact and friction with his fellow-man are
wit and sagacity kindled ; hence there is more wit in the town
than in the country, more in great towns than in small ones.
Only where man suns and warms himself in the proximity of
man, arise feeling and imagination. Love, which requires
mutuality, is the spring of poetry; and only where man com
municates with man, only in speech, a social act, awakes
reason. To ask a question and to answer, are the first acts
of thought. Thought originally demands two. It is not
until man has reached an advanced stage of culture that he
can double himself, so as to play the part of another within
himself. To think and to speak are therefore with all ancient
and sensuous nations, identical ; they think only in speaking ;
their thought is only conversation. The common people, i.e.,
people in whom the power of abstraction has not been
developed, are still incapable of understanding what is written
if they do not read it audibly, if they do not pronounce what
they read. In this point of view Hobbes correctly enough
derives the understanding of man from his ears !
Reduced to abstract logical categories, the creative principle
in God expresses nothing further than the tautological pro
position : the different can only proceed from a principle of
THE MYSTERY OF THE COSMOGONICAL PRINCIPLE. 83
difference, not from a simple being. However the Christian
philosophers and theologians insisted on the creation of the
world out of nothing, they were unahle altogether to evade
the old axiom " nothing comes from nothing," because it ex
presses a law of thought. It is true that they supposed no
real matter as the principle of the diversity of material things,
but they made the Divine understanding (and the Son is the
wisdom, the science, the understanding of the Father) as that
which comprehends within itself all things, as spiritual matter
the principle of real matter. The distinction between the
heathen eternity of matter and the Christian creation in this
respect, is only 'that the heathens ascribed to the world a real,
objective eternity, whereas the Christians gave it an invisible,
immaterial eternity. Things were, before they existed posi
tively, not, indeed, as an object of sense, but of the subjective
understanding. The Christians, whose principle is that of
absolute subjectivity, conceive all things as effected only
through this principle. The matter posited by their subjective
thought, conceptional, subjective matter, is therefore to them
the first matter, far more excellent than real, objective
matter. Nevertheless, this distinction is only a distinction in
the mode of existence. The world is eternal in God. Or did it
spring up in him as a sudden idea, a caprice ? Certainly man
can conceive this too ; but, in doing so, he deifies nothing but
his own irrationality. If, on the contrary, I abide by reason,
I can only derive the world from its essence, its idea, i.e., one
mode of its existence from another mode ; in other words, I
can derive the world only from itself. The world has its
basis in itself, as has everything in the world winch has a
claim to the name of species. The differentia specified, the
peculiar character, that by which a given being is what it is,
is always in the ordinary sense inexplicable, undeducible, is
through itself, has its cause in itself.
The distinction between the world and God as the creator
of the world, is therefore only a formal one. The nature of
God f or the divine understanding, that which comprehends
within itself all things, is the divine nature itself; hence God,
inasmuch as he thinks and knows himself, thinks and knows
at the same time the world and all things the nature of God
is nothing else than the abstract, thought nature of the world ;
the nature of the world nothing else than the real, concrete,
perceptible nature of God. Hence, creation is nothing more
84 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
than a formal act ; for that which, before the creation, was
an object of thought, of the understanding, is by creation
simply made an object of sense, its ideal contents continuing
the same ; although it remains absolutely inexplicable how a
real material thing can spring out of a pure thought.*
So it is with plurality and difference if we reduce the
world to these abstract categories in opposition to the
unity and identity of the Divine nature. Real difference
can be derived only from a being which has a principle of
difference in itself. But I posit difference in the original
being, because I have originally found difference as a positive
reality. Wherever difference is in itself nothing, there also
no difference is conceived in the principle of things. I posit
difference as an essential category, as a truth, where I derive it
from the original being, and vice versa : the two propositions
are identical. The rational expression is this : Difference lies
as necessarily in the reason as identity.
But as difference is a positive condition of the reason, I
cannot deduce it without presupposing it ; I cannot explain
it except by itself, because it is an original, self-luminous, self-
attesting reality. Through what means arises the world, that
which is distinguished from God ? through the distinguishing
of God from himself in himself. God thinks himself, he is an
object to himself; he distinguishes himself from himself.
Hence this distinction, the world, arises only from a distinction
of another kind, the external distinction from an internal one,
the static distinction from a dynamic one, from an act of dis
tinction : thus I establish difference only through itself; i. e.,
it is an original concept, a ne plus ultra of my thought, a
law, a necessity, a truth. The last distinction that I can think,
is the distinction of a being from and in itself. The dis
tinction of one being from another is self-evident, is already
implied in their existence, is a palpable truth : they are two.
But I first establish difference for thought when I discern it
in one and the same being, when I unite it with the law of
identity. Herein lies the ultimate truth of difference. The
cosmogonic principle in God, reduced to its last elements, is
nothing else than the act of thought in its simplest forms,
made objective. If I remove difference from God, he gives me
* It is therefore mere self-delusion to suppose that the hypothesis of a
Creation explains the existence of the world.
THE MYSTERY OF THE COSMOGONICAL PRINCIPLE. 85
no material for thought ; he ceases to be an object of thought ;
for difference is an essential principle of thought. And if I
consequently place difference in God, what else do I establish,
what else do I make an object, than the truth and necessity of
this principle of thought ?
86 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
CHAPTER IX.
THE MYSTERY OF MYSTICISM OR OF NATURE IN GOD.
INTERESTING material for the criticism of cosmogonic and theo-
gonic fancies is furnished in the doctrine revived hy Schelling
and drawn from Jacob Bohme of eternal Nature in God.
God is pure spirit, clear self-consciousness, moral person
ality; Nature, on the contrary, is, at least partially, confused,
dark, desolate, immoral, or to say no more, unmoral. But it
is self-contradictory that the impure should proceed from the
pure, darkness from light. How then can we remove these
obvious difficulties in the way of assigning a divine origin to
Nature ? Only by positing this impurity, this darkness in
God, by distinguishing in God himself a principle of light and
a principle of darkness. In other words, we can only explain
the origin of darkness by renouncing the idea of origin, and
presupposing darkness as existing from the beginning.*
But that which is dark in Nature is the irrational, the
material, Nature strictly, as distinguished from intelligence.
Hence the simple meaning of this doctrine is, that Nature,
Matter, cannot be explained as a result of intelligence ; on the
contrary, it is the basis of intelligence, the basis of personality,
without itself having any basis ; spirit without Nature is an
unreal abstraction; consciousness developes itself only out of
Nature. But this materialistic doctrine is veiled in a mystical
yet attractive obscurity, inasmuch as it is not expressed in the
clear, simple language of reason, but emphatically enunciated
in that consecrated word of the emotions God. If the light
in God springs out of the darkness in God, this is only because
it is involved in the idea of light in general, that it illuminates
* It is beside our purpose to criticise this crass mystical theory. We
merely remark here, that darkness can be explained only when it is derived
from light ; that the derivation of the darkness in Nature from light appears
an impossibility only when it is not perceived that even in darkness there is
a residue of light, that the darkness in Nature is not an absolute, but a
modified darkness, tempered by light.
THE MYSTEEY OF MYSTICISM. 87
darkness, thus presupposing darkness, not making it. If then
God is once subjected to a general law, as he must necessarily
be unless he be made the arena of conflict for the most senseless
notions, if self-consciousness in God as well as in itself, as in
general, is evolved from a principle in Nature, why is not this
natural principle abstracted from God ? That which is a law
of consciousness in itself, is a law for the consciousness of
every personal being, whether man, angel, demon, God, or
whatever else thou mayst conceive to thyself as a being. To
what then, seen in their true light, do the two principles in God
reduce themselves ? The one to Nature, at least to Nature as it
exists in the conception, abstracted from its reality ; the other
to rnind, consciousness, personality. The one half, the reverse
side, thou dost not name God, but only the obverse side, 011
which he presents to thee mind, consciousness : thus his specific
essence, that whereby he is God, is mind, intelligence, con
sciousness. Why then dost thou make that which is properly
the subject in God as God, i. e., as mind, into a mere predicate,
as if God existed as God apart from mind, from consciousness ?
Why, but because thou art enslaved by mystical religious
speculation, because the primary principle in thee is the
imagination, thought being only secondary and serving but to
throw into formulae the products of the imagination, because
thou feelest at ease and at home only in the deceptive twilight
of mysticism.
Mysticism is deuteroscopy a fabrication of phrases having a
double meaning. The mystic speculates concerning the essence
of Nature or of man, but under, and by means of, the suppo
sition that he is speculating concerning another, a personal
being, distinct from both. The mystic has the same objects as
the plain, self-conscious thinker ; but the real object is regarded
by the mystic, not as itself, but as an imaginary being, and
hence the imaginary object is to him the real object. Thus
here, in the mystical doctrine of the two principles in God,
the real object is pathology, the imaginary one, theology ; i.e.,
pathology is converted into theology. There would be nothing
to urge against this, if, consciously, real pathology were recog
nised and expressed as theology ; indeed, it is precisely our
task to show that theology is nothing else than an unconscious,
esoteric pathology, anthropology, and psychology, and that
therefore real anthropology, real pathology, and real psycho
logy have far more claim to the name of theology, than has
88 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
theology itself, because this is nothing more than an imaginary
psychology and anthropology. But this doctrine or theory is
supposed and for this reason it is mystical and fantastic to
be not pathology, but theology, in the old or ordinary sense of
the word ; it is supposed that we have here unfolded to us the
life of a Being distinct from us, while nevertheless it is only
our own nature which is unfolded, though at the same time
again shut up from us by the fact that this nature is repre
sented as inhering in another being. The mystic philosopher
supposes that in God, not in us human individuals, that
would be far too trivial a truth, reason first appears after the
Passion of Nature ; that not man, but God, has wrestled him
self out of the obscurity of confused feelings and impulses
into the clearness of knowledge ; that not in our subjective,
limited mode of conception, but in God himself, the nervous
tremors of darkness precede the joyful consciousness of light;
in short, he supposes that his theory presents not a history of
human throes, but a history of the development, i.e., the throes
of God for developments (or transitions) are birth-struggles.
But, alas ! this supposition itself belongs only to the patho
logical element.
If, therefore, the cosmogonic process presents to us the
Light of the power of distinction as belonging to the divine
essence ; so, on the other hand, the Night or Nature in God,
represents to us the Pensees confuses of Leibnitz as divine
powers. But the Pensees confuses confused, obscure concep
tions and thoughts, or more correctly images, represent the
flesh, matter ; a pure intelligence, separate from matter, has
only clear, free thoughts, no obscure, i.e., fleshly ideas, no
material images, exciting the imagination and setting the blood
in commotion. The Night in God, therefore, implies nothing
else than this : God is not only a spiritual but also a material,
corporeal, fleshly being ; but as man is man, and receives his
designation, in virtue not of his fleshly nature, but of his mind,
so is it with God.
But the mystic philosopher expresses this only in obscure,
mystical, indefinite, dissembling images. Instead of the rude,
but hence all the more precise and striking expression, flesh, it
substitutes the equivocal, abstract words, nature and ground.
" As nothing is before or out of God, he must have the ground
of his existence in himself. This all philosophies say, but
they speak of this ground as a mere idea, without making it
THE MYSTERY OF MYSTICISM. 89
something real. This ground of his existence which God has
in himself, is not God considered absolutely, i.e., in so far as
he exists ; it is only the ground of his existence. It is
Nature in God ; an existence inseparable from him, it is true,
but still distinct. Analogically (?), this relation may be illus
trated by gravitation and light in nature." But this ground is
the non-intelligent in God. " That which is the commence
ment of an intelligence (in itself) cannot also be intelligent."
" In the strict sense, intelligence is born of this unintelligent
principle. Without this antecedent darkness there is no reality
of the Creator." " With abstract ideas of God as actus puris-
simus, such as were laid down by the older philosophy, or such
as the modern, out of anxiety to remove God far from Nature,
is always reproducing, we can effect nothing. God is some
thing more real than a mere moral order of the world, and has
quite another and a more living motive power in himself than
is ascribed to him by the jejune subtilty of abstract idealists.
Idealism, if it has not a living realism as its basis, is as empty
and abstract a system as that of Leibnitz or Spinoza, or as any
other dogmatic system." " So long as the God of modern
theism remains the simple, supposed purely essential but
in fact nonessential Being that all modern systems make
him, so long as a real duality is not recognised in God,
and a limiting, negativing force, opposed to the expansive
affirming force, so long will the denial of a personal God be
scientific honesty." " All consciousness is concentration, is a
gathering together, a collecting of oneself. This negativing force
by which a being turns back upon itself, is the true force of
personality, the force of egoism." "How should there be a fear
of God, if there were no strength in him ? But that there
should be something in God, which is mere force and strength,
cannot be held astonishing if only it be not maintained that he
is this alone and nothing besides."*
But what then is force and strength which is merely such,
if not corporeal force and strength ? Dost them know any
power which stands at thy command, in distinction from
the power of kindness and reason, besides muscular power?
If them canst effect nothing through kindness and the argu
ments of reason, force is what them must take refuge in. But
* Schelling, Ueber das Wesen der Menschlichen Freiheit, 429, 432, 427.
Denkmal Jacobi's, s. 82, 97-99.
90 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
canst thou " effect " anything without strong arms and fists ?
Is there known to thee, in distinction from the power of the
moral order of the world, " another and more living motive
power " than the lever of the criminal court ? Is not Nature
without body also an "empty, abstract" idea, a "jejune sub-
tilty ? " Is not the mystery of Nature the mystery of corpo
reality ? Is not the system of a " living realism " the system of
the organized body ? Is there, in general, any other force, the
opposite of intelligence, than the force of flesh and blood,
any other strength of Nature than the strength of the fleshly
impulses ? And the strongest of the impulses of Nature, is it
not the sexual feeling ? Who does not remember the old pro
verb : " Amare et sapere vix Deo competit ? " So that if we
would posit in God a Nature, an existence opposed to the light
of intelligence, can we think of a more living, a more real
antithesis, than that of amare and sapere, of spirit and flesh,
of freedom and the sexual impulse ?
Personality, individuality, consciousness, without Nature, is
nothing ; or, which is the same thing, an empty, unsubstantial
abstraction. But Nature, as has been shown and is obvious,
is nothing without corporeality. The body alone is that nega
tiving, limiting, concentrating, circumscribing force, without
which no personality is conceivable. Take away from thy per
sonality its body, and thou takest away that which holds it
together. The body is the basis, the subject of personality.
Only by the body, is a real personality distinguished from the
imaginary one of a spectre. What sort of abstract, vague,
empty personalities should we be, if we had not the property
of impenetrability, if in the same place, in the same form in
which we are, others might stand at the same time ? Only by
the exclusion of others from the space it occupies, does person
ality prove itself to be real. But a body does not exist without
flesh and blood. Flesh and blood is life, and life alone is cor
poreal reality. But flesh and blood is nothing without the
oxygen of sexual distinction. The distinction of sex is not
superficial, or limited to certain parts of the body ; it is an
essential one : it penetrates bones and marrow. The substance
of man, is manhood; that of woman, womanhood. However
spiritual and super-sensual the man may be, he remains always
a man ; and it is the same with the woman. Hence person
ality is nothing without distinction of sex ; personality is
essentially distinguished into masculine and feminine. Where
THE MYSTERY OF MYSTICISM. 91
there is no thou, there is no I ; but the distinction between I
and thou, the fundamental condition of all personality, of all
consciousness, is only real, living, ardent, when felt as the dis
tinction between man and woman. The thou between man and
woman has quite another sound, than the monotonous thou
between friends.
Nature in distinction from personality can signify nothing
else than difference of sex. A personal being apart from
Nature is nothing else than a being without sex, and con
versely. Nature is said to be predicated of God, "in the
sense in which it is said of a man, that he is of a strong, healthy
nature." But what is more feeble, what more insupportable,
what more contrary to Nature than a person without sex, or a
person, who in character, manners, or feelings, denies sex ?
What is virtue, the excellence of man as man ? Manhood. Of
man as woman? Womanhood. But man exists only as man and
woman. The strength, the healthiness of man, consists there
fore in this : that as a woman, he be truly woman ; as man,
truly man. Thou repudiatest " the horror of all that is real,
which supposes the spiritual to be polluted by contact with the
real." Repudiate then before all, thy own horror for the dis
tinction of sex. If God is not polluted by Nature, neither is
he polluted by being associated with the idea of sex. In
renouncing sex, thou renouncest thy whole principle. A moral
God apart from Nature is without basis ; but the basis of
morality is the distinction of sex. Even the brute is capable
of self-sacrificing love in virtue of the sexual distinction. All
the glory of Nature, all its power, all its wisdom and pro
fundity, concentrates and individualizes itself in distinction of
sex. Why then dost thou shrink from naming the nature of
God by its true name ? Evidently, only because thou hast a
general horror of things in their truth and reality ; because
thou lookest at all things through the deceptive vapours of
mysticism. For this very reason then, because Nature in God
is only a delusive, unsubstantial appearance, a fantastic ghost
of Nature, for it is based, as we have said, not on flesh and
blood, not on a real ground, this attempt to establish a per
sonal God is once more a failure, and I, too, conclude with the
words, "the denial of a personal God will be scientific
honesty": and, I add, scientific truth, so long as it is not
declared and shown in unequivocal terms, first a priori, on
speculative grounds, that form, place, corporeality, and sex, do
92 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
not contradict the idea of the Godhead ; and secondly,
a posteriori, for the reality of a personal being, is sustained
only on empirical grounds, what sort of form God has, where
he exists, in heaven, and lastly, of what sex he is.
Let the profound, speculative religious philosophers of Ger
many courageously shake off the embarrassing remnant of
rationalism which yet clings to them, in flagrant contradiction
with their true character ; and let them complete their system,
by converting the mystical "potence" of Nature in God into
a really powerful, generating God.
The doctrine of Nature in God is borrowed from Jacob
Bohme. But in the original it has a far deeper and more
interesting significance, than in its second modernized and
emasculated edition. Jacob Bohme has a profoundly religious
mind. Eeligion is the centre of his life and thought. But at
the same time, the significance which has been given to Nature
in modern times by the study of natural science, by Spino-
zism, materialism, empiricism has taken possession of his
religious sentiment. He has opened his senses to Nature,
thrown a glance into her mysterious being; but it alarms him;
and he cannot harmonize this terror at Nature with his religious
conceptions. " When I looked into the great depths of this
world, and at the sun and stars, also at the clouds, also at the rain
and snow, and considered in my mind the whole creation of
this world; then I found in all things evil and good, love and
anger, in unreasoning things, such as wood, stone, earth, and
the elements, as well as in men and beasts But
because I found that in all things there was good and evil, in
the elements as well as in the creatures, and that it goes as well
in the world with the godless as with the pious, also that the
barbarous nations possess the best lands, and have more pro
sperity than the godly ; I was therefore altogether melancholy
and extremely troubled, and the Scriptures could not console
me, though almost all well known to me; and therewith assuredly
the devil was not idle, for he often thrust upon me heathenish
thoughts, of which I will here be silent."* But while his
mind seized with fearful earnestness the dark side of Nature,
which did not harmonize with the religious idea of a heavenly
* Kernhafter Auszug J. Bohme: Amsterdam, 1718, p. 58,
THE MYSTERY OF MYSTICISM. 93
Creator, he was on the other hand rapturously affected by her
resplendent aspects. Jacob Bohme has a sense for nature.
He preconceives, nay, he feels the joys of the mineralogist, of
the botanist, of the chemist the joys of " godless Natural
science." He is enraptured by the splendour of jewels, the
tones of metals, the hues and odours of plants, the beauty and
gentleness of many animals. In another place, speaking of the
revelation of God in the phenomena of light, the process by
which " there arises in the Godhead the wondrous and beautiful
structure of the heavens in various colours and kinds, and every
spirit shows itself in its form specially," he says, " I can com
pare it with nothing but with the noblest precious stones, such
as the ruby, emerald, epidote, onyx, sapphire, diamond, jasper,
hyacinth, amethyst, beryl, sardine, carbuncle, and the like."
Elsewhere : " But regarding the precious stones, such as the
carbuncle, ruby, emerald, epidote, onyx, and the like, which are
the very best, these have the very same origin the flash of light
in love. For that flash is born in tenderness, and is the heart
in the centre of the Fountain-spirit, wherefore those stones also
are mild, powerful, and lovely." It is evident that Jacob Bohme
had no bad taste in mineralogy ; that he had delight in flowers
also, and consequently a faculty for botany, is proved by the
following passages among others: "The heavenly powers
gave birth to heavenly joy-giving fruits and colours, to all sorts
of trees and shrubs, whereupon grows the beauteous and lovely
fruit of life : also there spring up in these powers all sorts of
flowers with beauteous heavenly colours and scents. Their
taste is various, in each according to its quality and kind,
altogether holy, divine, and joy-giving." " If thou desirest to
contemplate the heavenly, divine pomp and glory, as they are,
and to know what sort of products, pleasure, or joys there are
above : look diligently at this world, at the varieties of fruits
and plants that grow upon the earth, trees, shrubs, vegetables,
roots, flowers, oils, wines, corn, and everything that is there,
and that thy heart can search out. All this is an image of the
heavenly pomp."*
A despotic fiat could not suffice as an explanation of the
origin of Nature to Jacob Bohme ; Nature appealed too strongly
to his senses, and lay too near his heart ; hence he sought for
* L. c p. 480, 338, 340, 323.
94 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
a natural explanation of Nature ; but he necessarily found no
other ground of explanation than those qualities of Nature
which made the strongest impression on him. Jacob Bohme
this is his essential character is a mystical natural philoso
pher, a theosophic Vulcanist and Neptunist,* for according to
him, " all things had their origin in fire and water." Nature
had fascinated Jacob's religious sentiments, not in vain did
he receive his mystical light from the shining of tin utensils ;
but the religious sentiment works only within itself ; it has not
the force, not the courage, to press forward to the examination
of things in their reality ; it looks at all things through the
medium of religion, it sees all in God, i.e., in the entrancing,
soul-possessing splendour of the imagination, it sees all in
images and as an image. But Nature affected his mind in an
opposite manner ; hence he must place this opposition in God
himself, for the supposition of two independently existing,
opposite, original principles would have afflicted his religious
sentiment ; he must distinguish in God himself, a gentle, bene
ficent element, and a fierce consuming one. Everything fiery,
bitter, harsh, contracting, dark, cold, comes from a divine
harshness and bitterness ; everything mild, lustrous, warming,
tender, soft, yielding, from a mild, soft, luminous quality in
God. " Thus are the creatures on the earth, in the water, and
in the air, each creature out of its own science, out of good
and evil. ... As one sees before one's eyes that there are
good and evil creatures ; as venomous beasts and serpents
from the centre of the nature of darkness, from the power of
the fierce quality, which only want to dwell in darkness,
abiding in caves and hiding themselves from the sun. By each
animal's food and dwelling we see whence they have sprung,
for every creature needs to dwell with its mother, and yearns
after her, as is plain to the sight," " Gold, silver, precious
stones, and all bright metal, has its origin in the light, which
appeared before the times of anger," &c. " Everything which
in the substance of this world is yielding, soft, and thin, is
flowing, and gives itself forth, and the ground and origin of it
is in the eternal Unity, for unity ever flows forth from itself;
for in the nature of things not dense, as water and air, we can
* The Philosophus teutonicus walked physically as well as mentally on
volcanic ground. " The town of Go'rlitz is paved throughout with pure
basalt." Charpentier, Mineral. Geographic der Chursachsischen Lande,
p. 19.
THE MYSTERY OF MYSTICISM. 95
understand no susceptibility or pain, they being one in them
selves.* In short, heaven is as rich as the earth. Everything
that is on this earth, is in heaven, f all that is in Nature is in
God. But in the latter it is divine, heavenly ; in the former,
earthly, visible, external, material, but yet the same." " When
I write of trees, shrubs and fruits, thou must not understand
me of earthly things, such as are in this world; for it is not my
meaning, that in heaven there grows a dead, hard, wooden tree,
or a stone of earthly qualities. No : my meaning is heavenly
and spiritual, but yet truthful and literal ; thus, I mean no
other things than what I write in the letters of the alphabet ;"
i.e., in heaven there are the same trees and flowers, but the
trees in heaven are the trees which bloom and exhale in my
imagination, without making coarse material impressions upon
me ; the trees on earth are the trees which I perceive through
my senses. The distinction is the distinction between ima
gination and perception. " It is not my undertaking," says
Jacob Bohme himself, " to describe the course of all stars,
their place and name,, or how they have yearly their conjunc
tion or opposition, or quadrate, or the like, what they do
yearly and hourly, which through long years has been dis
covered by wise, skilful, ingenious men, by diligent contem
plation and observation, and deep thought and calculation. I
have not learned and studied these things, and leave scholars to
treat of them, but my undertaking is to write according to the
spirit and thought, not according to sight."*
The doctrine of Nature in God aims, by naturalism, to
establish theism, especially the theism which regards the Su
preme Being as a personal being. But personal theism con
ceives God as a personal being, separate from all material
things ; it excludes from him all development, because that is
nothing else than the self-separation of a being from circum
stances and conditions which do not correspond to its true
* L. c. p. 468, 617, 618.
f According to Swedeuborg, the angels in heaven have clothes and
dwellings. " Their dwellings are altogether such as the dwellings or houses
on earth, but far more beautiful ; there are apartments, rooms, and sleeping-
chambers therein in great number, and entrance-courts, and round about
gardens, flowers, meadows, and fields." (E. v. S. auserlesene Schriften, 1 Th.
Frankf. a. M. 1776, p. 190, and 96.) Thus to the mystic this world is the
other world ; but for that reason the other world is this world.
I L. c. p. 339, p. 69.
96 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
idea. And this does not take place in God, because in him
beginning, end, middle, are not to be distinguished, because
he is at once what he is, is from the beginning what he is to
be, what he can be ; he is the pure unity of existence and
essence, reality and idea, act and will. Deus suum Esse est.
Herein theism accords with the essence of religion. All re
ligions, however positive they may be, rest on abstraction ;
they are distinguished only in that from which the abstraction
is made. Even the Homeric gods, with all their living strength
and likeness to man, are abstract forms ; they have bodies, like
men, but bodies from which the limitations and difficulties of
the human body are eliminated. The idea of a divine being is
essentially an abstracted, distilled idea. It is obvious that this
abstraction is no arbitrary one, but is determined by the essen
tial stand-point of man. As he is, as he thinks, so does
he make his abstraction.
The abstraction expresses a judgment, an affirmative and a
negative one at the same time, praise and blame. What man
praises and approves, that is God to him ;* what he blames,
condemns, is the non-divine. Religion is a judgment. The
most essential condition in religion in the idea of the
divine being is accordingly the discrimination of the praise
worthy from the blameworthy, of the perfect from the imper
fect ; in a w r ord, of the positive from the negative. The cultus
itself consists in nothing else than in the continual renewal of
the origin of religion a solemnizing of the critical discrimi
nation between the divine and the non-divine.
The Divine Being is the human being glorified by the death
of abstraction; it is the departed spirit of man. In religion
man frees himself from the limits of life ; he here lets fall
what oppresses him, obstructs him, affects him repulsively;
God is the self- consciousness of man freed from all discordant
elements ; man feels himself free, happy, blessed in his religion,
because he only here lives the life of genius, and keeps holiday.
The basis of the divine idea lies for him outside of that idea itself;
its truth lies in the prior judgment, in the fact that all which
he excludes from God is previously judged by him to be non-
divine, and what is non- divine to be worthless, nothing. If
he were to include the attaining of this idea in the .idea itself, it
* " Quidquid enim unus quisque super osetera colit : hoc illi Deus est."
Origines Explan. in Epist. Pauli ad Rom. c. 1.
THE MYSTERY OF MYSTICISM. 97
would lose its most essential significance, its true value, its
beatifying charm. The divine being is the pure subjectivity
of man, freed from all else, from every thing objective, having
relation only to itself, enjoying only itself, reverencing only
itself his most subjective, his inmost self. The process of
discrimination, the separating of the intelligent from the non-
intelligent, of personality from nature, of the perfect from the
imperfect, necessarily therefore takes place in the subject, not in
the object, and the idea of God lies not at the beginning but at
the end of sensible existence, of the world, of Nature. "Where
Nature ceases, God begins," because God is the ne plus ultra,
the last limit of abstraction. That from which I can no longer
abstract is God, the last thought which I am capable of grasp
ing the last, i.e., the highest. Id quo nihil majus cogitari
potest, Deus est. That this Omega of sensible existence be
comes an Alpha also, is easily comprehensible ; but the essen
tial point is, that he is the Omega. The Alpha is primarily
a consequence ; because God is the last or highest, he is also
the first. And this predicate the first Being, has by no
means immediately a cosmogonic significance, but only implies
the highest rank. The creation in the Mosaic religion has
for its end to secure to Jehovah the predicate of the highest
and first, the true and exclusive God in opposition to idols.
The effort to establish the personality of God through
Nature, has therefore at its foundation an illegitimate, profane
mingling of philosophy and religion, a complete absence of
criticism and knowledge concerning the genesis of the personal
God. Where personality is held the essential attribute of
God, where it is said an impersonal God is no God ; there
personality is held to be in and by itself the highest and most
real thing, there it is presupposed that everything which is
not a person is dead, is nothing, that only personal existence
is real, absolute existence, is life and truth : but Nature is
impersonal, and is therefore a trivial thing. The truth of
personality rests only on the untruth of Nature. To predicate
personality of God is nothing else than to declare personality
as the absolute essence ; but personality is only conceived
in distinction, in abstraction from Nature. Certainly a
merely personal God is an abstract God ; but so he ought to
be that is involved in the idea of him ; for he is nothing
else than the personal nature of man positing itself out of all
connexion with the world, making itself free from all depend-*
F
98 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
ence on nature. In the personality of God man consecrates
the supernaturalness, immortality, independence, unlimitedness
of his own personality.
In general, the need of a personal God has its foundation in
this, that only in the attribute of personality does the personal
man meet with himself, find himself. Substance, pure spirit,
mere reason, does not satisfy him, is too abstract for him, i.e.,
does not express himself, does not lead him back to himself.
And man is content, happy, only when he is with himself, with
his own nature. Hence, the more personal a man is, the
stronger is his need of a personal God. The free, abstract
thinker knows nothing higher than freedom ; he does not
need to attach it to a personal being ; for him freedom in it
self, as such, is a real positive thing. A mathematical, astro
nomical mind, a man of pure understanding, an objective man,
who is not shut up in himself, who feels free and happy only in
the contemplation of objective rational relations, in the reason
which lies in things in themselves such a man will regard
the substance of Spinoza, or some similar idea, as his highest
being, and be full of antipathy towards a personal, i. e., sub
jective God. Jacobi therefore was a classic philosopher, be
cause (in this respect, at least) he was consistent, he was at
unity with himself; as was his God, so was his philosophy
personal, subjective. The personal God cannot be established
otherwise than as he is established by Jacobi and his disciples.
Personality is proved only in a personal manner.
Personality may be, nay, must be, founded on a natural
basis ; but this natural basis is attained only when I cease to
grope in the darkness of mysticism, when I step forth into the
clear daylight of real Nature, and exchange the idea of the
personal God for the idea of personality in general. But into
the idea of the personal God, the positive idea of whom is
liberated, disembodied personality, released from the limiting
force of Nature, to smuggle again this very Nature, is as per
verse as if I were to mix Brunswick mum with the nectar of the
gods, in order to give the ethereal beverage a solid foundation.
Certainly the ingredients of animal blood are not to be derived
from the celestial juice which nourishes the gods. But the
flower of sublimation arises only through the evaporation of
matter ; why, then, wilt thou mix with the sublimate that very
matter from which thou hast disengaged it? Certainly, the
impersonal existence of Nature is not to be explained by the
THE MYSTERY OF MYSTICISM. 99
idea of personality; but where personality is a truth, or, rather,
the absolute truth, Nature has no positive significance, and
consequently no positive basis. The literal creation out of
nothing is here the only sufficient ground of explanation ; for
it simply says this : Nature is nothing ; and this precisely
expresses the significance which Nature has for absolute
personality.
100 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
CHAPTEE X.
THE MYSTEKY OF PROVIDENCE, AND CREATION OUT
OF NOTHING.
CREATION is the spoken word of God ; the creative, cosmo-
gonic fiat is the tacit word, identical with the thought. To
speak is an act of the will ; thus, creation is a product of the
Will : as in the Word of God man affirms the divinity of the
human word, so in creation he affirms the divinity of the
Will : not, however, the will of the reason, but the will of the
imagination the absolutely subjective, unlimited will. The
culminating point of the principle of subjectivity is creation out
of nothing.* As the eternity of the world or of matter imports
nothing further than the essentiality of matter, so the creation
of the world out of nothing imports simply the non- essentiality,
the nothingness of the world. The commencement of a thing
is immediately connected, in idea if not in time, with its end.
"Lightly come, lightly go." The will has called it into
existence the will calls it back again into nothing. When ?
The time is indifferent : its existence or non-existence depends
only on the will. But this will is not its own will : not only
because a thing cannot will its non-existence, but for the prior
reason that the world is itself destitute of will. Thus the
nothingness of the world expresses the power of the will. The
will that it should exist is, at the same time, the will at least
the possible will that it should not exist. The existence of
the world is therefore a momentary, arbitrary, unreliable, i.e.,
unreal existence.
Creation out of nothing is the highest expression of omni
potence : but omnipotence is nothing else than subjectivity
exempting itself from all objective conditions and limitations,
* " Quare fecit Deus coelum et terrain ? Quia voluit. Voluntas enim Dei
causa est cceli et terrse et ideo major est voluntas Dei quam ccelum et terra.
Qui autem dicit : quare voluit facere ccelum et terrain ? majus aliquid quse-
rit, quam est voluntas Dei, nih.il enim majus invenire potest." Augustinus
(de Genesi adv. Manich. 1. i. c. 2).
THE MYSTERY OF PROVIDENCE. lOl
and consecrating this exemption as the highest power and
reality : nothing else than the ability to posit everything real
as unreal everything conceivable as possible : nothing else
than the power of the imagination, or of the will as identical
with the imagination, the power of self-will.* The strongest
and most characteristic expression of subjective arbitrari
ness is, " it has pleased ;" the phrase, " it has pleased God
to call the world of bodies and spirits into existence," is the
most undeniable proof that individual subjectivity, individual
arbitrariness, is regarded as the highest essence the omnipo
tent world-principle. On this ground, creation out of nothing
as a work of the Almighty Will falls into the same category
with miracle, or rather it is the first miracle, not only in time
but in rank also ; the principle of which all further miracles
are the spontaneous result. The proof of this is history itself ;
all miracles have been vindicated, explained, and illustrated by
appeal to the omnipotence which created the world out of
nothing. Why should not He who made the world out of
nothing, make wine out of water, bring human speech from
the mouth of an ass, and charm water out of a rock ? But
miracle is, as we shall see further on, only a product and object
of the imagination, and hence creation out of nothing, as the
primitive miracle, is of the same character. For this reason
the doctrine of creation out of nothing has been pronounced a
supernatural one, to which reason of itself could not have
attained ; and in proof of this, appeal has been made to the
fact that the Pagan philosophers represented the world to have
been formed by the Divine Reason out of already existing
matter. But this supernatural principle is no other than the
principle of subjectivity, which in Christianity exalted itself
to an unlimited, universal monarchy ; whereas the ancient
philosophers were not subjective enough to regard the ab
solutely subjective being as the exclusively absolute being,
because they limited subjectivity by the contemplation of the
world or reality because to them the world was a truth.
Creation out of nothing, as identical with miracle, is one
with Providence ; for the idea of Providence originally, in its
* A more profound origin of the creation out of nothing lies in the
emotional nature, as is both directly and indirectly declared in this work.
But arbitrariness is, in fact, the will of the emotions, their external mani
festation of force.
102 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
true religious significance, in which it is not yet infringed
upon and limited hy the unbelieving understanding is one
with the idea of miracle. The proof of Providence is miracle.*
Belief in Providence is belief in a power to which all things
stand at command to be used according to its pleasure, in
opposition to which all the power of reality is nothing. Provi
dence cancels the laws of Nature ; it interrupts the course of
necessity, the iron bond which inevitably binds effects to
causes ; in short, it is the same unlimited, all-powerful will,
that called the world into existence out of nothing. Miracle
is a creatio ex nihilo. He who turns water into wine, makes
wine out of nothing, for the constituents of wine are not found
in water ; otherwise, the production of wine would not be a
miraculous, but a natural act. The only attestation, the only
proof of Providence is miracle. Thus Providence is an ex
pression of the same idea as creation out of nothing. Creation
out of nothing can only be understood and explained in con
nexion with Providence ; for miracle properly implies nothing
more than that the miracle worker is the same as he who
brought forth all things by his mere will God the Creator.
But Providence has relation essentially to man. It is for
man's sake that Providence makes of things whatever it pleases :
it is for man's sake that it supersedes the authority and reality
of a law otherwise omnipotent. The admiration of Providence
in Nature, especially in the animal kingdom, is nothing else
than an admiration of Nature, and therefore belongs merely to
naturalism, though to a religious naturalism ;f for in Nature
is revealed only natural, not divine Providence not Pro
vidence as it is an object to religion. Keligious Providence
reveals itself only in miracles especially in the miracle of the
Incarnation, the central point of religion. But we nowhere
read that God, for the sake of brutes, became a brute the very
* " Certissimum divinse providentise testimonium prsebent miracula."
H. Grotius (de Verit. Eel. Christ. 1. i. 13).
f It is true that religious naturalism, or the acknowledgment of the
Divine in Nature, is also an element of the Christian religion, and yet more
of the Mosaic, which was so friendly to animals. But it is by no means
the characteristic, the Christian tendency of the Christian religion. The
Christian, the religious Providence, is quite another than that which clothes
the lilies and feeds the ravens. The natural Providence lets a man sink in
the water, if he has not learned to swim ; but the Christian, the religious
Providence, leads him with the hand of omnipotence over the water un
harmed.
THE MYSTERY OF PROVIDENCE. 103
idea of this is, in the eyes of religion, impious and ungodly ;
or that God ever performed a miracle for the sake of animals or
plants. On the contrary, we read that a poor fig-tree, because it
bore no fruit at a time when it could not bear it, was cursed,
purely in order to give men an example of the power of faith
over Nature ; and again, that when the tormenting devils were
driven out of men, they were driven into brutes. It is true
we also read : " No sparrow falls to the ground without your
Father;" but these sparrows have 110 more worth and importance
than the hairs on the head of a man, which are all numbered.
Apart from instinct, the brute has no other guardian spirit,
no other Providence, than its senses or its organs in general.
A bird which loses its eyes has lost its guardian angel; it neces
sarily goes to destruction if no miracle happens. We read
indeed that a raven brought food to the prophet Elijah, but
not (at least to my knowledge) that an animal was supported
by other than natural means. But if a man believes that
he also has no other Providence than the powers of his
race his senses and understanding, he is in the eyes of
religion, and of all those who speak the language of religion,
an irreligious man ; because he believes only in a natural Pro
vidence, and a natural Providence is in the eyes of religion as
good as none. Hence Providence has relation essentially to
men, and even among men only to the religious. " God is the
Saviour of all men, but especially of them that believe." It
belongs, like religion, only to man ; it is intended to express
the essential distinction of man from the brute, to rescue man
from the tyranny of the forces of Nature. Jonah in the whale,
Daniel in the den of lions, are examples of the manner in
which Providence distinguishes (religious) men from brutes.
If therefore the Providence which manifests itself in the organs
with which animals catch and devour their prey, and which is
so greatly admired by Christian naturalists, is a truth, the Pro
vidence of the Bible, the Providence of religion, is a falsehood ;
and vice versa-. What pitiable and at the same time ludicrous
hypocrisy is the attempt to do homage to both, to Nature and
the Bible at once ! How does Nature contradict the Bible !
How does the Bible contradict Nature ! The God of Nature
reveals himself by giving to the lion strength and appropriate
organs in order that, for the preservation of his life, he may in
case of necessity kill and devour even a human being ;
the God of the Bible reveals himself by interposing his
THE ESSENCE OF CHEISTIAN1TY.
own aid to rescue the human being from the jaws of the
lion !*
Providence is a privilege of man. It expresses the value of
man, in distinction from other natural beings and things ; it
exempts him from the connexion of the universe. Providence
is the conviction of man of the infinite value of his existence,
a conviction in which he renounces faith in the reality of exter
nal things ; it is the idealism of religion. Faith in Providence
is therefore identical with faith in personal immortality ; save
only, that in the latter the infinite value of existence is
expressed in relation to time, as infinite duration. He who
prefers no special claims, who is indifferent about himself,
who identifies himself with the world, who sees himself as a
part merged in the whole, such a one believes in no Provi
dence, i.e., in no special Providence ; but only special Providence
is Providence in the sense of religion. Faith in Providence is
faith in one's own worth, the faith of man in himself; hence
the beneficent consequences of this faith, but hence also
false humility, religious arrogance, which, it is true, does not
rely on itself, but only because it commits the care of itself to
the blessed God. God concerns himself about me ; he has in
view my happiness, my salvation ; he wills that I shall be blest ;
but that is my will also : thus, my interest is God's interest,
my own will is God's will, my own aim is God's aim, God's
love for me nothing else than my self-love deified. Thus when
I believe in Providence, in what do I believe but in the divine
reality and significance of my own being ?
But where Providence is believed in, belief in God is made
dependent on belief in Providence. He who denies that there
is a Providence, denies that there is a God, or what is the
same thing that God is God ; for a God who is not the
Providence of man, is a contemptible God, a God who is
wanting in the divinest, most adorable attribute. Conse
quently, the belief in God is nothing but the belief in human
dignity,* the belief in the absolute reality and significance of
the human nature. But belief in a (religious) Providence is
* In this contrast of the religious, or biblical, and the natural Providence,
the author had especially in view the vapid, narrow theology of the English
natural philosophers.
f " Qui Deos negant, nobilitatem generis humani destruunt." Bacon
(Serm. Fidel. 16).
THE MYSTERY OF PROVIDENCE. 105
belief in creation out of nothing, and vice versa ; the latter,
therefore, can have no other significance than that of Provi
dence as just developed, and it has actually no other. Beligion
sufficiently expresses this by making man the end of creation.
All things exist, not for their own sake, but for the sake of
man. He who, like the pious Christian naturalists, pro
nounces this to be pride, declares Christianity itself to be
pride ; for to say that the material world exists for the sake of
man, implies infinitely less than to say that God or at least,
if we follow Paul, a being who is almost God, scarcely to be
distinguished from God becomes man for the sake of men.
But if man is the end of creation, he is also the true cause
of creation, for the end is the principle of action. The
distinction between man as the end of creation, and man as its
cause, is only that the cause is the latent, inner man, the
essential man, whereas the end is the self-evident, empirical,
individual man, that man recognises himself as the end of
creation, but not as the cause, because he distinguishes the
cause, the essence from himself as another personal being.*
But this other being, this creative principle, is in fact nothing
else than his subjective nature separated from the limits of
individuality and materiality, i.e., of objectivity, unlimited will,
personality posited out of all connexion with the world,
which by creation, i.e., the positing of the w~orld, of objectivity,
of another, as a dependent, finite, non-essential existence,
gives itself the certainty of its exclusive reality. The point
in question in the Creation is not the truth and reality of the
world, but the truth and reality of personality, of subjectivity
in distinction from the world. The point in question is the
personality of God ; but the personality of God is the
* In Clemens Alex. (Coh. ad Gentes) there is an interesting passage. It
runs in the Latin translation (the bad Augsburg edition, 1778) thus :
" At nos ante mundi constitutionem tuimus, ratione futures nostrse pro-
ductionis, in ipso Deo quodammodo turn praeexistentes, Pivini igitur
Verbi sive Rationis, nos creaturse rationales sumus, et per eum primi esse
dicimur, quoniam in principio erat verbum." Yet more decidedly, however,
has Christian mysticism declared the human nature to be the creative prin
ciple, the ground of the world. " Man, who, before time was, existed in
eternity, works with God all the works that God wrought a thousand
years ago, and now, after a thousand years, still works." " All creatures
have sprung forth through man," Predigten, vor u, zu Tauleri Zeiten
(Ed. c. p. 5. p. 119.)
F 3
106 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
personality of man freed from all the conditions and limita
tions of Nature. Hence the fervent interest in the Creation,
the horror of all pantheistic cosmogonies. The Creation, like
the idea of a personal God in general, is not a scientific, but
a personal matter; not an object of the free intelligence, but
of the feelings ; for the point on which it hinges is only the
guarantee, the last conceivable proof and demonstration of
personality or subjectivity as an essence quite apart, having
nothing in common with Nature, a supra-and extramundane
entity.*
Man distinguishes himself from Nature. This distinction of
his is his God : the distinguishing of God from Nature is
nothing else than the distinguishing of man from Nature.
The antithesis of pantheism and personalism resolves itself
into the question : is the nature of man transcendental or
immanent, supranaturalistic or naturalistic ? The speculations
and controversies concerning the personality or impersonality
of God are therefore fruitless, idle, uncritical, and odious;
for the speculatists, especially those who maintain the person
ality, do not call the thing by the right name ; they put the
light under a bushel. While they in truth speculate only
concerning themselves, only in the interest of their own
instinct of self-preservation ; they yet will not allow that
they are splitting their brains only about themselves; they
speculate under the delusion that they are searching out the
mysteries of another being. Pantheism identifies man with
Nature, whether with its visible appearance, or its abstract
essence, Personalism isolates, separates him from Nature ;
converts him from a part into the whole, into an absolute
essence by himself. This is the distinction. If, therefore, you
would be clear on these subjects, exchange your mystical,
perverted anthropology, which you call theology, for real
anthropology, and speculate in the light of consciousness and
Nature concerning the difference or identity of the human
essence with the essence of Nature. You yourselves admit
that the essence of the pantheistical God is nothing but the
essence of Nature. Why, then, will you only see the mote in
* Hence is explained why all attempts of speculative theology and of its
kindred philosophy to make the transition from God to the world, or to
derive the world from God, have failed and must fail. Namely, because
they are fundamentally false, from being made in ignorance of the idea on
which the Creation really turns.
THE MYSTERY OF PROVIDENCE. 107
the eyes of your opponents, and not observe the very obvious
beam in your own eyes ? why make yourselves an exception to
a universally valid law? Admit that your personal God is
nothing else than your own personal nature, that while you
believe in and construct your supra- and extra-natural God,
you believe in and construct nothing else than the supra-and
extranaturalism of your own self.
In the Creation, as everywhere else, the true principle is
concealed by the intermingling of universal, metaphysical,
and even pantheistic definitions. But one need only be
attentive to the closer definitions to convince oneself that
the true principle of creation is the self-affirmation of sub
jectivity in distinction from Nature. God produces the world
outside himself; at first it is only an idea, a plan, a resolve;
now it becomes an act, and therewith it steps forth out of God
as a distinct and, relatively at least, a self-subsistent object.
But just so subjectivity in general, which distinguishes itself
from the world, which takes itself for an essence distinct from
the world, posits the world out of itself as a separate existence,
indeed, this positing out of self, and the distinguishing of self,
is one act. When therefore the world is posited outside of
God, God is posited by himself, is distinguished from the
world. What else then is God but your subjective nature,
when the w r orld is separated from it ?* It is true that when
astute reflection intervenes, the distinction between extra
and intra is disavowed as a finite and human (?) distinction.
But to the disavowal by the understanding, which in rela
tion to religion is pure misunderstanding, no credit is due. If
it is meant seriously, it destroys the foundation of the religious
consciousness ; it does away with the possibility, the very prin
ciple of the creation, for this rests solely on the reality of the
abovementioned distinction. Moreover, the effect of the crea-
* It is not admissible to urge against this the omnipresence of God, the
existence of God in all things, or the existence of things in God. For,
apart from the consideration that the future destruction of the world
expresses clearly enough its existence outside of God, i.e., its non-divine-
ness, God is in a special manner only in man ; but I am at home only
where I am specially at home. " Nowhere is God properly God, but in the
soul. In all creatures there is something of God; hut in the soul God exists
completely, for it is his resting-place." Predigten etzlicher Lehrer, &c.,
p. 19. And the existence of things in God, especially where it has no panthe
istic significance, and any such is here excluded, is equally an idea without
reality, and does not express the special sentiments of religion.
108 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
tion, all its majesty for the feelings and the imagination, is
quite lost, if the production of the world out of God is not
taken in the real sense. What is it to make, to create, to
produce, hut to make that which in the first instance is only
subjective, and so far invisible, non-existent, into something
objective, perceptible, so that other beings besides me may
know and enjoy it, and thus to put something out of myself,
to make it distinct from myself ? Where there is no reality or
possibility of an existence external to me, there can be no
question of making or creating. God is eternal, but the world
had a commencement ; God was, when as yet the world was
not ; God is invisible, not cognizable by the senses, but the
world is visible, palpable, material, and therefore outside of
God ; for how can the material as such, body, matter, be in
God ? The world exists outside of God, in the same sense in
which a tree, an animal, the world in general, exists outside of
my conception, outside of myself, is an existence distinct from
subjectivity. Hence, only when such an external existence is
admitted, as it was by the older philosophers and theologians,
have we the genuine, unmixed doctrine of the religious con
sciousness. The speculative theologians and philosophers of
modern times, on the contrary, foist in all sorts of pantheistic
definitions, although they deny the principle of pantheism ;
and the result of this process is simply an absolutely self-
contradictory, insupportable fabrication of their own.
Thus the creation of the world expresses nothing else than
subjectivity, assuring itself of its own reality and infinity
through the consciousness that the world is created, is a pro
duct of will, i.e., a dependent, powerless, unsubstantial exist
ence. The "nothing" out of which the world was produced,
is a still inherent nothingness. When thou sayest the world
was made out of nothing, thou conceivest the world itself as
nothing, thou clearest away from thy head all the limits to thy
imagination, to thy feelings, to thy will, for the world is the
limitation of thy will, of thy desire ; the world alone obstructs
thy soul; it alone is the wall of separation between thee
and God, thy beatified, perfected nature. Thus, subjec
tively, thou annihilatest the world ; thou thinkest God by him
self, i.e., absolutely unlimited subjectivity, the subjectivity or
soul which enjoys itself alone, which needs not the world,
which knows nothing of the painful bonds of matter. In the
inmost depths of thy soul thou wouldest rather there were no
THE MYSTERY OF PROVIDENCE. 109
world, for where the world is, there is matter, and where there
is matter there is weight and resistance, space and time, limit
ation and necessity. Nevertheless, there is a world, there is
matter. How dost thou escape from the dilemma of this con
tradiction ? How dost thou expel the world from thy con
sciousness, that it may not disturb thee in the beatitude of the
unlimited soul ? Only by making the world itself a product
of will, by giving it an arbitrary existence always hovering
between existence and non-existence, always awaiting its anni
hilation. Certainly the act of creation does not suffice to ex
plain the existence of the world or matter (the two are not
separable), but it is a total misconception to demand this of
it, for the fundamental idea of the creation is this : there is to
be no world, no matter; and hence its end is daily looked
forward to with longing. The world in its truth does not here
exist at all, it is regarded only as the obstruction, the limita
tion of subjectivity; how could the world in its truth and
reality be deduced from a principle which denies the world?
In order to recognise the above developed significance of the
creation as the true one, it is only necessary seriously to con
sider the fact, that the chief point in the creation is not the
production of earth and water, plants and animals, for which
indeed there is no God, but the production of personal beings
of spirits, according to the ordinary phrase. God is the idea
of personality as itself a person, subjectivity existing in itself
apart from the world, existing for self alone, without wants,
posited as absolute existence, the me without a thee. But as
absolute existence for self alone contradicts the idea of true
life, the idea of love ; as self-consciousness is essentially united
with the consciousness of a thee, as solitude cannot, at least in
perpetuity, preserve itself from tedium and uniformity ; thought
immediately proceeds from the divine Being to other conscious
beings, and expands the idea of personality which was at first
condensed in one being to a plurality of persons.* If the
* Here is also the point where the Creation represents to us not only
the Divine power, but also the Divine love. " Quia bonus est (Deus), sumus."
(Augustin.) In the beginning, before the world, God was alone. " Ante
omnia Deus erat solus, ipsi sibi et mundus et locus et omnia. Solus autem ;
quia nihil extrinsecus prseter ipsum." (Tertullian.) But there is no higher
happiness than to make another happy, bliss lies in the act of imparting.
And only joy, only love imparts. Hence man conceives imparting love as
the principle of existence. " Extasis boni non sinit ipsum manere in se ipso."
110 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
person is conceived physically, as a real man, in which form he
is a being with wants, he appears first at the end of the physical
world, when the conditions of his existence are present, as the
goal of creation. If, on the other hand, man is conceived
abstractly as a person, as is the case in religious speculation,
this circuit is dispensed with, and the task is the direct deduc
tion of the person, i.e., the self-demonstration, the ultimate
self- verification of the human personality. It is true that the
divine personality is distinguished in every possible way from
the human in order to veil their identity ; but these distinctions
are either purely fantastic, or they are mere assertions, devices
which exhibit the invalidity of the attempted deduction. All
positive grounds of the creation reduce themselves only to the
conditions, to the grounds, which urge upon the me the con
sciousness of the necessity of another personal being. Specu
late as much as you will, you will never derive your personality
from God, if you have not beforehand introduced it, if God
himself be not already the idea of your personality, your own
subjective nature.
(Dionysius A.) Everything positive establishes, attests itself, only t>y
itself. The divine love is the joy of life, establishing itself, affirming itself.
But the highest self-consciousness of life, the supreme joy of life is the love
which confers happiness. God is the bliss of existence.
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CREATION. 111
CHAPTER XL
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CREATION IN JUDAISM.
THE doctrine of the Creation sprang out of Judaism ; indeed,
it is the characteristic, the fundamental doctrine of the Jewish
religion. The principle which lies at its foundation is, how
ever, not so much the principle of subjectivity as of egoism.
The doctrine of the Creation in its characteristic significance
arises only on that stand-point where man in practice makes
Nature merely the servant of his will and needs, and hence in
thought also degrades it to a mere machine, a product of the
will. Now its existence is intelligible to him, since he explains
and interprets it out of himself, in accordance with his own
feelings and notions. The question, Whence is Nature or the
world ? presupposes wonder that it exists, or the question,
Why does it exist ? But this wonder, this question, arises only
where man has separated himself from Nature and made it a
mere object of will. The author of the Book of Wisdom says
truly of the heathens, that, " for admiration of the beauty of
the world they did not raise themselves to the idea of the
Creator." To him who feels that Nature is lovely, it appears
an end in itself, it has the ground of its existence in itself : in
him the question, Why does it exist ? does not arise. Nature
and God are identified in his consciousness, his percep
tion, of the world. Nature, as it impresses his senses, has
indeed had an origin, has been produced, but not created
in the religious sense, is not an arbitrary product. And
by this origin he implies nothing evil ; originating involves
for him nothing impure, undivine ; he conceives his gods
themselves as having had an origin. The generative force
is to him the primal force : he posits, therefore, as the
ground of Nature, a force of Nature, a real, present, visibly
active force, as the ground of reality. Thus does man think
where his relation to the world is assthetic or theoretic, (for the
112 THE ESSENCE OF CHKISTIANITY.
theoretic view was originally the aesthetic view, the prima phi-
losophia,) where the idea of the world is to him the idea of the
Cosmos, of majesty, of deity itself. Only where such a theory
was the fundamental principle could there be conceived and
expressed such a thought as that of Anaxagoras : man is born
to behold the world.* The stand-point of theory is the stand
point of harmony with the world. The subjective activity, that
in which man contents himself, allows himself free play, is here
the sensuous imagination alone. Satisfied with this, he lets
Nature subsist in peace, and constructs his castles in the air,
his poetical cosmogonies, only out of natural materials. When,
on the contrary, man places himself only on the practical stand
point and looks at the world from thence, making the practical
stand-point the theoretical one also, he is in disunion with
Nature; he makes Nature the abject vassal of his selfish
interest, of his practical egoism. The theoretic expression of
this egoistical, practical view, according to which Nature is
in itself nothing, is this : Nature or the world is made, created,
the product of a command. God said, Let the world be, and
straightway the world presented itself at His bidding, t
Utilism is the essential theory of Judaism. The belief in a
special Divine Providence is the characteristic belief of
Judaism; belief in Providence is belief in miracle ; but belief
in miracle exists where Nature is regarded only as an object
of arbitrariness, of egoism, which uses Nature only as an instru
ment of its own will and pleasure. Water divides or rolls itself
together like a firm mass, dust is changed into lice, a staff into
a serpent, rivers into blood, a rock into a fountain ; in the same
place it is both light and dark at once, the sun now stands still,
now goes backward. And all these contradictions of Nature
happen for the welfare of Israel, purely at the command of
Jehovah, who troubles himself about nothing but Israel, who is
* In Diogenes (L. 1. ii. c. iii. 6), it is literally, " for the contemplation
of the sun, the moon and the heavens." Similar ideas were held by other
philosophers. Thus the Stoics also said : " Ipse autem homo ortus est ad
mundum contemplandum et imitandum." Cic. (de Nat.)
f " Hebraei numen verbo quidquid videtur efficiens describunt et quasi im-
perio omnia creata tradunt, ut facilitatem in eo quod vult efficiendo,
summamque ejus in omnia potentiam ostendant." Ps. xxxiii. 6. " Verbo
Jehovae eoeli facti sunt." Ps. cxlviii. 5. " Ille jussit eaque creata sunt." J.
Clericus (Comment, in Mosem. Genes, i. 3).
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CREATION. 113
nothing but the personified selfishness of the Israelitish people,
to the exclusion of all other nations, absolute intolerance, the
secret essence of monotheism.
The Greeks looked at Nature with the theoretic sense ; they
heard heavenly music in the harmonious course of the stars ;
they saw Nature rise from the foam of the all-producing ocean
as Venus Anadyomene. The Israelites, on the contrary,
opened to Nature only the gastric sense ; their taste for Nature
lay only in the palate ; their consciousness of God in eating
manna. The Greek addicted himself to polite studies, to the
fine arts, to philosophy ; the Israelite did not rise above the
alimentary view of theology. " At even ye shall eat flesh, and
in the morning ye shall be filled with bread ; and ye shall know
that I am the Lord your God."* " And Jacob vowed a vow,
saying, ' If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way
that I go, and will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on, so
that I come again to my father's house in peace, then shall the
Lord be my God."t Eating is the most solemn act or the
initiation of the Jewish religion. In eating the Israelite
celebrates and renews the act of creation ; in eating man
declares Nature to be an insignificant object. When the
seventy elders ascended the mountain with Moses, " they saw
God ; and when they had seen God, they ate and drank." t
Thus with them what the sight of the Supreme Being height
ened was the appetite for food.
The Jews have maintained their peculiarity to this day.
Their principle, their God, is the most practical principle in
the world, namely, egoism : and moreover egoism in the form
of religion. Egoism is the God who will not let his servants
come to shame. Egoism is essentially monotheistic, for it has
only one, only self, as its end. Egoism strengthens cohesion,
concentrates man on himself, gives him a consistent principle
of life ; but it makes him theoretically narrow, because in
different to all which does not relate to the well-being of self.
Hence science, like art, arises only out of polytheism, for
polytheism is the frank, open, unenvying sense of all that is
beautiful and good without distinction, the sense of the world,
of the universe. The Greeks looked abroad into the wide
* Exod. xvi. 12. f Gen. xxviii. 20.
Exod. xxiv. 10, 11. "Tantum abest ut mortui sint, ut contra convivium
hilares celebrarint." Clericus.
114 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
world that they might extend their sphere of vision ; the Jews
to this day pray with their faces turned towards Jerusalem.
In the Israelites, monotheistic egoism excluded the free
theoretic tendency. Solomon, it is true, surpassed " all
the children of the east" in understanding and wisdom, and
spoke (treated, agebat) moreover " of trees, from the cedar that
is in Lebanon, even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the
wall," and also of " beasts and of fowl, and of creeping things,
and of fishes" (1 Kings iv. 30, 34). But it must be added
that Solomon did not serve Jehovah with his whole heart ; he
did homage to strange gods and strange women ; and thus he
had the polytheistic sentiment and taste. The polytheistic
sentiment, I repeat, is the foundation of science and art.
The significance which nature in general had for the Hebrews
is one with their idea of its origin. The mode in which the genesis
of a thing is explained is the candid expression of opinion, of sen
timent respecting it. If it be thought meanly of, so also is its
origin. Men used to suppose that insects, vermin, sprang from
carrion, and other rubbish. It was not because they derived
vermin from so uninviting a source, that they thought con
temptuously of them ; but, on the contrary, because they
thought thus, because the nature of vermin appeared to them
so vile, they imagined an origin corresponding to this nature, a
vile origin. To the Jews Nature was a mere means towards
achieving the end of egoism, a mere object of will. But the
ideal, the idol of the egoistic will is that Will which has un
limited command, which requires no means in order to attain
its end, to realize its object, which immediately by itself, i. e.,
by pure will, calls into existence whatever it pleases. It pains
the egoist that the satisfaction of his wishes and need is only
to be attained immediately, that for him there is a chasm
between the wish and its realization, between the object in the
imagination and the object in reality. Hence, in order to
relieve this pain, to make himself free from the limits of reality,
he supposes as the true, the highest being, one who brings
forth an object by the mere I WILL. For this reason, Nature,
the world, was to the Hebrews the product of a dictatorial
word, of a categorical imperative, of a magic fiat.
To that which has no essential existence for me in theory,
I assign no theoretic, no positive ground. By referring it to
Will I only enforce its theoretic nullity. What we despise we
do not honour with a glance : that which is observed has im-
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CREATION. 115
portance : contemplation is respect. Whatever is looked at
fetters by secret forces of attraction, overpowers, by the spell
which it exercises upon the eye, the criminal arrogance of that
Will which seeks only to subject all things to itself. What
ever makes an impression on the theoretic sense, on the rea
son, withdraws itself from the dominion of the egoistic Will : it
reacts, it presents resistance. That which devastating egoism
devotes to death, benignant theory restores to life.
The much-belied doctrine of the heathen philosophers con
cerning the eternity of matter, or the world, thus implies
nothing more than that Nature was to them a theoretic reality.*
The heathens were idolaters, that is, they contemplated Nature ;
they did nothing else than what the profoundly Christian
nations do at this day, when they make nature an object of
their admiration, of their indefatigable investigation. " But
the heathens actually worshipped natural objects." Certainly ;
for worship is only the childish, the religious form of contem
plation. Contemplation and worship are not essentially dis
tinguished. That which I contemplate I humble myself before,
I consecrate to it my noblest possession, my heart, my intel
ligence, as an offering. The natural philosopher also falls on
his knees before Nature when, at the risk of his life, he snatches
from some precipice a lichen, an insect, or a stone, to glorify it
in the light of contemplation, and give it an eternal existence
in the memory of scientific humanity. The study of Nature is
the worship of Nature idolatry in the sense of the Israeli tish
and Christian God ; and idolatry is simply man's primitive
contemplation of nature ; for religion is nothing else than man's
primitive and therefore childish, popular, but prejudiced, un-
emancipated consciousness of himself and of Nature. The
Hebrews, on the other hand, raised themselves from the wor
ship of idols to the worship of God, from the creature to the
Creator; i. e., they raised themselves from the theoretic view of
Nature, which fascinated the idolaters, to the purely practical
view which subjects Nature only to the ends of egoism. " And
lest thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven, and when thou seest
the sun, the moon, and the stars, even all the host of heaven,
* It is well known, however, that their opinions on this point were various.
(See e. g. Aristoteles de Coelo, 1. i. c. 10.) But their difference is a subordi
nate one, since the creative agency itself is with them a more or less cosmical
being.
116 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
sliouldst be driven to worship them and serve them, which the
Lord thy God hath divided unto \i. e., bestowed upon, largitus
est] all nations under the whole heaven."* Thus, the creation
out of nothing, i. e., the creation as a purely imperious act, had
its origin only in the unfathomable depth of Hebrew egoism.
On this ground, also, the creation out of nothing is no object
of philosophy ; at least in any other way than it is so here ;
for it cuts away the root of all true speculation, presents no
grappling-point to thought, to theory ; theoretically considered,
it is a baseless air-built doctrine, which originated solely in the
need to give a warrant to utilism, to egoism, which contains
and expresses nothing but the command to make Nature
not an object of thought, of contemplation, but an object
of utilization. The more empty it is, however, for natural
philosophy, the more profound is its " speculative" significance;
for just because it has no theoretic fulcrum, it allows to the
speculatist infinite room for the play of arbitrary, groundless
interpretation.
It is in the history of dogma and speculation as in the history
of states. World-old usages, laws, and institutions, continue to
drag out their existence long after they have lost their true
meaning. What has once existed will not be denied the right
to exist for ever ; what was once good, claims to be good for
all times. At this period of superannuation come the inter
preters, the speculatists, and talk of the profound sense, because
they no longer know the true one.f Thus, religious specula
tion deals with the dogmas, torn from the connexion in which
alone they have any true meaning ; instead of tracing them
back critically to their true origin, it makes the secondary
primitive, and the primitive secondary. To it God is the first;
man the second. Thus it inverts the natural order of things !
In reality, the first is man, the second the nature of man made
objective, namely, God. Only in later times, in which religion is
* Deut. iv. 19. " Licet enim ea, quse sunt in coelo, non sint liominum ar-
tificia, at hominum tamen gratia condita fuerunt. Ne quis igitur solem
adoret, sed soils effectorem desideret." Clemens Alex. (Coh. ad Gentes).
f But of course they only do this in the case of the " absolute religion;"
for with regard to other religions they hold up the ideas and customs which
are foreign to us, and of which we do not know the original meaning and
purpose, as senseless and ludicrous. And yet, in fact, to worship the urine
of cows, which the Parsees and Hindoos drink that they may obtain
forgiveness of sins, is not more ludicrous than to worship the comb or a
shred of the garment of the Mother of God.
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CREATION. 117
already become flesh and blood, can it be said as God is, so is
man : although, indeed, this proposition never amounts to any
thing more than tautology. But in the origin of religion it is
otherwise; and it is only in the origin of a thing that we can
discern its true nature. Man first unconsciously and involun
tarily creates God in his own image, and after this God con
sciously and voluntarily creates man in his own image. This
is especially confirmed by the development of the Israelitish
religion. Hence the position of theological one-sidedness, that
the revelation of God holds an even pace with the development
of the human race. Naturally ; for the revelation of God is
nothing else than the revelation, the self-unfolding of human
nature. The supranaturalistic egoism of the Jews did not
proceed from the Creator, but conversely, the latter from the
former ; in the creation the Israelite justified his egoism at
the bar of his reason.
It is true, and it may be readily understood on simply prac
tical grounds, that even the Israelite could not, as a man,
withdraw himself from the theoretic contemplation and admi
ration of Nature. But in celebrating the power and greatness
of Nature, he celebrates only the power and greatness of Je
hovah. And the power of Jehovah has exhibited itself with
the most glory, in the miracles which it has wrought in favour
of Israel. Hence, in the celebration of this power the Israelite
has always reference ultimately to himself ; he extols the great
ness of Nature only for the same reason that the conqueror
magnifies the strength of his opponent, in order thereby to
heighten his own self-complacency, to make his own fame more
illustrious. Great and mighty is Nature, which Jehovah has
created, but yet mightier, yet greater, is Israel's self- estimation.
For his sake the sun stands still ; for his sake, according to
Philo, the earth quaked at the delivery of the law ; in short,
for his sake all nature alters its course. "For the whole crea
ture in his proper kind, was fashioned again anew, serving the
peculiar commandments that were given unto them, that thy
children might be kept without hurt."* According to Philo,
God gave Moses power over the whole of Nature; all the
elements obeyed him as the Lord of Nature. t Israel's require
ment is the omnipotent law of the world, Israel's need the fate
of the universe. Jehovah is Israel's consciousness of the
* Wisd. xix. 6. f See Gfrorer's Philo.
118 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
sacredness and necessity of his own existence, a necessity
before which the existence of Nature, the existence of other
nations vanishes into nothing; Jehovah is the salus populi,
the salvation of Israel, to which everything that stands in its
way must he sacrificed ; Jehovah is exclusive, monarchical
arrogance, the annihilating flash of anger in the vindictive
glance of destroying Israel ; in a word, Jehovah is the ego of
Israel, which regards itself as the end and aim, the Lord of
Nature. Thus, in the power of Nature the Israelite celebrates
the power of Jehovah, and in the power of Jehovah the power
of his own self-consciousness. " Blessed he God ! God is our
help, God is our salvation." "Jehovah is my strength."
*' God himself hearkened to the word of Joshua, for Jehovah
himself fought for Israel." " Jehovah is a God of war."
If, in the course of time, the idea of Jehovah expanded itself
in individual minds, and his love was extended, as by the
writer of the book of Jonah, to man in general, this does not
belong to the essential character of the Israelitish religion.
The God of the fathers, to whom the most precious recollec
tions are attached, the ancient historical God, remains always
the foundation of a religion.*
* We may here observe, that certainly the admiration of the power and
glory of God in general, and so of Jehovah, as manifested in Nature, is in
fact, though not in the consciousness of the Israelite, only admiration of the
power and glory of Nature. (See, on this subject, P. Sayle, Ein
Beitrag, Sfc., p. 25 29.) But to prove this formally lies out of our
plan, since we here confine ourselves to Christianity, i. e., the adoration of
God in man (Deum colimus per Christum. Tertullian. Apolog. c, 21).
Nevertheless, the principle of this proof is stated in the present work.
THE MYSTERY OF PRAYER. 119
CHAPTER XII.
THE OMNIPOTENCE OF FEELING, OK THE MYSTERY
OF PEAYEE.
ISRAEL is the historical definition of the specific nature of the
religious consciousness, save only that here this consciousness
was circumscribed by the limits of a particular, a national in
terest. Hence, we need only let these limits fall, and we
have the Christian religion. Judaism is worldly Christianity;
Christianity, spiritual Judaism. The Christian religion is the
Jewish religion purified from national egoism, and yet at the
same time it is certainly another, a new religion; for every
reformation, every purification, produces especially in religious
matters, where even the trivial becomes important an essen
tial change. To the Jew, the Israelite was the mediator, the
bond between God and man ; in his relation to Jehovah he
relied on his character of Israelite ; Jehovah himself was
nothing else than the self-consciousness of Israel made
objective as the absolute being, the national conscience,
the universal law, the central point of the political system. *
If we let fall the limits of nationality, we obtain instead of
the Israelite man. As in Jehovah the Israelite personified
his national existence, so in God the Christian personified his
subjective human nature, freed from the limits of nationality.
As Israel made the wants of his national existence the law of
the world, as, under the dominance of these wants, he deified
even his political vindictiveness : so the Christian made the
requirements of human feeling the absolute powers and laws of
the world. The miracles of Christianity, which belong just as
essentially to its characterization, as the miracles of the Old
Testament to that of Judaism, have not the welfare of a nation
for their object, but the welfare of man : that is, indeed, only
of man considered as Christian; for Christianity, in contra-
* " The greater part of Hebrew poetry, which is often held to be only
spiritual, is political." Herder.
120 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
diction with the genuine universal human heart, recognised
man only under the condition, the limitation, of belief in
Christ. But this fatal limitation will be discussed further
on. Christianity has spiritualised the egoism of Judaism into
subjectivity (though even within Christianity this subjectivity
is again expressed as pure egoism), has changed the desire for
earthly happiness, the goal of the Israelitish religion, into the
longing for heavenly bliss, which is the goal of Christianity.
The highest idea, the God of a political community, of a
people whose political system expresses itself in the form of
religion, is Law, the consciousness of the law as an abso
lute divine power; the highest idea, the God of unpolitical,
unworldly feeling is Love ; the love which brings all the
treasures and glories in heaven and upon earth as an offering
to the beloved, the love whose law is the wish of the beloved
one, and whose power is the unlimited power of the imagination,
of intellectual miracle-working.
God is the Love that satisfies our wishes, our emotional
wants; he is himself the realized wish of the heart, the
wish exalted to the certainty of its fulfilment, of its reality,
to that undoubting certainty before which no contradiction of
the understanding, no difficulty of experience or of the ex
ternal world maintains its ground. Certainty is the highest
power for man ; that which is certain to him is the essential,
the divine. " God is love : " this, the supreme dictum of Chris
tianity, only expresses the certainty which human feeling has
of itself, as the alone essential, i.e., absolute divine power,
the certainty that the inmost wishes of the heart have objective
validity and reality, that there are 110 limits, no positive
obstacles to human feeling, that the whole world, with all its
pomp and glory, is nothing weighed against human feeling.
God is love: that is, feeling is the God of man, nay, God
absolutely, the Absolute Being. God is the nature of human
feeling, unlimited, pure feeling, made objective. God is the
optative of the human heart transformed into the tempus
finitum,tlie certain, blissful "is," the unrestricted omnipotence
of feeling, prayer hearing itself, feeling perceiving itself, the
echo of our cry of anguish. Pain must give itself utterance ;
involuntarily the artist seizes the lute, that he may breathe out
his sufferings in its tones. He soothes his sorrow by making
it audible to himself, by making it objective ; he lightens the
burden which weighs upon his heart, by communicating
THE MYSTERY OF PRAYER. 121
it to the air, by making his sorrow a general existence. But
nature listens not to the plaints of man, it is callous to his
sorrows. Hence man turns away from Nature, from all visible
objects. He turns within, that here, sheltered and hidden
from the inexorable powers, he may find audience for his
griefs. Here he utters his oppressive secrets ; here he gives
vent to his stifled sighs. This open-air of the heart, this
outspoken secret, this uttered sorrow of the soul, is God.
God is a tear of love, shed in the deepest concealment, over
human misery. " God is an unutterable sigh, lying in the
depths of the heart;"* this saying is the most remarkable,
the profoundest, truest expression of Christian mysticism.
The ultimate essence of religion is revealed by the simplest
act of religion prayer ; an act which implies at least as much
as the dogma of the Incarnation, although religious specula
tion stands amazed at this, as the greatest of mysteries. Not,
certainly, the prayer before and after meals, the ritual of
animal egoism, but the prayer pregnant with sorrow, the prayer
of disconsolate love, the prayer which expresses the power of
the heart that crushes man to the ground, the prayer which
begins in despair and ends in rapture.
In prayer, man addresses God with the word of intimate
affection Thou ; he thus declares articulately that God is
his alter ego; he confesses to God as the being nearest to him,
his most secret thoughts, his deepest wishes, which otherwise
he shrinks from uttering. But he expresses these wishes in
the confidence, in the certainty that they will be fulfilled.
How could he apply to a being that had no ear for his com
plaints ? Thus what is prayer but the wish of the heart
expressed with confidence in its fulfilment ? f what else is the
* Sebastian Frank vonWord in Zinkgrefs Apophthegm ata deutscher Nation.
f It would be an imbecile objection, to say that God fulfils only those
wishes, those prayers, which are uttered in his name, or in the interest of
the church of Christ, in short, only the wishes which are accordant with
his will; for the will of God is the will of man, or rather God has the
power, man the will : God makes men happy, but man wills that he may
be happy. A particular wish may not be granted ; but that is of no con
sequence, if only the species, the essential tendency is accepted. The pious
soul whose pra} r er has failed, consoles himself, therefore, by thinking that its
fulfilment would not have been salutary for him. " Nullo igitur modo vota
aut preces sunt irritse aut infrugiferse et recte dicitur, in petitione rerum
corporalium aliquando Deum exaudire nos, non ad voluntatem nostram,
sed ad salutem." Oratio de Precatione, in Declamat. Melancthonis, T. iii.
G
122 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
being that fulfils these wishes but human affection, the human
soul, giving ear to itself, approving itself, unhesitatingly affirm
ing itself ? The man who does not exclude from his mind the
idea of the world, the idea that everything here must be sought
intermediately, that every effect has its natural cause, that a
wish is only to be attained when it is made an end and the
corresponding means are put into operation such a man does
not pray : he only works ; he transforms his attainable wishes
into objects of real activity; other wishes which he recognises
as purely subjective, he denies, or regards as simply subjective,
pious aspirations. In other words, he limits, he conditionates his
being by the world, as a member of which he conceives him
self; he bounds his wishes by the idea of necessity. In prayer,
on the contrary, man excludes from his mind the world, and
with it all thoughts of intermediateness and dependence ; he
makes his wishes the concerns of his heart, objects of the
independent, omnipotent, absolute being, i.e., he affirms them
without limitation. God is the affirmation* of human feeling ;
prayer is the unconditional confidence of human feeling in
the absolute identity of the subjective and objective, the
certainty that the power of the heart is greater than the power
of Nature, that the heart's need is absolute necessity, the Fate
of the world. Prayer alters the course of Nature ; it determines
God to bring forth an effect in contradiction with the laws of
Nature. Prayer is the absolute relation of the human heart to
itself, to its own nature; in prayer, man forgets that there
exists a limit to his wishes, and is happy in this forgetfulness.
Prayer is the self-division of man into two beings, a dialogue
of man with himself, with his heart. It is essential to the
effectiveness of prayer that it be audibly, intelligibly, energeti
cally expressed. Involuntarily prayer wells forth in sound ;
the struggling heart bursts the barrier of the closed lips. But
audible prayer is only prayer revealing its nature ; prayer is
virtually, if not actually, speech, the Latin word oratio sig
nifies both ; in prayer, man speaks undisguisedly of that which
weighs upon him, which affects him closely; he makes his
heart objective; hence the moral power of prayer. Concen
tration, it is said, is the condition of prayer : but it is more
than a condition ; prayer is itself concentration, the dismissal
of all distracting ideas, of all disturbing influences from with-
* Ja-wort.
THE MYSTERY OF PRAYER. 123
out, retirement within oneself, in order to have relation only
with one's own being. Only a trusting, open, hearty, fervent
prayer is said to help ; but this help lies in the prayer itself.
As everywhere in religion the subjective, the secondary, the con-
ditionating, is theprima causa, the objective fact ; so here, these
subjective qualities are the objective nature of prayer itself.*
It is an extremely superficial view of prayer to regard it as
an expression of the sense of dependence. It certainly ex
presses such a sense, but the dependence is that of man on his
own heart, on his own feeling. He who feels himself only
dependent, does not open his mouth in prayer; the sense of
dependence robs him of the desire, the courage for it ; for the
sense of dependence is the sense of need. Prayer has its root
rather in the unconditional trust of the heart, untroubled by
all thought of compulsive need, that its concerns are objects
of the absolute Being, that the almighty, infinite nature of
the Father of men, is a sympathetic, tender, loving nature, and
that thus the dearest, most sacred emotions of man are divine
realities. But the child does not feel itself dependent on the
father as a father ; rather, he has in the father the feeling of
his own strength, the consciousness of his own worth, the
guarantee of his existence, the certainty of the fulfilment of
his wishes ; on the father rests the burden of care ; the child,
on the contrary, lives careless and happy in reliance on the
father, his visible guardian spirit, who desires nothing but the
child's welfare and happiness. The father makes the child an
end, and himself the means of its existence. The child, in
asking something of its father, does not apply to him as a
being distinct from itself, a master, a person in general, but
it applies to him in so far as he is dependent on, and determined
by his paternal feeling, his love for his child. f The entreaty is
* Also, on subjective grounds, social prayer is more effectual than
isolated prayer. Community enhances the force of emotion, heightens
confidence. What we are unable to do alone, we are able to do with others.
The sense of solitude is the sense of limitation : the sense of community is
the sense of freedom. Hence it is that men, when threatened hy the de
structive powers of nature, crowd together. " Multorum preces impossibile
est,utnonimpetrent, inquit Ambrosius Sanctse orationis fervor quanto
inter plures collectior tanto ardet diutius ac intensius cor divinum penetrat
Negatur singularitati, quod conceditur charitati." Sacra Hist,
de Gentis Hebr. ortu. P. Paul. Mezger. Aug. Vind. 1700, pp. 668, 669.
f In the excellent work, Theanthropos, eine Reihe von Aphorismen
(Zurich, 1838), the idea of the sense of dependence, of omnipotence, of
prayer, and of love, is admirably developed.
G 2
124 THE ESSENCE OF CHEISTIANITY.
only an expression of the force which the child exercises over
the father ; if, indeed, the word force is appropriate here, since
the force of the child is nothing more than the force of the
father's own heart. Speech has the same form hoth for entreaty
and command, namely, the imperative. And the imperative
of love has infinitely more power than that of despotism.
Love does not command ; love needs hut gently to intimate
its wishes, to be certain of their fulfilment ; the despot must
throw compulsion even into the tones of his voice in order to
make other beings, in themselves uncaring for him, the execu
tors of his wishes. The imperative of love works with electro
magnetic power; that of despotism with the mechanical power of
a wooden telegraph. The most intimate epithet of God in prayer
is the word "Father," the most intimate, because in it man
is in relation to the absolute nature as to his own ; the word
Father is the expression of the closest, the most intense identity,
the expression in which lies the pledge that my wishes will
"be fulfilled, the guarantee of my salvation. The omnipotence
to which man turns in prayer is nothing but the Omnipotence
of Goodness, which, for the sake of the salvation of man,
makes the impossible possible; is, in truth, nothing else than
the omnipotence of the heart, of feeling, which breaks through
all the limits of the understanding, which soars above all the
boundaries of Nature, which wills that there be nothing else than
feeling, nothing that contradicts the heart. Faith in omnipo
tence is faith in the unreality of the external world, of objec
tivity, faith in the absolute reality of man's emotional nature :
the essence of omnipotence is simply the essence of feeling.
Omnipotence is the power before which no law, no external
condition, avails or subsists ; but this power is the emo
tional nature, which feels every determination, every law, to be
a limit, a restraint, and for that reason dismisses it. Omni
potence does nothing more than accomplish the will of the
feelings. In prayer man turns to the Omnipotence of Good
ness- which simply means, that in prayer man adores his
own heart, regards his own feelings as absolute.
THE MYSTERY OF FAITH. 125
CHAPTER XIII.
THE MYSTERY OF FAITH THE MYSTERY OF MIRACLE.
FAITH in the power of prayer and only where a power, an
objective power, is ascribed to it, is prayer still a religious
t ru th, is identical with faith in miraculous power; and
faith in miracles is identical with the essence of faith in
general. Faith alone prays ; the prayer of faith is alone
effectual. But faith is nothing else than confidence in the
reality of the subjective in opposition to the limitations or
laws of nature and reason, that is, of natural reason. The
specific object of faith therefore is miracle; faith is the belief
in miracle ; faith and miracle are absolutely inseparable. That
which is objectively miracle, or miraculous power, is subjec
tively faith ; miracle is the outward aspect of faith, faith the
inward soul of miracle ; faith is the miracle of mind, the miracle
of feeling, which merely becomes objective in external miracles.
To faith nothing is impossible, and miracle only gives actuality
to this omnipotence of faith : miracles are but a visible ex
ample of what faith can effect. Unlimitedness, supernaturalness,
exaltation of feeling, transcendence is therefore the essence
of faith. Faith has reference only to things which, in con
tradiction with the limits or laws of Nature and reason,
give objective reality to human feelings and human desires.
Faith unfetters the wishes of subjectivity from the bonds of
natural reason ; it confers what nature and reason deny ; hence
it makes man happy, for it satisfies his most personal wishes.
And true faith is discomposed by no doubt. Doubt arises only
where I go out of myself, overstep the bounds of my personality,
concede reality and a right of suffrage to that which is distinct
from myself; where I know myself to be a subjective, i.e., a
limited being, and seek to widen my limits by admitting things
external to myself. But in faith the very principle of doubt is
annulled; for to faith the subjective is in and by itself the
objective nay, the absolute. Faith is nothing else than belief
in the absolute reality of subjectivity.
126 THE ESSENCE OF CHEISTIANITY.
"Faith is that courage in the heart which trusts for all good
to God. Such a faith, in which the heart places its reliance
on God alone, is enjoined by God in the first commandment,
where he says, I am the Lord thy God That is, I alone
will he thy God, thou shalt seek no other God ; I will help
thee out of all trouble. Thou shalt not think that I am an
enemy to thee, and will not help thee. When thou thinkest
so, thou makest me in thine heart into another God than I
am. Wherefore hold it for certain that I am willing to be
merciful to thee." " As thou behavest thyself, so does God
behave. If thou thinkest that he is angry with thee, He is
angry; if thou thinkest that He is unmerciful, and will cast
thee into hell, He is so. As thou believest of God, so is
He to thee." " If thou believest it, thou hast it ; but if thou
believest not, thou hast none of it." " Therefore, as we be
lieve, so does it happen to us. If we regard him as our God,
He will not be our devil. But if we regard him not as our
God, then truly he is not our God, but must be a consuming
fire." "By unbelief we make God a devil."* Thus, if I believe in
a God, I have a God, i.e., faith in God is the God of man. If
God is such, whatever it may be, as I believe Him, what else is
the nature of God than the nature of faith ? Is it possible for
thee to believe in a God who regards thee favourably, if thou
dost not regard thyself favourably, if thou despairest of man,
if he is nothing to thee ? What else then is the being of God
but the being of man, the absolute self-love of man ? If thou
believest that God is for thee, thou believest that nothing is or
can be against thee, that nothing contradicts thee. But if
thou believest that nothing is or can be against thee, thou be
lievest what ? nothing less than that thou art God.f That
God is another being is only illusion, only imagination. In
declaring that God is for thee, thou declares! that he is thy
own being. What then is faith but the infinite self- certainty
of man, the undoubting certainty that his own subjective being
is the objective, absolute being, the being of beings?
* Luther (T. xv. p. 282. T. xvi. pp. 491493).
f " God is Almig"
jhty; but he who believes, is a God." Luther
(in Chr. Kapps Christus u. die Weltgesckichte, s. 11). In another place
Luther calls faith the "Creator of the Godhead;" it is true that he
immediately adds, as he must necessarily do on his stand-point, the
following limitation : " Not that it creates anything in the divine, eternal
Being, but that it creates that Being in us." (T. xi. p. 161.)
THE MYSTERY OF FAITH. 127
Faith does not limit itself by the idea of a world, a universe,
a necessity. For faith there is nothing but God, i.e., limitless
subjectivity. Where faith rises the world sinks, nay, has
already sunk into nothing. Faith in the real annihilation of
the world in an immediately approaching, a mentally present
annihilation of this world, a world antagonistic to the wishes
of the Christian, is therefore a phenomenon belonging to the
inmost essence of Christianity ; a faith which is not properly
separable from the other elements of Christian belief, and with
the renunciation of which, true, positive Christianity is
renounced and denied.* The essence of faith, as may be
confirmed by an examination of its objects down to the
minutest speciality, is the idea that that which man wishes
actually is : he wishes to be immortal, therefore he is
immortal ; he wishes for the existence of a being who can
do everything which is impossible to Nature and reason,
therefore such a being exists ; he wishes for a world which
corresponds to the desires of the heart, a world of unlimited
subjectivity, i.e., of unperturbed feeling, of uninterrupted bliss,
while nevertheless there exists a world the opposite of that
subjective one, and hence this world must pass away,
as necessarily pass away as God, or absolute subjectivity,
must remain. Faith, love, hope, are the Christian Trinity.
Hope has relation to the fulfilment of the promises, the wishes
which are not yet fulfilled, but which are to be fulfilled ; love
has relation to the Being who gives and fulfils these promises ;
faith to the promises, the wishes, which are already fulfilled,
which are historical facts.
Miracle is an essential object of Christianity, an essential
* This belief is so essential to the Bible, that without it the biblical
writers can scarcely be understood. The passage, 2 Pet. iii. 8, as is
evident from the tenor of the whole chapter, says nothing in opposition to
an immediate destruction of the world ; for though with the Lord a thou
sand years are as one day, yet at the same time one day is as a thousand
years, and therefore the world may, even by to-morrow, no longer exist.
That in the Bible a very near end of the world is expected and prophesied,
although the day and hour are not determined, only falsehood or blindness
can deny. See on this subject Lutzelberger. Hence religious Christians,
in almost all times, have believed that the destruction of the world is near
at hand Luther, for example, often says that " the last day is not far off,"
(e. g. T. xvi. p. 26) ; or at least their souls have longed for the end of
the world, though they have prudently left it undecided whether it be near
or distant. See Augustin (de Fine Sseculi ad Hesychium, c. 13).
128 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
article of faith. But what is miracle ? A supranaturalistic
wish realized nothing more. The apostle Paul illustrates the
nature of Christian faith by the example of Abraham. Abraham
could not, in a natural way, ever hope for posterity ; Jehovah
nevertheless promised it to him out of special favour ; and
Abraham believed in spite of Nature. Hence this faith was
reckoned to him as righteousness, as merit ; for it implies
great force of subjectivity to accept as certain something in
contradiction with experience, at least with rational, normal
experience. But what was the object of this divine promise ?
Posterity : the object of a human wish. And in what did
Abraham believe when he believed in Jehovah ? In a Being
who can do everything, and can fulfil all wishes. " Is any
thing too hard for the Lord ?"*
But why do we go so far back as to Abraham ? We have
the most striking examples much nearer to us. Miracle feeds the
hungry, cures men born blind, deaf, and lame, rescues from
fatal diseases, and even raises the dead at the prayer of rela
tives. Thus it satisfies human wishes, and wishes which,
though not always intrinsically like the wish for the restoration
of the dead, yet in so far as they appeal to miraculous power,
to miraculous aid, are transcendental, supranaturalistic. But
miracle is distinguished from that mode of satisfying human
wishes and needs which is in accordance with Nature and
reason, in this respect, that it satisfies the wishes of men in a
way corresponding to the nature of wishes in the most desir
able way. Wishes own no restraint, no law, no time ; they
would be fulfilled without delay on the instant. And behold !
miracle is as rapid as a wish is impatient. Miraculous power
realizes human wishes in a moment, at one stroke, without any
hindrance. That the sick should become well is no miracle ;
but that they should become so immediately, at a mere word of
command, that is the mystery of miracle. Thus it is not in
its product or object that miraculous agency is distinguished
from the agency of nature and reason, but only in its mode
and process ; for if miraculous power were to effect something
absolutely new, never before beheld, never conceived, or not
even conceivable, it would be practically proved to be an essen
tially different, and at the same time objective agency. But the
* Gen. xviii. 14.
THE MYSTERY OF FAITH. 129
agency which in essence, in substance, is natural and accord
ant with the forms of the senses, and which is supernatural,
supersensual, only in the mode or process, is the agency of
the imagination. The power of miracle is therefore nothing
else than the power of the imagination.
Miraculous agency, is agency directed to an end. The
yearning after the departed Lazarus, the desire of his relatives
to possess him again, was the motive of the miraculous resus
citation; the satisfaction of this wish, the end. It is true that
the miracle happened " for the glory of God, that the Son of
God might he glorified thereby ; " but the message sent to the
Master by the sisters of Lazarus, "Behold, he whom thou
lovest, is sick," and the tears which Jesus shed, vindicate for
the miracle a human origin and end. The meaning is : to that
power which can awaken the dead, no human wish is impossible
to accomplish.* And the glory of the Son consists in this : that
he is acknowledged and reverenced as the being who is able to
do what man is unable, but wishes to do. Activity towards an
end, is well known to describe a circle : in the end it returns
upon its beginning. But miraculous agency is distinguished
from the ordinary realization of an object, in that it realizes the
end without means, that it effects an immediate identity of the
wish and its fulfilment ; that consequently it describes a circle,
not in a curved, but in a straight line, that is, the shortest line.
A circle in a straight line is the mathematical symbol of miracle.
The attempt to construct a circle with a straight line, would
not be more ridiculous than the attempt to deduce miracle
philosophically. To reason, miracle is absurd, inconceivable ;
as inconceivable as wooden iron, or a circle without a periphery.
Before it is discussed whether a miracle can happen, let it be
shown that miracle, i.e., the inconceivable, is conceivable.
* " To the whole world it is impossible to raise the dead, but to the Lord
Christ, not only is it not impossible, but it is no trouble or labour to him.
.... This Christ did as a witness and a sign, that he can and will raise
from death. He does it not at all times and to every one It is
enough that he has done it a few times ; the rest he leaves to the last day."
Luther (T. xvi. p. 518). The positive, essential significance of miracle
is therefore that the divine nature is the human nature. Miracles con
firm, authenticate doctrine. What doctrine ? Simply this, that God is a
Saviour of men, their Redeemer out of all trouble, i. e., a being corre
sponding to the wants and wishes of man, and therefore a human being.
What the God-man declares in words, miracle demonstrates ad oculos by
deeds.
G3
130 THE ESSENCE OF CHEISTIANITY.
What suggests to man the notion that miracle is conceivable
is, that miracle is represented as an event perceptible by the
senses, and hence man cheats his reason by material images
which screen the contradiction. The miracle of the turning of
water into wine, for example, implies in fact nothing else than
that water is wine, nothing else than that two absolutely con
tradictory predicates or subjects are identical ; for in the hand
of the miracle-worker there is no distinction between the two
substances ; the transformation is only the visible appearance
of this identity of two contradictories. But the transformation
conceals the contradiction, because the natural conception of
change is interposed. Here, however, is no gradual, no natural,
or, so to speak, organic change ; but an absolute, immaterial
one; a pure creatio ex nihilo. In the mysterious and mo
mentous act of miraculous power, in the act which constitutes
the miracle, water is suddenly and imperceptibly wine : which
is equivalent to saying that iron is wood, or wooden iron.
The miraculous act and miracle is only a transient act is
therefore not an object of thought, for it nullifies the very
principle of thought; but it is just as little an object of sense,
an object of real or even possible experience. Water is indeed
an object of sense, and wine also; I first see water, and then
wine; but the miracle itself, that which makes this water
suddenly wine, this, not being a natural process, but a pure
perfect without any antecedent imperfect, without any modus,
without way or means, is no object of real, or even of possible
experience. Miracle is a thing of the imagination ; and on that
very account is it so agreeable : for the imagination is the
faculty which alone corresponds to personal feeling, because it
sets aside all limits, all laws which are painful to the feelings,
and thus makes objective to man the immediate, absolutely
unlimited satisfaction of his subjective wishes.* Accordance
with subjective inclination, is the essential characteristic of
miracle. It is true that miracle produces also an awful,
agitating impression, so far as it expresses a power which
nothing can resist, the power of the imagination. But this
impression lies only in the transient miraculous act; the abiding,
* This satisfaction is certainly so far limited, that it is united to religion,
to faith in God : a remark which however is so obvious as to be super
fluous. But this limitation is in fact no limitation, for God himself is
unlimited, absolutely satisfied, self-contented human feeling.
THE MYSTERY OF FAITH. 131
essential impression is the agreeable one. At the moment in
which the beloved Lazarus is raised up, the surrounding rela
tives and friends are awe-struck at the extraordinary, almighty
power which transforms the dead into the living ; but soon the
relatives fall into the arms of the risen one, and lead him with
tears of joy to his home, there to celebrate a festival of rejoicing.
Miracle springs out of feeling, and has its end in feeling.
Even in the traditional representation it does not deny its origin ;
the representation which gratifies the feelings is alone the ade
quate one. Who can fail to recognise in the narrative of the
resurrection of Lazarus, the tender, pleasing, legendary tone?*
Miracle is agreeable, because, as has been said, it satisfies the
wishes of man without labour, without effort. Labour is unim-
passioned, unbelieving, rationalistic ; for man here makes his
existence dependent on activity directed to an end, which acti
vity again is itself determined solely by the idea of the objective
world. But feeling does not at all trouble itself about the
objective world; it does not go out of or beyond itself; it is
happy in itself. The element of culture, the northern principle
of self-renunciation, is wanting to the emotional nature. The
Apostles and Evangelists were no scientifically cultivated men.
Culture, in general, is nothing else than the exaltation of the
individual above his subjectivity to objective universal ideas, to
the contemplation of the world. The Apostles were men of the
people ; the people live only in themselves, in their feelings :
therefore Christianity took possession of the people. Vox
populi vox Dei. Did Christianity conquer a single philosopher,
historian, or poet, of the classical period ? The philosophers
who went over to Christianity were feeble, contemptible philo
sophers. All who had yet the classic spirit in them were
hostile, or at least indifferent to Christianity. The decline of
culture was identical with the victory of Christianity. The
classic spirit, the spirit of culture, limits itself by laws, not
indeed by arbitrary, finite laws, but by inherently true and valid
ones ; it is determined by the necessity, the truth of the nature
of things ; in a word, it is the objective spirit. In place of this,
* The legends of Catholicism of course only the best, the really
pleasing ones are, as it were, only the echo of the key-note which
predominates in this New Testament narrative. Miracle might be fitly
defined as religious humour. Catholicism especially has developed miracle
on this its humorous side.
132 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
there entered with Christianity the principle of unlimited,
extravagant, fanatical, supranaturalistic subjectivity ; a prin
ciple intrinsically opposed to that of science, of culture.* With
Christianity man lost the capability of conceiving himself as a
part of Nature, of the universe. As long as true, unfeigned, un-
falsified, uncompromising Christianity existed, as long as Chris
tianity was a living, practical truth, so long did real miracles
happen ; and they necessarily happened, for faith in dead,
historical, past miracles is itself a dead faith, the first step
towards unbelief, or rather the first and therefore the timid,
uncandid, servile mode in which unbelief in miracle finds vent.
But where miracles happen, all definite forms melt in the golden
haze of imagination and feeling ; there the world, reality, is no
truth; there the miracle-working, emotional, i.e., subjective
being, is held to be alone the objective, real being.
To the merely emotional man the imagination is immediately,
without his willing or knowing it, the highest, the dominant
activity ; and being the highest, it is the activity of God, the
creative activity. To him feeling is an immediate truth and
reality ; he cannot abstract himself from his feelings, he cannot
get beyond them : and equally real is his imagination. The
imagination is not to him what it is to us men of active under
standing, who distinguish it as subjective from objective cog
nition; it is immediately identical with himself, with his
feelings, and since it is identical with his being, it is his
essential, objective, necessary view of things. For us, indeed,
imagination is an arbitrary activity ; but where man has not
imbibed the principle of culture, of theory, where he lives and
moves only in his feelings, the imagination is an immediate,
involuntary activity.
The explanation of miracles by feeling and imagination is
regarded by many in the present day as superficial. But let
any one transport himself to the time when living, present
miracles were believed in ; when the reality of things without
us was as yet no sacred article of faith ; when men were so
void of any theoretic interest in the world, that they from day
* Culture in the sense in which it is here taken. It is highly charac
teristic of Christianity, and a popular proof of our positions, that the only
language in which the Divine Spirit was and is held to reveal himself in
Christianity, is not the language of a Sophocles or a Plato, of art and
philosophy, but the vague, unformed, crudely emotional language of the
THE MYSTERY OF FAITH. 183
to day looked forward to its destruction ; when they lived only
in the rapturous prospect and hope of heaven, that is, in the
imagination of it (for whatever heaven may he, for them, so
long as they were on earth, it existed only in the imagination) ;
when this imagination was not a fiction hut a truth, nay, the
eternal, alone abiding truth, not an inert, idle source of conso
lation, but a practical moral principle determining actions, a
principle to which men joyfully sacrificed real life, the real
world with all its glories; let him transport himself to
those times and he must himself be very superficial to pro
nounce the psychological genesis of miracles superficial.
It is no valid objection that miracles have happened, or are
supposed to have happened, in the presence of whole as
semblies : no man was independent, all were filled with exalted
supranaturalistic ideas and feelings ; all were animated by the
same faith, the same hope, the same hallucinations. And who
does not know that there are common or similar dreams, common
or similar visions, especially among impassioned individuals
who are closely united and restricted to their own circle ? But
be that as it may. If the explanation of miracles by feeling
and imagination is superficial, the charge of superficiality falls
not on the explainer but on that which he explains, namely,
on miracle ; for, seen in clear daylight, miracle presents abso
lutely nothing else than the sorcery of the imagination, which
satisfies without contradiction all the wishes of the heart.*
* Many miracles may really have had originally a physical or physiolo
gical phenomenon as their foundation. But we are here considering only
the religious significance and genesis of miracle.
THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
CHAPTEE XIV.
THE MYSTEEY OF THE RESUKRECTION AND OF THE
MIRACULOUS CONCEPTION.
THE quality of being agreeable to subjective inclination belongs
not only to practical miracles, in which it is conspicuous, as
they have immediate reference to the interest or wish of the
human individual ; it belongs also to theoretical, or more pro
perly dogmatic miracles, and hence to the Kesurrection and
the Miraculous Conception.
Man, at least in a state of ordinary well-being, has the wish
not to die. This wish is originally identical with the instinct
of self-preservation. Whatever lives seeks to maintain itself,
to continue alive, and consequently not to die. Subsequently,
when reflection and feeling are developed under the urgency of
life, especially of social and political life, this primary negative
wish becomes the positive wish for a life, and that a better life,
after death. But this wish involves the further wish for the
certainty of its fulfilment. Reason can afford no such certainty.
It has therefore been said that all proofs of immortality are
insufficient, and even that unassisted reason is not capable of
apprehending it, still less of proving it. And with justice ; for
reason furnishes only general proofs ; it cannot give the cer
tainty of any personal immortality, and it is precisely this
certainty which is desired. Such a certainty requires an im
mediate personal assurance, a practical demonstration. This
can only be given to me by the fact of a dead person, whose
death has been previously certified, rising again from the grave ;
and he must be no indifferent person, but on the contrary the
type and representative of all others, so that his resurrection
also may be the type, the guarantee of theirs. The resurrec
tion of Christ is therefore the satisfied desire of man for an
immediate certainty of his personal existence after death,
personal immortality as a sensible, indubitable fact.
Immortality was with the heathen philosophers a question in
THE MYSTERY OF THE RESURRECTION. IS 5
which the personal interest was only a collateral point. They
concerned themselves chiefly with the nature of the soul, of
mind, of the vital principle. The immortality of the vital prin
ciple by no means involves the idea, not to mention the
certainty, of personal immortality. Hence the vagueness,
discrepancy, and dubiousness with which the ancients express
themselves on this subject. The Christians, on the contrary,
in the undoubting certainty that their personal, self-flattering
wishes will be fulfilled, i.e., in the certainty of the divine nature
of their emotions, the truth and unassailableness of their sub
jective feelings, converted that which to the ancients was a
theoretic problem, into an immediate fact, converted a theo
retic, and in itself open question, into a matter of conscience,
the denial of which was equivalent to the high treason of
atheism. He who denies the resurrection denies the resurrec
tion of Christ, but he who denies the resurrection of Christ
denies Christ himself, and he who denies Christ denies God.
Thus did " spiritual" Christianity unspiritualize what was
spiritual ! To the Christians the immortality of the reason, of
the soul, was far too abstract and negative ; they had at heart
only a personal immortality, such as would gratify their feel
ings ; and the guarantee of this lies in a bodily resurrection
alone. The resurrection of the body is the highest triumph of
Christianity over the sublime, but certainly abstract spirituality
and objectivity of the ancients. For this reason the idea of the
resurrection could never be assimilated by the pagan mind.
As the Resurrection, which terminates the sacred history,
(to the Christian not a mere history, but the truth itself,)
is a realized wish, so also is that which commences it, namely,
the Miraculous Conception, though this has relation not so
much to an immediately personal interest as to a particular
subjective feeling.
The more man alienates himself from Nature, the more sub
jective, i.e., supranatural, or antinatural, is his view of things,
the greater the horror he has of Nature, or at least of those na
tural objects and processes which displease his imagination,
which affect him disagreeably.* The free, objective man
* " If Adam had not fallen into sin, nothing would have been known of
the cruelty of wolves, lions, bears, &c., and there would not have been in
all creation anything vexatious and dangerous to man . . . . ; no thorns, or
thistles, or diseases .... j his brow would not have been wrinkled ; no foot, or
136 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
doubtless finds things repugnant and distasteful in Nature, but
he regards them as natural, inevitable results, and under this
conviction he subdues his feeling as a merely subjective and
untrue one. On the contrary, the subjective man, who lives
only in the feelings and imagination, regards these things
with a quite peculiar aversion. He has the eye of that unhappy
foundling, who even in looking at the loveliest flower could pay
attention only to the little " black beetle," which crawled over
it, and who by this perversity of perception had his enjoyment
in the sight of flowers always embittered. Moreover, the subjec
tive man makes his feelings the measure, the standard of what
ought to be. That which does not please him, which offends
his transcendental, supranatural, or antinatural feelings, ought
not to be. Even if that which pleases him cannot exist with
out being associated with that which displeases him, the sub
jective man is not guided by the wearisome laws of logic and
physics but by the self-will of the imagination ; hence he drops
what is disagreeable in a fact, and holds fast alone what is
agreeable. Thus the idea of the pure, holy Virgin pleases him;
still he is also pleased with the idea of the Mother, but only
of the Mother who already carries the infant on her arms.
Virginity in itself is to him the highest moral idea, the
cornu copies of his supranaturalistic feelings and ideas, his
personified sense of honour and of shame before common
nature.* Nevertheless, there stirs in his bosom a natural
feeling also, the compassionate feeling which makes the Mother
hand, or other member of the body would have been feeble or infirm." " But
now, since the Fall, we all know and feel what a fury lurks in our flesh,
which not only burns and rages with lust and desire, but also loathes, when
once "* obtained, the very thing it has desired. But this is the fault of
original sin, which has polluted all creatures ; wherefore I believe that
before the Fall the sun was much brighter, water much clearer, and the
land much richer, and fuller of all sorts of plants." Luther (T. i. s. 322,
323, 329, 337).
* " Tantum denique abest incesti cupido, ut nonnullis rubori sit etiam
pudica conjunctio." M. Felicis, Oct. c. 31. One Father was so extraordi
narily chaste that he had never seen a woman's face, nay, he dreaded even
touching himself, "se quoque ipsum attingere quodammodo horrebat."
Another Father had so fine an olfactory sense in this matter, that on the
approach of an unchaste person he perceived an insupportable odour.
Bayle (Diet. Art. Mariana Rem. C.). But the supreme, the divine
Srinciple of this hyperphysical delicacy, is the Virgin Mary; hence the
atholics name her Virginum Gloria, Virginitatis corona, Virginitatis
typus et forma puritatis, Virginum vexillifera, Virginitatis magistra,
Virginum prima, Virginitatis primiceria.
THE MYSTERY OF THE RESURRECTION. 137
beloved. What then is to be done in this difficulty of the
heart, in this conflict between a natural and a supranatural
feeling ? The supranaturalist must unite the two, must com
prise in one and the same subject two predicates which exclude
each other.* what a plenitude of agreeable, sweet, super-
sensual, sensual emotions lies in this combination ?
Here we have the key to the contradiction in Catholicism,
that at the same time marriage is holy, and celibacy is holy.
This simply realizes, as a practical contradiction, the dogmatic
contradiction of the Virgin Mother. But this wondrous union
of virginity and maternity, contradicting nature and reason,
but in the highest degree accordant with the feelings and
imagination, is no product of Catholicism ; it lies already in
the twofold part which marriage plays in the Bible, especially
in the view of the Apostle Paul. The supernatural conception
of Christ is a fundamental doctrine of Christianity, a doctrine
which expresses its inmost dogmatic essence, and which rests
on the same foundation as all other miracles and articles
of faith. As death, which the philosopher, the man of
science, the free objective thinker in general, accepts as a
natural necessity, and as indeed all the limits of nature,
which are impediments to feeling, but to reason are rational laws,
were repugnant to the Christians, and were set aside by them
through the supposed agency of miraculous power ; so, neces
sarily, they had an equal repugnance to the natural process of
generation, and superseded it by miracle. The Miraculous
Conception is not less welcome than the Resurrection, to all
believers ; for it was the first step towards the purification of
mankind, polluted by sin and Nature. Only because the God-
man was not infected with original sin, could he, the pure one,
purify mankind in the eyes of God, to whom the natural
process of generation was an object of aversion, because he
himself is nothing else but supranatural feeling.
Even the arid Protestant orthodoxy, so arbitrary in its
criticism, regarded the conception of the God-producing
Virgin, as a great, adorable, amazing, holy mystery of faith,
transcending reason. f But with the Protestants, who confined
* " Salve sancta parens, enixa puerpera Kegem,
Gaudia matris habens cum virginitatis honore."
Theol. Schol. Mezger. t. iv. p. 132.
f See e. g. J. D. Winckler, Philolog. Lactant. s. Brunsvigae, 1754, pp.
247254.
138 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
the speciality of the Christian to the domain of faith, and with
whom, in life, it was allowable to he a man, even this mystery
had only a dogmatic, and no longer a practical significance ;
they did not allow it to interfere with their desire of marriage.
With the Catholics, and with all the old, uncompromising,
uncritical Christians, that which was a mystery of faith, was a
mystery of life, of morality.* Catholic morality is Christian,
mystical ; Protestant morality was, in its very beginning, ra
tionalistic. Protestant morality is, and was, a carnal mingling
of the Christian with the man, the natural, political, civil,
social man, or whatever else he may be called in distinction
from the Christian ; Catholic morality cherished in its heart
the mystery of the unspotted virginity. Catholic morality was
the Mater dolorosa ; Protestant morality a comely, fruitful
matron. Protestantism is from beginning to end the con
tradiction between faith and love ; for which very reason it has
been the source, or at least the condition, of freedom. Just
because the mystery of the Virgo Deipara had with the Pro
testants a place only in theory, or rather in dogma, and no
longer in practice, they declared that it was impossible to
express oneself with sufficient care and reserve concerning it,
and that it ought not to be made an object of speculation.
That which is denied in practice has no true basis and dura
bility in man, is a mere spectre of the mind ; and hence it is
withdrawn from the investigation of the understanding. Ghosts
no not brook daylight.
Even the later doctrine, (which, however, had been already
enunciated in a letter to St. Bernard, who rejects it,) that
Mary herself was conceived without taint of original sin, is by
no means a " strange school-bred doctrine," as it is called by
a modern historian. That which gives birth to a miracle,
which brings forth God, must itself be of miraculous, divine
origin, or nature. How could Mary have had the honour of
being overshadowed by the Holy Ghost, if she had not been
from the first pure ? Could the Holy Ghost take up his
abode in a body polluted by original sin ? If the principle of
Christianity, the miraculous birth of the Saviour, does not
appear strange to you, why think strange the naive, well-
meaning inferences of Catholicism ?
* See on this subject Pkilos. und Christenthum, by L. Feuerbach.
THE MYSTERY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHRIST. 139
CHAPTER XV.
THE MYSTERY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHRIST, OR THE
PERSONAL GOD.
THE fundamental dogmas of Christianity are realized wishes
of the heart ; the essence of Christianity is the essence of hu
man feeling. It is pleasanter to be passive than to act, to be
redeemed and made free by another than to free oneself; plea
santer to make one's salvation dependent on a person than on
the force of one's own spontaneity ; pleasanter to set before
oneself an object of love than an object of effort; pleasanter to
know oneself beloved by God than merely to have that simple,
natural self-love which is innate in all beings ; pleasanter to
see oneself imaged in the love-beaming eyes of another personal
being, than to look into the concave mirror of self, or into the
cold depths of the ocean of Nature ; pleasanter, in short, to
allow oneself to be acted on by one's own feeling as by another,
but yet fundamentally identical being, than to regulate oneself
by reason. Feeling is the oblique case of the ego, the ego in
the accusative. The ego of Fichte is destitute of feeling,
because the accusative is the same as the nominative, because
it is indeclinable. But feeling or sentiment is the ego acted
on by itself, and by itself as another being, the passive ego.
Feeling changes the active in man into the passive, and the
passive into the active. To feeling, that which thinks is the
thing thought, and the thing thought is that which thinks.
Feeling is the dream of Nature ; and there is nothing more
blissful, nothing more profound than dreaming. But what is
dreaming ? The reversing of the waking consciousness. In
dreaming, the active is the passive, the passive the active ; in
dreaming, I take the spontaneous action of my own mind for
an action upon me from without, my emotions for events, my
conceptions and sensations for true existences apart from
myself. I suffer what I also perform. Dreaming is a double
refraction of the rays of light; hence its indescribable charm.
It is the same ego, the same being in dreaming as in waking ;
140 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
the only distinction is, that in waking, the ego acts on itself;
whereas in dreaming, it is acted on by itself as by another being.
I think myself is a passionless, rationalistic position ; I am
thought by God, and think myself only as thought by God
is a position pregnant with feeling, religious. Feeling is a
dream with the eyes open ; religion the dream of waking con
sciousness : dreaming is the key to the mysteries of religion.
The highest law of feeling is the immediate unity of will and
deed, of wishing and reality. This law is fulfilled by the
Redeemer. As external miracles, in opposition to natural ac
tivity, realize immediately the physical wants and wishes of
man ; so the Redeemer, the Mediator, the God-man, in opposi
tion to the moral spontaneity of the natural or rationalistic
man, satisfies immediately the inward moral wants and wishes,
since he dispenses man on his own side from any intermediate
activity. What thou wishest is already effected. Thou desirest
to win, to deserve happiness. Morality is the condition, the
means of happiness. But thou canst not fulfil this condition ;
that is, in truth, thou needest not. That which thou seekest to
do has already been done. Thou hast only to be passive, thou
needest only believe, only enjoy. Thou desirest to make God
favourable to thee, to appease his anger, to be at peace with thy
conscience. But this peace exists already ; this peace is the
Mediator, the God-man. He is thy appeased conscience ; he
is the fulfilment of the law, and therewith the fulfilment of thy
own wish and effort.
Therefore it is no longer the law, but the fulfiller of the law,
who is the model, the guiding thread, the rule of thy life. He
who fulfils the law, annuls the law. The law has authority, has
validity, only in relation to him who violates it. But he who
perfectly fulfils the law, says to it : What thou wiliest I spon
taneously will, and what thou commandest I enforce by deeds ;
my life is the true, the living law. The fulfiller of the law,
therefore, necessarily steps into the place of the law ; moreover
he becomes a new law, one whose yoke is light and easy. For
in place of the merely imperative law, he presents himself as an
example, as an object of love, of admiration and emulation, and
thus becomes the Saviour from sin. The law does not give
me the power to fulfil the law; no ! it is hard and merciless;
it only commands, without troubling itself whether I can fulfil
it, or how I am to fulfil it ; it leaves me to myself, without
counsel or aid. But he who presents himself to me as an ex-
THE MYSTERY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHRIST.
ample, lights up my path, takes me by the hand, and imparts
to me his own strength. The law lends no power of resisting
sin, hut example works miracles. The law is dead ; but ex
ample animates, inspires, carries men involuntarily along with
it. The law speaks only to the understanding, and sets itself
directly in opposition to the instincts ; example, on the con
trary, appeals to a powerful instinct immediately connected
with the activity of the senses, that of involuntary imitation.
Example operates on the feelings and imagination. In short,
example has magical, i. e., sense-affecting powers ; for the ma
gical or involuntary force of attraction, is an essential property
as of matter in general, so in particular of that which affects
the senses.
The ancients said, that if virtue could become visible, its
beauty would win and inspire all hearts. The Christians were
so happy as to see even this wish fulfilled The heathens had
an unwritten, the Jews a written law; the Christians had a
model a visible, personal, living law, a law made flesh. Hence
the joyfulness especially of the primitive Christians, hence the
glory of Christianity that it alone contains and bestows the
power to resist sin. And this glory is not to be denied it.
Only it is to be observed that the power of the exemplar of
virtue is not so much the power of virtue as the power of ex
ample in general, just as the power of religious music is not
the power of religion, but the power of music;* and that
therefore, though the image of virtue has virtuous actions as
its consequences, these actions are destitute of the dispositions
and motives of virtue. But this simple and true sense of the
redeeming and reconciling power of example in distinction
from the power of law, to which we have reduced the antithesis
of the law and Christ, by no means expresses the full religious
significance of the Christian redemption and reconciliation.
In this, everything reduces itself to the personal power of that
miraculous intermediate being who is neither God alone nor
man alone, but a man who is also God, and a God who is also
* In relation to this, the confession of Augustine is interesting. " Ita
fluctuo inter periculum voluptatis et experimentum salubritatis : magisque
adducor . . . cantandi consuetudinem approbare in ecclesia, ut per oblecta-
menta aurium innrmior animus in affectum pietatis assurgat, Tamen cum
mihi accidit, ut nos amplius cantus, quam res quae canitur moveat,
prenaliter me peccare confiteor." Confess. 1. x. c. 33.
THE ESSENCE OF CHEISTIANITY.
man, and who can therefore only be comprehended in connec
tion with the significance of miracle. In this, the miraculous
Kedeemer is nothing else than the realized wish of feeling to
he free from the laws of morality, i.e., from the conditions to
which virtue is united in the natural course of things ; the
realized wish to he freed from moral evils instantaneously,
immediately, by a stroke of magic, that is, in an absolutely
subjective, agreeable way. " The word of God," says Luther,
for example, " accomplishes all things swiftly, brings forgive
ness of sins, and gives tliee eternal life, and costs nothing
more than that thou shouldst hear the word, and when thou
hast heard it shouldst believe. If thou believest, thou hast
it without pains, cost, delay, or difficulty."* But that hearing
of the word of God, which is followed by faith, is itself a " gift
of God." Thus faith is nothing else than a psychological
miracle, a supernatural operation of God in man, as Luther
likewise says. But man becomes free from sin and from the
consciousness of guilt only through faith, morality is depen
dent on faith, the virtues of the heathens are only splendid
sins; thus he becomes morally free and good only through
miracle.
That the idea of miraculous power is one with the idea of the
intermediate being, at once divine and human, has historical
proof in the fact that the miracles of the Old Testament, the
delivery of the law, Providence all the elements which
constitute the essence of religion, were in the later Judaism
attributed to the Logos. In Philo, however, this Logos still
hovers in the air between heaven and earth, now as abstract,
now as concrete ; that is, Philo vacillates between himself as a
philosopher and himself as a religious Israelite, between the
positive element of religion and the metaphysical idea of deity ;
but in such a way that even the abstract element is with him
more or less invested with imaginative forms. In Christianity
this Logos first attained perfect consistence, i.e., religion now
concentrated itself exclusively on that element, that object,
which is the basis of its essential difference. The Logos is the
personified essence of religion. Hence the definition of God
as the essence of feeling, has its complete truth only in the
Logos.
Th. xvi. p. 490.
THE -MYSTEKY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHRIST. 143
God as God is feeling as yet shut up, hidden; only Christ
is the unclosed, open feeling or heart. In Christ feeling is
first perfectly certain of itself, and assured heyond doubt of the
truth and divinity of its own nature; for Christ denies nothing
to feeling ; he fulfils all its prayers. In God the soul is still
silent as to what affects it most closely, it only sighs ; hut in
Christ it speaks out fully ; here it has no longer any reserves.
To him who only sighs, wishes are still attended with disqui
etude ; he rather complains that what he wishes is not, than
openly, positively declares what he wishes ; he is still in doubt
whether his wishes have the force of law. But in Christ, all
anxiety of the soul vanishes; he is the sighing soul passed
into a song of triumph over its complete satisfaction ; he is the
joyful certainty of feeling that its wishes hidden in God have
truth and reality, the actual victory over death, over all the
powers of the world and Nature, the resurrection no longer
merely hoped for, but already accomplished ; he is the heart
released from all oppressive limits, from all sufferings, the soul
in perfect blessedness, the Godhead made visible.*
To see God is the highest wish, the highest triumph of the
heart. Christ is this wish, this triumph, fulfilled. God, as an
object of thought only, i.e., God as God, is always a remote
being ; the relation to him is an abstract one, like that relation
of friendship in which we stand to a man who is distant from
us, and personally unknown to us. However his works, the
proofs of love which he gives us, may make his nature present
to us, there always remains an unfilled void, the heart is un
satisfied, we long to see him. So long as we have not met a
being face to face, we are always in doubt whether he be
really such as we imagine him ; actual presence alone gives.
* " Because God has given us his Son, he has with him given us every
thing, whether it be called devil, sin, hell, heaven, righteousness, life ; all,
all must be ours, because the Son is ours as a gift, in whom all else is
included." Luther (T. xv. p. 311). " The best part of the resurrection
has already happened ; Christ, the head of all Christendom, has passed
through death, and risen from the dead. Moreover, the most excellent
part of me, my soul, has likewise passed through death, and is with Christ
in the heavenly being. What harm, then, can death and the grave do
me?" Luther (T. xvi. p. 235). "A Christian man has equal power
with Christ, has fellowship with him and a common tenure. (T. xiii.
p. 648.) " Whoever cleaves to Christ, has as much as he." (T. xvi.
p. 574)
144 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY;
final confidence, perfect repose. Christ is God known per
sonally ; Christ, therefore, is the blessed certainty that God is
what the soul desires and needs him to be. God, as the object
of prayer, is indeed already a human being, since he sympa
thizes with human misery, grants human wishes ; but still he
is not yet an object to the religious consciousness as a real
man. Hence, only in Christ is the last wish of religion
realized, the mystery of religious feeling solved : solved how
ever in the language of imagery proper to religion, for what
God is in essence, that Christ is in actual appearance. So far
the Christian religion may justly be called the absolute religion.
That God, who in himself is nothing else than the nature of
man, should also have a real existence as such, should be as
man an object to the consciousness this is the goal of reli
gion. And this the Christian religion has attained in the in
carnation of God, which is by no means a transitory act, for
Christ remains man even after his ascension, man in heart
and man in form, only that his body is no longer an earthly
one, liable to suffering.
The incarnations of the Deity with the orientals the Hin
doos for example, have no such intense meaning as the Chris
tian incarnation ; just because they happen often they become
indifferent, they lose their value. The manhood of God is his
personality ; the proposition, God is a personal being, means :
God is a human being, God is a man. Personality is an ab
straction, which has reality only in an actual man.* The idea
which lies at the foundation of the incarnations of God is
therefore infinitely better conveyed by one incarnation, one
personality. Where God appears in several persons succes
sively, these personalities are evanescent. What is required is a
permanent, an exclusive personality. Where there are many
incarnations, room is given for innumerable others ; the ima
gination is not restrained ; and even those incarnations w T hich
are already real pass into the category of the merely possible
and conceivable, into the category of fancies, or of mere ap
pearances. But where one personality is exclusively believed
* This exhibits clearly the untruthfulness and vanity of the modern
speculations concerning the personality of God. If you are not ashamed
of a personal God, do not be ashamed of a corporeal God. An abstract
colourless personality, a personality without flesh and blood, is an empty
shade.
THE MYSTEKY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHRIST. 145
in and contemplated, this at once impresses with the power of
an historical personality ; imagination is done away with, the
freedom to imagine others is renounced. This one personality
presses on me the belief in its reality. The characteristic
of real personality is precisely exclusiveness, the Leibnitzian
principle of distinction, namely, that no one existence is ex
actly like another. The tone, the emphasis, with which the
one personality is expressed, produces such an effect on the
feelings, that it presents itself immediately as a real one, and
is converted from an object of the imagination into an object
of historical knowledge.
Longing is the necessity of feeling ; and feeling longs
for a personal God. But this longing after the personality
of God is true, earnest, and profound, only when it is the
longing for one personality, when it is satisfied with one.
With the plurality of persons, the truth of the want vanishes,
and personality becomes a mere luxury of the imagination.
But that w T hich operates with the force of necessity, operates
with the force of reality on man. That which to the feelings
is a necessary being, is to them immediately a real being.
Longing says: There must be a personal God, i. e., it cannot
be that there is not; satisfied feeling says: He is. The guaran
tee of his existence lies for feeling in its sense of the necessity
of his existence ; the necessity of the satisfaction in the force
of the want. Necessity knows no law besides itself ; necessity
breaks iron. Feeling knows no other necessity than its own,
than the necessity of feeling, than longing ; it holds in extreme
horror the necessity of Nature, the necessity of reason. Thus
to feeling, a subjective, sympathetic, personal God is neces
sary; but it demands one personality alone, and this an
historical, real one. Only when it is satisfied in the unity
of personality has feeling any concentration ; plurality dissi
pates it.
But as the truth of personality is unity, and as the truth
of unity is reality, so the truth of real personality is blood.
The last proof, announced with peculiar emphasis by the author
of the fourth gospel, that the visible person of God was no
phantasm, no illusion, but a real man, is, that blood flowed
from his side on the cross. If the personal God has a true
sympathy with distress, he must himself suffer distress. Only
in his suffering lies the assurance of his reality ; only on this
H
146 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
depends the impress! veness of the incarnation. To see God
does not satisfy feeling ; the eyes give no sufficient guarantee.
The truth of vision is confirmed only by touch. But as sub
jectively touch, so objectively the capability of being touched,
palpability, passibility, is the last criterion of reality ; hence
the passion of Christ is the highest confidence, the highest
self- enjoyment, the highest consolation of feeling; for only
in the blood of Christ is the thirst for a personal, that is, a
human, sympathizing, tender God, allayed.
" Wherefore we hold it to be a pernicious error when such
(namely, divine) majesty is taken away from Christ according
to his manhood, thereby depriving Christians of their highest
consolation, which they have in .... the promise of the
presence of their Head, King and High Priest, who has pro
mised them that not his mere Godhead, which to us poor
sinners is as a consuming fire to dry stubble, but He, He, the
Man who has spoken with us, who has proved all sorrows in
the human form which he took upon him, who therefore can
have fellow-feeling with us as his brethren, that He will
be with us in all our need, according to the nature whereby he
is our brother, and we are flesh of his flesh."*
It is superficial to say that Christianity is not the religion of
one personal God, but of three personalities. These three
personalities have certainly an existence in dogma ; but even
there the personality of the Holy Spirit is only an arbitrary
decision which is contradicted by impersonal definitions, as for
example that the Holy Spirit is the gift of the Father and
Son.f Already the very "procession" of the Holy Ghost pre
sents an evil prognostic for his personality, for a personal
being is produced only by generation, not by an indefinite
emanation or by spiratio. And even the Father, as the repre
sentative of the rigorous idea of the Godhead, is a personal
being only according to opinion and assertion, not according
to his definitions : he is an abstract idea, a purely rationalistic
being. Only Christ is the plastic personality. To personality
belongs form; form is the reality of personality. Christ alone
is the personal God ; he is the real God of Christians, a truth
* Concordienb. Erklar. Art. 8.
f This was excellently shown by Faustus Socinus. See his Defcns.
Animadv. in Assert. Theol. Coll. Posnan. de trino et uno Deo. Irenopoli,
1656. c. 11.
THE MYSTERY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHRIST. 147
which cannot he too often repeated.* In him alone is concen
trated the Christian religion, the essence of religion in general.
He alone meets the longing for a personal God ; he alone is an
existence identical with the nature of feeling ; on him alone
are heaped all the joys of the imagination, and all the suffer
ings of the heart; in him alone are feeling and imagination
exhausted. Christ is the "blending in one of feeling and
imagination.
Christianity is distinguished from other religions hy this,
that in other religions the heart and imagination are divided,
in Christianity they coincide. Here the imagination does not
wander, left to itself; it follows the leadings of the heart; it
describes a circle, whose centre is feeling. Imagination is here
limited by the wants of the heart, it only realizes the wishes of
feeling, it has reference only to the one thing needful ; in brief,
it has, at least generally, a practical, concentric tendency, not a
vagrant, merely poetic one. The miracles of Christianity
no product of free, spontaneous activity, but conceived in the
bosom of yearning, necessitous feeling place us immediately
on the ground of common, real life ; they act on the emotional
man with irresistible force, because they have the necessity of
feeling on their side. The power of imagination is here
at the same time the power of the heart, imagination is
only the victorious, triumphant heart. With the orientals,
with the Greeks, imagination, untroubled by the wants of the
heart, revelled in the enjoyment of earthly splendour and
* Let the reader examine, with, reference to this, the writings of the
Christian orthodox theologians against the heterodox ; for example, against
the Socinians. Modern theologians, indeed, agree with the latter, as is well
known, in pronouncing the divinity of Christ as accepted by the Church
to be unbiblical ; but it is undeniably the characteristic principle of Chris
tianity, and even if it does not stand in the Bible in the form which is
fiven to it by dogma, it is nevertheless a necessary consequence of what is
>und in the Bible. A being who is the fulness of the godhead bodily,
who is omniscient (John xvi. 30) and almighty (raises the dead, works
miracles), who is before all things, both in time and rank, who has life in
himself (though an imparted life) like as the father has life in himself,
what, if we follow out the consequences, can such a being be, but God ?
" Christ is one with the Father in will ; " but unity of will presup
poses unity of nature. " Christ is the ambassador, the representative of
God ;" but God can only be represented by a divine being. I can only
choose as my representative one in whom I find the same or similar quali
ties as in myself; otherwise I belie myself.
H 2
148 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
glory; in Christianity, it descended from the palace of the gods
into the abode of poverty, where only want rules, it humbled
itself under the sway of the heart. But the more it limited
itself in extent, the more intense became its strength. The
wantonness of the Olympian gods could not maintain itself
before the rigorous necessity of the heart ; but imagination is
omnipotent when it has a bond of union with the heart. And
this bond between the freedom of the imagination and the
necessity of the heart is Christ. All things are subject to
Christ ; he is the Lord of the world who does with it what He
will : but this unlimited power over Nature is itself again
subject to the power of the heart; Christ commands raging
Nature to be still, but only that he may hear the sighs of the
needy.
CHRISTIANITY AND HEATHENISM. 149
CHAPTER XVI.
THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN CHRISTIANITY AND
HEATHENISM.
CHRIST is the omnipotence of subjectivity, the heart released
from all the bonds and laws of Nature, the soul excluding the
world, and concentrated only on itself, the reality of all the
heart's wishes, the Easter festival of the heart, the ascent to
heaven of the imagination t Christ therefore is the distinc
tion of Christianity from Heathenism.
In Christianity, man w r as concentrated only on himself, he
unlinked himself from the chain of sequences in the system
of the universe, he made himself a self-sufficing whole, an
absolute, extra - and supramundane being. Because he no
longer regarded himself as a being immanent in the world,
because he severed himself from connexion with it, he felt him
self an unlimited being (for the sole limit of subjectivity is
the world, is objectivity), he had no longer any reason to doubt
the truth and validity of his subjective wishes and feelings.
The heathens, on the contrary, not shutting out Nature
by retreating within themselves, limited their subjectivity by
the contemplation of the world. Highly as the ancients esti
mated the intelligence, the reason, they were yet liberal and
objective enough, theoretically as well as practically to allow
that which they distinguished from mind, namely, matter, to
live, and even to live eternally ; the Christians evinced their
theoretical as well as practical intolerance in their belief that
they secured the eternity of their subjective life, only by anni
hilating, as in the doctrine of the destruction of the world, the
opposite of subjectivity Nature. The ancients were free from
themselves, but their freedom w T as that of indifference towards
themselves ; the Christians were free from Nature, but their
freedom was not that of reason, not true freedom, which limits
itself by the contemplation of the world, by Nature, it was
the freedom of feeling and imagination, the freedom of miracle.
The ancients w r ere so enraptured by the Cosmos, that they lost
sight of themselves, suffered themselves to be merged in the
150 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
whole ; the Christians despised the world ; what is the creature
compared with the Creator ? what are sun, moon, and earth,
compared with the human soul?* The world passes away,
but man, nay, the individual, personal man is eternal. If the
Christians severed man from all community with Nature, and
hence fell into the extreme of an arrogant fastidiousness, which
stigmatized the remotest comparison of man with the brutes as
an impious violation of human dignity ; the heathens, on the
other hand, fell into the opposite extreme, into that spirit of
depreciation which abolishes the distinction between man and
the brute, or even, as was the case, for example, with Celsus,
the opponent of Christianity, degrades man beneath the
brute.
But the heathens considered man not only in connexion
with the universe ; they considered the individual man, in con
nexion with other men, as member of a commonwealth. They
rigorously distinguished the individual from the species, the
individual as a part from the race as a whole, and they subor
dinated the part to the whole. Men pass away, but mankind
remains, says a heathen philosopher. " Why wilt thou grieve
over the loss of thy daughter?" writes Sulpicius to Cicero.
" Great, renowned cities and empires have passed away, and
thou behavest thus at the death of an ho-munculus, a little
human being ! Where is thy philosophy ?" The idea of man
as an individual was to the ancients a secondary one, attained
through the idea of the species. Though they thought highly
of the race, highly of the excellences of mankind, highly and
sublimely of the intelligence, they nevertheless thought slightly
of the individual. Christianity, on the contrary, cared nothing
for the species, and had only the individual in its eye and
mind. Christianity not, certainly, the Christianity of the
present day, which has incorporated with itself the cul
ture of heathenism, and has preserved only the name and
some general positions of Christianity is the direct opposite
of heathenism, and only when it is regarded as such is it truly
comprehended, nnd untravestied by arbitrary speculative inter
pretation ; it is true so far as its opposite is false, and
* " How much better is it, that I should lose the whole world than that
I should lose God, who created the world, and can create innumerable
worlds, who is better than a hundred thousand, than innumerable worlds ?
For what sort of a comparison is that of the temporal with the etrril ?
One soul is better than the whole world." Luther (T. xix. p. 21).
CHRISTIANITY AND HEATHENISM. 151
false so far as its opposite is true. The ancients sacrificed
the individual to the species ; the Christians sacrificed the
species to the individual. Or, heathenism conceived the indi
vidual only as a part in distinction from the whole of the
species ; Christianity, on the contrary, conceived the individual
only in immediate, undistinguishable unity with the species.
To Christianity the individual was the object of an immediate
Providence, that is, an immediate object of the Divine Being.
The heathens believed in a Providence for the individual, only
through his relation to the race, through law, through the order
of the world, and thus only in a mediate, natural, and not mira
culous Providence;* but the Christians left out the intermediate
process, and placed themselves in immediate connexion with
the prescient, all-embracing, universal Being ; i.e., they imme
diately identified the individual with the universal being.
But the idea of deity coincides with the idea of humanity.
All divine attributes, all the attributes which make God God,
are attributes of the species attributes, which in the indivi
dual are limited, but the limits of which are abolished in the
essence of the species, and even in its existence, in so far as
it has its complete existence only in all men taken toge
ther. My knowledge, my will, is limited ; but my limit is not
the limit of another man, to say nothing of mankind ; what is
difficult to me is easy to another; what is impossible, incon
ceivable, to one age, is to the coming age conceivable and
possible. My life is bound to a limited time ; not so the life of
humanity. The history of mankind consists of nothing else
than a continuous and progressive conquest of limits, which
at a given time pass for the limits of humanity, and there
fore for absolute insurmountable limits. But the future
always unveils the fact, that the alleged limits of the species
were only limits of individuals. The most striking proofs oi
this are presented by the history of philosophy and of physical
science. It would be highly interesting and instructive to
write a history of the sciences entirely from this point of view,
in order to exhibit in all its vanity the presumptuous notion of
the individual that he can set limits to his race. Thus the
species is unlimited ; the individual alone limited.
* It is true that the heathen philosophers also, as Plato, Socrates, the
Stidbs (see e. g. J. Lipsius, Physiol. Stoic. 1. i. diss. xi.), believed that the
divine Providence extended not merely to the general, but also to the par-
152 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
But the sense of limitation is painful, and hence the
individual frees himself from it by the contemplation of the
perfect Being ; in this contemplation he possesses what other
wise is wanting to him. With the Christians God is nothing
else than the immediate unity of species and individuality, of the
universal and individual being. God is the idea of the species
as an individual the idea or essence of the species, which as
a species, as universal being, as the totality of all perfections,
of all attributes or realities, freed from all the limits which exist
in the consciousness and feeling of the individual, is at the
same time again an individual, personal being. Ipse suum esse
est. Essence and existence are in God identical ; which means
nothing else than that he is the idea, the essence of the species,
conceived immediately as an existence, an individual. The
highest idea on the stand-point of religion is : God does not
love, he is himself love ; he does not live, he is life ; he is
not just, but justice itself; not a person, but personality
itself, the species, the idea, as immediately a concrete ex
istence.*
Because of this immediate unity of the species with indivi
duality, this concentration of all that is universal and real in
one personal being, God is a deeply moving object, enrapturing
to the imagination ; whereas, the idea of humanity has little
power over the feelings, because humanity is only an abstrac
tion ; and the reality which presents itself to us in distinction
from this abstraction, is the multitude of separate, limited indi
viduals. In God, on the contrary, feeling has immediate satis
faction, because here all is embraced in one, i. e., because here
the species has an immediate existence, is an individuality.
God is love, is justice, as itself a subject; he is the perfect
universal being as one being, the infinite extension of the species
as an all- comprehending unity. But God is only man's intui
tion of his own nature ; thus the Christians are distinguished
ticular, the individual ; but they identified Providence with Nature, Law,
Necessity. The Stoics, who were the orthodox speculatists of heathenism,
did indeed believe in miracles wrought by Providence (Cic. de Nat. Deor. 1.
ii. and de Divinat. 1. i.) ; but their miracles had no such supranaturalistic
significance as those of Christianity, though they also appealed to the supra-
naturalistic axiom : " Nihil est quod Deus efficere non possit."
* " Dicimur amare et Deus ; dicimur nosse et Deus. Et multa in hunc
modum. Sed Deus amat ut charitas, novit ut veritas etc." Bernard, (de
Consider. 1. v.).
CHRISTIANITY AND HEATHENISM. ] 53
from .the heathens in this, that they immediately identify the
individual with the species that with them the individual has
the significance of the species, the individual by himself is held
to he the perfect representative of the species that they deify
the human individual, make him the absolute being.
Especially characteristic is the difference between Christianity
and Heathenism concerning the relation of the individual to the
intelligence, to the understanding, to the VOVQ. The Christians
individualized the understanding, the heathens made it a uni
versal essence. To the heathens, the understanding, the
intelligence, was the essence of man ; to the Christians, it was
only a part of themselves. To the heathens therefore only
the intelligence, the species, to the Christians the individual,
was immortal, i. e. divine. Hence follows the further difference
between heathen and Christian philosophy.
The most unequivocal expression, the characteristic symbol
of this immediate identity of the species and individuality in
Christianity, is Christ, the real God of the Christians. Christ
is the ideal of humanity become existent, the compendium of
all moral and divine perfections to the exclusion of all that is
negative ; pure, heavenly, sinless man, the typical man, the
Adam Kadmon ; not regarded as the totality of the species, of
mankind, but immediately as one individual, one person.
Christ, i. e., the Christian, religious Christ, is therefore not the
central, but the terminal point of history. The Christians
expected the end of the world, the close of history. In the
Bible, Christ himself, in spite of all the falsities and sophisms
of our exegetists, clearly prophesies the speedy end of the world.
History rests only on the distinction of the individual from the
race. Where this distinction ceases, history ceases ; the very
soul of history is extinct. Nothing remains to man but the
contemplation and appropriation of this realized Ideal, and the
spirit of proselytism, which seeks to extend the prevalence of a
fixed belief, the preaching that God has appeared, and that
the end of the world is at hand.
Since the immediate identity of the species and the indi
vidual oversteps the limits of reason and Nature, it followed of
course that this universal, ideal individual was declared to be
a transcendent, supernatural, heavenly being. It is therefore
a perversity to attempt to deduce from reason the immediate
identity of the species and individual, for it is only the ima
gination which effects this identity, the imagination to which
H3
THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
nothing is impossible, and which is also the creator of miracles ;
for the greatest of miracles is the being who while he is an
individual is at the same time the ideal, the species, humanity
in the fulness of its perfection and infinity, i. e., the Godhead.
Hence it is also a perversity to adhere to the biblical or
dogmatic Christ, and yet to thrust aside miracles. If the prin
ciple be retained, wherefore deny its necessary consequences?
The total absence of the idea of the species in Christianity
is especially observable in its characteristic doctrine of the
universal sinfulness of men. For there lies at the foundation
of this doctrine the demand that the individual shall not be an
individual, a demand which again is based on the presupposi
tion that the individual by himself is a perfect being, is by
himself the adequate presentation or existence of the species.*
Here is entirely wanting the objective perception, the con
sciousness, that the tlwu belongs to the perfection of the /,
that men are required to constitute humanity, that only men
taken together are what man should and can be. All men are
sinners. Granted : but they are not all sinners in the same
way ; on the contrary, there exists a great and essential differ
ence between them. One man is inclined to falsehood, another
is not ; he would rather give up his life than break his word
or tell a lie ; the third has a propensity to intoxication, the
fourth to licentiousness ; while the fifth, whether by favour of
Nature, or from the energy of his character, exhibits none
of these vices. Thus, in the moral as well as the physical
and intellectual elements, men compensate for each other, so
that taken as a whole they are as they should be, they present
the perfect man.
Hence intercourse ameliorates and elevates ; involuntarily
and without disguise, man is different in intercourse from what
he is when alone. Love especially works wonders, and the love
of the sexes most of all. Man and woman are the complement
of each other, and thus united they first present the species,
* It is true that in one sense the individual is the absolute in the
phraseology of Leibnitz, the mirror of the universe, of the infinite. But in
so far as there are many individuals, each is only a single and, as such, a
finite mirror of the infinite. It is true also, in opposition to the abstraction
of a sinless man, that each individual regarded in himself is perfect, and
only by comparison imperfect, for each is what alone he can be.
CHKISTIANITY AND HEATHENISM. 155
the perfect man.* Without species, love is inconceivable.
Love is nothing else than the self-consciousness of the species
as evolved within the difference of sex. In love, the reality of
the species, which otherwise is only a thing of reason, an ohject
of mere thought, becomes a matter of feeling, a truth of feeling ;
for in love, man declares himself unsatisfied in his individuality
taken by itself, he postulates the existence of another as a need
of the heart ; he reckons another as part of his own being ; he
declares the life which he has through love to be the truly
human life, corresponding to the idea of man, i.e., of the species.
The individual is defective, imperfect, weak, needy ; but love
is strong, perfect, contented, tree from wants, self-sufficing,
infinite ; because in it the self- consciousness of the individuality
is the mysterious self-consciousness of the perfection of the
race. But this result of love is produced by friendship also,
at least where it is intense, where it is a religion, f as it was
with the ancients. Friends compensate for each other ; friend
ship is a means of virtue, and more : it is itself virtue,
dependent however on participation. Friendship can only exist
between the virtuous, as the ancients said. But it cannot be
based on perfect similarity; on the contrary, it requires diversity,
for friendship rests on a desire for self-completion. One friend
obtains through the other what he does not himself possess.
The virtues of the one atone for the failings of the other.
Friend justifies friend before God. However faulty a man may
be, it is a proof that there is a germ of good in him if he has
worthy men for his friends. If I cannot be myself perfect, I
yet at least love virtue, perfection in others. If therefore I
am called to account for any sins, weaknesses and faults, I
interpose as advocates, as mediators, the virtues of my friend.
How barbarous, how unreasonable would it be to condemn me
* With the Hindoos (Inst. of Menu) he alone is " a perfect man who
consists of three united persons, his wife, himself, and his son. For man
and wife, and father and son, are one." The Adam of the Old Testament
also is incomplete without woman; he feels his need of her. But the Adam
of the New Testament, the Christian, heavenly Adam, the Adam who is
constituted with a view to the destruction of this world, has no longer
any sexual impulses or functions.
f " Hse sane vires amicitise mortis contemptum ingenerare
potuerunt : quibus pene tantum venerationis, quantum Deorum immor-
talium ceremoniis debetur. Illis enim publica salus, his privata continetur."
Valerius Max. 1. iv. c, 7.
156 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
for sins which I doubtless have committed, but which I have
myself condemned, in loving my friends, who are free from
these sins !
But if friendship and love, which themselves are only sub
jective realizations of the species, make out of singly imperfect
beings an at least relatively perfect whole, how much more do
the sins and failings of individuals vanish in the species
itself, which has its adequate existence only in the sum total
of mankind, and is therefore only an object of reason ! Hence
the lamentation over sin is found only where the human in
dividual regards himself in his individuality as a perfect, com
plete being, not needing others for the realization of the
species, of the perfect man; where instead of the consciousness
of the species has been substituted the exclusive self-conscious
ness of the individual; where the individual does not recog
nise himself as a part of mankind, but identifies himself with the
species, and for this reason makes his oivn sins, limits and
weaknesses, the sins, limits and weaknesses of mankind in
general. Nevertheless man cannot lose the consciousness of
the species, for his self- consciousness is essentially united to his
consciousness of another than himself. Where therefore the
species is not an object to him as a species, it will be an object
to him as God. He supplies the absence of the idea of the
species by the idea of God, as the being who is free from the
limits and wants which oppress the individual, and, in his
opinion (since he identifies the species with the individual),
the species itself. But this perfect being, free from the limits
of the individual, is nothing else than the species, which
reveals the infinitude of its nature in this, that it is realized in
infinitely numerous and various individuals. If all men were
absolutely alike, there would then certainly be no distinction
between the race and the individual. But in that case the
existence of many men would be a pure superfluity ; a single
man would have achieved the ends of the species. In the one
who enjoyed the happiness of existence, all would have had
their complete substitute.
Doubtless the essence of man is one ; but this essence is
infinite ; its real existence is therefore an infinite, recipro
cally compensating variety, which reveals the riches of this
essence. Unity in essence is multiplicity in existence. Be
tween me and another human being and this other is the
representative of the species, even though he is only one, for
CHRISTIANITY AND HEATHENISM. 157
he supplies to me the want of many others, has for me a
universal significance, is the deputy of mankind, in whose
name he speaks to me, an isolated individual, so that, when
united only with one, I have a participated, a human life;
between me and another human heing there is an essential,
qualitative distinction. The other is my thou, the re
lation being reciprocal, my alter ego, man objective to me,
the revelation of my own nature, the eye seeing itself. In
another I first have the consciousness of humanity ; through
him I first learn, I first feel, that I am a man : in my love for
him it is first clear to me that he belongs to me and I to him,
that we two cannot be without each other, that only com
munity constitutes humanity. But morally, also, there is a
qualitative, critical distinction between the I and tliou.
My fellow-man is my objective conscience; he makes my
failings a reproach to me, even when he does not expressly
mention thenv he is my personified feeling of shame.
The consciousness of the moral law, of right, of propriety, of
truth itself, is indissolubly united with my consciousness
of another than myself. That is true in which another
agrees with me, agreement is the first criterion of truth; but
only because the species is the ultimate measure of truth.
That which I think only according to the standard of my
individuality, is not binding on another, it can be conceived
otherwise, it is an accidental, merely subjective view. But
that which I think according to the standard of the species,
I think as man in general only can think, and consequently as
every individual must think if he thinks normally, in accordance,
with law, and therefore truly. That is true which agrees with
the nature of the species, that is false which contradicts it.
There is no other rule of truth. But my fellow-man is to me
the representative of the species, the substitute of the rest, nay
his judgment may be of more authority with me than the
judgment of the innumerable multitude. Let the fanatic
make disciples as the sand on the sea-shore; the sand is
still sand; mine be the pearl a judicious friend. The
agreement of others is therefore my criterion of the normal-
ness, the universality, the truth of my thoughts. I cannot so
abstract myself from myself as to judge myself with perfect
freedom and disinterestedness; but another has an impartial
judgment; through him I correct, complete, extend my own
judgment, my own taste, my own knowledge. In short,
158 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
there is a qualitative, critical difference between men. But
Christianity extinguishes this qualitative distinction ; it sets the
same stamp on all men alike, and regards them as one and the
same individual, because it knows no distinction between the
species and the individual : it has one and the same means
of salvation for all men, it sees one and the same original
sin in all.
Because Christianity thus, from exaggerated subjectivity,
knows nothing of the species, in which alone lies the redemp
tion, the justification, the reconciliation and cure of the sins
and deficiencies of the individual, it needed a supernatural and
peculiar, nay a personal, subjective aid in order to overcome
sin. If I alone am the species, if no other, that is, no qualita
tively different men exist, or, which is the same thing, if
there is no distinction betweeen me and others, if we are all
perfectly alike, if my sins are not neutralized by the opposite
qualities of other men : then assuredly my sin is a blot of
shame which cries up to heaven ; a revolting horror which can
be exterminated only by extraordinary, superhuman, miraculous
means. Happily, however, there is a natural reconciliation.
My fellow-man is per se, the mediator between me and the
sacred idea of the species. Homo homini Deus est. My sin is
made to shrink within its limits, is thrust back into its nothing
ness, by the fact that it is only mine, and not that of my
fellows.
CELIBACY AND MOXACHISM. 159
CHAPTER XVII.
THE CHRISTIAN SIGNIFICANCE OF VOLUNTARY CELIBACY
AND MONACHISM.
THE idea of man as a species, and with it the significance of
the life of the species, of humanity as a whole, vanished as
Christianity became dominant. Herein we have a new con
firmation of the position advanced, that Christianity does not
contain within itself the principle of culture. Where man
immediately identifies the species with the individual, and
posits this identity as his highest being, as God, where the
idea of humanity is thus an object to him only as the idea of
Godhead, there the need of culture has vanished ; man has all
in himself, all in his God, consequently he has no need to
supply his own deficiencies by others as the representatives of
the species, or by the contemplation of the world generally;
and this need is alone the spring of culture. The individual
man attains his end by himself alone ; he attains it in God,
God is himself the attained goal, the realized highest aim of
humanity : but God is present to each individual separately.
God only is the want of the Christian ; others, the human race,
the world, are not necessary to him; he has not the inward need
of others. God fills to me the place of the species, of my fellow-
men ; yes, when I turn away from the world, when I am in
isolation, I first truly feel my need of God, I first have a
lively sense of his presence, I first feel what God is, and what
he ought to be to me. It is true that the religious man has
need also of fellowship, of edification in common ; but this
need of others is always in itself something extremely
subordinate. The salvation of the soul is the fundamental
idea, the main point in Christianity; and this salvation lies
only in God, only in the concentration of the mind on Him.
Activity for others is required, is a condition of salvation ; but
the ground of salvation is God, immediate reference in all
things to God. And even activity for others has only a religious
significance, has reference only to God, as its motive and end,
160 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
is essentially only an activity for God, for the glorifying of
his name, the spreading abroad of his praise. But God is
absolute subjectivity, subjectivity separated from the world,
above the world, set free from matter, severed from the life of
the species, and therefore from the distinction of sex. Separa
tion from the world, from matter, from the life of the species,
is therefore the essential aim of Christianity.* And this aim had
its visible, practical realization in Monachism.
It is a self-delusion to attempt to derive monachism from
the east. At least, if this derivation is to be accepted, they
who maintain it should be consistent enough to derive the
opposite tendency of Christendom, not from. Christianity, but
from the spirit of the western nations, the occidental nature in
general. But how, in that case, shall we explain the monastic
enthusiasm of the west ? Monachism must rather be derived
directly from Christianity itself: it was a necessary consequence
of the belief in heaven, promised to mankind by Christianity.
Where the heavenly life is a truth, the earthly life is a lie ; where
imagination is all, reality is nothing. To him who believes in
an eternal heavenly life, the present life loses its value, or
rather, it has already lost its value : belief in the heavenly life
is belief in the worthlessness and nothingness of this life. I
cannot represent to myself the future life without longing for
it, without casting down a look of compassion or contempt on
this pitiable earthly life, and the heavenly life can be no object,
no law of faith, without, at the same time, being a law of morality :
it must determine my actions, f at least if my life is to be in
accordance with my faith : I ought not to cleave to the tran
sitory things of this earth. I ought not ; but neither do I
wish ; for what are all things here below compared with the
glory of the heavenly life ?J
* " The life for God is not this natural life, which is subject to decay.
Ought we not then to sigh after future things, and be averse to all
these temporal things? .... Wherefore we should find consolation in
heartily despising this life and this world, and from our hearts sigh for and
desire the future honour and glory of eternal life." Luther (Th. i. s. 466,
467).
f "Eo dirigendus est spiritus, quo aliquando est iturus." Meditat.
Sacrse Joh. Gerhardi. Med. 46.
* " Affectanti coelestia, terrena non sapiunt. .ZEternis inhianti, fastidio
sunt transitoria." Bernard. (Epist. Ex persona Helire monachi ad parentes).
" Nihil nostra refert in hoc sevo, nisi de eo quam celeriter excedere." Ter-
tullian (Apol. adv. Gentes, c. 41). " Wherefore a Christian man should
CELIBACY AND MONACHISM. 161
It is true that the quality of that life depends on the quality,
the moral condition of this ; but morality is itself determined
hy the faith in eternal life. The morality corresponding to the
super- terrestrial life is simply separation from the world, the
negation of this life : and the practical attestation of this spi
ritual separation is the monastic life.* Everything must ulti
mately take an external form, must present itself to the senses.
An inward disposition must become an outward practice. The
life of the cloister, indeed ascetic life in general, is the heavenly
life as it is realized and can be realized here below. If my
soul belongs to heaven, ought I, nay, can I belong to the
earth with my body ? The soul animates the body. But if
the soul is in heaven, the body is forsaken, dead, and thus the
medium, the organ of connexion between the world and the
soul is annihilated. Death, the separation of the soul from
the body, at least from this gross, material, sinful body, is the
entrance into heaven. But if death is the condition of bless
edness and moral perfection, then necessarily mortification is
the one law of morality. Moral death is the necessary antici
pation of natural death ; I say necessary, for it would be the
extreme of immorality to attribute the obtaining of heaven to
physical death, which is no moral act, but a natural one com
mon to man and the brute. Death must therefore be exalted
into a moral, a spontaneous act. " I die daily," says the
apostle, and this dictum Saint Anthony, the founder of mona-
chism,f made the theme of his life.
But Christianity, it is contended, demanded only a spiritual
freedom. True ; but what is that spiritual freedom which does
not pass into action, which does not attest itself in practice?
Or dost thou believe that it only depends on thyself, on thy
will, on thy intention, whether thou be free from anything ?
If so, thou art greatly in error, and hast never experienced
what it is to be truly made free. So long as thou art in a
rather be advised to bear sickness with patience, yea, even to desire that
death should come, the sooner the better. For, as St. Cyprian says,
nothing is more for the advantage of a Christian, than soon to die. But
we rather listen to the pagan Juvenal, when he says : * Orandum est ut sit
mens sana in corpore sano.' " Luther (Th. iv. s. 15).
* " Ille perfectus est qui mente et corpore a seculo est elongatus." De
Modo bene Vivendi ad Sororem, s. vii. (Among the spurious writings of
St. Bernard.)
f On this subject see " Hieronymus, de Vita Pauli primi Eremitse."
162 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
given rank, profession, or relation, so long art thou, willingly
or not, determined by it. Thy will, thy determination, frees
thee only from conscious limitations and impressions, not from
the unconscious ones which lie in the nature of the case. Thus
we do not feel at home, we are under constraint, so long as we
are not locally, physically separated from one with whom we
have inwardly broken. External freedom is alone the full
truth of spiritual freedom. A man who has really lost spiritual
interest in earthly treasures, soon throws them out at window,
that his heart may be thoroughly at liberty. What I no longer
possess by inclination is a burden to me ; so away with it !
What affection has let go, the hand no longer holds fast. Only
affection gives force to the grasp; only affection makes pos
session sacred. He who having a wife is as though he had her
not, will do better to have no wife at all. To have as though
one had not, is to have without the disposition to have, is in
truth not to have. And therefore he who says, that one ought
to have a thing as though one had it not, merely says in a
subtle, covert, cautious way, that one ought not to have it at
all. That which I dismiss from my heart is no longer mine,
it is free as air. St. Anthony took the resolution to renounce
the world when he had once heard the saying, " If thou wilt
be perfect, go thy way, sell that thou hast and give to the
poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven; and come and
follow me." St. Anthony gave the only true interpretation of
this text. He went his way, and sold his possessions, and gave
the proceeds to the poor. Only thus did he prove his spiritual
freedom from the treasures of this world.*
Such freedom, such truth, is certainly in contradiction with
the Christianity of the present day, according to which the
Lord has required only a spiritual freedom, i. e., a freedom
which demands no sacrifice, no energy, an illusory, self-
deceptive freedom ; a freedom from earthly good, which con
sists in its possession and enjoyment ! For certainly the
Lord said, " My yoke is easy." How harsh, how unreasonable
would Christianity be, if it exacted from man the renunciation
* Naturally, Christianity had only such power when, as Jerome
writes to Demetrius, Domini nostri adhuc calebat criior et fervebat recens
in credentibus fides. See also on this subject G. Arnold. Von der ersten
Christen GrenugsamTceit u. Verscliinalmny alles Eigennutzes, 1, c. B. iv. c.
12, 7 16.
CELIBACY AND MONACHISM. 163
of earthly riches ! Then assuredly Christianity would not be
suited to this world. So far from this, Christianity is in the
highest degree practical and judicious; it defers the freeing
oneself from the wealth and pleasures of this world to the
moment of natural death; (monkish mortification is an un
christian suicide) and allots to our spontaneous activity the
acquisition and enjoyment of earthly possessions. Genuine
Christians do not indeed doubt the truth of the heavenly life,
God forbid! Therein they still agree with the ancient
monks ; but they await that life patiently, submissive to the
will of God, i. e., to their own selfishness, to the agreeable
pursuit of worldly enjoyment.* But I turn away with loath
ing and contempt from modern Christianity, in which the bride
of Christ readily acquiesces in polygamy, at least in succes
sive polygamy, and this in the eyes of the true Christian
does not essentially differ from contemporaneous polygamy;
but yet at the same time oh! shameful hypocrisy! swears
by the eternal, universally binding, irrefragable, sacred truth
of God's word. I turn back with reverence to the miscon
ceived truth of the chaste monastic cell, where the soul
betrothed to heaven did not allow itself to be wooed into
faithlessness by a strange, earthly body !
The unworldly, supernatural life is essentially also an un
married life. The celibate lies already, though not in the form
of a law, in the inmost nature of Christianity. This is suf
ficiently declared in the supernatural origin of the Saviour,
a doctrine in which unspotted virginity is hallowed as the
saving principle, as the principle of the new, the Christian
world. Let not such passages as, " Be fruitful and multiply,"
or, " What God has joined together let not man put asunder,"
be urged as a sanction of marriage. The first passage relates,
as Tertullian and Jerome have already observed, only to the
unpeopled earth, not to the earth when filled with men, only to
the beginning not to the end of the world, an end which was
* How far otherwise the ancient Christians ! " Difficile, imo impossible
est, ut et praesentibus quis et futuris fruatur bonis." Hieronymus (Epist.
Juliano). " Delicatus es, frater, si et hie vis gaudere cum seculo et postea
regnare cum Christo." Ib. (Epist. ad Heliodorum). " Ye wish to have both
God and the creature together, and that is impossible. Joy in God and joy
in the creature cannot subsist together." Tauler (ed. c. p. 334). But they
were abstract Christians. And we live now in the age of conciliation.
Yes, truly !
164 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
initiated by the immediate appearance of God upon earth.
And the second also refers only to marriage as an institution
of the Old Testament. Certain Jews proposed the question
whether it were lawful for a man to separate from his wife ; and
the most appropriate way of dealing with this question was the an
swer above cited. He who has once concluded a marriage ought
to hold it sacred. Marriage is intrinsically an indulgence to
the weakness or rather the strength of the flesh, an evil which
therefore must be restricted as much as possible. The indis-
solubleness of marriage is a nimbus, a sacred irradiance, which
expresses precisely the opposite of what minds, dazzled and
perturbed by its lustre, seek beneath it. Marriage in itself is,
in the sense of perfected Christianity, a sin,* or rather a weak
ness, which is permitted and forgiven thee only on condition
that thou for ever limitest thyself to a single wife. In short,
marriage is hallowed only in the Old Testament, but not in the
New. The New Testament knows a higher, a supernatural
principle, the mystery of unspotted virginity.f " He who can
receive it let him receive it." " The children of this world
marry, and are given in marriage : but they which shall be
accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection
from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage :
neither can they die any more : for they are equal unto the
angels ; and are the children of God, being the children of
the resurrection." Thus in heaven there is no marriage ; the
principle of sexual love is excluded from heaven as an earthly,
worldly principle. But the heavenly life is the true, perfected,
eternal life of the Christian. Why then should I, who am
destined for heaven, form a tie which is unloosed in my true
destination ? Why should I, who am potentially a heavenly
being, not realize this possibility even here ? j Marriage is
already proscribed from my mind, my heart, since it is expelled
* " Perfectum autem esse nolle delinquere est." Hieronymus (Epist. ad
Heliodorum de laude Vitse solit.). Let me observe once for all that I
interpret the biblical passages concerning marriage in the sense in which
they have been interpreted by the history of Christianity.
f- " The marriage state is nothing new or unwonted, and is lauded and
held good even by heathens according to the judgment of reason."
Luther (Th. ii. p. 377a).
" Prsesumendum est hos qui intra Paradisum recipi volunt debere ces-
sare ab eare,aquaparadisus intactus est." Tertullian(de Exhort, cast. c. 13).
"Crelibatusangelorumestiniitatio." Jo. Damasceni (Orthod. Fidei,!. iv. c. 25).
CELIBACY AND MONACH1SM. 165
from heaven, the essential object of my faith, hope, and life.
How can an earthly wife have a place in my heaven- filled
heart ? How can I divide my heart between God and man ?*
The Christian's love to God is not an abstract or general love
such as the love of truth, of justice, of science; it is a love to
a subjective, personal God, and is therefore a subjective, per
sonal love. It is an essential attribute of this love that it is
an exclusive, jealous love, for its object is a personal and at the
same time the highest being, to whom no other can be com
pared. " Keep close to Jesus [Jesus Christ is the Christian's
God], in life and in death; trust his faithfulness: he alone
can help thee, when all else leaves thee. Thy beloved has this
quality, that he will suffer no rival ; he alone will have thy
heart, will rule alone in thy soul as a king on his throne."
" What can the world profit thee without Jesus ? To be
without Christ is the pain of hell ; to be with Christ, heavenly
sweetness." " Thou canst not live without a friend : but if
the friendship of Christ is not more than all else to thee, thou
wilt be beyond measure sad and disconsolate." " Love every
thing for Jesus' sake, but Jesus for his own sake. Jesus
Christ alone is worthy to be loved." " My God, my love [my
heart] : Thou art wholly mine, and I am wholly Thine."
" Love hopes and trusts ever in God, even when God is not
gracious to it [or tastes bitter, non sapit] ; for we cannot live
in love without sorrow For the sake of the beloved, the
loving one must accept all things, even the hard and bitter."^
" My God and my All .... In Thy presence everything is sweet
to me, in Thy absence everything is distasteful .... Without
Thee nothing can please me." " O when at last will that
blessed, longed-for hour appear, when Thou wilt satisfy me
wholly, and be all in all to me ? So long as this is not granted
-me, my joy is only fragmentary." " When was it well with me
without Thee ? or when was it ill with me in Thy presence ?
I will rather be poor for Thy sake, than rich without Thee.
I will rather be a pilgrim on earth with Thee, than the pos
sessor of heaven without Thee. Where Thou art is heaven ;
death and hell where Thou art not. I long only for Thee."
" Thou canst not serve God and at the same time have thy
* " Quse non nubit, soli Deo dat operam et ejus cura non dividitur ;
pudica autem, quse nupsit, vitam cum Deo et cum marito dividit."
Clemens Alex. (Paedag. 1. ii.).
166 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
joys in earthly things : thou must wean thyself from all ac
quaintances and friends, and sever thy soul from all temporal
consolation. Believers in Christ should regard themselves,
according to the admonition of the Apostle Peter, only as
strangers and pilgrims on the earth."* Thus, love to God as
a personal heing is a literal, strict, personal, exclusive love.
How then can I at once love God and a mortal wife ? Do
I not thereby place God on the same footing with my wife ?
No ! to a soul which truly loves God, the love of woman is an
impossibility, is adultery. " He that is unmarried," says the
apostle Paul, "careth for the things that belong to the Lord,
how he may please the Lord ; but he that is married careth for
the things that are of the world, how he may please his wife."
The true Christian not only feels no need of culture, because
this is a worldly principle and opposed to feeling ; he has also
no need of (natural) love. God supplies to him the want of
culture, and in like manner God supplies to him the want of
love, of a wife, of a family. The Christian immediately iden
tifies the species with the individual ; hence he strips off the
difference of sex as a burdensome, accidental adjunct, f Man
and woman together first constitute the true man, man and
woman together are the existence of the race ; for their union
is the source of multiplicity, the source of other men. Hence
the man who does not deny his manhood, is conscious that he
is only a part of a being, which needs another part for the
making up of the whole, of true humanity. The Christian,
on the contrary, in his excessive, transcendental subjectivity,
conceives that he is, by himself, a perfect being. But the
sexual instinct runs counter to this view ; it is in contra
diction with his ideal : the Christian must therefore deny this
instinct.
The Christian certainly experienced the need of sexual love,
but only as a need in contradiction with his heavenly desti
nation, and merely natural, in the depreciatory, contemptuous
* Thomas a Kempis de Imit. (1. ii. c. 7, c. 8, 1. iii. c. 5, c. 34, c. 53, c. 59).
" Felix ilia conscientia et beata virginitas, in cujus eorde prseter amorem
Christi nullus alms versatur amor." Hieronymus (Demetriadi,
Virgini Deo consecrates) .
f " Divisa est .... mulier et virgo. Vide quantse felicitatis sit, quse et
nomen sexus amiserit. Virgo jam mulier non vocatur." Hieronymus (adv.
Helvidium de perpet. Virg. p. 14. T. ii. Erasmus).
CELIBACY AND MONACHISM. 167
sense which this word had in Christianity, not as a moral,
inward need, not, if I may so express myself, as a metaphy
sical, i.e., an essential need, which man can experience only
where he does not separate difference of sex from himself, hut
on the contrary regards it as belonging to his inmost nature.
Hence marriage is not holy in Christianity; at least it is so
only apparently, illusively ; for the natural principle of mar
riage, which is the love of the sexes, however civil marriage
may in endless instances contradict this, is in Christianity an
unholy thing, and excluded from heaven.* But that which
man excludes from heaven, he excludes from his true nature.
Heaven is his treasure-casket. Believe not in what he esta
blishes on earth, what he permits and sanctions here : here he
must accommodate himself ; here many things come athwart
him which do not fit into his system; here he shuns thy
glance, for he finds himself among strangers who intimidate
him. But watch for him when he throws off his incognito,
and shows himself in his true dignity, his heavenly state. In
heaven he speaks as he thinks ; there thou hearest his true
opinion. Where his heaven is, there is his heart, heaven is
his heart laid open. Heaven is nothing but the idea of the
true, the good, the valid, of that which ought to be; earth,
nothing but the idea of the untrue, the unlawful, of that which
ought not to be. The Christian excludes from heaven the life
of the species : there the species ceases, there dwell only pure
sexless individuals, " spirits;" there absolute subjectivity reigns:
thus the Christian excludes the life of the species from his
* This may be expressed as follows : Marriage has in Christianity only
a moral, no religious significance, no religious principle and exemplar. It
is otherwise with the Greeks, where, for example, " Zeus and Here are the
great archetype of every marriage " (Creuzer, Symbol.) ; with the ancient
Parsees, where procreation, as " the multiplication of the human race, is the
dimiimtion of the empire of Ahriman," and thus a religious act and duty
(Zend-Avesta) ; with the Hindoos, where the son is the regenerated father.
Among the Hindoos no regenerate man could assume the rank of a Sany-
assi, that is, of an anchorite absorbed in God, if he had not previously paid
three debts, one of which was that he had had a legitimate son. Amongst
the Christians on the contrary, at least the Catholics, it was a true festival
of religious rejoicing when betrothed or even married persons supposing
that it happened with mutual consent renounced the married state and
sacrificed conjugal to religious love.
168 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
conception of the true life; he pronounces the principle of
marriage sinful, negative ; for the sinless, positive life is the
heavenly one.*
* Inasmuch as the religious consciousness restores everything which it
begins by abolishing, and the future life is ultimately nothing else than
the present life re-established, it follows that sex must be re-esta
blished. " Erunt similes angelorum. Ergo homines non desinent
. . . . ut apostolus apostolus sit et Maria Maria." Hieronymus (ad Theo-
doram Viduam). But as the body in the other world is an incorporeal
body, so necessarily the sex there is one without difference, i.e., a sexless sex.
THE CHRISTIAN HEAVEN. 1 69
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE CHRISTIAN HEAVEN OR PERSONAL IMMORTALITY.
THE onwedded 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, abso
lutely subjective life. The belief in personal immortality has at
its foundation the belief that difference of sex is only an ex
ternal 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 re
cognises 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 w r hole, he also lives in the
consciousness that he is himself no more than a part, and that
I
170 THE ESSENCE OF CHEISTIANITY.
he is what he is only by virtue of the conditions which consti
tute 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 em
phatically 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 com
pletely does a man identify himself with it. In general, what
ever 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 realizes this
aim, man is not only something for himself, but also some
thing for others, for the general life, the species. He there
fore 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 : Nee 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 Chris
tianity. 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 prin
ciple, whence it follows as a necessary and obvious conse
quence. The contemplation of the world, of Nature, of the
THE CHRISTIAN HEAVEN. ]?1
race, was always coming athwart the ancients ; they distin
guished 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 dis
tinction is, that God is heaven spiritualized, while heaven is
God materialized, 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 anti
cipation, 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 realized, individualized 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.*
* " Berie dicitur, quod tune plene videbimus eum sicuti est, cum similes
ei erimus, h. e. erimus quod ipse est. Quibus enim potestas data est filios
I 2
172 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
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 person
ality, 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 circum
scribed 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 appa
rent even in the popular proofs of immortality. If there is not
another and a better life, God is not just and good. The jus
tice 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 there
fore 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 cer
tainty 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 exist
ence ; 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
Dei fieri, data est potestas, non quidem ut sint Deus, sed sint tamen quod
Deus est : sint sancti, futuri plene beati, quod Deus est. Nee aliunde hie
saneti, nee ibi futuri beati, quam ex Deo qui eorum et sanctitas et beatitude
est." De Yita solitaria (among the spurious writings of St. Bernard).
"Finis autena bonse voluntatis beatitude est: vita seternaipse Deus." Augus-
tin. (ap. Petrus Lomb. 1. ii. dist. 38, c. 1). " The other man will be reno
vated in the spiritual life, i. e. will become a spiritual man, when he shall
be restored into the image of God. For he will be like God, in life, in
righteousness, glory, and wisdom." Luther (T. i p. 324).
THE CHRISTIAN HEAVEN. 173
present, or rather a verb into a substantive; how should I
separate the one from the other ? God is the existence corre
sponding 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.* But heaven is the exist
ence adequate to my wishes, my longing ; f thus, there is no
distinction between God and heaven. God is the power by
which man realizes 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 there
fore 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 exist
ence ; if elsewhere in religion man makes his existence de
pendent 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 avoid
ing 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
" Si bomim est habere corpus incorruptibile, quare hoc facturum Deum
volumus desperare ?" Augustinus (Opp. Antwerp. 1700. T. v. p. 698).
f " Quare dicitur spiritale corpus, nisi quia ad nutum spiritus serviet ?
Nihil tibi contradicet ex te, nihil in te rebellabit adversus te, . . . . Ubi
volueris, eris Credere enim debemus talia corpora nos habituros, ut
ubi velimus, quando voluerimus, ibi simus." Augustinus (1. c. p. 703, 705).
" Nihil indecorum ibi erit, summa pax erit, nihil discordans, nihil monstruo-
sum, nihil quod offendat adspectum." (1. c. 707). " Nisi beatus, non vivit ut
vult." (De Civ. Dei, L 14, c. 25).
174 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
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 con
ceives 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.*
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 repre
sents 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
* And their conceptions of God are just as heterogeneous. The pious
Germans have a " German God," the pious Spaniards a Spanish God, the
French a French God. The French actually have the proverb : " Le bon
Dieu est Franpais." In fact polytheism must exist so long as there are
various nations. The real God of a people is the point d'hotmeur of its
nationality.
THE CHRISTIAN HEAVEN. 1*75
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 de
fined, '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." Natu
rally; 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 pre
supposed 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.
176 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
Where the future life is really believed in, where it is a cer
tain 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 pre
sent; 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 con
ditions ; 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 re
ligious 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 exist
ence 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 exist
ence 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 flori-
legium 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 destruc-
THE CHRISTIAN HEAVEN. 177
tion, it is regarded as a negation. Where life is not in contra
diction 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 real
ization 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 ;* it is only the re
moval of limits which here oppose themselves to the realization
of the idea. Where would be the consolation, where the sig
nificance of a future life, if it were midnight darkness to me ?
No! from yonder world there streams upon me with the splen
dour 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 se
paration 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.
* "Ibi nostra spes erit res." Augustin. "Therefore we have the first
fruits of immortal life in hope, until perfection comes at the last day, where
in we shall see and feel the life we have believed in and hoped for."
Luther (Th. i. s. 459).
i 3
178 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
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
he traced in an ascending line, hut 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 hehind 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 child-like, innocent and
true. This observation applies to the conceptions of a future
life. The " savage," whose consciousness does not extend be
yond 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.*
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 father-land. And according to Ossian's conception " the
spirits of those who die in a strange land float back towards
their birth-place. "f 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 spon
taneity ; for even his spontaneity has its foundation in Nature,
of which his particular character is only an expression. Be
* According to old books of travel, however, there are many tribes which,
do not believe that the future is identical with the present, or that it is
better, but that it is even worse. Parny (CEuv. chois. T. i. Melang.) tells
of a dying negro- slave, who refused the inauguration to immortality by
baptism, in these words : " Je ne veux point d'une autre vie, car peut-etre y
serais-je encore votre esclave."
f Ahlwardt (Ossian Aum. zu Carthonn.).
THE CHRISTIAN HEAVEN. 179
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 connexion, 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 distinc
tion 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 dis
tinguish 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 distinc
tion 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 devo
tion, 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,
180 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
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 limit
ation or an evil. The more definitely and profoundly the indi
vidual 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 circum
scribe 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.* The
* There everything will be restored. " Qui modo vivit, erit, nee me vel
dente, vel ungue fraudatum revomet patefacti fossa sepiilchri." Aurelius
Prud. (Apotheos. de Eesurr. Carnis hum.). And this faith, which you consi
der rude and carnal, and which you therefore disavow, is the only consistent,
honest, and true faith. To the identity of the person belongs the identity of
the body.
THE CHRISTIAN HEAVEN. 181
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 re
nounces 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 con
trarieties 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 embel
lished, contemplated through the imagination, purified from all
gross matter; or, positively expressed, it is the beauteous present
intensified.
Embellishment, emendation, presupposes blame, dissatisfac
tion. 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 abso
lutely 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 per
sonality 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 indi
vidual; 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.*
* " Neque enim post resurrectionem tempus diebus ac noctibus numera-
bitur. Erit magis una dies sine vespere." Job. Damascen. (Orth. Fidei
1. ii. c. 1).
182 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
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 suprahuman God ap
pears at the commeo cement, 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 pain
ful. 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,* 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 free
dom of subjectivity from the limits of Nature; it is faith in
* "Ipsum (corpus) erit et non ipsum erit." Augustinus (v. J. Ch. Doe-
derlein. Inst. Theol. Christ. Altorf. 1781, 280).
THE CHRISTIAN HEAVEN. 183
the eternity and infinitude of personality, and not of person
ality viewed in relation to the idea of the species, in which it for
ever unfolds itself in new individuals, but of personality as be
longing 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 na
tural 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
Eeligion is MAN.
END OF PART I.
184 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
PART II.
THE FALSE OE THEOLOGICAL ESSENCE OF KELIGION.
CHAPTEK XIX.
THE ESSENTIAL STAND-POINT OF EELIGION.
THE essential stand-point of religion is the practical or sub
jective. 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
realized salvation of the soul, or the unlimited power of
effecting the salvation, the bliss of man.* The Christian
religion is especially 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 recourse 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.
* "Prseter salutem tuam nihil cogites; solum qua? Dei sunt cures."
Thomas a K. (de Imit. 1. i. c. 23). "Contra salutem proprium cogites nihil.
Minus dixi : contra, praeter dixisse debueram." Bernhardus (de Consid. ad
Eugenium pontif. max. 1. ii.). "Qui Deum quserit, de propria salute sollici-
tus est." Clemens Alex. (Cohort, ad Gent.).
THE ESSENTIAL STAND-POINT OF RELIGION. 185
The soul thus self-absorbed, self-concentrated, seeking satis
faction 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.
Keligion 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 ; other
wise 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 stand-point of religion is the practical or
subjective stand-point, 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 con
scious 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 intel-
18G THE ESSENCE OF CHKISTIANITY.
lect, of science* 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 con
sciousness, 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. f 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 him
self, 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
* Here and in other parts of this work, theory is taken in the sense in
which it is the source of true objective activity, the science which gives
birth to art, for man can do only so much as he knows : " tantum potest
quantum scit."
f Concerning the biblical conceptions of Satan, his power and works, see
Liitzelherger's "Grundziige der Paulinischen Glaubenslehre," and G. Ch.
Knapp's "Tories, iiber d. Christl. Glaubensl." 6265. To this subject
belongs demoniacal possession, which also has its attestation in the Bible.
See Knapp ( 65. iii. 2, 3).
THE ESSENTIAL STAND-POINT OF KELIGION. 187
again the confirmation of that which we have seen to be tfie
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 dis
tinguish 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.*
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 good
ness. 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
* Doubtless, this unveiling of the mystery of predestination will be
pronounced atrocious, impious, diabolical. I have nothing to allege against
this ; I would rather be a devil in alliance with truth, than an angel in
alliance with falsehood.
188 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
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 connexion 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 spon
taneous activity of the second cause.*
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
* A kindred doctrine is that of the Concursus Dei, according to which,
God not only gives the first impulse, but also co-operates in the agency of
the second cause. For the rest, this doctrine is only a particular form of
the contradictory dualism between God and Nature, which runs through
the history of Christianity. On the subject of this remark, as of the whole
paragraph, see Strauss : Die Ckristliche Glaubenslehre, B. ii. 75, 76.
THE ESSENTIAL STAND-POINT OF RELIGION. 189
being, is supposed himself to become in the other world a
sensible existence.* 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 under
standing, 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 hypo
thetical 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
* " Dum sumus in hoc corpore, peregrinamur ab eo qui summe est."
Bernard. Epist. 18. (Ed. Basle, 1552). "As long as we live, we are in the
midst of death." Luther (T. i. p. 331). The idea of the future life is
therefore nothing else than the idea of true, perfected religion, freed from
the limits and obstructions of this life, the future life, as has been already
said, nothing but the true opinion and disposition, the open heart, of reli
gion. Here we believe; there we behold; i.e., there there is nothing
besides God, and thus nothing between God and the soul ; but only for
this reason, that there ought to be nothing between them, because the
immediate union of God and the soul is the true opinion and desire of
religion. " We have as yet so to do with God as with one hidden
from us, and it is not possible that in this life we should hold communion
with him face to face. All creatures are now nothing else than vain masks,
under which God conceals himself, and by which he deals with us."
Luther (T. xi. p. 70). " If thou wert only free from the images of created
things, thou mightest have God without intermission." Tauler (1. c. p. 313).
190 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
sake of the world, merely that he may, as a First Cause,
explain the existence of the world. The narrow rationalizing
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
realizes 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 me
chanical 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.* 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
* "Voluntate igitur Dei immobilis manet et stat inseculum terra ....
et voluntate Dei movetur et nutat. Non ergo fundamentis suis nixa sub-
sistit, nee fulcris suis stabilis perseverat, sed Dominus statuit earn et firrna-
mento voluntatis suse continet, quia in mami ejus omnes fines terra?."
Ambrosius (HexaBmeron. 1. i. c. 61).
THE ESSENTIAL STAND-POINT OF RELIGION. 191
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 prcesens, 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
192 THE ESSENCE OF CHKISTIANITY.
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, extranatural or
supranatural Being. God is the idea which supplies the lack
of theory. The idea of God is the explanation of the in
explicable, 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 every
thing 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. Dark
ness 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* 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 proximo,, 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
* It is only unbelief in the efficacy of prayer which has subtly limited
prayer to spiritual matters.
THE ESSENTIAL STAND-POINT OF RELIGION. 193
prayer possesses superhuman and supernatural powers.* But
in prayer he applies immediately to God. Thus G-od is to him
the immediate cause, the fulfilment of prayer, the power which
realizes prayer. But an immediate act of God is a miracle ;
hence miracle is essential to the religious view. Keligion
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 ex
pression 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
realizes 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
* According to the notion of barbarians, therefore, prayer is a coercive
power, a charm. But this conception is an unchristian one (although even
among many Christians, the idea is accepted that prayer constrains God) ;.
for in Christianity God is essentially feeling satisfied in itself, Almighty
goodness, which denies nothing to (religious) feeling. The idea of coercion
presupposes an unfeeling God.
K
194 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
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 stand-point, 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 dif
ferent from the natural miracle, though they are continually
interchanged, in order to stultify reason, and, under the ap
pearance 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 stand -point, 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 neces
sarily 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,*
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
* " Natura. enim remota providentia et potestate divina prorsus nihil est."
Lactantius (Div. Inst. lib. 3, c. 28). "Omniaquse creatasunt, quamvis ea
Deus fecerit valde bona, Creatori tamen comparata, nee bona sunt, cui com-
parata nee sunt ; altissime quippe et proprio modo quodam de se ipso dixit :
Ego sum, qui sum." Augustinus (de Perfectione just. Horn. c. 14).
THE ESSENTIAL STAND-POINT OF EELIGION. 195
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 con
sciousness 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 aesthetic, whereas the practical is unaesthetic. Reli
gion therefore finds in God a compensation for the want
of an aesthetic 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.*
Hence in religion it is God that serves as the object of
pure, untainted, i. e., theoretic or esthetic contemplation.
God is the existence to which the religious man has an ob
jective 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.
* "Pulchras formas et varias, nitidos et amcenos colores amant oculi. Xon
teneant hsec animam meam; teneat eamDeus qui haec fecit, bona quidemvalde,
sed ipse est bonum meum, non haec." Augustin. (Confess. 1. x. c. 34). " Vetiti
autem sumus (2 Cor. iv. 18.) converti ad ea quse videntur .... Amandus
igitur solus Deus est : omnis vero iste mundus, i. e. omnia seiisibilia con-
temnenda, utendum autem his ad hujus vita? necessitatem." Ib. (de Moribus
Eccl. Cathol. 1. i. c. 20).
K 2
196 THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
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, hut 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 fanati
cism, 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 se
parately 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 con
sciousness 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 essen
tial 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 Je
hovah separated in the strictest manner from man, and recourse
THE CONTRADICTION IN THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 197
was had to allegory in order to give to the old anthropo
morphisms 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 hecame.
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 Fath
