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MAR 11 1954 
 
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 BL 51 .L6713 1903 
 Lotze, Hermann, 1817-1881 
 Outlines of the philosophy 
 of religion 
 
rK 
 
LOTZE'S 
 
 Outlines of Philosophy 
 
 II 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 
 
OUTLINES 
 
 MAR 11 1954 
 
 v. 
 
 OF THE 
 
 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 
 
 DICTATED PORTIONS 
 
 OF THE 
 
 LECTURES OF HERMANN LOTZE 
 
 TRANSLATION EDITED BY 
 
 GEORGE T. LADD 
 
 PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN YALE COLLEGE 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 PT^BLISHED BY GINN & COMPANY. 
 
 1903 
 
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1885, by 
 
 GEORGE T. LADD. 
 in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 
 
 J. S. L,usHiNG & Co., Printers, 115 High Stkeet, Boston. 
 
EDITOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 -•o«- 
 
 This translation of Lotze's ' Outlines of the 
 Philosophy of Religion ' is made from the German 
 of the second edition, for the revision of which, 
 as well as for that of the first German edition, 
 Professor Rehnisch of Gottingen is responsible. 
 In preference to the first edition, the second was 
 selected, because it seems to be at once more 
 compact (if that were possible) and more compre- 
 hensive. It is composed of the dictated portions 
 of the Lectures given in the Summer-Semester of 
 1875 and the Winter-Semester of 1878-79. The 
 first eight chapters belong to the earlier date ; 
 and, in fact, the course of 1875 closed with them. 
 It was not until the year 1878 that Lotze added 
 to this course the instruction on Religion and Mo- 
 rality (Chapter IX.) and on Dogmas and Confessions 
 (Chapter X.). 
 
 In choosing this volume for the second place in 
 the series of translations of these Outlines, I have 
 been guided to a considerable extent by my own 
 convenience as a teacher. It will be found to be 
 very closely connected with, and indeed founded 
 upon, the conclusions already made accessible in 
 
vi editor's I'REFACE. 
 
 the translation of the 'Outlines of Mclaphysic' 
 The riiilosophy of Religion is, of course, primarily 
 a speculative or theoretical treatment of the proofs 
 for the Being of God, of his Attributes, and of 
 his Relations to the World of matter and of finite 
 spirits. But Lotze's metaphysical thinking leads 
 him to the conclusion that the source and centre 
 and sum of all that Reality with which it is the 
 business of Metaphysic to deal, is the Personal 
 Absolute whom — to use the lanfruarre of Tren- 
 delenburg — "faith calls God." The Philosophy 
 of Religion must therefore first derive from Meta- 
 physic the results of a critical treatment of those 
 assumptions concerning all that is Real, which 
 enter into all experience ; it must afterwards dis- 
 cuss these same assumptions in that expanded 
 form which is the result of taking into the ac- 
 count the content of a fniiJier special experience 
 of an aesthetic, ethical, and definitively religious 
 kind. Readers who have not already made them- 
 selves somewhat familiar with the author's views 
 on metaphysical questions, should, in studying this 
 volume, recur constantly to the * Outlines of Meta- 
 physic,' or to the larger volume on Metaphysic in 
 his * System of Philosophy.' 
 
 It is my earnest hope that a large number of 
 those whose work it is to teach religion will make 
 
editor's preface. vii 
 
 a somewhat careful study of this brief philosophi- 
 cal treatise. It seems to me admirably adapted 
 for an exercise in that fundamental thinking on 
 the most important of subjects presented to the 
 human reason, which no one can safely despise, 
 and which few are in a position wisely to neglect. 
 It is surely when applied to such subjects, if at 
 all, that Philosophy may make good her claim to 
 the ancient title which ascribed to her something 
 of the ' divine.' 
 
 It is scarcely necessary for me to repeat what 
 was said in the Preface to the * Outlines of Meta- 
 physic ' ; namely, that my office is solely that of 
 an interpreter, and not at all that of a critic or 
 judge, — favorable or unfavorable to any views of 
 the author. One remark, however, may properly 
 be added, simply with a view to guard those 
 readers who are not familiar with the writings of 
 Lotze, against impressions that might lead to mis- 
 understanding him. This entire treatise is avow- 
 edly designed to inquire ''how much of the con- 
 tent of religion may be discovered, proved, or at 
 least confirmed, agreeably to reason" (see p. 2). 
 It is an effort to treat of " Religion within the 
 limits of mere reason." But it is also avowedly 
 very far from that " barren rationalism " which 
 overlooks the ' aesthetic ' (in the widest sense) 
 
f 
 
 VIU FDTTOT? S I'REFACE. 
 
 elements of human nature (p. 6f.); ii makes con- 
 stant reference to, and attempts to afford satis- 
 faction for, our indestructible religious needs. Par- 
 ticularly in the last two chapters, therefore, it 
 should be remembered, that what may be said to 
 be, * speculatively ' considered, cither determinable 
 or unknowable, is by no means necessarily the 
 same when considered from the point of view 
 occupied by the investigator of the specific truths 
 of Biblical revelation. In other words, a large 
 amount of speculative agnosticism is not incom- 
 patible with a firm conviction as to the truthful- 
 ness of the system of doctrines called Scriptural, 
 and scientifically formulated by dogmatics. 
 
 The first translation of this volume, with the 
 exception of Chapters 1 1, to IV., was made by 
 L. O. Brastow, D.D. : the editor is responsible for 
 the translation of those three chapters and for 
 the revision of the whole. The nature of both 
 the subject and its treatment has made it pos- 
 sible to present this one of the series, with the 
 exception of certain distinctively metaphysical por- 
 tions, in a form more easily intelligible to most 
 readers than was possible in the case of the 
 ' Outlmes of Metaphysic* 
 
 GEORGE T. LADD. 
 
 New Havkn, January, 1885. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 -»<>•- 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Introduction i 
 
 Chapter I . — The Proofs for the Existence of God . 8 
 II. — More precise Determinations of the Abso- 
 lute ....... 35 
 
 III. — The Metaphysical Attributes of God . 45 
 
 IV. — Of the Personality of the Absolute . 55 
 V. — Of the Conception of Creation ... 70 
 
 VI. — Of Preservation . . . . . 81 
 
 VII. — Of Government . ..... 95 
 
 VIII. — Of the Conception of the World-Aim . 114 
 IX. — Religion and Morality . . . .129 
 
 X. — Dogmas and Confessions . . . 143 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 —<>»- 
 
 § 1. If religion were a normal product of the 
 human reason alone, then philosophy would be 
 the sole legitimate organ for determining and 
 interpreting its content. 
 
 If, on the contrary, it sprung from revelation, 
 then reason alone would not be able, it is true, 
 to have discovered it ; but after it were in exist- 
 ence, it would still be necessary to show that its 
 content is the adequate fulfilment for those re- 
 ligious needs which our reason is compelled to cher- 
 ish, but would not be able of itself to satisfy. Even 
 in this case, therefore, philosophy would have a 
 work to accomplish by way of such authenticating. 
 The assertion that the content of religion is a 
 * mystery ' is not convincing. There can be many 
 facts of religion of such sort that the possibility 
 of their coming to pass may not admit of rational 
 apprehension ; and yet we should not without ex- 
 ception take offence at this. But a ' mystery,' 
 the significance of which were not at least sus- 
 ceptible of definition, would be a mere curiosity 
 devoid of all connection with our religious needs, 
 
iMiiLOsornv of religion. 
 
 and, on this account, an unworthy object of reve- 
 lation. 
 
 Finally, if religion were a morbid product of the 
 human spirit, philosophy, even in that case, would 
 find occupation. It would have to investigate psy- 
 chologically and historically the conditions of the 
 origin of this delusion, as well as the conditions 
 of avoiding it in the future. 
 
 The principal object of the following reflections 
 is connected with the first point of view above 
 suggested : that is, we seek to ascertain how much 
 of the content of religion may be discovered, 
 proved, or at least confirmed, agreeably to reason. 
 The two other points of view we subordinate to 
 this. 
 
 § 2. It is customary to demand faith in contrast 
 with knowledge as the proper organ for the truths 
 of religion. Such an assertion finds its most exact 
 expression in the intimation that, in fact, even 
 scientific cognition always rests ultimately upon 
 'faith'; that is to say, u}K)n an immediate act of 
 trust in certain absolutely simple and self-evident 
 truths, which are neither in need of any proof, nor 
 capable of it. 
 
 An important distinction is overlooked in the 
 above-mentioned view. All such ultimate, self- 
 
THE PROPOSITIONS OF FAITH. 
 
 evident propositi(3ns, upon which our knowledge is 
 founded, are general judgments, which do not tell 
 us that anything whatever is or takes place, but 
 which only declare what would exist or would have 
 to take place, in case definite conditions occur ; or 
 — more concisely — they all merely express certain 
 general rules, which we are obliged to follow in the 
 combination of the content of our ideas. On the 
 contrary, those propositions upon which the most 
 special interest of religion depends, — for example, 
 that God is, that He has created the world, that 
 the soul survives death, etc., — are all of them 
 declarative judgments, which assert a definite, par- 
 ticular fact. With respect to the before-mentioned 
 general propositions, it may be understood that 
 they are capable of being objects of our imme- 
 diate insight or evidence ; for they are nothing but 
 expressions of the forms of activity, in which our 
 reason according to its own nature must be exer- 
 cised. On the other hand, these declarative propo- 
 sitions of faith, which assert a fact with respect to 
 the ordering of the world that is foreign to our 
 own nature, cannot with equal legitimacy be re- 
 garded as a natural or innate endowment of our 
 spirit, but are in some sort the results of culture. 
 
IMIILOSOI'llV OF RELIGION. 
 
 S3. It wouUl l)c better to have undertaken a 
 comparison of religious truth and scientific cog- 
 nition (Hfferent from the forcijjoini;. No cognition 
 consists merely of those general propositions of 
 which we have made mention ; but every cognition 
 originates by. means of the application of these prop- 
 ositions to a content which only experience can fur- 
 nish ; more concisely, it is an elaboration of given 
 perceptions. Now it might be asserted that it is not 
 the external world exclusively which furnishes these 
 necessary data by influence on our senses. Rather 
 is it quite as admissible to think of a divine or 
 supersensible influence upon our interior being, by 
 means of which * intuitions ' of another species fall 
 to our lot, such as the senses can never supply, 
 and such as constitute just that religious cognition 
 which obtrudes itself upon us with immediate cer- 
 tainty. 
 
 It is to be said in reply to the foregoing claim 
 that, although the aforesaid divine influences are 
 willingly conceded, still, according to the analogy 
 of the 'sense-impressions' which are brought into 
 comparison with them, they can consist imme- 
 diately in nothing but a certain mode of our affec- 
 tion, or of our experience, or of our feeling. Now, 
 just as a sense-impression, — for example, a color 
 or a tone, — is after all no * cognition ' whatever ; 
 
ORIGIN OF RELIGIOUS TRUTH. 5 
 
 but such a cognition originates only by comparing 
 one impression with others, and by noticing the 
 relations which occur between them, just so would 
 those supersensible impressions consist immediately 
 in mere feelings, moods, or movements of our own 
 mind; but they would still represent in this form 
 no truth of religion. The rather would such a 
 truth, as admits of being expressed in a definite 
 communicable proposition, originate only through 
 the agency of an elaboration in thought of those 
 'inner experiences' which go back to the * grounds' 
 of these states of the mind. 
 
 § 4. The only remnant of any useful result from 
 this opposition of science to faith is, therefore, the 
 conviction that the whole of our knowledge certainly 
 does not originate from external experience, which 
 is mediated for us by the senses ; but that there are 
 also inner states which are available as data for 
 the acquisition of truth. The finishing of the 
 structure of religion depends, not exclusively but 
 chiefly, upon these latter data ; and of such inner 
 states there may be distinguished three groups : — 
 
 (i) The personal feelings of fear, of absolute 
 dependence on unknown powers, which belong to 
 the most effective, but also to the most crude of 
 the fundamental impulses that urge the mind to 
 
PHILOSOPHY or RELIGION. 
 
 seek consolation in a non-empirical view of the 
 workl. 
 
 (2) Then there arc the much nobler and just as 
 truly effective aesthetic feelings that yield them- 
 selves admiringly to the beautiful which they dis- 
 cover in the world, and by means of it are incited 
 to form a picture of an ideal world. This they 
 do without any egoistic interest in the consolation 
 desired ; but rather with the sure conviction that 
 what is so fair and full of significance cannot be 
 an accidental product of that which is without 
 significance, but must be either the very Princi- 
 ple of the world or closely related to its creative 
 principle. 
 
 (3) Finally, there are the ethical feelings, which, 
 without being deducible from * mere experience,' 
 necessitate the attempt to think of the world as a 
 system of affairs in which this fact of the moral 
 obligation of the will to a definite form of action 
 finds an intelligible and rational place. 
 
 If now we conceive of the truth of religion as 
 developed from all these data by means of our 
 reflection, then we certainly get at what might be 
 designated as '* Religion within the limits of mere 
 reason," but still not at that which has been so 
 called. For, in most attempts of this kind, the 
 great and weighty influence of the aforesaid aes- 
 
CAUSES OF BARREN RATIONALISM. 7 
 
 thetic elements is especially overlooked, and, there- 
 by, a very barren rationalism takes the place of that 
 which the whole reason, acting in all directions, 
 would be able to produce. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE PROOFS FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD. 
 
 § 5. The different attempts of reason to attain to 
 certainty concerning the Supersensible, by starting 
 from all the above-mentioned points of departure, 
 are too manifold for direct statement. As often, 
 however, as science has sought to give account of 
 the results it has won, it has done this in a doctrine 
 of the " Proofs for the existence of God." Accord- 
 ingly we also now present these proofs with the 
 design to show how each one of them adopts its 
 own special method for discovering a portion of 
 the supersensible truth ; and with the brief pre- 
 liminary remark that these proofs naturally cannot, 
 properly speaking, demonstrate the existence of God 
 as necessary, — that is, as dependent on something 
 else, — but that they are all able merely to demon- 
 strate our assumption of this existence as a logi- 
 cally necessary consequence of the given facts of 
 the world. 
 
 § 6. The ontological argument, as ordinarily ap- 
 prehended, maintains that, while the conception of 
 other beings does not include their existence, the 
 
THE MOST PERFECT BEING. 
 
 conception of the most perfect Being of all does 
 include it ; and that this being would in fact con- 
 tradict its own conception, if the one perfection 
 — to wit, existence itself — did not belong to it. 
 
 The logical error of this argument is sufficiently- 
 well known. Not merely the conception of the 
 most perfect Being, but indeed that of every living 
 or active being (as, for example, the conception of 
 an animal), includes existence also as necessary to 
 be added in thought for defining it ; and without 
 this all the rest of its predicates {e.g., sensation, 
 motion, propagation, etc.) would be quite unthink- 
 able. But with respect to no one of these concep- 
 tions, does it follow from the necessity of adding 
 in thought this i^iai'k (of existence), that after this 
 the total content of the conception thus fully 
 thought has validity in the nature of reality also, 
 and that it may not be a merely thinkable combi- 
 nation of our imasfination. 
 
 But although logically this attempt at proof is 
 quite invalid, it is nevertheless of interest in other 
 respects. For that which induces it to regard 
 existence as a necessary attribute of the total 
 content of the conception of the mo.st perfect 
 Being, is not, as it is in the case of the other 
 conception (that of the animal), the mere circum- 
 stance that the rest of the predicates would admit 
 
lO riiiLOsoi'HV or ki:li(;ic)N. 
 
 of formal attachment to wliat is existent only, and 
 not to what is non-existent. This is obviously 
 rather a case where an altogether immediate con- 
 viction breaks through into consciousness ; to wit, 
 the conviction that tlie totality of all that has 
 value — all that is perfect, fair, and good — can- 
 not possibly be homeless in the world or in tlie 
 realm of actuality, but has the very best claim to 
 be regarded by us as imperishable reality. This 
 assurance, which properly has no need of proof, 
 has sought to formulate itself, after a scholastic 
 fashion, in the above-mentioned awkward argument. 
 
 § 7. The cosmological argument begins in an ap- 
 prehension of frequent occurrence, yet withal wholly 
 incorrect ; namely, that the existence of each indi- 
 vidual Thing and of the world in general is contin- 
 gent, and therefore presupposes not a contingent 
 but a necessary Being. At this point, the particular 
 conceptions which are wrongly attached to this 
 thought, must be first subjected to a definition. 
 
 The ordinary use of language is not at all ac- 
 quainted with the philosophic significance of the 
 word 'contingent,' according to which it is applicable 
 to every existing thing whose non-existence in gen- 
 eral would be thinkable without contradiction, and 
 whose conception or whose nature accordingly offers 
 
IDEA OF THE 'CONTINGENT.' II 
 
 no resistance to the cessation of its own existence. 
 Rather does the common usage in the first instance 
 merely contrast the 'contingent' with the designed, 
 and understands by it all those secondary effects 
 which, without being themselves designed, originate 
 from action of ours that is designed. This happens 
 because our actions themselves are for the most part 
 capable of accomplishment only by means of some 
 change in the objects of the external world ; these 
 objects, however, because of those relations inde- 
 pendent of ourselves in which they stand to each 
 other, cannot be changed by us without propagating 
 still further in various directions the impressions 
 they have received. 
 
 We speak, furthermore, of ' contingent ' events, 
 when we have directed our attention to a general 
 law of nature and when, in its application to a 
 single case, processes occur which do not follow 
 from the law and from the circumstances necessary 
 for its application, but only from the accessory cir- 
 cumstances that are foreign to the law. Even 
 such a 'contingent,' as well as the preceding, is, 
 wherever it occurs, necessary and inevitable, and is 
 constantly conditioned by its own adequate reasons ; 
 only these reasons do not reside in the design nor 
 in the law. 
 
 Finally, we also call such facts 'contingent* as 
 
12 rillLOSOPHY OK RELIGION. 
 
 are assumed l)v us not to be predestinated in such 
 a plan of tlic world's course as we have rightly 
 or wronjT^ly presupposed, but only to originate inci- 
 dentally througli the mechanism of those efficient 
 agencies which are summoned for the accomplish- 
 ment of that plan. 
 
 And with the one just mentioned is connected the 
 still broader use of the word, according to which it 
 becomes a mere determination of value, and desig- 
 nates that whose nature and content seem to de- 
 serve existence neither on account of its own value 
 nor by connection w^ith other values ; although it, 
 nevertheless, is in possession of such existence. In 
 this sense, the ' contingent ' is simply the matter 
 of fact, whose being does not permit either of deri- 
 vation from an effectuating condition, or of justifi- 
 cation by its own value. 
 
 § 8. The other conception, namely, that of the 
 ' necessary,' is, in the only meaning of it which is 
 quite clear to us, completely identical with that of 
 the 'conditioned.' That only 'is' necessary, the ac- 
 tuality of which cannot be conceived of as lacking, 
 whenever a definite presupposed condition actually 
 takes place. 
 
 But it is very easy to understand whence comes 
 the wish to place in opposition to this " condi- 
 
IDEA OF THE 'NECESSARY.' 1 3 
 
 tioned necessary" another of a higher sort. For a 
 given c, which must of course exist in case a deter- 
 minate b exists, is ' necessary ' only in the sense of 
 its being forxed. By means of its own nature 
 merely, and without the aid of b, this c would ?iot 
 exist. The ' necessary ' in that higher sense which 
 is sought, would therefore be such an one as is not 
 dependent on anything else for its existence, and 
 consequently is not conditioned. 
 
 But it is entirely incorrect to persist in designat- 
 ing such an unconditioned as is sought for, by the 
 predicate 'necessary.' It must rather be called 
 the absolute matter of fact, which exists for the 
 reason merely that it does exist ; which does not 
 need for its existence any extraneous condition ; 
 but which, for precisely this reason, can only be an 
 actual and never a necessary existence. 
 
 § 9. According to the analysis made above, the 
 thoughts of the cosmological argument do not co- 
 here well. From the so-called ' contingent,' — i.e. 
 from that which is conditioned by something else 
 external to it, and in just this respect must be 
 called likewise necessary, — it is certainly possible 
 to ascend to the Unconditioned, whose existence 
 is dependent on nothing else ; but for this very 
 reason such an unconditioned is not * necessary,' 
 
14 rniLosornv of KicLUiioN. 
 
 but merely matter of fact or actual. The desire to 
 find something, which by means of its own nature, 
 made its own existence nccessar)', is intrinsically 
 beyond the possibility of realization, — as we saw it 
 to be in the case of the ontolo^ical ar<;ument ; and 
 to this cause was due also the failure of the thought 
 that the Unconditioned w^hich is souirht is to be 
 found in a most perfect l^ein^^. To that merely 
 actual (not necessary) unconditioned existence, the 
 smallest, meanest, and most insignificant thing has 
 just as good a claim as the most perfect ; and that 
 precisely for the reason that it is an unconditioned 
 existence, and therefore is dependent on no reasons 
 of any kind. 
 
 In another direction also the cosmological argu- 
 ment goes farther than its premises permit. It was 
 legitimate to seek an Unconditioned for the Condi- 
 tioned in the world ; but it is an altogether arbi- 
 trary leap to assume that this Unconditioned must 
 be One ; and, furthermore, that it can be conceived 
 of only in the form of a single real Being. It 
 is possible that this assumption may be justified 
 subsequently ; but just at this point the other as- 
 sumption, to which the natural sciences have come 
 through their need of interpreting the world, obvi- 
 ously lies much nearer at hand. We refer to the 
 assumption of a very great multiplicity of uncon- 
 
A SINGLE UNCONDITIONED BEING. 1 5 
 
 ditionally existing elements, which are independent 
 of each other, and are only subject to a general 
 sphere of laws in accordance with which the mani- 
 fold phenomena proceed from their changeable posi- 
 tions with respect to each other. 
 
 One more consideration of a logical character 
 must first qualify this view. It is that we get no 
 insight as to how a single unconditioned being, 
 even though it were in existence, would be able to 
 condition anything else, and therefore serve as the 
 desired initial member in the conditioned series of 
 the world's events. A conclusion or a consequence 
 never follows except from the concurrence of two 
 premises, and not from one premise alone. To the 
 one unconditioned Being, therefore, if aught is to 
 result from it, there would always have to be added 
 again other accessory circumstances, which do not 
 emanate from it, but which are just as much uncon- 
 ditioned : the world therefore would not be depend- 
 ent upon onc\ but upon inany unconditioned begin- 
 
 nings. 
 
 § 10. The teleological argument proposes to make 
 that empirical conformit)' to an end, which appears 
 in the world, the point of departure for an inference 
 with respect to a single designing and creative rea- 
 son, as the supreme cause of the world. 
 
l6 PHILOSOI'llV OK RELIGION. 
 
 Let US in the first place investigate the con- 
 ception of that which is 'conformable to an end,' 
 as such. This conception is entirely free from 
 ambiguity only when we take our start from the 
 conscious purposes of our own will, which are 
 fixed upon a determinate result as their end. In 
 that case, what is ' conformable to an end ' is the 
 selection or combination of means, which, by their 
 legitimate action, bring about the realization of the 
 aforesaid end. To call those means themselves 
 ' conformable to an end * is, properly speaking, not 
 correct. They are themselves merely serviceable : 
 that is to say, their nature is in itself calculated 
 for no determinate end whatever, such as we might 
 set for ourselves ; but it is merely of such sort 
 that a useful application of it to our ends be- 
 comes possible for us. 
 
 Now that this ' serviceableness ' or ' accidental 
 conformity ' of things in the world to an end, is 
 of very frequent occurrence, proves nothing further. 
 For when once there exist Things with properties 
 of their own and with established methods of ac- 
 tion, it is a matter of course that some of our 
 designs (which themselves, in the last analysis, 
 always amount to the same as some alteration 
 in the states of Things) may be accomplished by 
 means of the activity to which other Things lay 
 
IMMANENT CONFORMITY TO END. 1/ 
 
 claim. More than this, however, does not in reality 
 take place. The nature of Things is not so emi- 
 nently useful, that it would be sufficient for the ac- 
 complishment even of all authorized designs ; and it 
 is not so absolutely useful that it might not serve 
 just as well for the frustration of that which is 
 rational, and for the production of that which is 
 unauthorized. 
 
 § 11. In contrast with the aforesaid utility, an 
 "immanent conformity to an end" is spoken of, 
 which appears primarily in the individual organisms 
 that have no other end beyond their own existence, 
 but in each one of which all parts are recipro- 
 cally related as end and means. Such conformity 
 to an end is then transferred from these individ- 
 ual organisms to the Universe, as to a *' great or- 
 ganism." 
 
 Now we are accustomed to assert that these com- 
 posite forms cannot possibly be mere products of 
 the blind co-operation of many elements, without the 
 unity of one controlling design. Such a conclusion 
 is decidedly false. Even supposing a conscious de- 
 sign to be demonstrably at work, still the realiza- 
 tion of its end is always dependent on the fact, that 
 every particle of this end is likewise the inevita- 
 ble and undesignedly necessary product of the co- 
 
l8 rillLOSOPHV OF KliLIGlON. 
 
 operation of tlic means summoned to aid. The 
 end would not be possible at all if it were impossi- 
 ble in accordance with the laws of the mechanism 
 which these means follow ; and it would not be 
 actual, if it were not also necessary in accordance 
 with these laws, at the very instant when the afore- 
 said means are applied. 
 
 But still further : It is supposed that at least the 
 bringing together of the means themselves, into 
 those positions in which they are of necessity com- 
 pelled to realize the end, is impossible without a 
 controlling design. But again it may be answered : 
 Even where this design actually exists, it is unable 
 to bring the usable means into those useful posi- 
 tions by its own mere volition ; on the contrary, it is 
 able to accomplish this only by summoning physical 
 agencies and forces of a sort similar to the means 
 themselv^es. Therefore the state attained at any 
 given instant, when the end is accomplished, must 
 be regarded as the necessary resultant of the co- 
 operation of these forces at the preceding instant ; 
 and instead of an intelligence which might ex- 
 plain the state of the case belonging to this pre- 
 ceding instant, there may always be substituted a 
 combination of other blind elements and forces 
 which were compelled to have precisely the same 
 result. 
 
IMMANENT CONFORMITY TO END. 1 9 
 
 To State the same thing briefly : The completely 
 automatic blind origin even of the system most 
 conformable to an end, is never impossible ; it is 
 only improbable. And now the question comes, 
 what is meant by this latter expression ? 
 
 S 12. If we take for sfranted, that an indefinite 
 multitude of different elements act ujoon one an- 
 other entirely in accordance with mechanical laws, 
 and that they were aboriginally in reciprocal mo- 
 tions which were not regulated by any design, then 
 there might issue from such conditions innumera- 
 ble possible consequences. The forms possessed of 
 an immanent conformity to an end would represent 
 only a very insignificant number among these pos- 
 sible consequences ; and therefore they would have 
 very little probability of coming into existence. But 
 to reason back from this to a design proposing 
 an end, would be valid only in case the forms con- 
 formable to the end alone appeared in the world ; 
 and in case those other results that are without 
 an end, or in contradiction to an end, were neither 
 present in experience, nor needed to be assumed 
 even as having existed in the past. 
 
 Neither of the above-mentioned suppositions cor- 
 responds with the facts. In our actual observation 
 there occur innumerable cases of disease and of the 
 
20 PHlLOSOrilV OK RELIGION. 
 
 failure of rational life-ends; — to say nothing what- 
 ever of the very many facts and occurrences which, 
 so far as our discernment extends, are at least with- 
 out an end, even if they disturb no other end. But 
 with reference to the past we are at liberty to as- 
 sume, that at first an innumerable multitude of in- 
 harmonious forms, intrinsically hostile to any end, 
 actually emerged from the reciprocal impact of blind 
 elements ; that these forms, however, were not able 
 to maintain themselves in the course of nature, as 
 against the constant assaults from without ; that, on 
 the contrary, only those few held out, which had 
 chanced to be the more fortunate ; that then these 
 fortunate ones exerted more and more a determin- 
 ing influence upon the rest ; and that thus gradu- 
 ally it has come to pass, that nature runs its course, 
 not indeed in complete perfection and conformity to 
 an end, but after all to such an extent that there 
 still remain but few disturbances or interferences 
 by which the development and perpetuation of the 
 structures that are conformable to an end, is en- 
 dangered. In this way, therefore, it would not be 
 unthinkable that an original chaos gradually shaped 
 itself into a nature that is arranged in conformity 
 to ends. 
 
INTELLIGENT ELEMENTS OF REALITY. 21 
 
 § 13. Moreover, it is not necessary to stop with 
 the altogether meagre assumptions which we have 
 made. If it is once held to be conceivable that 
 a single supreme intelligence may exert an influ^ 
 ence upon the reciprocal relations of the elements 
 of the world, then similar intelligence may also be 
 imagined as immediately active in all these indi- 
 vidual elements themselves ; and, instead of con- 
 ceiving them as controlled merely by blindly op- 
 erative forces, they may be imagined as animated 
 spiritual beings, who strive after certain states and 
 offer resistance to certain other states. In such 
 case there may be imagined the gradual origin of 
 ever more perfect relations, from the reciprocal 
 action of these elements, almost like the reciprocal 
 action of a human society ; and that too without 
 necessarily arriving at the assumption, to which we 
 are here inclined, of a single, supreme, intelligent 
 Being. Our reasoning issues rather in a sort of 
 polytheistic or even pantheistic conception, and that 
 too in quite tolerable agreement with experience. 
 
 § 14. Against what was said above it may still 
 be objected, that the persistence, the power of self- 
 maintenance, and the equipoise of the more for- 
 tunate forms, which we previously admitted to have 
 originated in the blind course of nature, are not 
 
22 rniLosoriiY of religion. 
 
 identical \vitli that conformity to an end, the ad- 
 miration for whicli was our ]K)int of departure in 
 the teleological argument. The aforesaid mere equi- 
 poise, and the permanence that originates from it, 
 might also belong of themselves to altogether pur- 
 poseless forms ; that is to say, to forms whose entire 
 existence would have absolutely no immediate value 
 and no rational significance. Both these character- 
 istics however we suppose we recognize in those 
 structures conformable to an end, which we are here 
 making our point of departure. 
 
 There is a remainder of truth in the above-men- 
 tioned view ; but the thought does not prove what 
 it was assumed to prove. To wit, so soon as we 
 confine ourselves simply to admiration for an imma- 
 nent conformity to an end, we are in fact scarcely 
 ever able to demonstrate conclusively that the total 
 result which is produced by it is actually anything 
 of absolute value; — a value which would have to 
 be apprehended either as being generically its own 
 end, or as being such an end as to admit of our 
 understanding that it could have been devised only 
 by a designing wisdom, and that if only, rather than 
 one of its opposites, was worthy of this wisdom. 
 
 We admire, for example, the stability of the plan- 
 etary system ; we believe that only a Providence 
 has been able to choose from among the innumer- 
 
MEANS AND END IN ORGANISM. 23 
 
 able possible arrangements of its masses, precisely 
 that one on which this stability depends. But it 
 may be questioned whether after all this constant 
 repetition of the same occurrences is, as a matter 
 of course, a supreme end ; and whether it may not 
 rather be a tedious arrangement ; so much so that 
 there might conceivably have been innumerable 
 arrangements, that never occur in the actual world, 
 which the one succession of different developments 
 of the heavenly bodies might have established, — 
 something much more manifold, novel, and inter- 
 esting. In plants, after they once exist, everything 
 harmonizes as means and end. But what is the 
 value of their entire existence ? Ends external to 
 themselves, which they serve, are accomplished by 
 them ; but they might possibly have been accom- 
 plished by a shorter methocl. Their own growth 
 and bloom is in the estimate of our understanding 
 an entirely purposeless fact, in which nothing fur- 
 ther actually appears than that equiiDoise which the 
 mechanical course of nature is capable of produc- 
 ing, and from which the conformity to an end here 
 assumed should be quite essentially distinguished. 
 
 The above-mentioned consideration may be ex- 
 tended to the world of animals and men : so Ions: 
 as there are still among the latter so many com- 
 plaints about unrealizable ideals, the thought that 
 
24 riiiLosopHV or religion. 
 
 much of the beauty \vc conceive has no existence 
 will continue to nullify the conclusiveness of the 
 telcological argument. 
 
 § 15. If we summarize our thoughts, there re- 
 mains but one point of a positive character, and 
 this is the conviction that there is in the world 
 at all events a great deal of that which is beautiful 
 and great and excellent, — admiration for which was 
 the point of departure for this teleological argu- 
 ment ; and that it is by no means possible to get rid 
 of this argument by deducing all its examples from 
 the undesigned reciprocal actions of innumerable 
 elements, working in accordance with law. By such 
 deduction we merely change the location of that 
 which has value. We are necessitated then to as- 
 sert of just that aforesaid original nature of the 
 elements, and of their general laws of action, that 
 . they themselves from the very first include within 
 themselves the ground capable of developing that 
 which has value. 
 
 But the course of thought given above has ut- 
 terly failed as an argument for the existence of God. 
 That Intelligence, of which we cannot be wholly 
 rid, admits just as well of being apprehended as a 
 property adhering iminanently to all Things ; or 
 even, if one is pleased to seek it outside of Things, 
 
FATE OF THE TELEOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. 
 
 ^D 
 
 as a multiplicity of spiritual beings or demons, who 
 share with each other in the creation and control 
 of the world. And each of these assumptions really 
 harmonizes better with the immediate impression 
 of experience than the hasty assumption of one 
 only supreme wisdom, from which as their source 
 the imperfections of the world, that in fact are 
 manifest to us, are much more difficult to compre- 
 hend. 
 
 § 16. The teleological argument was wrecked by 
 the fact that it was unable, with sufficient certainty 
 and to a sufficient extent, to prove empirically the 
 empirical datum, which it assumed to make its point 
 of departure, — namely, the world's conformity to 
 an end. 
 
 We attempt therefore to find our point of depart- 
 ure in a simpler datum, which is not so doubtful, 
 and which is quite as generally acknowledged. And 
 we attempt to deduce from it, not exactly the 
 existence of God, but a more modest conclusion, 
 which shall serve us as a preliminary condition for 
 that other conclusion. 
 
 This datum is in substance the assumption that 
 all the elements of the world, without exception, 
 act upon each other, no matter whether adapted to 
 an end or the reverse ; and therefore that each 
 
26 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 
 
 exerts influences upon the rest, or, in turn, receives 
 influences from them. So far as our experience 
 extends, it confirms this assumption. The objec- 
 tion against it, that we know little of the past, and 
 absolutely nothing of the future, and that even in 
 the present perhaps individual elements do not 
 stand in any relation of reciprocal action with each 
 other, cannot refute the assumption. For this in- 
 difference just mentioned between two elements — 
 a and b — at the same time that each individual 
 element stands in a relation of reciprocal action 
 with many others, we should after all never be com- 
 pelled to regard as a fact based upon no principle, 
 but as the necessary consequence of the same Maw,' 
 in accordance with which a and b exercise the afore- 
 said other reciprocal actions. And just so, if in 
 the past or future these actions of the elements 
 with respect to each other, were different from 
 what they are now ; yet we should not regard 
 even this as a fact independent of conditions, but 
 as conditioned by some fixed law, which sooner or 
 later would demand other actions with the same 
 consistency with which it now demands the ones 
 in question. 
 
 If what was said above be not acknowledged, but 
 if it were maintained rather that the elements of the 
 world, without any cause, have sometimes acted upon 
 
THE ORIGINAL ELEMENTS RELATED. 2^ 
 
 each other, in general, and at other times not at 
 all, at one time thus and at another time otherwise ; 
 then the very basis for every investigation would 
 be abolished. Such a world would furnish no data 
 whatever for any conclusion, even with respect to 
 an event that is to be anticipated within its own 
 limits merely, still less for any conclusion with re- 
 spect to anything external to itself, which might be 
 regarded, as in any sense, its ground, its cause, its 
 end, or its principle. 
 
 § 17. From the foregoing it follows now that 
 the individual elements, of which the world is com- 
 posed, are by no means able to exist as they will ; 
 and that therefore a course of the world cannot 
 be deduced from real beings, which are from the 
 beginning wholly without relation to each other. 
 
 If, for example, all things were as incomparable 
 with each other or as disparate as perhaps * red ' 
 or ' sweet ' (and nothing would prevent the making 
 of such an assumption, in case each real being is 
 completely independent, and has to pay no regard 
 whatever to all the others), it is evident that no 
 definite result could possibly spring from any rela- 
 tion between two such beings (supposing one to be 
 at all able to conceive of such a 'relation') with 
 any more right than any other could claim. For, 
 
28 TMiir.osornv oi- religion. 
 
 in order that the result in must originate from a 
 and b, while the same result m could not originate 
 from a and <•, it is necessary that there first exist 
 between b and c, not a complete incomparability, 
 but a definite contrariety, or a difference of definite 
 magnitude, — a thing which is not thinkable, unless 
 b and c are comparable. 
 
 The further development of these considerations 
 would show then, that this comparability must ob- 
 tain, not merely between b and c, but between all 
 the real elements of the world ; and this in such 
 manner, that these elements constitute collectively, 
 not members of a single series, indeed, but rather 
 members of a system of series intersecting each 
 other ; and also in such manner that it should be 
 possible for one to proceed from the nature of each 
 individual element to the nature of every other, by 
 a definite number of steps, taken within this net- 
 work of system. Such a state of the case lies, as 
 a silent assumption, just as if it were utterly im- 
 possible to be otherwise, at the foundation of our 
 entire view of the world ; and, on this account, the 
 importance of this wonderful circumstance is com- 
 monly overlooked. 
 
 § 18. It would be over-rash to infer from this, 
 without further question, a common origin for all 
 
ALL ELEMENTS ARE COMPARABLE. 29 
 
 these elements. For although this comparableness 
 of theirs seems like a single select case from among 
 many in contrast with the empty possibilities which 
 we might be able to imagine (as, for example, that 
 all the elements were as totally different as ' red,' 
 ' sweet,' or * warm '), nevertheless there is appli- 
 cable to the case no calculation of probabilities, in 
 accordance with which it would be impossible to 
 accept the existence of this particular case as a 
 mere matter of fact independently of a common 
 cause for all the elements. 
 
 On the contrary, a different conclusion is justi- 
 fied. It is not enough that the natures of Things 
 are homogeneous, unless the same natures stand 
 in some other connection besides. From such ho- 
 mogeneity it would barely follow what result (c) 
 must originate from the meeting of two beings a 
 and b, — taking it for granted that there were in 
 general some reason why something new must 
 originate, and why the mere existence of a and b 
 and their conjunction could not have been enough. 
 Or, as expressed in other words : The most that fol- 
 lows from the comparable natures a and b concerns 
 the result which they are necessitated to produce, 
 or the manner in which they are necessitated to 
 act upon one another ; but it does not follow that 
 they must {produce anything whatever, or that they 
 must act at all upon each other. 
 
30 I'llILOSOPlIV OF RELIGION. 
 
 In case \vc draw a conclusion e from two premises 
 a and b, the meaning is as follows : In the unity 
 of our thinkin<; ego, the two thoughts a and b can- 
 not appear as states of this ego without the thought 
 V being attached to them, — and this just on account 
 of the nature of this one subject. If, on the other 
 hand, the thought a were conceived by one person, 
 and the thought b .by another, then the thought c 
 would not originate as a consequence in either one 
 of the two, although c, and c alone, would be the 
 necessary result of a and b provided they came to- 
 gether at all. The case is exactly so with Thijigs. 
 From the mere fact that one Thing a exists, and 
 another b exists, e does not by any means follow, 
 of course ; and this, although c would be the only 
 effect which could follow, provided a and b acted 
 upon each other. We must investigate the ques- 
 tion what, in such a case, would correspond to 
 that identity of the thinking subject by means of 
 which the thoughts a and b alone are necessitated 
 to produce a result. 
 
 § 19. We derive from Metaphysic the conviction, 
 that this fact of the reciprocal influence of two 
 Things a and b is impossible, so long as both were 
 conceived of as entirely self-sufficient and in such 
 sort independent of each other, that a might exist 
 
THINGS AS MODES OF ONE BEING. 3 1 
 
 and be what it is, even though b had no existence. 
 It remains a completely insolvable contradiction, 
 that a and b accommodate themselves to each other 
 (that b, therefore, enters into a state p, as soon as 
 a enters into the state a), if a and b have no con- 
 cern with each other. 
 
 We derive moreover from Metaphysic the further 
 conviction, that all middle terms, which are inter- 
 polated between a and b, such as the 'transition' 
 of a 'substance,' of an 'influence,' or of a 'force,' 
 are either essentially inconceivable ideas, or at any 
 rate do not at all explain the action, but always 
 leave unanswered the same question ; namely, how 
 X after its transition from a to b can begin the 
 production of a change in b, — that is to say, how 
 X can act upon b, or how in general one Thing can 
 act upon another. 
 
 Finally, we derive the conviction that the afore- 
 said inconceivableness can be removed only by the 
 negation of the independence of individual Things ; 
 a and b cannot be absolutely different beings, but 
 only modifications of one and the same Being M, 
 which is in them all, in a, b, c, d, . . ., the truly 
 Existent ; and which has indeed assumed different 
 forms in all these different Things, but still re- 
 mains indivisibly one and the same individual M. 
 
 If, then, in the single Thing a there occurs a 
 
32 PHILOSOPHY or KF.I.IGION. 
 
 change a, this a is co ipso, is of itself already be- 
 sides a change of 31, and has no need first to 
 become such a change. If then we conceive the 
 nature of M as always endeavoring to maintain its 
 own identity, M will now produce within itself a 
 second state p, which occurs as a compensation to 
 a, and in connection with it forms again an expres- 
 sion of the whole nature of M. 
 
 It is not necessary, however, that this p should 
 appear in our observation as a change of a, but it 
 may appear as a change of the other individual 
 Thing b. And this would then be the procedure 
 which we conceive as an ''action of a upon b." 
 
 § 20. For the sake of elucidation the following 
 remark must be added : What this one Beinfc, or 
 — according to the common expression — what 'the 
 Absolute ' is, remains at first completely indeter- 
 minate. From the fact of the reciprocal action of 
 individual Things, the only conclusion at which we 
 arrived was that of the necessary unity of this 
 Absolute. What it is, is left for further determi- 
 nation. 
 
 Furthermore, in designating Things as ''modifi- 
 cations of the Absolute," it is to be acknowledged 
 that such an expression contains no explanation 
 whatever of the precise sort of unity which obtains 
 
THINGS AS MODES OF ONE BEING. 33 
 
 between Things and the Absolute ; or of the sort 
 of dependence in which they stand with reference 
 to that Absolute. The expression has rather the 
 distinct negative meaning which denies the self- 
 dependence of individual Things. With something 
 of like sort we are frequently compelled to be sat- 
 isfied. We are very often obliged, for the purpose 
 of removing a contradiction or of explaining an 
 occurrence, to postulate a fact, with respect to 
 which, however, we are never able to say how it 
 were possible for it to exist, or to have been 
 brought to pass; — and this, even in case it can 
 be yet more accurately defined than the fact that 
 is just now assumed by us. We postpone to a 
 subsequent chapter whatever more there is to be 
 said upon this point. 
 
 Finally ; even the elasticity, or self-maintenance, 
 that we attribute to the Absolute, is used in a 
 preliminary way merely as a not unimaginable ex- 
 pression to which different significations may be 
 given. It is not necessary to conceive of the reac- 
 tions of the Absolute against the changes that 
 occur, as directed, in a merely mechanical way, to 
 the preservation of the status quo ; instead of this, 
 we might assume even an impulse of development 
 in progress towards a definite goal ; and that this 
 impulse, likewise, by means of any state a which 
 
34 I'HILOSOPIIV OF RELIGION. 
 
 had originated cither elsewhere or in the prosecu- 
 tion of this purposeful activity, would occasion the 
 production of a further state p, by which such pur- 
 poseful activity would be propagated further. Such 
 an assumi)tion, made in a preliminary way, is a mat- 
 ter of indifference. It is certain only that if there 
 is to be any reciprocal action whatever of individual 
 Things, there must be in the Absolute some such 
 consistent sensibility as is necessitated to produce 
 by means of o its consequence p, no matter whether 
 it be for self-maintenance or for progress. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 MORE PRECISE DETERMINATIONS OF THE ABSOLUTE. 
 
 § 21. It is not our present design to dissect 
 logically the conception of an ' Absolute,' and to lay 
 down the conditions under which aught would be 
 held to be the Absolute or acknowledged as such. 
 As far as this is a matter of interest, it is too 
 difficult for the present moment. Just now we are 
 rather making the attempt to specify by name that 
 which is by its own nature adapted to fulfil the 
 conditions above alluded to ; and, of course, fulfil 
 them in such a way that it can be recognized as 
 the absolute Principle of that world which is given 
 in experience as bare matter of fact. Not to stray 
 too far abroad, we confine ourselves to the two 
 contraries between which it has long been custom- 
 ary to distribute the consistence of whatever is 
 actual ; namely, Matter and Spirit. 
 
 § 22. The assumption that the common substance 
 of the world is only matter, and matter as endowed 
 only with those properties which we in physical 
 science attribute to every portion of the same, 
 
36 PHILOSOPHY or ki:i,k;iox. 
 
 has probably never been made in earnest by any 
 one. 
 
 Such an assumption would take upon itself the 
 difficult ])rc)blem of showini; how, from these mere 
 properties of spacc-fillini;, inertia, divisibility, and 
 mobility, all the rest of the world, and therefore 
 even its spiritual constituents, could be developed 
 as a matter of course, — that is to say, as the mere 
 consequences of such properties and without admix- 
 ture of any other principle whatever. 
 
 Now Psychology has compelled us to the convic- 
 tion that the states of motion — which can only be 
 considered as events that happen to masses of the 
 kind referred to above — are, as a matter of fact, 
 the occasions upon which there arise /;/ 7is spiritual 
 processes, such as sensations or feelings. But in 
 what way these occasions bring after them these 
 results so unlike themselves, is not only not a sub- 
 ject of empirical knowledge, but it is even possible 
 to see that we can never reach the point where it 
 would be for us a matter of course that a mode 
 of the motion of these masses, however wondrously 
 intricate, would now have to cease to remain such, 
 and would be necessitated to transmute itself into 
 quite a different process, of sensation or of feeling. 
 According to all the axioms of which we avail our- 
 selves elsewhere in the mechanical consideration of 
 
SPIRITUAL AND PHYSICAL PROCESSES. 37 
 
 nature, from motions alone nothing but a transfer- 
 ence, new distribution, propagation or arrest, of 
 inotiojis can originate. A spiritual effect can be 
 attached to them only indirectly ; to wit, by means 
 of the action of the aforesaid physical processes on 
 a subject which, in its own nature, possesses that 
 capacity for the production of psychical processes in 
 which the motions themselves are wanting. 
 
 As here in the small, so also in the totality of 
 the world, a Principle of barely material nature 
 would be in no condition to produce from itself 
 the world of spiritual processes. 
 
 § 23. Now although each of these two series of 
 events, the spiritual and the physical processes, re- 
 quires its own peculiar 'ground' in reality, it is 
 nevertheless not necessary that the ' ground ' of 
 the two be divided into two different species of 
 reality, in such a manner that there may be mate- 
 rial Things devoid of all spiritual susceptibility, and 
 spirits devoid of all physical property and activity. 
 The rather may we first examine the thought that 
 both of these original properties are in fact insep- 
 arably united in every existence ; and that, on ac- 
 count of one of them, the Existent is able to appear 
 as, and to pass for, matter ; while, on account of 
 the other, contrariwise, it leads an inner life and 
 develops spiritual states within itself. 
 
38 pnii.(^sni-nv or RruGfox. 
 
 For the psych()l()<^y of the individual bcin^, this 
 assumption, on closer inspection, is shown to be un- 
 j:)roductive. T'or the consideration of the world as a 
 whole it, at first, has more to recommend it ; and it 
 forms the text of the spirited descriptions in which 
 Pantheism glorifies the unresting life of the eter- 
 nally One Substance, both corporal and spiritual, 
 which in ceaseless vicissitude fashions its individual 
 shapes, and lets them be absorbed again into itself. 
 
 The more definite formulating of these thoughts, 
 in the case of Spinoza and Schelling, arouses our 
 scruples against them. When the former (Spinoza) 
 ascribes to the Absolute innumerable kinds of doing 
 and acting (* Attributes ') that admit of no compari- 
 son with each other, — of which, to be sure, only 
 two, namely Thought and Extension {cogitatio and 
 extensio) are familiar to us men, — such manifold- 
 ness obviates in some degree, at least for the 
 imagination, the difficulty which lies in the sin- 
 gular circumstance, that just those two attributes 
 which are not reducible to each other are assumed 
 to form the essence of all the Existent. To find, 
 however, for both of these attributes a still * higher 
 common root,' from which both issued as mere con- 
 sequences, but did not themselves constitute such 
 root (so Schelling,) is a problem that surpasses all 
 human power of comprehension. It is indeed pos- 
 
THE ABSOLUTE AS SPIRIT. 39 
 
 sible to fashion the name of such a * First Absolute,' 
 which is neither real nor ideal, and yet is the ground 
 of both. But it is not possible to discover any- 
 thina: in the entire world, of which it could be said 
 that it belongs to this thing, by virtue of its own 
 nature, to be esteemed as such a common root. 
 
 Since, therefore, the goad of this Dualism cannot 
 be got rid of, and a substance that is merely real 
 and acts blindly does not suffice for explaining the 
 world, we find herein one of the motives that lead 
 us to the opposite attempt, — to the pure Spiritual- 
 ism which undertakes to comprehend the spirit 
 alone as truly existent, and all else as its product. 
 
 § 24. The above-mentioned views, on being carried 
 out further, are wont by preference to invalidate yet 
 more the spiritual element of the Absolute. Such 
 views customarily announce this element as a rea- 
 son that is 'per se unconscious ' ; that only in indi- 
 vidual points of its extreme altitude, in individual 
 spiritual beings, raises itself to consciousness. 
 
 Such a form of conception as the foregoing ap- 
 pears inadmissible. We have no right to strip off 
 from the Reason, which we invariably first learn 
 by experience to know as conscious, this predicate 
 of consciousness, and then persuade ourselves that 
 ausrht intellicrible is left still remainins:. Rather is 
 
40 rniLOSoiMiv of keijcjion. 
 
 it true that only one definite thought admits of 
 being connected with the expression, a reason act- 
 ing unconsciously in the world ; to wit, the thought 
 that biifid iorcQS act in the world, which are not in 
 any respect reason, but which in fact act so that 
 their results are the same as those which a reason 
 acting in the world would have been compelled to 
 desire. 
 
 At this point the additional misfortune comes to 
 view, that the aforesaid proposition does not ad- 
 mit of being proved with reference to any kind of 
 nature's action.' For, in order to do this, it were 
 necessary to show that the results of her action are 
 the fulfilment of those absolute ends which reason 
 would have been, not merely able to propose to itself, 
 but compelled to propose as the ones justified in 
 the highest degree. If, on the contrary, we appraise 
 what is actually achieved in nature at a lower value, 
 and assume that it could have been still better, but 
 is not so, then we should be quite as much justified 
 in speaking of an ?^?/reason acting blindly in the 
 world. 
 
 But apart from this, it is clear according to what 
 was said above, that a self-conscious reason could 
 never originate as a final product from such powers ; 
 rather should we have to be satisfied with uncon- 
 sciousness throughout the entire world. 
 
IMPERSONAL SPIRIT IMPOSSIBLE. 4I 
 
 It is wrong also to appeal to the analogy of our 
 own spirit, which, without conscious design, in- 
 stinctively produces many of its rational works ; 
 such, for example, as those of art. We admit 
 the existence of such activities ; but we know 
 of them in absolutely no other case than that of 
 spirits whose nature it is to be self-conscious : 
 moreover, they appear in this case as actions ac- 
 companying or following excitations and states 
 which were originally possible only in conscious- 
 ness, but which in time vanish from consciousness 
 by reciprocal inhibition. How, on the other hand, 
 anything similar could take place in a subject, in 
 whose nature no consciousness had ever preceded 
 such activities, is not in the slightest degree com- 
 prehensible. 
 
 § 25. In connection herewith, the same view is 
 fond of speaking of an iDipci'soiial Spirit. 
 
 This, too, is much easier to say than by it men- 
 tally to represent anything. It is quite correct 
 that, in our own spiritual life, we experience 
 manifold states in which all attention to our own 
 self, and all positing of that self over opposite to 
 an external world, are completely gone ; and we 
 so lose ourselves in the content of a sensation, 
 an idea, a feeling, or an effort, that we (so to 
 
42 PHILOSOI'HV OF RELIGION. 
 
 speak) an- for a time nothing but this, as it were, 
 self-apprehending content, and not a subject which 
 had this content as an object of its consciousness 
 and distinguished it from itself. 
 
 But it is just as certain that we know such 
 states only as occurrences in an otherwise per- 
 sonal spirit. They merely prove that it is not 
 necessary for the personal spirit at every moment 
 to think of itself as different from the content 
 which exactly fills out its consciousness. But they 
 cannot prove that anything similar is possible 
 without the personality, which, in such a case, 
 does not indeed mentally represent itself, but 
 none the less remains in fact the condition of 
 the possibility of such a self-forgetfulness. For 
 all the aforesaid sensations, ideas, or feelings, 
 in which we . thus lose ourselves, are after all 
 never thinkable except as states of a definite, 
 self -identical and separate spiritual subject ; and 
 not the least consecutiveness, nor any coherency 
 according to law between these different spiritual 
 states, would be possible, unless the personal unity 
 of the spirit, which is by no means apparent in 
 them, were for all that the real ground which 
 unites them with one another. 
 
IMPERSONAL SPIRIT IMPOSSIBLE. 43 
 
 § 26. It is further adduced in support of the 
 above-mentioned view that even the ' personality ' 
 with which we have an acquaintance, — to wit, 
 that of the human soul, — first originates in the 
 course of its development. As originally given 
 there exist, it is said, only common spiritual capa- 
 cities which, by means of favorable circumstances, 
 are aroused to expression in such manner that, 
 from the combination of these expressions, a 
 reflection directed toward self and a self-con- 
 sciousness can also originate. 
 
 Just so, it is claimed, the Absolute at first is 
 impersonal Spirit. At this point views are di- 
 vided : one makes the Absolute, just like the 
 finite spirit, attain to a personality of its own ; 
 the other makes it always remain of itself imper- 
 sonal and only assume personal form in individual 
 ones of its products, that is in finite spirits. 
 
 The first view is for the present time a useless 
 curiosity. For us it would hardly be of any 
 value religiously, that the Absolute has attained 
 to personality at the conclusion of its develop- 
 ment. On the contrary, an account of the way 
 in which this result is reached is demanded by 
 no religious need, but at the very most only by 
 speculative curiosity. 
 
 The other view would be compelled to assert 
 
44 ruiLosopHV or kkmgion. 
 
 that the Absolute, of itself unconscious and imper- 
 sonal, j)ro(luccs even in its blind development the 
 favoring; conditions under which its own products, 
 the finite spirits, developed the personality denied 
 to itself. This is likewise an opinion that answers 
 to no religious need ; and least of all to the neces- 
 sity of making intelligible from a single real prin- 
 ciple, not merely the external course of the world, 
 but also its moral order, and the fact that it fur- 
 nishes us with obligatory ideals of the Good and 
 the Holy. 
 
 In this way it is made apparent that very pow- 
 erful motives impel the religious spirit, at last, 
 straight to the conception of a personal God, and 
 do not permit it to shrink back from the many 
 difficulties that lie in this conception also. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE METAPHYSICAL ATTRIBUTES OF GOD. 
 
 § 27. We abandon the previous train of thought 
 and now consider the conception of God as, on 
 the basis of the incentives depicted in the last 
 chapter, by means of a long spiritual labor of the 
 centuries and essentially harmonious, it lies before 
 us perfected in the monotheistic religions. We 
 consider, first, the formal or metaphysical deter- 
 minations. 
 
 That God is but Oiie^ and that polytheism is 
 therefore excluded, we pass with a bare allusion. 
 Many Gods, if each lived independent in his own 
 world, would be a useless and adventurous 
 thought ; but if they met each other with their 
 activity in one and the same world, then they 
 would necessarily be finite beings, which acted 
 on each other and suffered effects from each 
 other in accordance with certain laws appointed 
 over them. 
 
 The religious nature does not understand the 
 ' Unity of God ' in the aforesaid numerical mean- 
 ing. It does not intend to affirm that God is 
 in fact only one, while by way of imagination 
 
46 PHILOSOIMIV or RELIGION. 
 
 there niiglU }:)()s.sibly be beside him still others 
 of his own kind. It means rather that God is 
 an o}ily God ; that is to say, there is no superior 
 general concept of a God, of such sort that all 
 the predicates which might belong to the actual 
 God as an example of this concept of species, 
 would ensue from it just as much conditioned and 
 prescribed as in the case of every finite creature, 
 from whose concept of species ensues the limit 
 within which its properties and their reciprocal 
 combination can vary. 
 
 This absolute independence of the Highest Prin- 
 ciple, which does not admit of its being in any 
 way subordinated to one still higher, — as though 
 it were effect or even mere example of the latter, 
 — will appear to us subsequently in the different 
 consequences which are to be drawn from it, as 
 one of the most important of the formal deter- 
 minations. 
 
 § 28. To a second formal predicate, that of 
 Unchangeableness, the religious feeling does not 
 attach the same meaning as seems to accord with 
 this title. 
 
 Perfectly unchangeable substances would, of 
 course, be philosophically useless assumptions even 
 for the explanation of nature ; but still, if one 
 
THE PREDICATE OF OMNIPRESENCE. 47 
 
 chooses to avoid certain questions as to first prin- 
 ciples, such substances always admit of being em- 
 ployed for the intermediate explanation of processes 
 one from the other. A God, on the contrary, who 
 should be without changeable inner states forever 
 perfectly self-identical, would answer to no religious 
 need. 
 
 We need, in brief, a living God ; and, there- 
 fore, by his ' unchangeableness ' nothing further is 
 meant than the consistency with which all these 
 inner states proceed from a nature that remains 
 the same. On this point we are in accord with 
 Metaphysic also, which requires of the nature of 
 all substances — even of such as are finite — only 
 this consistent exclusiveness of the series of forms 
 within which each being among them varies ; it 
 does not, however, require the monotony and rigid- 
 ity of a perfect unchanging self-likeness. 
 
 § 29. A third formal predicate. Omnipresence, 
 seems only at first sight to ascribe to God an at- 
 tribute of spatiality such as we otherwise impute 
 merely to matter. The religious meaning of this 
 expression signifies rather the opposite. 
 
 Concerning finite things we know that if they 
 act upon each other immediately, it is only when 
 in spatial contact, and therefore where they are ; 
 
48 rmi.osoruv ok religion. 
 
 on tlic contrai y, if tluy acl at a distance, it is only 
 mediately (by means of the propagation of their 
 first action to elements lyin<^ between) : or we know 
 that, if wc concede to them an immediate action 
 from afar, this action at least has its maximum 
 when the nearness is greatest, and diminishes as 
 the distance increases. 
 
 Both limitations are suj)})osed not to be true of 
 God. If he wills to act upon any element of the 
 world, then his activity is supposed not to have to 
 traverse any way, long or short, up to the point 
 where such clement exists. Converselv, if an ele- 
 ment of the world — for example, a finite spirit 
 with his prayer — wills to act upon God, then it is 
 not necessary to traverse any way in order to dis- 
 cover God, as though he had a definite position in 
 space. The rather is the activity of God everywhere 
 alike immediately and perfectly present, without dif- 
 ference of degree. 
 
 Only this is meant by 'Omnipresence.' On the 
 contrary, no one ever had any interest in ascribing 
 positively to God himself, as one of his attributes, 
 the predicate of an infinitely great extension in 
 space. Quite the opposite, the simple design has 
 been held of denying with reference to him in 
 every respect that power to put under conditions 
 which space-limitation exercises upon the recipro- 
 cal action of finite beings. 
 
THE PREDICATE OF OMNIPOTENCE. 49 
 
 § 30. The predicate of Omnipotence obviously 
 presupposes that conceptions of activity, either 
 barely transforming or else creative, have some 
 applicability to God ; and, under this presupposi- 
 tion, it is then sought to exalt the power of God 
 absolutely above all bounds ; but in the ordinary 
 conception of this attribute such a result is not 
 obtained. 
 
 The simplest interpretation of Omnipotence, that 
 " God can do all possible," does not satisfy the 
 religious feeling ; we should thus obtain only the 
 relatively greatest one of those finite forces which, 
 collectively, are obliged to acknowledge certain lim- 
 its of 'possibility' that stand fixed independently 
 of them. God would therefore be subjected to a 
 sphere of laws antecedent even to himself, which 
 would determine for him the free scope of his power. 
 
 The other explanation — " God can make even 
 the impossible to be possible and actual" — without 
 doubt expresses the real heart-meaning of the re- 
 ligious feeling, but, in the aforesaid way of formu- 
 lating it, appears absurd and unthinkable. For all 
 order, all consistency and all coherency of the world 
 appear to depend upon the limits between the 
 joossible and the impossible being absolutely im- 
 movable. If that which is of itself impossible can 
 once be made possible by any power whatever, 
 
JO rnii.osornv of kklkhox. 
 
 then every sure foundation for making any conclu- 
 sion whatever in relation to the coherency of the 
 world falls away. 
 
 But even this last explanation does the very 
 thing for which it finds fault with the first ; it 
 assumes that this distinction of the impossible 
 from the possible already exists independently of 
 God. God finds them both already determined and 
 authenticated by means of a truth that is independ- 
 ent of himself ; and only in practice does the ca- 
 pacity belong to him of withdrawing aught that is 
 subordinated to the self-authenticated conception 
 of the impossible, from the domain of this concep- 
 tion, and of disposing it under the conception of 
 the possible. 
 
 The thought mentioned above is neither sound 
 in general, nor is such an omnipotence actually 
 unlimited. Rather must we arrive at such an 
 apprehension of God as makes God himself to be 
 the prime reason for the opposition of the possible 
 and the impossible having any significance at all 
 in the world of actual existence. 
 
 This thought, which is hard to define in the 
 present connection, we shall pursue further later 
 on. For our immediate purpose, that which is of 
 religious value in it permits of being most simply 
 and effectively expressed in the not quite correct 
 
THE PREDICATE OF ETERNITY. 5 I 
 
 form that '* God can do even the impossible." 
 This form at least states one thing clearly, — to 
 wit, that the impossible is no barrier for God. 
 
 § 31. The predicate of Eternity in time depends 
 upon different motives ; first, as may be readily 
 understood, upon the need that we be able to re- 
 gard what is to be our support and our consolation 
 as at no time ready to fail. But then, apart from 
 every religious need, eternal duration is aestheti- 
 cally an imposing idea on account of a sublimity 
 which is worthy of the Absolute Principle. 
 
 But the aforesaid expression, nevertheless, does 
 not itself depend upon our seeing any value or any 
 advantage in the bare filling-up of infinite time. 
 Just as we did not apprehend omnipresence as a 
 positive magnitude in space, but only as the nega- 
 tion of all restrictive significations of space for the 
 action of God; just so, 'infinite duration' signifies 
 only the perfect independence of all those condi- 
 tions that change in time, by which finite beings 
 are constantly confined within a definite tract of 
 their possible existence. 
 
 § 32. Moreover ' Time ' also, like Space, is not 
 to be thought of as though it were a somehow 
 self-existing form, and as though God had only 
 
52 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 
 
 the capacity of -filling it up by his existence, how- 
 ever far it may extend. But the difficult at- 
 tempts which have been made to apprehend this 
 relation otherwise, — to consider time as in God, 
 or God as above time, — we must defer pro- 
 visionally and make prominent another point in- 
 stead. 
 
 God, as filling eternal time in a perfectly un 
 changeable way, would be a mental representation 
 of no service for religious interests. But if God 
 is living and the subject of change, — that is, if 
 anything whatever takes place within him, then 
 it follows that he is in every second instant an 
 other than he was in the first instant preceding ; 
 — unless it can be demonstrated on other grounds 
 in what way that ' Unity ' of his Being which is 
 for us indispensable is maintained continuously 
 through the course of his changes in time. 
 
 Now, at this point we derive from Metaphysic the 
 conviction that such * Unity of a Being w^ith itself ' 
 certainly presupposes all its successive states to be 
 comprehensible as different consequences of one and 
 the same nature, and — in brief — to cohere together 
 in accordance with one and the same formula ; but, 
 likewise, the conviction that this presupposition is 
 not at all adequate. For if wc also, the thinking 
 subjects, in the series of states a, a^, a,, 03, . . ., every- 
 
THE UNITY OF SELF-CONSCIOUS SPIRIT. 53 
 
 where observe the secondary effect of the original 
 nature a of a being ; and if we, on this account, 
 apprehend such a series as the history of one and 
 the same being a : still it is in this way by no 
 means yet proved, that this is more than a subjec- 
 tive apprehension on our part; — that is to say, 
 that the a, ai, a.., . . ., are not different successive 
 beings instead of only successive states of one and 
 the same Being (a). 
 
 If the latter conclusion is to be proved, then only 
 the Being a itself can prove it ; and, of course, only 
 by itself doing what, previously, merely we, the 
 investigating subjects, have done. The Being a 
 must comprehend itself as a 'unity'; must, as 
 such, set itself over against the series a, a^, . . ., as 
 mere states of its own, and be able to unite these 
 successive states into one synchronous state by 
 means of recollection. Expressed in simple man- 
 ner : In no respect can we assert of selfless 
 'Things,' but only of a self-conscious 'Spirit,' that 
 it remains in the course of its history one and the 
 same ; and, for the very reason that only it actual- 
 izes the aforesaid unity by means of this deed of 
 self-consciousness. Of a ' Thing,' on the contrary, 
 — since it is merely subject to different states one 
 after another, although in a sequence according 
 
54 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 
 
 to law, — there is no decisive test by which to 
 
 prove the fact and the means of its distinguishing 
 
 itself from a succession of different and merely 
 related Things. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 OF THE PERSONALITY OF THE ABSOLUTE. 
 
 § 33. The paradoxical result of the previous re- 
 flections is as follows : If all the predicates of 
 'unconditionateness' are to be valid for the Highest 
 Being, then one condition of this validity lies pre- 
 cisely in the addition of a last formal predicate, — 
 namely, that of Personal Existence. 
 
 At the faith in this ' personality of God ' the 
 religious faculty, naturally enough, has not arrived 
 by the above-mentioned way, but from familiar 
 motives that lie nearer at hand. Against this 
 faith, however, philosophic reflection has subse- 
 quently been very unanimously directed with the 
 assertion: 'Personality' is conceivable only in finite 
 spirits, and in this case rests on conditions which 
 can have no significance for the Absolute. 
 
 The above-mentioned investigations concerning 
 the possibility or impossibility of the assumption 
 of a ' personal God ' should be briefly repeated in 
 this connection. 
 
 § 34. Two thoughts which we believe ourselves 
 obliged to distinguish, lie in the conception of 'per- 
 sonality.' 
 
56 pnii.nsoriiv of religion. 
 
 First: No 'personality,' or — what can for the 
 moment ]:)ass as identical with it — no 'self-con- 
 sciousness ' is conceivable without our ascribing to 
 the spiritual subject, to which it is to belong, an 
 image of cognition or an image of representation, 
 of that which this subject itself is, and by means 
 of which it distinguishes itself from others. Since 
 these images of cognition, as well as those which 
 we project for ourselves from other objects, may 
 be more or less either correct or false ; therefore, 
 self-consciousness is by no means identical with 
 'adequate self-cognition.' We are rather to esti- 
 mate the different degrees of its clearness and per- 
 fection exactly according to the measure of the 
 conformity of its content with the actual nature of 
 the subject. 
 
 But the mental representation of the aforesaid pic- 
 ture will always deserve the title of 'self-conscious- 
 ness ' so long as it contains this second factor: — 
 to wit, so long as the other additional thought is 
 present, that this mental image is the image of 
 ourselves, and is by no means distinguished from 
 any other image merely in the same way that a 
 second object is distinguished from a third ; but 
 that it is rather significant of somewhat which, as 
 ' ego,' is to be placed in a fundamental and incom- 
 parable opposition to all else. This second trans- 
 action we consider in the first place. 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 5/ 
 
 § 35. It is a very common opinion that ' self-con- 
 sciousness ' is a spiritual phenomenon which develops 
 very gradually, and the origin and necessary con- 
 ditions of which, accordingly, have a history. * 
 
 Such an opinion we recognize as correct only in 
 relation to the first of the points distinguished 
 above. To wit : We doubtless do not arrive at the 
 knowledge of the properties of which we compose 
 the before-mentioned mental image, or at the con- 
 tent of the image of ourselves which we construct 
 for ourselves, except by means of an accumulation 
 of external and internal experiences. 
 
 But in relation to the other point we cannot 
 assent to this opinion. It does not admit of being 
 shown intelligibly, how, in the course of the pro- 
 jection of manifold mental representations, the 
 moment must necessarily at some time arrive, when 
 we should be compelled to consider one of these 
 representations, not merely as image of one object 
 which is distinguished from a second only in the 
 same way as the latter from a third, but precisely 
 as the image of our 'ego,' which stands in that 
 absolute opposition to every non-ego, so easily in- 
 telligible but so difficult further to describe. 
 
 It will be found that the apparent ' origin ' of 
 self-consciousness in this sense always presupposes 
 the latent previous existence of its most essentia) 
 
58 PHiLOSoniv or kkmcion. 
 
 element, — naniely, of a sclf-fccliug in the same 
 sense. 
 
 5 36. The materialistic attempts to generate self- 
 consciousness from all manner of motions in brain- 
 atoms returning upon themselves, are deserving of 
 no respect. As they are unable in general to de- 
 duce any * consciousness ' from motions, so is this 
 return of the motions also unable to generate any 
 jr^-consciousness. 
 
 But, on the whole, the frequent philosophical 
 assertions — Personality can only be generated by 
 an activity of the ego proceeding outward, and by 
 a resistance of the non-ego which * reflects ' this 
 activity upon its own point of issue — are not a 
 v.hit better. These modes of speech correspond 
 to absolutely no demonstrable and real transaction. 
 Such an activity of the ego proceeding outward 
 nowhere admits of being designated by name. 
 The analogy that it is thrown back like rays of 
 light from the non-ego, is a mental image utterly 
 without real motif, and one under which it is not 
 l)ossible to bring any actual procedure. The con- 
 clusion finally, that, this activity becomes * self-con- 
 sciousness ' by means of such * reflection,' is a bare 
 subreption. For it is precisely by this means that 
 the mere return of the activity to its own point of 
 
THE IDEA OF THE EGO. 59 
 
 issue is occasioned. But that it should now be 
 compelled to apprehend this point as its own self, 
 — and hence the precise origin of self-conscious- 
 ness, — is a mere supplement of thought devoid of 
 all basis. 
 
 Only those attempts would deserve consideration 
 which aim to show how the soul originally pro- 
 duces merely intuitive ideas, and then, in the course 
 of the reciprocal actions of these its individual 
 products, projects also conceptions of non-intuitive 
 subjects to which the aforesaid ideas belong as 
 predicates ; that it finally succeeds also in assign- 
 ing by thought one subject to the totality of all 
 its inner states ; and that it thus generates the 
 consciousness of the * ego ' as of that one which 
 is at the same time subject and object of the act 
 of ideation. 
 
 § 37. It is to be alleged, in the first place, against 
 such attempts as the foregoing, that identity of 
 ideating subject and ideated object is the general 
 notion of every personality ; and that, therefore, * I * 
 is not by this means distinguishable from * thou ' 
 and 'he.' And yet 'self-consciousness' or 'person- 
 ality ' obviously does not consist in subsuming 
 ourselves, together with all others under one and 
 the same general notion : but it consists in our 
 
60 IMIILOSOPHV OF RELIGION. 
 
 iiisti/iiriiis/iifiis ourselves from all others within this 
 i^cncral notion. 
 
 h might now be said: 'I' am subject and ob- 
 ject of my thou<;hts, * thou ' art subject and object 
 of thine, etc. If distinguishing thus is not to bring 
 us round and round in a constant circle, then the 
 distinction between 'mine' and 'thine' — the one 
 we need to make — cannot be deduced from the 
 fact that the * mine ' belongs to the * I,' and the 
 ' thine ' to the * thou ' ; but between both of them 
 there must already exist a distinction that is abso- 
 lutely clear, immediately given, and in need of no 
 deduction at all. 
 
 Such now is actually the case ; and the distinc- 
 tion depends upon this, that we are in general 
 unable to think of any soul exclusively as a being 
 active merely in the formation of ideas. Every 
 soul is rather likewise capable of experiencing 
 feelings of pleasure and of pain, and of combining 
 these feelings with the content of ideas. Simply 
 by means of the fact that the idea of any state 
 whatsoever is combined with a feeling of pleasure 
 or pain, is such state authenticated as 02ir own^ 
 and no longer passes merely as the state of some 
 being or other. 
 
 We express the matter simply by means of the 
 following antithesis : Granted that some superior 
 
FEELING AND SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS. 6 1 
 
 spirit possesses so perfect an intelligence as to 
 have a quite adequate cognition of all things, and 
 of its own being as well, and yet is utterly lack- 
 ing in the faculty for pleasure and pain ; and that 
 every conceivable content is therefore as indif- 
 ferent to it as is every other. Then such a spirit 
 will not merely cognize itself, but will also know 
 that in this case the cognizing subject is identical 
 with the object cognized. It will, however, at the 
 same time cognize the fact, that the case of such 
 identity may occur precisely so millions of times 
 in other beings ; and it will have no motive at all 
 to regard one of these cases — just that one which 
 occurs in its own self — as something special, and 
 to distinguish this case from those others ; it will 
 not, therefore, apprehend itself as an * ego ' set 
 over against some other as the ^non-ego.' On 
 the other hand, an animal of the lowest order, 
 that has scarcely any cognition of itself at all, 
 but has indeed feeling for pleasure and pain, will 
 never confound itself with the external world. 
 When it feels a smart, it will experience this 
 state as one belonging to itself alone ; and just 
 by this means will it feel itself as an 'ego' in 
 opposition to the whole world, although it would 
 not know at all how to specify precisely in what 
 its own being consists. 
 
62 niiLosoriiv oi kiclk.ion. 
 
 § 38. Wc arrive at the same goal by another 
 way. We often hear it said: 'Ego' and 'non- 
 ego* are two correlative conceptions, neither of 
 which has in general any significance apart from 
 its opposition to the other. Therefore, — it is said, 
 — even the idea of the 'ego' can originate only at 
 the moment when that of the * non-ego ' likewise 
 originates. On this account, * personality ' is pos- 
 sible only for finite beings which can be limited 
 by a non-ego. 
 
 The foregoing three propositions have really no 
 inner connection with each other. The first of 
 them must be pronounced perfectly absurd. Two 
 conceptions, each of which should have a meaning 
 only as a negation of the other, and should signify 
 nothing further, would both of them have no mean- 
 ing at all, and would not even acquire any by their 
 being opposed to each other. One of the two 
 must necessarily be independently determined and 
 signify something. 
 
 On consideration of our case we find the ques- 
 tion to be : If ' ego ' and ' non-ego ' were two 
 such conceptions, each of which contained barely 
 the negation of the other : by what means would 
 the soul then be induced, at the moment of the 
 simultaneous origin of both, to rank itself under 
 the conception of the * ego ' rather than under that 
 
THE TERM ' NON-EGO ' RELATIVE. 6^ 
 
 of the ' non-ego ' ; and what does it gain thereby if 
 it does the one and forbears the other ? To such 
 a question no answer is possible but just this ; 
 that one of the two conceptions signifies some- 
 what independently determined, and on this ac- 
 count the spirit applies it to itself, or does not so 
 apply it. Now, without going further, the expres- 
 sions themselves show that this independent sig- 
 nificance belongs only to the ' ego ' as positively 
 apprehended. What is meant by the term is 
 directly obvious : what, on the contrary, is meant 
 by the negative expression ' non-ego ' is in a pre- 
 liminary way obscure ; and only thus much is 
 known about it, — namely, that it is not the 'ego.' 
 But this is just what would be achieved by the 
 aforesaid immediate feeling, by which the ego posi- 
 tively apprehends what belongs to it as its own; 
 and, on the other hand, at first excludes from 
 ' itself ' in a merely negative way what does not 
 belong to it. 
 
 § 39. The above position being conceded, it is 
 still always possible to say : This ' feeling of the 
 ego,' although in itself of a definite content, which 
 does not primarily originate by means of its op- 
 position to the non-ego, nevertheless, as a matter 
 of fact, cannot actually occur except at the moment 
 
64 PlIILOSOrilV ol RELIGION. 
 
 of such an opposition. To see colors is also an 
 original capacity of the soul, and could not be pro- 
 cured for it by means of any waves of ether, if it 
 did not of itself jiossess the capacity ; yet we do 
 see colors solely in case waves of ether act on us. 
 Just so we feel ourselves as *ego,' only in case an 
 opposed non-ego acts on us. 
 
 On this point it is now to be observed, that the 
 possibility of personality is in any case erroneously 
 attached to the opposition to a real non-ego ; as 
 though by means of it that being, which in conse- 
 quence thereof then feels itself as *ego,' became 
 really limited. 
 
 A reciprocal action with a real non-ego, of such 
 kind that this as such might enter into consciousness 
 and the ego thus be posited in opposition to this per- 
 ceived non-ego, never occurs at all. In all sensations 
 and perceptions, what enters consciousness in con- 
 sequence of such an influence, is invariably nothing 
 but some inner state belonging to the spiritual 
 being, — the sensation or mental representation it- 
 self ; it is never the reality by means of which the 
 state is brought about. 
 
 From these inner states the entire subsequent 
 development of the spiritual life, and therefore that 
 of the personality, proceeds. It suffices for laying 
 the foundation of the latter, if a si)iritual being has 
 
THE EXCITATION OF THE EGO. 6$ 
 
 the faculty of apprehending- itself as 'I' in opposi- 
 tion to its own states, which are only its ' states ' 
 and not 'I.' A relation to an external reality is not 
 necessary ; and, consequently, ' personality ' also is 
 not bound to the condition oi fijiitciicss, — to wit, 
 to that of being limited by another reality of the 
 same kind. 
 
 § 40. It may nevertheless always be said : Even 
 if, in a course of thought that is once in process, 
 this world of thoughts can serve as the non-ego 
 in opposition to which the thinking spirit knows 
 itself as the ego, still the first excitation of such 
 process of thought needs the influence from without 
 which can only be given by an actual reality affect- 
 ing the senses. But this objection unwarrantably 
 carries over what takes place as a matter of fact 
 in the case of us men, as though it were indispen- 
 sable to every personality. 
 
 In all attempts at a physical explanation of the 
 world, we are at last under the necessity of recog- 
 nizing, not merely certain real elements, but also 
 certain motions of the same, as original data; and 
 it is of no advantage to search further for the 
 causes of these motions also, — since they could 
 only consist of still other motions ; nor is it con- 
 ceivable how we are ever to get from a state of 
 
66 piuLosornv of keligion. 
 
 equilibrium or rest as orii;inally assumed, to dis- 
 turbance of equilibrium or to motion. 
 
 Only the same concession, and no more, is re- 
 quired in relation to the Infinite Spirit. It is not 
 to be thought of as somewhat which it were barely 
 possible to imagine, but as somewhat which is im- 
 agined as eternally and unceasingly actual ; — some- 
 what to which no such state of rest was ever 
 antecedent, as a state from which it would have 
 been obliged to be extricated by means of special 
 influence. 
 
 § 41. All further inquiries concerning this mat- 
 ter (as to what, perhaps, gives conditions to this 
 eternal movement of thought with respect to its 
 content and its direction) must, of course, remain 
 unanswered. Nevertheless it can be shown — not, 
 indeed, with a strictness that satisfies the demands 
 of science, but still in a manner intelligible to 
 imagination, — why the matter stands with us men 
 in that different fashion which we should not be 
 justified in wanting to carry over and apply to 
 God. 
 
 "When treating of 'Omnipresence' allusion was 
 made to the truth, that God, who is the truly 
 Existent in all Things and comprises them all as 
 mere modifications of his Being, stands in need of 
 
FINITE SPIRITS DEPEND ON THINGS. (>'J 
 
 no mediation through transmitted effects, in order 
 to be acquainted with the individual elements of 
 the world and the states belonging to them. Every 
 finite spirit, however, has its existence only from 
 a definite point of time onward, and has in the 
 coherence of all Things a determinate position in 
 the system, which assigns to it also a limited place 
 in space. 
 
 Now it follows from the above-mentioned truth, 
 that finite spirits, who have very much outside of 
 themselves which they themselves arc not, stand 
 in absolute need of a real outside world and of its 
 effects, in order to attain to the development of 
 the life of thought possible to them. 
 
 It is intelligible, further, that finite spirits who 
 are not the Absolute itself but only modifications 
 or fragments of the same, and yet likewise possess 
 all their existence only through this Absolute, do 
 constantly, in case they reflect upon themselves, 
 suppose that they find an obscure germ in their 
 own being, — to wit, just this power of the Absolute 
 itself. This power it is which works through and 
 through them, and, without their own assistance, 
 prescribes for them the universal forms of their 
 spiritual activity, their sensation, imagination, judg- 
 ment, etc. ; and which permits them only within nar- 
 row limits to dispose further of this dowry, and 
 
6S I'lllLUbOl'liV Ul- KELKjION. 
 
 to pursue their special ends. That is to say, 
 therefore: * Personality ' is in ///^v// only very im- 
 perfectly accom})lishe(l. There remains something 
 back in the e^o, which it cannot itself explain. 
 This is a fact which is corroborated by the course 
 of Psycholo<^y, wherein always at last the question 
 recurs, — What then really are we ? and can never 
 be answered to our perfect satisfaction. 
 
 Finally, it does not indeed admit of direct proof, 
 but is none the less a probable assumption, that 
 the laws of the psychical mechanism to which our 
 inner life is subjected are also connected with this 
 'finiteness.' From them it follows, how^ever, that 
 our ideas inhibit one another ; that only a small 
 number of them is at any time present in con- 
 sciousness ; that the forgotten ones return, indeed, 
 to our recollection in accordance wdth general law^s, 
 but not always in a manner corresponding to our 
 momentary need. Hence it comes about that we 
 frequently over-hasten ; that we permit certain 
 measures of conception which are just present in 
 consciousness, partially to pass over into transac- 
 tions which we later, when \\c have collected our- 
 selves, may no longer recognize as our own ; that, 
 finally, we forget very much, and with increasing 
 age can no longer transport ourselves back into 
 the frames of mind, feelings and enthusiasms of 
 the earlier epochs of life. 
 
THE INFINITE A PERFECT PERSONALITY. 69 
 
 All these hindrances of a perfect ' personality ' 
 we can imagine as not existent in the Infinite 
 Spirit. On this account, we conclude with the 
 assertion which is exactly the opposite of the 
 customary one : Perfect personality is compatible 
 only with the conception of an Infinite Being ; for 
 finite beings only an approximation to this is at- 
 tainable. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 OF THE CON'CEPTIOX OT CREATION. 
 
 § 42. We reserve the further concrete predi- 
 cates, chiefly of an ethical kind, by which we 
 have to complete the still abstract conception of 
 an infinite personality, until after we have consid- 
 ered the relation of this personality to the world. 
 And this relation itself we treat for convenience 
 under the three distinctive names of Creation, 
 Preserv^ation and Government. 
 
 In relation to the first topic, we omit all ancient 
 and modern cosmogonies, such as intend to fur- 
 nish an intuitive picture of the process of * crea- 
 tion ' and of the succession of particular creative 
 acts ; — a picture, which is in general impossible, 
 and in particulars not to be established with any 
 certainty. Our design is merely to show what 
 fundamental conceptions admit of being formed 
 concerning that relation of God to the world 
 from which the creation proceeds, or in which it 
 consists, or which is established by means of it. 
 
 We divide the essentially different views, which 
 are possible on this subject, into the three fol- 
 lowing : the first of which attempts to trace the 
 
CREATION NOT DEVELOPMENT. 71 
 
 world to the "consistent development of the 
 nature of God," the second to his will, the third 
 to a creative act. 
 
 § 43. The first view, crudely elaborated and 
 satisfying merely to the imagination but not to 
 speculation, appears in all the emanation theories 
 of ancient and modern times. This we exclude 
 from our investigation. 
 
 On the contrary, the conception of the world 
 as a * necessary, involuntary, and inevitable devel- 
 opment of the nature of God,' which rests essen- 
 tially upon the foundation of modern scientific 
 views, is worthy of consideration. 
 
 So far as this view endeavors to exclude a God 
 who rules without principle in blind arbitrariness, 
 it is correct ; and in this respect corresponds also 
 to our religious need. But we must resist with 
 the greatest possible decisiveness the further 
 apotheosis of the notion of ' development ' conse- 
 quent upon this view, which it is customary just 
 now to express and to extol with such great em- 
 phasis, as though it were identical, as a matter of 
 course, with all that is great and sublime and holy. 
 
 If it were only a question concerning a theo- 
 retic explanation of the course of the world, then 
 such a conception would be satisfactory. But it 
 
72 I'HILOSOrilV OF RELIGION. 
 
 is wholly useless from the reH<2^ious point of view, 
 because it leads consistently to nothing; but a 
 thorougli-going Determinism, accordiuL; to which 
 not only is every thing that must ha})pen, in case 
 certain conditions occur, appointed in pursuance of 
 general laws ; but according to wliich even the suc- 
 cessive occurrence of these conditions, and conse- 
 quently the whole of history with all its details, is 
 predetermined. 
 
 In such a mechanical contrivance there is no 
 place whatever for any * freedom ' or * activity,' or 
 for an effort that shall produce aught which does 
 not originate from the mechanism itself. Religious 
 opinion assumes rather that, while there are uni- 
 versal laws, without whose efficacy no 'design* 
 whatever would be able by definite means to attain 
 to a definite goal, there is however at the same 
 time, on the basis and in the domain of this reign 
 of law, a free, voluntary activity, which, by the 
 use and combination of the given elements acting 
 in accordance with law, produces that even, which 
 would have no existence without such activity. 
 
 The above-mentioned assumption has its diffi- 
 culties. Until, however, it is shown decisively to 
 be impossible, the religious feeling will never re- 
 turn to the thought of an * undesigned, inevitable 
 development ' of the world from the nature of God, 
 
CREATIVE WILL NOT MOMENTARY. -J ^ 
 
 but will derive it from an act of the divine will, 
 without which it would not have existed. 
 
 § 44. In speaking of the will of God, we natu- 
 rally think first of the analogy of our own will ; 
 we may not however summarily transfer to the 
 former that which is peculiar to the latter. 
 
 Now the aims to which our will can be directed, 
 are only given to us finite beings progressively 
 by means of experience. Hence under the term 
 * will ' we conceive primarily of a spiritual activity 
 momentarily awakening, which is directed chiefly to 
 the production of a state not yet existing, or to 
 the change of a state already existing. Even in 
 those cases in which we ' will ' nothing new but 
 merely the status qiio^ we become conscious of 
 this act of will, at least distinctly so, only if 
 something threatens to disturb this state that has 
 been ' willed ' by us. 
 
 The foregoing conceptions are not applicable to 
 the creative will of God. Although the imagi- 
 nation naturally represents the dependence of the 
 world upon the will of God in the most forcible 
 manner by making a period of time precede in 
 which even this creative will of God had no 
 existence ; still there is no ground whatever for 
 forming a philosophical tenet out of this view, 
 
74 PTTTI.OSfMMIV OF RKLFGION. 
 
 — harmless as it is to religion, — and for speaking 
 of an inner life in God, which, after this period, 
 has proceeded to the decision to create and to its 
 execution. Besides it would be impossible to fill 
 this space of time with anything but a delusive 
 history of development, in which the systematic 
 coherence of all the thoughts, by uniting which 
 we endeavor to interpret for ourselves the being 
 of God, would be fictitiously converted into a chro- 
 nological sequence ; and by this means the nature 
 of God would for the first time become completely 
 realized. 
 
 This is, philosophically considered, erroneous, 
 and religiously devoid of all significance : we abide 
 therefore by the assumption, that the 'will to 
 create ' is an absolutely eternal predicate of God, 
 and ought not to be used to designate a deed of 
 his so much as the absolute dependence of the 
 world upon his will in contradistinction to its in- 
 voluntary * emanation ' from his nature. 
 
 § 45. With the foregoing assertion, however, 
 there seems to vanish something which we regard 
 as necessary for the religious conception of crea- 
 tion ; to wit, a will which is constantly existent, has 
 no longer the character of a deed. In order that 
 will may be distinguished from that involuntary 
 
WILLING CONSIDERED AS DEED. 75 
 
 development, from which we intended to distin- 
 guish it, it seems necessary that some deed or 
 work be added to the act of will, by whose accom- 
 plishment alone that which is willed truly becomes 
 the complete possession of the one who wills, and 
 at the same time becomes a reality. There is in- 
 volved herein an undoubtedly genuine religious 
 need, but it is wrongly formulated in dependence 
 upon analogies derived from our own willing and 
 doing, which are not transferable to God. 
 
 In the first place as regards the efficacy of our 
 own will, wx know psychologically that our 'will- 
 ing ' can never do anything else but produce a 
 definite psychical state within us (an idea, a feel- 
 ing, a wdsh). With this state, as soon as it is 
 once in existence, an order of nature under the 
 control of general law, wholly independent of our 
 volition and hardly accessible to our intelligence, 
 has connected a definite result ; and this result 
 then originates without our being able to compre- 
 hend the process of its origination or to con- 
 tribute anything further to it. 
 
 Now we believe to be sure that, in the 
 performance of our corporal movements, we feel 
 at once the transition of our will to the limbs, 
 and that to a certain extent we observe the 
 will at its work, by which it brings to pass the 
 
^6 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 
 
 effect. But it is known psycholo<:^ically, that we 
 actually foci in this case only the changes, which 
 the will, in a manner wholly beyond the power 
 of observation, has already produced in the limbs, 
 and from which, in a supplemental way, the sen- 
 sations of weariness and exertion are produced in 
 the consciousness. These feelings therefore do not 
 show us how those movements are produced by 
 us ; but they only show how much disturbance our 
 organism has experienced, in consequence of those 
 movements having been [?ttached to the action of 
 our will, in accordance with an order of nature 
 unknown to us. 
 
 If therefore we recognize as our own ' deed ' 
 an effect which issues from us only in case we 
 have had, at the time of its accomplishment, all 
 the aforesaid feelings, then this analogy of the 
 human will cannot be transferred to God. For 
 this apparent activity in accomplishing something 
 beyond the bare action of willing is in truth 
 merely a witness to the powerlessness of our 
 will, which effects something only in case a 
 higher power has united with it the origination 
 of changes in external objects. 
 
 In this sense, therefore, we may not, in addi- 
 tion to the creative will of God, still further 
 postulate a special creative deed ; but we must 
 
REALIZATION OF THE DIVINE WILL. JJ 
 
 be satisfied with the thought that the will of the 
 Supreme Being is without further procedure the 
 realization of that which He wills. . 
 
 § 46. But after all there remains a genuine 
 religious need, which was expressed, although 
 wrongly, by the demand for a divine work of 
 creation. 
 
 The value of the feelings, to which we referred, 
 does not consist in the fact that they brought to 
 our view the modus agendi of our will, but that at 
 each minutest instant they furnished us the knowl- 
 edge as to how far the realization of its activity 
 had already advanced. Suppose, for example, that 
 we give our arm a wide swing, then we have at 
 each minutest point of time a new sensation which 
 discloses to us the magnitude of the breadth of 
 the movement already executed ; and therefore 
 the progress of our wills' mode of operation, 
 although in itself unobserved, is noted by us 
 from the beginning to the end of the move- 
 ment. Now it is precisely because in such a 
 case our consciousness always has an immediate 
 feeling in conjunction with the product of the 
 will, that such movements appear as, in the strict- 
 est sense, our own living deed. On the contrary, 
 in the case of the stone that flies away from the 
 
^8 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 
 
 hand at the completion of that movement of the 
 arm, although it has in fact got its velocity by 
 means of us, still we have no immediate sensation 
 of its further movement. While this movement, 
 therefore, as well as its subsequent effects upon 
 other objects, seem to us to be consequences of 
 our deed, they no longer seem to be our own ac- 
 tivity itself. 
 
 Now it is the counterpart of just this, which 
 it is really intended to exclude from the concep- 
 tion of the divine creative work. It is not to be 
 supposed that the act of will originates a bare 
 result in which the consciousness of the one who 
 wills were no longer present ; but it is to be sup- 
 posed that the creative will remains in that con- 
 stant feeling in conjunction with the state of its 
 product, which we men experience only on occasion 
 of the movements of our own body, and not on 
 occasion of the movements of external objects in- 
 directly produced. 
 
 Now because this feeling in our case is psycho- 
 logically connected with the effort and labor, which 
 are simply a consequence of our finite nature, some 
 have arrived at the false conception that this must 
 be so even in the case of God Himself; and on 
 this account have demanded the aforesaid special 
 work of creation. 
 
NO PROCESS OF CREATIOX. 79 
 
 § 47. The sum and substance of the preceding 
 discussion is, that the conception of creation prop- 
 erly signifies nothing more than this ; that the world, 
 with respect to its existence as well as its content, 
 is completely dependent upon the will of God, and 
 not a mere involuntary ' development ' of his 
 nature ; that it proceeds, however, only from the 
 will and not from a special work of God, — this 
 latter conception being always applicable only in 
 cases where a will endeavors to realize its pur- 
 pose in conflict with an existing world that is 
 independent of it : whereas of God we in fact 
 assert that He " has created the world out of 
 nothing," — a strange expression, which strictly 
 interpreted means to say, in a merely negative 
 manner, that there is nothing out of which God 
 constructed the world ; and which then whimsi- 
 cally makes this Nothing appear again as a sort 
 of ' stuff ' from which it is created. 
 
 There can be no consistent description of the 
 process of creation, for the reason that there is 
 no such process. Such process in fact, whenever 
 the attempt has been made to imagine it, has 
 always presupposed in turn the existence of 
 another world, and of certain forms of happening 
 already in use in it. 
 
 In regard still further to the content of crea- 
 
So PHILOSOPHY OK RELIGION. 
 
 tion, it would l)c from a relij^ious point of view 
 an object of interest for us, only in case we con- 
 ceive withal of a plan which is to be realized in 
 the world ; and this subject is to be discussed 
 under the head of the conception of 'Government.' 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 OF PRESERVATION. 
 
 § 48. To ascribe the preservation of the world 
 to a special divine activity, may seem to be a super- 
 fluous thought. In fact, the common opinion of 
 natural philosophy amounts to this, that the world, 
 when once in existence, maintains itself as a mat- 
 ter of course by the efficacy of the laws which 
 have once gained prevalence in it. The utmost 
 that is conceded is, that the origination of the 
 world may be the object of an action, but not its 
 continuation after it has once originated. 
 
 The foregoing opinion only serves to remind us 
 that we really have already before us, even with re- 
 spect to creation, a difficulty of which, in the ordi- 
 nary reflection, we are less sensible only in relation 
 to this conception of preservation. To wit, the ques- 
 tion is raised, in what way God, in the action of 
 his will, has arrived at a decision concerning that 
 which should be or should not be. 
 
 The readiest answer, — namely that He has 
 summoned into actual existence only that which 
 is in itself possible, — as well as the other" 
 answer, — that He has summoned into actual 
 
S2 ^ TMIILOSOrilY OF KKLIOION. 
 
 existence the best among many j)ossible worlds, 
 both contain the thought that what is good or 
 not good, possible or not possible, has already 
 been decided independently of the will of God ; 
 and therefore that, after all, there precedes God, 
 the Supreme Principle, a certain realm of eternal 
 truths as a still higher Principle, to which He 
 together with his activity is now obliged to 
 become subordinate. 
 
 This strange idea is not improved by the 
 immediate reply that, in the use of a distinction 
 frequently made, we designate those ' eternal 
 truths ' merely as the * content of God's under- 
 standing,' and not as a necessity foreign to Him 
 and which stands over against Him objectively. 
 No improvement of the idea is attained so long 
 at least as we have in mind in this connection 
 our own spiritual life, in which of course all 
 these general truths appear as something pro- 
 ceeding from a higher power and not connected 
 with our personality ; or, at all events, as some- 
 thing not deducible from it. 
 
 Concerning these difficulties we must make the 
 following somewhat detailed reflections. 
 
 § 49. It has already been observ^ed, in dis- 
 coursing of the possibility of the reciprocal 
 
LAWS NOT INDEPENDENT OF GOD. 83 
 
 actions of the elements of the world, that the 
 prevalent method of speaking of the "authority 
 of general laws of nature over Things " has noth- 
 ing properly corresponding to it in the actual 
 state of the case. 
 
 Laws can exist only in a twofold manner : they 
 may either exist at the instant when they are 
 obeyed, as the activity of the elements them- 
 selves, which seem to follow them ; or, in the 
 observing spirits which compare the events, as 
 conscious rules for the combination of the ideas, 
 by which we (the observing spirits) are enabled, 
 in accordance with the reality, to determine 
 beforehand from given states those which suc- 
 ceed them. 
 
 On the contrary, laws never exist outside, betwecft, 
 beside, or above the Things that are to obey them. 
 And if we ourselves should intend to assume 
 that a ghost-like existence, of a sort that is wholly 
 beyond the power of representation, belongs to 
 them, the question would be left the more un- 
 answerable, how in that case they went to work 
 to secure obedience from the elements which were 
 wholly foreign to them. 
 
 This first mode of representation, then, accord- 
 ing to which God even would have 'found at 
 hand' a sum of self-existing truths, must be wholly 
 abandoned. 
 
84 riiiLOSoriiv of kkligion. 
 
 § 50. The first modification of the thouirht we 
 are considerin<,% to the effect that the eternal 
 truths were nothing else but the mode of the 
 action of God's own nature and intelligence, we 
 found, just at the close of the last paragraph but 
 one, to be not altogether satisfactory. 
 
 To wit : we find in ourselves such truths (as 
 for examjile the law of identity, or the simple 
 geometrical intuitions, or the fundamental ethical 
 judgments of our conscience), as do not present 
 themselves to us, at any rate when considered 
 individually, as something foreign to our nature, 
 but as the mode of our own experience or the 
 form of our own activity. But we find several of 
 such truths within us, and we find no connection 
 between them. For, from the fact that the propo- 
 sition of identity is a necessity of our thought, it 
 by no means certainly follows that we must also 
 have an intuition of space, or must make a distinc- 
 tion between good and evil. Hence the aggregate 
 of these truths seems to us after all to be some- 
 thing foreign to our own being, and not deducible 
 from it ; or at least something whose origin from 
 it cannot be known. 
 
 If it were thus with God, it would seem to us 
 as if He met with these eternal truths, not to be 
 sure as forces external to Himself, but as some- 
 
ETERNAL TRUTHS DO NOT LIMIT GOD. 85 
 
 thing within Himself, which He could regard only 
 in the light of a gift bestowed upon Him as it 
 were. 
 
 Now we can of course never give a positive de- 
 scription of the manner in which those truths, that 
 to our discernment are disparate, are united with 
 each other in God, and are 'experienced as belong- 
 ing together in the unity of a single thought. But, 
 for all that, there is no contradiction in the as- 
 sumption that with God it is so ; and that only 
 we finite beings, who are able to possess nothing 
 but fragments of the whole of truth, fail to grasp 
 the inner connection by which these truths are 
 perfected into one whole. 
 
 § 51. The above-mentioned view of the case also 
 often proves unsatisfactory. The assumption, that 
 the eternal truths are the proper 7nodiis agendi of 
 the divine understanding itself, has always seemed 
 to many to involve after all a limitation of his un- 
 conditionateness and omnipotence. In such case 
 we should not be content with anything less than 
 the statement that God did not possess this viodus 
 agcftdi, but that He first bcstozccd it upon Himself. 
 Indeed even in such case it might perhaps still be 
 doubted, whether in the choice of such a viodus 
 from among many that arc conceivable and now 
 
S6 PHILOSOI'HV OI- KKLUJION. 
 
 excluded, there were not after all again involved a 
 limitation of his unconditionateness, although a 
 self-chosen limitation. 
 
 In one view of the matter, however, it may be 
 remarked that in this way the conception of God 
 loses all content whatever ; and that, instead of 
 conceiving of that concrete Being to whom uncon- 
 ditionateness in respect to his conduct belongs, 
 we have made the empty conception of uncondi- 
 tionateness itself the subject or the principle of 
 the world. To do this is, fundamentally consid- 
 ered, just the same mistake that is made when 
 we content ourselves with the abstract expressions, 
 the 'One,' the 'Existent,' the 'Absolute,' etc., and 
 suppose that by them we have expressed the Su- 
 preme Principle, instead of designating by name or 
 representing that which deserves to be acknowledged 
 as the Real Principle of the world, because it pos- 
 sesses in virtue of its own concrete nature the 
 alleged predicates. 
 
 But the misunderstandings that arise in this con- 
 nection admit of being analyzed somewhat further 
 in detail. 
 
 § 52. If, in the first place, we see a limitation of 
 omnipotence in the fact, that even omnipotence, 
 from its very beginning onward, follows a definite 
 
CAPACITY NEVER INDETERMINATE. 8/ 
 
 modus ageiidi, then we may in the next place be 
 reminded that we in fact never mentally represent 
 even any finite 'power' or 'capacity' as a predicate 
 which would inhere in a Thing without connection 
 with its remaining ii predicates as an (n + l)th. 
 Just as little do we represent such a power as a 
 ' being able in general,' which would still have no 
 direction whatever ; so that it would only be de- 
 termined subsequently by secondary circumstances, 
 what sort of activity this ' being able ' will exercise, 
 and with reference to what objects. 
 
 On the contrary every * power ' or ' capacity ' is 
 conceivable only as one that is quite definitely 
 fixed in reality. And the abstract conception of 
 'capacity in general,' which we may form just as 
 legitimately as the conception of ' motion in gen- 
 eral,' can just as little signify something real as can 
 the latter before it is again furnished with a ' direc- 
 tion ' and a 'velocity,' from which, in the forma- 
 tion of the general conception, the abstraction was 
 made. 
 
 If now this conception of 'power' is to be ex- 
 alted to that of 'omnipotence,' it cannot be ac- 
 complished by omitting every such act of determi- 
 nation as would fix some modus agcndi ; but only 
 by representing just this modus as one so compre- 
 hensive, that all actual capacities and powers 
 
88 PHILOSOPHY OF KKLIGIOX. 
 
 whatever, which appear in the world, originate from 
 it. In that, we should have substituted the mere 
 general conception of power for the supreme actual 
 Power. But still further, omnipotence, even in this 
 case, cannot be conceived of as a predicate addi- 
 tional to the rest of the predicates of God ; but it 
 is only an expression for the efficacy in action of 
 just these predicates, and therefore of that concrete 
 nature of God in which all reality is comprehended. 
 
 § 53. We may now be tempted for the last time 
 to inquire : If God's omnipotence is only co-exten- 
 sive with his nature, why then has God this de- 
 terminate nature a and not another b or c ? and 
 does not the fact that He is not this b or c 
 involve again a limitation of his being ? 
 
 In support of such thoughts an appeal is also 
 made perhaps to the celebrated pfoposition '' Omiiis 
 determinatio est ncgatio'' ; the meaning of which is 
 often enough thought to be, that all determination 
 is limitation, because it is the product of the nega- 
 tion of innumerable other possibilities. 
 
 Thus understood, the proposition would be 
 thoroughly false. It is only in cases where a com- 
 pletely disjunctive judgment is already validated, 
 in accordance with which a subject s must be 
 either a or b or c, that the affirmation of a can 
 
NEGATION AND AFFIRMATION. 89 
 
 originate from the negation of b and c. And even 
 in such cases this negation is nothing more than 
 a reason for our cognition, from which we conclude 
 that s is a, but is not a reason in reaHty why s is 
 actually a. That is to say ; It is not the real de- 
 termination, but our subjective certainty of its 
 existence, that follows from the negation of other 
 possibilities. 
 
 But in other cases, as a rule, the above-men- 
 tioned proposition can only signify, not that every 
 determination originates from a negation of that 
 which is different from it, but that it is accessory 
 to, or consequent upon, such negation. 
 
 If we thus apprehend the proposition, the doubt 
 above suggested will subside ; the doubt, namely, 
 whether after all there is not again involved a limi- 
 tation of a, in the very fact that something can now 
 no longer be b or c, because it is originally a. This 
 thought has some significance for us finite beings, 
 to whom a determinate nature a is given, beside 
 and outside of which the natures p and -y of other 
 beings — as for example those of other species of 
 animals — are likewise met with as actualities. Since 
 then we are unable to transpose ourselves out of 
 our own nature into the p and 7 foreign to us, this 
 incapacity seems to us a limitation which prevents 
 our enjoyment of a good that actually exists. 
 
QO lMlIL()S(>^^^■ oi^ kfaac.ios. 
 
 Hut the foregoing analogy is not transferable 
 to the nature of God. Fur ///is nature a is pre- 
 cisely such an one as is not the product of a 
 still higher nature M, among the consequences 
 of which it would find itself coordinated with 
 the other equally real products b and c : and 
 at the same time excluded from them. But out- 
 side of this a nothing exists : a is rather the 
 primal source of the sum-total of reality ; and, 
 indeed, a source of such sort that, owing to its 
 concrete nature, thinking beings also are met 
 with in this realm of reality, who are able to 
 distinguish a from a never-existent, but con- 
 ceivable non-a ; and who now are able to raise 
 the wondrous question, why all the world bears 
 the character of this a and not the other char- 
 acter of a non-a. 
 
 The noteworthy capacity for denying in thought 
 what actually exists, — a capacity which is itself 
 only a product of the laws that are valid in 
 actuality upon the basis of that a, — misleads 
 us into the acceptance of this strange and utterly 
 unthinkable idea : before God was and before the 
 world was, there was already a multitude of coor- 
 dinate, possible future Gods and worlds ; and there 
 was possible and necessary a choice between them, 
 by which the total character a of the actual God, 
 
GOD AND ETERNAL TRUTH. 
 
 91 
 
 and of the actual World was established ; but at 
 the same time there was by this means intro- 
 duced a limitation of both of them, because now 
 they could no longer be b and c. 
 
 § 54. We arrive at the same result, if we 
 undertake to think through one of the two fol- 
 lowing propositions : * God has only recognized the 
 truth ' ; or, ' He has created it.' 
 
 ■ Arbitrary statutes admit of being ' recognized ' 
 in so far as our transactions are willingly or 
 reluctantly accommodated to them. But in 
 thinking we can only ' recognize ' as truth that 
 which accords with the laws of such thinking, — 
 that is, with its modus agcndi. And thus even God 
 would have been able to * recognize ' any ' truth ' 
 that he met with, as truth, only because it had 
 already belonged to the intrinsic nature of his own 
 thought. 
 
 Moreover statutes of all sorts admit of being 
 'made,* and a practical obedience to them may be 
 enforced : but to make something which, after it is 
 done, should constitute a truth, is only possible in 
 case the productive energy itself is already of itself 
 fulfilling, as rules of its own action, precisely the 
 same conditions as those that are conditions of the . • 
 truth to the intelligence associated with the energy. 
 
c)2 rTTiLOSoriiv or religion. 
 
 By both paths, then, \vc return to the propo- 
 sition, tliat eternal truths are neither antecedent 
 norms nor subsequent products of the tHvinc activ- 
 ity ; but are nothini; else than the actual form 
 of this very energizin<; ; and that, in the special 
 sense of the word * truth,' they appear as com- 
 mands, which something not yet existent must 
 satisfy, only in our subjective reflection, in case 
 we attempt to bring the future into combination 
 with the present. 
 
 § 55. The foregoing considerations are con- 
 nected with the conception of the Preservation 
 of the world in the following manner. 
 
 The common view of nature, in modern times, 
 either asserts that God indeed created the world 
 at the beginning, but after it was created left it 
 to itself and to the further development of the 
 general laws which He established in it. Or, in 
 the other case, ' since the act of creation can 
 never be made apprehensible, such act is entirely 
 left out ; and it is simply asserted that the world 
 which lies readv-made before us, is maintained 
 by the constant prevalence of its general laws, 
 and needs no divine support. 
 
 In opposition to this the proposition of religion 
 is heard : " Preservation is continual new-creation." 
 
SUBSTANCE AS INDESTRUCTIBLE. 93 
 
 It is not conceivable that this can be intended 
 to mean : The world of the next instant is, as to 
 its content, entirely new and foreign to that of 
 the preceding instant. So far from this, we 
 naturally accept the assumption that, in the divine 
 activity, there is unity and coherence ; and, for 
 this reason, the creative act of the next instant 
 also is a consequence of that of the preceding. 
 But, nevertheless, the aforesaid proposition would 
 deny that the world of one instant perpetuates 
 itself by its own agency and by its general laws 
 into the next instant. 
 
 For that very reason it will be superfluous, as 
 regards all special inquiries into the coherence of 
 the processes of nature, to come back to the 'co- 
 working of God ' ; and it is sufficient to speak of 
 the consecutive order of nature which He has 
 established. Still, in our idea of the zuhoie, we 
 must decidedly guard against the view which speaks 
 of an actual self-sufficiency of nature, and which, 
 from this as from a secure stand-point, exercises a 
 negative criticism in opposition to the religious in- 
 tuitions. 
 
 It must rather be asserted that if corporal 'sub- 
 stance ' is indestructible, it is not so by its own 
 agency or in accordance with a claim to the right 
 growing out of its own nature, but because the 
 
94 IMIILOSOPIIV ()I<- RKLIGION. 
 
 divine creative power preserves it continuously at 
 each instant ; and that if, in the course of nature, 
 the same forces always act according to the same 
 laws, this does not come to pass because these 
 forces were of themselves eternal and these laws 
 of themselves efficient, but because it lies within 
 the plan of the divine efficiency to employ, at each 
 instant of the course of the world, this number of 
 homogeneous actions, as means for the production 
 of more composite products. 
 
 In a word : The entire interior consistency of 
 the cohering order of nature, upon which the 
 natural sciences are supported, is conceded as a 
 matter of fact ; but taken as a whole and at large 
 it is regarded as a system of mutually condition- 
 ing actualities, utterly dependent upon the divine 
 power ; so that ultimately, therefore, the World 
 does not preserve itself but is preserved by God. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 OF GOVERNMENT. 
 
 § 56. We can only speak of Government in 
 case there are elements that, with a certain inde- 
 pendence of behavior on their part, threaten to 
 withdraw from a plan prescribed to them, which 
 the governing principle intends to realize. 
 
 The considerations to which we last referred 
 therefore seem to leave no place for the application 
 of this conception. Indeed, in proportion as these 
 considerations themselves make the preservation 
 of the world dependent upon the constant action 
 of th€ will of God, do they obscure the thought 
 to which we would firmly hold; — namely, that the 
 World is not a mere immanent development of 
 God, but a product of his will. 
 
 In order that this contradiction may have any 
 significance, the product of the will, after it is 
 created, would have to possess a certain independ- 
 ence. Or, to use a well-known mode of expres- 
 sion, the world would have to be 'outside' of God 
 and not merely a process 'in' Him. 
 
 We need not adhere to these last mentioned 
 expressions in terms of space which would lead 
 
g6 riiiLosopiiv of kkligion. 
 
 to such endless and perfectly empty disputes ; but 
 the inquiry must be made as to what must really 
 constitute that 'mode of behavior' which it is sup- 
 posed may be figuratively designated by these 
 expressions. And to this question the only answer 
 will probably be, that only that Reality possesses 
 the independence obviously here intended, which 
 is able to have its own states, — such, that is, as 
 are not immediately states of the ' Universal Sub- 
 stance ' ; and to initiate processes which do not 
 proceed from that Substance. 
 
 If now we consider how these abstract postulates 
 might be fulfilled, we find but one Reality which 
 actually fulfils them ; namely, spiritual life. 
 
 A being which has experience of itself as an 
 individual subject for its own states, and which 
 distinguishes these states from those of other 
 beings, may, it is true, be nothing whatever as to 
 its entire existence but a product of the Infinite 
 Being. But after it is once in existence, it is, by 
 the very form of its existence, by this conscious- 
 ness which places itself in relation to itself, dis- 
 tinguished as an individual ego from the very 
 Absolute, that in reality conditions it, and that 
 now, as posited over against itself, belongs to the 
 non-ego. And by this act, or by this form of its 
 existence, does it possess that relative independ- 
 
NATURE OF THE * WORLD-STUFF.' 97 
 
 ence which we designate when we say that it is 
 'outside' of God. 
 
 § 57. Hence it would follow (what we now 
 remark only incidentally) that, with respect to 
 our entire view of the World, we find ourselves 
 in the presence of an alternative. 
 
 If spiritual life is the only form in which we 
 can conceive of a reality that is not a mere state 
 of some other real being, then our current idea 
 of a motionless, blind and lifeless ' stuff,' which 
 should exist outside of us, can signify nothing 
 that is actual. 
 
 We must either assume, as the Idealist does, 
 that what we regard as such a ' stuff ' has no 
 existence externa] to spirits, but that the self- 
 coherent semblance of such a ' world-stuff ' (com- 
 pare especially J. G. Fichte), is merely produced 
 within these spirits, and for them only, by a 
 universal power which works in all spirits. Or 
 else we must conclude, in entire agreement 
 with the Spiritualists, that each atom of that 
 which appears to us as mere 'stuff,' is after all 
 something better than this ; that is to say, it 
 participates in the most general characteristic of 
 the spiritual life : and this characteristic consists 
 in somehow (either in distinct consciousness or in 
 
98 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 
 
 the mere feeling of pleasure and pain) * being for 
 si'/f,' and not in merely forming an object of con- 
 templation for others. 
 
 It is only the common realistic opinion on this 
 subject that would seem to us impossible, accord- 
 ing to which an entirely ' selfless stuff ' would be 
 just as actually existent outside of us as we are 
 wont commonly to represent it. 
 
 There is no doubt that either of the two fore- 
 going views may be formed into an entirely con- 
 sistent apprehension of the world. But from the 
 religious point of view, we are not necessarily 
 required to choose between them. 
 
 § 58. If however there were in existence noth- 
 ing more than an indefinite number of such inde- 
 pendent, created beings, there would still be no 
 foundation for the conception of a government of 
 the world. It would still be thinkable, that the 
 world might develop itself in a perfectly impertur- 
 bable harmony ; and the problem for all spirits 
 would consist in merely looking on, and in con- 
 sciously and admiringly rejoicing in this fact. 
 
 In point of fact, however, religious sentiment 
 has never been satisfied with this, but has always 
 insisted, at the outset very obscurely although vig- 
 orously, that something new also must happen in 
 
POSSIBILITY OF SOMETHING NEW. 99 
 
 the world, — something that is not a mere conse- 
 quence of what has gone before ; — and that there 
 must exist in individual spirits just this capacity 
 to initiate a new series of events ; and therefore in 
 brief a freedom of acting or primarily of willing, 
 by which they separate themselves from the Uni- 
 versal Substance in a still more decided manner 
 than by their mere ' Being for self ' as relatively 
 independent beings. 
 
 In this way then has the problem originated 
 which leads to the conception of a government. 
 For only after this is there any possibility of 
 events by which the continuous realization of a 
 predeterminate plan of the world might be inter- 
 rupted. 
 
 § 59. Even the above-mentioned demand for free- 
 dom would have no religious significance, if it were 
 directed in a merely formal way to the possibility 
 of new beginnings. For that something new hap- 
 pen in the world, has of itself no more value than 
 that the whole course of the world be an unin- 
 terrupted, consecutive process of development ; in 
 which of itself also, as we have already previously 
 suggested, there is involved nothing that is worthy 
 of adoration. 
 
 But we know surely, that we only demand this 
 
lOO rniLosorjiY or religion. 
 
 fonnal 'freedom' because we regard it as the coi- 
 d'ltio si>ic qua uoii for the fuli'dment of ethical com- 
 mands, whose obligatory majesty we consider to be 
 the most absolute certainty and one that needs 
 no derivation from any other source whatever. 
 
 This conviction is the absolutely fundamental 
 point upon which the entire religious character of 
 our view of the world depends. And for him who 
 does not directly experience and acknowledge this, 
 all questions of religious philosophy are altogether 
 superfluous. 
 
 § 60. The ideas of freedom are not induced by 
 speculation ; but they rest entirely upon the fact 
 of that penitence and self-condemnation in which 
 we believe we find the immediate assurance of the 
 possibility, that the choice, whose failure is now 
 repented of, might have been reached even sooner 
 than it was. 
 
 This idea is, in an obscure way, the first and 
 most natural, the one that has precedence in hu- 
 man culture. It was not till a later period that the 
 scientific contemplation of nature disclosed the con- 
 ception of a 'necessary causal connection,' and then 
 extended it over the whole course of the world, 
 so that now the idea of freedom seems like a 
 strange exception and as such is denied. It is 
 
POSSIBILITY OF FREE CHOICE. ID I 
 
 acknowledged that even the ethical ideals origi- 
 nate in the mechanical course of psychical develop- 
 ment. But how much influence they have upon 
 our action, depends entirely upon the involuntary 
 states and movements within our own interior 
 being. It is therefore due to a process of nature, 
 that the impulse to good actions, or even to bad 
 actions, preponderates within us ; and the mechan- 
 ical conditions for such result may be strengthened 
 by a correct or by a pervejted education. But, 
 to be consistent and candid about it, an action in 
 the proper sense, such as would issue from our 
 own ego, will then no longer exist. , And even the 
 inducement to all such reflection — that is, the feel- 
 ing of penitence — will be regarded as a disagree- 
 able state, about like a feeling of sickness ; and 
 it will be maintained that the wish involved in 
 this feeling, — the wish that one had acted differ- 
 ently, — gives no assurance whatever of this hav- 
 ing been possible at an earlier moment. 
 
 Such views as the foregoing are not to be 
 got at by speculation ; they involve no contra- 
 diction of cognition. If they are abandoned, it 
 can be done only upon the basis of an undemon- 
 strable belief, that after all there is directly dis- 
 closed in the aforesaid self-condemnation, the pos- 
 sibility of a free choice, without which ' the bad 
 
I02 I'HILOSOPHV OF RELIGION. 
 
 conscience' and the pain of ' jicnitcnce ' would con- 
 tinue to be totally inexplicable phenomena in a 
 rational order of the world. 
 
 § 61. We cannot think of doing more than refute 
 the objections against the possibility of the con- 
 ception of freedom ; we cannot think of proving its 
 actual validity. 
 
 Now, in the first place, it should be remembered 
 that • freedom ' and * causality ' are not absolutely 
 opposed to each other, but are compatible with 
 each other ; that is to say, the former would pos- 
 tulate the latter, but of course the latter would 
 not the former. For every free beginning of an 
 action must demand that, in the world into which 
 it intends to introduce an event a, all Things 
 cohere firmly and according to law ; so that from 
 a only the intended result z can follow, and not 
 any other at pleasure. Consequently * freedom ' is 
 only to be accepted in the sense of an influence 
 upon a world causally ordered. 
 
 Since however the free action ought to be sub- 
 jected to an ethical judgment, it must be added 
 that the decision with respect also to what is 
 'good' or 'bad,' is made in entire independence 
 of the will. Therefore, freedom also is to be 
 accepted only in the sense of a choice between 
 
POSSIBILITY OF UNCONDITIONED CHOICE. IO3 
 
 what has value and what has not value, — perma- 
 nently, and for its own sake. 
 
 The further objection, — namely that a* freedom, 
 in the sense intended by us, that is in the disrep- 
 utable sense of a completely ' unconditioned ' choice 
 between a and non-a, is in respect of the process 
 of its action incomprehensible, — is likely to be mis- 
 understood : it does not raise a special obstacle 
 such as positively to prohibit the conception of 
 freedom, but simply and absolutely denies its valid- 
 ity. For, assuming that there is freedom, it is 
 involved in its very conception, that the process of 
 the decision it makes cannot be a ' comprehen- 
 sible ' one ; because this would presuppose that the 
 decision follows as the consequence of a succes- 
 sion of reciprocally conditioning circumstances, and 
 therefore does not follow freely. If now offence 
 is still taken at this incomprehensibility of freedom, 
 it may be borne in mind, that the process of causal 
 action would be no less obscure, and the fact of 
 something effectuating something else, as regards 
 its succession of events, just as incomprehensible. 
 
 If then it is still argued, that at all events such 
 a capacity of choosing arbitrarily and blindly be- 
 tween a and non-a is irrational and unworthy of 
 any respect, it is to be considered that we in 
 fact neither commend nor venerate the 'freedom 
 
i04 rHlI.OSOI'll\ ()!• KI-.LK.ION. 
 
 that has not yet decided. It is only the ' will 
 which is no longer free, but has made its decision, 
 that merits commendation or censure. * Freedom 
 is simply the conditio sine qua tion for the possibility 
 of the subsequent valuation of the determinate 
 act of willing. 
 
 For although we may concede that it is just the 
 volition itself which we commend or censure, while 
 we do not demand that this volition itself be re- 
 peated once more, still we after all tacitly pre- 
 suppose in such a case, that just this ' volition 
 from the very outset has the significance of a 
 decision sprung from 'freedom.' If this is denied 
 us, and the will is defined as an emotion which 
 originates mechanically within us, then we deny 
 that ethical predicates are at all applicable to the 
 will as a mere process of nature. 
 
 On the other hand it is objected, that the Good 
 ought to be chosen for its own sake, but not in an 
 entirely arbitrary manner : a blind freedom there- 
 fore would be just as little conducive to actions 
 which may be judged ethically. In reply to this 
 it is to he observed, that we can never speak of a 
 * blind ' will ; since all volition belongs to the same 
 spiritual subject, w^hich on the other hand is en- 
 dowed likewise with the consciousness of the pos- 
 sible modes of its action and of their values. If 
 
VARYING INFLUENCE OF WILL. IO5 
 
 such a subject in possession of this consciousness 
 makes a choice, its choice at all events is not 
 * blind.' But there is no necessity for apprehending 
 the presence in consciousness of the correct esti- 
 mate of the possible modes of action as at the 
 same time a determining influence which neces- 
 sarily conditioned the direction of the will. 
 
 One difficulty however remains. The act of voli- 
 tion, although itself not causally conditioned, would 
 still, if there is to be any corresponding result, 
 be obliged to have a varying influence upon the 
 existing states of the mind. And now the ques- 
 tion comes, as to the means that determined the 
 intensity with which the ' freely ' originated will 
 either overcomes the states of passion that strug- 
 gle against it, or else yields to them. It would 
 be a somewhat sophistical piece of information 
 to affirm unqualifiedly that only the volition, but 
 not the accomplishment of it is free ; and indeed 
 to carry this to such extent, that not only the pos- 
 sibility of the execution of an external action when 
 willed would be doubtful, but that even the inner 
 states of the mind also would form for the will a 
 sort of external world, in which it could validate 
 itself only in case the states of the same are more- 
 over in harmony with its demands. 
 
 In a somewhat indefinite form this thought ap- 
 
io6 PHiLOSOiMiv or rfligiox. 
 
 pears in tlic splierc of religion : \vc pray God to 
 grant strength to the well-disposed but weak will ; 
 we therefore certainly ascribe volition to the hu- 
 man spirit, and only doubt about its needful 
 power. 
 
 A decisive judgment upon this question it is 
 hardly possible to find. To assume an entirely 
 free 'volition' and to include in the conception 
 of it its complete ineffectiveness seems almost 
 absurd : on the contrary the other extreme opin- 
 ion is a very bold one and hardly to be accepted ; 
 namely, that just as the will freely determines its 
 own direction, so also is it able to determine its 
 own intensity, and that it is always the willing 
 spirit's own fault, if it has too little intensity of 
 v^olition to overcome the involuntary psychical im- 
 pulses to action. 
 
 § 62. According to the entire foregoing discus- 
 sion, acceptance or rejection of freedom will ulti- 
 mately be a matter of decision, and not the result 
 of a theoretical demonstration. 
 
 It is only on the assumption, that we do not 
 hold the speculative difficulties which we encounter 
 to be insuperable, and that we therefore believe in 
 the freedom of spiritual beings, that there is any 
 further interest in discussing the conception of a 
 government of the world. 
 
GOVERNMENT AND PRESERVATION. IQ/ 
 
 Government, in contradistinction to Preservation, 
 could only consist in immediate influences of God 
 upon the order of nature, such as were not included 
 in the proper consequences of this order. And 
 these influences could only be occasioned by the 
 free actions which threaten to turn the prog- 
 ress of the world's course aside from a prescribed 
 line. 
 
 Such divine influences are comprehended under 
 the name of Miracles. 
 
 In order to estimate this conception, it must 
 not be defined as an abolition of the order of 
 nature in general, or of the general laws of na- 
 ture. For then the conception would not at all 
 correspond to what we mean by it. ' General ' sus- 
 spension of the 'laws of nature' would only occa- 
 sion a chaos which is utterly beyond the power 
 of representation. 
 
 The ' miracle ' however is supposed to be a 
 definite event, in which, in a single instance and 
 with reference to definite things and for definite 
 moments, the physical laws are invalidated which, 
 contemporaneously or previously and subsequently, 
 continued to be valid with respect to all other 
 things. 
 
 This however means nothing but that the nature 
 a of some one element experiences a change into 
 
108 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 
 
 a, by which it now no I()nL;cr falls under the do- 
 main of the natural law j^-, but under that of an- 
 other y ; and in consequence of this it no longer 
 produces the ordinary effect, but another and ex- 
 traordinary one. According to this definition, there- 
 fore, the miracle in general would involve no 
 alteration whatever of the laws of nature, but 
 only the change of one or more magnitudes to 
 which those laws are applied. 
 
 Now it cannot be disputed, that such a change 
 of the natures of single elements by the influence 
 of a divine intervention is just as thinkable as it 
 would be if accomplished by the intervention of 
 another, and that a physical force. And particu- 
 larly under the presupposition, that the Things of 
 nature are not independent, but are products con- 
 stantly supported by a divine power, does this 
 general conception of the miracle contain, on the 
 one hand, all that can be demanded in the re- 
 ligious interest, and, on the other, nothing that 
 would be theoretically contradictory or impossible. 
 
 § 63. There is no cause for overmuch rejoicing 
 on account of this proof of the mere abstract 
 conceivableness of the miracle. On the contrary 
 it must be lamented, that we lack every decisive 
 scientific regulative for determining the limits, 
 
MIRACLES AS RELATED TO SPIRITS. lOQ 
 
 within which wc may have confidence in this 
 possibility of thought, as valid in actuality. Only 
 very indefinite thoughts upon this question admit 
 of being presented. 
 
 That the order of nature for its own sake is in 
 need of no corrections, is obvious. And the 
 changes, which the free actions of spirits are able 
 to produce in it, are so narrowly limited and may 
 be so easily compensated for by the general 
 economy of nature, that even for their sake 
 * miraculous ' interventions are incredible. 
 
 Although, on the other hand, we feel a certain 
 aesthetic inclination to behold great crises of 
 history, in which a new phase of spiritual devel- 
 opment has its beginning, made glorious by 
 extraordinary changes of physical conditions also ; 
 still we must acknowledge that we can prove 
 neither the necessity nor the real benefit which 
 would result from satisfying our fancy by this 
 summons of the miraculous. 
 
 It seems therefore, that it is not at all nature 
 directly, but primarily the inner life of the world 
 of spirits only, that forms the object, to which 
 immediate interventions in the government of the 
 world could have relation ; and this in such manner 
 that the interventions would not make use of the 
 individual spirits merely as passive points of tran- 
 
iio PHii.osopiiv oi- Ki:ij(;i()N. 
 
 sition, but would sup})ly tlicir own acti\ity with 
 inducements nnd incentives, which the external 
 course of nature cannot offer them. Moreover, 
 by means of these inducements and incentives 
 they would succeed, in accordance with the ordi- 
 nary laws of the spiritual life, in introducing into 
 the world new beginnings of spiritual movement 
 that are in conformity with the plan of the world. 
 If in these events we include among others re- 
 ligious visions also, then we do not conceive them 
 to be, as Rationalism does, merely subjective delu- 
 sions to which nothing in external nature, and 
 consequently nothing whatever corresponds. On 
 the contrary, we think of them as products of a 
 reciprocal action of God with individual spirits by 
 means of which there is brought to pass in them 
 an ideal appearance of a truly valid content ; and 
 this content would gain nothing whatever in dig- 
 nity, value or reality, if it were realized, not 
 merely as such appearance, but as physical or ma- 
 terial actuality besides. 
 
 § 64. Accordingly it is impossible speculatively 
 to determine, how far within the limits of proba- 
 bility, faith in the applicability of the not essen- 
 tially impossible conception of miracle ought to 
 be extended. 
 
HISTORY NOT MERE DEVELOPMENT. I I I 
 
 The entire thought however, in which the in- 
 clination towards this faith has its source, is still 
 further in harmony with the idea of a history for 
 the world in which we come to participate with 
 God in some common experience. And while 
 this is something which is determined in accord- 
 ance with his most general plan, it is still in its 
 details by no means the mere result of original 
 predestination. It is therefore not merely ' de- 
 velopment ' according to the law of reason and 
 consequent, but actual history ; and this history is 
 without exception found only where general laws 
 or a general plan are not executed with perfect 
 constancy, but in alternate action with innumerable 
 lawless obstacles or free counteractions. 
 
 This summing-up of actuality into a history which 
 has beginning, middle and end, is very natural 
 to all religions. And yet there are no doubt dif- 
 ficulties involved in such an idea in itself con- 
 sidered. 
 
 That is to say, it seems to us at first as if the 
 proper determination of actuality consists in the 
 historical actualization of a " world-aim " or in the 
 struggle toward it. And with this understanding 
 of the matter, it is altogether natural to regard the 
 creation, the history of the world, and the judg- 
 ment of the world, as three successive acts of such 
 
112 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 
 
 a concluded drama. But upon closer consideration 
 after all this view is in contradiction to our 
 needs. 
 
 If the world was created in time, so that reckon- 
 ing from this (present) moment a retrogressive 
 cognition should, after a finite number of steps, 
 discover its beginning, then we are troubled by the 
 emptiness of infinite time before this beginning ; 
 and we know of nothing with which to fill it out. 
 For even the thought of a solitary preexistence of 
 God is an obscure one, supposing that the creation 
 of the world is made to originate from an act of 
 the will of God, which could have no need of this 
 preparatory period either for its origination or for 
 its execution. 
 
 Just so if the judgment of the world is the 
 conclusion of history, it certainly cannot be under- 
 stood to mean that the created actuality would 
 now vanish again into nothingness. Rather is it 
 only by this judgment of the world that there is 
 established an order of things which fulfils the 
 aim of the world, and which would then naturally 
 be perpetuated ad infinitiiui as the actuality of 
 that which ought to be ; — and this without ex- 
 periencing any further history of that development, 
 which would now be superfluous. 
 
 Such considerations convince us that the idea 
 
THE PERIODS OF THE WORLD. II3 
 
 of these three successive periods of Beginning, 
 Realization and Completion of an aim, — derived 
 as it is from our human endeavors, — is not ap- 
 plicable to the totality of the world. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 OF THE CONCEPTION OF THE * WORLD-AI M.' 
 
 i^ 65. The conception of a * world-aim,' which, 
 according to the remarks we have just made, would 
 not be realized all at once at the conclusion of a 
 history, but progressively in the course of the 
 world, we have simply introduced without any 
 question as to its validity. Speculatively it is by 
 no means to be demonstrated ; it continues to be 
 perfectly possible to think of the course of the 
 world as an entirely purposeless, although more 
 or less living development of an Absolute. 
 
 But religious feeling has an immediate evidence 
 that the case is not so, and that all the phenomena 
 of inspiration, of adoration, and of the feeling of 
 obligation to an ideal, are not explicable 'as casual 
 effects in the development of a purposeless Prin- 
 ciple. 
 
 l^ut if the conception of a supreme aim for 
 the world is once acknowledged, then the other 
 ideas, which form its necessary points of relation, 
 comport with it ; and especially the idea of a per- 
 sonal God, in whose consciousness and will alone 
 this aim, previous to its full accomplishment, can 
 
PLACE OF THE SUPREME AIM. II5 
 
 have any actuality by means of which it becomes 
 effective as guiding principle for the course of 
 the world itself. To this subject however we are 
 not going to return. The most urgent question 
 is, wherein are we to place this * supreme aim.' 
 
 § 66. The answer to the foregoing question is 
 to this extent self-evident, that naturally this aim 
 cannot be placed in the realization of a fact, with 
 respect to which the further question were * possi- 
 ble ; why just this, and not other conceivable 
 aims of like nature, is to fill this supremely 
 exalted position in the world. The aim must 
 obviously be that which has supreme value, and 
 with respect to which the aforesaid question 
 becomes senseless. 
 
 Now as to what this aim is, the common, unphil- 
 osophical religious view is not at all uncertain : 
 nothing but the conception of blessedness seems 
 to it to express this value, with respect to which 
 it is absurd to raise the question, why this and 
 why nothing else constitutes the supreme aim. 
 It may be incidentally remarked, that the exist- 
 ence of a world of spirits is connected with the 
 foregoing view as something conceivable. For only 
 such a world could contain the subjects whose states 
 this supreme aim may be conceived to be. On the 
 
I 1 6 PHILOSOPHY OF KKLKUON. 
 
 Other hand, this view by no means also furnishes 
 at once an explanation of the existence of this 
 determinate, ///animate wcjrld. 
 
 ^ 67. The above-mentioned view is combated in 
 xain from the side of an ethical Ri<;orism, which, 
 throu<j^h its well-known undcrx'aluation of all 'pleas- 
 ure,' always in the })ractical domain, regards noth- 
 ing but disinterested obedience to the universal 
 commands of duty as ethical ; and therefore in 
 the religious domain also would not in any case 
 be disposed to acknowdedge * supreme blessedness ' 
 as the final purpose of the world, — perhaps not, 
 with any readiness, even as a tolerable conse- 
 quence of that purpose. 
 
 With respect to this point we briefly remark 
 as follows : If obedience or disobedience to an 
 ethical law were to occasion not a trace of pleas- 
 ure or pain to any sensitive being in the world, 
 — whether God, angels, or men, — it would be 
 utterly incomprehensible, why it is just the obedi- 
 ence and not the disobedience to the law that 
 must have an obligatory force ; since after all 
 the effects of the two modes of conduct consist 
 only in the production of different states of fact, 
 one of which would be as indifferent as the other. 
 
 In a word, it is impossible to understand what 
 
THE NATURE OF THE GOOD. 11/ 
 
 is to constitute the ' value ' of any action, if its 
 results are not able to produce some 'Good' some- 
 where in the world, or to increase the sum of 
 already existing ' Good.' But while we designate 
 Things, States and Events as * Good,' it is after 
 all only in so far as they are means for obtain- 
 ing the only real and substantial 'Good'; and 
 this latter always exists only in the pleasure of 
 some sensitive spirit, and would vanish with the 
 world of spirits completely from the realm of ac- 
 tuality. 
 
 No Ethics can avoid having regard to a pur- 
 pose that is final and in itself of absolute value. 
 No matter to what extent many rigorous systems 
 formulate their highest ethical laws apparently 
 without any such regard, still, in addition to the 
 assurances that they are the highest laws, the 
 conclusion must always be supplied : What then 
 would be the result, if these laws were not obeyed ? 
 
 § 68. The foregoing assertions do not degrade 
 morals. It is not meant by them, that the direct 
 endeavor after happiness — and that, too, after one's 
 own happiness — should be the ethically praise- 
 worthy motive of our action. On this point our 
 conscience gives us sufficient instruction ; since 
 it interprets this endeavor as in itself considered 
 
Ii8 rnii.osoi'in- oi- kki.kiiox. 
 
 indifferent and merely natural, but on the con- 
 trary interprets as ethically laudable only the 
 endeavor to secure the hapj)iness of others. Thus 
 (as might be further proved) the command of 
 ' benevolence ' is, among all ethical commands, 
 really the fundamental one ; and only upon the 
 assumption of it do all the rest receive their ob- 
 ligatory value. 
 
 On the other hand, in seeking a coherent view 
 of the world, we have a speculative interest in the 
 fact that the ethical commands, which we are able 
 in practice to obey without any further question 
 as to their origin, are not wholly lacking in co- 
 herence wqth the arram^ement of the world. 
 
 That such arrangement therefore be reckoned to 
 the account of the final purpose of blessedness, is 
 a speculative claim, which we set up in the in- 
 terest, to a certain extent, of our reverence for 
 the world, but not for the satisfaction of our own 
 wishes for happiness. We are naturally unable to 
 avoid including our own welfare also in this com- 
 prehensive final purpose. 
 
 The foregoing are perhaps the incentives which 
 in religious thought have led to this doctrine of 
 blessedness. Fronj these incentives are distin- 
 guished, and not to their advantage, at least as 
 regards the intention, the philosophical systems 
 
BLESSEDNESS AS AN ABSTRACT NOTION. II9 
 
 which only in a practical way set up claims upon 
 our obedience to universal ethical laws, but specu- 
 latively give us no enlightenment with respect to 
 the ultimate end, to which properly this ceaseless 
 expenditure of ethical energy is to lead. 
 
 § 69. Certainly, the laudation alluded to above 
 holds good only of the intention and not of the 
 performance of this religious opinion. It is wrecked 
 rather in the attempt, actually to deduoe the neces- 
 sity of the pi'escnt world from the supreme purpose 
 of blessedness. 
 
 The first objection certainly might be disre- 
 garded ; namely, why this purpose could be accom- 
 plished at all only as a result of a course of the 
 world, and why it could not be accomplished as 
 well from the very beginning. At the foundation 
 of such a question there really lies the logical error 
 of regarding the conception of ' blessedness ' or of 
 * pleasure in general ' in this universal sense of it, 
 as something realizable. But the * pleasure ' that 
 is without content can no more exist than a sen- 
 sation of 'color in general,' which were neither 
 green nor blue. Every ' pleasure ' is rather an 
 altogether determinate one, which is distinguished, 
 as to its intensity and coloring, from others, and in 
 both respects is determined by the nature of the 
 content of which it is an enjoyment. 
 
I20 PHILOSOPHY OF KKLKilON. 
 
 Hence it may be made evident, that we arc 
 utterly unable to form any real idea of a blessed- 
 ness without content, although we can form the 
 name of it ; that it is capable of realization rather 
 only upon the supposition that there are actual 
 relations of some sort, which constitute the object 
 of enjoyment in this pleasure ; and, finally, that 
 even these relations cannot be as they will, but 
 together must form an orderly arrangement of the 
 world. 
 
 But no progress is made in the foregoing way ; 
 the postulates which are set up with respect to 
 such an arrangement of the world, are always after 
 all general and abstract. That they had to be 
 realized now by means of just these substances, 
 forces, organisms, and kinds of occurrence, which 
 we discover empirically in the world, is in nowise 
 to be proved. 
 
 Wonder at the fact that so many other kinds 
 of existence were still possible, which however do 
 not exist, can be modified but imperfectly by the 
 intimation that our range of experience is narrow, 
 and that perhaps there are realized in the extra- 
 earthly world all the possibilities which we miss 
 upon the surface of the earth. For since we have 
 reason to think that the most general physical laws, 
 which are valid with us, are valid also for all distant 
 
THE EXISTENCE OF EVIL. 121 
 
 parts of the world, therefore the organizations also 
 which are there found can only be such as are in 
 accordance with these laws. There always remains 
 as conceivable, however, an infinite manifoldness 
 that might exist, if those laws were only different. 
 We are therefore brought round to the new 
 question : Why are the laws of nature, which are 
 not necessities of thought but empirical, precisely 
 as they are and not otherwise ? This question is 
 unanswerable ; and in our religious faith we must 
 be content to think of the given world as in 
 fact called to the realization of the supreme pur- 
 pose, without being able to investigate any further 
 the grounds of this calling. 
 
 § 70. The existence of evil in the world — and 
 that too primarily of mere physical evil — brings 
 our general assumptions still further into inex- 
 plicable contradiction with our data of facts. 
 
 It is sufficient to indicate in a word, how utterly 
 fruitless are those ways of speaking which seek 
 to apologize for evil by recognizing it only " in 
 particulars," but maintaining " the harmony of 
 the world as a whole." One needs only to reverse 
 these utterances : " On the whole the world makes 
 a beautiful figure indeed, but in particulars it is 
 wretched," — in order to understand that such ex- 
 
122 rillLOSOI'HY OF RELIGION. 
 
 pressions give cvitlence merely of the good inten- 
 tion of the apology, but specify no ground for 
 such an apology. 
 
 Moreover the assertion of that " harmony on the 
 whole " is in fact by no means whatever to be 
 demonstrated. We merely know that the world 
 does not perish on account of its imperfections, 
 but that both it and they continue together. 
 
 § 71. All efforts to attain to clearness upon the 
 above-mentioned subject, can only try to apologize 
 for the evil that does not admit of being done 
 away with by denial. 
 
 The first onset for this purpose consists in the 
 assumption that evil is necessary ; in other words 
 that God, although having in view only the High- 
 est Good, has nevertheless been bound in his 
 creation to laws which have not permitted the un- 
 conditioned Good, but only the choice of the best 
 world among many, all of which were imperfect. 
 
 The limitation of the divine Omnipotence which 
 is involved in this view, might be tolerated to a 
 certain extent, if the aforesaid general laws were 
 really understood to be simply the eternal truths, 
 which, as we saw, are nothing extraneous to God, 
 but are only the proper modus agoidi of his own 
 spiritual activity. But there is nothing whatever 
 
THE ORIGIN OF EVIL. 1 23 
 
 % 
 
 in the whole world by which to prove that these 
 eternal truths were to blame for the evils that 
 are in the world. So far as we are in any way 
 empirically acquainted with the course of things, 
 and arc able, according to its analogy, to judge 
 of non-realized possibilities, an absolutely faultless 
 world would not be at all inconsistent with those 
 'eternal truths.' The ground of evil, so far as 
 we know, lies rather in those special facts and 
 arrangements, which are in actual existence, but 
 instead of which there might as well be others 
 that were also on friendly terms with the afore- 
 said truths and yet would not lead to these evils. 
 
 Since now we must attribute the establishment 
 of these special actualities to the creative will of 
 God, the attempt in this way to make the origin 
 of evil independent of the divine will would not 
 succeed ; for his omnipotence would have still 
 further to be so limited that even the actual ele- 
 ments of the world and their original combina- 
 tions would be regarded as something taken for 
 granted, in the midst of which God would have 
 to find himself existing, and from which He then 
 would have to endeavor to secure the best result 
 still possible (Leibnitz). 
 
 This would be not only a degradation of our 
 conception of God from a religious point of view, 
 
124 rHiLOSoriiv of religion. 
 
 but it would also be speculatively fruitless. For 
 in order that the measurable influence upon the 
 world, which is still attributed to such a God, 
 might be able to exist at all, a second superior 
 God would have to be assumed, who, in the 
 manner previously discussed (§§ i6 ff.), would com- 
 prehend both of these now mutually indifferent 
 members in one reciprocal action, and would pre- 
 vail upon them to act upon each other. 
 
 § 72. After the foregoing explanation which is 
 intended as metaphysical, there is one of a peda- 
 gogic sort, that regards evil as a means of Good, 
 that is of education and improvement. 
 
 But in the first place this view merely contem- 
 plates men, who alone are capable of education. 
 But in the animal world as well physical evils 
 appear ; and that not at all in a sporadic manner, 
 but so systematized that the terrible torture and 
 destruction of one class of creatures by the rest 
 belongs directly to the so-called order of Nature. 
 No pedagogic can make this comprehensible. We 
 can much sooner comprehend how earlier times in 
 despair over this very fact set a ' bad Principle ' 
 in a dualistic manner over against the Good. 
 
 But even leaving this out of the account, — 
 any education makes use of evil simply because 
 
MORAL AND PHYSICAL EVIL. 1 25 
 
 the minds which it intends to affect, are psycho- 
 logically so defectively organized, that without 
 this intrinsically objectionable means the end 
 would no longer be realized. If it were applied 
 to the entire world, it would lead back to the 
 previous thought : God did not have it in his 
 power to make the world so perfect that it 
 would attain its end without corrections by 
 means of evil. 
 
 § 73. A view which has been elaborated rather 
 in a religious and mystical way, regards the mor- 
 ally Bad as prior and physical evil as a consequence 
 of its becoming actual. 
 
 Now the circumstance that the truly Good was 
 not to be actualized without the possibility of the 
 Bad, and therefore that the freedom of the world 
 of spirits was to be conceded, we can consider 
 as a necessity which need not be foreign even 
 to God's own nature. But after all we do not 
 understand, why the bad disposition which entered 
 the world in consequence of such freedom needed 
 to have any physical result at all ; and why the 
 danger which it threatened to the undisturbed 
 continuance of the world, was not averted by 
 one of those self-compensations, by means of 
 which so frequently elsewhere in nature the be- 
 
126 riiiLOsoniY of relk.ion. 
 
 ginning of a disturbed equipoise cancels itself 
 
 agani. 
 
 The necessary existence of freedom would there- 
 fore by no means show that the innocent must 
 suffer by its misuse. But in addition to this also 
 the view does not cover the whole question. 
 
 For the further assumption that nature was 
 originally without evil and that sin first brought 
 it into the world, not only lacks all empirical 
 foundation, but is even in itself considered un- 
 tenable. We cannot, just because individual spirits, 
 or even very many of them, erred, regard ' sin ' as 
 a unit-principle or a power which would have a 
 legitimate influence upon the course of nature in 
 general ; still less is it to be understood, why na- 
 ture did not endeavor to overcome singly the dis- 
 turbances which the sin that is foreign to it had 
 introduced, instead of admitting physical evils, as 
 a kind of solidaric totality, into the very plan of 
 its operations. 
 
 The incomprehensibleness of the foregoing views 
 is not lessened by their being proclaimed with still 
 greater emphasis ; thus, for example, by speaking 
 of a •* voluntary fall of the entire creation " which 
 now extends '* the curse of its imperfection to all 
 creatures that still spring from it." In whatever 
 way the picture may be painted, to attribute this 
 
EVIL AN INSOLVABLE ENIGMA. 12/ 
 
 act of a 'fair to the collective conception of a 
 creation means after all nothing whatever. It is 
 intelligible only as regards each particular, indi- 
 vidual, free and conscious being. But if we refer 
 it to such a being, then it is a perfect monstrosity, 
 at variance with the simplest sense of justice, to 
 assume that the consequences of this act pass 
 over, as an inheritance which it is impossible to 
 shake off, to all later generations, although they 
 are according to their very conception destined 
 to like 'freedom.' 
 
 In very different forms have Mythology, Mysti- 
 cism and Dogmatics represented such a primaeval 
 history of the world. But none of these attempts 
 has been able to eliminate the aforesaid manifest 
 
 mcongruities. 
 
 § 74. The above-mentioned incapacity of our spec- 
 ulative cognition for the solution of this enigma of 
 evil had to be very plainly expressed. For there 
 ought not to remain any seeming as if there were, in 
 expressions which cannot be understood and which 
 only commend themselves to the imagination through 
 intuitive images, any real speculative proof for the 
 correctness of the religious feeling upon which 
 rests our faith in a good and holy God, and in the 
 destination of the world to the attainment of a 
 blessed end. 
 
128 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 
 
 He who docs not share this religious conviction, 
 may, on account of these last considerations of 
 ours, very easily from a speculative point of view 
 reach that Pessimism, which is just now the order 
 of the day, and for which there will be on specu- 
 lative grounds no refutation. But this Pessimism, 
 which reverts to the thought of an original energy 
 without will, that produces the Good and the Bad 
 alike without design, is not a profound view but is 
 just that cheap and superficial kind of view, by 
 which all enigmas are conveniently disposed of — 
 by simply sacrificing all that is most essential and 
 supreme to the unprejudiced mind. 
 
 In contrast with this Pessimism, the more diffi- 
 cult problem is the firm confidence that, in spite 
 of all that is incomprehensible to us, the striving 
 after a supreme end is at all events extant in the 
 world. For this confidence takes upon itself the 
 great and ever unavoidable task of always making 
 renewed attempts to fill the gap which lies be- 
 tween this content of our faith and our actual 
 experiences. 
 
 If we call every attempt of this sort in thought 
 or action 'Religion,' then 'religion' is never ex- 
 actly a demonstrable theorem, but the conviction 
 of its truth is a deed that is to be accredited to 
 character. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 RELIGION AND MORALITY. 
 
 § 75. If there is no speculative argument for 
 religious conviction, still there must be a motive 
 for holding fast this conviction. And in fact an 
 appeal has constantly been made to an 'immediate 
 inner experience/ which attests the truth of the 
 content of religion, as directly and independently 
 of the intervention of logic as perception by the 
 senses attests the reality of external objects. It 
 has already been said in the Introduction however, 
 that there by no means exists an harmonious 
 inner experience as regards that divine order of 
 the world which is not perceivable by the senses ; 
 but rather that (compare also § 59) the only ele- 
 ment common to men, to which an ap^peal may 
 be made for the confirmation of religion, consists 
 in those * utterances of the conscience' that pri- 
 marily only say what oiigJu to be, and yet after 
 all permit an indirect inference from this as to 
 what is. 
 
 § 76. There are different ways of apprehend- 
 ing this real function of the * conscience ' also. 
 
I ;o PiiiLosornv or religion. 
 
 It must be acknowlcd^^cd that the conscience 
 is not, prior to all experience, a coherent revela- 
 tion of the commands to which our future conduct 
 ought to conform ; the rather is it like our capa- 
 city of cognition. The supreme j)rinciples to 
 which this capacity reduces its judgment of 
 Things, are also no original ready-made posses- 
 sion of our consciousness. Particular perceptions 
 rather induce us, in the first place, as a sort of 
 immediate reaction, to effect their combination so 
 as to give them a definite significance. It is 
 only subsequent reflection upon many such par- 
 ticular cases, that shows us in accordance with 
 what * principles ' our conduct, which was pre- 
 viously only instinctive, has proceeded. And 
 now for the first time are they cousciojis prin- 
 ciples, to which we conform in our subsequent 
 cognition. 
 
 Just so * conscience * is first induced, by consid- 
 ering cases that are quite definite, to pass par- 
 ticular judgments of approval or disapproval upon 
 actions which are brought before it. It is only 
 by reflective comparison of these particular judg- 
 ments, that there is formed from them those 
 general ethical precepts, which it is then cus- 
 tomary to designate as the * immediate voice of 
 conscience.' 
 
THE VIEW OF EGOISM. I^I 
 
 § 77. This necessary concession with respect to 
 the psychological development of our conscience, 
 is now made use of to support in the first place 
 a view, which annuls the obligatory value and the 
 proper majesty of ethical commands. 
 
 It is the view, namely, that the sensibility 
 which induces the spirit to approve or disapprove 
 of some definite act itself rests in turn merely 
 upon the immediate well-being or ill-being, which 
 the spirit experiences from it. When however 
 this sensibility proceeds to the formation of gen- 
 eral propositions, it comprises only those maxims, 
 constant obedience to which experience has taught 
 Becures on the average the highest degree and 
 steadiest permanence of that well-being which is 
 at all attainable. All ethical commands accord- 
 ingly appear merely as maxims of that Egoism 
 which seeks its own self-preservation ; they appear 
 however as general laws simply for the reason 
 that the limitation of our cognition of the past, 
 present and future, does not in every case permit 
 that mode of action which is specially suited to 
 these different periods, for the attainment of the 
 highest possible good. 
 
 To this entire mode of apprehending the sub- 
 ject we must now concede this one point, — 
 namely, that the mere experience of human inter- 
 
132 PHILOSOPHY OP KKLICilON. 
 
 course certainly may furnish us with the concrete 
 and (letcrniinatc i:)articular content of those pre- 
 cej)ts, in conforming to which ethical behavior 
 consists ; and that, on the other hand, all at- 
 tempts in a reverse direction to deduce those 
 specialized precepts from the general conceptions 
 of the Good, the T^thical, the Holy, or the Just, 
 are in vain. Such general conceptions express 
 nothing whatever but the peculiar character of 
 the impression, which definite kinds of conduct 
 will make upon our feelings, as soon as we shall 
 become acquainted with them : on the other hand, 
 they do not acquaint us with just those forms of 
 the conduct itself, to which this impression will 
 apply. 
 
 § 78. A disposition which insists upon endeavor- 
 ing to find in ethical precepts nothing but pru- 
 dential maxims acquired by experience, and to find 
 back of all actions nothing but egoistic motives, can 
 in no way be gainsaid by mere speculation. So 
 much only is clear, namely, that such an interpre- 
 tation of moral commands is arbitraiy. For in that 
 case also, supposing us to assume that a worth 
 and sacredness of their own belongs to these com- 
 mands, everything w^ould still be exactly the same. 
 That is to say, these commands would in fact be 
 
THE VIEW OF EGOISM. 1 33 
 
 the maxims, conforming to which produces the 
 greatest amount of happiness. The content more- 
 over of that which they command would always 
 be learned first by experience, as was previously 
 mentioned. And for just this reason it would always 
 be possible to represent them as though they were 
 nothing more than such lessons of experience with 
 respect to what is expedient. 
 
 But on the other hand, he who prefers this 
 interpretation overlooks the fact, that we all of us 
 none the less set over against the conduct which 
 simply conforms to these maxims of prudence, 
 another of an altogether different sort, as being 
 the only one of value ; and this latter conduct con- 
 forms to these same maxims, although with differ- 
 ent sentiments ; and indeed with such sentiments 
 as either have disinterested regard to the estab- 
 lishment of the Good, in precisely the same way, 
 for instance, in which we reverence beauty as having 
 objective value without advantage to ourselves — 
 or else with such sentiments as find happiness, so 
 far as they make the production of it an object 
 of pursuit, only in benevolence towards others and 
 not in selfishness. 
 
 This also may be denied ; but in denying it 
 there is involved the denial of an inner experience, 
 upon the acknowledgment of Which every further 
 
134 PMir.osopnY OF religion. 
 
 upwarti flight of religion depends. Conversely, 
 therefore, it will not be possible to gainsay those 
 who are conscious of this inner experience. 
 
 § 79. lUit even the recognition of the peculiar 
 worth and sacredness of ethical commands does not 
 lead at once to a religions view of the world ; on the 
 contrary this recognition, in ancient as well as mod- 
 ern times, has been put in express opposition to 
 religious thought.s, which seemed like a needless 
 and false supplement to it. It is not to be denied, 
 that practically even this Stoicism, or the Rational- 
 ism which disdains any connection with religion, 
 may, by mere subordination to the general demands 
 of morality and of the course of the world, furnish 
 the basis for a conduct of life well deserving of rec- 
 ognition. But there are involved in this conception 
 (compare § 6'^) peculiar speculative contradictions. 
 
 It is maintained in the first place, that all 
 thoughts about an origin at some time or other, 
 or about an ultimate aim of moral laws, are to be 
 avoided, because they could only serve to corrupt 
 the conception of the peculiar sacredness and un- 
 conditioned obligation of these laws, which demand 
 rather an altogether immediate recognition as being 
 absolutely obligator)\ Worthy of respect as is the 
 sentiment which is* thus expressed, yet the specu- 
 
AN 'UNCONDITIONED OUGHT.' I35 
 
 lative thought, by which it would Uke to sustain 
 itself, is utterly unserviceable. Laws that are com- 
 pletely unconditioned may be conceived of, so far 
 forth as they in fact govern all actuality, like the 
 laws of nature, and are consequently expressions of 
 a ' nmst ' which knows no exceptions. On the con- 
 trary the thought of an 'unconditioned Ought,' that 
 is, of a law to which actuality in no wise of itself 
 corresponds, is incomprehensible. 
 
 There must be a difference between the reality 
 of that which oitgJit to be and of that which ought 
 not to be ; and this difference cannot consist in 
 the mere repetition of these two antithetical j^redi- 
 cates. Rather must the very consideration, that the 
 one ought to be and the other ought not to be, 
 have a practical validity. In other words and more 
 simply : An unconditioned ' Ought ' is unthinkable ; 
 and only a conditioned Ought is possible, which 
 attaches advantages and disadvantages to the ob- 
 servance or non-observance of what is prescribed. 
 These very consequences, however, may still con- 
 sist ultimately only in pleasure or pain. And in 
 this alone. also consists the 'absolute value,' as it is 
 called, which the ideals of conduct designated by 
 moral laws possess. A value, which is valued by 
 no ojte, and therefore causes 7io one pleasure or 
 pain, is, according to our previous explanation 
 (§ 6"/), an essentially self-contradictory thought. 
 
136 rniLOSopiTV of rf.ligion. 
 
 Now the advantage, which must be inseparably 
 connected with the claim to validity for the moral 
 laws, could be sought primarily in that immobility 
 of feeling, that atamxyy which Stoicism regards as 
 the ideal of life for the wise man. But if this is 
 commendable so far as it does not permit disturb- 
 ance by the passions, still there is little that is 
 commendable in its consequence, which would also 
 exclude living enthusiasm for the Good and Beauti- 
 ful, and would virtually degrade the feeling spirit 
 to the form in which an impersonal substance ex- 
 ists. The moral laws, however, so far as this 
 ataraxy would be attained by observing them, would 
 in fact still be mere maxims of utility, which w^ould 
 be designed for the attainment of a completely ego- 
 istic well-being. 
 
 It is manifestly, however, not this tranquillity 
 of mind alone that has been in view as the ulti- 
 mate goal and good, but the self-esteem which is 
 secured by observance of the moral laws. Now 
 this may without doubt be very well meant, but 
 to say the least it is not compatible with the 
 refusal of all further religious views. If we regard 
 the individual personality as only a product of 
 nature, which transiently appears and then van- 
 ishes, it is not possible to understand just why 
 we attach any value to the fact that what we 
 
PRINCIPLES OF ALL RELIGION. 1 3/ 
 
 revere as good and holy must have its realization 
 in just such an 'Ego' as this. Self-esteem also 
 would therefore be immediately intelligible as an 
 ultimate goal only in case it were brought under 
 the conception of that which ministers to our 
 egoistic well-being, in the same way as does 
 every sensuous satisfaction. It would be possi- 
 ble for it to have a different significance only in 
 case our view of our own personality, and of its 
 position in the totality of the world be changed. 
 
 § 80. The foregoing reflections, which con- 
 fessedly have not the value of demonstrations in 
 the proper sense, but are merely intended to 
 make us sensible of the connection by which 
 the particular thoughts here mentioned, first get 
 their complete satisfaction, lead us now to three 
 propositions which we may regard as the character- 
 istic convictions of every religious apprehension, in 
 contradistinction to a merely intellectual view of 
 the world, — namely : 
 
 (i) Ethical laws we designate as the will of God ; 
 
 (2) Individual finite spirits we designate not as 
 products of nature, but as children of God ; 
 
 (3) Actuality we designate not as a mere course 
 of the world, but as a kingdom of God. These 
 three propositions are to be elucidated and their 
 consequences investigated. 
 
138 riiiLosoriiY OF religion. 
 
 § 81. The first of tlic aliov •-mcntiuncd j^ropo- 
 sitions has raised objections, which ultimately 
 lead to the well-known scholastic alternative : * Is 
 the Good good, because God wills it ? or does 
 He will it, because it is good.-*' This point is 
 to be decided according to the analogy of the 
 similar question as to the validity of eternal 
 truths. 
 
 If one would answer the first member of the 
 alternative in the affirmative, the question would 
 be asked : What then is comprehended under the 
 thought of that God, who appears here as the sub- 
 ject of this w^ill ? He would be nothing but an 
 infinite Power, as yet wholly devoid of content ; 
 and the affirmation, that He has willed the Good 
 (if it meant a determination of will issued in time, 
 quite as much as if it declared this will, to be one 
 without beginning and eternal) would really be 
 precisely identical with the other assertion, — 
 namely, the Good is assumed to be once for all in 
 existence, and a * positing ' or * affirming,' wholly 
 without origin, is the basis of this assumption. 
 It is moreover obvious, that every such deed of 
 mere power, while it may impart necessity^ cannot 
 impart worth to the command. 
 
 But then, on the other hand, it is just as fruitless 
 to assert that God wills the Good because it is 
 
GOD THE INTRINSICALLY GOOD. 1 39 
 
 — ■ — — — — — ( 
 
 * intrinsically good.' For, to say nothing about 
 the ambiguity of this latter expression, an ac- 
 knowledgment of the Good, which is not a merely 
 enforced decree in subordination to a statute, 
 would after all be possible only in case the con- 
 tent to be acknowledged already possesses for the 
 nature of the acknowledging spirit the truth and 
 the value which is to be awarded to it. 
 
 We are convinced therefore, that the above- 
 mentioned alternative separates again two thoughts, 
 which must be thought together in absolute insep- 
 arableness as the expression of a single fact ; and 
 that we always run against absurdities, whenever 
 we make one of these alternatives the condition 
 for the other. 
 
 We therefore come to the following decision : 
 God is nothing else than that Will, whose con- 
 tent and modes of procedure are comprehended in 
 our reflection as the * intrinsically Good ' ; and 
 which may by abstraction be separated from that 
 living form of existence which it nowhere else 
 possesses but precisely in the real God. In truth, 
 however, such will of God no more follows from 
 his nature as secondary to it, or precedes it as 
 primary to it, than in motion — say direction can 
 be antecedent or subsequent to velocity. 
 
 It is therefore an entire mistake to object that 
 
140 I'liiLosornv m- kelihion. 
 
 the peculiar majesty of moral laws suffers detri- 
 ment if they are regarded as the will of God. For 
 we take this view of the matter, not precisely 
 with the design of laying, by the specification of 
 their origin, a basis for that worth of those com- 
 mands which we directly recognize ; but we do it 
 in order to add to this worth — which, although 
 it stands on its own foundation, we were neverthe- 
 less obliged to regard speculatively as an incom- 
 plete thought, — this supplement, by which, as we 
 remarked, its worth is not enhanced but becomes 
 intelligible and compatible with the totality of our 
 view of the world. 
 
 § 82. As regards the second proposition (§ 80), 
 the somewhat sentimental way in which it is ex- 
 pressed need not deceive us with respect to the 
 weightiness of the thought. It has a twofold mean- 
 ing. That is to say, on the one hand there is 
 involved in it the recognition of the finiteness of 
 the personal spirit and of its subjection to the 
 power and wisdom of God. And herein is found 
 the reason for that opposition which the Christian 
 Religion especially has expressed against the pride 
 of speculative systems of morality, that seek to 
 attain as their ideal the self-satisfaction, self-esteem, 
 and self-righteousness of the 'wise man.' 
 
RELATION OF MAN TO GOD. I4I 
 
 J — — 
 
 The other part of this twofold meaning is the no 
 less lively opposition to that depreciation of per- 
 sonality, which sees in it merely a transient prod- 
 uct of the course of nature. The assertion is 
 therefore expressed in this connection, that there 
 exists between man and God a relation of piety ; 
 that this relation is always a vital one ; and that 
 by means of it — but also only by means of it — 
 the finite spirit ceases to be such absolutely de- 
 pendent product of the course of nature. 
 
 The hope of being loved by God, however, takes 
 the place of mere self-satisfaction as the Highest 
 Good. Such approval by the Supreme Spirit sup- 
 plants the proud claim of having one's satisfaction 
 in one's own self-esteem. 
 
 § 83. With relation to the third proposition 
 (§ 80), we have already been obliged to confess that 
 we do not know the content and plan of the divine 
 government of the world : and the consequence of 
 this with respect to religion is, that the entire con- 
 sideration of external reality is withdrawn from its 
 domain, and is regarded as an object for science, 
 which has to ascertain its consistence by methods 
 entirely free from prejudice, and therefore not at 
 all influenced even by religious considerations. 
 This attitude, too, is distinctive of Christianity. 
 
142 riiiLosoriiv or religion. 
 
 The rclij^ions of licathcnisni possess a mythology, 
 which seeks to explain ami interpret, in a very cir- 
 cumstantial manner, the facts of reality. Chris- 
 tianity has no mythology and rests all its reflec- 
 tions entireU' upon considerations of the spiritual 
 world, of which we have an inner experience. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 DOGMAS AND CONFESSIONS. 
 
 § 84. Nothing more than the content of the three 
 propositions ah-eady cited is in fact revealed, even 
 by the Christian Revelation. To be penetrated by 
 their influence, and to be voluntarily subject to the 
 divine will, as they require, constitutes a living, 
 consolatory religious state, — or religion as a condi- 
 tion of mind. 
 
 It is, nevertheless, quite impossible to avert 
 attempts to transform this religious content, which 
 was originally apprehended only in living presenti- 
 ment, into a series of formulated and communicable 
 propositions. 
 
 To such attempts we are impelled on the one 
 side by our own life-experience, which desires to 
 answer the doubts that have arisen, not always by 
 a mere appeal to the same frame of mind, but also 
 by convictions that enter upon the special content 
 of the doubts raised. Under the name of relie:ious 
 Mysticism may be summed up the whole of these 
 attempts at theory which are based exclusively upon 
 one's own inner religious experience, and which 
 also primarily claim no other validity than that 
 
144 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 
 
 which exists for the personal subject who finds 
 out of the depth of his own mind the desired 
 answers to those doubts. 
 
 § 85. Over against this first impulse stands a 
 second. It is essentially self-contradictory for one 
 to stand alone with his religious conviction, since 
 it is just this condition which unites man to the 
 entire universe. Religion is not merely union of 
 the individual with God, but in and by this union 
 it is at the same time union with all other men. 
 
 In this impulse lies the one respectable root of 
 religious Fanaticism. What we acknowledge as the 
 Supreme, would not be such Supreme, unless it 
 were acknowledged by all. Hence now there fol- 
 lows, not the warrant to be sure to force one's 
 subjective views upon others, but rather that need 
 of a religious community — now so frequently mis- 
 taken — within which each one finds again, not 
 indeed the complete content of his own individual 
 mysticism, but at least the outlines of the convic- 
 tion to which he is able to subordinate or to attach 
 his own. 
 
 Such therefore is the necessity of generally ac- 
 cepted Dogmas and Symbols. 
 
TWOFOLD DESIGN OF DOGMA. 1 45 
 
 § 86. Without doubt the historic development 
 of such thoughts will embrace the content of 
 religion more completely than the life-experience 
 of an individual ; although this latter pervades with 
 greater intensity that which has once become ob- 
 ject of such personal experience. 
 
 Generally accepted objective dogmas will there- 
 fore have the twofold design, — on the one hand, 
 to hold fast those solutions of doubt which have 
 been gained in the course of time ; but, on the 
 other hand, to designate certain outlines of thought 
 beyond which our subjective fancies are not to go 
 without exposing themselves to error. 
 
 According to our previous considerations, no one 
 of these dogmas would be, properly speaking, a 
 speculatively or scientifically conclusive answer to 
 a proposed question ; they would all be mere sym- 
 bols rather, which acknowledge the existence of 
 an enigma and which by means of an insufficient 
 figurative designation only fix the limits of that 
 range of thoughts, beyond which the fulfilment 
 of such postulates must not be sought. 
 
 It would therefore be reckoned a mistake for us 
 to demand of the one who purposes to belong to a 
 religious community, an obligation binding him to 
 the literal purport of such dogmas. It is just ac- 
 cording to their literal purport that they cannot be 
 
146 IMIILOSOrHV OK RKLIGION. 
 
 objects of a confession or non-confession at all. In 
 order that this question of confession may be raised, 
 the dogmas need at all times an interpretation of 
 their real meaning, — a meaning which they always 
 indicate but imperfectly, by figures or symbols. 
 Such interpretation however is not given objec- 
 tively, but each individual is in fact to find it by 
 the activity of his own mind. 
 
 It appears therefore that the only question to 
 be put to the one who proposes to belong to a 
 religious community is, whether he in his own 
 heart experiences and confesses a religious truth, 
 which admits of being comprehended as the im- 
 port of this objectively formulated dogma, and 
 which it is worth while to have acknowledged 
 in this particular form as a bond of union for 
 the religious conviction of a collective body. 
 
 § 87. It may be objected, that there is involved 
 in this a sort of dissimulation. But above all 
 things we do not maintain that religion and its 
 dogmas are obligatory 'only for the uncultivated.' 
 The truth of religion rather is absolutely valid for 
 all alike ; on the contrary, the speculative expres- 
 sions which have been discovered for it, are alto- 
 gether inadequate. And for just this reason it is 
 permitted to agree upon a formula, to which each 
 
INEXPRESSIBLE BUT TRUE RELATIONS. I47 
 
 one gives that theoretical construction by which 
 he beUeves its essential meaning is best compre- 
 hended. 
 
 In other departments of life also we are not 
 able to discard methods of apprehending the 
 world, which within the sphere of philosophy we 
 nevertheless recognize as inadequate. The exist- 
 ence of a space-world outside of us, the atoms, and 
 the forces of matter, — all these are ideas, without 
 the use of which not only the common understand- 
 ing, but even philosophy, which denies their cor- 
 rectness, would not be at all able to find its way 
 in its observation and treatment of the external 
 world. In all these cases it is not so much 
 that we get at the truth, as that we get at such 
 an intuitive ^ seeniing' as is able to make intelli- 
 gible to us the essentially inexpressible, but true 
 relations of the Actual. 
 
 Just so in the case of religion it is not re- 
 quired that there be found a speculatively unob- 
 jectionable expression for that which is essentially 
 Transcendent, but that we have figurative expres- 
 sions to which the mind may attach the same 
 feelings that are appropriate to the proper con- 
 tent of religion. 
 
 Now it is of course to be conceded that we 
 could speak as simply as we do, only in case 
 
I4«^ PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION, 
 
 these formulated tlo^nias were first to be estab- 
 lished. They arc however already in existence, 
 and historically considered they are surely not in 
 all cases so perfected, that they admit of no mis- 
 understanding as to their true sense. Hut still 
 this affords no reason for a wilful separation from 
 those circles which acknowledge the dogmas ; it 
 only involves a summons not to make of them 
 subjects for theoretic instruction, as well as a 
 problem of pastoral wisdom in combating the 
 evils of a false interpretation. 
 
 § 88. The attempts at theory may be reduced to 
 three divisions, the first of which only, Theology in 
 the narrower sense, is sufTiciently accessible to phi- 
 losophy. 
 
 We have endeavored in the preceding discussion 
 to show, what more precise determinations of the 
 Divine Being philosophy admits, what it excludes, 
 and finally what it demands, without being able to 
 present them in the form of adequate conceptions. 
 As the total result of our discussion we repeat, 
 that faith in a personal God contradicts none of 
 those metaphysical convictions which we are com- 
 pelled to maintain ; that, on the contrary, those 
 assertions are entirely without foundation which, 
 with decided incredulity as regards all that is re- 
 
THEOLOGY AND THE RELIGIOUS LIFE. I49 
 
 ligious and with frivolous credulousness as regards 
 the theories fashionable in physical science, conceive 
 of an origin for spiritual life from the forces of 
 mere matter ; and, finally, that the charge of an- 
 thropomorphism is entirely unjust, for the distinc- 
 tions between the infinite and the finite spirit are 
 by no means overlooked. But it is certainly foolish 
 to prefer to assign the Supreme Principle of the 
 world to an unconscious blind substratum, the con- 
 ception of which is for us, strictly speaking, some- 
 thing completely dark and inscrutable. 
 
 § 89. Further speculations — as for example con- 
 cerning the Trinity — would be, as regards the 
 religious life, matters of complete indifference, but 
 for the fact that they have been brought into con- 
 nection with the position toward God, which the 
 human race has come to occupy by means of the 
 establishment or revelation of religion. The con- 
 sideration in general of this position forms a sec- 
 ond grand object of religious theories. 
 
 According to the conviction maintained in this 
 discussion as to the constant activity of God in the 
 world and upon individual spirits ; and considering 
 our acknowledged ignorance of the precise plan 
 which the divine government follows ; there is noth- 
 ing whatever that stands in opposition to the further 
 
I 5;0 IMIILOSOIMU (►!• KKI.ICIU.N. 
 
 conviction lliat (iod, at particular moments and 
 in particular persons, may ha\c stood nearer to 
 humanity, or may have revealed himself at such 
 moments and in such persons in a more eminent 
 way than at otlier moments and in other persons. 
 
 If therefore reverence for the founder of our 
 religion designates him as * Son of God,' no se- 
 rious objection to the essential tliought which is 
 expressed by this term is, in view of the j)reced- 
 ing paragraph, tenable ; it is even without doubt 
 legitimate to regard the relation in which he stood 
 to God, as absolutely unique not only as to degree 
 but also as to its essential quality. 
 
 But no one can discover an adequate expression 
 for that which would exactly correspond to the con- 
 notation of such a term (diescn Intentionen). Since 
 then Christ after all cannot be * God's Son ' in the 
 literal sense, but the true meaning of this figura- 
 tive expression admits of no authentic interpreta- 
 tion whatever, this entire proposition is not at 
 all adapted for the formation of a speculative 
 dogma ; and he who assents to it in fact expresses 
 merely his conviction of the unique value which 
 Christ has for him, and which Christ's relation to 
 God has for humanity, without however being able 
 precisely to define either of them. 
 
SATISFACTION AND REDEMPTION. I51 
 
 § 90. He who in an unprejudiced way allows 
 the teaching of Christ and the history of Christ's 
 life to influence his mind, without analyzing this 
 impression, may be convinced that an infinitely 
 valuable and unique act has occurred here on earth 
 for the salvation of humanity. But the attempts 
 to settle speculatively the content and value of 
 this fact, do not as a whole lead to the end 
 designed. 
 
 It is impossible to speak of God's honor as re- 
 ceiving * satisfaction ' through the sacrificial death 
 of a single person, for the injury done it by the 
 sin of man. For such a view, aside from its some- 
 what crude conception of God, is based upon the 
 altogether impossible conception of a solidaric 
 unity of the human race and of the possibility 
 of a transfer of its guilt and obligation to a single 
 representative. 
 
 The more humane ideas of a ' Reconciliation ' or 
 a * Redemption ' — at least the latter of them — 
 leave it undetermined from whom it is, precisely, 
 that humanity beholds itself delivered by this 
 ransom. It could not well be God, but must 
 rather be the order of natural law, which has 
 connected sin with our finiteness and condemna- 
 tion with our sin. 
 
 Now we know that we are redeemed neither 
 
152 rini.osoi'HV of kklk.ion. 
 
 from physical evils nor from the possibility of sin. 
 The only thing left therefore as the practically 
 effective result of redemption is the content of a 
 faith revealed and proffered to us, which redeems 
 us from the distress and wretchedness of Creation, 
 in so far as it teaches us to regard all evil as only 
 a divine trial ; teaches us, however, to regard the 
 whole of the earthly life, not to be sure as insig- 
 nificant, nor yet as an irrevocable finality, but as a 
 state of preparation, for the errors of which there 
 is in the divine grace a redemption which we are 
 not in the least able speculatively to define. 
 
 All further speculations which attach themselves 
 to this subject — as, for exaniple, about the origin 
 of sin and about its consequences — are perfectly 
 useless as regards the religious life. 
 
 § 91. Even the third division of such specula- 
 tions, which we may sum up as Eschatology, 
 does not admit of being cultivated speculatively. 
 The earthly future of the human race as well as 
 the nature of our immortality and of the retri- 
 bution which the final judgment will bring, are 
 entirely beyond the reach of any concrete por- 
 trayal. And in this connection the Humanism 
 of modern times has in fact become entirely dis- 
 used to such concrete representations, and has be- 
 
NECESSITY FOR A RELIGIOUS COMMUNITY. 1 53 
 
 come satisfied, as it must be, with maintaining 
 the general faith in continued existence and in 
 a constant process of perfection, as well as in a 
 retribution ; and in just this way it has shown 
 that for a truly religious life there is really no 
 necessity whatever for that vast sum of knowl- 
 edges which dogmatics, with much liability to 
 misunderstanding, assumes as necessary to such a 
 life. 
 
 § 92. Mention was previously made of the value 
 attaching to the necessity that one shall not stand 
 alone in his religious convictions. The value of 
 this is the more enhanced on account of the fact 
 that the content of these very convictions them- 
 selves consists in faith in an uninterrupted union 
 of men with each other and with God, into which 
 it is possible for every one to enter by his own 
 free choice. 
 
 If we call this communion the invisible Church, 
 then the visible Church, on the other hand, is 
 certainly nothing more than a human institution 
 of the company of believers : partly for fellowship 
 in the worship of God, partly for the regulation 
 of its earthly affairs in agreement with the de- 
 mands of its faith. But every pretension which 
 
154 PHILOSOPHY OF RKLIGION. 
 
 such visible Church mi<;ht advance, not merely to 
 teach the way to eternal salvation and to guide 
 to it, but to open and to shut this way by virtue 
 of its own power, is quite unfounded. As for the 
 rest, the Church, like every other institution, must 
 not fall into a condition of opposition to the regu- 
 lations of the State ; although we cannot regard it 
 as a happy expression to say that the Church 
 must be subjected to these regulations in anything 
 else but external matters of an altogether indiffer- 
 ent character. On the contrary, it is the evil of 
 the present time — and of course has its historic 
 conditions — that the State as such is compelled 
 to exist without any religious foundation and that 
 it believes it has no need of any. 
 
 But the complete unity of the State in religious 
 matters also, would of course presuppose that two 
 hostile parties should return to modesty; — namely, 
 that theological learning on the one side, and irre- 
 ligious natural science on the other, should not 
 assert that they have exact knowledge about so 
 very much which they neither do know nor can 
 know ; it would therefore presuppose that, in the 
 recognition of divine mysteries which are left to 
 the interpretation of each individual believing mind, 
 and of general ethical precepts concerning the 
 
THE END OF CONTROVERSY. 1 55 
 
 meaning of which moreover there exists no con- 
 troversy, the religious life may unfold itself in 
 accordance with the motto : In 7iecessariis unitas^ 
 in dubiis libertas^ in omnibus caritas. 
 
INDEX. 
 
INDEX 
 
 -•o«- 
 
 Absolute, the One Being, 32 f. ; relation of Things to, 33 f. ; Determinations 
 of, 35 f. ; Spinoza's view of, 38 ; as personal Spirit, 43 f., 55 f., 68 ; and 
 therefore conscious, 66 f. ; none besides God, 83 f. ; course of the world 
 related to, 114 f. 
 
 Action, between elements, 25 f. ; of Things on each other, 30 f. 
 
 Argument, the Ontological, 8 f. ; the Cosmological, 10 f.; the Teleological, 
 
 Attributes, of God, 45 f. 
 
 B. 
 
 Being, God as the Most Perfect, 9 f. ; as the necessary, 10 f. ; and uncon- 
 ditioned, 13 f., 55 f. ; intelligent, 21 ; the Absolute, 32 f. ; Unity of, 52 f. 
 Blessedness, as the supreme end, 118 f. 
 
 C. 
 
 Christ, as Son of God, 150 f. ; relation to humanity, 150. 
 
 Cliurch, visible and invisible, 153 ; relation of, to State, 153. 
 
 Conscience, function of, 129 f.; development of, 131 f. 
 
 Consciousness, belongs to Personality, 56 f. ; conception of, 56; origin of, 
 
 57 f. ; involves self-identical Ego, 59 f., 62 ; feeling necessary to, 60 f. 
 Contingent, events, as, 10 f. 
 Creation, conception of, 71 f. ; Divine will in, 73 f. ; not necessarily deed, 
 
 74 f., 79 f. ; " out of Nothing," 79 ; no process of, 79 f. 
 
 Design, conscious in Nature, 17 f. 
 
 Development, not creation, 71 f., 79. 
 
 Dogmas, necessity of, 143 f. ; subscription to, 145; limits of, 147. 
 
 Dualism, in philosophy, 39; as to origin of evil, 124. 
 
l6o INDEX. 
 
 Ego, unites elements, 30; idea of, 59 f., 63, 64 ; correlative to non-ego, 62 f. 
 End, conformity to an, 16 f., iS f. ; in the worlds history, inf., 114; the 
 
 supreme, 115 f., 118. 
 Eschatolog^, not a matter for speculation, 152. 
 
 Ethics, relation of, to the idea of value, 117; and of expediency, 132 1 
 Evil, apologies for, 121 f. ; origin of, 124, 126. 
 
 F. 
 
 Faith, as organ of Religion, i f. 
 Fall, conception of a, 126 f. 
 Fanaticism, origin of, 144. 
 
 Feeling, gioups of the religious, 5 f. ; necessary to self-consciousness, 60 f. 
 Fichte, on " world-stufif," 97. 
 
 Force, conception of, in Nature, 17 f^ 20 f.; blind and unconscious, 40. 
 Freedom, a condition of Government, 99; not speculatively defensible, 
 100 f., 102, 106; objections to, 103. 
 
 G. 
 
 God, proof of his existence, 8 f. ; ontological argument for, 8 f. ; cosmo- 
 logical argument for, 10 f.; as unconditioned, 13 f.; teleolog^cal argu- 
 ment for, 15 f., 22 f., 24 f. ; as Supreme Intelligence, 21 ; Unity of, 45 f. ; 
 Unchangeableness of, 46 f., 52 f. ; Omnipresence of, 47 f. ; Omnipotence 
 of, 49 f., 86 f., 88; Eternity of, 51 f . ; Personality of, 55 f., 68 f. ; as Cre- 
 ator, 70, 79; productive will of, 73 f., 79 f., 139; no Principle antecedent 
 to, 82, 90 ; relation of truth to, 84 f., 91 f. ; government of, 95 f. 
 
 Good, idea of the highest, 122, 133, 141; as compatible with Evil, 124; rela- 
 tion to the Divine Will, 138 f. 
 
 Government, the Divine, 95 f.; conditions of, 98 f., 106; distinguished 
 from Preservation, 107 ; by intervention, 109 f. 
 
 I. 
 
 Intelligence, in Nature, 21 ; inhering in Things, 24 f. 
 
 Law, not above Things, 83 ; nor antecedent to God, 83 f., 88 f. 
 Leibnitz, best possible world of, 123. 
 
INDEX. l6l 
 
 M. 
 
 Materialism, its account of self-consciousness, 57. 
 
 Matter, contrasted with Spirit, 35 f., 37, 38. 
 
 Metaphysic, Postulates derived from, 30 f., 52. * 
 
 Miracle, the conception of, 107 f. ; abstract conceivableness of, 108 f. ; 
 
 extent not speculatively determined, no f. 
 Mysticism, origin of, 143. 
 
 N. 
 
 Nature, elements and forces of, 18 f. ; blind course of, 21 f., 47. 
 Necessary, conception of the, 10, 12 f. 
 
 Omnipotence, meaning of the Divine, 49, 86f,,88; never in the abstract, 
 
 87 f. ; modus agendi of, 122. 
 Ought, idea of the, 135 f. 
 
 P. 
 
 Pantheism, 38. 
 
 Personality, conception of, 55 f. ; of the Absolute, 55, 68 ; a self-conscious 
 
 ^go. 59^'. 62 f., 64 ; perfect only when infinite 68 f. 
 Pessimism, 128. 
 
 Philosophy, legitimate place of, i f. 
 Power, conception of, 87 f. 
 
 Preservation, of the World, 81 f, 92 f. ; as new creation, 92 f. 
 Principle, the absolute, 35 ; and the supreme, 149. 
 Providence, in organism, 22 f. 
 
 Eeason, organ of Religion, i f. ; necessarily self-conscious, 39 f. 
 
 Redemption, idea of, 151 f. 
 
 Keligion, as related to Reason, if., 6; and scientific cognition, 4f. ; 
 involves experience, 5 ; feelings of, 5 f. ; relation to morals, 129 f. ; first 
 principles of, 137; the Christian, 140; the communion of, 145. 
 
 Rigorism, an ethical, 116 f. 
 
1 62 INPKX. 
 
 S. 
 
 Schelling, 38. 
 
 Science, nature of its cognitions, 4. 
 
 Sensations, origin of, 36. 
 
 Sin, origin of, in a Fall, 126 f. 
 
 Spinoza, 38. 
 
 Spirit, contrasted with Matter, 35 f., 38; always self-conscious, 39, 56 f.; 
 
 and personal, 41 f. ; the Infinite, 66; finite spirits, 67 f., 96. 
 Spiritualism, the philosophical, 39. 
 Stoicism, its wise man, 136. 
 
 T. 
 
 Theology, relation to philosophy, 148. 
 
 Things, properties of, 16 f.; as intelligent, 24 f. ; homogeneous and con- 
 nected, 29 f., 31 ; influence of, on each other, 30 f. ; as modifications of 
 the Absolute, 32^,34,67; spiritual susceptibility of, 37; cannot have 
 ""'•y, 53 ; as subject to law , 83. 
 
 Time, not self-subsisting form, 51 f. 
 
 Trinity, doctrine of, 149. 
 
 Truth, as related to God, 84 f., 91 f. 
 
 U. 
 
 Unconditioned, conception of the, 13 f. 
 Universe, origin of, 17 f., 28; elements of, 27 f., 28 f. 
 
 W. 
 
 Will, the Divine in creation, 73 f. ; the human, 75, 104 ; modus agendi 
 
 unknown, 'j'j ; the free, 104 f. 
 World, relation of, to God, 70, 81, 94, 95. 
 
ADVERTISEMENTS 
 
ETHICAL SERIES 
 
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 A ssisiant Professor of Philosophy in Yale University. 
 
 The primary object of the Series is to facilitate the study of the 
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