The Essence of Christianity

by Ludwig Feuerbach

Published in 1841

A foundational text in the development of modern atheism and humanism. Feuerbach critiques traditional Christian dogma by suggesting that religious deities are idealized reflections of human virtues and needs. By reclaiming these projected attributes, he argues that humanity can achieve true self-realization. This work was a massive influence on the Young Hegelians, particularly Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

Genres: Philosophy, Theology

Tags: atheism, humanism, materialism, german idealism, anthropology

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 Index: original.md
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 # THE ESSENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.
+## Preface (TimelessLibrary Edition)
+## Preface (Timeless Library Edition)
 This book is part of the Timeless Library project, which aims to make old texts more accessible to modern audiences with the aid of AI. For more information, please visit: [timelesslibrary.org](https://timelesslibrary.org)
 The version of this book is: v1.0
 ## PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
+The outcry caused by this work did not surprise me, nor has it shifted my position. I have again, with complete composure, subjected it to rigorous historical and philosophical scrutiny, correcting its formal flaws and enriching it with striking historical evidence. Having verified my analysis, I hope open-minded readers will admit—however reluctantly—that this work translates the Christian religion from its Eastern imagery into plain speech, offering an empirical and historical-philosophical analysis that solves its enigma.
+The clamour excited by the present work has not surprised me,
+and hence it has not in the least moved me from my position. On the
+contrary, I have once more, in all calmness, subjected my work to the
+severest scrutiny, both historical and philosophical; I have, as far as
+possible, freed it from its defects of form, and enriched it with new
+developments, illustrations, and historical testimonies,--testimonies
+in the highest degree striking and irrefragable. Now that I have thus
+verified my analysis by historical proofs, it is to be hoped that
+readers whose eyes are not sealed will be convinced and will admit,
+even though reluctantly, that my work contains a faithful, correct
+translation of the Christian religion out of the Oriental language of
+imagery into plain speech. And it has no pretension to be anything
+more than a close translation, or, to speak literally, an empirical
+or historico-philosophical analysis, a solution of the enigma of the
+Christian religion. The general propositions which I premise in the
+Introduction are no à priori, excogitated propositions, no products
+of speculation; they have arisen out of the analysis of religion;
+they are only, as indeed are all the fundamental ideas of the work,
+generalisations from the known manifestations of human nature, and
+in particular of the religious consciousness,--facts converted into
+thoughts, i.e., expressed in general terms, and thus made the property
+of the understanding. The ideas of my work are only conclusions,
+consequences, drawn from premisses which are not themselves mere
+ideas, but objective facts either actual or historical--facts which
+had not their place in my head simply in virtue of their ponderous
+existence in folio. I unconditionally repudiate absolute, immaterial,
+self-sufficing speculation--that speculation which draws its material
+from within. I differ toto coelo from those philosophers who pluck
+out their eyes that they may see better; for my thought I require the
+senses, especially sight; I found my ideas on materials which can be
+appropriated only through the activity of the senses. I do not generate
+the object from the thought, but the thought from the object; and I
+hold that alone to be an object which has an existence beyond one's own
+brain. I am an idealist only in the region of practical philosophy,
+that is, I do not regard the limits of the past and present as the
+limits of humanity, of the future; on the contrary, I firmly believe
+that many things--yes, many things--which with the short-sighted,
+pusillanimous practical men of to-day, pass for flights of imagination,
+for ideas never to be realised, for mere chimeras, will to-morrow,
+i.e., in the next century,--centuries in individual life are days
+in the life of humanity,--exist in full reality. Briefly, the "Idea"
+is to me only faith in the historical future, in the triumph of truth
+and virtue; it has for me only a political and moral significance;
+for in the sphere of strictly theoretical philosophy, I attach myself,
+in direct opposition to the Hegelian philosophy, only to realism,
+to materialism in the sense above indicated. The maxim hitherto
+adopted by speculative philosophy: All that is mine I carry with
+me, the old omnia mea mecum porto, I cannot, alas! appropriate. I
+have many things outside myself, which I cannot convey either in my
+pocket or my head, but which nevertheless I look upon as belonging
+to me, not indeed as a mere man--a view not now in question--but
+as a philosopher. I am nothing but a natural philosopher in the
+domain of mind; and the natural philosopher can do nothing without
+instruments, without material means. In this character I have
+written the present work, which consequently contains nothing else
+than the principle of a new philosophy verified practically, i.e.,
+in concreto, in application to a special object, but an object which
+has a universal significance: namely, to religion, in which this
+principle is exhibited, developed, and thoroughly carried out. This
+philosophy is essentially distinguished from the systems hitherto
+prevalent, in that it corresponds to the real, complete nature of
+man; but for that very reason it is antagonistic to minds perverted
+and crippled by a superhuman, i.e., anti-human, anti-natural religion
+and speculation. It does not, as I have already said elsewhere, regard
+the pen as the only fit organ for the revelation of truth, but the eye
+and ear, the hand and foot; it does not identify the idea of the fact
+with the fact itself, so as to reduce real existence to an existence
+on paper, but it separates the two, and precisely by this separation
+attains to the fact itself; it recognises as the true thing, not the
+thing as it is an object of the abstract reason, but as it is an object
+of the real, complete man, and hence as it is itself a real, complete
+thing. This philosophy does not rest on an Understanding per se, on
+an absolute, nameless understanding, belonging one knows not to whom,
+but on the understanding of man;--though not, I grant, on that of
+man enervated by speculation and dogma;--and it speaks the language
+of men, not an empty, unknown tongue. Yes, both in substance and in
+speech, it places philosophy in the negation of philosophy, i.e.,
+it declares that alone to be the true philosophy which is converted
+in succum et sanguinem, which is incarnate in Man; and hence it finds
+its highest triumph in the fact that to all dull and pedantic minds,
+which place the essence of philosophy in the show of philosophy,
+it appears to be no philosophy at all.
+The propositions in my Introduction are not *a priori* theories but emerged directly from religious analysis. They are generalizations based on manifest facts of human nature and religious consciousness—facts converted into thoughts. These ideas are conclusions drawn from objective, historical facts, not concepts that exist in my head simply because they occupy heavy volumes on a shelf.
+This philosophy has for its principle, not the Substance
+of Spinoza, not the ego of Kant and Fichte, not the Absolute
+Identity of Schelling, not the Absolute Mind of Hegel, in short,
+no abstract, merely conceptional being, but a real being, the true
+Ens realissimum--man; its principle, therefore, is in the highest
+degree positive and real. It generates thought from the opposite
+of thought, from Matter, from existence, from the senses; it has
+relation to its object first through the senses, i.e., passively,
+before defining it in thought. Hence my work, as a specimen of
+this philosophy, so far from being a production to be placed in the
+category of Speculation,--although in another point of view it is the
+true, the incarnate result of prior philosophical systems,--is the
+direct opposite of speculation, nay, puts an end to it by explaining
+it. Speculation makes religion say only what it has itself thought,
+and expressed far better than religion; it assigns a meaning to
+religion without any reference to the actual meaning of religion; it
+does not look beyond itself. I, on the contrary, let religion itself
+speak; I constitute myself only its listener and interpreter, not its
+prompter. Not to invent, but to discover, "to unveil existence," has
+been my sole object; to see correctly, my sole endeavour. It is not I,
+but religion that worships man, although religion, or rather theology,
+denies this; it is not I, an insignificant individual, but religion
+itself that says: God is man, man is God; it is not I, but religion
+that denies the God who is not man, but only an ens rationis,--since it
+makes God become man, and then constitutes this God, not distinguished
+from man, having a human form, human feelings, and human thoughts,
+the object of its worship and veneration. I have only found the key to
+the cipher of the Christian religion, only extricated its true meaning
+from the web of contradictions and delusions called theology;--but
+in doing so I have certainly committed a sacrilege. If therefore
+my work is negative, irreligious, atheistic, let it be remembered
+that atheism--at least in the sense of this work--is the secret of
+religion itself; that religion itself, not indeed on the surface, but
+fundamentally, not in intention or according to its own supposition,
+but in its heart, in its essence, believes in nothing else than
+the truth and divinity of human nature. Or let it be proved that the
+historical as well as the rational arguments of my work are false; let
+them be refuted--not, however, I entreat, by judicial denunciations,
+or theological jeremiads, by the trite phrases of speculation, or
+other pitiful expedients for which I have no name, but by reasons,
+and such reasons as I have not already thoroughly answered.
+I reject absolute, immaterial speculation that draws its material only from within. I differ *toto coelo* from those philosophers who 'pluck out their eyes' that they may see better; for my thought I require the senses, especially sight. I derive thought from the object, not the object from thought; only what exists outside one's brain is truly an object.
+Certainly, my work is negative, destructive; but, be it observed,
+only in relation to the unhuman, not to the human elements of
+religion. It is therefore divided into two parts, of which the
+first is, as to its main idea, positive, the second, including the
+Appendix, not wholly, but in the main, negative; in both, however,
+the same positions are proved, only in a different or rather opposite
+manner. The first exhibits religion in its essence, its truth, the
+second exhibits it in its contradictions; the first is development,
+the second polemic; thus the one is, according to the nature of the
+case, calmer, the other more vehement. Development advances gently,
+contest impetuously; for development is self-contented at every
+stage, contest only at the last blow. Development is deliberate, but
+contest resolute. Development is light, contest fire. Hence results a
+difference between the two parts even as to their form. Thus in the
+first part I show that the true sense of Theology is Anthropology,
+that there is no distinction between the predicates of the divine and
+human nature, and, consequently, no distinction between the divine and
+human subject: I say consequently, for wherever, as is especially the
+case in theology, the predicates are not accidents, but express the
+essence of the subject, there is no distinction between subject and
+predicate, the one can be put in the place of the other; on which point
+I refer the reader to the Analytics of Aristotle, or even merely to
+the Introduction of Porphyry. In the second part, on the other hand,
+I show that the distinction which is made, or rather supposed to be
+made, between the theological and anthropological predicates resolves
+itself into an absurdity. Here is a striking example. In the first part
+I prove that the Son of God is in religion a real son, the son of God
+in the same sense in which man is the son of man, and I find therein
+the truth, the essence of religion, that it conceives and affirms a
+profoundly human relation as a divine relation; on the other hand,
+in the second part I show that the Son of God--not indeed in religion,
+but in theology, which is the reflection of religion upon itself,--is
+not a son in the natural, human sense, but in an entirely different
+manner, contradictory to Nature and reason, and therefore absurd, and
+I find in this negation of human sense and the human understanding,
+the negation of religion. Accordingly the first part is the direct,
+the second the indirect proof, that theology is anthropology: hence
+the second part necessarily has reference to the first; it has no
+independent significance; its only aim is to show that the sense in
+which religion is interpreted in the previous part of the work must be
+the true one, because the contrary is absurd. In brief, in the first
+part I am chiefly concerned with religion, in the second with theology:
+I say chiefly, for it was impossible to exclude theology from the first
+part, or religion from the second. A mere glance will show that my
+investigation includes speculative theology or philosophy, and not,
+as has been here and there erroneously supposed, common theology
+only, a kind of trash from which I rather keep as clear as possible,
+(though, for the rest, I am sufficiently well acquainted with it),
+confining myself always to the most essential, strict and necessary
+definition of the object, [2] and hence to that definition which
+gives to an object the most general interest, and raises it above
+the sphere of theology. But it is with theology that I have to do,
+not with theologians; for I can only undertake to characterise what
+is primary,--the original, not the copy, principles, not persons,
+species, not individuals, objects of history, not objects of the
+chronique scandaleuse.
+I am an idealist only in practical philosophy: I believe the past and present are not humanity's ultimate limits. Many things dismissed today as illusions will exist in reality tomorrow—in the next century, which for humanity is like a day. The "Idea" means faith in the future triumph of truth and virtue. In theoretical philosophy, however, I align with realism and materialism, directly opposing Hegelianism.
+If my work contained only the second part, it would be perfectly just
+to accuse it of a negative tendency, to represent the proposition:
+Religion is nothing, is an absurdity, as its essential purport. But I
+by no means say (that were an easy task!): God is nothing, the Trinity
+is nothing, the Word of God is nothing, &c. I only show that they are
+not that which the illusions of theology make them,--not foreign, but
+native mysteries, the mysteries of human nature; I show that religion
+takes the apparent, the superficial in Nature and humanity for the
+essential, and hence conceives their true essence as a separate,
+special existence: that consequently, religion, in the definitions
+which it gives of God, e.g., of the Word of God,--at least in those
+definitions which are not negative in the sense above alluded to,--only
+defines or makes objective the true nature of the human word. The
+reproach that according to my book religion is an absurdity, a nullity,
+a pure illusion, would be well founded only if, according to it, that
+into which I resolve religion, which I prove to be its true object and
+substance, namely, man,--anthropology, were an absurdity, a nullity,
+a pure illusion. But so far from giving a trivial or even a subordinate
+significance to anthropology,--a significance which is assigned to
+it only just so long as a theology stands above it and in opposition
+to it,--I, on the contrary, while reducing theology to anthropology,
+exalt anthropology into theology, very much as Christianity, while
+lowering God into man, made man into God; though, it is true, this
+human God was by a further process made a transcendental, imaginary
+God, remote from man. Hence it is obvious that I do not take the word
+anthropology in the sense of the Hegelian or of any other philosophy,
+but in an infinitely higher and more general sense.
+I cannot adopt speculative philosophy's maxim *omnia mea mecum porto*—"all that is mine I carry with me." I have many things outside myself that I cannot pocket or contain in my head, yet they belong to me. I am nothing but a natural philosopher in the domain of mind; and the natural philosopher can do nothing without instruments, without material means. Thus my work contains the principles of a new philosophy, verified *in concreto* and applied to religion.
+Religion is the dream of the human mind. But even in dreams we do not
+find ourselves in emptiness or in heaven, but on earth, in the realm
+of reality; we only see real things in the entrancing splendour of
+imagination and caprice, instead of in the simple daylight of reality
+and necessity. Hence I do nothing more to religion--and to speculative
+philosophy and theology also--than to open its eyes, or rather to turn
+its gaze from the internal towards the external, i.e., I change the
+object as it is in the imagination into the object as it is in reality.
+This philosophy differs from previous systems because it corresponds to man's complete nature. It is hostile to minds warped by "superhuman"—anti-human—religion. It does not reduce truth to pen and paper but uses eye, ear, hand, and foot. It separates the idea of a fact from the fact itself, reaching the fact through this separation. It recognizes the true "thing" as experienced by the complete person, not as perceived by abstract reason.
+But certainly for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing
+signified, the copy to the original, fancy to reality, the appearance
+to the essence, this change, inasmuch as it does away with illusion,
+is an absolute annihilation, or at least a reckless profanation;
+for in these days illusion only is sacred, truth profane. Nay,
+sacredness is held to be enhanced in proportion as truth decreases
+and illusion increases, so that the highest degree of illusion comes
+to be the highest degree of sacredness. Religion has disappeared, and
+for it has been substituted, even among Protestants, the appearance
+of religion--the Church--in order at least that "the faith" may
+be imparted to the ignorant and indiscriminating multitude; that
+faith being still the Christian, because the Christian churches
+stand now as they did a thousand years ago, and now, as formerly,
+the external signs of the faith are in vogue. That which has no
+longer any existence in faith (the faith of the modern world is only
+an ostensible faith, a faith which does not believe what it fancies
+that it believes, and is only an undecided, pusillanimous unbelief)
+is still to pass current as opinion: that which is no longer sacred
+in itself and in truth is still at least to seem sacred. Hence the
+simulated religious indignation of the present age, the age of shows
+and illusion, concerning my analysis, especially of the Sacraments. But
+let it not be demanded of an author who proposes to himself as his
+goal not the favour of his contemporaries, but only the truth, the
+unveiled, naked truth, that he should have or feign respect towards
+an empty appearance, especially as the object which underlies this
+appearance is in itself the culminating point of religion, i.e.,
+the point at which the religious slides into the irreligious. Thus
+much in justification, not in excuse, of my analysis of the Sacraments.
+This philosophy rests not on an absolute, nameless Understanding but on human understanding—not that of those weakened by speculation, but the language of people. It places philosophy in the negation of philosophy, declaring that alone to be the true philosophy which is converted *in succum et sanguinem*—into vital juice and blood—and is incarnate in Man. To dull, pedantic minds, it appears no philosophy at all.
+With regard to the true bearing of my analysis of the Sacraments,
+especially as presented in the concluding chapter, I only remark,
+that I therein illustrate by a palpable and visible example the
+essential purport, the peculiar theme of my work; that I therein call
+upon the senses themselves to witness to the truth of my analysis
+and my ideas, and demonstrate ad oculos, ad tactum, ad gustum, what
+I have taught ad captum throughout the previous pages. As, namely,
+the water of Baptism, the wine and bread of the Lord's Supper, taken
+in their natural power and significance, are and effect infinitely
+more than in a supernaturalistic, illusory significance; so the
+object of religion in general, conceived in the sense of this work,
+i.e., the anthropological sense, is infinitely more productive and
+real, both in theory and practice, than when accepted in the sense
+of theology. For as that which is or is supposed to be imparted in
+the water, bread, and wine, over and above these natural substances
+themselves, is something in the imagination only, but in truth, in
+reality, nothing; so also the object of religion in general, the Divine
+essence, in distinction from the essence of Nature and Humanity,--that
+is to say, if its attributes, as understanding, love, &c., are and
+signify something else than these attributes as they belong to man
+and Nature,--is only something in the imagination, but in truth
+and reality nothing. Therefore--this is the moral of the fable--we
+should not, as is the case in theology and speculative philosophy,
+make real beings and things into arbitrary signs, vehicles, symbols,
+or predicates of a distinct, transcendent, absolute, i.e., abstract
+being; but we should accept and understand them in the significance
+which they have in themselves, which is identical with their qualities,
+with those conditions which make them what they are:--thus only do we
+obtain the key to a real theory and practice. I, in fact, put in the
+place of the barren baptismal water, the beneficent effect of real
+water. How "watery," how trivial! Yes, indeed, very trivial. But
+so Marriage, in its time, was a very trivial truth, which Luther,
+on the ground of his natural good sense, maintained in opposition to
+the seemingly holy illusion of celibacy. But while I thus view water
+as a real thing, I at the same time intend it as a vehicle, an image,
+an example, a symbol, of the "unholy" spirit of my work, just as the
+water of Baptism--the object of my analysis--is at once literal and
+symbolical water. It is the same with bread and wine. Malignity has
+hence drawn the conclusion that bathing, eating, and drinking are the
+summa summarum, the positive result of my work. I make no other reply
+than this: If the whole of religion is contained in the Sacraments,
+and there are consequently no other religious acts than those which
+are performed in Baptism and the Lord's Supper; then I grant that the
+entire purport and positive result of my work are bathing, eating,
+and drinking, since this work is nothing but a faithful, rigid,
+historico-philosophical analysis of religion--the revelation of
+religion to itself, the awakening of religion to self-consciousness.
+This philosophy's principle is not Spinoza's "Substance," Kant and Fichte's "Ego," Schelling's "Absolute Identity," or Hegel's "Absolute Mind"—no abstract, conceptual being. Its principle is real: the true *Ens realissimum* is man. It generates thought from matter, existence, and the senses, relating to objects first through the senses before defining them.
+I say an historico-philosophical analysis, in distinction from a merely
+historical analysis of Christianity. The historical critic--such
+a one, for example, as Daumer or Ghillany--shows that the Lord's
+Supper is a rite lineally descended from the ancient cultus of human
+sacrifice; that once, instead of bread and wine, real human flesh
+and blood were partaken. I, on the contrary, take as the object of my
+analysis and reduction only the Christian significance of the rite,
+that view of it which is sanctioned Christianity, and I proceed
+on the supposition that only that significance which a dogma or
+institution has in Christianity (of course in ancient Christianity,
+not in modern), whether it may present itself in other religions
+or not, is also the true origin of that dogma or institution in
+so far as it is Christian. Again, the historical critic, as, for
+example, Lützelberger, shows that the narratives of the miracles
+of Christ resolve themselves into contradictions and absurdities,
+that they are later fabrications, and that consequently Christ was
+no miracle-worker, nor, in general, that which he is represented
+to be in the Bible. I, on the other hand, do not inquire what the
+real, natural Christ was or may have been in distinction from what
+he has been made or has become in Supernaturalism; on the contrary,
+I accept the Christ of religion, but I show that this superhuman being
+is nothing else than a product and reflex of the supernatural human
+mind. I do not ask whether this or that, or any miracle can happen
+or not; I only show what miracle is, and I show it not à priori,
+but by examples of miracles narrated in the Bible as real events;
+in doing so, however, I answer or rather preclude the question as
+to the possibility or reality of necessity of miracle. Thus much
+concerning the distinction between me and the historical critics
+who have attacked Christianity. As regards my relation to Strauss
+and Bruno Bauer, in company with whom I am constantly named, I
+merely point out here that the distinction between our works is
+sufficiently indicated by the distinction between their objects,
+which is implied even in the title-page. Bauer takes for the object
+of his criticism the evangelical history, i.e., biblical Christianity,
+or rather biblical theology; Strauss, the System of Christian Doctrine
+and the Life of Jesus (which may also be included under the title of
+Christian Doctrine), i.e., dogmatic Christianity, or rather dogmatic
+theology; I, Christianity in general, i.e., the Christian religion,
+and consequently only Christian philosophy or theology. Hence I take
+my citations chiefly from men in whom Christianity was not merely a
+theory or a dogma, not merely theology, but religion. My principal
+theme is Christianity, is Religion, as it is the immediate object,
+the immediate nature, of man. Erudition and philosophy are to me only
+the means by which I bring to light the treasure hid in man.
+My work is no product of speculation—though it is the incarnate result of previous systems. It ends speculation by explaining it. Speculation makes religion say only what the philosopher already thought, assigning meaning without regard for religion's actual meaning. I let religion speak for itself. My aim is not to invent but to discover—to unveil existence. > **Quote:** It is not I, an insignificant individual, but religion itself that says: God is man, man is God; it is not I, but religion that denies the God who is not man.  Religion rejects a God who is merely a product of reason (*ens rationis*). I have found Christianity's key, untangling its meaning from theology's contradictions. If this seems negative, irreligious, or atheistic, remember: atheism, in this work's sense, is religion's own secret. Refute my arguments if you can—but not with legal denunciations, only with reasons I have not already addressed.
+I must further mention that the circulation which my work has had
+amongst the public at large was neither desired nor expected by
+me. It is true that I have always taken as the standard of the mode
+of teaching and writing, not the abstract, particular, professional
+philosopher, but universal man, that I have regarded man as the
+criterion of truth, and not this or that founder of a system, and
+have from the first placed the highest excellence of the philosopher
+in this, that he abstains, both as a man and as an author, from the
+ostentation of philosophy, i.e., that he is a philosopher only in
+reality, not formally, that he is a quiet philosopher, not a loud
+and still less a brawling one. Hence, in all my works, as well as
+in the present one, I have made the utmost clearness, simplicity,
+and definiteness a law to myself, so that they may be understood,
+at least in the main, by every cultivated and thinking man. But
+notwithstanding this, my work can be appreciated and fully understood
+only by the scholar, that is to say, by the scholar who loves truth,
+who is capable of forming a judgment, who is above the notions
+and prejudices of the learned and unlearned vulgar; for although a
+thoroughly independent production, it has yet its necessary logical
+basis in history. I very frequently refer to this or that historical
+phenomenon without expressly designating it, thinking this superfluous;
+and such references can be understood by the scholar alone. Thus,
+for example, in the very first chapter, where I develop the necessary
+consequences of the standpoint of Feeling, I allude to Jacobi and
+Schleiermacher; in the second chapter I allude chiefly to Kantism,
+Scepticism, Theism, Materialism and Pantheism; in the chapter on the
+"Standpoint of Religion," where I discuss the contradictions between
+the religious or theological and the physical or natural-philosophical
+view of Nature, I refer to philosophy in the age of orthodoxy, and
+especially to the philosophy of Descartes and Leibnitz, in which
+this contradiction presents itself in a peculiarly characteristic
+manner. The reader, therefore, who is unacquainted with the historical
+facts and ideas presupposed in my work, will fail to perceive on what
+my arguments and ideas hinge; no wonder if my positions often appear
+to him baseless, however firm the footing on which they stand. It
+is true that the subject of my work is of universal human interest;
+moreover, its fundamental ideas, though not in the form in which they
+are here expressed, or in which they could be expressed under existing
+circumstances, will one day become the common property of mankind:
+for nothing is opposed to them in the present day but empty, powerless
+illusions and prejudices in contradiction with the true nature of
+man. But in considering this subject in the first instance, I was under
+the necessity of treating it as a matter of science, of philosophy; and
+in rectifying the aberrations of Religion, Theology, and Speculation,
+I was naturally obliged to use their expressions, and even to appear
+to speculate, or--which is the same thing--to turn theologian myself,
+while I nevertheless only analyse speculation, i.e., reduce theology
+to anthropology. My work, as I said before, contains, and applies in
+the concrete, the principle of a new philosophy suited--not to the
+schools, but--to man. Yes, it contains that principle, but only by
+evolving it out of the very core of religion; hence, be it said in
+passing, the new philosophy can no longer, like the old Catholic and
+modern Protestant scholasticism, fall into the temptation to prove
+its agreement with religion by its agreement with Christian dogmas;
+on the contrary, being evolved from the nature of religion, it has
+in itself the true essence of religion,--is, in its very quality as
+a philosophy, a religion also. But a work which considers ideas in
+their genesis and explains and demonstrates them in strict sequence,
+is, by the very form which this purpose imposes upon it, unsuited to
+popular reading.
+My work is negative only toward religion's non-human elements. It has two parts: the first positive, the second (including the Appendix) primarily negative. Both prove the same points differently. The first shows religion's essence and truth; the second shows its contradictions. The first develops ideas calmly and lightly; the second critiques with fire and intensity.
+Lastly, as a supplement to this work with regard to many
+apparently unvindicated positions, I refer to my articles in the
+Deutsches Jahrbuch, January and February 1842, to my critiques
+and Charakteristiken des modernen After-christenthums, in previous
+numbers of the same periodical, and to my earlier works, especially the
+following:--P. Bayle. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Philosophie und
+Menschheit, Ausbach, 1838, and Philosophie und Christenthum, Mannheim,
+. In these works I have sketched, with a few sharp touches, the
+historical solution of Christianity, and have shown that Christianity
+has in fact long vanished, not only from the reason but from the life
+of mankind, that it is nothing more than a fixed idea, in flagrant
+contradiction with our fire and life assurance companies, our railroads
+and steam-carriages, our picture and sculpture galleries, our military
+and industrial schools, our theatres and scientific museums.
+In the first part, I show that "the true sense of Theology is Anthropology." I demonstrate no distinction between divine and human attributes, and thus none between divine and human subject. Where attributes express essence—as in theology—subject and attribute are interchangeable. See Aristotle's *Analytics* or Porphyry's *Introduction*.
+In the second part, I show the supposed distinction between attributes leads to absurdity. For example: first I prove that in religion, the Son of God is a "real" son—finding truth in this human relationship made divine. But in theology (religion reflecting on itself), the Son of God is not a son in any natural sense, but in a way that contradicts nature. This rejection of human meaning is religion's self-rejection.
+Thus the first part offers direct proof, the second indirect proof, that theology is anthropology. The second refers back to the first; it has no independent meaning. Its goal is to show my interpretation must be correct because the alternative is absurd. Briefly: the first concerns religion, the second theology—though neither could be kept entirely separate.
+My investigation includes speculative theology, not just the "common" kind I avoid. I stick to essential definitions, elevating the subject above professional theology. But I deal with theology, not theologians—characterizing principles, species, and historical objects, not individuals.
+If my work had only the second part, one could accuse it of pure negativity. But I do not say "God is nothing." I show they are not what theology claims—not foreign but native mysteries of human nature. Religion takes the superficial and treats it as essence, imagining that essence as separate. In defining "the Word of God," it defines the human word.
+The criticism that I make religion absurd would hold only if anthropology itself were absurd. But I exalt anthropology into theology, just as Christianity turned man into God by bringing God to man. I use "anthropology" not in Hegel's sense but in a far broader, universal sense.
+> **Quote:** Religion is the dream of the human mind. But even in dreams we do not find ourselves in emptiness or in heaven, but on earth, in the realm of reality.  Yet dreams occur on earth, not in heaven; they show real things in imagination's enchanted light. I do nothing more than turn religion's gaze from internal to external—"changing the object as it is in imagination into the object as it is in reality."
+Yet this age prefers symbols to things, copy to original, fancy to reality, appearance to essence. This removal of illusion appears as destruction, for "illusion only is sacred, truth profane." Sacredness is thought to increase as truth decreases. Religion has vanished, replaced among Protestants by the Church's mere appearance. What no longer exists in belief—a superficial, cowardly disbelief—still circulates as opinion. This explains the feigned outrage at my analysis of the Sacraments. Do not expect an author who seeks truth, not favor, to respect empty appearance. This justifies my analysis.
+My analysis of the Sacraments uses tangible examples to illustrate my theme, calling upon the senses—eye, touch, taste—to witness its truth. Just as baptismal water and the bread and wine of Communion achieve more in their natural meaning than in supernatural illusion, so religion's object is more productive when understood in this human-centered sense than in theology's.
+For whatever is supposed to be imparted in these elements beyond themselves exists only in imagination and is truthfully nothing. So too the Divine essence, if its attributes are meant to be other than those belonging to humans and Nature, exists only in imagination and is in truth nothing.
+Therefore we should not turn real beings into signs for a transcendent being, as theology does, but accept them as they are. This provides the key to true theory and practice. I replace sterile baptismal water with actual water's beneficial effects. How 'watery,' how trivial! Yes, indeed, very trivial. But Marriage, in its time, was a very trivial truth, which Luther maintained against the holy illusion of celibacy. If religion is contained wholly in the Sacraments, then bathing, eating, and drinking are indeed my work's result. For this work is a faithful historical-philosophical analysis—the revelation of religion to itself, its awakening to self-consciousness.
+I call this historical-philosophical analysis to distinguish it from purely historical analysis. The historical critic shows the Lord's Supper descends from ancient human sacrifice cults; I take only Christianity's own meaning. The critic shows Christ's miracles are fabrications; I accept the Christ of religion but show this superhuman being is only a product of the supernatural human mind. I do not ask whether miracles can happen; I show what miracles *are* through biblical examples. This separates me from historical critics.
+As for Strauss and Bauer, with whom I am grouped, our difference is clear from our titles. Bauer critiques Gospel history; Strauss examines Christian doctrine; I examine Christianity itself—its religion, and thus its philosophy. I cite those for whom Christianity was religion, not mere theory. My theme is Religion as humanity's immediate object and nature.
+My work's wide circulation was neither desired nor expected. Though my standard is universal humanity, not the specialized philosopher, and though I avoid philosophy's pretentiousness—being a quiet philosopher, not a loud one—my work can only be fully understood by the scholar. I allude to Jacobi, Schleiermacher, Kantianism, and others without naming them; only the scholar will catch these references.
+The subject is of universal interest; its ideas will become common knowledge. Yet I was forced to treat it scientifically, using the terminology of Religion, Theology, and Speculation even while correcting them—translating theology into anthropology. My work contains a new philosophy's principle, drawn from religion's core. It can no longer prove agreement with religion through dogmas; because it evolves from religion, it contains religion's true essence and is itself a religion. But its rigorous form makes it unsuited for popular reading.
+Finally, for unsupported claims, see my articles in the *Deutsches Jahrbuch* (1842) and earlier works. There I sketched Christianity's historical dissolution, showing it has vanished from reason and life—nothing more than a fixed idea, in flagrant contradiction with our fire and life assurance companies, our railroads and steam-carriages, our picture and sculpture galleries, our military and industrial schools, our theatres and scientific museums.
 ## CHAPTER I. - INTRODUCTION.
 ### 1. The Essential Nature of Man.
+Religion has its basis in the essential difference between man and
+the brute--the brutes have no religion. It is true that the old
+uncritical writers on natural history attributed to the elephant,
+among other laudable qualities, the virtue of religiousness; but
+the religion of elephants belongs to the realm of fable. Cuvier,
+one of the greatest authorities on the animal kingdom, assigns,
+on the strength of his personal observations, no higher grade of
+intelligence to the elephant than to the dog.
+Religion is rooted in the fundamental difference between humans and animals—animals have no religion. It is true that older, less critical natural historians attributed religiousness to the elephant; however, this belongs to myth. Cuvier, a leading authority on the animal kingdom, observed that the elephant possesses no higher intelligence than a dog.
+But what is this essential difference between man and the brute? The
+most simple, general, and also the most popular answer to this
+question is--consciousness:--but consciousness in the strict sense;
+for the consciousness implied in the feeling of self as an individual,
+in discrimination by the senses, in the perception and even judgment
+of outward things according to definite sensible signs, cannot
+be denied to the brutes. Consciousness in the strictest sense is
+present only in a being to whom his species, his essential nature,
+is an object of thought. The brute is indeed conscious of himself
+as an individual--and he has accordingly the feeling of self as the
+common centre of successive sensations--but not as a species: hence,
+he is without that consciousness which in its nature, as in its name,
+is akin to science. Where there is this higher consciousness there
+is a capability of science. Science is the cognisance of species. In
+practical life we have to do with individuals; in science, with
+species. But only a being to whom his own species, his own nature,
+is an object of thought, can make the essential nature of other things
+or beings an object of thought.
+But what is this fundamental difference? The simplest answer is consciousness—strictly defined. We cannot deny animals consciousness of themselves as individuals, sensory discrimination, or perception and judgment based on physical signs.
+Hence the brute has only a simple, man a twofold life: in the brute,
+the inner life is one with the outer; man has both an inner and an
+outer life. The inner life of man is the life which has relation to
+his species, to his general, as distinguished from his individual,
+nature. Man thinks--that is, he converses with himself. The brute can
+exercise no function which has relation to its species without another
+individual external to itself; but man can perform the functions
+of thought and speech, which strictly imply such a relation, apart
+from another individual. Man is himself at once I and thou; he can
+put himself in the place of another, for this reason, that to him
+his species, his essential nature, and not merely his individuality,
+is an object of thought.
+> **Quote:** "Consciousness in the strictest sense is present only in a being to whom his species, his essential nature, is an object of thought."
+Religion being identical with the distinctive characteristic of man,
+is then identical with self-consciousness--with the consciousness
+which man has of his nature. But religion, expressed generally,
+is consciousness of the infinite; thus it is and can be nothing
+else than the consciousness which man has of his own--not finite
+and limited, but infinite nature. A really finite being has not
+even the faintest adumbration, still less consciousness, of an
+infinite being, for the limit of the nature is also the limit of the
+consciousness. The consciousness of the caterpillar, whose life is
+confined to a particular species of plant, does not extend itself
+beyond this narrow domain. It does, indeed, discriminate between
+this plant and other plants, but more it knows not. A consciousness
+so limited, but on account of that very limitation so infallible,
+we do not call consciousness, but instinct. Consciousness, in
+the strict or proper sense, is identical with consciousness of the
+infinite; a limited consciousness is no consciousness; consciousness
+is essentially infinite in its nature. [3] The consciousness of the
+infinite is nothing else than the consciousness of the infinity of
+the consciousness; or, in the consciousness of the infinite, the
+conscious subject has for his object the infinity of his own nature.
+The animal is conscious of itself as an individual—it feels itself as the center of its sensations—but not as a species. Consequently, it lacks that consciousness which, in its nature and its very name, is akin to science. For science is the consciousness of species. In practical life we deal with individuals; in science, with species. Only a being who can think about its own species can make the essential nature of other things an object of thought.
+What, then, is the nature of man, of which he is conscious, or what
+constitutes the specific distinction, the proper humanity of man? [4]
+Reason, Will, Affection. To a complete man belong the power of thought,
+the power of will, the power of affection. The power of thought is
+the light of the intellect, the power of will is energy of character,
+the power of affection is love. Reason, love, force of will, are
+perfections--the perfections of the human being--nay, more, they are
+absolute perfections of being. To will, to love, to think, are the
+highest powers, are the absolute nature of man as man, and the basis of
+his existence. Man exists to think, to love, to will. Now that which
+is the end, the ultimate aim, is also the true basis and principle of
+a being. But what is the end of reason? Reason. Of love? Love. Of
+will? Freedom of the will. We think for the sake of thinking;
+love for the sake of loving; will for the sake of willing--i.e.,
+that we may be free. True existence is thinking, loving, willing
+existence. That alone is true, perfect, divine, which exists for its
+own sake. But such is love, such is reason, such is will. The divine
+trinity in man, above the individual man, is the unity of reason,
+love, will. Reason, Will, Love, are not powers which man possesses,
+for he is nothing without them, he is what he is only by them; they
+are the constituent elements of his nature, which he neither has
+nor makes, the animating, determining, governing powers--divine,
+absolute powers--to which he can oppose no resistance. [5]
+Therefore, the animal lives a single life, while the human lives a twofold life: in the animal, inner and outer are identical; the human has both. The inner life is the life lived in relation to one's species, to general nature distinguished from individual existence. To think is to converse with oneself. Animals cannot perform species-functions without another individual; humans can think and speak—which relate to the species—alone. A person is simultaneously "I" and "you," able to put themselves in another's place because their species and essential nature, not just their individuality, are objects of thought.
+How can the feeling man resist feeling, the loving one love,
+the rational one reason? Who has not experienced the overwhelming
+power of melody? And what else is the power of melody but the power
+of feeling? Music is the language of feeling; melody is audible
+feeling--feeling communicating itself. Who has not experienced the
+power of love, or at least heard of it? Which is the stronger--love
+or the individual man? Is it man that possesses love, or is it not
+much rather love that possesses man? When love impels a man to suffer
+death even joyfully for the beloved one, is this death-conquering power
+his own individual power, or is it not rather the power of love? And
+who that ever truly thought has not experienced that quiet, subtle
+power--the power of thought? When thou sinkest into deep reflection,
+forgetting thyself and what is around thee, dost thou govern reason,
+or is it not reason which governs and absorbs thee? Scientific
+enthusiasm--is it not the most glorious triumph of intellect over
+thee? The desire of knowledge--is it not a simply irresistible, and
+all-conquering power? And when thou suppressest a passion, renouncest a
+habit, in short, achievest a victory over thyself, is this victorious
+power thy own personal power, or is it not rather the energy of will,
+the force of morality, which seizes the mastery of thee, and fills
+thee with indignation against thyself and thy individual weaknesses?
+> **Quote:** "Religion being identical with the distinctive characteristic of man, is then identical with self-consciousness—with the consciousness which man has of his nature."
+Man is nothing without an object. The great models of humanity,
+such men as reveal to us what man is capable of, have attested the
+truth of this proposition by their lives. They had only one dominant
+passion--the realisation of the aim which was the essential object
+of their activity. But the object to which a subject essentially,
+necessarily relates, is nothing else than this subject's own, but
+objective, nature. If it be an object common to several individuals of
+the same species, but under various conditions, it is still, at least
+as to the form under which it presents itself to each of them according
+to their respective modifications, their own, but objective, nature.
+Generally speaking, religion is the consciousness of the infinite—nothing other than consciousness of one's own nature, not as finite but as infinite. A truly finite being has no inkling of an infinite being, for the limit of its nature is the limit of its consciousness. A caterpillar's consciousness, confined to its plant, is not consciousness but instinct. Consciousness is essentially infinite; a limited consciousness is no consciousness at all. The consciousness of the infinite is simply consciousness of the infinity of consciousness itself—the subject taking the infinity of its own nature as object.
+Thus the Sun is the common object of the planets, but it is an object
+to Mercury, to Venus, to Saturn, to Uranus, under other conditions
+than to the Earth. Each planet has its own sun. The Sun which lights
+and warms Uranus has no physical (only an astronomical, scientific)
+existence for the Earth; and not only does the Sun appear different,
+but it really is another sun on Uranus than on the Earth. The relation
+of the Sun to the Earth is therefore at the same time a relation of
+the Earth to itself, or to its own nature, for the measure of the
+size and of the intensity of light which the Sun possesses as the
+object of the Earth is the measure of the distance which determines
+the peculiar nature of the Earth. Hence each planet has in its sun
+the mirror of its own nature.
+What, then, is the human nature of which we are conscious? Reason, Will, and Affection. A complete person possesses the powers of thought, will, and affection—light of intellect, energy of character, and love. These are perfections, absolute perfections of being. Humans exist to think, love, and will. The aim of reason is reason; of love, love; of will, freedom. We think for thinking's sake, love for love's sake, will for freedom's sake. True existence thinks, loves, and wills. Only what exists for its own sake is true, perfect, divine.
+In the object which he contemplates, therefore, man becomes
+acquainted with himself; consciousness of the objective is the
+self-consciousness of man. We know the man by the object, by his
+conception of what is external to himself; in it his nature becomes
+evident; this object is his manifested nature, his true objective
+ego. And this is true not merely of spiritual, but also of sensuous
+objects. Even the objects which are the most remote from man, because
+they are objects to him, and to the extent to which they are so,
+are revelations of human nature. Even the moon, the sun, the stars,
+call to man Gnothi seauton. That he sees them, and so sees them,
+is an evidence of his own nature. The animal is sensible only of the
+beam which immediately affects life; while man perceives the ray,
+to him physically indifferent, of the remotest star. Man alone has
+purely intellectual, disinterested joys and passions; the eye of man
+alone keeps theoretic festivals. The eye which looks into the starry
+heavens, which gazes at that light, alike useless and harmless, having
+nothing in common with the earth and its necessities--this eye sees
+in that light its own nature, its own origin. The eye is heavenly in
+its nature. Hence man elevates himself above the earth only with the
+eye; hence theory begins with the contemplation of the heavens. The
+first philosophers were astronomers. It is the heavens that admonish
+man of his destination, and remind him that he is destined not merely
+to action, but also to contemplation.
+> **Quote:** "The divine trinity in man, above the individual man, is the unity of reason, love, and will."
+The absolute to man is his own nature. The power of the object over
+him is therefore the power of his own nature. Thus the power of the
+object of feeling is the power of feeling itself; the power of the
+object of the intellect is the power of the intellect itself; the
+power of the object of the will is the power of the will itself. The
+man who is affected by musical sounds is governed by feeling; by the
+feeling, that is, which finds its corresponding element in musical
+sounds. But it is not melody as such, it is only melody pregnant
+with meaning and emotion, which has power over feeling. Feeling
+is only acted on by that which conveys feeling, i.e., by itself,
+its own nature. Thus also the will; thus, and infinitely more, the
+intellect. Whatever kind of object, therefore, we are at any time
+conscious of, we are always at the same time conscious of our own
+nature; we can affirm nothing without affirming ourselves. And since
+to will, to feel, to think, are perfections, essences, realities,
+it is impossible that intellect, feeling, and will should feel or
+perceive themselves as limited, finite powers, i.e., as worthless, as
+nothing. For finiteness and nothingness are identical; finiteness is
+only a euphemism for nothingness. Finiteness is the metaphysical, the
+theoretical--nothingness the pathological, practical expression. What
+is finite to the understanding is nothing to the heart. But it is
+impossible that we should be conscious of will, feeling, and intellect,
+as finite powers, because every perfect existence, every original
+power and essence, is the immediate verification and affirmation of
+itself. It is impossible to love, will, or think, without perceiving
+these activities to be perfections--impossible to feel that one is
+a loving, willing, thinking being, without experiencing an infinite
+joy therein. Consciousness consists in a being becoming objective
+to itself; hence it is nothing apart, nothing distinct from the
+being which is conscious of itself. How could it otherwise become
+conscious of itself? It is therefore impossible to be conscious of
+a perfection as an imperfection, impossible to feel feeling limited,
+to think thought limited.
+These are not merely powers a person possesses, for a person is nothing without them; they are the constituent elements of human nature, which one neither owns nor creates. They are the animating, determining, governing powers—divine, absolute powers—to which a person can offer no resistance.
+Consciousness is self-verification, self-affirmation, self-love, joy
+in one's own perfection. Consciousness is the characteristic mark
+of a perfect nature; it exists only in a self-sufficing, complete
+being. Even human vanity attests this truth. A man looks in the glass;
+he has complacency in his appearance. This complacency is a necessary,
+involuntary consequence of the completeness, the beauty of his form. A
+beautiful form is satisfied in itself; it has necessarily joy in
+itself--in self-contemplation. This complacency becomes vanity only
+when a man piques himself on his form as being his individual form,
+not when he admires it as a specimen of human beauty in general. It
+is fitting that he should admire it thus: he can conceive no form more
+beautiful, more sublime than the human. [6] Assuredly every being loves
+itself, its existence--and fitly so. To exist is a good. Quidquid
+essentia dignum est, scientia dignum est. Everything that exists
+has value, is a being of distinction--at least this is true of the
+species: hence it asserts, maintains itself. But the highest form of
+self-assertion, the form which is itself a superiority, a perfection,
+a bliss, a good, is consciousness.
+How can a feeling person resist feeling, a loving person resist love, or a rational person resist reason? Who has not experienced music's overwhelming power? What is melody but audible feeling? Who has not experienced love's power? Which is stronger—love or the individual? Does one possess love, or does love possess one? When love drives someone to face death joyfully, is this their individual strength, or love's power? Whoever has truly thought has experienced thought's quiet power. In deep reflection, do you govern reason, or does reason govern you? Is not scientific enthusiasm intellect's triumph? Is the desire for knowledge not irresistible? When you achieve victory over yourself, is this your personal strength, or will and morality taking mastery?
+Every limitation of the reason, or in general of the nature of man,
+rests on a delusion, an error. It is true that the human being,
+as an individual, can and must--herein consists his distinction
+from the brute--feel and recognise himself to be limited; but he
+can become conscious of his limits, his finiteness, only because
+the perfection, the infinitude of his species, is perceived by him,
+whether as an object of feeling, of conscience, or of the thinking
+consciousness. If he makes his own limitations the limitations of
+the species, this arises from the mistake that he identifies himself
+immediately with the species--a mistake which is intimately connected
+with the individual's love of ease, sloth, vanity, and egoism. For
+a limitation which I know to be merely mine humiliates, shames, and
+perturbs me. Hence to free myself from this feeling of shame, from this
+state of dissatisfaction, I convert the limits of my individuality
+into the limits of human nature in general. What is incomprehensible
+to me is incomprehensible to others; why should I trouble myself
+further? It is no fault of mine; my understanding is not to blame,
+but the understanding of the race. But it is a ludicrous and even
+culpable error to define as finite and limited what constitutes the
+essence of man, the nature of the species, which is the absolute
+nature of the individual. Every being is sufficient to itself. No
+being can deny itself, i.e., its own nature; no being is a limited
+one to itself. Rather, every being is in and by itself infinite--has
+its God, its highest conceivable being, in itself. Every limit of a
+being is cognisable only by another being out of and above him. The
+life of the ephemera is extraordinarily short in comparison with
+that of longer-lived creatures; but nevertheless, for the ephemera
+this short life is as long as a life of years to others. The leaf on
+which the caterpillar lives is for it a world, an infinite space.
+> **Quote:** "The object to which a subject essentially, necessarily relates, is nothing else than this subject’s own, but objective, nature."
+That which makes a being what it is, is its talent, its power,
+its wealth, its adornment. How can it possibly hold its existence
+non-existence, its wealth poverty, its talent incapacity? If the
+plants had eyes, taste, and judgment, each plant would declare its
+own flower the most beautiful; for its comprehension, its taste,
+would reach no farther than its natural power of production. What
+the productive power of its nature has brought forth as the highest,
+that must also its taste, its judgment, recognise and affirm as the
+highest. What the nature affirms, the understanding, the taste, the
+judgment, cannot deny; otherwise the understanding, the judgment, would
+no longer be the understanding and judgment of this particular being,
+but of some other. The measure of the nature is also the measure of
+the understanding. If the nature is limited, so also is the feeling,
+so also is the understanding. But to a limited being its limited
+understanding is not felt to be a limitation; on the contrary,
+it is perfectly happy and contented with this understanding; it
+regards it, praises and values it, as a glorious, divine power; and
+the limited understanding, on its part, values the limited nature
+whose understanding it is. Each is exactly adapted to the other;
+how should they be at issue with each other? A being's understanding
+is its sphere of vision. As far as thou seest, so far extends thy
+nature; and conversely. The eye of the brute reaches no farther than
+its needs, and its nature no farther than its needs. And so far as
+thy nature reaches, so far reaches thy unlimited self-consciousness,
+so far art thou God. The discrepancy between the understanding and the
+nature, between the power of conception and the power of production
+in the human consciousness, on the one hand, is merely of individual
+significance and has not a universal application; and, on the other
+hand, it is only apparent. He who, having written a bad poem, knows
+it to be bad, is in his intelligence, and therefore in his nature,
+not so limited as he who, having written a bad poem, admires it and
+thinks it good.
+A human being is nothing without an object. The great models of humanity—those who reveal our capabilities—proved this through lives devoted to a single dominant passion: realizing the essential object of their activity. If an object is common to several individuals of the same species under various conditions, it remains their own objective nature, at least as it presents to each according to their unique perspective. The Sun, for example, is the common object of all planets, but each has its own sun. The Sun that warms Uranus has no physical existence for Earth. Not only does the Sun appear different on each planet, it truly is different. The intensity and size the Sun has for Earth is determined by Earth's distance—its specific nature. Thus, each planet sees the mirror of its own nature in its sun.
+It follows that if thou thinkest the infinite, thou perceivest and
+affirmest the infinitude of the power of thought; if thou feelest the
+infinite, thou feelest and affirmest the infinitude of the power of
+feeling. The object of the intellect is intellect objective to itself;
+the object of feeling is feeling objective to itself. If thou hast no
+sensibility, no feeling for music, thou perceivest in the finest music
+nothing more than in the wind that whistles by thy ear, or than in the
+brook which rushes past thy feet. What, then, is it which acts on thee
+when thou art affected by melody? What dost thou perceive in it? What
+else than the voice of thy own heart? Feeling speaks only to feeling;
+feeling is comprehensible only by feeling, that is, by itself--for this
+reason, that the object of feeling is nothing else than feeling. Music
+is a monologue of emotion. But the dialogue of philosophy also is
+in truth only a monologue of the intellect; thought speaks only to
+thought. The splendours of the crystal charm the sense, but the
+intellect is interested only in the laws of crystallisation. The
+intellectual only is the object of the intellect. [7]
+> **Quote:** Hence each planet has in its sun the mirror of its own nature.
+All therefore which, in the point of view of metaphysical,
+transcendental speculation and religion, has the significance only
+of the secondary, the subjective, the medium, the organ--has in
+truth the significance of the primary, of the essence, of the object
+itself. If, for example, feeling is the essential organ of religion,
+the nature of God is nothing else than an expression of the nature
+of feeling. The true but latent sense of the phrase, "Feeling is the
+organ of the divine," is, feeling is the noblest, the most excellent,
+i.e., the divine, in man. How couldst thou perceive the divine by
+feeling, if feeling were not itself divine in its nature? The divine
+assuredly is known only by means of the divine--God is known only by
+himself. The divine nature which is discerned by feeling is in truth
+nothing else than feeling enraptured, in ecstasy with itself--feeling
+intoxicated with joy, blissful in its own plenitude.
+> **Quote:** "Consciousness of the objective is the self-consciousness of man."
+It is already clear from this that where feeling is held to be
+the organ of the infinite, the subjective essence of religion,--the
+external data of religion lose their objective value. And thus, since
+feeling has been held the cardinal principle in religion, the doctrines
+of Christianity, formerly so sacred, have lost their importance. If,
+from this point of view, some value is still conceded to Christian
+ideas, it is a value springing entirely from the relation they bear to
+feeling; if another object would excite the same emotions, it would be
+just as welcome. But the object of religious feeling is become a matter
+of indifference, only because when once feeling has been pronounced to
+be the subjective essence of religion, it in fact is also the objective
+essence of religion, though it may not be declared, at least directly,
+to be such. I say directly; for indirectly this is certainly admitted,
+when it is declared that feeling, as such, is religious, and thus
+the distinction between specifically religious and irreligious, or at
+least non-religious, feelings is abolished--a necessary consequence
+of the point of view in which feeling only is regarded as the organ
+of the divine. For on what other ground than that of its essence,
+its nature, dost thou hold feeling to be the organ of the infinite,
+the divine being? And is not the nature of feeling in general also the
+nature of every special feeling, be its object what it may? What, then,
+makes this feeling religious? A given object? Not at all; for this
+object is itself a religious one only when it is not an object of the
+cold understanding or memory, but of feeling. What then? The nature of
+feeling--a nature of which every special feeling, without distinction
+of objects, partakes. Thus, feeling is pronounced to be religious,
+simply because it is feeling; the ground of its religiousness is its
+own nature--lies in itself. But is not feeling thereby declared to
+be itself the absolute, the divine? If feeling in itself is good,
+religious, i.e., holy, divine, has not feeling its God in itself?
+Thus, in the object a person contemplates, they become acquainted with themselves. We know a person by their object, their conception of the external; in it, their nature becomes evident. This object is their manifested nature, their true objective ego. This holds for spiritual and sensory objects alike. Even the most remote objects are revelations of human nature. The moon, sun, and stars call out: *Know thyself*. That a person sees them as they do is evidence of their nature. Animals are aware only of light affecting their life; humans perceive the remotest star, even when physically indifferent. Only humans possess purely intellectual, disinterested joys; the human eye alone keeps 'theoretic festivals.' The eye gazing at starlight—useless, harmless, unrelated to earthly necessities—sees its own nature and origin. The eye is heavenly. Thus humans elevate themselves above earth through the eye; theory begins with contemplation of the heavens. The first philosophers were astronomers. The heavens remind us we are destined for contemplation as well as action.
+But if, notwithstanding, thou wilt posit an object of feeling,
+but at the same time seekest to express thy feeling truly, without
+introducing by thy reflection any foreign element, what remains
+to thee but to distinguish between thy individual feeling and the
+general nature of feeling;--to separate the universal in feeling from
+the disturbing, adulterating influences with which feeling is bound up
+in thee, under thy individual conditions? Hence what thou canst alone
+contemplate, declare to be the infinite, and define as its essence,
+is merely the nature of feeling. Thou hast thus no other definition
+of God than this: God is pure, unlimited, free Feeling. Every other
+God, whom thou supposest, is a God thrust upon thy feeling from
+without. Feeling is atheistic in the sense of the orthodox belief,
+which attaches religion to an external object; it denies an objective
+God--it is itself God. In this point of view only the negation of
+feeling is the negation of God. Thou art simply too cowardly or too
+narrow to confess in words what thy feeling tacitly affirms. Fettered
+by outward considerations, still in bondage to vulgar empiricism,
+incapable of comprehending the spiritual grandeur of feeling, thou
+art terrified before the religious atheism of thy heart. By this fear
+thou destroyest the unity of thy feeling with itself, in imagining
+to thyself an objective being distinct from thy feeling, and thus
+necessarily sinking back into the old questions and doubts--is there a
+God or not?--questions and doubts which vanish, nay, are impossible,
+where feeling is defined as the essence of religion. Feeling is thy
+own inward power, but at the same time a power distinct from thee,
+and independent of thee; it is in thee, above thee; it is itself
+that which constitutes the objective in thee--thy own being which
+impresses thee as another being; in short, thy God. How wilt thou,
+then, distinguish from this objective being within thee another
+objective being? How wilt thou get beyond thy feeling?
+To a person, the absolute is their own nature; the object's power is their nature's power. Thus the power of a feeling-object is feeling's power; of an intellect-object, intellect's power; of a will-object, will's power. Musical sounds govern one through feeling—the feeling that finds its match in those sounds. Only melody full of meaning and emotion has power over feeling, for feeling is influenced only by what conveys feeling: itself. The same holds for will and intellect. Whatever object we are conscious of, we are simultaneously conscious of our own nature; we affirm nothing without affirming ourselves.
+But feeling has here been adduced only as an example. It is
+the same with every other power, faculty, potentiality, reality,
+activity--the name is indifferent--which is defined as the essential
+organ of any object. Whatever is a subjective expression of a nature
+is simultaneously also its objective expression. Man cannot get
+beyond his true nature. He may indeed by means of the imagination
+conceive individuals of another so-called higher kind, but he can
+never get loose from his species, his nature; the conditions of
+being, the positive final predicates which he gives to these other
+individuals, are always determinations or qualities drawn from his
+own nature--qualities in which he in truth only images and projects
+himself. There may certainly be thinking beings besides men on the
+other planets of our solar system. But by the supposition of such
+beings we do not change our standing point--we extend our conceptions
+quantitatively not qualitatively. For as surely as on the other planets
+there are the same laws of motion, so surely are there the same laws of
+perception and thought as here. In fact, we people the other planets,
+not that we may place there different beings from ourselves, but more
+beings of our own or of a similar nature. [8]
+Since to will, feel, and think are perfections, it is impossible for them to perceive themselves as finite powers—that is, as nothing. Finiteness and nothingness are identical; 'finiteness' is the theoretical expression, while 'nothingness' is the practical one. What is finite to the understanding is nothing to the heart. It is impossible to be conscious of our will, feeling, and intellect as finite, because every perfect existence is its own immediate validation. One cannot love, will, or think without perceiving these as perfections, or be conscious of them without infinite joy. Consciousness is a being becoming an object to itself; therefore it is nothing separate from the being conscious of itself. How else could it become self-conscious? It is impossible to be conscious of a perfection as an imperfection—impossible to feel feeling as limited, or to think thought as limited.
+Consciousness is self-validation, self-affirmation, self-love, joy in one's perfection—the hallmark of a perfect nature, existing only in a self-sufficient, complete being. Even vanity testifies: a person looks in the glass and is pleased; this complacency is a necessary consequence of their form's completeness and beauty. This becomes vanity only when one takes pride in it as his own individual form, rather than admiring it as a specimen of human beauty in general. It is right to admire it thus: one can conceive no form more beautiful. Every being loves itself and its existence—and rightly so. To exist is a good.
+> **Quote:** "Quidquid essentia dignum est, scientia dignum est."
+Everything that exists has value—at least the species; therefore it asserts itself. But the highest form of self-assertion— itself a superiority, perfection, bliss, and good—is consciousness.
+Every limitation of reason or human nature is based on delusion. It is true that as an individual, a human can and must—and this distinguishes them from animals—recognize themselves as limited; but they can only become conscious of limits because they perceive the perfection and infinity of their species, whether through feeling, conscience, or thought.
+Treating one's own limitations as the species' limitations arises from mistaking oneself for the species—a mistake connected to laziness, vanity, and egoism. A limitation known as merely mine humiliates me; to free myself, I turn individual limits into species limits: "What is incomprehensible to me is incomprehensible to others; why should I trouble myself further? It is no fault of mine; my understanding is not to blame, but the understanding of the human species."
+But it is ridiculous to define as finite the essence of man—the species' nature, which is the individual's absolute nature. Every being is sufficient unto itself; no being can many its own nature or see itself as limited. Rather, every being is infinite in itself—it has its God within. Every limit can only be recognized by another being outside it. A mayfly's short life is as long to it as many years are to others; the caterpillar's leaf is its infinite world.
+What makes a being what it is, is its talent, power, wealth, and beauty. How could it view its existence as non-existence? If plants had judgment, each would declare its own flower most beautiful, for its taste would reach no farther than its productive power. What nature produces as highest, judgment must affirm as highest. What nature affirms, understanding cannot deny; otherwise it would belong to another being.
+> **Quote:** "The measure of the nature is also the measure of the understanding."
+If nature is limited, so too are feeling and understanding. But to a limited being, its limited understanding is not felt as limitation; it is perfectly happy and content. It praises its understanding as glorious and divine. A being's understanding is its sphere of vision: as far as you see, so far extends your nature, and vice-versa. An animal's eye reaches no farther than its needs. And as far as your nature reaches, so far reaches your unlimited self-consciousness; to that extent, you are God.
+The discrepancy between understanding and nature—between conception and production—is merely individual and only apparent. One who writes a bad poem and knows it is not as limited as one who writes a bad poem and admires it.
+If you think the infinite, you perceive the infinity of thought; if you feel the infinite, you feel the infinity of feeling. The object of intellect is intellect objectified; the object of feeling is feeling objectified. Without feeling for music, you perceive only wind or water. What acts upon you when moved by melody? What do you perceive but the voice of your own heart? Feeling speaks only to feeling, can only be understood by feeling—by itself—for its object is nothing but feeling.
+> **Quote:** "Music is a monologue of emotion."
+But the dialogue of philosophy is also, in truth, only a monologue of the intellect; thought speaks only to thought. Crystal splendors charm the senses, but intellect is interested only in crystallization's laws. Only what is intellectual is an object for the intellect.
+Therefore, everything considered secondary, subjective, or merely an organ is in truth primary—the essence and object itself. If feeling is religion's essential organ, God's nature is nothing but an expression of feeling's nature. The hidden meaning of "Feeling is the organ of the divine" is that feeling is the noblest, divine element in man. How could you perceive the divine through feeling if feeling were not itself divine? The divine is known only through the divine. The divine nature discerned by feeling is feeling enraptured with itself—intoxicated with joy, blissful in its abundance.
+Where feeling is religion's organ—the subjective essence—the external facts lose objective value. Since feeling became religion's central principle, Christian doctrines have lost importance. Any remaining value derives entirely from relationship to feeling; another object exciting the same emotions would be equally welcome. The object of religious feeling has become indifferent because feeling, declared the subjective essence, is in fact also the objective essence—even if not stated directly. The distinction between religious and non-religious feelings is abolished—a necessary consequence of feeling alone as divine organ. For on what ground do you consider feeling the organ of the infinite, if not its own nature? And is not feeling's general nature also the nature of every specific feeling? What makes a feeling religious? Its object? No; an object is religious only when it is an object of feeling, not cold understanding. What then? The nature of feeling itself. Thus feeling is religious simply because it is feeling; its religiousness lies within itself. But isn't feeling thereby declared absolute, divine? If feeling in itself is holy and divine, does it not have its God within?
+If you wish to propose a feeling-object while expressing feeling truthfully, you must distinguish individual feeling from feeling's general nature—separate the universal from distorting individual influences. Therefore, the only thing you can contemplate as infinite essence is feeling itself. You have no other definition of God than this:
+> **Quote:** God is pure, unlimited, free Feeling.
+Any other God is forced upon feeling from outside. Feeling is "atheistic" in the orthodox sense, which ties religion to external objects; it denies an objective God—it is itself God. Only the negation of feeling is the negation of God. You are too cowardly to admit what your feeling affirms. Bound by external considerations and common empiricism, terrified by your heart's "religious atheism," you destroy feeling's unity by imagining an objective being distinct from it. Thus you fall back into "is there a God?"—questions that vanish when feeling is religion's essence. Feeling is your inner power, yet distinct and independent; it is in you and above you, constituting the objective within you—your own being that seems another; in short, your God. How will you distinguish this inner objective being from another? How will you get beyond your own feeling?
+Feeling is only an example. The same applies to every power defined as an essential organ. Whatever is a subjective expression of nature is simultaneously its objective expression. Humans cannot get beyond their true nature. They may imagine individuals of a "higher" kind, but never break free from their species. The conditions they give to such beings are always qualities drawn from their own nature, which they are only projecting. There may be thinking beings on other planets, but assuming them extends our concepts in quantity, not quality. The same laws of perception and thought exist there. We populate other planets not with different beings, but with more beings of our own nature.
 ### 2. The Essence of Religion Considered Generally.
+What we have hitherto been maintaining generally, even with regard
+to sensational impressions, of the relation between subject and
+object, applies especially to the relation between the subject and
+the religious object.
+What applies to subject-object relations generally applies specifically to the human subject and religious object. In sensory perception, consciousness of an object remains distinct from self-consciousness; in religion, they coincide. While sensory objects exist outside us, the religious object exists within—as intimately as self-awareness or conscience. Augustine says God is "closer to us, more related to us, and therefore more easily known by us than sensible, corporeal things." [9]
+In the perceptions of the senses consciousness of the object
+is distinguishable from consciousness of self; but in religion,
+consciousness of the object and self-consciousness coincide. The
+object of the senses is out of man, the religious object is within
+him, and therefore as little forsakes him as his self-consciousness
+or his conscience; it is the intimate, the closest object. "God," says
+Augustine, for example, "is nearer, more related to us, and therefore
+more easily known by us, than sensible, corporeal things." [9]
+The object of the senses is in itself indifferent--independent of
+the disposition or of the judgment; but the object of religion is a
+selected object; the most excellent, the first, the supreme being;
+it essentially presupposes a critical judgment, a discrimination
+between the divine and the non-divine, between that which is worthy of
+adoration and that which is not worthy. [10] And here may be applied,
+without any limitation, the proposition: the object of any subject is
+nothing else than the subject's own nature taken objectively. Such
+as are a man's thoughts and dispositions, such is his God; so much
+worth as a man has, so much and no more has his God. Consciousness
+of God is self-consciousness, knowledge of God is self-knowledge. By
+his God thou knowest the man, and by the man his God; the two are
+identical. Whatever is God to a man, that is his heart and soul; and
+conversely, God is the manifested inward nature, the expressed self
+of a man,--religion the solemn unveiling of a man's hidden treasures,
+the revelation of his intimate thoughts, the open confession of his
+love-secrets.
+A sensory object is indifferent, independent of our judgment. The religious object is selected—the most excellent, supreme being. It requires critical judgment, a distinction between divine and secular, worthy and unworthy. [10] This principle applies without limit:
+But when religion--consciousness of God--is designated as the
+self-consciousness of man, this is not to be understood as affirming
+that the religious man is directly aware of this identity; for, on
+the contrary, ignorance of it is fundamental to the peculiar nature of
+religion. To preclude this misconception, it is better to say, religion
+is man's earliest and also indirect form of self-knowledge. Hence,
+religion everywhere precedes philosophy, as in the history of the
+race, so also in that of the individual. Man first of all sees his
+nature as if out of himself, before he finds it in himself. His
+own nature is in the first instance contemplated by him as that
+of another being. Religion is the childlike condition of humanity;
+but the child sees his nature--man--out of himself; in childhood a
+man is an object to himself, under the form of another man. Hence
+the historical progress of religion consists in this: that what by
+an earlier religion was regarded as objective, is now recognised as
+subjective; that is, what was formerly contemplated and worshipped as
+God is now perceived to be something human. What was at first religion
+becomes at a later period idolatry; man is seen to have adored his own
+nature. Man has given objectivity to himself, but has not recognised
+the object as his own nature: a later religion takes this forward step;
+every advance in religion is therefore a deeper self-knowledge. But
+every particular religion, while it pronounces its predecessors
+idolatrous, excepts itself--and necessarily so, otherwise it would no
+longer be religion--from the fate, the common nature of all religions:
+it imputes only to other religions what is the fault, if fault it be,
+of religion in general. Because it has a different object, a different
+tenor, because it has transcended the ideas of preceding religions,
+it erroneously supposes itself exalted above the necessary eternal
+laws which constitute the essence of religion--it fancies its object,
+its ideas, to be superhuman. But the essence of religion, thus hidden
+from the religious, is evident to the thinker, by whom religion is
+viewed objectively, which it cannot be by its votaries. And it is our
+task to show that the antithesis of divine and human is altogether
+illusory, that it is nothing else than the antithesis between the
+human nature in general and the human individual; that, consequently,
+the object and contents of the Christian religion are altogether human.
+> **Quote:** "the object of any subject is nothing else than the subject's own nature taken objectively."
+Religion, at least the Christian, is the relation of man to himself,
+or more correctly to his own nature (i.e., his subjective nature);
+[11] but a relation to it, viewed as a nature apart from his own. The
+divine being is nothing else than the human being, or, rather, the
+human nature purified, freed from the limits of the individual man,
+made objective--i.e., contemplated and revered as another, a distinct
+being. All the attributes of the divine nature are, therefore,
+attributes of the human nature. [12]
+A person's God matches their thoughts and dispositions; a man's God has exactly as much value as the man himself.
+In relation to the attributes, the predicates, of the Divine Being,
+this is admitted without hesitation, but by no means in relation
+to the subject of these predicates. The negation of the subject is
+held to be irreligion, nay, atheism; though not so the negation of
+the predicates. But that which has no predicates or qualities, has no
+effect upon me; that which has no effect upon me has no existence for
+me. To deny all the qualities of a being is equivalent to denying the
+being himself. A being without qualities is one which cannot become an
+object to the mind, and such a being is virtually non-existent. Where
+man deprives God of all qualities, God is no longer anything more
+to him than a negative being. To the truly religious man, God is
+not a being without qualities, because to him he is a positive,
+real being. The theory that God cannot be defined, and consequently
+cannot be known by man, is therefore the offspring of recent times,
+a product of modern unbelief.
+> **Quote:** "Consciousness of God is self-consciousness; knowledge of God is self-knowledge."
+As reason is and can be pronounced finite only where man regards
+sensual enjoyment, or religious emotion, or æsthetic contemplation,
+or moral sentiment, as the absolute, the true; so the proposition that
+God is unknowable or undefinable, can only be enunciated and become
+fixed as a dogma, where this object has no longer any interest for the
+intellect; where the real, the positive, alone has any hold on man,
+where the real alone has for him the significance of the essential,
+of the absolute, divine object, but where at the same time, in
+contradiction with this purely worldly tendency, there yet exist some
+old remains of religiousness. On the ground that God is unknowable, man
+excuses himself to what is yet remaining of his religious conscience
+for his forgetfulness of God, his absorption in the world: he denies
+God practically by his conduct,--the world has possession of all his
+thoughts and inclinations,--but he does not deny him theoretically, he
+does not attack his existence; he lets that rest. But this existence
+does not affect or incommode him; it is a merely negative existence,
+an existence without existence, a self-contradictory existence,--a
+state of being which, as to its effects, is not distinguishable from
+non-being. The denial of determinate, positive predicates concerning
+the divine nature is nothing else than a denial of religion, with,
+however, an appearance of religion in its favour, so that it is not
+recognised as a denial; it is simply a subtle, disguised atheism. The
+alleged religious horror of limiting God by positive predicates is
+only the irreligious wish to know nothing more of God, to banish God
+from the mind. Dread of limitation is dread of existence. All real
+existence, i.e., all existence which is truly such, is qualitative,
+determinative existence. He who earnestly believes in the Divine
+existence is not shocked at the attributing even of gross sensuous
+qualities to God. He who dreads an existence that may give offence,
+who shrinks from the grossness of a positive predicate, may as well
+renounce existence altogether. A God who is injured by determinate
+qualities has not the courage and the strength to exist. Qualities
+are the fire, the vital breath, the oxygen, the salt of existence. An
+existence in general, an existence without qualities, is an insipidity,
+an absurdity. But there can be no more in God than is supplied by
+religion. Only where man loses his taste for religion, and thus
+religion itself becomes insipid, does the existence of God become an
+insipid existence--an existence without qualities.
+Knowing a person's God means knowing the person; the two are identical. What a person considers God is their heart and soul; God is the outward manifestation of their inner nature.
+There is, however, a still milder way of denying the divine
+predicates than the direct one just described. It is admitted that the
+predicates of the divine nature are finite, and, more particularly,
+human qualities, but their rejection is rejected; they are even
+taken under protection, because it is necessary to man to have a
+definite conception of God and since he is man he can form no other
+than a human conception of him. In relation to God, it is said, these
+predicates are certainly without any objective validity; but to me,
+if he is to exist for me, he cannot appear otherwise than as he does
+appear to me, namely, as a being with attributes analogous to the
+human. But this distinction between what God is in himself, and what
+he is for me destroys the peace of religion, and is besides in itself
+an unfounded and untenable distinction. I cannot know whether God is
+something else in himself or for himself than he is for me; what he is
+to me is to me all that he is. For me, there lies in these predicates
+under which he exists for me, what he is in himself, his very nature;
+he is for me what he can alone ever be for me. The religious man finds
+perfect satisfaction in that which God is in relation to himself;
+of any other relation he knows nothing, for God is to him what he can
+alone be to man. In the distinction above stated, man takes a point
+of view above himself, i.e., above his nature, the absolute measure
+of his being; but this transcendentalism is only an illusion; for I
+can make the distinction between the object as it is in itself, and
+the object as it is for me, only where an object can really appear
+otherwise to me, not where it appears to me such as the absolute
+measure of my nature determines it to appear--such as it must appear
+to me. It is true that I may have a merely subjective conception,
+i.e., one which does not arise out of the general constitution of my
+species; but if my conception is determined by the constitution of
+my species, the distinction between what an object is in itself, and
+what it is for me ceases; for this conception is itself an absolute
+one. The measure of the species is the absolute measure, law, and
+criterion of man. And, indeed, religion has the conviction that its
+conceptions, its predicates of God, are such as every man ought to
+have, and must have, if he would have the true ones--that they are
+the conceptions necessary to human nature; nay, further, that they
+are objectively true, representing God as he is. To every religion
+the gods of other religious are only notions concerning God, but its
+own conception of God is to it God himself, the true God--God such as
+he is in himself. Religion is satisfied only with a complete Deity,
+a God without reservation; it will not have a mere phantasm of God; it
+demands God himself. Religion gives up its own existence when it gives
+up the nature of God; it is no longer a truth when it renounces the
+possession of the true God. Scepticism is the arch-enemy of religion;
+but the distinction between object and conception--between God as he
+is in himself, and God as he is for me--is a sceptical distinction,
+and therefore an irreligious one.
+> **Quote:** "religion [is] the solemn unveiling of a man's hidden treasures, the revelation of his intimate thoughts, the open confession of his love-secrets."
+That which is to man the self-existent, the highest being, to which he
+can conceive nothing higher--that is to him the Divine Being. How then
+should he inquire concerning this being, what he is in himself? If God
+were an object to the bird, he would be a winged being: the bird knows
+nothing higher, nothing more blissful, than the winged condition. How
+ludicrous would it be if this bird pronounced: To me God appears
+as a bird, but what he is in himself I know not. To the bird the
+highest nature is the bird-nature; take from him the conception of
+this, and you take from him the conception of the highest being. How,
+then, could he ask whether God in himself were winged? To ask whether
+God is in himself what he is for me, is to ask whether God is God,
+is to lift oneself above one's God, to rise up against him.
+When we call religion the self-consciousness of humanity, we don't mean the religious person is aware of this identity—on the contrary, this lack of awareness is fundamental to religion. Religion is man's earliest and most indirect form of self-knowledge, preceding philosophy in both human history and individual life. Humans first see their own nature as if outside themselves before finding it within. Religion is humanity's childlike condition; as a child sees his nature—man—out of himself, so in religion a man is an object to himself under the form of another man.
+Wherever, therefore, this idea, that the religious predicates are
+only anthropomorphisms, has taken possession of a man, there has
+doubt, has unbelief, obtained the mastery of faith. And it is only
+the inconsequence of faint-heartedness and intellectual imbecility
+which does not proceed from this idea to the formal negation of
+the predicates, and from thence to the negation of the subject
+to which they relate. If thou doubtest the objective truth of the
+predicates, thou must also doubt the objective truth of the subject
+whose predicates they are. If thy predicates are anthropomorphisms,
+the subject of them is an anthropomorphism too. If love, goodness,
+personality, &c., are human attributes, so also is the subject which
+thou presupposest, the existence of God, the belief that there is a
+God, an anthropomorphism--a presupposition purely human. Whence knowest
+thou that the belief in a God at all is not a limitation of man's mode
+of conception? Higher beings--and thou supposest such--are perhaps so
+blest in themselves, so at unity with themselves, that they are not
+hung in suspense between themselves and a yet higher being. To know
+God and not oneself to be God, to know blessedness and not oneself
+to enjoy it, is a state of disunity, of unhappiness. Higher beings
+know nothing of this unhappiness; they have no conception of that
+which they are not.
+The historical evolution of religion consists in this: what earlier religion regarded as objective, later religion recognizes as subjective. What was once worshipped as God is later perceived as human. What was initially religion becomes seen as idolatry; people realize they've been worshipping their own projected nature. Every advance in religion is deeper self-knowledge. Yet each specific religion, while calling its predecessors idolatrous, views itself as an exception—it must, or it would cease to be religion. It mistakenly believes it has risen above the eternal laws of religion's essence because it has a different object and content.
+Thou believest in love as a divine attribute because thou thyself
+lovest; thou believest that God is a wise, benevolent being
+because thou knowest nothing better in thyself than benevolence
+and wisdom; and thou believest that God exists, that therefore he
+is a subject--whatever exists is a subject, whether it be defined
+as substance, person, essence, or otherwise--because thou thyself
+existest, art thyself a subject. Thou knowest no higher human good than
+to love, than to be good and wise; and even so thou knowest no higher
+happiness than to exist, to be a subject; for the consciousness of
+all reality, of all bliss, is for thee bound up in the consciousness
+of being a subject, of existing. God is an existence, a subject to
+thee, for the same reason that he is to thee a wise, a blessed, a
+personal being. The distinction between the divine predicates and the
+divine subject is only this, that to thee the subject, the existence,
+does not appear an anthropomorphism, because the conception of it is
+necessarily involved in thy own existence as a subject, whereas the
+predicates do appear anthropomorphisms, because their necessity--the
+necessity that God should be conscious, wise, good, &c.,--is not an
+immediate necessity, identical with the being of man, but is evolved by
+his self-consciousness, by the activity of his thought. I am a subject,
+I exist, whether I be wise or unwise, good or bad. To exist is to man
+the first datum; it constitutes the very idea of the subject; it is
+presupposed by the predicates. Hence man relinquishes the predicates,
+but the existence of God is to him a settled, irrefragable, absolutely
+certain, objective truth. But, nevertheless, this distinction is
+merely an apparent one. The necessity of the subject lies only in the
+necessity of the predicate. Thou art a subject only in so far as thou
+art a human subject; the certainty and reality of thy existence lie
+only in the certainty and reality of thy human attributes. What the
+subject is lies only in the predicate; the predicate is the truth of
+the subject--the subject only the personified, existing predicate,
+the predicate conceived as existing. Subject and predicate are
+distinguished only as existence and essence. The negation of the
+predicates is therefore the negation of the subject. What remains of
+the human subject when abstracted from the human attributes? Even
+in the language of common life the divine predicates--Providence,
+Omniscience, Omnipotence--are put for the divine subject.
+The essence of religion, hidden from believers, is evident to objective thinkers. The opposition between divine and human is illusory—merely the opposition between human nature in general and the individual. Consequently, the content and object of Christian religion are entirely human. Religion is man's relationship to his own subjective nature, viewed as separate. [11]
+The certainty of the existence of God, of which it has been said that
+it is as certain, nay, more certain to man than his own existence,
+depends only on the certainty of the qualities of God--it is in
+itself no immediate certainty. To the Christian the existence of the
+Christian God only is a certainty; to the heathen that of the heathen
+God only. The heathen did not doubt the existence of Jupiter, because
+he took no offence at the nature of Jupiter, because he could conceive
+of God under no other qualities, because to him these qualities were
+a certainty, a divine reality. The reality of the predicate is the
+sole guarantee of existence.
+> **Quote:** "The divine being is nothing else than the human being, or, rather, the human nature purified, freed from the limits of the individual man, made objective—that is, contemplated and revered as another, distinct being."  [13]
+Whatever man conceives to be true, he immediately conceives to be
+real (that is, to have an objective existence), because, originally,
+only the real is true to him--true in opposition to what is merely
+conceived, dreamed, imagined. The idea of being, of existence, is the
+original idea of truth; or, originally, man makes truth dependent
+on existence, subsequently, existence dependent on truth. Now God
+is the nature of man regarded as absolute truth,--the truth of man;
+but God, or, what is the same thing, religion, is as various as are
+the conditions under which man conceives this his nature, regards
+it as the highest being. These conditions, then, under which man
+conceives God, are to him the truth, and for that reason they are
+also the highest existence, or rather they are existence itself;
+for only the emphatic, the highest existence, is existence, and
+deserves this name. Therefore, God is an existent, real being, on
+the very same ground that he is a particular, definite being; for
+the qualities of God are nothing else than the essential qualities of
+man himself, and a particular man is what he is, has his existence,
+his reality, only in his particular conditions. Take away from the
+Greek the quality of being Greek, and you take away his existence. On
+this ground it is true that for a definite positive religion--that
+is, relatively--the certainty of the existence of God is immediate;
+for just as involuntarily, as necessarily, as the Greek was a Greek,
+so necessarily were his gods Greek beings, so necessarily were they
+real, existent beings. Religion is that conception of the nature of the
+world and of man which is essential to, i.e., identical with, a man's
+nature. But man does not stand above this his necessary conception;
+on the contrary, it stands above him; it animates, determines, governs
+him. The necessity of a proof, of a middle term to unite qualities
+with existence, the possibility of a doubt, is abolished. Only that
+which is apart from my own being is capable of being doubted by
+me. How then can I doubt of God, who is my being? To doubt of God
+is to doubt of myself. Only when God is thought of abstractly, when
+his predicates are the result of philosophic abstraction, arises the
+distinction or separation between subject and predicate, existence
+and nature--arises the fiction that the existence or the subject is
+something else than the predicate, something immediate, indubitable,
+in distinction from the predicate, which is held to be doubtful. But
+this is only a fiction. A God who has abstract predicates has also
+an abstract existence. Existence, being, varies with varying qualities.
+All divine attributes are therefore human attributes. [12]
+The identity of the subject and predicate is clearly evidenced by
+the progressive development of religion, which is identical with
+the progressive development of human culture. So long as man is
+in a mere state of nature, so long is his god a mere nature-god--a
+personification of some natural force. Where man inhabits houses, he
+also encloses his gods in temples. The temple is only a manifestation
+of the value which man attaches to beautiful buildings. Temples in
+honour of religion are in truth temples in honour of architecture. With
+the emerging of man from a state of savagery and wildness to one of
+culture, with the distinction between what is fitting for man and
+what is not fitting, arises simultaneously the distinction between
+that which is fitting and that which is not fitting for God. God is
+the idea of majesty, of the highest dignity: the religious sentiment
+is the sentiment of supreme fitness. The later more cultured artists
+of Greece were the first to embody in the statues of the gods the
+ideas of dignity, of spiritual grandeur, of imperturbable repose
+and serenity. But why were these qualities in their view attributes,
+predicates of God? Because they were in themselves regarded by the
+Greeks as divinities. Why did those artists exclude all disgusting
+and low passions? Because they perceived them to be unbecoming,
+unworthy, unhuman, and consequently ungodlike. The Homeric gods
+eat and drink;--that implies eating and drinking is a divine
+pleasure. Physical strength is an attribute of the Homeric gods:
+Zeus is the strongest of the gods. Why? Because physical strength,
+in and by itself, was regarded as something glorious, divine. To
+the ancient Germans the highest virtues were those of the warrior;
+therefore their supreme god was the god of war, Odin,--war, "the
+original or oldest law." Not the attribute of the divinity, but
+the divineness or deity of the attribute, is the first true Divine
+Being. Thus what theology and philosophy have held to be God, the
+Absolute, the Infinite, is not God; but that which they have held not
+to be God is God: namely, the attribute, the quality, whatever has
+reality. Hence he alone is the true atheist to whom the predicates of
+the Divine Being,--for example, love, wisdom, justice,--are nothing;
+not he to whom merely the subject of these predicates is nothing. And
+in no wise is the negation of the subject necessarily also a negation
+of the predicates considered in themselves. These have an intrinsic,
+independent reality; they force their recognition upon man by their
+very nature; they are self-evident truths to him; they prove, they
+attest themselves. It does not follow that goodness, justice, wisdom,
+are chimæras because the existence of God is a chimæra, nor truths
+because this is a truth. The idea of God is dependent on the idea of
+justice, of benevolence; a God who is not benevolent, not just, not
+wise, is no God; but the converse does not hold. The fact is not that
+a quality is divine because God has it, but that God has it because
+it is in itself divine: because without it God would be a defective
+being. Justice, wisdom, in general every quality which constitutes
+the divinity of God, is determined and known by itself independently,
+but the idea of God is determined by the qualities which have thus
+been previously judged to be worthy of the divine nature; only in
+the case in which I identify God and justice, in which I think of
+God immediately as the reality of the idea of justice, is the idea
+of God self-determined. But if God as a subject is the determined,
+while the quality, the predicate, is the determining, then in truth the
+rank of the godhead is due not to the subject, but to the predicate.
+While this is admitted regarding God's qualities, it is denied regarding the subject. Denying the subject is called irreligion or atheism; denying qualities is not. But something without qualities has no effect on me, and what has no effect does not exist for me. To deny all qualities is to deny the being itself. A being without qualities cannot be an object of mind and is effectively non-existent. When stripped of qualities, God becomes a negative concept. To a truly religious person, God is a positive, real being with qualities. The theory that God cannot be defined is modern unbelief.
+Not until several, and those contradictory, attributes are united in
+one being, and this being is conceived as personal--the personality
+being thus brought into especial prominence--not until then is
+the origin of religion lost sight of, is it forgotten that what
+the activity of the reflective power has converted into a predicate
+distinguishable or separable from the subject, was originally the true
+subject. Thus the Greeks and Romans deified accidents as substances;
+virtues, states of mind, passions, as independent beings. Man,
+especially the religious man, is to himself the measure of all things,
+of all reality. Whatever strongly impresses a man, whatever produces
+an unusual effect on his mind, if it be only a peculiar, inexplicable
+sound or note, he personifies as a divine being. Religion embraces
+all the objects of the world: everything existing has been an object
+of religious reverence; in the nature and consciousness of religion
+there is nothing else than what lies in the nature of man and in his
+consciousness of himself and of the world. Religion has no material
+exclusively its own. In Rome even the passions of fear and terror
+had their temples. The Christians also made mental phenomena into
+independent beings, their own feelings into qualities of things, the
+passions which governed them into powers which governed the world,
+in short, predicates of their own nature, whether recognised as such
+or not, into independent subjective existences. Devils, cobolds,
+witches, ghosts, angels, were sacred truths as long as the religious
+spirit held undivided sway over mankind.
+Reason is called "finite" only when one treats sensory enjoyment, religious emotion, aesthetic contemplation, or moral sentiment as absolute truth. The idea that God is unknowable becomes doctrine only when intellect loses interest in God—when the physical world seems essential yet religious sentiment lingers in contradiction. By claiming God unknowable, people excuse their forgetfulness of God and absorption in the world. They deny God in practice but not in theory; they let God's existence be, but this existence doesn't affect them—it's a negative existence, indistinguishable from non-existence.
+In order to banish from the mind the identity of the divine and human
+predicates, and the consequent identity of the divine and human nature,
+recourse is had to the idea that God, as the absolute, real Being,
+has an infinite fulness of various predicates, of which we here know
+only a part, and those such as are analogous to our own; while the
+rest, by virtue of which God must thus have quite a different nature
+from the human or that which is analogous to the human, we shall only
+know in the future--that is, after death. But an infinite plenitude
+or multitude of predicates which are really different, so different
+that the one does not immediately involve the other, is realised
+only in an infinite plenitude or multitude of different beings or
+individuals. Thus the human nature presents an infinite abundance
+of different predicates, and for that very reason it presents an
+infinite abundance of different individuals. Each new man is a new
+predicate, a new phasis of humanity. As many as are the men, so many
+are the powers, the properties of humanity. It is true that there
+are the same elements in every individual, but under such various
+conditions and modifications that they appear new and peculiar. The
+mystery of the inexhaustible fulness of the divine predicates is
+therefore nothing else than the mystery of human nature considered
+as an infinitely varied, infinitely modifiable, but, consequently,
+phenomenal being. Only in the realm of the senses, only in space
+and time, does there exist a being of really infinite qualities or
+predicates. Where there are really different predicates there are
+different times. One man is a distinguished musician, a distinguished
+author, a distinguished physician; but he cannot compose music,
+write books, and perform cures in the same moment of time. Time,
+and not the Hegelian dialectic, is the medium of uniting opposites,
+contradictories, in one and the same subject. But distinguished and
+detached from the nature of man, and combined with the idea of God,
+the infinite fulness of various predicates is a conception without
+reality, a mere phantasy, a conception derived from the sensible
+world, but without the essential conditions, without the truth of
+sensible existence, a conception which stands in direct contradiction
+with the Divine Being considered as a spiritual, i.e., an abstract,
+simple, single being; for the predicates of God are precisely of
+this character, that one involves all the others, because there
+is no real difference between them. If, therefore, in the present
+predicates I have not the future, in the present God not the future
+God, then the future God is not the present, but they are two distinct
+beings. [13] But this distinction is in contradiction with the unity
+and simplicity of the theological God. Why is a given predicate a
+predicate of God? Because it is divine in its nature, i.e., because it
+expresses no limitation, no defect. Why are other predicates applied
+to him? Because, however various in themselves, they agree in this,
+that they all alike express perfection, unlimitedness. Hence I can
+conceive innumerable predicates of God, because they must all agree
+with the abstract idea of the Godhead, and must have in common that
+which constitutes every single predicate a divine attribute. Thus it is
+in the system of Spinoza. He speaks of an infinite number of attributes
+of the divine substance, but he specifies none except Thought and
+Extension. Why? Because it is a matter of indifference to know them;
+nay, because they are in themselves indifferent, superfluous; for
+with all these innumerable predicates, I yet always mean to say the
+same thing as when I speak of Thought and Extension. Why is Thought
+an attribute of substance? Because, according to Spinoza, it is
+capable of being conceived by itself, because it expresses something
+indivisible, perfect, infinite. Why Extension or Matter? For the same
+reason. Thus, substance can have an indefinite number of predicates,
+because it is not their specific definition, their difference, but
+their identity, their equivalence, which makes them attributes of
+substance. Or rather, substance has innumerable predicates only because
+(how strange!) it has properly no predicate; that is, no definite,
+real predicate. The indefinite unity which is the product of thought,
+completes itself by the indefinite multiplicity which is the product of
+the imagination. Because the predicate is not multum, it is multa. In
+truth, the positive predicates are Thought and Extension. In these two
+infinitely more is said than in the nameless innumerable predicates;
+for they express something definite--in them I have something. But
+substance is too indifferent, too apathetic to be something; that is,
+to have qualities and passions; that it may not be something, it is
+rather nothing.
+Denying specific, positive divine attributes is disguised atheism. The supposed fear of "limiting" God through attributes is actually an irreligious desire to banish God from mind. Fear of limitation is fear of existence; all real existence is qualitative and definite. One who truly believes in Divine existence is not shocked by sensory qualities attributed to God. One who fears offense from positive attributes might as well give up on existence. A God "injured" by qualities lacks courage to exist. Qualities are the fire, the vital breath, the oxygen, the salt of existence. Existence without qualities is absurd. There can be nothing more in God than what religion provides. Only when religion becomes dull does God's existence become dull—without qualities.
+Now, when it is shown that what the subject is lies entirely in
+the attributes of the subject; that is, that the predicate is the
+true subject; it is also proved that if the divine predicates are
+attributes of the human nature, the subject of those predicates is also
+of the human nature. But the divine predicates are partly general,
+partly personal. The general predicates are the metaphysical, but
+these serve only as external points of support to religion; they are
+not the characteristic definitions of religion. It is the personal
+predicates alone which constitute the essence of religion--in which
+the Divine Being is the object of religion. Such are, for example,
+that God is a Person, that he is the moral Lawgiver, the Father
+of mankind, the Holy One, the Just, the Good, the Merciful. It is,
+however, at once clear, or it will at least be clear in the sequel,
+with regard to these and other definitions, that, especially as
+applied to a personality, they are purely human definitions, and that
+consequently man in religion--in his relation to God--is in relation
+to his own nature; for to the religious sentiment these predicates
+are not mere conceptions, mere images, which man forms of God,
+to be distinguished from that which God is in himself, but truths,
+facts, realities. Religion knows nothing of anthropomorphisms; to it
+they are not anthropomorphisms. It is the very essence of religion,
+that to it these definitions express the nature of God. They are
+pronounced to be images only by the understanding, which reflects on
+religion, and which while defending them yet before its own tribunal
+denies them. But to the religious sentiment God is a real Father,
+real Love and Mercy; for to it he is a real, living, personal being,
+and therefore his attributes are also living and personal. Nay, the
+definitions which are the most sufficing to the religious sentiment
+are precisely those which give the most offence to the understanding,
+and which in the process of reflection on religion it denies. Religion
+is essentially emotion; hence, objectively also, emotion is to it
+necessarily of a divine nature. Even anger appears to it an emotion
+not unworthy of God, provided only there be a religious motive at
+the foundation of this anger.
+A milder way of denying attributes admits they are finite, human qualities but defends them as necessary for human conception. They argue attributes have no objective validity for God himself but are necessary for us; if God is to exist for us, he must appear with attributes analogous to ours.
+But here it is also essential to observe, and this phenomenon is an
+extremely remarkable one, characterising the very core of religion,
+that in proportion as the divine subject is in reality human, the
+greater is the apparent difference between God and man; that is,
+the more, by reflection on religion, by theology, is the identity of
+the divine and human denied, and the human, considered as such, is
+depreciated. [14] The reason of this is, that as what is positive in
+the conception of the divine being can only be human, the conception
+of man, as an object of consciousness, can only be negative. To
+enrich God, man must become poor; that God may be all, man must be
+nothing. But he desires to be nothing in himself, because what he takes
+from himself is not lost to him, since it is preserved in God. Man has
+his being in God; why then should he have it in himself? Where is the
+necessity of positing the same thing twice, of having it twice? What
+man withdraws from himself, what he renounces in himself, he only
+enjoys in an incomparably higher and fuller measure in God.
+But the distinction between what God is "in himself" and "for me" destroys religion's peace and is untenable. I cannot know if God is something else in himself; what he is to me is everything he is. In the attributes through which he exists for me, I find his very nature. The religious person finds satisfaction in what God is in relation to them; they know no other relation. Making this distinction means trying to stand above one's own nature—the absolute measure of being. This is illusion. I can only distinguish between an object "in itself" and "for me" when it could appear differently. I cannot when it appears as my nature's absolute measure determines it must.
+The monks made a vow of chastity to God; they mortified the sexual
+passion in themselves, but therefore they had in heaven, in the
+Virgin Mary, the image of woman--an image of love. They could
+the more easily dispense with real woman in proportion as an ideal
+woman was an object of love to them. The greater the importance they
+attached to the denial of sensuality, the greater the importance of
+the heavenly virgin for them: she was to them in the place of Christ,
+in the stead of God. The more the sensual tendencies are renounced,
+the more sensual is the God to whom they are sacrificed. For whatever
+is made an offering to God has an especial value attached to it; in it
+God is supposed to have especial pleasure. That which is the highest
+in the estimation of man is naturally the highest in the estimation
+of his God; what pleases man pleases God also. The Hebrews did not
+offer to Jehovah unclean, ill-conditioned animals; on the contrary,
+those which they most highly prized, which they themselves ate,
+were also the food of God (Cibus Dei, Lev. iii. 2). Wherever,
+therefore, the denial of the sensual delights is made a special
+offering, a sacrifice well-pleasing to God, there the highest value is
+attached to the senses, and the sensuality which has been renounced
+is unconsciously restored, in the fact that God takes the place
+of the material delights which have been renounced. The nun weds
+herself to God; she has a heavenly bridegroom, the monk a heavenly
+bride. But the heavenly virgin is only a sensible presentation of
+a general truth, having relation to the essence of religion. Man
+denies as to himself only what he attributes to God. Religion
+abstracts from man, from the world; but it can only abstract from
+the limitations, from the phenomena; in short, from the negative,
+not from the essence, the positive, of the world and humanity: hence,
+in the very abstraction and negation it must recover that from which
+it abstracts, or believes itself to abstract. And thus, in reality,
+whatever religion consciously denies--always supposing that what is
+denied by it is something essential, true, and consequently incapable
+of being ultimately denied--it unconsciously restores in God. Thus,
+in religion man denies his reason; of himself he knows nothing of God,
+his thoughts are only worldly, earthly; he can only believe what God
+reveals to him. But on this account the thoughts of God are human,
+earthly thoughts: like man, he has plans in his mind, he accommodates
+himself to circumstances and grades of intelligence, like a tutor
+with his pupils; he calculates closely the effect of his gifts and
+revelations; he observes man in all his doings; he knows all things,
+even the most earthly, the commonest, the most trivial. In brief,
+man in relation to God denies his own knowledge, his own thoughts,
+that he may place them in God. Man gives up his personality; but in
+return, God, the Almighty, infinite, unlimited being, is a person;
+he denies human dignity, the human ego; but in return God is to him
+a selfish, egoistical being, who in all things seeks only himself,
+his own honour, his own ends; he represents God as simply seeking
+the satisfaction of his own selfishness, while yet he frowns on that
+of every other being; his God is the very luxury of egoism. [15]
+Religion further denies goodness as a quality of human nature; man
+is wicked, corrupt, incapable of good; but, on the other hand, God is
+only good--the Good Being. Man's nature demands as an object goodness,
+personified as God; but is it not hereby declared that goodness is an
+essential tendency of man? If my heart is wicked, my understanding
+perverted, how can I perceive and feel the holy to be holy, the
+good to be good? Could I perceive the beauty of a fine picture if
+my mind were æsthetically an absolute piece of perversion? Though I
+may not be a painter, though I may not have the power of producing
+what is beautiful myself, I must yet have æsthetic feeling, æsthetic
+comprehension, since I perceive the beauty that is presented to me
+externally. Either goodness does not exist at all for man, or, if it
+does exist, therein is revealed to the individual man the holiness
+and goodness of human nature. That which is absolutely opposed to
+my nature, to which I am united by no bond of sympathy, is not even
+conceivable or perceptible by me. The holy is in opposition to me
+only as regards the modifications of my personality, but as regards my
+fundamental nature it is in unity with me. The holy is a reproach to
+my sinfulness; in it I recognise myself as a sinner; but in so doing,
+while I blame myself, I acknowledge what I am not, but ought to be,
+and what, for that very reason, I, according to my destination, can be;
+for an "ought" which has no corresponding capability does not affect
+me, is a ludicrous chimæra without any true relation to my mental
+constitution. But when I acknowledge goodness as my destination, as my
+law, I acknowledge it, whether consciously or unconsciously, as my own
+nature. Another nature than my own, one different in quality, cannot
+touch me. I can perceive sin as sin, only when I perceive it to be a
+contradiction of myself with myself--that is, of my personality with
+my fundamental nature. As a contradiction of the absolute, considered
+as another being, the feeling of sin is inexplicable, unmeaning.
+If my idea is determined by my species' constitution, the distinction disappears because the conception is absolute. The species' measure is humanity's absolute law. Religion is convinced its God-conceptions are what everyone must have to possess truth—necessary conceptions of human nature, objectively true. To any religion, other faiths' gods are mere "ideas," but its own conception is God himself—the true God. Religion wants a complete Deity, not a phantom; it gives up its existence by giving up God's nature. Skepticism is religion's arch-enemy, and the distinction between God "in himself" and "for me" is skeptical and irreligious.
+The distinction between Augustinianism and Pelagianism consists only
+in this, that the former expresses after the manner of religion what
+the latter expresses after the manner of Rationalism. Both say the
+same thing, both vindicate the goodness of man; but Pelagianism does it
+directly, in a rationalistic and moral form; Augustinianism indirectly,
+in a mystical, that is, a religious form. [16] For that which is given
+to man's God is in truth given to man himself; what a man declares
+concerning God, he in truth declares concerning himself. Augustinianism
+would be a truth, and a truth opposed to Pelagianism, only if man
+had the devil for his God, and, with the consciousness that he was
+the devil, honoured, reverenced, and worshipped him as the highest
+being. But so long as man adores a good being as his God, so long
+does he contemplate in God the goodness of his own nature.
+Whatever a person considers the self-existent, highest being—beyond which they conceive nothing greater—is their Divine Being. Why ask what this being is "in himself"?
+As with the doctrine of the radical corruption of human nature, so is
+it with the identical doctrine, that man can do nothing good, i.e.,
+in truth, nothing of himself--by his own strength. For the denial of
+human strength and spontaneous moral activity to be true, the moral
+activity of God must also be denied; and we must say, with the Oriental
+nihilist or pantheist: the Divine being is absolutely without will or
+action, indifferent, knowing nothing of the discrimination between evil
+and good. But he who defines God as an active being, and not only so,
+but as morally active and morally critical,--as a being who loves,
+works, and rewards good, punishes, rejects, and condemns evil,--he who
+thus defines God only in appearance denies human activity, in fact,
+making it the highest, the most real activity. He who makes God act
+humanly, declares human activity to be divine; he says: A god who is
+not active, and not morally or humanly active, is no god; and thus
+he makes the idea of the Godhead dependent on the idea of activity,
+that is, of human activity, for a higher he knows not.
+> **Quote:** "If God were an object to the bird, he would be a winged being: the bird knows nothing higher, nothing more blissful, than the winged condition."
+Man--this is the mystery of religion--projects his being into
+objectivity, [17] and then again makes himself an object to this
+projected image of himself thus converted into a subject; he thinks of
+himself, is an object to himself, but as the object of an object, of
+another being than himself. Thus here. Man is an object to God. That
+man is good or evil is not indifferent to God; no! He has a lively,
+profound interest in man's being good; he wills that man should be
+good, happy--for without goodness there is no happiness. Thus the
+religious man virtually retracts the nothingness of human activity,
+by making his dispositions and actions an object to God, by making
+man the end of God--for that which is an object to the mind is
+an end in action; by making the divine activity a means of human
+salvation. God acts, that man may be good and happy. Thus man, while
+he is apparently humiliated to the lowest degree, is in truth exalted
+to the highest. Thus, in and through God, man has in view himself
+alone. It is true that man places the aim of his action in God, but
+God has no other aim of action than the moral and eternal salvation
+of man: thus man has in fact no other aim than himself. The divine
+activity is not distinct from the human.
+How ridiculous if the bird said, "To me, God appears as a bird, but what he is in himself, I do not know." To the bird, the highest nature is bird-nature; remove that, and you remove the conception of the highest being. To ask whether God is in himself what he is for me is to ask whether God is God; it is to try to stand above one's God.
+How could the divine activity work on me as its object, nay, work
+in me, if it were essentially different from me; how could it have
+a human aim, the aim of ameliorating and blessing man, if it were
+not itself human? Does not the purpose determine the nature of
+the act? When man makes his moral improvement an aim to himself,
+he has divine resolutions, divine projects; but also, when God seeks
+the salvation of man, he has human ends and a human mode of activity
+corresponding to these ends. Thus in God man has only his own activity
+as an object. But for the very reason that he regards his own activity
+as objective, goodness only as an object, he necessarily receives
+the impulse, the motive not from himself, but from this object. He
+contemplates his nature as external to himself, and this nature as
+goodness; thus it is self-evident, it is mere tautology to say that
+the impulse to good comes only from thence where he places the good.
+Whenever religious attributes are seen as mere "anthropomorphisms," doubt has conquered faith. Only timid inconsistency prevents moving from this to formal denial of attributes, then denial of the subject. If you doubt attributes' objective truth, you must doubt the subject's objective truth too. If attributes are anthropomorphisms, the subject is also. If love, goodness, and personality are human, then God's very existence is an anthropomorphism—a purely human assumption. To know God and not oneself to be God, to know blessedness and not oneself to enjoy it, is a state of disunity and unhappiness. Higher beings know nothing of this unhappiness; they have no conception of that which they are not.
+God is the highest subjectivity of man abstracted from himself;
+hence man can do nothing of himself, all goodness comes from God. The
+more subjective God is, the more completely does man divest himself
+of his subjectivity, because God is, per se, his relinquished self,
+the possession of which he however again vindicates to himself. As
+the action of the arteries drives the blood into the extremities,
+and the action of the veins brings it back again, as life in general
+consists in a perpetual systole and diastole; so is it in religion. In
+the religious systole man propels his own nature from himself, he
+throws himself outward; in the religious diastole he receives the
+rejected nature into his heart again. God alone is the being who
+acts of himself,--this is the force of repulsion in religion; God is
+the being who acts in me, with me, through me, upon me, for me, is
+the principle of my salvation, of my good dispositions and actions,
+consequently my own good principle and nature,--this is the force of
+attraction in religion.
+You believe love is divine because you love; you believe God is wise and benevolent because you know nothing better in yourself. You believe God exists as a "subject" because you exist as a subject. You know no higher human good than loving and being good and wise, and no higher happiness than existing as a subject. God is an existing subject to you for the same reason he is wise, blessed, and personal.
+The course of religious development which has been generally indicated
+consists specifically in this, that man abstracts more and more from
+God, and attributes more and more to himself. This is especially
+apparent in the belief in revelation. That which to a later age or a
+cultured people is given by nature or reason, is to an earlier age,
+or to a yet uncultured people, given by God. Every tendency of man,
+however natural--even the impulse to cleanliness, was conceived by
+the Israelites as a positive divine ordinance. From this example
+we again see that God is lowered, is conceived more entirely on
+the type of ordinary humanity, in proportion as man detracts from
+himself. How can the self-humiliation of man go further than when he
+disclaims the capability of fulfilling spontaneously the requirements
+of common decency? [18] The Christian religion, on the other hand,
+distinguished the impulses and passions of man according to their
+quality, their character; it represented only good emotions, good
+dispositions, good thoughts, as revelations, operations--that is,
+as dispositions, feelings, thoughts,--of God; for what God reveals is
+a quality of God himself: that of which the heart is full overflows
+the lips; as is the effect such is the cause; as the revelation,
+such the being who reveals himself. A God who reveals himself in
+good dispositions is a God whose essential attribute is only moral
+perfection. The Christian religion distinguishes inward moral purity
+from external physical purity; the Israelites identified the two. [19]
+In relation to the Israelitish religion, the Christian religion is
+one of criticism and freedom. The Israelite trusted himself to do
+nothing except what was commanded by God; he was without will even
+in external things; the authority of religion extended itself even
+to his food. The Christian religion, on the other hand, in all these
+external things made man dependent on himself, i.e., placed in man
+what the Israelite placed out of himself in God. Israel is the most
+complete presentation of Positivism in religion. In relation to the
+Israelite, the Christian is an esprit fort, a free-thinker. Thus do
+things change. What yesterday was still religion is no longer such
+to-day; and what to-day is atheism, to-morrow will be religion.
+The only difference between divine attributes and the divine subject is this: the subject's existence doesn't seem like an anthropomorphism because it's tied to your own existence. Attributes seem like anthropomorphisms because their necessity isn't identical with your existence but develops through thought. I exist whether wise or unwise; existence is the primary fact, presupposed by attributes. So people might give up attributes but cling to God's existence as absolute truth.
+But this distinction is merely apparent. The subject's necessity lies entirely in the attribute's necessity. You are a subject only as a human subject; your existence's certainty lies in your human attributes' reality. What the subject *is* lies only in its attributes; the attribute is the subject's truth. The subject is merely the personified attribute—attribute conceived as entity. Subject and attribute differ only as existence and essence. To deny attributes is to deny the subject. What remains of the human subject stripped of human attributes? Even in everyday language, we substitute divine attributes—Providence, Omniscience, Omnipotence—for the divine subject itself.
+The certainty of God's existence—described as more certain than one's own—depends entirely on the certainty of God's qualities; it's not immediate certainty itself. To a Christian, only the Christian God exists; to a pagan, only the pagan God. The ancient Greek never doubted Jupiter's existence because he wasn't troubled by Jupiter's nature. He couldn't conceive God having other qualities, and those qualities were divine reality to him. Attribute reality is the only guarantee of existence.
+Whatever a person perceives as true, they immediately perceive as real and objectively existent, because originally only the real is "true"—true as opposed to merely thought, dreamed, or imagined. The idea of existence is the original idea of truth. First humans make truth dependent on existence; later they make existence dependent on truth. God is humanity's nature regarded as absolute truth. Religion is as diverse as the conditions under which humans conceive their own nature as the highest being. These conditions are their truth and therefore the highest existence. Only the highest existence truly "exists."
+Therefore, God is a real, existing being for the same reason he is specific and definite. God's qualities are humanity's essential qualities, and a specific person has reality only within specific conditions. Remove a Greek's "Greekness," and you remove their existence. In any specific religion, God's existence is immediately certain. Just as a Greek was necessarily Greek, his gods were necessarily Greek beings—real and existent. Religion is a conception of world and human nature identical to one's own nature. This conception stands above the person, animating and governing them. No proof is needed to connect qualities with existence, and doubt is impossible. Only what is separate from my being can be doubted. How can I doubt God, who is my very being? To doubt God is to doubt myself. Only when God is thought abstractly—when attributes result from philosophical abstraction—does separation between subject and predicate arise. This creates the fiction that subject existence differs from attributes: immediate and certain, versus doubtful attributes. But this is fiction. A God with abstract attributes has abstract existence. Existence changes with qualities. Subject-predicate identity is proven by religion's progressive development, identical to human culture's development.
+In a purely natural state, humans' god is a nature-god—a personified natural force. Where humans live in houses, they house gods in temples. The temple manifests value placed on beautiful buildings; temples built for religion are truly temples for architecture. As humanity moves from savagery to culture, distinguishing what is fitting for humans, they simultaneously distinguish what is fitting for God. God is the concept of majesty and highest dignity; religious sentiment is feeling of supreme fitness. Later, cultured Greek artists first embodied dignity, spiritual grandeur, and serenity in god-statues. Why were these divine attributes? Because Greeks regarded these qualities as divine. Why exclude low passions? Because they saw them as unworthy, inhuman, ungodlike. Homeric gods eat and drink—implying these are divine pleasures. Physical strength is their attribute: Zeus is strongest. Why? Because strength itself was glorious and divine. To ancient Germans, warrior virtues were highest; therefore their supreme god was Odin, god of war—war being "the original or oldest law."
+> **Quote:** "Not the attribute of the divinity, but the divineness or deity of the attribute, is the first true Divine Being."
+What theology calls God—the Absolute, Infinite—is not God. What they considered *not* God is God: the attribute, quality, whatever possesses reality.
+> **Quote:** "Hence he alone is the true atheist to whom the predicates of the Divine Being,--for example, love, wisdom, justice,--are nothing; not he to whom merely the subject of these predicates is nothing."
+Denying the subject doesn't deny attributes themselves. Attributes have intrinsic, independent reality; they demand recognition by nature. They are self-evident truths. It doesn't follow that goodness, justice, and wisdom are illusions because God's existence is an illusion, nor are they truths because God is a truth. The concept of God depends on justice and benevolence; a God without them is no God. The reverse is not true.
+> **Quote:** "The fact is not that a quality is divine because God has it, but that God has it because it is in itself divine: because without it God would be a defective being."
+Justice, wisdom, and every quality constituting divinity are determined independently. God is defined by qualities already judged worthy of divine nature. Only when I identify God with justice—thinking of God as justice's reality—is God self-determined. If God as subject is defined by the predicate, divinity's rank belongs to the predicate, not subject. Only when contradictory attributes unite in one person-conception do we lose sight of religion's origin. We forget what reflection turned into a separable predicate was originally the true subject.
+Greeks and Romans deified accidental traits as substances, turning virtues, states of mind, and passions into independent beings. For religious humans, the self is the measure of all reality. Whatever impresses a person—or produces unusual effect, even an inexplicable sound—they personify as divine. Religion encompasses all world objects; everything existing has been religiously revered. In religion's nature and consciousness, there is nothing beyond what exists in man's nature and his self/world consciousness. Religion has no exclusive material. In Rome, even fear and terror had temples. Christians transformed mental phenomena into independent beings, their feelings into qualities of things, their governing passions into world-governing powers. They turned predicates of their own nature into independent existences. Devils, goblins, witches, ghosts, and angels were sacred truths while religious spirit held sway.
+To avoid admitting divine and human attributes' identity—and thus divine and human nature's identity—people claim God possesses infinite fullness of various attributes. They say we know only a few now (those analogous to ours), while the rest—which would make God entirely different from humans—will be known after death. But truly different attributes can only be realized in different beings or individuals. Human nature presents infinite abundance of attributes and therefore infinite abundance of individuals. Every new person is a new predicate, a new phase of humanity. As many people as exist, so exist humanity's powers and properties. The same elements appear new and unique through different conditions.
+The mystery of divine attributes' inexhaustible fullness is merely the mystery of human nature as infinitely varied and adaptable. A being with truly infinite qualities exists only in space and time. Where truly different attributes exist, there are different times. One may be musician, author, physician, but cannot compose, write, and operate simultaneously. Time, not Hegelian logic, unites opposites in the same subject. When attributes detach from human nature and combine with God, this "infinite fullness" becomes a concept without reality—a fantasy borrowed from the sensory world but stripped of its truth conditions. It contradicts the Divine Being as spiritual, abstract, and simple; God's attributes involve all others because no real difference exists between them. If present attributes don't contain future ones, then present and future God are distinct beings—contradicting theology's unified, simple God.
+Why assign a specific attribute to God? Because it's divine—expressing no limitation. Why apply other attributes? Because however different, they all express perfection and limitlessness. Therefore I can imagine countless attributes for God, since all must align with divinity's abstract idea. Spinoza's system works this way: he speaks of infinite attributes for divine substance but specifies only Thought and Extension. Why? Knowing others is irrelevant; they're indifferent and superfluous. With innumerable attributes, I'm still saying the same as with Thought and Extension. Why is Thought an attribute? Because Spinoza says it can be conceived alone and expresses something indivisible, perfect, infinite. Why Extension? Same reason. Substance can have indefinite attributes because it's their identity and equivalence—not specific differences—that makes them attributes. Or rather, substance has innumerable attributes only because it has no real, definite attribute. Vague unity from thought is supplemented by vague multiplicity from imagination. Because the predicate is not *multum* (much), it is *multa* (many). In truth, Thought and Extension are the positive attributes. These two say infinitely more than nameless ones because they express something definite. But substance is too indifferent to be "something"—to have specific qualities. To avoid being "something," it is essentially nothing.
+Once we show the subject's nature lies entirely in its attributes—that the predicate is the true subject—we prove that if divine attributes are human nature's attributes, their subject is also human nature. Divine attributes are partly general, partly personal. General metaphysical attributes are external supports, not religion's essence. Personal attributes constitute religion's essence—making the Divine Being an object of devotion: God as Person, moral Lawgiver, Father of humanity, Holy One, Just, Good, Merciful. These definitions, especially applied to personality, are purely human. Consequently, in religious relationship with God, humans are actually relating to their own nature. To the religious mind, these attributes aren't mere concepts to be distinguished from God in himself—they're truths, facts, realities. Religion knows nothing of "anthropomorphisms"; to believers, they're not human projections. It's religion's essence that these definitions express God's actual nature. Only analytical reflection calls them "images," defending while denying. To religious sentiment, God is real Father, real Love, real Mercy—a real, living, personal being, so his attributes are living and personal. Descriptions satisfying religious feeling are those offending analytical mind. Religion is essentially emotion; thus emotion is necessarily divine. Even anger is not unworthy of God if religiously motivated.
+A remarkable phenomenon characterizes religion's core: as the divine subject becomes more human in reality, the apparent difference between God and man grows. Through theological reflection, divine-human identity is denied and human nature devalued [14]—because everything positive in God can only be human, man's concept can only be negative.
+> **Quote:** "To enrich God, man must become poor; that God may be all, man must be nothing."
+The individual accepts being nothing because what he removes from himself is preserved in God. Man has his being in God; why need it in himself? What one withdraws and renounces, one enjoys incomparably higher and fuller in God.
+Monks vowed chastity to God, suppressing sexual passion, but gained the Virgin Mary in heaven—an image of woman and love. They lived more easily without real women because an ideal woman became their love's object. The more they denied physical senses, the more important the heavenly Virgin became—she replaced Christ, even God. The more one renounces sensuality, the more sensual the sacrificial God becomes. What is offered to God receives special value; God is assumed to take special pleasure. What humans value most, their God values most. Hebrews didn't offer Jehovah sickly animals; those they prized and ate themselves were "God's food." Thus denying physical delights as sacrifice to God actually attaches highest value to senses. Renounced sensuality is unconsciously restored when God replaces abandoned material delights. The nun marries God, having a heavenly bridegroom, as the monk has a heavenly bride. This heavenly Virgin physically represents a general truth:
+> **Quote:** "Man denies as to himself only what he attributes to God."
+Religion separates from man and world, but only from limitations and appearances—the negative—not from positive essence. Consequently, in denying, it must reclaim what it thinks it's separating. Whatever religion consciously denies—if essential and true, therefore impossible to discard—it unconsciously restores in God.
+Thus religion denies man's reason; he claims to know nothing of God independently, believing his thoughts worldly, believing only God's revelation. Yet God's thoughts are human, earthly: God has plans, adapts to circumstances and intelligence like a tutor, calculates revelations' effects, observes humans in all doings—knowing mundane things. Man denies his knowledge to place it in God. Man gives up personality, but God—the almighty, infinite being—is a person. Man denies human dignity and ego; but God becomes a self-centered, egoistic being seeking only his own honor, frowning on others' selfishness. This God is egoism's ultimate luxury. [15]
+Religion denies goodness as a human quality, claiming man wicked, corrupt, incapable of good. Meanwhile God is only good—the Good Being. Human nature demands goodness personified as God; but doesn't this declare goodness is man's essential drive? If my heart were truly wicked, how could I perceive holiness as holy? If my mind were aesthetically perverted, how could I see a fine picture's beauty? Though not a painter, I must possess aesthetic feeling to perceive beauty. Either goodness doesn't exist for man, or its existence reveals human nature's holiness and goodness.
+> **Quote:** "That which is absolutely opposed to my nature, to which I am united by no bond of sympathy, is not even conceivable or perceptible by me."
+The holy opposes me only regarding personality's flaws, but unites with my fundamental nature. Holiness reproaches my sinfulness; in it I recognize myself as sinner. Yet in blaming myself, I acknowledge what I am not but ought to be—and therefore can be. An "ought" without corresponding "can" doesn't affect me; it's ridiculous fantasy. But when I acknowledge goodness as my destination and law, I acknowledge it as my nature—consciously or unconsciously. A nature qualitatively different from mine cannot touch me. I perceive sin only as contradiction of myself with myself—conflict between personality and fundamental nature. As contradiction of an absolute "other" being, sin-feeling is inexplicable and meaningless.
+The distinction between Augustine and Pelagius is merely that the former expresses religiously what the latter expresses rationally. Both defend man's goodness; Pelagianism does it directly in logical-moral form, Augustinianism indirectly in mystical-religious form. [16] What is given to man's God is truly given to man himself.
+> **Quote:** "What a man declares concerning God, he in truth declares concerning himself."
+Augustinianism would only oppose Pelagianism if man worshipped the devil as highest being. But as long as man adores a good God, he contemplates his own nature's goodness.
+The same applies to radical corruption doctrine—that man can do no good by his own strength. Denying human strength requires denying God's moral activity too. We'd have to say, like Oriental nihilists, that the Divine being is without will or action, indifferent to good and evil. But whoever defines God as morally active—loving, working for, rewarding good while punishing evil—only appears to deny human activity. In fact, they make it the highest, most real activity.
+> **Quote:** "He who makes God act humanly, declares human activity to be divine."
+This says a god not active—and not morally/humanly active—is no god at all. Divinity's idea depends on activity's idea, specifically human activity, for no higher form is known.
+> **Quote:** "Man—this is the mystery of religion—projects his being into objectivity, and then again makes himself an object to this projected image of himself thus converted into a subject."  [17]
+Man becomes God's object. Whether man is good or evil matters profoundly to God; He wills man be good and happy—for without goodness, no happiness. Thus the religious person virtually retracts human activity's worthlessness by making his actions/character God's object, making humanity God's end. Since mind's object is action's goal, divine activity becomes means for human salvation. God acts so man may be good and happy. While man appears humiliated, he's actually exalted. Through God, man focuses on himself alone. Man places his action's aim in God, but God has no aim beyond man's moral salvation: thus man aims only at himself. Divine activity isn't distinct from human activity.
+How could divine activity work on me if essentially different? How could it have human aim—improving man—if not itself human? Doesn't purpose determine act's nature? When one makes moral improvement their aim, they have divine resolutions; when God seeks man's salvation, He has human ends and activity mode. In God, man has only his own activity as object.
+Because he regards his activity as external and goodness as object, he receives motive from that object, not himself. He views his nature as outside himself—as goodness; thus it's mere repetition to say good's impulse comes only from where he's positioned good. God is man's highest subjectivity, abstracted from self; hence man feels he can do nothing himself and all goodness comes from God. The more "subjective" God is, the more completely the person divests their own subjectivity, because God is their relinquished self—eventually reclaimed.
+As arteries drive blood outward and veins return it, as life consists of perpetual contraction and expansion, so in religion. In religious "systole," man propels his nature away; he throws himself outward. In religious "diastole," he receives the rejected nature back. The idea that "God alone acts of himself" is religion's repulsive force; "God acts in me, through me, for me" is salvation's principle—my good nature's attraction force.
+Religious development's course is that man abstracts more from God and attributes more to himself. This is clearest in revelation belief. What later ages attribute to nature/reason, earlier peoples attribute to God. Ancient Israelites saw every impulse—even cleanliness drive—as divine command. This shows God conceived more in ordinary humanity's image as man denies his own capabilities. How far can self-humiliation go beyond disclaiming ability to fulfill common decency? [18]
+Christianity distinguished human impulses/passions by quality, representing only good emotions/thoughts as God's operations. What God reveals is God's quality: the heart's fullness overflows the lips. As the effect, so the cause; as revelation, so the revealing being. A God revealing good dispositions has moral perfection as essential attribute. Christianity distinguished internal moral from external physical purity; Israelites identified them. [19]
+Compared to Israelite religion, Christianity is criticism and freedom. Israelites trusted themselves to do nothing unless God commanded; they lacked personal will even in externals, as religious authority extended to food. Christianity made man responsible for externals—placing within man what Israel placed outside in God. Israel is religion's most complete "positivism." Compared to Israelites, Christians are free-thinkers. This is how things change:
+> **Quote:** "What yesterday was still religion is no longer such to-day; and what to-day is atheism, to-morrow will be religion."
 ## PART I. - THE TRUE OR ANTHROPOLOGICAL ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
 ### CHAPTER II. - GOD AS A BEING OF THE UNDERSTANDING.
+> **Quote:** "Religion is the disuniting of man from himself; he sets God before him as the antithesis of himself."
+Religion is the disuniting of man from himself; he sets God before him
+as the antithesis of himself. God is not what man is--man is not what
+God is. God is the infinite, man the finite being; God is perfect,
+man imperfect; God eternal, man temporal; God almighty, man weak;
+God holy, man sinful. God and man are extremes: God is the absolutely
+positive, the sum of all realities; man the absolutely negative,
+comprehending all negations.
+God is not what man is—man is not what God is. God is the infinite, man the finite being; God perfect, man imperfect; God eternal, man temporal; God almighty, man weak; God holy, man sinful. God and man are extremes:
+But in religion man contemplates his own latent nature. Hence it must
+be shown that this antithesis, this differencing of God and man, with
+which religion begins, is a differencing of man with his own nature.
+> **Quote:** "God is the absolutely positive, the sum of all realities; man the absolutely negative, comprehending all negations."
+The inherent necessity of this proof is at once apparent from
+this,--that if the divine nature, which is the object of religion,
+were really different from the nature of man, a division, a disunion
+could not take place. If God is really a different being from myself,
+why should his perfection trouble me? Disunion exists only between
+beings who are at variance, but who ought to be one, who can be one,
+and who consequently in nature, in truth, are one. On this general
+ground, then, the nature with which man feels himself in disunion
+must be inborn, immanent in himself, but at the same time it must be
+of a different character from that nature or power which gives him
+the feeling, the consciousness of reconciliation, of union with God,
+or, what is the same thing, with himself.
+But in religion, man contemplates his own hidden nature. Therefore, this opposition between God and man is actually a distinction man makes within his own nature. If the divine nature were truly different from man's nature, no such division could occur. If God is really a being different from myself, why should his perfection trouble me? Conflict exists only between beings who are at odds but who *ought* to be one, who *can* be one, and who are fundamentally one in their true nature. The nature from which man feels alienated must be innate and internal to him; yet it must be of a different character from the nature or power that gives him reconciliation and unity with God.
+This nature is nothing else than the intelligence--the reason
+or the understanding. God as the antithesis of man, as a being
+not human, i.e., not personally human, is the objective nature
+of the understanding. The pure, perfect divine nature is the
+self-consciousness of the understanding, the consciousness which
+the understanding has of its own perfection. The understanding
+knows nothing of the sufferings of the heart; it has no desires,
+no passions, no wants, and, for that reason, no deficiencies and
+weaknesses, as the heart has. Men in whom the intellect predominates,
+who, with one-sided but all the more characteristic definiteness,
+embody and personify for us the nature of the understanding, are free
+from the anguish of the heart, from the passions, the excesses of
+the man who has strong emotions; they are not passionately interested
+in any finite, i.e., particular object; they do not give themselves
+in pledge; they are free. "To want nothing, and by this freedom from
+wants to become like the immortal gods;"--"not to subject ourselves
+to things, but things to us;"--"all is vanity;"--these and similar
+sayings are the mottoes of the men who are governed by abstract
+understanding. The understanding is that part of our nature which
+is neutral, impassible, not to bribed, not subject to illusions--the
+pure, passionless light of the intelligence. It is the categorical,
+impartial consciousness of the fact as fact, because it is itself of
+an objective nature. It is the consciousness of the uncontradictory,
+because it is itself the uncontradictory unity, the source of
+logical identity. It is the consciousness of law, necessity, rule,
+measure, because it is itself the activity of law, the necessity
+of the nature of things under the form of spontaneous activity, the
+rule of rules, the absolute measure, the measure of measures. Only
+by the understanding can man judge and act in contradiction with
+his dearest human, that is, personal feelings, when the God of the
+understanding,--law, necessity, right,--commands it. The father who,
+as a judge, condemns his own son to death because he knows him to be
+guilty, can do this only as a rational, not as an emotional being. The
+understanding shows us the faults and weaknesses even of our beloved
+ones; it shows us even our own. It is for this reason that it so
+often throws us into painful collision with ourselves, with our
+own hearts. We do not like to give reason the upper hand: we are
+too tender to ourselves to carry out the true, but hard, relentless
+verdict of the understanding. The understanding is the power which has
+relation to species: the heart represents particular circumstances,
+individuals,--the understanding, general circumstances, universals;
+it is the superhuman, i.e., the impersonal power in man. Only by and
+in the understanding has man the power of abstraction from himself,
+from his subjective being,--of exalting himself to general ideas
+and relations, of distinguishing the object from the impressions
+which it produces on his feelings, of regarding it in and by itself
+without reference to human personality. Philosophy, mathematics,
+astronomy, physics, in short, science in general, is the practical
+proof, because it is the product of this truly infinite and divine
+activity. Religious anthropomorphisms, therefore, are in contradiction
+with the understanding; it repudiates their application to God; it
+denies them. But this God, free from anthropomorphisms, impartial,
+passionless, is nothing else than the nature of the understanding
+itself regarded as objective.
+This nature is nothing other than the intelligence—reason or the understanding. God as the antithesis of man—as a being who is not human, or rather, not *personally* human—is the objective nature of the understanding. The pure, perfect divine nature is the self-consciousness of the understanding—the awareness the understanding has of its own perfection. The understanding knows nothing of the sufferings of the heart; it has no desires, no passions, no needs, and therefore no deficiencies or weaknesses. People in whom the intellect predominates are free from the heart's anguish. They are not passionately interested in any specific, finite object; they do not give themselves in pledge; they are free.
+God as God, that is, as a being not finite, not human, not materially
+conditioned, not phenomenal, is only an object of thought. He is
+the incorporeal, formless, incomprehensible--the abstract, negative
+being: he is known, i.e., becomes an object, only by abstraction
+and negation (viâ negationis). Why? Because he is nothing but the
+objective nature of the thinking power, or in general of the power or
+activity, name it what you will, whereby man is conscious of reason,
+of mind, of intelligence. There is no other spirit, that is (for the
+idea of spirit is simply the idea of thought, of intelligence, of
+understanding, every other spirit being a spectre of the imagination),
+no other intelligence which man can believe in or conceive than that
+intelligence which enlightens him, which is active in him. He can
+do nothing more than separate the intelligence from the limitations
+of his own individuality. The "infinite spirit," in distinction
+from the finite, is therefore nothing else than the intelligence
+disengaged from the limits of individuality and corporeality,--for
+individuality and corporeality are inseparable,--intelligence posited
+in and by itself. God, said the schoolmen, the Christian fathers,
+and long before them the heathen philosophers,--God is immaterial
+essence, intelligence, spirit, pure understanding. Of God as God no
+image can be made; but canst thou frame an image of mind? Has mind a
+form? Is not its activity the most inexplicable, the most incapable
+of representation? God is incomprehensible; but knowest thou the
+nature of the intelligence? Hast thou searched out the mysterious
+operation of thought, the hidden nature of self-consciousness? Is not
+self-consciousness the enigma of enigmas? Did not the old mystics,
+schoolmen, and fathers, long ago compare the incomprehensibility of the
+divine nature with that of the human intelligence, and thus, in truth,
+identify the nature of God with the nature of man? [20] God as God--as
+a purely thinkable being, an object of the intellect--is thus nothing
+else than the reason in its utmost intensification become objective
+to itself. It is asked what is the understanding or the reason? The
+answer is found in the idea of God. Everything must express itself,
+reveal itself, make itself objective, affirm itself. God is the
+reason expressing, affirming itself as the highest existence. To the
+imagination, the reason is the revelation of God; but to the reason,
+God is the revelation of the reason; since what reason is, what it can
+do, is first made objective in God. God is a need of the intelligence,
+a necessary thought--the highest degree of the thinking power. "The
+reason cannot rest in sensuous things;" it can find contentment
+only when it penetrates to the highest, first necessary being,
+which can be an object to the reason alone. Why? Because with the
+conception of this being it first completes itself, because only
+in the idea of the highest nature is the highest nature of reason
+existent, the highest step of the thinking power attained: and it is
+a general truth, that we feel a blank, a void, a want in ourselves,
+and are consequently unhappy and unsatisfied, so long as we have not
+come to the last degree of a power, to that quo nihil majus cogitari
+potest,--so long as we cannot bring our inborn capacity for this or
+that art, this or that science, to the utmost proficiency. For only in
+the highest proficiency is art truly art; only in its highest degree
+is thought truly thought, reason. Only when thy thought is God dost
+thou truly think, rigorously speaking; for only God is the realised,
+consummate, exhausted thinking power. Thus in conceiving God, man first
+conceives reason as it truly is, though by means of the imagination
+he conceives this divine nature as distinct from reason, because
+as a being affected by external things he is accustomed always to
+distinguish the object from the conception of it. And here he applies
+the same process to the conception of the reason, thus for an existence
+in reason, in thought, substituting an existence in space and time,
+from which he had, nevertheless, previously abstracted it. God, as
+a metaphysical being, is the intelligence satisfied in itself, or
+rather, conversely, the intelligence, satisfied in itself, thinking
+itself as the absolute being, is God as a metaphysical being. Hence
+all metaphysical predicates of God are real predicates only when
+they are recognised as belonging to thought, to intelligence, to
+the understanding.
+> **Quote:** "To want nothing, and by this freedom from wants to become like the immortal gods"
+The understanding is that which conditionates and co-ordinates all
+things, that which places all things in reciprocal dependence and
+connection, because it is itself immediate and unconditioned; it
+inquires for the cause of all things, because it has its own ground
+and end in itself. Only that which itself is nothing deduced, nothing
+derived, can deduce and construct, can regard all besides itself as
+derived; just as only that which exists for its own sake can view
+and treat other things as means and instruments. The understanding
+is thus the original, primitive being. The understanding derives all
+things from God as the first cause; it finds the world, without an
+intelligent cause, given over to senseless, aimless chance; that is,
+it finds only in itself, in its own nature, the efficient and the final
+cause of the world--the existence of the world is only then clear and
+comprehensible when it sees the explanation of that existence in the
+source of all clear and intelligible ideas, i.e., in itself. The being
+that works with design towards certain ends, i.e., with understanding,
+is alone the being that to the understanding has immediate certitude,
+self-evidence. Hence that which of itself has no designs, no purpose,
+must have the cause of its existence in the design of another, and
+that an intelligent being. And thus the understanding posits its own
+nature as the causal, first, premundane existence--i.e., being in rank
+the first but in time the last, it makes itself the first in time also.
+> **Quote:** "not to subject ourselves to things, but things to us"
+The understanding is to itself the criterion of all reality. That which
+is opposed to the understanding, that which is self-contradictory,
+is nothing; that which contradicts reason contradicts God. For
+example, it is a contradiction of reason to connect with the idea
+of the highest reality the limitations of definite time and place;
+and hence reason denies these of God as contradicting his nature. The
+reason can only believe in a God who is accordant with its own nature,
+in a God who is not beneath its own dignity, who, on the contrary,
+is a realisation of its own nature: i.e., the reason believes only
+in itself, in the absolute reality of its own nature. The reason
+is not dependent on God, but God on the reason. Even in the age
+of miracles and faith in authority, the understanding constitutes
+itself, at least formally, the criterion of divinity. God is all
+and can do all, it was said, by virtue of his omnipotence; but
+nevertheless he is nothing and he can do nothing which contradicts
+himself, i.e., reason. Even omnipotence cannot do what is contrary
+to reason. Thus above the divine omnipotence stands the higher power
+of reason; above the nature of God the nature of the understanding,
+as the criterion of that which is to be affirmed and denied of God,
+the criterion of the positive and negative. Canst thou believe in
+a God who is an unreasonable and wicked being? No, indeed; but why
+not? Because it is in contradiction with thy understanding to accept a
+wicked and unreasonable being as divine. What then dost thou affirm,
+what is an object to thee, in God? Thy own understanding. God is thy
+highest idea, the supreme effort of thy understanding, thy highest
+power of thought. God is the sum of all realities, i.e., the sum of
+all affirmations of the understanding. That which I recognise in the
+understanding as essential I place in God as existent: God is what
+the understanding thinks as the highest. But in what I perceive to
+be essential is revealed the nature of my understanding, is shown
+the power of my thinking faculty.
+> **Quote:** "all is vanity"
+Thus the understanding is the ens realissimum, the most real being
+of the old onto-theology. "Fundamentally," says onto-theology, "we
+cannot conceive God otherwise than by attributing to him without
+limit all the real qualities which we find in ourselves." [21]
+Our positive, essential qualities, our realities, are therefore
+the realities of God, but in us they exist with, in God without,
+limits. But what then withdraws the limits from the realities,
+what does away with the limits? The understanding. What, according
+to this, is the nature conceived without limits, but the nature of
+the understanding releasing, abstracting itself from all limits? As
+thou thinkest God, such is thy thought;--the measure of thy God is
+the measure of thy understanding. If thou conceivest God as limited,
+thy understanding is limited; if thou conceivest God as unlimited,
+thy understanding is unlimited; If, for example, thou conceivest God
+as a corporeal being, corporeality is the boundary, the limit of thy
+understanding; thou canst conceive nothing without a body. If, on the
+contrary, thou deniest corporeality of God, this is a corroboration
+and proof of the freedom of thy understanding from the limitation of
+corporeality. In the unlimited divine nature thou representest only
+thy unlimited understanding. And when thou declarest this unlimited
+being the ultimate essence, the highest being, thou sayest in reality
+nothing else than this: the être suprême, the highest being, is the
+understanding.
+These are the mottos of those governed by abstract understanding. The understanding is the part of our nature that is neutral, impassive, impossible to bribe or deceive—the pure, passionless light of intelligence. It is the impartial consciousness of facts as they are, because it is objective by its very nature. It is the consciousness of what is consistent, because it is itself a consistent unity and the source of logical identity. It is the consciousness of law, necessity, rule, and measure, because it is the activity of law—the necessity of nature expressed through spontaneous activity, the rule of all rules, the ultimate standard of measurement. Only through the understanding can a person judge and act in opposition to their dearest personal feelings, when the God of the understanding—law, necessity, and justice—demands it. A father who, as a judge, condemns his own son to death because he knows him to be guilty, can do this only as a rational being, not as an emotional one. The understanding reveals the faults and weaknesses even in those we love, and reveals our own as well. It often brings us into painful conflict with ourselves and our own hearts. We do not like to give reason the upper hand; we are too soft on ourselves to carry out the honest but hard, relentless verdict of the understanding. The understanding is the power related to the universal species, while the heart represents specific individuals and circumstances. The understanding is the impersonal, superhuman power in man. Only through the understanding does man have the power to step back from himself and his subjective existence—to rise toward general ideas, to distinguish an object from the impressions it makes on his feelings, and to regard it as it is in itself without reference to human personality. Philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, and physics—science in general—is the practical proof of this, as it is the product of this truly infinite and divine activity. Religious personifications contradict the understanding; the understanding rejects and denies their application to God. But this God—impartial, passionless, and free from human traits—is nothing more than the nature of the understanding itself, viewed as an external object.
+The understanding is further the self-subsistent and independent
+being. That which has no understanding is not self-subsistent, is
+dependent. A man without understanding is a man without will. He who
+has no understanding allows himself to be deceived, imposed upon,
+used as an instrument by others. How shall he whose understanding
+is the tool of another have an independent will? Only he who thinks
+is free and independent. It is only by the understanding that man
+reduces the things around and beneath him to mere means of his own
+existence. In general, that only is self-subsistent and independent
+which is an end to itself, an object to itself. That which is an end
+and object to itself is for that very reason--in so far as it is an
+object to itself--no longer a means and object for another being. To
+be without understanding is, in one word, to exist for another,--to
+be an object: to have understanding is to exist for oneself,--to
+be a subject. But that which no longer exists for another, but for
+itself, rejects all dependence on another being. It is true we, as
+physical beings, depend on the beings external to us, even as to the
+modifications of thought; but in so far as we think, in the activity of
+the understanding as such, we are dependent on no other being. Activity
+of thought is spontaneous activity. "When I think, I am conscious that
+my ego in me thinks, and not some other thing. I conclude, therefore,
+that this thinking in me does not inhere in another thing outside of
+me, but in myself, consequently that I am a substance, i.e., that I
+exist by myself, without being a predicate of another being." [22]
+Although we always need the air, yet as natural philosophers we
+convert the air from an object of our physical need into an object
+of the self-sufficing activity of thought, i.e., into a mere thing
+for us. In breathing I am the object of the air, the air the subject;
+but when I make the air an object of thought, of investigation, when
+I analyse it, I reverse this relation,--I make myself the subject,
+the air an object. But that which is the object of another being is
+dependent. Thus the plant is dependent on air and light, that is,
+it is an object for air, and light, not for itself. It is true that
+air and light are reciprocally an object for the plant. Physical
+life in general is nothing else than this perpetual interchange
+of the objective and subjective relation. We consume the air and
+are consumed by it; we enjoy and are enjoyed. The understanding
+alone enjoys all things without being itself enjoyed; it is the
+self-enjoying, self-sufficing existence--the absolute subject--the
+subject which cannot be reduced to the object of another being,
+because it makes all things objects, predicates of itself,--which
+comprehends all things in itself, because it is itself not a thing,
+because it is free from all things.
+God as God—that is, as a being who is not finite, human, physically conditioned, or part of the world of appearances—is strictly an object of thought. He is the bodiless, formless, and incomprehensible—the abstract, negative being. He is known and becomes an object only through abstraction and negation (*via negationis*). Why? Because he is nothing but the objective nature of the power of thought—the activity through which man is conscious of reason and intelligence. There is no other spirit (for the idea of "spirit" is simply the idea of thought or understanding; any other "spirit" is a ghost of the imagination) that man can believe in or conceive of besides the intelligence that enlightens him and is active within him. He can do no more than separate this intelligence from the limitations of his own individuality. The "infinite spirit," as distinguished from the finite, is therefore nothing but intelligence freed from the limits of individuality and the body. It is intelligence considered in and of itself. The medieval scholars, the Church Fathers, and the ancient philosophers long before them all said that God is immaterial essence, intelligence, spirit, or pure understanding. No image can be made of God; but can you create an image of the mind? Does the mind have a shape? Is its activity not the most inexplicable thing, the most impossible to represent? God is incomprehensible; but do you truly know the nature of intelligence? Have you searched out the mysterious operation of thought or the hidden nature of self-awareness? Is self-consciousness not the enigma of enigmas? Did the ancient mystics and theologians not compare the incomprehensibility of the divine nature with that of human intelligence, and in doing so, effectively identify the nature of God with the nature of man?
+That is dependent the possibility of whose existence lies out
+of itself; that is independent which has the possibility of its
+existence in itself. Life therefore involves the contradiction of
+an existence at once dependent and independent,--the contradiction
+that its possibility lies both in itself and out of itself. The
+understanding alone is free from this and other contradictions of
+life; it is the essence perfectly self-subsistent, perfectly at one
+with itself, perfectly self-existent. [23] Thinking is existence in
+self; life, as differenced from thought, existence out of self: life
+is to give from oneself; thought is to take into oneself. Existence
+out of self is the world; existence in self is God. To think is to
+be God. The act of thought, as such, is the freedom of the immortal
+gods from all external limitations and necessities of life.
+> **Quote:** "God as God--as a purely thinkable being, an object of the intellect--is thus nothing else than the reason in its utmost intensification become objective to itself."
+The unity of the understanding is the unity of God. To the
+understanding the consciousness of its unity and universality
+is essential; the understanding is itself nothing else than the
+consciousness of itself as absolute identity, i.e., that which is
+accordant with the understanding is to it an absolute, universally
+valid, law; it is impossible to the understanding to think that what
+is self-contradictory, false, irrational, can anywhere be true, and,
+conversely, that what is true, rational, can anywhere be false and
+irrational. "There may be intelligent beings who are not like me,
+and yet I am certain that there are no intelligent beings who know
+laws and truths different from those which I recognise; for every
+mind necessarily sees that two and two make four, and that one must
+prefer one's friend to one's dog." [24] Of an essentially different
+understanding from that which affirms itself in man, I have not the
+remotest conception, the faintest adumbration. On the contrary,
+every understanding which I posit as different from my own, is
+only a position of my own understanding, i.e., an idea of my own, a
+conception which falls within my power of thought, and thus expresses
+my understanding. What I think, that I myself do, of course only in
+purely intellectual matters; what I think of as united, I unite; what
+I think of as distinct, I distinguish; what I think of as abolished,
+as negatived, that I myself abolish and negative. For example, if
+I conceive an understanding in which the intuition or reality of
+the object is immediately united with the thought of it, I actually
+unite it; my understanding or my imagination is itself the power of
+uniting these distinct or opposite ideas. How would it be possible
+for me to conceive them united--whether this conception be clear or
+confused--if I did not unite them in myself? But whatever may be the
+conditions of the understanding which a given human individual may
+suppose as distinguished from his own, this other understanding is only
+the understanding which exists in man in general--the understanding
+conceived apart from the limits of this particular individual. Unity is
+involved in the idea of the understanding. The impossibility for the
+understanding to think two supreme beings, two infinite substances,
+two Gods, is the impossibility for the understanding to contradict
+itself, to deny its own nature, to think of itself as divided.
+We ask what the understanding or reason is, and the answer is found in the idea of God. Everything must express and reveal itself, making itself objective. God is reason expressing and affirming itself as the highest form of existence. To the imagination, reason is a revelation from God; but to reason, God is a revelation of reason itself. What reason is and what it can do is first made objective in the concept of God. God is a requirement of the intelligence, a necessary thought—the peak of the power of thinking. "Reason cannot rest in sensory things"; it finds satisfaction only when it reaches the highest, most necessary being, which can only be an object of reason. Why? Because the mind only completes itself with the conception of this being; only in the idea of a supreme nature does the highest nature of reason exist. It is a general truth that we feel a void within ourselves, and are consequently unhappy, as long as we have not reached the ultimate degree of a power—to that *quo nihil majus cogitari potest*. Strictly speaking, you only truly think when your thought is "God," for only "God" represents the fully realized and perfected power of thought. Thus, in conceiving of God, man first conceives of reason as it truly is. However, through imagination he perceives this divine nature as distinct from reason because, as a being influenced by external things, he is accustomed to distinguishing an object from the concept of it. Here, he applies that same process to the concept of reason, substituting an existence in space and time for what is actually an existence within reason and thought. God, as a metaphysical being, is the intelligence satisfied with itself; or rather, the intelligence satisfied with itself, thinking of itself as the absolute being, is God as a metaphysical being. All metaphysical descriptions of God are only real when they are recognized as belonging to thought and the understanding.
+The understanding is the infinite being. Infinitude is immediately
+involved in unity, and finiteness in plurality. Finiteness--in the
+metaphysical sense--rests on the distinction of the existence from
+the essence, of the individual from the species; infinitude, on the
+unity of existence and essence. Hence, that is finite which can be
+compared with other beings of the same species; that is infinite
+which has nothing like itself, which consequently does not stand as
+an individual under a species, but is species and individual in one,
+essence and existence in one. But such is the understanding; it has
+its essence in itself, consequently it has nothing, together with or
+external to itself, which can be ranged beside it; it is incapable of
+being compared, because it is itself the source of all combinations
+and comparisons; immeasurable, because it is the measure of all
+measures,--we measure all things by the understanding alone; it can
+be circumscribed by no higher generalisation, it can be ranged under
+no species, because it is itself the principle of all generalising, of
+all classification, because it circumscribes all things and beings. The
+definitions which the speculative philosophers and theologians give
+of God, as the being in whom existence and essence are not separable,
+who himself is all the attributes which he has, so that predicate
+and subject are with him identical,--all these definitions are thus
+ideas drawn solely from the nature of the understanding.
+The understanding is that which conditions and organizes all things, placing everything in mutual dependence, because it is itself immediate and unconditioned. It searches for the cause of all things because it finds its own basis and purpose within itself. Only that which is not derived from something else can derive and construct other things, viewing everything else as secondary. Just as only that which exists for its own sake can treat other things as means, the understanding is the original, primary being. The understanding derives all things from God as the first cause; it finds that a world without an intelligent cause is left to blind, aimless chance. That is, it finds the ultimate cause of the world only within its own nature; the existence of the world becomes clear only when its explanation is seen in the source of all clear ideas—in the understanding itself. A being that works with a purpose—with understanding—is the only being that is immediately certain and self-evident to the understanding. Therefore, anything that lacks its own purpose must have the cause of its existence in the design of another, intelligent being. In this way, the understanding projects its own nature as the primary cause of the world—being first in importance but last in time, it makes itself first in time as well.
+Lastly, the understanding or the reason is the necessary being. Reason
+exists because only the existence of the reason is reason; because,
+if there were no reason, no consciousness, all would be nothing;
+existence would be equivalent to non-existence. Consciousness first
+founds the distinction between existence and non-existence. In
+consciousness is first revealed the value of existence, the value
+of nature. Why, in general, does something exist? why does the world
+exist? on the simple ground that if something did not exist, nothing
+would exist; if reason did not exist, there would be only unreason;
+thus the world exists because it is an absurdity that the world should
+not exist. In the absurdity of its non-existence is found the true
+reason of its existence, in the groundlessness of the supposition
+that it were not the reason that it is. Nothing, non-existence,
+is aimless, nonsensical, irrational. Existence alone has an aim,
+a foundation, rationality; existence is, because only existence is
+reason and truth; existence is the absolute necessity. What is the
+cause of conscious existence, of life? The need of life. But to whom
+is it a need? To that which does not live. It is not a being who saw
+that made the eye: to one who saw already, to what purpose would be
+the eye? No! only the being who saw not needed the eye. We are all
+come into the world without the operation of knowledge and will; but
+we are come that knowledge and will may exist. Whence, then, came the
+world? Out of necessity; not out of a necessity which lies in another
+being distinct from itself--that is a pure contradiction,--but out of
+its own inherent necessity; out of the necessity of necessity; because
+without the world there would be no necessity; without necessity, no
+reason, no understanding. The nothing, out of which the world came,
+is nothing without the world. It is true that thus, negativity,
+as the speculative philosophers express themselves--nothing is the
+cause of the world;--but a nothing which abolishes itself, i.e., a
+nothing which could not have existed if there had been no world. It
+is true that the world springs out of a want, out of privation, but
+it is false speculation to make this privation an ontological being:
+this want is simply the want which lies in the supposed non-existence
+of the world. Thus the world is only necessary out of itself and
+through itself. But the necessity of the world is the necessity of
+reason. The reason, as the sum of all realities,--for what are all the
+glories of the world without light, much more external light without
+internal light?--the reason is the most indispensable being--the
+profoundest and most essential necessity. In the reason first lies
+the self-consciousness of existence, self-conscious existence; in the
+reason is first revealed the end, the meaning of existence. Reason is
+existence objective to itself as its own end; the ultimate tendency
+of things. That which is an object to itself is the highest, the
+final being; that which has power over itself is almighty.
+The understanding is the *ens realissimum*—the most real being of classical onto-theology—and its own standard for reality. Whatever opposes the understanding, or is self-contradictory, is nothing; what contradicts reason contradicts God. For example, it is a contradiction of reason to attach the limits of a specific time or place to the idea of the highest reality; therefore, reason denies these qualities of God as being contrary to his nature. Reason can only believe in a God that is consistent with its own nature—a God who is not beneath its own dignity but is, instead, a realization of its own nature. In other words, reason believes only in itself, in the absolute reality of its own nature. Reason is not dependent on God; rather, God is dependent on reason. Even in an age of miracles and absolute authority, the understanding acts as the formal judge of what is divine. It was said that God is all-powerful and can do anything; yet, he can do nothing that contradicts himself—that is, nothing that contradicts reason. Even omnipotence cannot do what is irrational. Thus, above divine omnipotence stands the higher power of reason; above the nature of God stands the nature of the understanding as the criterion for what must be affirmed or denied. Can you believe in a God who is unreasonable or wicked? No. Why? Because it contradicts your understanding to accept a wicked and unreasonable being as divine. What then are you affirming?
+> **Quote:** "Fundamentally, we cannot conceive God otherwise than by attributing to him without limit all the real qualities which we find in ourselves."
+Our positive, essential qualities—our realities—are therefore the realities of God; but while they exist in us with limits, they exist in God without them. What removes these limits? The understanding. What is the nature conceived without limits but the nature of the understanding releasing and abstracting itself from all limits? As you think God, so is your thought; the measure of your God is the measure of your understanding. If you conceive God as limited, your understanding is limited; if you conceive God as unlimited, your understanding is unlimited. If you conceive God as a physical being, physicality is the boundary of your understanding. If you deny that God has a body, this confirms that your understanding is free from the limitation of physicality. In the unlimited divine nature, you represent only your own unlimited understanding. When you declare this unlimited being to be the ultimate essence, you are saying nothing other than this: the *être suprême* is the understanding.
+The understanding is, furthermore, the self-sustaining and independent being. That which lacks understanding is not self-sustaining; it is dependent. A person without understanding is a person without a will. Those who have no understanding allow themselves to be deceived, manipulated, and used as tools by others. How can someone whose understanding is the tool of another have an independent will? Only those who think are free and independent. It is only through the understanding that human beings reduce the things around them to mere means for their own existence. Only that which is an end in itself and an object to itself is self-sustaining and independent. That which is its own end and object is, for that very reason, no longer a means or an object for another being. To be without understanding is, in a word, to exist for another—to be an object; to have understanding is to exist for oneself—to be a subject. But that which no longer exists for another, but for itself, rejects all dependence on any other being. It is true that we, as physical beings, depend on external things; but insofar as we think—in the activity of the understanding as such—we are dependent on no other being. The activity of thought is spontaneous activity.
+> **Quote:** "When I think, I am conscious that my ego in me thinks, and not some other thing. I conclude, therefore, that this thinking in me does not inhere in another thing outside of me, but in myself, consequently that I am a substance, i.e., that I exist by myself, without being a predicate of another being."
+Although we always need air, as natural philosophers we transform air from an object of physical need into an object of the self-sufficient activity of thought. In breathing, I am the object of the air and the air is the subject; but when I make the air an object of thought and investigation, I reverse this relationship—I make myself the subject and the air the object. That which is the object of another being is dependent. A plant is dependent on air and light; it is an object for air and light, not for itself. Physical life in general is nothing but this perpetual interchange between the objective and subjective relationship. We consume the air and are consumed by it; we enjoy and are enjoyed. The understanding alone enjoys all things without being enjoyed itself; it is the self-enjoying, self-sufficing existence—the absolute subject. It is the subject that cannot be reduced to the object of another being because it makes all things objects and predicates of itself; it encompasses all things within itself because it is not itself a thing, being free from all things.
+That which finds the possibility of its existence outside itself is dependent; that which contains the possibility of its existence within itself is independent. Life therefore involves the contradiction of an existence that is simultaneously dependent and independent—the contradiction that its possibility lies both within and outside itself. The understanding alone is free from this and other contradictions of life; it is the essence that is perfectly self-sustaining, perfectly at one with itself, and perfectly self-existent. Thinking is existence within the self; life, as distinguished from thought, is existence outside the self. Life is to give from oneself; thought is to take into oneself. Existence outside the self is the world; existence within the self is God.
+> **Quote:** "To think is to be God. The act of thought, as such, is the freedom of the immortal gods from all external limitations and necessities of life."
+The unity of the understanding is the unity of God. To the understanding, the consciousness of its unity and universality is essential; the understanding is itself nothing other than the consciousness of itself as absolute identity. Whatever accords with the understanding is, for it, an absolute and universally valid law. It is impossible for the understanding to think that what is self-contradictory could be true anywhere; conversely, it cannot think that what is true could be false anywhere.
+> **Quote:** "There may be intelligent beings who are not like me, and yet I am certain that there are no intelligent beings who know laws and truths different from those which I recognise; for every mind necessarily sees that two and two make four, and that one must prefer one's friend to one's dog."
+I do not have the remotest conception of an understanding essentially different from the one that expresses itself in humanity. On the contrary, every understanding that I assume to be different from my own is merely a projection of my own understanding—an idea that falls within my power of thought and thus expresses my understanding. What I think, I myself do, at least in purely intellectual matters; what I think of as united, I unite; what I think of as distinct, I distinguish; what I think of as abolished, I myself abolish and negate. If I conceive of an understanding in which the intuition of an object is immediately united with the thought of it, I am the one actually uniting them; my understanding or imagination is itself the power of uniting these distinct ideas. Whatever conditions one might imagine for a different kind of understanding, this 'other' is merely the understanding that exists in humanity in general, viewed apart from the limits of the individual. Unity is inherent in the idea of the understanding. The impossibility for the understanding to conceive of two supreme beings is simply the impossibility for the understanding to contradict itself, to deny its own nature, or to think of itself as divided.
+The understanding is the infinite being. Infinity is immediately involved in unity, just as finitude is involved in plurality. Finiteness rests on the distinction between existence and essence, between the individual and the species. Infinity rests on the unity of existence and essence. That which can be compared with other beings of the same species is finite; that which has nothing like itself—and consequently does not stand as an individual under a species but is species and individual in one, essence and existence in one—is infinite. This is the nature of the understanding; it carries its essence within itself, so it has nothing alongside or outside itself that can be ranked with it. It cannot be compared because it is itself the source of all combinations and comparisons. It is immeasurable because it is the measure of all measures—we measure all things by the understanding alone. It cannot be limited by any higher generalization because it is itself the principle of all generalizing; it encompasses all things and beings. The definitions that speculative philosophers and theologians give of God—as the being in whom existence and essence are inseparable—are all ideas drawn solely from the nature of the understanding.
+Finally, the understanding or reason is the necessary being. Reason exists because only the existence of reason is rational; if there were no reason, no consciousness, everything would be nothing. Existence would be equivalent to non-existence. Consciousness is what first establishes the distinction between existence and non-existence. Why does the world exist? It is for the simple reason that if something did not exist, nothing would exist; if reason did not exist, there would be only unreason. Thus, the world exists because it is an absurdity for the world not to exist. In the absurdity of its non-existence lies the true reason for its existence. Nothingness and non-existence are aimless, nonsensical, and irrational. Existence alone has a purpose, a foundation, and rationality; existence is, because only existence is reason and truth. Existence is absolute necessity. What is the cause of conscious existence, of life? The need for life. But to whom is it a need? To that which does not live. It was not a being who already saw that made the eye; for what purpose would an eye serve someone who could already see? Only the being who could not see needed the eye. We have all come into the world without the involvement of knowledge and will, but we have come so that knowledge and will may exist. Where, then, did the world come from? Out of necessity—not a necessity that lies in another being distinct from itself, which is a pure contradiction, but out of its own inherent necessity. It came from the necessity of necessity, because without the world there would be no necessity, and without necessity, there would be no reason or understanding. The "nothing" from which the world came is nothing without the world. It is true that "negativity"—nothingness—is the cause of the world; but it is a nothingness that abolishes itself, a nothingness that could not have existed if there had been no world. It is true that the world springs from a want, from privation, but it is false speculation to turn this privation into an ontological being. Thus, the world is necessary only from itself and through itself. But the necessity of the world is the necessity of reason. Reason, as the sum of all realities—for what are all the glories of the world without light, and even more, what is external light without internal light?—reason is the most indispensable being, the deepest and most essential necessity. In reason, the self-consciousness of existence first resides; in reason, the end and meaning of existence are first revealed. Reason is existence becoming an object to itself as its own purpose; it is the ultimate tendency of things. That which is an object to itself is the highest, the final being; that which has power over itself is almighty.
 ### CHAPTER III. - GOD AS A MORAL BEING, OR LAW.
+God as God—the infinite, universal, non-human being of the intellect—is for religion merely a foundation, a kind of mathematical point. The consciousness of human limitation or nothingness that accompanies this idea is not religious; it characterizes skeptics, materialists, and pantheists. Religion's vital elements are only those that make man an object to man.
+God as God--the infinite, universal, non-anthropomorphic being of the
+understanding, has no more significance for religion than a fundamental
+general principle has for a special science; it is merely the ultimate
+point of support,--as it were, the mathematical point of religion. The
+consciousness of human limitation or nothingness which is united with
+the idea of this being, is by no means a religious consciousness;
+on the contrary, it characterises sceptics, materialists, and
+pantheists. The belief in God--at least in the God of religion--is
+only lost where, as in scepticism, pantheism, and materialism, the
+belief in man is lost, at least in man such as he is presupposed in
+religion. As little then as religion has any influential belief in the
+nothingness of man, [25] so little has it any influential belief in
+that abstract being with which the consciousness of this nothingness
+is united. The vital elements of religion are those only which make
+man an object to man. To deny man is to deny religion.
+> "To deny man is to deny religion."
+It certainly is the interest of religion that its object should
+be distinct from man; but it is also, nay, yet more, its interest
+that this object should have human attributes. That he should be
+a distinct being concerns his existence only; but that he should
+be human concerns his essence. If he be of a different nature, how
+can his existence or non-existence be of any importance to man? How
+can he take so profound an interest in an existence in which his own
+nature has no participation?
+It is certainly in religion's interest that its object should be distinct from man, but even more that this object should have human attributes. If God were of a different nature, how could his existence matter to us? How could we take such profound interest in a being in which our own nature has no part?
+To give an example. "When I believe that the human nature alone
+has suffered for me, Christ is a poor Saviour to me: in that case,
+he needs a Saviour himself." And thus, out of the need for salvation
+is postulated something transcending human nature, a being different
+from man. But no sooner is this being postulated than there arises
+the yearning of man after himself, after his own nature, and man
+is immediately re-established. "Here is God, who is not man and
+never yet became man. But this is not a God for me.... That would
+be a miserable Christ to me, who ... should be nothing but a purely
+separate God and divine person ... without humanity. No, my friend;
+where thou givest me God, thou must give me humanity too." [26]
+Consider this: "When I believe that human nature alone has suffered for me, Christ is a poor Savior; in that case, he would need a Savior himself." Thus salvation requires something transcending human nature. But no sooner is this established than we yearn for humanity, and the human element is restored.
+In religion man seeks contentment; religion is his highest good. But
+how could he find consolation and peace in God if God were an
+essentially different being? How can I share the peace of a being if
+I am not of the same nature with him? If his nature is different from
+mine, his peace is essentially different,--it is no peace for me. How
+then can I become a partaker of his peace if I am not a partaker of
+his nature? but how can I be a partaker of his nature if I am really
+of a different nature? Every being experiences peace only in its own
+element, only in the conditions of its own nature. Thus, if man feels
+peace in God, he feels it only because in God he first attains his
+true nature, because here, for the first time, he is with himself,
+because everything in which he hitherto sought peace, and which he
+hitherto mistook for his nature, was alien to him. Hence, if man
+is to find contentment in God, he must find himself in God. "No one
+will taste of God but as he wills, namely--in the humanity of Christ;
+and if thou dost not find God thus, thou wilt never have rest." [27]
+"Everything finds rest on the place in which it was born. The place
+where I was born is God. God is my fatherland. Have I a father in
+God? Yes, I have not only a father, but I have myself in him; before
+I lived in myself, I lived already in God." [28]
+> "Here is God, who is not man and never yet became man. But this is not a God for me.... That would be a miserable Christ to me... without humanity. No, my friend; where thou givest me God, thou must give me humanity too."
+A God, therefore, who expresses only the nature of the understanding
+does not satisfy religion, is not the God of religion. The
+understanding is interested not only in man, but in the things out of
+man, in universal nature. The intellectual man forgets even himself
+in the contemplation of nature. The Christians scorned the pagan
+philosophers because, instead of thinking of themselves, of their
+own salvation, they had thought only of things out of themselves. The
+Christian thinks only of himself. By the understanding an insect is
+contemplated with as much enthusiasm as the image of God--man. The
+understanding is the absolute indifference and identity of all things
+and beings. It is not Christianity, not religious enthusiasm, but the
+enthusiasm of the understanding that we have to thank for botany,
+mineralogy, zoology, physics, and astronomy. The understanding
+is universal, pantheistic, the love of the universe; but the grand
+characteristic of religion, and of the Christian religion especially,
+is that it is thoroughly anthropotheistic, the exclusive love of man
+for himself, the exclusive self-affirmation of the human nature, that
+is, of subjective human nature; for it is true that the understanding
+also affirms the nature of man, but it is his objective nature,
+which has reference to the object for the sake of the object, and
+the manifestation of which is science. Hence it must be something
+entirely different from the nature of the understanding which is
+an object to man in religion, if he is to find contentment therein,
+and this something will necessarily be the very kernel of religion.
+Religion is man's search for contentment. But how could he find peace in an essentially different being? Every being finds rest only in its own element. If man feels peace in God, he feels it only because in God he finally attains his true nature—because here, for the first time, he is truly himself.
+Of all the attributes which the understanding assigns to God, that
+which in religion, and especially in the Christian religion, has
+the pre-eminence, is moral perfection. But God as a morally perfect
+being is nothing else than the realised idea, the fulfilled law of
+morality, the moral nature of man posited as the absolute being;
+man's own nature, for the moral God requires man to be as he himself
+is: Be ye holy for I am holy; man's own conscience, for how could he
+otherwise tremble before the Divine Being, accuse himself before him,
+and make him the judge of his inmost thoughts and feelings?
+> "Everything finds rest on the place in which it was born. The place where I was born is God. God is my fatherland. Have I a father in God? Yes, I have not only a father, but I have myself in him."
+But the consciousness of the absolutely perfect moral nature,
+especially as an abstract being separate from man, leaves us cold
+and empty, because we feel the distance, the chasm between ourselves
+and this being;--it is a dispiriting consciousness, for it is the
+consciousness of our personal nothingness, and of the kind which is
+the most acutely felt--moral nothingness. The consciousness of the
+divine omnipotence and eternity in opposition to my limitation in
+space and time does not afflict me: for omnipotence does not command
+me to be myself omnipotent, eternity, to be myself eternal. But I
+cannot have the idea of moral perfection without at the same time
+being conscious of it as a law for me. Moral perfection depends,
+at least for the moral consciousness, not on the nature, but on the
+will--it is a perfection of will, perfect will. I cannot conceive
+perfect will, the will which is in unison with law, which is itself
+law, without at the same time regarding it is an object of will, i.e.,
+as an obligation for myself. The conception of the morally perfect
+being is no merely theoretical, inert conception, but a practical
+one, calling me to action, to imitation, throwing me into strife,
+into disunion with myself; for while it proclaims to me what I ought
+to be, it also tells me to my face, without any flattery, what I am
+not. [29] And religion renders this disunion all the more painful,
+all the more terrible, that it sets man's own nature before him as
+a separate nature, and moreover as a personal being, who hates and
+curses sinners, and excludes them from his grace, the source of all
+salvation and happiness.
+A God who expresses only the intellect's nature does not satisfy religion. The intellect is interested in the whole of nature; the intellectual man may even forget himself in contemplation. Early Christians once scorned pagan philosophers because, instead of focusing on their own salvation, those thinkers focused only on things outside themselves. We have the intellect's enthusiasm to thank for botany, mineralogy, zoology, physics, and astronomy—not Christianity.
+Now, by what means does man deliver himself from this state of disunion
+between himself and the perfect being, from the painful consciousness
+of sin, from the distressing sense of his own nothingness? How does
+he blunt the fatal sting of sin? Only by this; that he is conscious of
+love as the highest, the absolute power and truth, that he regards the
+Divine Being not only as a law, as a moral being, as a being of the
+understanding; but also as a loving, tender, even subjective human
+being (that is, as having sympathy with individual man).
+The intellect is universal, pantheistic, a love for the entire universe. But religion, especially Christianity, is thoroughly "anthropotheistic"—the exclusive love of man for himself, the affirmation of subjective human nature. While the intellect affirms man's objective nature (which finds expression in science), religion must have an object entirely different from the intellect. That object is the core of religion.
+The understanding judges only according to the stringency of law; the
+heart accommodates itself, is considerate, lenient, relenting, kat'
+anthropon. No man is sufficient for the law which moral perfection
+sets before us; but, for that reason, neither is the law sufficient for
+man, for the heart. The law condemns; the heart has compassion even on
+the sinner. The law affirms me only as an abstract being,--love, as a
+real being. Love gives me the consciousness that I am a man; the law
+only the consciousness that I am a sinner, that I am worthless. [30]
+The law holds man in bondage; love makes him free.
+Of all divine attributes, moral perfection holds pre-eminence in religion. But God as morally perfect is simply the realized ideal, the fulfilled law of morality—man's moral nature presented as absolute being. He is man's own conscience; otherwise, how could man tremble before him and make him judge of his secret thoughts?
+Love is the middle term, the substantial bond, the principle of
+reconciliation between the perfect and the imperfect, the sinless and
+sinful being, the universal and the individual, the divine and the
+human. Love is God himself, and apart from it there is no God. Love
+makes man God and God man. Love strengthens the weak and weakens the
+strong, abases the high and raises the lowly, idealises matter and
+materialises spirit. Love is the true unity of God and man, of spirit
+and nature. In love common nature is spirit, and the pre-eminent spirit
+is nature. Love is to deny spirit from the point of view of spirit,
+to deny matter from the point of view of matter. Love is materialism;
+immaterial love is a chimæra. In the longing of love after the distant
+object, the abstract idealist involuntarily confirms the truth of
+sensuousness. But love is also the idealism of nature--love is also
+spirit, esprit. Love alone makes the nightingale a songstress; love
+alone gives the plant its corolla. And what wonders does not love
+work in our social life! What faith, creed, opinion separates, love
+unites. Love even, humorously enough, identifies the high noblesse with
+the people. What the old mystics said of God, that he is the highest
+and yet the commonest being, applies in truth to love, and that not
+a visionary, imaginary love--no! a real love, a love which has flesh
+and blood, which vibrates as an almighty force through all living.
+Yet an absolutely perfect moral nature, especially as an abstract being separate from man, leaves us cold. We feel the chasm between ourselves and this being—a consciousness of moral nothingness, the most painful kind. The awareness of divine omnipotence doesn't trouble me; omnipotence doesn't command me to be omnipotent. But I cannot hold the idea of moral perfection without feeling it as a law for myself. I cannot conceive a perfect will without seeing it as an obligation.
+Yes, it applies only to the love which has flesh and blood, for
+only this can absolve from the sins which flesh and blood commit. A
+merely moral being cannot forgive what is contrary to the law of
+morality. That which denies the law is denied by the law. The moral
+judge, who does not infuse human blood into his judgment judges
+the sinner relentlessly, inexorably. Since, then, God is regarded
+as a sin-pardoning being, he is posited, not indeed as an unmoral,
+but as more than a moral being--in a word, as a human being. The
+negation or annulling of sin is the negation of abstract moral
+rectitude,--the positing of love, mercy, sensuous life. Not abstract
+beings--no! only sensuous, living beings are merciful. Mercy is the
+justice of sensuous life. [31] Hence God does not forgive the sins
+of men as the abstract God of the understanding, but as man, as the
+God made flesh, the visible God. God as man sins not, it is true, but
+he knows, he takes on himself, the sufferings, the wants, the needs
+of sensuous beings. The blood of Christ cleanses us from our sins in
+the eyes of God; it is only his human blood that makes God merciful,
+allays his anger; that is, our sins are forgiven us because we are
+no abstract beings, but creatures of flesh and blood. [32]
+This is not merely a theoretical idea but a practical one that calls me to action. It throws me into internal conflict, proclaiming what I ought to be while telling me plainly what I am not. Religion intensifies this conflict by presenting man's own nature as a personal being who hates sinners and excludes them from grace.
+How does man deliver himself from this conflict? Only by becoming conscious of love as the highest power. He regards the Divine Being not just as a law or moral being, but as a loving, tender, subjective human being who has sympathy for the individual.
+The intellect judges by strict law; the heart shows compassion. No person can fulfill what moral perfection demands; for that reason, the law is not sufficient for the human heart. The law condemns; the heart has compassion even for sinners. The law affirms me only as an abstract concept, but love affirms me as a real being. Love gives me consciousness that I am a person; the law only gives consciousness that I am a singer. The law holds man in bondage; love makes him free.
+Love is the middle ground, the essential bond, the principle of reconciliation between the perfect and imperfect, sinless and sinful, universal and individual, divine and human.
+> "Love makes man God and God man."
+Love strengthens the weak and softens the strong; it humbles the high and raises the lowly. Love is the true unity of God and man, of spirit and nature. In love, common nature becomes spirit, and the highest spirit becomes nature. What faith separates, love unites. What the ancient mystics said of God—that he is the highest and yet the most common being—applies truly to love: a real love of flesh and blood that vibrates as an almighty force through all living things.
+Indeed, this applies only to love that has flesh and blood, for only such love can absolve the sins that flesh and blood commit. A merely moral being cannot forgive moral violations. Therefore, since God pardons sin, he is presented not as immoral but as more than moral—in a word, as human. The canceling of sin is the assertion of love, mercy, and life. Abstract beings are not merciful; only living, sensory beings are.
+> **Quote:** "Mercy is the justice of sensuous life."
+Hence, God forgives not as the abstract God of the intellect, but as man—as God made flesh. The blood of Christ cleanses us from sin; it is his human blood that makes God merciful and allays his anger. Our sins are forgiven because we are not abstract entities but creatures of flesh and blood.
 ### CHAPTER IV. - THE MYSTERY OF THE INCARNATION; OR, GOD AS LOVE, AS A BEING OF THE HEART.
+The consciousness of love reconciles us with God—meaning our own nature as represented in the moral law. This consciousness, which is simply contemplating God as human, is the mystery of the Incarnation: the practical manifestation of God's human nature. God did not become human for his own sake; human need and want—a want still present in religious feeling—caused the Incarnation. He became human out of mercy, proving he was already a human God in essence before becoming an actual man, for human misery touched his heart. The Incarnation was a tear of divine compassion, the visible arrival of a Being who possesses human feelings and is therefore essentially human.
+It is the consciousness of love by which man reconciles himself with
+God, or rather with his own nature as represented in the moral law. The
+consciousness of the divine love, or what is the same thing, the
+contemplation of God as human, is the mystery of the Incarnation. The
+Incarnation is nothing else than the practical, material manifestation
+of the human nature of God. God did not become man for his own sake;
+the need, the want of man--a want which still exists in the religious
+sentiment--was the cause of the Incarnation. God became man out of
+mercy: thus he was in himself already a human God before he became
+an actual man; for human want, human misery, went to his heart. The
+Incarnation was a tear of the divine compassion, and hence it was only
+the visible advent of a Being having human feelings, and therefore
+essentially human.
+Viewed merely as God becoming human, the Incarnation seems marvelous and inexplicable. But it is only the visible manifestation of humanity made divine, for God's descent is preceded by humanity's exaltation to God. Humanity was already in God—already God himself—before God showed himself as human. The maxim *ex nihilo nihil fit* applies: a king who does not mentally live with his subjects in their dwellings, who is not 'a common man' in his feelings, will not physically descend from his throne. The subject must have already risen in the king's heart before the king descends. And the subject's happiness comes not from physical presence alone but from the manifestation of the philanthropic nature that caused it. Yet in religious consciousness, the true cause appears as consequence: humanity's elevation to God is presented as the result of God's descent.
+If in the Incarnation we stop short at the fact of God becoming
+man, it certainly appears a surprising, inexplicable, marvellous
+event. But the incarnate God is only the apparent manifestation of
+deified man; for the descent of God to man is necessarily preceded by
+the exaltation of man to God. Man was already in God, was already God
+himself, before God became man, i.e., showed himself as man. [33] How
+otherwise could God have become man? The old maxim, ex nihilo nihil
+fit, is applicable here also. A king who has not the welfare of his
+subjects at heart, who, while seated on his throne, does not mentally
+live with them in their dwellings, who, in feeling, is not, as the
+people say, "a common man," such a king will not descend bodily from
+his throne to make his people happy by his personal presence. Thus,
+has not the subject risen to be a king before the king descends to be
+a subject? And if the subject feels himself honoured and made happy
+by the personal presence of his king, does this feeling refer merely
+to the bodily presence, and not rather to the manifestation of the
+disposition, of the philanthropic nature which is the cause of the
+appearance? But that which in the truth of religion is the cause,
+takes in the consciousness of religion the form of a consequence;
+and so here the raising of man to God is made a consequence of the
+humiliation or descent of God to man. God, says religion, made himself
+human that he might make man divine. [34]
+> **Quote:** "God made himself human that he might make man divine."
+That which is mysterious and incomprehensible, i.e., contradictory,
+in the proposition, "God is or becomes a man," arises only from the
+mingling or confusion of the idea or definitions of the universal,
+unlimited, metaphysical being with the idea of the religious God,
+i.e., the conditions of the understanding with the conditions of
+the heart, the emotive nature; a confusion which is the greatest
+hindrance to the correct knowledge of religion. But, in fact, the
+idea of the Incarnation is nothing more than the human form of a God,
+who already in his nature, in the profoundest depths of his soul,
+is a merciful and therefore a human God.
+The mystery and contradiction in "God becomes man" arises only from confusing the metaphysical concept of God with the religious God—mixing intellect's requirements with the heart's. In reality, the Incarnation is simply the human form of a God who is already, in his deepest nature, a merciful and therefore human God.
+The form given to this truth in the doctrine of the Church is, that
+it was not the first person of the Godhead who was incarnate, but the
+second, who is the representative of man in and before God; the second
+person being however in reality, as will be shown, the sole, true,
+first person in religion. And it is only apart from this distinction
+of persons that the God-man appears mysterious, incomprehensible,
+"speculative;" for, considered in connection with it, the Incarnation
+is a necessary, nay, a self-evident consequence. The allegation,
+therefore, that the Incarnation is a purely empirical fact, which could
+be made known only by means of a revelation in the theological sense,
+betrays the most crass religious materialism; for the Incarnation is
+a conclusion which rests on a very comprehensible premiss. But it is
+equally perverse to attempt to deduce the Incarnation from purely
+speculative, i.e., metaphysical, abstract grounds; for metaphysics
+apply only to the first person of the Godhead, who does not become
+incarnate, who is not a dramatic person. Such a deduction would at
+the utmost be justifiable if it were meant consciously to deduce from
+metaphysics the negation of metaphysics.
+Church doctrine states that the second person of the Trinity, not the first, was incarnated—the one who represents humanity before God. Yet this second person is in reality the true first person in religion. Only by ignoring this distinction does the God-man appear mysterious. With it, the Incarnation is a necessary, self-evident consequence. To claim it's a purely empirical fact requiring revelation betrays crude religious materialism; it follows from an understandable premise. Yet deriving it from abstract metaphysics is equally wrong, for metaphysics apply only to the first person, who does not become incarnate. Such speculation only uses metaphysics to negate itself.
+This example clearly exhibits the distinction between the method of our
+philosophy and that of the old speculative philosophy. The former does
+not philosophise concerning the Incarnation, as a peculiar, stupendous
+mystery, after the manner of speculation dazzled by mystical splendour;
+on the contrary, it destroys the illusive supposition of a peculiar
+supernatural mystery; it criticises the dogma and reduces it to its
+natural elements, immanent in man, to its originating principle and
+central point--love.
+This shows the difference between my method and old speculative philosophy. I do not philosophize about the Incarnation as a unique mystery dazzled by mystical splendor. I destroy that illusion, critiquing the dogma and reducing it to its originating principle—love.
+The dogma presents to us two things--God and love. God is love: but
+what does that mean? Is God something besides love? a being distinct
+from love? Is it as if I said of an affectionate human being, he
+is love itself? Certainly; otherwise I must give up the name God,
+which expresses a special personal being, a subject in distinction
+from the predicate. Thus love is made something apart. God out of
+love sent his only-begotten Son. Here love recedes and sinks into
+insignificance in the dark background--God. It becomes merely a
+personal, though an essential, attribute; hence it receives both in
+theory and in feeling, both objectively and subjectively, the rank
+simply of a predicate, not that of a subject, of the substance;
+it shrinks out of observation as a collateral, an accident; at one
+moment it presents itself to me as something essential, at another,
+it vanishes again. God appears to me in another form besides that of
+love; in the form of omnipotence, of a severe power not bound by love;
+a power in which, though in a smaller degree, the devils participate.
+The dogma gives us two things: God and love. God is love—but what does this mean? Is God something other than love? If I call someone "love itself," I still mean a distinct person. Thus love becomes separate. "God, out of love, sent his Son." Here love recedes into the background as a mere attribute, a predicate rather than a substance. It fades from view; one moment essential, the next vanished. God appears as omnipotence, harsh power unbound by love—a power demons share. Until love is elevated to substance, a subject remains behind it, something even without love: an unloving monster, a diabolical being delighting in the blood of heretics and unbelievers—the phantom of religious fanaticism. Yet the essence of the Incarnation, though shrouded, is love.
+So long as love is not exalted into a substance, into an essence, so
+long there lurks in the background of love a subject who even without
+love is something by himself, an unloving monster, a diabolical being,
+whose personality, separable and actually separated from love, delights
+in the blood of heretics and unbelievers,--the phantom of religious
+fanaticism. Nevertheless the essential idea of the Incarnation,
+though enveloped in the night of the religious consciousness, is
+love. Love determined God to the renunciation of his divinity. [35]
+Not because of his Godhead as such, according to which he is the
+subject in the proposition, God is love, but because of his love,
+of the predicate, is it that he renounced his Godhead; thus love is
+a higher power and truth than deity. Love conquers God. It was love
+to which God sacrificed his divine majesty. And what sort of love
+was that? another than ours? than that to which we sacrifice life
+and fortune? Was it the love of himself? of himself as God? No! it
+was love to man. But is not love to man human love? Can I love man
+without loving him humanly, without loving him as he himself loves,
+if he truly loves? Would not love be otherwise a devilish love? The
+devil too loves man, but not for man's sake--for his own; thus
+he loves man out of egotism, to aggrandise himself, to extend his
+power. But God loves man for man's sake, i.e., that he may make him
+good, happy, blessed. Does he not then love man as the true man loves
+his fellow? Has love a plural? Is it not everywhere like itself? What
+then is the true unfalsified import of the Incarnation but absolute,
+pure love, without adjunct, without a distinction between divine and
+human love? For though there is also a self-interested love among
+men, still the true human love, which is alone worthy of this name,
+is that which impels the sacrifice of self to another. Who then is our
+Saviour and Redeemer? God or Love? Love; for God as God has not saved
+us, but Love, which transcends the difference between the divine and
+human personality. As God has renounced himself out of love, so we,
+out of love, should renounce God; for if we do not sacrifice God to
+love, we sacrifice love to God, and, in spite of the predicate of love,
+we have the God--the evil being--of religious fanaticism.
+> **Quote:** "Love determined God to the renunciation of his divinity."
+While, however, we have laid open this nucleus of truth in the
+Incarnation, we have at the same time exhibited the dogma in its
+falsity; we have reduced the apparently supernatural and super-rational
+mystery to a simple truth inherent in human nature:--a truth which
+does not belong to the Christian religion alone, but which, implicitly
+at least, belongs more or less to every religion as such. For every
+religion which has any claim to the name presupposes that God is not
+indifferent to the beings who worship him, that therefore what is
+human is not alien to him, that, as an object of human veneration, he
+is a human God. Every prayer discloses the secret of the Incarnation,
+every prayer is in fact an incarnation of God. In prayer I involve
+God in human distress, I make him a participator in my sorrows and
+wants. God is not deaf to my complaints; he has compassion on me;
+hence he renounces his divine majesty, his exaltation above all that is
+finite and human; he becomes a man with man; for if he listens to me,
+and pities me, he is affected by my sufferings. God loves man--i.e.,
+God suffers from man. Love does not exist without sympathy, sympathy
+does not exist without suffering in common. Have I any sympathy for
+a being without feeling? No! I feel only for that which has feeling,
+only for that which partakes of my nature, for that in which I feel
+myself, whose sufferings I myself suffer. Sympathy presupposes a like
+nature. The Incarnation, Providence, prayer, are the expression of
+this identity of nature in God and man. [36]
+It was not his Godhead—the subject in "God is love"—but love, the predicate, that made him renounce his Godhead. Thus love is higher than deity; love conquers God. What kind of love? Different from ours? Different from the love that sacrifices life and fortune? Love of himself? No—love for humanity. But is that not human love? Can I love without loving humanly, as the beloved loves? Otherwise it is devilish love—the devil loves humanity, but for himself, out of egoism. God loves humanity for its own sake, to make it good and happy. Does he not love as a true person loves their neighbor? Does love have a plural? Is it not everywhere the same? The Incarnation means absolute love, without distinction between divine and human love. True human love sacrifices self for another.
+It is true that theology, which is pre-occupied with the metaphysical
+attributes of eternity, unconditionedness, unchangeableness,
+and the like abstractions, which express the nature of the
+understanding,--theology denies the possibility that God should
+suffer, but in so doing it denies the truth of religion. [37] For
+religion--the religious man in the act of devotion believes in a real
+sympathy of the divine being in his sufferings and wants, believes
+that the will of God can be determined by the fervour of prayer, i.e.,
+by the force of feeling, believes in a real, present fulfilment of
+his desire, wrought by prayer. The truly religious man unhesitatingly
+assigns his own feelings to God; God is to him a heart susceptible
+to all that is human. The heart can betake itself only to the heart;
+feeling can appeal only to feeling; it finds consolation in itself,
+in its own nature alone.
+> **Quote:** "Who then is our Saviour and Redeemer? God or Love? Love; for God as God has not saved us, but Love, which transcends the difference between the divine and human personality."
+The notion that the fulfilment of prayer has been determined from
+eternity, that it was originally included in the plan of creation,
+is the empty, absurd fiction of a mechanical mode of thought, which
+is in absolute contradiction with the nature of religion. "We need,"
+says Lavater somewhere, and quite correctly according to the religious
+sentiment, "an arbitrary God." Besides, even according to this fiction,
+God is just as much a being determined by man, as in the real, present
+fulfilment consequent on the power of prayer; the only difference is,
+that the contradiction with the unchangeableness and unconditionedness
+of God--that which constitutes the difficulty--is thrown back into the
+deceptive distance of the past or of eternity. Whether God decides
+on the fulfilment of my prayer now, on the immediate occasion of my
+offering it, or whether he did decide on it long ago, is fundamentally
+the same thing.
+As God renounced himself for love, so we must renounce "God" for love; otherwise we sacrifice love to "God" and remain with the God of fanaticism.
+It is the greatest inconsequence to reject the idea of a God who
+can be determined by prayer, that is, by the force of feeling, as an
+unworthy anthropomorphic idea. If we once believe in a being who is
+an object of veneration, an object of prayer, an object of affection,
+who is providential, who takes care of man,--in a Providence, which is
+not conceivable without love,--in a being, therefore, who is loving,
+whose motive of action is love; we also believe in a being, who has,
+if not an anatomical, yet a psychical human heart. The religious mind,
+as has been said, places everything in God, excepting that alone which
+it despises. The Christians certainly gave their God no attributes
+which contradicted their own moral ideas, but they gave him without
+hesitation, and of necessity, the emotions of love, of compassion. And
+the love which the religious mind places in God is not an illusory,
+imaginary love, but a real, true love. God is loved and loves again;
+the divine love is only human love made objective, affirming itself. In
+God love is absorbed in itself as its own ultimate truth.
+Having uncovered this truth, we have revealed the dogma's falsity. We have reduced the supernatural mystery to a simple truth in human nature, implicit in every religion. Every religion presupposes God is not indifferent to worshippers; therefore he is a human God. Every prayer discloses the secret of the Incarnation; every prayer is, in fact, an incarnation of God. In prayer, I involve God in human distress and make him a participator in my sorrows and wants. God is not deaf; he has compassion. Therefore he renounces his divine majesty and becomes human with humanity. God loves humanity—meaning God suffers with humanity. Love requires sympathy, and sympathy requires shared suffering. I can only sympathize with what has feeling, what shares my nature, whose sufferings I feel as my own. Sympathy presupposes shared nature. Incarnation, Providence, and prayer all express this identity between God and humanity.
+It may be objected to the import here assigned to the Incarnation,
+that the Christian Incarnation is altogether peculiar, that at least
+it is different (which is quite true in certain respects, as will
+hereafter be apparent) from the incarnations of the heathen deities,
+whether Greek or Indian. These latter are mere products of men or
+deified men; but in Christianity is given the idea of the true God;
+here the union of the divine nature with the human is first significant
+and "speculative." Jupiter transforms himself into a bull; the heathen
+incarnations are mere fancies. In paganism there is no more in the
+nature of God than in his incarnate manifestation; in Christianity,
+on the contrary, it is God, a separate, superhuman being, who appears
+as man. But this objection is refuted by the remark already made,
+that even the premiss of the Christian Incarnation contains the human
+nature. God loves man; moreover God has a Son; God is a father; the
+relations of humanity are not excluded from God; the human is not
+remote from God, not unknown to him. Thus here also there is nothing
+more in the nature of God than in the incarnate manifestation of
+God. In the Incarnation religion only confesses, what in reflection
+on itself, as theology, it will not admit; namely, that God is an
+altogether human being. The Incarnation, the mystery of the "God-man,"
+is therefore no mysterious composition of contraries, no synthetic
+fact, as it is regarded by the speculative religious philosophy,
+which has a particular delight in contradiction; it is an analytic
+fact,--a human word with a human meaning. If there be a contradiction
+here, it lies before the incarnation and out of it; in the union of
+providence, of love, with deity; for if this love is a real love,
+it is not essentially different from our love,--there are only our
+limitations to be abstracted from it; and thus the Incarnation is only
+the strongest, deepest, most palpable, open-hearted expression of this
+providence, this love. Love knows not how to make its object happier
+than by rejoicing it with its personal presence, by letting itself be
+seen. To see the invisible benefactor face to face is the most ardent
+desire of love. To see is a divine act. Happiness lies in the mere
+sight of the beloved one. The glance is the certainty of love. And
+the Incarnation has no other significance, no other effect, than the
+indubitable certitude of the love of God to man. Love remains, but the
+Incarnation upon the earth passes away: the appearance was limited by
+time and place, accessible to few; but the essence, the nature which
+was manifested, is eternal and universal. We can no longer believe
+in the manifestation for its own sake, but only for the sake of the
+thing manifested; for to us there remains no immediate presence but
+that of love.
+Theology, preoccupied with metaphysical attributes like eternity, unconditionedness, and immutability—abstractions of pure intellect—denies that God can suffer, thereby denying religion's fundamental truth. The religious person believes the divine being sympathizes with their suffering, that God's will can be moved by prayer's fervor, by feeling, and that desires are fulfilled through prayer. The truly religious unhesitatingly attribute their own feelings to God; to them, God is a heart sensitive to everything human. The heart turns only to another heart; feeling appeals only to feeling. It finds consolation only within itself, in its own nature.
+The clearest, most irrefragable proof that man in religion contemplates
+himself as the object of the Divine Being, as the end of the divine
+activity, that thus in religion he has relation only to his own nature,
+only to himself,--the clearest, most irrefragable proof of this is
+the love of God to man, the basis and central point of religion. God,
+for the sake of man, empties himself of his Godhead, lays aside his
+Godhead. Herein lies the elevating influence of the Incarnation; the
+highest, the perfect being humiliates, lowers himself for the sake
+of man. Hence in God I learn to estimate my own nature; I have value
+in the sight of God; the divine significance of my nature is become
+evident to me. How can the worth of man be more strongly expressed
+than when God, for man's sake, becomes a man, when man is the end,
+the object of the divine love? The love of God to man is an essential
+condition of the Divine Being: God is a God who loves me--who loves
+man in general. Here lies the emphasis, the fundamental feeling of
+religion. The love of God makes me loving; the love of God to man is
+the cause of man's love to God; the divine love causes, awakens human
+love. "We love God because he first loved us." What, then, is it that I
+love in God? Love: love to man. But when I love and worship the love
+with which God loves man, do I not love man; is not my love of God,
+though indirectly, love of man? If God loves man, is not man, then,
+the very substance of God? That which I love, is it not my inmost
+being? Have I a heart when I do not love? No! love only is the heart
+of man. But what is love without the thing loved? Thus what I love is
+my heart, the substance of my being, my nature. Why does man grieve,
+why does he lose pleasure in life when he has lost the beloved
+object? Why? because with the beloved object he has lost his heart,
+the activity of his affections, the principle of life. Thus if God
+loves man, man is the heart of God--the welfare of man his deepest
+anxiety. If man, then, is the object of God, is not man, in God,
+an object to himself? is not the content of the divine nature the
+human nature? If God is love, is not the essential content of this
+love man? Is not the love of God to man--the basis and central point
+of religion--the love of man to himself made an object, contemplated
+as the highest objective truth, as the highest being to man? Is not
+then the proposition, "God loves man" an orientalism (religion is
+essentially oriental), which in plain speech means, the highest is
+the love of man?
+The idea that prayer's fulfillment was eternally predetermined is an absurd fiction contradicting religion's nature. As Lavater said, "We need an arbitrary God." Even in this fiction, God is defined by human needs. The only difference is that the contradiction between immutability and responsiveness is pushed into the deceptive distance of eternity. Whether God decides now or decided long ago is fundamentally the same.
+The truth to which, by means of analysis, we have here reduced the
+mystery of the Incarnation, has also been recognised even in the
+religious consciousness. Thus Luther, for example, says, "He who
+can truly conceive such a thing (namely, the incarnation of God)
+in his heart, should, for the sake of the flesh and blood which
+sits at the right hand of God, bear love to all flesh and blood here
+upon the earth, and never more be able to be angry with any man. The
+gentle manhood of Christ our God should at a glance fill all hearts
+with joy, so that never more could an angry, unfriendly thought come
+therein--yea, every man ought, out of great joy, to be tender to his
+fellow-man for the sake of that our flesh and blood." "This is a fact
+which should move us to great joy and blissful hope that we are thus
+honoured above all creatures, even above the angels, so that we can
+with truth boast, My own flesh and blood sits at the right hand of
+God and reigns over all. Such honour has no creature, not even an
+angel. This ought to be a furnace that should melt us all into one
+heart, and should create such a fervour in us men that we should
+heartily love each other." But that which in the truth of religion
+is the essence of the fable, the chief thing, is to the religious
+consciousness only the moral of the fable, a collateral thing.
+It is inconsistent to reject a God moved by prayer as unworthy anthropomorphism. Once we believe in a providential being who cares for humanity, we believe in a Providence inconceivable without love. Thus we believe in a being motivated by love, possessing at least a psychological heart. The religious mind attributes everything to God except what it despises. Christians unhesitatingly gave God love and compassion, not attributes contradicting their ideals. This projected love is not illusory but real—human love made objective, affirming itself. In God, love absorbs itself as its own ultimate truth.
+One might object that the Christian Incarnation is unique and "speculative" compared to pagan incarnations like Jupiter becoming a bull—mere fantasies where the god's nature is nothing beyond the form. Christianity claims a distinct, superhuman God appears as man. But this ignores that Christian Incarnation assumes human nature in God. God loves humanity; God has a Son; God is a Father. Human relationships are not excluded. Thus nothing in God's nature is absent from his incarnate form. Religion confesses in Incarnation what theology denies: God is entirely human. The "God-man" is not a mysterious "synthetic fact" but an "analytic fact"—human words with human meaning. Any contradiction exists prior to Incarnation, in combining providence and love with deity. If love is real, it differs from ours only by removing human limitations. The Incarnation is simply the most powerful expression of this love. Love knows no better way to make its object happy than by personal presence. To see the invisible benefactor is love's deepest desire. The Incarnation's sole purpose is to give unquestionable certainty of God's love. The appearance was limited, but the manifested nature is eternal. We believe not in the manifestation itself but in what was manifested: love.
+The clearest proof that religion is humanity contemplating itself is God's love for humanity, religion's foundation. For humanity's sake, God empties himself of divinity. This is the Incarnation's elevating power: the highest being humbles himself for humanity. Through God, I learn my own worth; I have value in God's eyes. How else express humanity's worth than God becoming man for man's sake? God's love for humanity is essential to his being. This is religion's fundamental feeling. God's love makes me loving; divine love awakens human love.
+> **Quote:** "We love God because he first loved us."
+What do I love in God? Love—love for humanity. But when I worship God's love for humanity, do I not love humanity itself? Is my love for God not, indirectly, love for humanity? If God loves humanity, is not humanity God's substance? Is what I love not my own innermost being? Do I have a heart if I do not love? No—love alone is the heart. What is love without an object? Thus I love my heart, my nature. Why do we grieve when losing a beloved? Because we lose our heart, the principle of our life. If God loves humanity, humanity is God's heart—human welfare his deepest concern. If humanity is God's object, are not humans making themselves their own object in God? Is not divine nature actually human nature? If God is love, is not humanity the essential content? Is not the proposition 'God loves man' an orientalism—for religion is essentially oriental—which in plain speech means: the highest is the love of man?
+> **Quote:** "He who can truly conceive such a thing in his heart should, for the sake of the flesh and blood which sits at the right hand of God, bear love to all flesh and blood here upon the earth, and never more be able to be angry with any man. The gentle manhood of Christ our God should at a glance fill all hearts with joy, so that never more could an angry, unfriendly thought come therein—yea, every man ought, out of great joy, to be tender to his fellow-man for the sake of that our flesh and blood."
+> **Quote:** "This is a fact which should move us to great joy and blissful hope that we are thus honoured above all creatures, even above the angels, so that we can with truth boast, My own flesh and blood sits at the right hand of God and reigns over all. Such honour has no creature, not even an angel. This ought to be a furnace that should melt us all into one heart, and should create such a fervour in us men that we should heartily love each other."
+But what is truly essential—the primary point—religious consciousness treats as merely the moral, a secondary matter.
 ### CHAPTER V. - THE MYSTERY OF THE SUFFERING GOD.
+An essential condition of the incarnate God—Christ—is the Passion. Love proves itself through suffering; all thoughts of Christ center on this idea.
+An essential condition of the incarnate, or, what is the same thing,
+the human God, namely, Christ, is the Passion. Love attests itself by
+suffering. All thoughts and feelings which are immediately associated
+with Christ concentrate themselves in the idea of the Passion. God as
+God is the sum of all human perfection; God as Christ is the sum of all
+human misery. The heathen philosophers celebrated activity, especially
+the spontaneous activity of the intelligence, as the highest, the
+divine; the Christians consecrated passivity, even placing it in
+God. If God as actus purus, as pure activity, is the God of abstract
+philosophy; so, on the other hand, Christ, the God of the Christians,
+is the passio pura, pure suffering--the highest metaphysical thought,
+the être suprême of the heart. For what makes more impression on the
+heart than suffering? especially the suffering of one who considered
+in himself is free from suffering, exalted above it;--the suffering
+of the innocent, endured purely for the good of others, the suffering
+of love,--self-sacrifice? But for the very reason that the history
+of the Passion is the history which most deeply affects the human
+heart, or let us rather say the heart in general--for it would be a
+ludicrous mistake in man to attempt to conceive any other heart than
+the human,--it follows undeniably that nothing else is expressed in
+that history, nothing else is made an object in it, but the nature
+of the heart,--that it is not an invention of the understanding
+or the poetic faculty, but of the heart. The heart, however, does
+not invent in the same way as the free imagination or intelligence;
+it has a passive, receptive relation to what it produces; all that
+proceeds from it seems to it given from without, takes it by violence,
+works with the force of irresistible necessity. The heart overcomes,
+masters man; he who is once in its power is possessed as it were by
+his demon, by his God. The heart knows no other God, no more excellent
+being than itself, than a God whose name may indeed be another, but
+whose nature, whose substance is the nature of the heart. And out of
+the heart, out of the inward impulse to do good, to live and die for
+man, out of the divine instinct of benevolence which desires to make
+all happy, and excludes none, not even the most abandoned and abject,
+out of the moral duty of benevolence in the highest sense, as having
+become an inward necessity, i.e., a movement of the heart,--out of
+the human nature, therefore, as it reveals itself through the heart,
+has sprung what is best, what is true in Christianity--its essence
+purified from theological dogmas and contradictions.
+> "God as God is the sum of all human perfection; God as Christ is the sum of all human misery."
+For, according to the principles which we have already developed, that
+which in religion is the predicate we must make the subject, and that
+which in religion is a subject we must make a predicate, thus inverting
+the oracles of religion; and by this means we arrive at the truth. God
+suffers--suffering is the predicate--but for men, for others, not for
+himself. What does that mean in plain speech? Nothing else than this:
+to suffer for others is divine; he who suffers for others, who lays
+down his life for them, acts divinely, is a God to men. [38]
+Where heathen philosophers celebrated activity—especially the intellect's spontaneous activity—as the highest state, Christians consecrated passivity, placing it within God himself. If the God of abstract philosophy is *actus purus*—pure activity—then Christ is *passio pura*—pure suffering, the *être suprême* of the heart. What makes a deeper impression than suffering? Especially the suffering of one innocent and exalted, endured purely for others? Because the Passion story moves the heart most deeply, it expresses the nature of the heart itself—not an invention of intellect or poetry, but of the heart.
+The Passion of Christ, however, represents not only moral, voluntary
+suffering, the suffering of love, the power of sacrificing self for
+the good of others; it represents also suffering as such, suffering
+in so far as it is an expression of passibility in general. The
+Christian religion is so little superhuman that it even sanctions
+human weakness. The heathen philosopher, on hearing tidings of the
+death of his child exclaims: "I knew that he was mortal." Christ, on
+the contrary,--at least in the Bible,--sheds tears over the death of
+Lazarus, a death which he nevertheless knew to be only an apparent
+one. While Socrates empties the cup of poison with unshaken soul,
+Christ exclaims, "If it be possible, let this cup pass from me." [39]
+Christ is in this respect the self-confession of human sensibility. In
+opposition to the heathen, and in particular the stoical principle,
+with its rigorous energy of will and self-sustainedness, the Christian
+involves the consciousness of his own sensitiveness and susceptibility
+in the consciousness of God; he finds it, if only it be no sinful
+weakness, not denied, not condemned in God.
+The heart's relationship to what it produces is passive and receptive. Everything from the heart seems given from outside, working with irresistible necessity. The heart overcomes us; anyone in its power is possessed by their own demon—their own God. Out of the heart—out of the inward impulse to do good, to live and die for others, out of the moral duty of benevolence that has become an inward necessity—has sprung what is best and truest in Christianity: its essence purified from theological dogmas.
+To suffer is the highest command of Christianity--the history of
+Christianity is the history of the Passion of Humanity. While amongst
+the heathens the shout of sensual pleasure mingled itself in the
+worship of the gods, amongst the Christians, we mean of course the
+ancient Christians, God is served with sighs and tears. [40] But as
+where sounds of sensual pleasure make a part of the cultus, it is a
+sensual God, a God of life, who is worshipped, as indeed these shouts
+of joy are only a symbolical definition of the nature of the gods to
+whom this jubilation is acceptable; so also the sighs of Christians are
+tones which proceed from the inmost soul, the inmost nature of their
+God. The God expressed by the cultus, whether this be an external,
+or, as with the Christians, an inward spiritual worship,--not the God
+of sophistical theology,--is the true God of man. But the Christians,
+we mean of course the ancient Christians, believed that they rendered
+the highest honour to their God by tears, the tears of repentance and
+yearning. Thus tears are the light-reflecting drops which mirror the
+nature of the Christian's God. But a God who has pleasure in tears,
+expresses nothing else than the nature of the heart. It is true that
+the theory of the Christian religion says: Christ has done all for
+us, has redeemed us, has reconciled us with God; and from hence the
+inference may be drawn: Let us be of a joyful mind and disposition;
+what need have we to trouble ourselves as to how we shall reconcile
+ourselves with God? we are reconciled already. But the imperfect
+tense in which the fact of suffering is expressed makes a deeper,
+a more enduring impression, than the perfect tense which expresses
+the fact of redemption. The redemption is only the result of the
+suffering; the suffering is the cause of the redemption. Hence the
+suffering takes deeper root in the feelings; the suffering makes
+itself an object of imitation;--not so the redemption. If God himself
+suffered for my sake, how can I be joyful, how can I allow myself
+any gladness, at least on this corrupt earth, which was the theatre
+of his suffering? [41] Ought I to fare better than God? Ought I not,
+then, to make his sufferings my own? Is not what God my Lord does my
+model? Or shall I share only the gain and not the cost also? Do I know
+merely that he has redeemed me? Do I not also know the history of his
+suffering? Should it be an object of cold remembrance to me, or even
+an object of rejoicing, because it has purchased my salvation? Who
+can think so--who can wish to be exempt from the sufferings of his God?
+Applying our established principle—inverting religion's oracles to find truth—we must make the predicate the subject. God suffers, but for humanity, not himself. What does this mean?
+The Christian religion is the religion of suffering. [42] The images of
+the crucified one which we still meet with in all churches, represent
+not the Saviour, but only the crucified, the suffering Christ. Even
+the self-crucifixions among the Christians are, psychologically, a
+deep-rooted consequence of their religious views. How should not he
+who has always the image of the crucified one in his mind, at length
+contract the desire to crucify either himself or another? At least
+we have as good a warrant for this conclusion as Augustine and other
+fathers of the Church for their reproach against the heathen religion,
+that the licentious religious images of the heathens provoked and
+authorised licentiousness.
+> "to suffer for others is divine; he who suffers for others, who lays down his life for them, acts divinely, is a God to men."
+God suffers, means in truth nothing else than: God is a heart. The
+heart is the source, the centre of all suffering. A being without
+suffering is a being without a heart. The mystery of the suffering
+God is therefore the mystery of feeling, sensibility. A suffering
+God is a feeling, sensitive God. [43] But the proposition: God is a
+feeling Being, is only the religious periphrase of the proposition:
+feeling is absolute, divine in its nature.
+The Passion represents not just voluntary suffering—the suffering of love and self-sacrifice—but suffering as such, as expression of general sensitivity. Christianity is so little "superhuman" that it sanctions human weakness. The heathen philosopher, hearing of his child's death, says: "I knew he was mortal." Christ, knowing Lazarus's death temporary, still weeps. While Socrates drinks the poison with unshaken soul, Christ prays: "If it be possible, let this cup pass from me." Here, Christ is the self-confession of human sensibility. Against the Stoic principle of rigorous will and self-sufficiency, Christianity includes consciousness of human vulnerability within the consciousness of God.
+Man has the consciousness not only of a spring of activity, but also
+of a spring of suffering in himself. I feel; and I feel feeling (not
+merely will and thought, which are only too often in opposition to me
+and my feelings), as belonging to my essential being, and, though the
+source of all sufferings and sorrows, as a glorious, divine power and
+perfection. What would man be without feeling? It is the musical power
+in man. But what would man be without music? Just as man has a musical
+faculty and feels an inward necessity to breathe out his feelings
+in song; so, by a like necessity, he in religious sighs and tears
+streams forth the nature of feeling as an objective, divine nature.
+> "The history of Christianity is the history of the Passion of Humanity."
+Religion is human nature reflected, mirrored in itself. That which
+exists has necessarily a pleasure, a joy in itself, loves itself,
+and loves itself justly; to blame it because it loves itself is
+to reproach it because it exists. To exist is to assert oneself,
+to affirm oneself, to love oneself; he to whom life is a burthen
+rids himself of it. Where, therefore, feeling is not depreciated
+and repressed, as with the Stoics, where existence is awarded to it,
+there also is religious power and significance already conceded to it,
+there also is it already exalted to that stage in which it can mirror
+and reflect itself, in which it can project its own image as God. God
+is the mirror of man.
+Where heathens worshipped with shouts of sensual pleasure, Christians serve God with sighs and tears. Just as those shouts defined a sensual God of life, Christian sighs proceed from the innermost nature of their God. The God expressed through worship—whether external ritual or inward devotion—is humanity's true God, not the God of sophisticated theology.
+That which has essential value for man, which he esteems the perfect,
+the excellent, in which he has true delight,--that alone is God
+to him. If feeling seems to thee a glorious attribute, it is then,
+per se, a divine attribute to thee. Therefore, the feeling, sensitive
+man believes only in a feeling, sensitive God, i.e., he believes only
+in the truth of his own existence and nature, for he can believe in
+nothing else than that which is involved in his own nature. His faith
+is the consciousness of that which is holy to him; but that alone is
+holy to man which lies deepest within him, which is most peculiarly
+his own, the basis, the essence of his individuality. To the feeling
+man a God without feeling is an empty, abstract, negative God, i.e.,
+nothing; because that is wanting to him which is precious and sacred
+to man. God is for man the commonplace book where he registers his
+highest feelings and thoughts, the genealogical tree on which are
+entered the names that are dearest and most sacred to him.
+Ancient Christians believed they honored God most through tears of repentance and longing. These tears are the light-reflecting drops that mirror the nature of the Christian's God—for a God who takes pleasure in tears expresses only the nature of the heart. Christian theory says: Christ has done everything, redeemed us, reconciled us to God. One might conclude we should be joyful. But the imperfect tense in which the suffering is expressed makes a deeper impression than the perfect tense of redemption. Redemption is only the result; suffering is the cause. Therefore suffering takes deeper root, becoming an object of imitation, while redemption does not. If God suffered for me, how can I be joyful? How can I allow myself happiness on this corrupt earth that staged his suffering? Should I fare better than God? Should I not make his sufferings my own? Is not God's action my model? Or shall I share only the gain and not the cost? Should his suffering be merely cold memory, or even cause for rejoicing because it purchased my salvation? Who could think so—who would wish exemption from their God's sufferings?
+It is a sign of an undiscriminating good-nature, a womanish instinct,
+to gather together and then to preserve tenaciously all that we
+have gathered, not to trust anything to the waves of forgetfulness,
+to the chance of memory, in short not to trust ourselves and learn
+to know what really has value for us. The freethinker is liable to
+the danger of an unregulated, dissolute life. The religious man who
+binds together all things in one, does not lose himself in sensuality;
+but for that reason he is exposed to the danger of illiberality, of
+spiritual selfishness and greed. Therefore, to the religious man at
+least, the irreligious or un-religious man appears lawless, arbitrary,
+haughty, frivolous; not because that which is sacred to the former is
+not also in itself sacred to the latter, but only because that which
+the un-religious man holds in his head merely, the religious man
+places out of and above himself as an object, and hence recognises
+in himself the relation of a formal subordination. The religious
+man having a commonplace book, a nucleus of aggregation, has an aim,
+and having an aim he has firm standing-ground. Not mere will as such,
+not vague knowledge--only activity with a purpose, which is the union
+of theoretic and practical activity, gives man a moral basis and
+support, i.e., character. Every man, therefore, must place before
+himself a God, i.e., an aim, a purpose. The aim is the conscious,
+voluntary, essential impulse of life, the glance of genius, the focus
+of self-knowledge,--the unity of the material and spiritual in the
+individual man. He who has an aim has a law over him; he does not
+merely guide himself; he is guided. He who has no aim, has no home,
+no sanctuary; aimlessness is the greatest unhappiness. Even he who has
+only common aims gets on better, though he may not be better, than
+he who has no aim. An aim sets limits; but limits are the mentors
+of virtue. He who has an aim, an aim which is in itself true and
+essential, has, eo ipso, a religion, if not in the narrow sense of
+common pietism, yet--and this is the only point to be considered--in
+the sense of reason, in the sense of the universal, the only true love.
+> "The Christian religion is the religion of suffering."
+The crucified Christ images in all churches represent not the Savior but the suffering Christ. Even Christian self-mortification practices are psychologically deep-rooted consequences of this view. How could one who constantly contemplates the crucified not eventually desire to crucify themselves or another? We have as much justification for this conclusion as Augustine had for reproaching heathen religion—that its licentious images provoked licentiousness.
+> **Quote:** "God suffers" means in truth nothing else than: God is a heart.
+The heart is suffering's source and center. A being without suffering is a being without a heart. The mystery of the suffering God is the mystery of feeling. But "God is a feeling being" is only religion's paraphrase of: feeling is absolute and divine.
+Humans are conscious of a source of suffering within themselves. I feel; and I experience feeling—not just will and thought, often opposed to me—as belonging to my essential being. Despite being suffering's source, I experience it as glorious and divine. What would a human be without feeling? It is our musical power. As we must express feelings in song, we pour out feeling's nature in religious sighs and tears as an objective, divine nature.
+> "God is the mirror of man."
+Religion is human nature reflected. That which exists necessarily loves itself; it affirms itself. To blame a being for self-love is to reproach it for existing. Where feeling is not repressed—as with the Stoics—religious power is already conceded to it. Feeling becomes exalted, mirroring itself and projecting its image as God.
+Whatever has essential value, whatever we esteem as perfect and excellent—that alone is God to us. If feeling seems a glorious attribute, then it is divine. The feeling person believes only in a feeling God; that is, they believe only in their own nature's truth, for they can believe in nothing beyond it. Their faith is consciousness of what is holy to them; only what lies deepest within—the basis of their individuality—is truly holy. To a feeling person, a God without feeling is empty and abstract, nothing at all, because he lacks what is most precious. God is the commonplace book where we register our highest feelings, the genealogical tree where we enter the names most sacred to us.
+It is undiscriminating good-nature to gather everything together and cling tenaciously, trusting nothing to forgetfulness—in short, not trusting ourselves to learn what truly has value. The freethinker risks an unregulated, dissolute life. The religious person, binding everything into one, does not lose themselves in sensuality; but for that very reason, they risk narrow-mindedness and spiritual selfishness. Thus to the religious person, the irreligious appears lawless, arrogant, frivolous—not because what is sacred to the former isn't also sacred to the latter, but because the religious person places what the non-religious merely holds in mind outside themselves as an object, thereby recognizing formal subordination.
+Because the religious person has a "commonplace book," a center for focus, they have an aim; and with an aim, they have firm ground. Character comes not from mere will or vague knowledge, but from purposeful activity—the union of theoretical and practical effort. Every person must place a God before themselves—that is, an aim or purpose. The aim is life's conscious, voluntary, essential impulse; it is the focus of self-knowledge, the unity of material and spiritual. He who has an aim has a law over him; he is guided. He who has no aim has no home; aimlessness is the greatest unhappiness. An aim sets limits, and limits are virtue's mentors. He who has an inherently true and essential aim has, by that fact, a religion—if not in the narrow sense of common piety, then in the sense of reason and the universal, which is the only true love.
 ### CHAPTER VI. - THE MYSTERY OF THE TRINITY AND THE MOTHER OF GOD.
+If a God without emotion cannot satisfy a suffering human, neither can a God who only feels, without intelligence or will. Only a being encompassing all of humanity can satisfy the whole person. Our consciousness of ourselves in our totality is the consciousness of the Trinity, which binds previously separate qualities into unity; in doing so, it reduces the universal being of the intellect—that is, God as God—to a specific being or faculty.
+If a God without feeling, without a capability of suffering, will not
+suffice to man as a feeling, suffering being, neither will a God with
+feeling only, a God without intelligence and will. Only a being who
+comprises in himself the whole man can satisfy the whole man. Man's
+consciousness of himself in his totality is the consciousness of the
+Trinity. The Trinity knits together the qualities or powers which
+were before regarded separately into unity, and thereby reduces the
+universal being of the understanding, i.e., God as God, to a special
+being, a special faculty.
+What theology calls the image of the Trinity must be taken as the thing itself: the essence, the archetype, the original. The so-called images are primarily: mind, understanding, memory, will, and love—*mens, intellectus, memoria, voluntas, amor*, or *caritas*. God thinks; God loves; and further, he thinks and loves himself. The object thought, known, and loved is God himself. The objectivity of self-consciousness is the first thing we encounter in the Trinity. Self-consciousness inevitably presents itself as absolute. For a human being, existence is one with self-consciousness—existence with self-consciousness is existence itself. If I do not know that I exist, it makes no difference whether I do. Self-consciousness is for us, and in itself, absolute. A God without consciousness is no God at all. Humans cannot imagine themselves without consciousness; therefore, they cannot imagine God without it.
+That which theology designates as the image, the similitude of the
+Trinity, we must take as the thing itself, the essence, the archetype,
+the original; by this means we shall solve the enigma. The so-called
+images by which it has been sought to illustrate the Trinity, and
+make it comprehensible, are principally: mind, understanding, memory,
+will, love--mens, intellectus, memoria, voluntas, amor or caritas.
+> **Quote:** "The divine self-consciousness is nothing else than the consciousness of consciousness as an absolute or divine essence."
+God thinks, God loves; and, moreover, he thinks, he loves himself;
+the object thought, known, loved, is God himself. The objectivity
+of self-consciousness is the first thing we meet with in the
+Trinity. Self-consciousness necessarily urges itself upon man as
+something absolute. Existence is for him one with self-consciousness;
+existence with self-consciousness is for him existence simply. If
+I do not know that I exist, it is all one whether I exist or
+not. Self-consciousness is for man--is, in fact, in itself--absolute. A
+God who knows not his own existence, a God without consciousness, is
+no God. Man cannot conceive himself as without consciousness; hence
+he cannot conceive God as without it. The divine self-consciousness
+is nothing else than the consciousness of consciousness as an absolute
+or divine essence.
+But this explanation is incomplete. It would be arbitrary to limit the Trinity to that single proposition. Consciousness, understanding, will, and love as abstract essences belong only to abstract philosophy. Religion is our consciousness of ourselves in our concrete totality, where self-consciousness exists only as the complete unity of "I" and "thou."
+But this explanation is by no means exhaustive. On the contrary,
+we should be proceeding very arbitrarily if we sought to reduce
+and limit the mystery of the Trinity to the proposition just laid
+down. Consciousness, understanding, will, love, in the sense of
+abstract essences or qualities, belong only to abstract philosophy. But
+religion is man's consciousness of himself in his concrete or living
+totality, in which the identity of self-consciousness exists only as
+the pregnant, complete unity of I and thou.
+Religion—at least in its Christian form—is an abstraction from the world; it is essentially inward. The religious person leads a life withdrawn from the world, hidden in God, quiet, and devoid of worldly joy. They separate themselves from the world, not only in the common sense—where renouncing the world is part of any earnest life—but also in the sense that science uses when it calls itself "world-wisdom" (*welt-weisheit*). They separate themselves only because God is a being separate from the world, outside and above it—expressed abstractly, God is the non-existence of the world.
+Religion, at least the Christian, is abstraction from the world; it is
+essentially inward. The religious man leads a life withdrawn from the
+world, hidden in God, still, void of worldly joy. He separates himself
+from the world, not only in the ordinary sense, according to which
+the renunciation of the world belongs to every true, earnest man,
+but also in that wider sense which science gives to the word, when
+it calls itself world-wisdom (welt-weisheit); but he thus separates
+himself only because God is a being separate from the world, an
+extra and supramundane being,--i.e., abstractly and philosophically
+expressed, the non-existence of the world. God, as an extramundane
+being, is however nothing else than the nature of man withdrawn from
+the world and concentrated in itself, freed from all worldly ties
+and entanglements, transporting itself above the world, and positing
+itself in this condition as a real objective being; or, nothing else
+than the consciousness of the power to abstract oneself from all that
+is external, and to live for and with oneself alone, under the form
+which this power takes in religion, namely, that of a being distinct,
+apart from man. [44] God as God, as a simple being, is the being
+absolutely alone, solitary--absolute solitude and self-sufficingness;
+for that only can be solitary which is self-sufficing. To be able to
+be solitary is a sign of character and thinking power. Solitude is
+the want of the thinker, society the want of the heart. We can think
+alone, but we can love only with another. In love we are dependent,
+for it is the need of another being; we are independent only in the
+solitary act of thought. Solitude is self-sufficingness.
+God, as a being outside the world, is nothing other than human nature withdrawn from the world and concentrated in itself—freed from worldly ties, lifting itself above the world and establishing itself as a real, objective being. Or, it is the consciousness of the power to distance oneself from everything external and live for oneself alone, expressed in religion as a distinct being apart from humanity.
+But from a solitary God the essential need of duality, of love,
+of community, of the real, completed self-consciousness, of the
+alter ego, is excluded. This want is therefore satisfied by religion
+thus: in the still solitude of the Divine Being is placed another,
+a second, different from God as to personality, but identical with
+him in essence,--God the Son, in distinction from God the Father. God
+the Father is I, God the Son Thou. The I is understanding, the Thou
+love. But love with understanding and understanding with love is mind,
+and mind is the totality of man as such--the total man.
+God as God, as a simple being, is absolutely alone and solitary—absolute solitude and self-sufficiency; for only that which is self-sufficient can be truly solitary. > **Quote:** "Solitude is the want of the thinker, society the want of the heart."  We can think alone, but we can only love with another. In love we are dependent, for it is the need for another being; we are independent only in the solitary act of thought. Solitude is self-sufficiency.
+Participated life is alone true, self-satisfying, divine life:--this
+simple thought, this truth, natural, immanent in man, is the secret,
+the supernatural mystery of the Trinity. But religion expresses
+this truth, as it does every other, in an indirect manner, i.e.,
+inversely, for it here makes a general truth into a particular one,
+the true subject into a predicate, when it says: God is a participated
+life, a life of love and friendship. The third Person in the Trinity
+expresses nothing further than the love of the two divine Persons
+towards each other; it is the unity of the Son and the Father, the
+idea of community, strangely enough regarded in its turn as a special
+personal being.
+But the essential need for duality, love, community, and a real, completed self-consciousness—the need for an *alter ego*—is excluded from a solitary God. Religion satisfies this by placing another into the quiet solitude of the Divine Being—a second person, distinct in personality but identical in essence: God the Son, as distinguished from God the Father. The Father is "I"; the Son is "Thou." The "I" is understanding; the "Thou" is love. But love with understanding and understanding with love is mind, and mind is the totality of the human being—the complete person.
+The Holy Spirit owes its personal existence only to a name, a word. The
+earliest Fathers of the Church are well known to have identified
+the Spirit with the Son. Even later, its dogmatic personality wants
+consistency. He is the love with which God loves himself and man,
+and, on the other hand, he is the love with which man loves God and
+men. Thus he is the identity of God and man, made objective according
+to the usual mode of thought in religion, namely, as in itself a
+distinct being. But for us this unity or identity is already involved
+in the idea of the Father, and yet more in that of the Son. Hence we
+need not make the Holy Spirit a separate object of our analysis. Only
+this one remark further. In so far as the Holy Spirit represents the
+subjective phase, he is properly the representation of the religious
+sentiment to itself, the representation of religious emotion, of
+religious enthusiasm, or the personification, the rendering objective
+of religion in religion. The Holy Spirit is therefore the sighing
+creature, the yearning of the creature after God.
+A shared life is the only true, self-satisfying, and divine life. This simple thought—this natural truth inherent in humanity—is the secret, the supernatural mystery of the Trinity. But religion expresses this truth inversely: it turns a general truth into a specific one when it says God is a shared life, a life of love and friendship. The third Person expresses nothing more than the love of the two divine Persons for each other; it is the unity of Son and Father, the idea of community, strangely regarded as its own distinct personal being.
+But that there are in fact only two Persons in the Trinity, the
+third representing, as has been said, only love, is involved in
+this, that to the strict idea of love two suffice. With two we have
+the principle of multiplicity and all its essential results. Two
+is the principle of multiplicity, and can therefore stand as its
+complete substitute. If several Persons were posited, the force
+of love would only be weakened--it would be dispersed. But love
+and the heart are identical; the heart is no special power; it is
+the man who loves, and in so far as he loves. The second Person is
+therefore the self-assertion of the human heart as the principle of
+duality, of participated life,--it is warmth; the Father is light,
+although light was chiefly a predicate of the Son, because in him the
+Godhead first became clear, comprehensible. But notwithstanding this,
+light as a superterrestrial element may be ascribed to the Father,
+the representative of the Godhead as such, the cold being of the
+intelligence; and warmth, as a terrestrial element, to the Son. God
+as the Son first gives warmth to man; here God, from an object of
+the intellectual eye, of the indifferent sense of light, becomes
+an object of feeling, of affection, of enthusiasm, of rapture;
+but only because the Son is himself nothing else than the glow of
+love, enthusiasm. [45] God as the Son is the primitive incarnation,
+the primitive self-renunciation of God, the negation of God in God;
+for as the Son he is a finite being, because he exists ab alio, he
+has a source, whereas the Father has no source, he exists à se. Thus
+in the second Person the essential attribute of the Godhead, the
+attribute of self-existence, is given up. But God the Father himself
+begets the Son; thus he renounces his rigorous, exclusive divinity;
+he humiliates, lowers himself, evolves within himself the principle
+of finiteness, of dependent existence; in the Son he becomes man,
+not indeed, in the first instance, as to the outward form, but as
+to the inward nature. And for this reason it is as the Son that God
+first becomes the object of man, the object of feeling, of the heart.
+The Holy Spirit owes its personal existence only to a name. It is well known that the earliest Church Fathers identified the Spirit with the Son, and even later its personality in dogma lacks consistency. He is the love with which God loves himself and humanity, and on the other hand, the love with which humans love God and one another—thus the identity of God and humanity, made objective as a distinct being. But this unity is already contained in the idea of the Father, and even more so in the Son. Therefore, we need not make the Holy Spirit a separate object of analysis. Insofar as he represents the subjective phase, he is the personification of religion within religion—the "sighing creature," the longing of the creature for God.
+The heart comprehends only what springs from the heart. From
+the character of the subjective disposition and impressions the
+conclusion is infallible as to the character of the object. The
+pure, free understanding denies the Son,--not so the understanding
+determined by feeling, overshadowed by the heart; on the contrary,
+it finds in the Son the depths of the Godhead, because in him it
+finds feeling, which in and by itself is something dark, obscure,
+and therefore appears to man a mystery. The Son lays hold on the
+heart, because the true Father of the Divine Son is the human heart,
+[46] and the Son himself nothing else than the divine heart, i.e.,
+the human heart become objective to itself as a Divine Being.
+That there are actually only two Persons in the Trinity—the third representing only love—is based on the idea that for love, two are sufficient. With two we have the principle of multiplicity. Two is the principle of variety and can stand as its complete substitute; more Persons would only weaken and scatter love's power. The heart is not a separate power; it is the person who loves, in the act of loving. The second Person is therefore the self-assertion of the human heart as the principle of duality and shared life; he is warmth. The Father is light—the representative of the Godhead as such, the cold being of intelligence—while warmth belongs to the Son. God as the Son first gives warmth to humanity, changing from an object of the intellectual eye—the indifferent sense of light—into an object of feeling, affection, and rapture. This happens only because the Son is the glow of love and enthusiasm. God as the Son is the original incarnation, the self-denial of God, the negation of God within God. As the Son, he is a finite being because he exists *ab alio* (from another), whereas the Father exists *a se* (from himself). Thus in the second Person, the essential attribute of the Godhead—self-existence—is surrendered. The Father himself begets the Son, thereby renouncing his strict divinity and developing within himself the principle of finiteness. In the Son, he becomes human—not in outward form, but in inward nature. For this reason it is as the Son that God first becomes an object for humanity, an object of the heart.
+A God who has not in himself the quality of finiteness, the principle
+of concrete existence, the essence of the feeling of dependence, is
+no God for a finite, concrete being. The religious man cannot love a
+God who has not the essence of love in himself, neither can man, or,
+in general, any finite being, be an object to a God who has not in
+himself the ground, the principle of finiteness. To such a God there is
+wanting the sense, the understanding, the sympathy for finiteness. How
+can God be the Father of men, how can he love other beings subordinate
+to himself, if he has not in himself a subordinate being, a Son, if
+he does not know what love is, so to speak, from his own experience,
+in relation to himself? The single man takes far less interest in the
+family sorrows of another than he who himself has family ties. Thus
+God the Father loves men only in the Son and for the sake of the
+Son. The love to man is derived from the love to the Son.
+> **Quote:** "The heart comprehends only what springs from the heart."
+The Father and Son in the Trinity are therefore father and son not
+in a figurative sense, but in a strictly literal sense. The Father
+is a real father in relation to the Son, the Son is a real son
+in relation to the Father, or to God as the Father. The essential
+personal distinction between them consists only in this, that the one
+begets, the other is begotten. If this natural empirical condition is
+taken away, their personal existence and reality are annihilated. The
+Christians--we mean of course the Christians of former days, who would
+with difficulty recognise the worldly, frivolous, pagan Christians
+of the modern world as their brethren in Christ--substituted for
+the natural love and unity immanent in man a purely religious love
+and unity; they rejected the real life of the family, the intimate
+bond of love which is naturally moral, as an undivine, unheavenly,
+i.e., in truth, a worthless thing. But in compensation they had a
+Father and Son in God, who embraced each other with heartfelt love,
+with that intense love which natural relationship alone inspires. On
+this account the mystery of the Trinity was to the ancient Christians
+an object of unbounded wonder, enthusiasm, and rapture, because here
+the satisfaction of those profoundest human wants which in reality,
+in life, they denied, became to them an object of contemplation in
+God. [47]
+The conclusion about an object's nature is inevitable from one's subjective disposition. The pure intellect denies the Son, but intellect guided by feeling finds the depths of the Godhead in him, because in him it finds feeling—which is inherently dark and obscure, and therefore appears as mystery. The Son takes hold of the heart because the true Father of the Divine Son is the human heart, and the Son himself is nothing other than the divine heart—the human heart viewed objectively as a Divine Being.
+It was therefore quite in order that, to complete the divine
+family, the bond of love between Father and Son, a third, and that
+a feminine person, was received into heaven; for the personality of
+the Holy Spirit is a too vague and precarious, a too obviously poetic
+personification of the mutual love of the Father and Son, to serve as
+the third complementary being. It is true that the Virgin Mary was not
+so placed between the Father and Son as to imply that the Father had
+begotten the Son through her, because the sexual relation was regarded
+by the Christians as something unholy and sinful; but it is enough
+that the maternal principle was associated with the Father and Son.
+A God who does not possess finiteness, concrete existence, and the essence of dependence is no God for a finite being. A religious person cannot love a God who lacks the essence of love within himself; nor can a human be an object of concern to a God who does not contain the root and principle of finiteness. Such a God would lack sense, understanding, and sympathy for finite existence. How can God be the Father of humanity if he does not have a subordinate being—a Son—within himself? How could he know what love is from his own experience? An individual takes much less interest in another's family sorrows than someone with family ties. Thus, God the Father loves humanity only in the Son and for his sake. Love for humanity is derived from love for the Son.
+It is, in fact, difficult to perceive why the Mother should be
+something unholy, i.e., unworthy of God, when once God is Father
+and Son. Though it is held that the Father is not a father in the
+natural sense--that, on the contrary, the divine generation is quite
+different from the natural and human--still he remains a Father, and a
+real, not a nominal or symbolical Father in relation to the Son. And
+the idea of the Mother of God, which now appears so strange to us,
+is therefore not really more strange or paradoxical, than the idea
+of the Son of God, is not more in contradiction with the general,
+abstract definition of God than the Sonship. On the contrary, the
+Virgin Mary fits in perfectly with the relations of the Trinity, since
+she conceives without man the Son whom the Father begets without woman;
+[48] so that thus the Holy Virgin is a necessary, inherently requisite
+antithesis to the Father in the bosom of the Trinity. Moreover we have,
+if not in concreto and explicitly, yet in abstracto and implicitly,
+the feminine principle already in the Son. The Son is the mild, gentle,
+forgiving, conciliating being--the womanly sentiment of God. God, as
+the Father, is the generator, the active, the principle of masculine
+spontaneity; but the Son is begotten without himself begetting, Deus
+genitus, the passive, suffering, receptive being; he receives his
+existence from the Father. The Son, as a son, of course not as God,
+is dependent on the Father, subject to his authority. The Son is thus
+the feminine feeling of dependence in the Godhead; the Son implicitly
+urges upon us the need of a real feminine being. [49]
+The Father and Son in the Trinity are therefore father and son in a strictly literal sense, not figurative. The essential personal difference is simply that one begets and the other is begotten. Remove this natural, empirical condition and their personal existence is destroyed. The Christians—meaning those of the past who would hardly recognize modern worldly Christians—replaced natural love and unity with purely religious love and unity. They rejected the real life of the family and the intimate bond of love as unholy and worthless, but in exchange had a Father and Son in God who embraced each other with the intense affection that only a natural relationship inspires. For this reason, the Trinity was an object of boundless wonder for ancient Christians—it allowed them to contemplate in God the fulfillment of deepest human needs they denied in actual life.
+The son--I mean the natural, human son--considered as such, is an
+intermediate being between the masculine nature of the father and the
+feminine nature of the mother; he is, as it were, still half a man,
+half a woman, inasmuch as he has not the full, rigorous consciousness
+of independence which characterises the man, and feels himself drawn
+rather to the mother than to the father. The love of the son to the
+mother is the first love of the masculine being for the feminine. The
+love of man to woman, the love of the youth for the maiden, receives
+its religious--its sole truly religious consecration in the love of the
+son to the mother; the son's love for his mother is the first yearning
+of man towards woman--his first humbling of himself before her.
+It was therefore perfectly logical that, to complete the divine family, a third person—a feminine one—was welcomed into heaven.
+Necessarily, therefore, the idea of the Mother of God is associated
+with the idea of the Son of God,--the same heart that needed the one
+needed the other also. Where the Son is, the Mother cannot be absent;
+the Son is the only-begotten of the Father, but the Mother is the
+concomitant of the Son. The Son is a substitute for the Mother to the
+Father, but not so the Father to the Son. To the Son the Mother is
+indispensable; the heart of the Son is the heart of the Mother. Why
+did God become man only through woman? Could not the Almighty have
+appeared as a man amongst men in another manner--immediately? Why
+did the Son betake himself to the bosom of the Mother? [50] For what
+other reason than because the Son is the yearning after the Mother,
+because his womanly, tender heart found a corresponding expression
+only in a feminine body? It is true that the Son, as a natural
+man, dwells only temporarily in the shrine of this body, but the
+impressions which he here receives are inextinguishable; the Mother
+is never out of the mind and heart of the Son. If then the worship
+of the Son of God is no idolatry, the worship of the Mother of God
+is no idolatry. If herein we perceive the love of God to us, that he
+gave us his only-begotten Son, i.e., that which was dearest to him,
+for our salvation,--we can perceive this love still better when we
+find in God the beating of a mother's heart. The highest and deepest
+love is the mother's love. The father consoles himself for the loss
+of his son; he has a stoical principle within him. The mother, on the
+contrary, is inconsolable; she is the sorrowing element, that which
+cannot be indemnified--the true in love.
+The Holy Spirit's personality is too vague—too obviously a poetic personification of mutual love—to serve as the third complementary being. The Virgin Mary was not placed between Father and Son to imply the Father begot the Son through her, because Christians viewed sex as unholy. But it is enough that the maternal principle was associated with them.
+Where faith in the Mother of God sinks, there also sinks faith in the
+Son of God, and in God as the Father. The Father is a truth only where
+the Mother is a truth. Love is in and by itself essentially feminine in
+its nature. The belief in the love of God is the belief in the feminine
+principle as divine.* Love apart from living nature is an anomaly,
+a phantom. Behold in love the holy necessity and depth of Nature!
+Even if the Father is not a father in the natural sense, he remains a real Father in relation to the Son. The Mother of God is no more strange or paradoxical than the Son of God; it contradicts the abstract definition of God no more than Sonship does. On the contrary, the Virgin Mary fits perfectly into the Trinity, since she conceives the Son without a man, just as the Father begets the Son without a woman.
+Protestantism has set aside the Mother of God; but this deposition
+of woman has been severely avenged. [51] The arms which it has used
+against the Mother of God have turned against itself, against the
+Son of God, against the whole Trinity. He who has once offered up the
+Mother of God to the understanding, is not far from sacrificing the
+mystery of the Son of God as an anthropomorphism. The anthropomorphism
+is certainly veiled when the feminine being is excluded, but only
+veiled--not removed. It is true that Protestantism had no need of
+the heavenly bride, because it received with open arms the earthly
+bride. But for that very reason it ought to have been consequent and
+courageous enough to give up not only the Mother, but the Son and the
+Father. Only he who has no earthly parents needs heavenly ones. The
+triune God is the God of Catholicism; he has a profound, heartfelt,
+necessary, truly religious significance, only in antithesis to the
+negation of all substantial bonds, in antithesis to the life of the
+anchorite, the monk, and the nun. [52] The triune God has a substantial
+meaning only where there is an abstraction from the substance of
+real life. The more empty life is, the fuller, the more concrete is
+God. The impoverishing of the real world and the enriching of God
+is one act. Only the poor man has a rich God. God springs out of the
+feeling of a want; what man is in need of, whether this be a definite
+and therefore conscious, or an unconscious need,--that is God. Thus
+the disconsolate feeling of a void, of loneliness, needed a God in
+whom there is society, a union of beings fervently loving each other.
+Thus, the Holy Virgin is a necessary counterpart to the Father within the Trinity. Furthermore, we already have the feminine principle implicitly in the Son. The Son is the mild, gentle, forgiving being—the feminine sentiment of God. The Father is the creator, the active masculine principle; the Son is begotten without begetting himself—*Deus genitus*—the passive, suffering, receptive being. He receives his existence from the Father, is dependent on him and subject to his authority. The Son is thus the feminine feeling of dependence within the Godhead, implicitly pointing to the need for a real feminine being.
+Here we have the true explanation of the fact that the Trinity has in
+modern times lost first its practical, and ultimately its theoretical
+significance.
+The natural human son is an intermediate being between masculine father and feminine mother. He is still half-man and half-woman, lacking full consciousness of independence and feeling more drawn to the mother. A son's love for his mother is the first love of a masculine being for a feminine one, receiving its only truly religious consecration in the love of son for mother.
+Inevitably, therefore, the Mother of God is linked to the Son of God; the same heart that needed the one needed the other. Where the Son is, the Mother cannot be missing. The Son can substitute for the Mother in the Father's eyes, but to the Son the Mother is indispensable; the Son's heart is the Mother's heart.
+Why did God become human only through a woman? Could the Almighty not have appeared immediately? Why did the Son seek the Mother's womb? Because the Son is the longing for the Mother, because his tender, womanly heart found expression only in a feminine body. Though the Son stays only temporarily in this sanctuary, the impressions are permanent; the Mother is never far from the mind and heart of the Son.
+If worship of the Son is not idolatry, neither is worship of the Mother. If we see God's love in that he gave his only-begotten Son—dearest to him—for our salvation, we see it more clearly in the beating of a mother's heart within God. The highest love is a mother's love. A father consoles himself for a son's loss; a mother is inconsolable—she represents sorrow, that which cannot be compensated—the truth in love.
+Where faith in the Mother fades, faith in the Son and Father also fades. The Father is a reality only where the Mother is. > **Quote:** "Love is in and by itself essentially feminine in its nature. The belief in the love of God is the belief in the feminine principle as divine."  Love apart from living nature is a ghost. Protestantism has set aside the Mother, but this removal has been severely avenged: its weapons turned against itself—against the Son, and against the Trinity.
+Anyone who has sacrificed the Mother to the intellect is not far from sacrificing the Son as mere anthropomorphism. The human character of these ideas is veiled when the feminine being is excluded, but only veiled. Protestantism had no need for a heavenly bride because it welcomed the earthly bride—but for that reason, it should have been consistent enough to give up Mother, Son, and Father. Only those without earthly parents need heavenly ones. The triune God is the God of Catholicism; he has profound religious significance only in opposition to the rejection of real human bonds—hermit, monk, nun. The triune God has substantial meaning only where there is withdrawal from real life.
+> **Quote:** "The impoverishing of the real world and the enriching of God is one act. Only the poor man has a rich God."
+God arises from the feeling of a need; what a person lacks—conscious or unconscious—that is God. Thus, the desolate feeling of loneliness required a God in whom there is society, a union of beings who fervently love one another. This is the true explanation for why the Trinity has lost first its practical and finally its theoretical importance in modern times.
 ### CHAPTER VII. - THE MYSTERY OF THE LOGOS AND DIVINE IMAGE.
+The Trinity's essence lies in the Second Person. The fierce debate between *homoousios* and *homoiousios*—though over a single letter—was not hollow, for it concerned the co-equality and divine dignity of the Son, and thus Christianity's honor. Whatever is essentially a religion's object is its true God.
+The essential significance of the Trinity is, however, concentrated
+in the idea of the second Person. The warm interest of Christians
+in the Trinity has been, in the main, only an interest in the Son
+of God. [53] The fierce contention concerning the Homousios and
+Homoiousios was not an empty one, although it turned upon a letter. The
+point in question was the co-equality and divine dignity of the second
+Person, and therefore the honour of the Christian religion itself;
+for its essential, characteristic object is the second Person;
+and that which is essentially the object of a religion is truly,
+essentially its God. The real God of any religion is the so-called
+Mediator, because he alone is the immediate object of religion. He
+who, instead of applying to God, applies to a saint, does so only on
+the assumption that the saint has all power with God, that what he
+prays for, i.e., wishes and wills, God readily performs; that thus
+God is entirely in the hands of the saint. Supplication is the means,
+under the guise of humility and submission, of exercising one's power
+and superiority over another being. That to which my mind first turns
+is also, in truth, the first being to me. I turn to the saint, not
+because the saint is dependent on God, but because God is dependent
+on the saint, because God is determined and ruled by the prayers,
+i.e., by the wish or heart of the saint. The distinctions which the
+Catholic theologians made between latreia, doulia, and hyperdoulia,
+are absurd, groundless sophisms. The God in the background of the
+Mediator is only an abstract, inert conception, the conception or
+idea of the Godhead in general; and it is not to reconcile us with
+this idea, but to remove it to a distance, to negative it, because
+it is no object for religion, that the Mediator interposes. [54]
+God above the Mediator is nothing else than the cold understanding
+above the heart, like Fate above the Olympic gods.
+> **Quote:** "The real God of any religion is the so-called Mediator, because he alone is the immediate object of religion."
+Man, as an emotional and sensuous being, is governed and made happy
+only by images, by sensible representations. Mind presenting itself as
+at once type-creating, emotional, and sensuous, is the imagination. The
+second Person in God, who is in truth the first person in religion, is
+the nature of the imagination made objective. The definitions of the
+second Person are principally images or symbols; and these images do
+not proceed from man's incapability of conceiving the object otherwise
+than symbolically,--which is an altogether false interpretation,--but
+the thing cannot be conceived otherwise than symbolically because the
+thing itself is a symbol or image. The Son is, therefore, expressly
+called the Image of God; his essence is that he is an image--the
+representation of God, the visible glory of the invisible God. The
+Son is the satisfaction of the need for mental images, the nature of
+the imaginative activity in man made objective as an absolute, divine
+activity. Man makes to himself an image of God, i.e., he converts
+the abstract being of the reason, the being of the thinking power,
+into an object of sense or imagination. [55] But he places this image
+in God himself, because his want would not be satisfied if he did not
+regard this image as an objective reality, if it were nothing more
+for him than a subjective image, separate from God,--a mere figment
+devised by man. And it is in fact no devised, no arbitrary image;
+for it expresses the necessity of the imagination, the necessity of
+affirming the imagination as a divine power. The Son is the reflected
+splendour of the imagination, the image dearest to the heart; but
+for the very reason that he is only an object of the imagination,
+he is only the nature of the imagination made objective. [56]
+Those who pray to saints assume the saint has complete influence over God—that whatever the saint wills, God performs. In this view, God is in the saint's hands. Supplication is a means, under the guise of humility, of exercising power over another being. That to which my mind first turns is my primary being. The Catholic distinctions between *latreia*, *doulia*, and *hyperdoulia* are absurd sophistry. The God behind the Mediator is merely an abstract concept—the Mediator doesn't reconcile us to this abstraction but pushes it away, for abstractions are not religious objects. God above the Mediator is simply cold intellect above the heart, like Fate above the Olympic gods.
+It is clear from this how blinded by prejudice dogmatic speculation
+is, when, entirely overlooking the inward genesis of the Son of God
+as the Image of God, it demonstrates the Son as a metaphysical ens,
+as an object of thought, whereas the Son is a declension, a falling
+off from the metaphysical idea of the Godhead;--a falling off, however,
+which religion naturally places in God himself, in order to justify it,
+and not to feel it as a falling off. The Son is the chief and ultimate
+principle of image-worship, for he is the image of God; and the image
+necessarily takes the place of the thing. The adoration of the saint
+in his image is the adoration of the image as the saint. Wherever the
+image is the essential expression, the organ of religion, there also
+it is the essence of religion.
+Humans, as emotional and sensory beings, are governed by images. The mind that creates types while remaining emotional and sensory is the imagination. The Second Person in God—truly the first in religion—is the externalized nature of the imagination. The Son is explicitly called the Image of God; his essence is that he is an image, the visible glory of the invisible. He satisfies the human need for mental images, being human imaginative activity externalized as absolute, divine activity. We create God's image, converting the abstract being of reason into an object for the senses, but place it within God himself, for our needs are unsatisfied unless this image is objective reality. It is no arbitrary invention; it expresses the necessity of affirming imagination as divine power.
+The Council of Nice adduced, amongst other grounds for the religious
+use of images, the authority of Gregory of Nyssa, who said that he
+could never look at an image which represented the sacrifice of Isaac
+without being moved to tears, because it so vividly brought before
+him that event in sacred history. But the effect of the represented
+object is not the effect of the object as such, but the effect of
+the representation. The holy object is simply the haze of holiness in
+which the image veils its mysterious power. The religious object is
+only a pretext, by means of which art or imagination can exercise its
+dominion over men unhindered. For the religious consciousness, it is
+true, the sacredness of the image is associated, and necessarily so,
+only with the sacredness of the object; but the religious consciousness
+is not the measure of truth. Indeed, the Church itself, while insisting
+on the distinction between the image and the object of the image,
+and denying that the worship is paid to the image, has at the same
+time made at least an indirect admission of the truth, by itself
+declaring the sacredness of the image. [57]
+> **Quote:** "The Son is the reflected splendour of the imagination, the image dearest to the heart; but for the very reason that he is only an object of the imagination, he is only the nature of the imagination made objective."
+But the ultimate, highest principle of image-worship is the worship of
+the Image of God in God. The Son, who is the "brightness of his glory,
+the express image of his person," is the entrancing splendour of the
+imagination, which only manifests itself in visible images. Both
+to inward and outward contemplation the representation of Christ,
+the Image of God, was the image of images. The images of the saints
+are only optical multiplications of one and the same image. The
+speculative deduction of the Image of God is therefore nothing more
+than an unconscious deduction and establishing of image-worship: for
+the sanction of the principle is also the sanction of its necessary
+consequences; the sanction of the archetype is the sanction of its
+semblance. If God has an image of himself, why should not I have
+an image of God? If God loves his Image as himself, why should not
+I also love the Image of God as I love God himself? If the Image of
+God is God himself, why should not the image of the saint be the saint
+himself? If it is no superstition to believe that the image which God
+makes of himself is no image, no mere conception, but a substance,
+a person, why should it be a superstition to believe that the image
+of the saint is the sensitive substance of the saint? The Image of
+God weeps and bleeds; why then should not the image of a saint also
+weep and bleed? Does the distinction lie in the fact that the image
+of the saint is a product of the hands? Why, the hands did not make
+this image, but the mind which animated the hands, the imagination;
+and if God makes an image of himself, that also is only a product
+of the imagination. Or does the distinction proceed from this, that
+the Image of God is produced by God himself, whereas the image of
+the saint is made by another? Why, the image of the saint is also
+a product of the saint himself: for he appears to the artist; the
+artist only represents him as he appears.
+This shows how prejudice blinds dogmatic speculation. It overlooks the Son's internal origin as Image of God, trying to prove he's a metaphysical entity instead. In reality, the Son is a declension—a falling off from the metaphysical idea of the Godhead—which religion projects into God himself to justify it. The Son is the ultimate principle of image-worship, for he *is* God's image, and the image inevitably replaces the thing itself. Wherever image is religion's essential expression, it is also religion's essence.
+Connected with the nature of the image is another definition of the
+second Person, namely, that he is the Word of God.
+The Council of Nicaea cited Gregory of Nyssa's authority for the use of images:
+A word is an abstract image, the imaginary thing, or, in so far as
+everything is ultimately an object of the thinking power, it is the
+imagined thought: hence men, when they know the word, the name for a
+thing, fancy that they know the thing also. Words are a result of the
+imagination. Sleepers who dream vividly and invalids who are delirious
+speak. The power of speech is a poetic talent. Brutes do not speak
+because they have no poetic faculty. Thought expresses itself only by
+images; the power by which thought expresses itself is the imagination;
+the imagination expressing itself is speech. He who speaks, lays
+under a spell, fascinates those to whom he speaks; but the power of
+words is the power of the imagination. Therefore to the ancients,
+as children of the imagination, the Word was a being--a mysterious,
+magically powerful being. Even the Christians, and not only the vulgar
+among them, but also the learned, the Fathers of the Church, attached
+to the mere name Christ, mysterious powers of healing. [58] And in
+the present day the common people still believe that it is possible to
+bewitch men by mere words. Whence comes this ascription of imaginary
+influences to words? Simply from this, that words themselves are only
+a result of the imagination, and hence have the effect of a narcotic
+on man, imprison him under the power of the imagination. Words possess
+a revolutionising force; words govern mankind. Words are held sacred;
+while the things of reason and truth are decried.
+> **Quote:** "...he could never look at an image which represented the sacrifice of Isaac without being moved to tears, because it so vividly brought before him that event in sacred history."
+The affirming or making objective of the nature of the imagination is
+therefore directly connected with the affirming or making objective
+of the nature of speech, of the word. Man has not only an instinct, an
+internal necessity, which impels him to think, to perceive, to imagine;
+he has also the impulse to speak, to utter, impart his thoughts. A
+divine impulse this--a divine power, the power of words. The word is
+the imaged, revealed, radiating, lustrous, enlightening thought. The
+word is the light of the world. The word guides to all truth, unfolds
+all mysteries, reveals the unseen, makes present the past and the
+future, defines the infinite, perpetuates the transient. Men pass
+away, the word remains; the word is life and truth. All power is
+given to the word: the word makes the blind see and the lame walk,
+heals the sick, and brings the dead to life;--the word works miracles,
+and the only rational miracles. The word is the gospel, the paraclete
+of mankind. To convince thyself of the divine nature of speech, imagine
+thyself alone and forsaken, yet acquainted with language; and imagine
+thyself further hearing for the first time the word of a human being:
+would not this word seem to thee angelic? would it not sound like
+the voice of God himself, like heavenly music? Words are not really
+less rich, less pregnant than music, though music seems to say more,
+and appears deeper and richer than words, for this reason simply,
+that it is invested with that prepossession, that illusion.
+But the impact is of the representation, not the object. The holy object is simply the haze of holiness in which the image veils its mysterious power. For religious consciousness, image-sacredness and object-sacredness are associated, but this consciousness is not truth's standard. Indeed, the Church indirectly admitted this by declaring images sacred while denying they are worshipped.
+The word has power to redeem, to reconcile, to bless, to make free. The
+sins which we confess are forgiven us by virtue of the divine power of
+the word. The dying man who gives forth in speech his long-concealed
+sins departs reconciled. The forgiveness of sins lies in the confession
+of sins. The sorrows which we confide to our friend are already half
+healed. Whenever we speak of a subject, the passions which it has
+excited in us are allayed; we see more clearly; the object of anger,
+of vexation, of sorrow, appears to us in a light in which we perceive
+the unworthiness of those passions. If we are in darkness and doubt
+on any matter, we need only speak of it;--often in the very moment in
+which we open our lips to consult a friend, the doubts and difficulties
+disappear. The word makes man free. He who cannot express himself is
+a slave. Hence, excessive passion, excessive joy, excessive grief, are
+speechless. To speak is an act of freedom; the word is freedom. Justly
+therefore is language held to be the root of culture; where language
+is cultivated, man is cultivated. The barbarism of the Middle Ages
+disappeared before the revival of language.
+The ultimate principle of image-worship is adoring God's Image within God. The Son, "brightness of his glory and express image of his person," is the imagination's captivating splendor, revealing itself only through visible images. For contemplation, Christ's representation was the "image of images"; saintly images are merely optical multiplications. The speculative deduction of God's Image is thus an unconscious justification of image-worship. To sanction the archetype is to sanction imitation.
+As we can conceive nothing else as a Divine Being than the Rational
+which we think, the Good which we love, the Beautiful which we
+perceive; so we know no higher spiritually operative power and
+expression of power than the power of the Word. [59] God is the sum of
+all reality. All that man feels or knows as a reality he must place
+in God or regard as God. Religion must therefore be conscious of the
+power of the word as a divine power. The Word of God is the divinity
+of the word, as it becomes an object to man within the sphere of
+religion,--the true nature of the human word. The Word of God is
+supposed to be distinguished from the human word in that it is no
+transient breath, but an imparted being. But does not the word of man
+also contain the being of man, his imparted self,--at least when it
+is a true word? Thus religion takes the appearance of the human word
+for its essence; hence it necessarily conceives the true nature of
+the Word to be a special being, distinct from the human word.
+If God has his own image, why shouldn't I have one? If God loves his Image as himself, why shouldn't I? If God's Image is God himself, why isn't a saint's image the saint? If it's not superstition to believe God's self-image is substance and person, why is it superstition to believe a saint's image is their living substance? God's Image weeps and bleeds; why shouldn't a saint's? Is the difference that the saint's image is man-made? The hands didn't make it; the imagination that animated them did. And God's self-image is also imagination's product. Or is it that God produces his own image while another makes the saint's? The saint's image is also the saint's product, for he appears to the artist, who only represents what appears.
+Connected to the image is the Second Person's other definition: the Word. A word is an abstract image, an "imagined thing"—an imagined thought. This is why knowing a name often passes for knowing the thing. Words are imagination's product, as dreams and delirium prove. Speech is essentially poetic talent; animals lack this faculty. Thought expresses itself only through images; imagination is this expressive power, and speech is imagination expressing itself. The speaker casts a spell, but the power is imagination's.
+The ancients, as children of imagination, saw the Word as mysteriously powerful. Even learned Church Fathers attributed healing powers to Christ's name. Today people still believe words can bewitch. This belief comes from words being imagination's product; they act like a narcotic, imprisoning under imagination's power. Words possess revolutionary force; they govern mankind. Words are held sacred while reason's matters are dismissed.
+The externalization of imagination connects directly to speech's externalization. Humans have an internal necessity to think and imagine, and an impulse to speak and share. This is a divine impulse: the power of words. The word is revealed, radiating, enlightening thought—the light of the world. It guides to truth, unfolds mysteries, reveals the unseen, makes past and future present, defines the infinite, preserves the fleeting. People pass, but the word remains; the word is life and truth. All power is given to it: it heals, makes the blind see, the lame walk, raises the dead. The word works miracles—the only rational miracles.
+> **Quote:** "The word is the gospel, the paraclete of mankind."
+To grasp speech's divine nature, imagine yourself abandoned yet knowing language, then hearing another's word for the first time. Would it not seem angelic, like God's voice itself? Words are no less rich than music; music only seems deeper due to illusion.
+The word redeems, reconciles, blesses, frees. Confessed sins are forgiven through its divine power; the dying man who speaks his hidden sins departs reconciled. Sorrows confided to a friend are half-healed. Speaking of a subject calms its passions; we see more clearly. In darkness or doubt, we need only speak; often the moment we open our lips, doubts vanish. The word makes us free.
+> **Quote:** "He who cannot express himself is a slave."
+Hence excessive passion leaves us speechless. To speak is freedom; the word is freedom itself. Language is culture's root; where language is cultivated, humanity is. The Middle Ages' barbarism vanished with language's revival.
+Just as we conceive Divine Being as the Rational, Good, and Beautiful, we know no higher spiritual power than the Word. God is the sum of all reality. All one feels or knows as reality must be placed within God. Religion must therefore recognize the word's power as divine.
+> **Quote:** "The Word of God is the divinity of the word, as it becomes an object to man within the sphere of religion,--the true nature of the human word."
+The Word of God is supposedly distinguished from the human word in that it is not a transient breath, but an imparted being. But doesn't a sincere human word also contain a person's essence—their imparted self? Religion mistakes the word's appearance for its essence, thus conceiving the Word's true nature as separate from human speech.
 ### CHAPTER VIII. - THE MYSTERY OF THE COSMOGONICAL PRINCIPLE IN GOD.
+The second Person, as God revealing, manifesting, and declaring himself (*Deus se dicit*), is the creative principle within God: the intermediary between the noumenal God and phenomenal world, the divine principle of the finite. As "begotten" rather than existing entirely of himself (*a se*), he contains the condition of finitude yet remains identical with God. He is neither pure divinity nor pure humanity, but an intermediate being positioned between these opposites.
+The second Person, as God revealing, manifesting, declaring himself
+(Deus se dicit), is the world-creating principle in God. But this
+means nothing else than that the second Person is intermediate between
+the noumenal nature of God and the phenomenal nature of the world,
+that he is the divine principle of the finite, of that which is
+distinguished from God. The second Person as begotten, as not à se,
+not existing of himself, has the fundamental condition of the finite
+in himself. [60] But at the same time, he is not yet a real finite
+Being, posited out of God; on the contrary, he is still identical
+with God,--as identical as the son is with the father, the son being
+indeed another person, but still of like nature with the father. The
+second Person, therefore, does not represent to us the pure idea of
+the Godhead, but neither does he represent the pure idea of humanity,
+or of reality in general: he is an intermediate Being between the
+two opposites. The opposition of the noumenal or invisible divine
+nature and the phenomenal or visible nature of the world, is, however,
+nothing else than the opposition between the nature of abstraction
+and the nature of perception; but that which connects abstraction
+with perception is the imagination: consequently, the transition from
+God to the world by means of the second Person, is only the form in
+which religion makes objective the transition from abstraction to
+perception by means of the imagination. It is the imagination alone by
+which man neutralises the opposition between God and the world. All
+religious cosmogonies are products of the imagination. Every being,
+intermediate between God and the world, let it be defined how it may,
+is a being of the imagination. The psychological truth and necessity
+which lies at the foundation of all these theogonies and cosmogonies
+is the truth and necessity of the imagination as a middle term between
+the abstract and concrete. And the task of philosophy in investigating
+this subject is to comprehend the relation of the imagination to
+the reason,--the genesis of the image by means of which an object of
+thought becomes an object of sense, of feeling.
+The tension between invisible God and visible world is the tension between abstraction and perception. What connects them is imagination. The religious transition from God to world through the second Person is merely the externalization of the transition from abstraction to perception through imagination. All religious accounts of the world's origin are products of imagination. Any being intermediate between God and world is a creature of imagination. The psychological truth underlying these cosmic origin stories is the necessity of imagination as middle ground between abstract and concrete. Philosophy here must understand the relationship between imagination and reason—the birth of the image through which thought becomes an object of sense and feeling.
+But the nature of the imagination is the complete, exhaustive truth
+of the cosmogonic principle, only where the antithesis of God and the
+world expresses nothing but the indefinite antithesis of the noumenal,
+invisible, incomprehensible being, God, and the visible, tangible
+existence of the world. If, on the other hand, the cosmogonic being
+is conceived and expressed abstractly, as is the case in religious
+speculation, we have also to recognise a more abstract psychological
+truth as its foundation.
+If this creative being is conceived abstractly, as in religious speculation, we must recognize a more abstract psychological truth as its foundation.
+The world is not God; it is other than God, the opposite of God, or at
+least that which is different from God. But that which is different
+from God cannot have come immediately from God, but only from a
+distinction of God in God. The second Person is God distinguishing
+himself from himself in himself, setting himself opposite to himself,
+hence being an object to himself. The self-distinguishing of God
+from himself is the ground of that which is different from himself,
+and thus self-consciousness is the origin of the world. God first
+thinks the world in thinking himself: to think oneself is to beget
+oneself, to think the world is to create the world. Begetting precedes
+creating. The idea of the production of the world, of another being
+who is not God, is attained through the idea of the production of
+another being who is like God.
+The world is not God; it is "other" than God, distinct from Him. But what is distinct cannot originate directly from God; it must come from a distinction within God himself. The second Person is God distinguishing himself from himself within himself, setting himself against himself, becoming an object to himself. This internal self-distinction is the basis for all that differs from God; thus, self-consciousness is the origin of the world. God first thinks the world by thinking himself: to think oneself is to beget oneself; to think the world is to create the world. Begetting precedes creating. The idea of producing the world—a being not God—is reached through the idea of producing another being like God.
+This cosmogonical process is nothing else than the mystic paraphrase of
+a psychological process, nothing else than the unity of consciousness
+and self-consciousness made objective. God thinks himself:--thus he
+is self-conscious. God is self-consciousness posited as an object,
+as a being; but inasmuch as he knows himself, thinks himself, he also
+thinks another than himself; for to know oneself is to distinguish
+oneself from another, whether this be a possible, merely conceptional,
+or a real being. Thus the world--at least the possibility, the idea of
+the world--is posited with consciousness, or rather conveyed in it. The
+Son, i.e., God thought by himself, objective to himself, the original
+reflection of God, the other God, is the principle of creation. The
+truth which lies at the foundation of this is the nature of man: the
+identity of his self-consciousness with his consciousness of another
+who is identical with himself, and of another who is not identical
+with himself. And the second, the other who is of like nature, is
+necessarily the middle term between the first and third. The idea
+of another in general, of one who is essentially different from me,
+arises to me first through the idea of one who is essentially like me.
+This cosmological process is nothing more than a mystical version of a psychological process—the externalization of the unity of consciousness and self-consciousness. God thinks himself; therefore he is self-conscious. God is self-consciousness treated as objective being. But because he knows himself, he also thinks of something other than himself; for to know oneself is to distinguish oneself from another. Thus the world—or at least its idea and possibility—is established within consciousness. The Son—God as thought by himself, made objective, the original reflection and "other" God—is the principle of creation. The underlying truth is human nature: the identity of self-consciousness with consciousness of another who is like him, and another who is different. This second being, the one of similar nature, is necessarily the bridge between first and third. The idea of "another" in general—one essentially different from me—first arises through the idea of someone essentially like me.
+Consciousness of the world is the consciousness of my limitation:
+if I knew nothing of a world, I should know nothing of limits; but
+the consciousness of my limitation stands in contradiction with the
+impulse of my egoism towards unlimitedness. Thus from egoism conceived
+as absolute (God is the absolute Self) I cannot pass immediately to
+its opposite; I must introduce, prelude, moderate this contradiction
+by the consciousness of a being who is indeed another, and in so far
+gives me the perception of my limitation, but in such a way as at
+the same time to affirm my own nature, make my nature objective to
+me. The consciousness of the world is a humiliating consciousness;
+the creation was an "act of humility;" but the first stone against
+which the pride of egoism stumbles is the thou, the alter ego. The
+ego first steels its glance in the eye of a thou before it endures
+the contemplation of a being which does not reflect its own image. My
+fellow-man is the bond between me and the world. I am, and I feel
+myself, dependent on the world, because I first feel myself dependent
+on other men. If I did not need man, I should not need the world. I
+reconcile myself with the world only through my fellow-man. Without
+other men, the world would be for me not only dead and empty, but
+meaningless. Only through his fellow does man become clear to himself
+and self-conscious; but only when I am clear to myself does the
+world become clear to me. A man existing absolutely alone would lose
+himself without any sense of his individuality in the ocean of Nature;
+he would neither comprehend himself as man nor Nature as Nature. The
+first object of man is man. The sense of Nature, which opens to us
+the consciousness of the world as a world, is a later product; for it
+first arises through the distinction of man from himself. The natural
+philosophers of Greece were preceded by the so-called seven Sages,
+whose wisdom had immediate reference to human life only.
+Consciousness of the world is consciousness of my own limits. If I knew nothing of a world, I would know nothing of boundaries; but awareness of limitations contradicts the ego's impulse toward the infinite. Therefore I cannot pass directly from absolute egoism (where God is the absolute Self) to its opposite. I must moderate this contradiction through consciousness of a being who is indeed "another"—and thus makes me aware of my limits—but who also affirms my own nature and makes it objective. Awareness of the world is a humbling realization; creation was described as an "act of humility." But the first obstacle that trips up the pride of the ego is the "thou," the *alter ego*.
+The ego, then, attains to consciousness of the world through
+consciousness of the thou. Thus man is the God of man. That he
+is, he has to thank Nature; that he is man, he has to thank man;
+spiritually as well as physically he can achieve nothing without
+his fellow-man. Four hands can do more than two, but also four eyes
+can see more than two. And this combined power is distinguished not
+only in quantity but also in quality from that which is solitary. In
+isolation human power is limited, in combination it is infinite. The
+knowledge of a single man is limited, but reason, science, is
+unlimited, for it is a common act of mankind; and it is so, not only
+because innumerable men co-operate in the construction of science,
+but also in the more profound sense, that the scientific genius of
+a particular age comprehends in itself the thinking powers of the
+preceding age, though it modifies them in accordance with its own
+special character. Wit, acumen, imagination, feeling as distinguished
+from sensation, reason as a subjective faculty,--all these so-called
+powers of the soul are powers of humanity, not of man as an individual;
+they are products of culture, products of human society. Only where
+man has contact and friction with his fellow-man are wit and sagacity
+kindled; hence there is more wit in the town than in the country,
+more in great towns than in small ones. Only where man suns and warms
+himself in the proximity of man arise feeling and imagination. Love,
+which requires mutuality, is the spring of poetry; and only where man
+communicates with man, only in speech, a social act, awakes reason. To
+ask a question and to answer are the first acts of thought. Thought
+originally demands two. It is not until man has reached an advanced
+stage of culture that he can double himself, so as to play the part of
+another within himself. To think and to speak are therefore, with all
+ancient and sensuous nations, identical; they think only in speaking;
+their thought is only conversation. The common people, i.e., people
+in whom the power of abstraction has not been developed, are still
+incapable of understanding what is written if they do not read it
+audibly, if they do not pronounce what they read. In this point of view
+Hobbes correctly enough derives the understanding of man from his ears!
+> **Quote:** "The ego first steels its glance in the eye of a thou before it endures the contemplation of a being which does not reflect its own image."
+Reduced to abstract logical categories, the creative principle in
+God expresses nothing further than the tautological proposition:
+the different can only proceed from a principle of difference,
+not from a simple being. However the Christian philosophers and
+theologians insisted on the creation of the world out of nothing,
+they were unable altogether to evade the old axiom--"Nothing comes
+from nothing," because it expresses a law of thought. It is true that
+they supposed no real matter as the principle of the diversity of
+material things, but they made the divine understanding (and the Son
+is the wisdom, the science, the understanding of the Father)--as that
+which comprehends within itself all things as spiritual matter--the
+principle of real matter. The distinction between the heathen eternity
+of matter and the Christian creation in this respect is only that the
+heathens ascribed to the world a real, objective eternity, whereas
+the Christians gave it an invisible, immaterial eternity. Things were
+before they existed positively,--not, indeed, as an object of sense,
+but of the subjective understanding. The Christians, whose principle
+is that of absolute subjectivity, conceive all things as effected only
+through this principle. The matter posited by their subjective thought,
+conceptional, subjective matter, is therefore to them the first
+matter,--far more excellent than real, objective matter. Nevertheless,
+this distinction is only a distinction in the mode of existence. The
+world is eternal in God. Or did it spring up in him as a sudden idea,
+a caprice? Certainly man can conceive this too; but, in doing so, he
+deifies nothing but his own irrationality. If, on the contrary, I abide
+by reason, I can only derive the world from its essence, its idea,
+i.e., one mode of its existence from another mode; in other words,
+I can derive the world only from itself. The world has its basis in
+itself, as has everything in the world which has a claim to the name
+of species. The differentia specifica, the peculiar character, that
+by which a given being is what it is, is always in the ordinary sense
+inexplicable, undeducible, is through itself, has its cause in itself.
+> **Quote:** "My fellow-man is the bond between me and the world."
+The distinction between the world and God as the creator of the world
+is therefore only a formal one. The nature of God--for the divine
+understanding, that which comprehends within itself all things,
+is the divine nature itself; hence God, inasmuch as he thinks and
+knows himself, thinks and knows at the same time the world and all
+things--the nature of God is nothing else than the abstract, thought
+nature of the world; the nature of the world nothing else than the
+real, concrete, perceptible nature of God. Hence creation is nothing
+more than a formal act; for that which, before the creation, was an
+object of thought, of the understanding, is by creation simply made an
+object of sense, its ideal contents continuing the same; although it
+remains absolutely inexplicable how a real material thing can spring
+out of a pure thought. [61]
+I am dependent on the world because I first feel dependent on other people. If I did not need others, I would not need the world. I reconcile myself to the world only through fellow human beings. Without others, the world would be dead, empty, meaningless. Only through others does a person become clear to themselves and self-conscious; and only when I am clear to myself does the world become clear. A person in absolute solitude would lose themselves in Nature, having no sense of individuality; they would understand neither themselves as human nor Nature as Nature.
+So it is with plurality and difference--if we reduce the world to
+these abstract categories--in opposition to the unity and identity
+of the Divine nature. Real difference can be derived only from a
+being which has a principle of difference in itself. But I posit
+difference in the original being, because I have originally found
+difference as a positive reality. Wherever difference is in itself
+nothing, there also no difference is conceived in the principle of
+things. I posit difference as an essential category, as a truth,
+where I derive it from the original being, and vice versâ: the
+two propositions are identical. The rational expression is this:
+Difference lies as necessarily in the reason as identity.
+> **Quote:** "The first object of man is man."
+But as difference is a positive condition of the reason, I cannot
+deduce it without presupposing it; I cannot explain it except by
+itself, because it is an original, self-luminous, self-attesting
+reality. Through what means arises the world, that which is
+distinguished from God? through the distinguishing of God from
+himself in himself. God thinks himself, he is an object to himself;
+he distinguishes himself from himself. Hence this distinction, the
+world, arises only from a distinction of another kind, the external
+distinction from an internal one, the static distinction from a dynamic
+one,--from an act of distinction: thus I establish difference only
+through itself, i.e., it is an original concept, a ne plus ultra of
+my thought, a law, a necessity, a truth. The last distinction that
+I can think is the distinction of a being from and in itself. The
+distinction of one being from another is self-evident, is already
+implied in their existence, is a palpable truth: they are two. But I
+first establish difference for thought when I discern it in one and
+the same being, when I unite it with the law of identity. Herein lies
+the ultimate truth of difference. The cosmogonic principle in God,
+reduced to its last elements, is nothing else than the act of thought
+in its simplest forms made objective. If I remove difference from
+God, he gives me no material for thought; he ceases to be an object
+of thought; for difference is an essential principle of thought. And
+if I consequently place difference in God, what else do I establish,
+what else do I make an object, than the truth and necessity of this
+principle of thought?
+The sense of Nature, which allows us to perceive the world as a world, is a later development; it arises only through the distinction of man from himself. The natural philosophers of Greece were preceded by the Seven Sages, whose wisdom focused entirely on human life. The ego arrives at consciousness of the world through consciousness of the "thou."
+> **Quote:** "Man is the God of man."
+That he exists at all, he owes to Nature; that he is human, he owes to other humans. Spiritually and physically, he can achieve nothing without his fellow man. Four hands can do more than two, but four eyes can also see more than two. This combined power differs from solitary power not just in quantity, but in quality. In isolation, human power is limited; in combination, it is infinite. The knowledge of a single person is limited, but reason and science are unlimited because they are collective acts of humanity. The scientific genius of an era embodies the thinking power of previous ages, modifying it according to its own character. Wit, acumen, imagination, feeling—as distinguished from sensation—and reason as a subjective faculty—all these "powers of the soul" are powers of humanity, not of the individual. They are products of culture and society. Wit and intelligence are sparked only where people interact; this is why there is more wit in the city than the country, and more in great cities than small ones. Feeling and imagination arise only where people bask in the proximity of others. Love, which requires reciprocity, is the source of poetry; and reason awakens only where people communicate through speech, a social act. To ask and answer a question are the first acts of thought.
+> **Quote:** "Thought originally demands two."
+Only at an advanced stage of culture can a person "double" themselves, playing another's part within their own mind. For ancient and sensory-oriented nations, thinking and speaking were identical; they thought only by speaking, and their thought was conversation. Common people—those who have not developed abstraction—cannot understand what is written unless they read it aloud. From this perspective, Hobbes was correct enough to trace human understanding back to the ears.
+Reduced to abstract logical categories, the creative principle in God is nothing more than the statement that the "different" can only come from a principle of difference, not from a simple, uniform being. No matter how much Christian philosophers insisted the world was created from nothing, they could not escape the ancient axiom "Nothing comes from nothing," because it is a law of thought. While they did not assume real matter was the source of diversity, they treated the divine understanding—represented by the Son as the wisdom and intellect of the Father—as the "spiritual matter" containing blueprints for all things. The difference between pagan belief in matter's eternity and Christian belief in creation is merely that pagans gave the world a real, objective eternity, while Christians gave it an invisible, immaterial eternity. Things existed before physical creation—not as objects of the senses, but as objects of the mind. Christians, whose guiding principle is absolute subjectivity, believe everything is brought about through this principle. To them, the "conceptual matter" produced by subjective thought is primary matter, far superior to real, objective matter. However, this is only a difference in mode of existence. The world is eternal within God. Did it just pop into His head as a sudden whim? One could imagine that, but doing so only deifies human irrationality. If I follow reason, I can only derive the world from its own essence or idea—deriving one mode of existence from another. In other words, I can only derive the world from itself. The world is grounded in itself, just as everything that constitutes a species is grounded in itself. The specific quality making a being what it is is inexplicable and cannot be derived from anything else; it exists through itself and is its own cause. The distinction between world and God as creator is therefore only formal. God's nature—the divine understanding encompassing all things—is the divine nature itself. Thus, in knowing himself, God simultaneously knows the world. God's nature is nothing but the abstract, thought-nature of the world; the world's nature is nothing but the real, concrete, perceptible nature of God. Consequently, creation is merely a formal act. What was an object of thought before creation is simply made an object of the senses, while its essential content remains the same—even though it remains impossible to explain how a real, physical thing could emerge from pure thought.
+The same applies to plurality and difference—if we reduce the world to these abstract categories—as opposed to the unity and identity of Divine nature. Real difference can only be derived from a being containing a principle of difference within itself. I place difference within the original being because I have found difference to be a positive reality. Wherever difference is in itself nothing, there also no difference is conceived in the principle of things. I treat difference as essential when I derive it from the original being.
+> **Quote:** "Difference lies as necessarily in the reason as identity."
+But since difference is a positive condition of reason, I cannot derive it without assuming it; I can only explain it through itself, because it is an original, self-evident reality. How does the world—that which is distinct from God—arise? It arises through God distinguishing himself from himself. God thinks himself; he is an object to himself; he distinguishes himself from himself. Thus this distinction arises only from another kind of distinction: the external comes from the internal, the static from the dynamic—from an act of distinction. By doing this, I establish difference only through itself; it is a fundamental concept, a limit of thought, a necessity, a truth. The ultimate distinction I can conceive is the distinction of a being from and within itself. The distinction between two different beings is obvious; they are simply two things. But I establish a distinction for the mind only when I see it within one and the same being, uniting it with the law of identity. Here lies the ultimate truth of difference.
+The cosmological principle in God, stripped to its basics, is nothing more than the act of thought in its simplest forms made objective. If I remove difference from God, He provides no material for thought; He ceases to be an object of thought, because difference is an essential principle of thinking. In placing difference in God, what else am I making an object than the truth and necessity of this principle of thought?
 ### CHAPTER IX. - THE MYSTERY OF MYSTICISM, OR OF NATURE IN GOD.
+The doctrine of "eternal Nature in God"—from Böhme, revived by Schelling—offers ready material for exposing origin fantasies. God is pure spirit; Nature is confused, dark, at best amoral. How could impurity emerge from purity? Only by placing darkness within God himself, positing light and dark principles in the divine essence from the start. What is dark in Nature is the irrational and material—Nature proper, distinct from intelligence. Thus the doctrine simply means: Nature is the basis of intelligence, not its product. Spirit without Nature is empty abstraction; consciousness develops from Nature. Yet this materialism hides behind the mystical word "God" instead of plain reason.
+Interesting material for the criticism of cosmogonic and theogonic
+fancies is furnished in the doctrine--revived by Schelling and drawn
+from Jacob Böhme--of eternal Nature in God.
+Light in God springs from darkness only because light presupposes darkness—it illuminates what already exists, it doesn't create it. If God is subject to consciousness's laws, and self-consciousness evolves from a natural principle, why not separate this principle from God? The two principles clearly reduce to Nature (abstracted) and mind/personality. You call only the latter "God," making His essence intelligence. So why reduce mind to a mere predicate of God? Because mystical speculation enslaves you—imagination is primary, and thought only serves to formalize its products. You feel at ease and at home only in mysticism's deceptive twilight.
+God is pure spirit, clear self-consciousness, moral personality;
+Nature, on the contrary, is, at least partially, confused,
+dark, desolate, immoral, or to say no more, unmoral. But it is
+self-contradictory that the impure should proceed from the pure,
+darkness from light. How then can we remove these obvious difficulties
+in the way of assigning a divine origin to Nature? Only by positing
+this impurity, this darkness in God, by distinguishing in God himself
+a principle of light and a principle of darkness. In other words,
+we can only explain the origin of darkness by renouncing the idea of
+origin, and presupposing darkness as existing from the beginning. [62]
+Mysticism is double-vision—phrases with two meanings. The mystic studies Nature or man but thinks he's studying a distinct personal being. The real subject becomes pathology, the imaginary one theology—pathology converted into theology. My task is to show that theology is nothing other than an unconscious, esoteric pathology, anthropology, and psychology. Real anthropology has more right to the name "theology" than theology does. But this theory wants to be traditional theology, not pathology—hence it's mystical and fantastic. It claims to reveal a Being distinct from us, yet only reveals our own nature, hidden by attributing it to another. It assumes God, not man, wrestles from darkness to light—not in our limited perception, but in God Himself. It describes God's birth-throes, not human struggles.
+But that which is dark in Nature is the irrational, the material,
+Nature strictly, as distinguished from intelligence. Hence the simple
+meaning of this doctrine is, that Nature, Matter, cannot be explained
+as a result of intelligence; on the contrary, it is the basis of
+intelligence, the basis of personality, without itself having any
+basis; spirit without Nature is an unreal abstraction; consciousness
+develops itself only out of Nature. But this materialistic doctrine is
+veiled in a mystical yet attractive obscurity, inasmuch as it is not
+expressed in the clear, simple language of reason, but emphatically
+enunciated in that consecrated word of the emotions--God. If the
+light in God springs out of the darkness in God, this is only because
+it is involved in the idea of light in general, that it illuminates
+darkness, thus presupposing darkness, not making it. If then God is
+once subjected to a general law,--as he must necessarily be unless
+he be made the arena of conflict for the most senseless notions,--if
+self-consciousness in God as well as in itself, as in general, is
+evolved from a principle in Nature, why is not this natural principle
+abstracted from God? That which is a law of consciousness in itself
+is a law for the consciousness of every personal being, whether man,
+angel, demon, God, or whatever else thou mayest conceive to thyself as
+a being. To what then, seen in their true light, do the two principles
+in God reduce themselves? The one to Nature, at least to Nature as
+it exists in the conception, abstracted from its reality; the other
+to mind, consciousness, personality. The one half, the reverse side,
+thou dost not name God, but only the obverse side, on which he presents
+to thee mind, consciousness: thus his specific essence, that whereby
+he is God, is mind, intelligence, consciousness. Why then dost thou
+make that which is properly the subject in God as God, i.e., as mind,
+into a mere predicate, as if God existed as God apart from mind,
+from consciousness? Why, but because thou art enslaved by mystical
+religious speculation, because the primary principle in thee is the
+imagination, thought being only secondary and serving but to throw
+into formulæ the products of the imagination,--because thou feelest
+at ease and at home only in the deceptive twilight of mysticism.
+> **Quote:** ...developments (or transitions) are birth-struggles.
+Mysticism is deuteroscopy--a fabrication of phrases having a double
+meaning. The mystic speculates concerning the essence of Nature or of
+man, but under, and by means of, the supposition that he is speculating
+concerning another, a personal being, distinct from both. The mystic
+has the same objects as the plain, self-conscious thinker; but the
+real object is regarded by the mystic, not as itself, but as an
+imaginary being, and hence the imaginary object is to him the real
+object. Thus here, in the mystical doctrine of the two principles
+in God, the real object is pathology, the imaginary one, theology;
+i.e., pathology is converted into theology. There would be nothing to
+urge against this, if consciously real pathology were recognised and
+expressed as theology; indeed, it is precisely our task to show that
+theology is nothing else than an unconscious, esoteric pathology,
+anthropology, and psychology, and that therefore real anthropology,
+real pathology, and real psychology have far more claim to the name of
+theology than has theology itself, because this is nothing more than
+an imaginary psychology and anthropology. But this doctrine or theory
+is supposed--and for this reason it is mystical and fantastic--to
+be not pathology, but theology, in the old or ordinary sense of the
+word; it is supposed that we have here unfolded to us the life of
+a Being distinct from us, while nevertheless it is only our own
+nature which is unfolded, though at the same time again shut up
+from us by the fact that this nature is represented as inhering in
+another being. The mystic philosopher supposes that in God, not in us
+human individuals,--that would be far too trivial a truth,--reason
+first appears after the Passion of Nature;--that not man, but God,
+has wrestled himself out of the obscurity of confused feelings and
+impulses into the clearness of knowledge; that not in our subjective,
+limited mode of conception, but in God himself, the nervous tremors
+of darkness precede the joyful consciousness of light; in short, he
+supposes that his theory presents not a history of human throes, but a
+history of the development, i.e., the throes of God--for developments
+(or transitions) are birth-struggles. But, alas! this supposition
+itself belongs only to the pathological element.
+But this assumption itself is pathological.
+If, therefore, the cosmogonic process presents to us the Light
+of the power of distinction as belonging to the divine essence;
+so, on the other hand, the Night or Nature in God represents to us
+the Pensées confuses of Leibnitz as divine powers. But the Pensées
+confuses--confused, obscure conceptions and thoughts, or more correctly
+images--represent the flesh, matter;--a pure intelligence, separate
+from matter, has only clear, free thoughts, no obscure, i.e., fleshly
+ideas, no material images, exciting the imagination and setting the
+blood in commotion. The Night in God, therefore, implies nothing else
+than this: God is not only a spiritual, but also a material, corporeal,
+fleshly being; but as man is man, and receives his designation, in
+virtue not of his fleshly nature, but of his mind, so is it with God.
+> **Quote:** "As nothing is before or out of God, he must have the ground of his existence in himself. This all philosophies say, but they speak of this ground as a mere idea, without making it something real. This ground of his existence which God has in himself, is not God considered absolutely, i.e., in so far as he exists; it is only the ground of his existence. It is Nature—in God; an existence inseparable from him, it is true, but still distinct. Analogically (?), this relation may be illustrated by gravitation and light in Nature... That which is the commencement of an intelligence (in itself) cannot also be intelligent... In the strict sense, intelligence is born of this unintelligent principle. Without this antecedent darkness there is no reality of the Creator... With abstract ideas of God as actus purissimus, such as were laid down by the older philosophy, or such as the modern, out of anxiety to remove God far from Nature, is always reproducing, we can effect nothing. God is something more real than a mere moral order of the world, and has quite another and a more living motive power in himself than is ascribed to him by the jejune subtilty of abstract idealists. Idealism, if it has not a living realism as its basis, is as empty and abstract a system as that of Leibnitz or Spinoza, or as any other dogmatic system... So long as the God of modern theism remains the simple, supposed purely essential, but in fact non-essential Being that all modern systems make him, so long as a real duality is not recognised in God, and a limiting, negativing force, opposed to the expansive affirming force, so long will the denial of a personal God be scientific honesty... All consciousness is concentration, is a gathering together, a collecting of oneself. This negativing force, by which a being turns back upon itself, is the true force of personality, the force of egoism... How should there be a fear of God if there were no strength in him? But that there should be something in God which is mere force and strength cannot be held astonishing if only it be not maintained that he is this alone and nothing besides."
+But the mystic philosopher expresses this only in obscure, mystical,
+indefinite, dissembling images. Instead of the rude, but hence all
+the more precise and striking expression, flesh, it substitutes
+the equivocal, abstract words nature and ground. "As nothing is
+before or out of God, he must have the ground of his existence in
+himself. This all philosophies say, but they speak of this ground
+as a mere idea, without making it something real. This ground
+of his existence which God has in himself, is not God considered
+absolutely, i.e., in so far as he exists; it is only the ground of his
+existence. It is Nature--in God; an existence inseparable from him,
+it is true, but still distinct. Analogically (?), this relation may
+be illustrated by gravitation and light in Nature." But this ground
+is the non-intelligent in God. "That which is the commencement of an
+intelligence (in itself) cannot also be intelligent." "In the strict
+sense, intelligence is born of this unintelligent principle. Without
+this antecedent darkness there is no reality of the Creator." "With
+abstract ideas of God as actus purissimus, such as were laid down
+by the older philosophy, or such as the modern, out of anxiety to
+remove God far from Nature, is always reproducing, we can effect
+nothing. God is something more real than a mere moral order of
+the world, and has quite another and a more living motive power in
+himself than is ascribed to him by the jejune subtilty of abstract
+idealists. Idealism, if it has not a living realism as its basis, is as
+empty and abstract a system as that of Leibnitz or Spinoza, or as any
+other dogmatic system." "So long as the God of modern theism remains
+the simple, supposed purely essential, but in fact non-essential
+Being that all modern systems make him, so long as a real duality is
+not recognised in God, and a limiting, negativing force, opposed to
+the expansive affirming force, so long will the denial of a personal
+God be scientific honesty." "All consciousness is concentration, is a
+gathering together, a collecting of oneself. This negativing force, by
+which a being turns back upon itself, is the true force of personality,
+the force of egoism." "How should there be a fear of God if there
+were no strength in him? But that there should be something in God
+which is mere force and strength cannot be held astonishing if only
+it be not maintained that he is this alone and nothing besides." [63]
+But what is pure force if not physical, corporeal strength? What power do you have besides kindness and reason, except muscular force? Without strong arms, can you "achieve" anything? What "other living motive power" exists besides criminal courts? Isn't bodiless "Nature" just empty abstraction? Isn't the mystery of Nature the mystery of physicality? Isn't "living realism" the system of the organized body? What force opposes intelligence but flesh and blood? And what is Nature's strongest impulse if not sexual feeling? The proverb reminds us:
+But what then is force and strength which is merely such, if
+not corporeal force and strength? Dost thou know any power which
+stands at thy command, in distinction from the power of kindness and
+reason, besides muscular power? If thou canst effect nothing through
+kindness and the arguments of reason, force is what thou must take
+refuge in. But canst thou "effect" anything without strong arms and
+fists? Is there known to thee, in distinction from the power of the
+moral order of the world, "another and more living motive power" than
+the lever of the criminal court? Is not Nature without body also an
+"empty, abstract" idea, a "jejune subtilty"? Is not the mystery of
+Nature the mystery of corporeality? Is not the system of a "living
+realism" the system of the organised body? Is there, in general,
+any other force, the opposite of intelligence, than the force of
+flesh and blood,--any other strength of Nature than the strength of
+the fleshly impulses? And the strongest of the impulses of Nature,
+is it not the sexual feeling? Who does not remember the old proverb:
+"Amare et sapere vix Deo competit?" So that if we would posit in God
+a nature, an existence opposed to the light of intelligence,--can we
+think of a more living, a more real antithesis, than that of amare
+and sapere, of spirit and flesh, of freedom and the sexual impulse?
+> **Quote:** "Amare et sapere vix Deo competit."
+Personality, individuality, consciousness, without Nature, is
+nothing; or, which is the same thing, an empty, unsubstantial
+abstraction. But Nature, as has been shown and is obvious, is nothing
+without corporeality. The body alone is that negativing, limiting,
+concentrating, circumscribing force, without which no personality is
+conceivable. Take away from thy personality its body, and thou takest
+away that which holds it together. The body is the basis, the subject
+of personality. Only by the body is a real personality distinguished
+from the imaginary one of a spectre. What sort of abstract, vague,
+empty personalities should we be, if we had not the property of
+impenetrability,--if in the same place, in the same form in which we
+are, others might stand at the same time? Only by the exclusion of
+others from the space it occupies does personality prove itself to
+be real. But a body does not exist without flesh and blood. Flesh and
+blood is life, and life alone is corporeal reality. But flesh and blood
+is nothing without the oxygen of sexual distinction. The distinction
+of sex is not superficial, or limited to certain parts of the body;
+it is an essential one: it penetrates bones and marrow. The substance
+of man is manhood; that of woman, womanhood. However spiritual and
+supersensual the man may be, he remains always a man; and it is the
+same with the woman. Hence personality is nothing without distinction
+of sex; personality is essentially distinguished into masculine and
+feminine. Where there is no thou, there is no I; but the distinction
+between I and thou, the fundamental condition of all personality,
+of all consciousness, is only real, living, ardent, when felt as the
+distinction between man and woman. The thou between man and woman
+has quite another sound than the monotonous thou between friends.
+(To love and be wise is hardly possible even for God.) If we place "nature" in God, opposed to intelligence, what antithesis is more real than love versus wisdom, spirit versus flesh, freedom versus sexual impulse?
+Nature in distinction from personality can signify nothing else than
+difference of sex. A personal being apart from Nature is nothing
+else than a being without sex, and conversely. Nature is said to
+be predicated of God, "in the sense in which it is said of a man
+that he is of a strong, healthy nature." But what is more feeble,
+what more insupportable, what more contrary to Nature, than a person
+without sex, or a person who in character, manners, or feelings denies
+sex? What is virtue, the excellence of man as man? Manhood. Of man as
+woman? Womanhood. But man exists only as man and woman. The strength,
+the healthiness of man consists therefore in this: that as a woman,
+he be truly woman; as man, truly man. Thou repudiatest "the horror
+of all that is real, which supposes the spiritual to be polluted by
+contact with the real." Repudiate then, before all, thy own horror for
+the distinction of sex. If God is not polluted by Nature, neither is he
+polluted by being associated with the idea of sex. In renouncing sex,
+thou renouncest thy whole principle. A moral God apart from Nature
+is without basis; but the basis of morality is the distinction of
+sex. Even the brute is capable of self-sacrificing love in virtue of
+the sexual distinction. All the glory of Nature, all its power, all
+its wisdom and profundity, concentrates and individualises itself in
+distinction of sex. Why then dost thou shrink from naming the nature
+of God by its true name? Evidently, only because thou hast a general
+horror of things in their truth and reality; because thou lookest at
+all things through the deceptive vapours of mysticism. For this very
+reason then, because Nature in God is only a delusive, unsubstantial
+appearance, a fantastic ghost of Nature,--for it is based, as we have
+said, not on flesh and blood, not on a real ground,--this attempt to
+establish a personal God is once more a failure, and I, too, conclude
+with the words, "The denial of a personal God will be scientific
+honesty:"--and, I add, scientific truth, so long as it is not declared
+and shown in unequivocal terms, first à priori, on speculative grounds,
+that form, place, corporeality, and sex do not contradict the idea of
+the Godhead; and secondly, à posteriori,--for the reality of a personal
+being is sustained only on empirical grounds,--what sort of form God
+has, where he exists,--in heaven,--and lastly, of what sex he is.
+Personality is nothing without Nature—empty abstraction. But Nature is nothing without physicality. The body alone is the restricting, concentrating, defining force of personality. Strip the body and you remove what holds personality together. The body is personality's foundation. Only through body is real personality distinguished from a ghost's. Without occupying space, personality is abstract and vague. Personality proves itself real by excluding others from its space. But body requires flesh and blood, which requires sexual distinction. This difference is essential, penetrating bone and marrow. Man's essence is manhood; woman's is womanhood. Personality is essentially masculine and feminine. No "thou" means no "I." The I/thou distinction becomes real, living, passionate only as man/woman distinction. The "thou" between man and woman has quite another sound than the monotonous "thou" between friends.
+Let the profound, speculative religious philosophers of Germany
+courageously shake off the embarrassing remnant of rationalism
+which yet clings to them, in flagrant contradiction with their
+true character; and let them complete their system, by converting
+the mystical "potence" of Nature in God into a really powerful,
+generating God.
+"Nature" can only mean sexual difference. A person without sex is contrary to Nature. Virtue is manhood or womanhood. Human strength is being truly man or woman. You reject "horror of the real"? Then reject your horror of sexual distinction. If God isn't polluted by Nature, He isn't polluted by sex. Renouncing sex renounces your principle. A moral God needs Nature; morality's foundation is sexual distinction. Even animals love self-sacrificially through sex. All nature's glory concentrates in sexual distinction. Why shrink from calling God's nature by its true name? Only because you fear truth, viewing everything through mysticism's haze. Thus "Nature in God" is a hollow ghost, not based on flesh and blood—so this attempt at a personal God fails once more. I, too, conclude: 'The denial of a personal God will be scientific honesty'—and I would add, scientific truth, until logic proves form, place, physicality, and sex don't contradict divinity, and experience shows what form God has, where He exists, what sex He is. Let German religious philosophers shake off rationalism's remnants and complete their system—transform the mystical "potential" of Nature in God into a truly powerful, generating God.
+The doctrine comes from Jacob Böhme, whose original version is far deeper than this modernized one. Böhme was profoundly religious, yet modern natural science, Spinozism, materialism, and empiricism had seized his feelings. He opened his senses to Nature's mysterious essence, which terrified him. He couldn't reconcile this with religious belief: 'When I looked into the world's depths—sun, stars, clouds, rain, snow—and saw good and evil in everything from wood to animals, saw the world treat godless and devout alike, saw barbaric nations prosper more than the godly, I fell into melancholy. Scripture couldn't comfort me, though I knew it by heart. The devil forced pagan thoughts upon me.'
+Yet Böhme also felt Nature's radiant aspects, anticipating the joys of mineralogy, botany, and chemistry—the joys of "godless natural science." He was captivated by jewels, metals, plants, animals. Of God's revelation through light he wrote: 'I can compare it to nothing but the noblest precious stones—ruby, emerald, onyx, sapphire, diamond, and the like.' He had sophisticated mineralogical taste. His delight in flowers shows botanical talent: 'The heavenly powers gave birth to joyful fruits, colors, trees, shrubs, flowers with heavenly colors and scents—all holy and divine.' He continues: 'If you wish to know heavenly splendor, look at this world: fruits, plants, trees, shrubs, vegetables, roots, flowers, oils, wines, corn. All is an image of heavenly splendor.'
+The doctrine of Nature in God is borrowed from Jacob Böhme. But in
+the original it has a far deeper and more interesting significance
+than in its second modernised and emasculated edition. Jacob Böhme
+has a profoundly religious mind. Religion is the centre of his life
+and thought. But at the same time, the significance which has been
+given to Nature in modern times--by the study of natural science,
+by Spinozism, materialism, empiricism--has taken possession of his
+religious sentiment. He has opened his senses to Nature, thrown a
+glance into her mysterious being; but it alarms him, and he cannot
+harmonise this terror at Nature with his religious conceptions. "When I
+looked into the great depths of this world, and at the sun and stars,
+also at the clouds, also at the rain and snow, and considered in my
+mind the whole creation of this world; then I found in all things evil
+and good, love and anger,--in unreasoning things, such as wood, stone,
+earth, and the elements, as well as in men and beasts.... But because
+I found that in all things there was good and evil, in the elements
+as well as in the creatures, and that it goes as well in the world
+with the godless as with the pious, also that the barbarous nations
+possess the best lands, and have more prosperity than the godly; I
+was therefore altogether melancholy and extremely troubled, and the
+Scriptures could not console me, though almost all well known to me;
+and therewith assuredly the devil was not idle, for he often thrust
+upon me heathenish thoughts, of which I will here be silent." [64]
+But while his mind seized with fearful earnestness the dark side
+of Nature, which did not harmonise with the religious idea of a
+heavenly Creator, he was on the other hand rapturously affected by
+her resplendent aspects. Jacob Böhme has a sense for Nature. He
+preconceives, nay, he feels the joys of the mineralogist, of the
+botanist, of the chemist--the joys of "godless natural science." He is
+enraptured by the splendour of jewels, the tones of metals, the hues
+and odours of plants, the beauty and gentleness of many animals. In
+another place, speaking of the revelation of God in the phenomena of
+light, the process by which "there arises in the Godhead the wondrous
+and beautiful structure of the heavens in various colours and kinds,
+and every spirit shows itself in its form specially," he says, "I can
+compare it with nothing but with the noblest precious stones, such as
+the ruby, emerald, epidote, onyx, sapphire, diamond, jasper, hyacinth,
+amethyst, beryl, sardine, carbuncle, and the like." Elsewhere: "But
+regarding the precious stones, such as the carbuncle, ruby, emerald,
+epidote, onyx, and the like, which are the very best, these have the
+very same origin--the flash of light in love. For that flash is born
+in tenderness, and is the heart in the centre of the Fountain-spirit,
+wherefore those stones also are mild, powerful, and lovely." It is
+evident that Jacob Böhme had no bad taste in mineralogy; that he had
+delight in flowers also, and consequently a faculty for botany, is
+proved by the following passages among others:--"The heavenly powers
+gave birth to heavenly joy-giving fruits and colours, to all sorts
+of trees and shrubs, whereupon grows the beauteous and lovely fruit
+of life: also there spring up in these powers all sorts of flowers
+with beauteous heavenly colours and scents. Their taste is various,
+in each according to its quality and kind, altogether holy, divine,
+and joy-giving." "If thou desirest to contemplate the heavenly,
+divine pomp and glory, as they are, and to know what sort of products,
+pleasure, or joys there are above: look diligently at this world, at
+the varieties of fruits and plants that grow upon the earth,--trees,
+shrubs, vegetables, roots, flowers, oils, wines, corn, and everything
+that is there, and that thy heart can search out. All this is an
+image of the heavenly pomp." [65]
+A simple divine decree couldn't explain nature for Böhme—Nature appealed too strongly to his senses. He sought a natural explanation, finding only those qualities that impressed him most. Böhme was essentially a mystical natural philosopher, a theosophic Vulcanist and Neptunist: "all things originated in fire and water."
+A despotic fiat could not suffice as an explanation of the origin
+of Nature to Jacob Böhme; Nature appealed too strongly to his
+senses, and lay too near his heart; hence he sought for a natural
+explanation of Nature; but he necessarily found no other ground of
+explanation than those qualities of Nature which made the strongest
+impression on him. Jacob Böhme--this is his essential character--is a
+mystical natural philosopher, a theosophic Vulcanist and Neptunist,
+[66] for according to him "all things had their origin in fire and
+water." Nature had fascinated Jacob's religious sentiments,--not
+in vain did he receive his mystical light from the shining of tin
+utensils; but the religious sentiment works only within itself;
+it has not the force, not the courage, to press forward to the
+examination of things in their reality; it looks at all things
+through the medium of religion, it sees all in God, i.e., in
+the entrancing, soul-possessing splendour of the imagination, it
+sees all in images and as an image. But Nature affected his mind
+in an opposite manner; hence he must place this opposition in God
+himself,--for the supposition of two independently existing, opposite,
+original principles would have afflicted his religious sentiment;--he
+must distinguish in God himself a gentle, beneficent element, and a
+fierce consuming one. Everything fiery, bitter, harsh, contracting,
+dark, cold, comes from a divine harshness and bitterness; everything
+mild, lustrous, warming, tender, soft, yielding, from a mild, soft,
+luminous quality in God. "Thus are the creatures on the earth, in the
+water, and in the air, each creature out of its own science, out of
+good and evil.... As one sees before one's eyes that there are good
+and evil creatures; as venomous beasts and serpents from the centre
+of the nature of darkness, from the power of the fierce quality,
+which only want to dwell in darkness, abiding in caves and hiding
+themselves from the sun. By each animal's food and dwelling we see
+whence they have sprang, for every creature needs to dwell with its
+mother, and yearns after her, as is plain to the sight." "Gold, silver,
+precious stones, and all bright metal, has its origin in the light,
+which appeared before the times of anger," &c. "Everything which in
+the substance of this world is yielding, soft, and thin, is flowing,
+and gives itself forth, and the ground and origin of it is in the
+eternal Unity, for unity ever flows forth from itself; for in the
+nature of things not dense, as water and air, we can understand no
+susceptibility or pain, they being one in themselves. [67] In short,
+heaven is as rich as the earth. Everything that is on this earth is
+in heaven, [68] all that is in Nature is in God. But in the latter
+it is divine, heavenly; in the former, earthly, visible, external,
+material, but yet the same." "When I write of trees, shrubs and fruits,
+thou must not understand me of earthly things, such as are in this
+world; for it is not my meaning that in heaven there grows a dead,
+hard, wooden tree, or a stone of earthly qualities. No: my meaning is
+heavenly and spiritual, but yet truthful and literal; thus, I mean no
+other things than what I write in the letters of the alphabet;" i.e.,
+in heaven there are the same trees and flowers, but the trees in heaven
+are the trees which bloom and exhale in my imagination, without making
+coarse material impressions upon me; the trees on earth are the trees
+which I perceive through my senses. The distinction is the distinction
+between imagination and perception. "It is not my undertaking," says
+Jacob Böhme himself, "to describe the course of all stars, their place
+and name, or how they have yearly their conjunction or opposition,
+or quadrate, or the like,--what they do yearly and hourly,--which
+through long years has been discovered by wise, skilful, ingenious
+men, by diligent contemplation and observation, and deep thought and
+calculation. I have not learned and studied these things, and leave
+scholars to treat of them, but my undertaking is to write according
+to the spirit and thought, not according to sight." [69]
+Nature fascinated Böhme's religious feelings—he claimed enlightenment from light reflecting on tin utensils. But religious sentiment lacks courage to examine things as they are. It views everything through religion's lens, seeing all in God, in imagination's splendor, as images.
+The doctrine of Nature in God aims, by naturalism, to establish
+theism, especially the theism which regards the Supreme Being as
+a personal being. But personal theism conceives God as a personal
+being, separate from all material things; it excludes from him all
+development, because that is nothing else than the self-separation of
+a being from circumstances and conditions which do not correspond to
+its true idea. And this does not take place in God, because in him
+beginning, end, middle, are not to be distinguished,--because he is
+at once what he is, is from the beginning what he is to be, what he
+can be; he is the pure unity of existence and essence, reality and
+idea, act and will. Deus suum Esse est. Herein theism accords with
+the essence of religion. All religions, however positive they may be,
+rest on abstraction; they are distinguished only in that from which
+the abstraction is made. Even the Homeric gods, with all their living
+strength and likeness to man, are abstract forms; they have bodies,
+like men, but bodies from which the limitations and difficulties of the
+human body are eliminated. The idea of a divine being is essentially
+an abstracted, distilled idea. It is obvious that this abstraction
+is no arbitrary one, but is determined by the essential stand-point
+of man. As he is, as he thinks, so does he make his abstraction.
+Nature affected him contradictorily, so he placed this contradiction within God. He couldn't bear two independent principles, so he distinguished within God a gentle beneficent element and a fierce consuming one: all harsh, dark, cold from divine harshness; all mild, radiant, warm from divine mildness.
+The abstraction expresses a judgment,--an affirmative and a
+negative one at the same time, praise and blame. What man praises
+and approves, that is God to him; [70] what he blames, condemns, is
+the non-divine. Religion is a judgment. The most essential condition
+in religion--in the idea of the divine being--is accordingly the
+discrimination of the praiseworthy from the blameworthy, of the perfect
+from the imperfect; in a word, of the positive from the negative. The
+cultus itself consists in nothing else than in the continual renewal
+of the origin of religion--a solemnising of the critical discrimination
+between the divine and the non-divine.
+Thus creatures are born from their own nature, out of good and evil—venomous beasts from darkness, from fierce quality. Food and home show their origin; each creature yearns for its mother. Gold, precious stones originate in pre-anger light. Everything soft and yielding flows from eternal Unity; water and air feel no pain, being one in themselves.
+The Divine Being is the human being glorified by the death of
+abstraction; it is the departed spirit of man. In religion man frees
+himself from the limits of life; he here lets fall what oppresses him,
+obstructs him, affects him repulsively; God is the self-consciousness
+of man freed from all discordant elements; man feels himself free,
+happy, blessed in his religion, because he only here lives the life
+of genius, and keeps holiday. The basis of the divine idea lies for
+him outside of that idea itself; its truth lies in the prior judgment,
+in the fact that all which he excludes from God is previously judged
+by him to be non-divine, and what is non-divine to be worthless,
+nothing. If he were to include the attaining of this idea in the idea
+itself, it would lose its most essential significance, its true value,
+its beatifying charm. The divine being is the pure subjectivity of
+man, freed from all else, from everything objective, having relation
+only to itself, enjoying only itself, reverencing only itself--his
+most subjective, his inmost self. The process of discrimination, the
+separating of the intelligent from the non-intelligent, of personality
+from Nature, of the perfect from the imperfect, necessarily therefore
+takes place in the subject, not in the object, and the idea of God
+lies not at the beginning but at the end of sensible existence, of
+the world, of Nature. "Where Nature ceases, God begins," because God
+is the ne plus ultra, the last limit of abstraction. That from which
+I can no longer abstract is God, the last thought which I am capable
+of grasping--the last, i.e., the highest. Id quo nihil majus cogitari
+potest, Deus est. That this Omega of sensible existence becomes an
+Alpha also, is easily comprehensible; but the essential point is, that
+he is the Omega. The Alpha is primarily a consequence; because God is
+the last or highest, he is also the first. And this predicate--the
+first Being, has by no means immediately a cosmogonic significance,
+but only implies the highest rank. The creation in the Mosaic religion
+has for its end to secure to Jehovah the predicate of the highest
+and first, the true and exclusive God in opposition to idols.
+Heaven is as rich as earth; all on earth is in heaven, all nature in God—divine in God, material on earth, yet the same. Böhme clarifies: "When I write of trees, shrubs, fruits, I don't mean dead earthly things. I mean heavenly, spiritual, yet truthful and literal—exactly what I write." Heavenly trees bloom in imagination without coarse material impact; earthly trees are sensed. The distinction is imagination versus perception.
+The effort to establish the personality of God through Nature has
+therefore at its foundation an illegitimate, profane mingling of
+philosophy and religion, a complete absence of criticism and knowledge
+concerning the genesis of the personal God. Where personality is held
+the essential attribute of God, where it is said--an impersonal God is
+no God; there personality is held to be in and by itself the highest
+and most real thing, there it is presupposed that everything which
+is not a person is dead, is nothing, that only personal existence is
+real, absolute existence, is life and truth--but Nature is impersonal,
+and is therefore a trivial thing. The truth of personality rests
+only on the untruth of Nature. To predicate personality of God is
+nothing else than to declare personality as the absolute essence;
+but personality is only conceived in distinction, in abstraction
+from Nature. Certainly a merely personal God is an abstract God;
+but so he ought to be--that is involved in the idea of him; for he is
+nothing else than the personal nature of man positing itself out of all
+connection with the world, making itself free from all dependence on
+nature. In the personality of God man consecrates the supernaturalness,
+immortality, independence, unlimitedness of his own personality.
+Böhme says: "It is not my task to describe stars' paths, names, positions, conjunctions—things discovered by scholars through observation and calculation. I leave those to scholars; I write according to spirit and thought, not sight."
+In general, the need of a personal God has its foundation in this, that
+only in the attribute of personality does the personal man meet with
+himself, find himself. Substance, pure spirit, mere reason, does not
+satisfy him, is too abstract for him, i.e., does not express himself,
+does not lead him back to himself. And man is content, happy, only when
+he is with himself, with his own nature. Hence, the more personal a
+man is, the stronger is his need of a personal God. The free, abstract
+thinker knows nothing higher than freedom; he does not need to attach
+it to a personal being; for him freedom in itself, as such, is a
+real positive thing. A mathematical, astronomical mind, a man of pure
+understanding, an objective man, who is not shut up in himself, who
+feels free and happy only in the contemplation of objective rational
+relations, in the reason which lies in things in themselves--such
+a man will regard the substance of Spinoza, or some similar idea,
+as his highest being, and be full of antipathy towards a personal,
+i.e., subjective God. Jacobi therefore was a classic philosopher,
+because (in this respect, at least) he was consistent, he was at
+unity with himself; as was his God, so was his philosophy--personal,
+subjective. The personal God cannot be established otherwise than as
+he is established by Jacobi and his disciples. Personality is proved
+only in a personal manner.
+"Nature in God" attempts to use naturalism to establish personal theism. But personal theism conceives God as separate from all material things, excluding development—since development is separating from unmatching circumstances. In God there's no beginning, middle, or end. He is at once what He is, pure unity of existence and essence, reality and idea, act and will. *Deus suum Esse est*—God is His own being.
+Personality may be, nay, must be, founded on a natural basis; but
+this natural basis is attained only when I cease to grope in the
+darkness of mysticism, when I step forth into the clear daylight of
+real Nature, and exchange the idea of the personal God for the idea
+of personality in general. But into the idea of the personal God,
+the positive idea of whom is liberated, disembodied personality,
+released from the limiting force of Nature, to smuggle again this very
+Nature, is as perverse as if I were to mix Brunswick mum with the
+nectar of the gods, in order to give the ethereal beverage a solid
+foundation. Certainly the ingredients of animal blood are not to be
+derived from the celestial juice which nourishes the gods. But the
+flower of sublimation arises only through the evaporation of matter;
+why, then, wilt thou mix with the sublimate that very matter from
+which thou hast disengaged it? Certainly, the impersonal existence of
+Nature is not to be explained by the idea of personality; but where
+personality is a truth, or, rather, the absolute truth, Nature has
+no positive significance, and consequently no positive basis. The
+literal creation out of nothing is here the only sufficient ground of
+explanation; for it simply says this: Nature is nothing;--and this
+precisely expresses the significance which Nature has for absolute
+personality.
+Theism aligns with religion's essence. All religions are based on abstraction, differing only in what they abstract from. Even Homer's gods are abstract forms—bodies stripped of human limits. The divine being is essentially an abstracted, distilled idea.
+This abstraction isn't arbitrary; it's determined by the human perspective. As one thinks and exists, so one forms abstraction—a judgment, both affirmation and negation, praise and blame. What you approve is God; what you condemn is non-divine. Religion is judgment. Its essential condition is discriminating praiseworthy from blameworthy, perfect from imperfect—positive from negative. Worship is merely renewing religion's origin: ritualizing the distinction between divine and non-divine.
+> **Quote:** "The Divine Being is the human being glorified by the death of abstraction; it is the departed spirit of man."
+In religion, humans free themselves from life's limits, casting off what oppresses them. God is human self-consciousness freed from conflict. People feel blessed in religion because they live pure genius and find rest. The divine idea's basis lies outside itself—in prior judgment. Everything excluded from God is already judged non-divine, worthless. If the struggle to reach God were included in the idea, it would lose its meaning, value, and comfort.
+The divine being is pure human subjectivity freed from everything objective—a being relating only to itself, enjoying and revering only itself. The process of discrimination—separating intelligence from non-intelligence, personality from nature, perfection from imperfection—happens in the subject, not object. Therefore, God is found at the end of physical existence, not the beginning.
+> **Quote:** "Where Nature ceases, God begins."
+God is the *ne plus ultra*—the final limit of abstraction. That from which I cannot abstract further is God, the highest thought. *Id quo nihil majus cogitari potest, Deus est*—God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived. This "Omega" of existence becomes "Alpha" secondarily; being last/highest makes Him first. "First Being" means highest rank, not scientific first cause. In Mosaic religion, creation secures Jehovah's status as highest, exclusive God against idols.
+Establishing God's personality through nature illegitimately mixes philosophy and religion, showing no understanding of how personal God is created. When personality is God's essential attribute, personality itself is assumed highest and most real. What is not a person is dead; only personal existence is absolute truth. Nature thus becomes impersonal and trivial.
+Personality's truth relies on nature's "untruth." Attributing personality to God declares it absolute essence. But personality is conceived by abstracting it from nature. A purely personal God is abstract—exactly as He should be. He is human personality projected outside worldly connection, freed from nature. In God's personality, humans consecrate their own personality's supernatural quality, immortality, independence.
+The need for a personal God stems from personal humans finding themselves only in personality. Substance, pure spirit, or reason doesn't satisfy—they're too abstract. Humans are content only with their own nature. The more personal one is, the stronger the need for a personal God.
+The free, abstract thinker values freedom itself, not attached to a personal being. A mathematical mind, happy in objective laws, sees Spinoza's "Substance" as highest and feels antipathy toward a personal God.
+Jacobi was consistent: his philosophy and God were personal and subjective. A personal God can only be established personally, as Jacobi did.
+Personality must be founded on a natural basis—but only by leaving mysticism for real nature, trading personal God for personality in general. Smuggling nature back into the personal God is as perverse as mixing a heavy malt liquor like Brunswick mum with the nectar of the gods to give it a solid foundation. You can't derive animal blood from celestial juice. Sublimation evaporates matter; why remix it? Where personality is absolute truth, nature is nothing. "Creation out of nothing" simply means: Nature is nothing—expressing nature's only value for absolute personality.
 ### CHAPTER X. - THE MYSTERY OF PROVIDENCE, AND CREATION OUT OF NOTHING.
+Creation is God's spoken word, the creative command identical with thought. To speak is an act of will; therefore creation is a product of Will—not reason's will, but the imagination's: the absolutely subjective, unlimited will. Its peak is creation out of nothing. Just as matter's eternity implies its essential nature, creation from nothing implies the world's non-essential nature—its nothingness. A thing's beginning is immediately connected—in idea, if not in time—with its end. "Easy come, easy go." The will calls it into existence; the will calls it back to nothingness. When? The timing is irrelevant; existence depends solely on will. But this will is not the world's own—not only because a thing cannot will its non-existence, but because the world itself lacks will. Thus the world's nothingness expresses will's power. The will that it should exist is simultaneously the will—or potential will—that it should not. The world's existence is therefore momentary, arbitrary, unreliable—that is, unreal.
+Creation is the spoken word of God; the creative, cosmogonic fiat is
+the tacit word, identical with the thought. To speak is an act of the
+will; thus, creation is a product of the Will: as in the Word of God
+man affirms the divinity of the human word, so in creation he affirms
+the divinity of the Will: not, however, the will of the reason, but the
+will of the imagination--the absolutely subjective, unlimited will. The
+culminating point of the principle of subjectivity is creation out of
+nothing. [71] As the eternity of the world or of matter imports nothing
+further than the essentiality of matter, so the creation of the world
+out of nothing imports simply the non-essentiality, the nothingness
+of the world. The commencement of a thing is immediately connected,
+in idea if not in time, with its end. "Lightly come, lightly go." The
+will has called it into existence--the will calls it back again into
+nothing. When? The time is indifferent: its existence or non-existence
+depends only on the will. But this will is not its own will:--not only
+because a thing cannot will its non-existence, but for the prior reason
+that the world is itself destitute of will. Thus the nothingness of the
+world expresses the power of the will. The will that it should exist
+is, at the same time, the will--at least the possible will--that it
+should not exist. The existence of the world is therefore a momentary,
+arbitrary, unreliable, i.e., unreal existence.
+> **Quote:** "Creation out of nothing is the highest expression of omnipotence: but omnipotence is nothing else than subjectivity exempting itself from all objective conditions and limitations, and consecrating this exemption as the highest power and reality:"
+Creation out of nothing is the highest expression of omnipotence:
+but omnipotence is nothing else than subjectivity exempting itself
+from all objective conditions and limitations, and consecrating this
+exemption as the highest power and reality: nothing else than the
+ability to posit everything real as unreal--everything conceivable as
+possible: nothing else than the power of the imagination, or of the
+will as identical with the imagination, the power of self-will. [72]
+The strongest and most characteristic expression of subjective
+arbitrariness is, "it has pleased;"--the phrase, "it has pleased
+God to call the world of bodies and spirits into existence," is
+the most undeniable proof that individual subjectivity, individual
+arbitrariness, is regarded as the highest essence--the omnipotent
+world-principle. On this ground, creation out of nothing as a work
+of the Almighty Will falls into the same category with miracle, or
+rather it is the first miracle, not only in time but in rank also;--the
+principle of which all further miracles are the spontaneous result. The
+proof of this is history itself; all miracles have been vindicated,
+explained, and illustrated by appeal to the omnipotence which created
+the world out of nothing. Why should not He who made the world out of
+nothing, make wine out of water, bring human speech from the mouth of
+an ass, and charm water out of a rock? But miracle is, as we shall see
+further on, only a product and object of the imagination, and hence
+creation out of nothing, as the primitive miracle, is of the same
+character. For this reason the doctrine of creation out of nothing has
+been pronounced a supernatural one, to which reason of itself could
+not have attained; and in proof of this, appeal has been made to the
+fact that the pagan philosophers represented the world to have been
+formed by the Divine Reason out of already existing matter. But this
+supernatural principle is no other than the principle of subjectivity,
+which in Christianity exalted itself to an unlimited, universal
+monarchy; whereas the ancient philosophers were not subjective enough
+to regard the absolutely subjective being as the exclusively absolute
+being, because they limited subjectivity by the contemplation of the
+world or reality--because to them the world was a truth.
+It is nothing but the ability to posit everything real as unreal and everything conceivable as possible—the power of imagination, of will identical with imagination, of self-will. Its strongest expression is the phrase "it has pleased." The statement that "it has pleased God to call the world into existence" proves that individual whim is regarded as the highest essence—the omnipotent principle. Creation out of nothing thus falls into the same category as miracle; in fact, it is the primary miracle, the principle from which all others follow. History proves this: all miracles are justified by appealing to the omnipotence that created from nothing. Why shouldn't He who made the world from nothing turn water into wine or make an ass speak? But miracle is simply a product of imagination, and creation out of nothing, as the original miracle, shares that character. This doctrine has been called supernatural, something reason alone could not discover. To prove this, people note that pagan philosophers imagined the world formed by Divine Reason from pre-existing matter. But this supernatural principle is merely the principle of subjectivity, which in Christianity elevated itself to unlimited monarchy. Ancient philosophers were not subjective enough to view the absolutely subjective being as the only absolute being, because they limited subjectivity through observing the world—to them, the world was a truth.
+Creation out of nothing, as identical with miracle, is one with
+Providence; for the idea of Providence--originally, in its true
+religious significance, in which it is not yet infringed upon and
+limited by the unbelieving understanding--is one with the idea of
+miracle. The proof of Providence is miracle. [73] Belief in Providence
+is belief in a power to which all things stand at command to be used
+according to its pleasure, in opposition to which all the power
+of reality is nothing. Providence cancels the laws of Nature; it
+interrupts the course of necessity, the iron bond which inevitably
+binds effects to causes; in short, it is the same unlimited,
+all-powerful will, that called the world into existence out of
+nothing. Miracle is a creatio ex nihilo. He who turns water into
+wine, makes wine out of nothing, for the constituents of wine are
+not found in water; otherwise, the production of wine would not be a
+miraculous, but a natural act. The only attestation, the only proof of
+Providence is miracle. Thus Providence is an expression of the same
+idea as creation out of nothing. Creation out of nothing can only be
+understood and explained in connection with Providence; for miracle
+properly implies nothing more than that the miracle worker is the same
+as he who brought forth all things by his mere will--God the Creator.
+> **Quote:** "The proof of Providence is miracle."
+But Providence has relation essentially to man. It is for man's sake
+that Providence makes of things whatever it pleases: it is for man's
+sake that it supersedes the authority and reality of a law otherwise
+omnipotent. The admiration of Providence in Nature, especially in
+the animal kingdom, is nothing else than an admiration of Nature,
+and therefore belongs merely to naturalism, though to a religious
+naturalism; [74] for in Nature is revealed only natural, not divine
+Providence--not Providence as it is an object to religion. Religious
+Providence reveals itself only in miracles--especially in the miracle
+of the Incarnation, the central point of religion. But we nowhere
+read that God, for the sake of brutes, became a brute--the very idea
+of this is, in the eyes of religion, impious and ungodly; or that
+God ever performed a miracle for the sake of animals or plants. On
+the contrary, we read that a poor fig-tree, because it bore no fruit
+at a time when it could not bear it, was cursed, purely in order to
+give men an example of the power of faith over Nature;--and again,
+that when the tormenting devils were driven out of men, they were
+driven into brutes. It is true we also read: "No sparrow falls to the
+ground without your Father;" but these sparrows have no more worth and
+importance than the hairs on the head of a man, which are all numbered.
+Belief in Providence is belief in a power that can use all things at pleasure, a power against which the world's reality is nothing. Providence cancels nature's laws; it breaks necessity's iron bond. In short, it is the same unlimited will that called the world from nothing. A miracle is a *creatio ex nihilo*—turning water into wine makes wine from nothing, since wine's components are not in water; otherwise it would be natural. The only proof of Providence is miracle. Thus Providence expresses the same idea as creation out of nothing, which can only be understood in relation to it; for miracle implies the performer is the same Creator God who brought all things into being by mere will.
+Apart from instinct, the brute has no other guardian spirit, no other
+Providence, than its senses or its organs in general. A bird which
+loses its eyes has lost its guardian angel; it necessarily goes to
+destruction if no miracle happens. We read indeed that a raven brought
+food to the prophet Elijah, but not (at least to my knowledge) that an
+animal was supported by other than natural means. But if a man believes
+that he also has no other Providence than the powers of his race--his
+senses and understanding,--he is in the eyes of religion, and of all
+those who speak the language of religion, an irreligious man; because
+he believes only in a natural Providence, and a natural Providence is
+in the eyes of religion as good as none. Hence Providence has relation
+essentially to men, and even among men only to the religious. "God
+is the Saviour of all men, but especially of them that believe." It
+belongs, like religion, only to man; it is intended to express the
+essential distinction of man from the brute, to rescue man from the
+tyranny of the forces of Nature. Jonah in the whale, Daniel in the den
+of lions, are examples of the manner in which Providence distinguishes
+(religious) men from brutes. If therefore the Providence which
+manifests itself in the organs with which animals catch and devour
+their prey, and which is so greatly admired by Christian naturalists,
+is a truth, the Providence of the Bible, the Providence of religion,
+is a falsehood; and vice versâ. What pitiable and at the same time
+ludicrous hypocrisy is the attempt to do homage to both, to Nature,
+and the Bible at once! How does Nature contradict the Bible! How
+does the Bible contradict Nature! The God of Nature reveals himself
+by giving to the lion strength and appropriate organs in order that,
+for the preservation of his life, he may in case of necessity kill
+and devour even a human being; the God of the Bible reveals himself
+by interposing his own aid to rescue the human being from the jaws
+of the lion! [75]
+Providence is fundamentally about humanity. It is for man's sake that Providence overrides otherwise all-powerful laws. Admiring Providence in nature is merely admiring nature itself—religious naturalism, not divine Providence. Religious Providence reveals itself only through miracles, especially the Incarnation. We never read that God became an animal for animals' sake, or performed miracles for plants. On the contrary, we read of a fig tree cursed for bearing no fruit out of season—simply to give men an example of faith's power over nature. We read of demons driven from men into animals. True, "no sparrow falls without your Father," but these sparrows have no more value than the hairs on a man's head, which are all numbered.
+Providence is a privilege of man. It expresses the value of man,
+in distinction from other natural beings and things; it exempts him
+from the connection of the universe. Providence is the conviction of
+man of the infinite value of his existence,--a conviction in which he
+renounces faith in the reality of external things; it is the idealism
+of religion. Faith in Providence is therefore identical with faith in
+personal immortality; save only, that in the latter the infinite value
+of existence is expressed in relation to time, as infinite duration. He
+who prefers no special claims, who is indifferent about himself, who
+identifies himself with the world, who sees himself as a part merged in
+the whole,--such a one believes in no Providence, i.e., in no special
+Providence; but only special Providence is Providence in the sense of
+religion. Faith in Providence is faith in one's own worth, the faith
+of man in himself; hence the beneficent consequences of this faith,
+but hence also false humility, religious arrogance, which, it is true,
+does not rely on itself, but only because it commits the care of itself
+to the blessed God. God concerns himself about me; he has in view my
+happiness, my salvation; he wills that I shall be blest; but that is my
+will also: thus, my interest is God's interest, my own will is God's
+will, my own aim is God's aim,--God's love for me nothing else than
+my self-love deified. Thus when I believe in Providence, in what do
+I believe but in the divine reality and significance of my own being?
+Beyond instinct, an animal has no Providence but its senses and organs. A bird that loses its eyes has lost its guardian angel; it will perish unless a miracle occurs. We read that a raven fed Elijah, but not that any animal was supported otherwise than naturally. Yet if a man believes he has no Providence beyond his species' powers—senses and intellect—he is deemed irreligious. For he believes only in natural providence, which religion considers no providence at all. Providence relates essentially to humans, specifically religious ones. "God is the Savior of all men, but especially of those who believe." Like religion itself, it belongs only to man, expressing the difference between man and animal, rescuing man from nature's tyranny. Jonah in the whale and Daniel in the lions' den show how Providence distinguishes religious men from animals.
+But where Providence is believed in, belief in God is made dependent on
+belief in Providence. He who denies that there is a Providence, denies
+that there is a God, or--what is the same thing--that God is God; for a
+God who is not the Providence of man, is a contemptible God, a God who
+is wanting in the divinest, most adorable attribute. Consequently,
+the belief in God is nothing but the belief in human dignity,
+[76] the belief in the absolute reality and significance of the
+human nature. But belief in a (religious) Providence is belief in
+creation out of nothing, and vice versâ; the latter, therefore, can
+have no other significance than that of Providence as just developed,
+and it has actually no other. Religion sufficiently expresses this
+by making man the end of creation. All things exist, not for their
+own sake, but for the sake of man. He who, like the pious Christian
+naturalists, pronounces this to be pride, declares Christianity itself
+to be pride; for to say that the material world exists for the sake of
+man, implies infinitely less than to say that God--or at least, if we
+follow Paul, a being who is almost God, scarcely to be distinguished
+from God--becomes man for the sake of men.
+If the providence in animals' prey-catching organs is true, then biblical Providence is false—and vice versa. It is pitiable and ridiculous to hypocritically honor both nature and the Bible. Nature contradicts the Bible, and the Bible contradicts nature! Nature's God gives a lion strength to kill and eat even a human to survive; the Bible's God intervenes to rescue the human from the lion's jaws!
+But if man is the end of creation, he is also the true cause of
+creation, for the end is the principle of action. The distinction
+between man as the end of creation, and man as its cause, is only
+that the cause is the latent, inner man, the essential man, whereas
+the end is the self-evident, empirical, individual man,--that man
+recognises himself as the end of creation, but not as the cause,
+because he distinguishes the cause, the essence from himself as
+another personal being. [77] But this other being, this creative
+principle, is in fact nothing else than his subjective nature
+separated from the limits of individuality and materiality, i.e.,
+of objectivity, unlimited will, personality posited out of all
+connection with the world,--which by creation, i.e., the positing
+of the world, of objectivity, of another, as a dependent, finite,
+non-essential existence, gives itself the certainty of its exclusive
+reality. The point in question in the Creation is not the truth and
+reality of the world, but the truth and reality of personality, of
+subjectivity in distinction from the world. The point in question is
+the personality of God; but the personality of God is the personality
+of man freed from all the conditions and limitations of Nature. Hence
+the fervent interest in the Creation, the horror of all pantheistic
+cosmogonies. The Creation, like the idea of a personal God in general,
+is not a scientific, but a personal matter; not an object of the free
+intelligence, but of the feelings; for the point on which it hinges
+is only the guarantee, the last conceivable proof and demonstration
+of personality or subjectivity as an essence quite apart, having
+nothing in common with Nature, a supra- and extra-mundane entity. [78]
+> **Quote:** "The God of Nature reveals himself by giving to the lion strength and appropriate organs in order that... he may in case of necessity kill and devour even a human being; the God of the Bible reveals himself by interposing his own aid to rescue the human being from the jaws of the lion!"
+Man distinguishes himself from Nature. This distinction of his
+is his God: the distinguishing of God from Nature is nothing
+else than the distinguishing of man from Nature. The antithesis
+of pantheism and personalism resolves itself into the question:
+Is the nature of man transcendental or immanent, supranaturalistic
+or naturalistic? The speculations and controversies concerning the
+personality or impersonality of God are therefore fruitless, idle,
+uncritical, and odious; for the speculatists, especially those who
+maintain the personality, do not call the thing by the right name;
+they put the light under a bushel. While they in truth speculate only
+concerning themselves, only in the interest of their own instinct of
+self-preservation; they yet will not allow that they are splitting
+their brains only about themselves; they speculate under the delusion
+that they are searching out the mysteries of another being. Pantheism
+identifies man with Nature, whether with its visible appearance, or its
+abstract essence. Personalism isolates, separates, him from Nature;
+converts him from a part into the whole, into an absolute essence by
+himself. This is the distinction. If, therefore, you would be clear
+on these subjects, exchange your mystical, perverted anthropology,
+which you call theology, for real anthropology, and speculate in
+the light of consciousness and Nature concerning the difference
+or identity of the human essence with the essence of Nature. You
+yourselves admit that the essence of the pantheistical God is nothing
+but the essence of Nature. Why, then, will you only see the mote in
+the eyes of your opponents, and not observe the very obvious beam
+in your own eyes? why make yourselves an exception to a universally
+valid law? Admit that your personal God is nothing else than your own
+personal nature, that while you believe in and construct your supra-
+and extra-natural God, you believe in and construct nothing else than
+the supra- and extra-naturalism of your own self.
+Providence is a human privilege. It expresses humanity's value, exempting man from the universe's mechanical connections. It is man's conviction of his existence's infinite value—a conviction rejecting faith in external reality. It is religion's idealism. Faith in Providence is identical to faith in personal immortality, except immortality expresses infinite value as infinite duration. One who identifies with the world, seeing themselves as merged into the whole, does not believe in Providence—or at least not in *special* Providence. And only special Providence is Providence in the religious sense. Faith in Providence is faith in one's own worth; it is man's faith in himself. God concerns himself with my happiness and salvation; he wills that I be blessed, and that is my will also. Thus, my interest is God's interest, and my aim is God's aim.
+In the Creation, as everywhere else, the true principle is concealed
+by the intermingling of universal, metaphysical, and even pantheistic
+definitions. But one need only be attentive to the closer definitions
+to convince oneself that the true principle of creation is the
+self-affirmation of subjectivity in distinction from Nature. God
+produces the world outside himself; at first it is only an idea, a
+plan, a resolve; now it becomes an act, and therewith it steps forth
+out of God as a distinct and, relatively at least, a self-subsistent
+object. But just so subjectivity in general, which distinguishes
+itself from the world, which takes itself for an essence distinct from
+the world, posits the world out of itself as a separate existence,
+indeed, this positing out of self, and the distinguishing of self,
+is one act. When therefore the world is posited outside of God, God
+is posited by himself, is distinguished from the world. What else
+then is God but your subjective nature, when the world is separated
+from it? [79] It is true that when astute reflection intervenes,
+the distinction between extra and intra is disavowed as a finite and
+human (?) distinction. But to the disavowal by the understanding,
+which in relation to religion is pure misunderstanding, no credit
+is due. If it is meant seriously, it destroys the foundation of
+the religious consciousness; it does away with the possibility,
+the very principle of the creation, for this rests solely on the
+reality of the above-mentioned distinction. Moreover, the effect of
+the creation, all its majesty for the feelings and the imagination,
+is quite lost, if the production of the world out of God is not taken
+in the real sense. What is it to make, to create, to produce, but
+to make that which in the first instance is only subjective, and so
+far invisible, non-existent, into something objective, perceptible,
+so that other beings besides me may know and enjoy it, and thus to
+put something out of myself, to make it distinct from myself? Where
+there is no reality or possibility of an existence external to me,
+there can be no question of making or creating. God is eternal, but
+the world had a commencement; God was, when as yet the world was not;
+God is invisible, not cognisable by the senses, but the world is
+visible, palpable, material, and therefore outside of God; for how
+can the material as such, body, matter, be in God? The world exists
+outside of God, in the same sense in which a tree, an animal, the
+world in general, exists outside of my conception, outside of myself,
+is an existence distinct from subjectivity. Hence, only when such an
+external existence is admitted, as it was by the older philosophers
+and theologians, have we the genuine, unmixed doctrine of the religious
+consciousness. The speculative theologians and philosophers of modern
+times, on the contrary, foist in all sorts of pantheistic definitions,
+although they deny the principle of pantheism; and the result of this
+process is simply an absolutely self-contradictory, insupportable
+fabrication of their own.
+> **Quote:** "God's love for me nothing else than my self-love deified."
+Thus the creation of the world expresses nothing else than
+subjectivity, assuring itself of its own reality and infinity
+through the consciousness that the world is created, is a product
+of will, i.e., a dependent, powerless, unsubstantial existence. The
+"nothing" out of which the world was produced, is a still inherent
+nothingness. When thou sayest the world was made out of nothing, thou
+conceivest the world itself as nothing, thou clearest away from thy
+head all the limits to thy imagination, to thy feelings, to thy will,
+for the world is the limitation of thy will, of thy desire; the world
+alone obstructs thy soul; it alone is the wall of separation between
+thee and God,--thy beatified, perfected nature. Thus, subjectively,
+thou annihilatest the world; thou thinkest God by himself, i.e.,
+absolutely unlimited subjectivity, the subjectivity or soul which
+enjoys itself alone, which needs not the world, which knows nothing
+of the painful bonds of matter. In the inmost depths of thy soul
+thou wouldest rather there were no world, for where the world is,
+there is matter, and where there is matter there is weight and
+resistance, space and time, limitation and necessity. Nevertheless,
+there is a world, there is matter. How dost thou escape from the
+dilemma of this contradiction? How dost thou expel the world from thy
+consciousness, that it may not disturb thee in the beatitude of the
+unlimited soul? Only by making the world itself a product of will, by
+giving it an arbitrary existence always hovering between existence
+and non-existence, always awaiting its annihilation. Certainly
+the act of creation does not suffice to explain the existence of
+the world or matter (the two are not separable), but it is a total
+misconception to demand this of it, for the fundamental idea of the
+creation is this: there is to be no world, no matter; and hence its
+end is daily looked forward to with longing. The world in its truth
+does not here exist at all, it is regarded only as the obstruction,
+the limitation of subjectivity; how could the world in its truth and
+reality be deduced from a principle which denies the world?
+When I believe in Providence, what do I believe in but the divine reality of my own being? Wherever Providence is believed, belief in God depends on it. Whoever denies Providence denies God—or denies that God is God. A God who is not man's Providence is worthless, lacking the most divine attribute. Consequently, belief in God is nothing but belief in human dignity and the absolute reality of human nature. But belief in religious Providence is belief in creation out of nothing, and vice versa. Therefore creation out of nothing has no other meaning than that described for Providence. Religion expresses this by making man creation's purpose. All things exist not for their own sake, but for man's.
+In order to recognise the above developed significance of the creation
+as the true one, it is only necessary seriously to consider the fact,
+that the chief point in the creation is not the production of earth
+and water, plants and animals, for which indeed there is no God,
+but the production of personal beings--of spirits, according to the
+ordinary phrase. God is the idea of personality as itself a person,
+subjectivity existing in itself apart from the world, existing for self
+alone, without wants, posited as absolute existence, the me without
+a thee. But as absolute existence for self alone contradicts the idea
+of true life, the idea of love; as self-consciousness is essentially
+united with the consciousness of a thee, as solitude cannot, at least
+in perpetuity, preserve itself from tedium and uniformity; thought
+immediately proceeds from the divine Being to other conscious beings,
+and expands the idea of personality which was at first condensed in
+one being to a plurality of persons. [80] If the person is conceived
+physically, as a real man, in which form he is a being with wants, he
+appears first at the end of the physical world, when the conditions
+of his existence are present,--as the goal of creation. If, on the
+other hand, man is conceived abstractly as a person, as is the case in
+religious speculation, this circuit is dispensed with, and the task
+is the direct deduction of the person, i.e., the self-demonstration,
+the ultimate self-verification of the human personality. It is true
+that the divine personality is distinguished in every possible way
+from the human in order to veil their identity; but these distinctions
+are either purely fantastic, or they are mere assertions, devices
+which exhibit the invalidity of the attempted deduction. All positive
+grounds of the creation reduce themselves only to the conditions,
+to the grounds, which urge upon the me the consciousness of the
+necessity of another personal being. Speculate as much as you will,
+you will never derive your personality from God, if you have not
+beforehand introduced it, if God himself be not already the idea of
+your personality, your own subjective nature.
+To say the material world exists for man's sake implies infinitely less than to say God—or at least, following Paul, a being barely distinguishable from God—becomes human for humanity's sake. But if man is creation's goal, he is also its true cause, for the goal is any action's underlying principle. The only distinction between man as goal and as cause is that the cause is the hidden, inner, essential man, whereas the goal is the self-evident, empirical, individual man. Man recognizes himself as the goal but not the cause, because he views the cause—the essence—as a separate personal being. Yet this creative principle is in fact nothing but his own subjective nature, stripped of individuality's and materiality's limits—that is, of objectivity. It is unlimited will and personality set apart from any world-connection.
+> **Quote:** "The personality of God is the personality of man freed from all the conditions and limitations of Nature."
+This explains the passionate interest in Creation and horror of pantheistic views. Creation, like the personal God idea, is not scientific but personal—an object of feeling, not free intelligence. Its point is the guarantee—the final proof—of personality or subjectivity as a completely separate essence, having nothing in common with Nature: a supernatural, extra-worldly entity.
+> **Quote:** "Man distinguishes himself from Nature. This distinction of his is his God: the distinguishing of God from Nature is nothing else than the distinguishing of man from Nature."
+The conflict between pantheism and personalism boils down to: Is man's nature transcendental or immanent, supernatural or natural? Speculations on God's personality are therefore fruitless and misguided. Those who speculate—especially defenders of God's personality—hide the truth. While actually speculating about themselves, in their survival instinct's interest, they refuse to admit they're merely racking their brains over their own nature. They speculate under the delusion of exploring another being's mysteries. Pantheism identifies man with Nature; personalism isolates him from Nature, transforming him from part into whole—into absolute essence. This is the key distinction. Want clarity? Exchange your mystical, distorted "theology" for real anthropology. Speculate in consciousness and Nature's light: is human essence different from or identical to Nature's essence? You admit the pantheistic God's essence is Nature's essence. Why see the speck in your opponent's eye but ignore the log in your own? Why make yourself a universal law's exception?
+> **Quote:** "Admit that your personal God is nothing else than your own personal nature, that while you believe in and construct your supra- and extra-natural God, you believe in and construct nothing else than the supra- and extra-naturalism of your own self."
+Thus the world's creation expresses nothing but subjectivity assuring itself of its own reality and infinity through awareness that the world is created—a product of will, and therefore dependent, powerless, insubstantial. The "nothingness" from which the world was produced is a lingering, inherent nothingness. When you say the world was made from nothing, you conceive the world itself as nothing. You clear from your mind all limits to imagination, feeling, will—for the world is your will's limitation. The world alone obstructs your soul; it is the only wall between you and God—your blessed, perfected nature. Thus subjectively you annihilate the world; you imagine God by himself—as absolutely unlimited subjectivity, the soul enjoying itself alone, needing no world, knowing nothing of matter's painful bonds. In your soul's deepest depths, you would rather no world existed, for where world exists, there is matter; and where matter exists, there is weight, resistance, space, time, limitation, necessity. Nevertheless, world exists, matter exists. How escape this contradiction? How push world from consciousness so it doesn't disturb the unlimited soul's bliss? Only by making world itself a product of will—giving it arbitrary existence hovering between being and non-being, always awaiting destruction. Certainly, creation does not explain world or matter's existence (the two cannot be separated), but expecting it to is total misunderstanding. Creation's fundamental idea is: there is to be no world, no matter. This is why its end is daily anticipated with longing. In this view, world does not exist in its own truth at all; it is regarded only as subjectivity's obstruction or limit. How could world in its truth and reality derive from a principle that denies world?
+To recognize this as creation's true significance, consider that its main point is not producing earth, water, plants, animals—for which no God is needed—but producing personal beings or "spirits." God is personality's idea as person itself—subjectivity existing apart from world, for itself alone, without needs, as absolute existence: the "I" without a "Thou". But because absolute existence for oneself contradicts true life and love; because self-consciousness is essentially tied to another's consciousness; and because solitude cannot forever protect against boredom, thought moves from divine Being to other conscious beings. It expands personality's idea, first concentrated in one being, into a plurality. If a person is conceived physically—as real human with needs—he appears only at the physical world's end, once existence conditions are met, as creation's goal. If man is conceived abstractly as "person," as in religious speculation, this long route is skipped. The task becomes direct derivation of person—self-demonstration and ultimate self-verification of human personality.
+True, divine personality is distinguished from human in every way to hide their identity, but these distinctions are purely imaginary or mere assertions—tactics proving the attempt's failure. All positive reasons for creation reduce to conditions forcing the "I" to awareness of need for another personal being. Speculate as you like, you will never derive your personality from God if you have not already put it there—if God were not already your personality's idea, your own subjective nature.
 ### CHAPTER XI. - THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CREATION IN JUDAISM.
+The doctrine of Creation is Judaism's fundamental doctrine, founded not so much on the principle of subjectivity as on that of egoism. It arises only when humanity treats Nature in practice as a servant to its will, degrading it in thought to a mere machine, a product of will.
+The doctrine of the Creation sprang out of Judaism; indeed, it is the
+characteristic, the fundamental doctrine of the Jewish religion. The
+principle which lies at its foundation is, however, not so much the
+principle of subjectivity as of egoism. The doctrine of the Creation
+in its characteristic significance arises only on that stand-point
+where man in practice makes Nature merely the servant of his will
+and needs, and hence in thought also degrades it to a mere machine,
+a product of the will. Now its existence is intelligible to him,
+since he explains and interprets it out of himself, in accordance with
+his own feelings and notions. The question, Whence is Nature or the
+world? presupposes wonder that it exists, or the question, Why does
+it exist? But this wonder, this question, arises only where man has
+separated himself from Nature and made it a mere object of will. The
+author of the Book of Wisdom says truly of the heathens, that, "for
+admiration of the beauty of the world they did not raise themselves
+to the idea of the Creator." To him who feels that Nature is lovely,
+it appears an end in itself, it has the ground of its existence in
+itself: in him the question, Why does it exist? does not arise. Nature
+and God are identified in his consciousness, his perception, of the
+world. Nature, as it impresses his senses, has indeed had an origin,
+has been produced, but not created in the religious sense, is not
+an arbitrary product. And by this origin he implies nothing evil;
+originating involves for him nothing impure, undivine; he conceives
+his gods themselves as having had an origin. The generative force
+is to him the primal force: he posits, therefore, as the ground of
+Nature, a force of Nature,--a real, present, visibly active force, as
+the ground of reality. Thus does man think where his relation to the
+world is æsthetic or theoretic (for the theoretic view was originally
+the æsthetic view, the prima philosophia), where the idea of the world
+is to him the idea of the cosmos, of majesty, of deity itself. Only
+where such a theory was the fundamental principle could there be
+conceived and expressed such a thought as that of Anaxagoras:--Man
+is born to behold the world. [81] The standpoint of theory is the
+standpoint of harmony with the world. The subjective activity, that
+in which man contents himself, allows himself free play, is here
+the sensuous imagination alone. Satisfied with this, he lets Nature
+subsist in peace, and constructs his castles in the air, his poetical
+cosmogonies, only out of natural materials. When, on the contrary,
+man places himself only on the practical standpoint and looks at the
+world from thence, making the practical standpoint the theoretical
+one also, he is in disunion with Nature; he makes Nature the abject
+vassal of his selfish interest, of his practical egoism. The theoretic
+expression of this egoistical, practical view, according to which
+Nature is in itself nothing, is this: Nature or the world is made,
+created, the product of a command. God said, Let the world be, and
+straightway the world presented itself at his bidding. [82]
+The question "Why does Nature exist?" emerges only when humanity has separated from Nature, making it an object of will. The author of the Book of Wisdom rightly says of heathens that in admiring the world's beauty, they did not reach a Creator. To those who find Nature beautiful, it is an end in itself, containing its own ground of existence; the question "Why?" does not arise. For them, Nature and God are one.
+Utilism is the essential theory of Judaism. The belief in a special
+Divine Providence is the characteristic belief of Judaism; belief
+in Providence is belief in miracle; but belief in miracle exists
+where Nature is regarded only as an object of arbitrariness, of
+egoism, which uses Nature only as an instrument of its own will and
+pleasure. Water divides or rolls itself together like a firm mass,
+dust is changed into lice, a staff into a serpent, rivers into blood,
+a rock into a fountain; in the same place it is both light and dark
+at once, the sun now stands still, now goes backward. And all these
+contradictions of Nature happen for the welfare of Israel, purely at
+the command of Jehovah, who troubles himself about nothing but Israel,
+who is nothing but the personified selfishness of the Israelitish
+people, to the exclusion of all other nations,--absolute intolerance,
+the secret essence of monotheism.
+Nature may have had an origin, but not a "created" one—not an arbitrary product. Even their gods had origins. For them, generative force is primal force, and they posit a real, active force of Nature as the ground of reality. This is the aesthetic or theoretical view (*prima philosophia*), where the world is cosmos, majesty, deity itself.
+The Greeks looked at Nature with the theoretic sense; they heard
+heavenly music in the harmonious course of the stars; they saw Nature
+rise from the foam of the all-producing ocean as Venus Anadyomene. The
+Israelites, on the contrary, opened to Nature only the gastric sense;
+their taste for Nature lay only in the palate; their consciousness
+of God in eating manna. The Greek addicted himself to polite studies,
+to the fine arts, to philosophy; the Israelite did not rise above the
+alimentary view of theology. "At even ye shall eat flesh, and in the
+morning ye shall be filled with bread; and ye shall know that I am
+the Lord your God." [83] "And Jacob vowed a vow, saying, If God will
+be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me
+bread to eat and raiment to put on, so that I come again to my father's
+house in peace, then shall the Lord be my God." [84] Eating is the
+most solemn act or the initiation of the Jewish religion. In eating,
+the Israelite celebrates and renews the act of creation; in eating,
+man declares Nature to be an insignificant object. When the seventy
+elders ascended the mountain with Moses, "they saw God; and when they
+had seen God, they ate and drank." [85] Thus with them what the sight
+of the Supreme Being heightened was the appetite for food.
+> **Quote:** "Man is born to behold the world."
+The Jews have maintained their peculiarity to this day. Their
+principle, their God, is the most practical principle in the
+world,--namely, egoism; and moreover egoism in the form of
+religion. Egoism is the God who will not let his servants come to
+shame. Egoism is essentially monotheistic, for it has only one, only
+self, as its end. Egoism strengthens cohesion, concentrates man on
+himself, gives him a consistent principle of life; but it makes him
+theoretically narrow, because indifferent to all which does not relate
+to the well-being of self. Hence science, like art, arises only out of
+polytheism, for polytheism is the frank, open, unenvying sense of all
+that is beautiful and good without distinction, the sense of the world,
+of the universe. The Greeks looked abroad into the wide world that they
+might extend their sphere of vision; the Jews to this day pray with
+their faces turned towards Jerusalem. In the Israelites, monotheistic
+egoism excluded the free theoretic tendency. Solomon, it is true,
+surpassed "all the children of the East" in understanding and wisdom,
+and spoke (treated, agebat) moreover "of trees, from the cedar that
+is in Lebanon, even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall,"
+and also of "beasts and of fowl, and of creeping things and of fishes"
+(1 Kings iv. 30, 34). But it must be added that Solomon did not serve
+Jehovah with his whole heart; he did homage to strange gods and strange
+women; and thus he had the polytheistic sentiment and taste. The
+polytheistic sentiment, I repeat, is the foundation of science and art.
+The theoretical standpoint is harmony with the world, contenting itself with sensory imagination, letting Nature exist in peace while building "castles in the air"—poetic origins from natural materials. The practical standpoint makes Nature the wretched servant of selfish interests. Its theoretical expression: Nature is created, made by command. God said, "Let the world be," and it was.
+The significance which Nature in general had for the Hebrews is one
+with their idea of its origin. The mode in which the genesis of a
+thing is explained is the candid expression of opinion, of sentiment
+respecting it. If it be thought meanly of, so also is its origin. Men
+used to suppose that insects, vermin, sprang from carrion and other
+rubbish. It was not because they derived vermin from so uninviting a
+source that they thought contemptuously of them, but, on the contrary,
+because they thought thus, because the nature of vermin appeared to
+them so vile, they imagined an origin corresponding to this nature,
+a vile origin. To the Jews Nature was a mere means towards achieving
+the end of egoism, a mere object of will. But the ideal, the idol
+of the egoistic will is that Will which has unlimited command, which
+requires no means in order to attain its end, to realise its object,
+which immediately by itself, i.e., by pure will, calls into existence
+whatever it pleases. It pains the egoist that the satisfaction of
+his wishes and need is only to be attained immediately, that for him
+there is a chasm between the wish and its realisation, between the
+object in the imagination and the object in reality. Hence, in order
+to relieve this pain, to make himself free from the limits of reality,
+he supposes as the true, the highest being, One who brings forth an
+object by the mere I will. For this reason, Nature, the world, was
+to the Hebrews the product of a dictatorial word, of a categorical
+imperative, of a magic fiat.
+Utilism is the essential theory of Judaism. Belief in special Divine Providence—miracles—exists only where Nature is a mere object of whim and egoism. Water divides, dust becomes lice, staffs turn serpents, rivers to blood, rocks to fountains; light and dark coexist; the sun stands still. All for Israel's welfare, at Jehovah's command. He is nothing but Israel's personified selfishness, excluding all other nations—absolute intolerance, the secret essence of monotheism.
+To that which has no essential existence for me in theory I assign
+no theoretic, no positive ground. By referring it to Will I only
+enforce its theoretic nullity. What we despise we do not honour with
+a glance: that which is observed has importance: contemplation is
+respect. Whatever is looked at fetters by secret forces of attraction,
+overpowers by the spell which it exercises upon the eye, the criminal
+arrogance of that Will which seeks only to subject all things to
+itself. Whatever makes an impression on the theoretic sense, on the
+reason, withdraws itself from the dominion of the egoistic Will:
+it reacts, it presents resistance. That which devastating egoism
+devotes to death, benignant theory restores to life.
+The Greeks viewed Nature theoretically, hearing heavenly music in the stars' movement, seeing Venus Anadyomene rise from ocean foam. Israelites approached Nature through the "gastric sense"—taste existing only in the palate, consciousness of God in eating manna. Greeks dedicated themselves to humanities, arts, philosophy; Israelites never rose above the nutritional view of theology: "At evening you shall eat meat, and in the morning... you shall know that I am the Lord your God." "And Jacob vowed... If God will... give me bread to eat and clothing... then shall the Lord be my God." Eating is the most solemn act of Jewish religion, celebrating and renewing creation, declaring Nature insignificant. When the seventy elders ascended with Moses, "they saw God; and when they had seen God, they ate and drank." For them, the sight of the Supreme Being merely heightened appetite.
+The much-belied doctrine of the heathen philosophers concerning
+the eternity of matter, or the world, thus implies nothing more
+than that Nature was to them a theoretic reality. [86] The heathens
+were idolaters, that is, they contemplated Nature; they did nothing
+else than what the profoundly Christian nations do at this day
+when they make Nature an object of their admiration, of their
+indefatigable investigation. "But the heathens actually worshipped
+natural objects." Certainly; for worship is only the childish,
+the religious form of contemplation. Contemplation and worship are
+not essentially distinguished. That which I contemplate I humble
+myself before, I consecrate to it my noblest possession, my heart,
+my intelligence, as an offering. The natural philosopher also falls
+on his knees before Nature when, at the risk of his life, he snatches
+from some precipice a lichen, an insect, or a stone, to glorify it in
+the light of contemplation, and give it an eternal existence in the
+memory of scientific humanity. The study of Nature is the worship of
+Nature--idolatry in the sense of the Israelitish and Christian God;
+and idolatry is simply man's primitive contemplation of Nature; for
+religion is nothing else than man's primitive, and therefore childish,
+popular, but prejudiced, unemancipated consciousness of himself and
+of Nature. The Hebrews, on the other hand, raised themselves from
+the worship of idols to the worship of God, from the creature to
+the Creator; i.e., they raised themselves from the theoretic view
+of Nature, which fascinated the idolaters, to the purely practical
+view which subjects Nature only to the ends of egoism. "And lest
+thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven, and when thou seest the sun,
+the moon, and the stars, even all the host of heaven, shouldst be
+driven to worship them and serve them, which the Lord thy God hath
+divided unto (i.e., bestowed upon, largitus est) all nations under
+the whole heaven." [87] Thus the creation out of nothing, i.e.,
+the creation as a purely imperious act, had its origin only in the
+unfathomable depth of Hebrew egoism.
+The Jews have maintained this peculiarity. Their God is the most practical principle: egoism, in religious form. Egoism is essentially monotheistic, having only one end—the self. It strengthens cohesion and gives consistency, but makes them theoretically narrow, indifferent to all beyond their own well-being. Consequently, science and art arise only from polytheism: the frank appreciation of all that is beautiful, the sense of the world. Greeks looked outward to expand vision; Jews pray toward Jerusalem. Solomon surpassed "all the children of the East" in wisdom, speaking of "trees, from the cedar... to the hyssop..." and of "beasts and birds..."—yet he served foreign gods, possessing polytheistic sentiments. The polytheistic sentiment is the foundation of science and art.
+On this ground, also, the creation out of nothing is no object of
+philosophy;--at least in any other way than it is so here;--for it cuts
+away the root of all true speculation, presents no grappling-point
+to thought, to theory; theoretically considered, it is a baseless
+air-built doctrine, which originated solely in the need to give
+a warrant to utilism, to egoism, which contains and expresses
+nothing but the command to make Nature--not an object of thought,
+of contemplation, but--an object of utilisation. The more empty
+it is, however, for natural philosophy, the more profound is its
+"speculative" significance; for just because it has no theoretic
+fulcrum, it allows to the speculatist infinite room for the play of
+arbitrary, groundless interpretation.
+The Hebrews' view of Nature's origin reveals their feeling toward it. The way one explains origin expresses one's opinion: what is despised gets a vile origin. People assumed vermin sprang from rubbish not to justify contempt, but because contempt preceded it—they imagined an origin matching the vile nature. To Jews, Nature was a mere means to egoistic ends. The egoist's ideal is Will with unlimited command, needing no means, creating by pure will. The gap between wish and realization pains him; to escape reality's limits, he assumes a being who creates by mere will. Thus Nature became the product of a dictatorial word, a categorical imperative, a magical decree.
+It is in the history of dogma and speculation as in the history of
+states. World-old usages, laws, and institutions continue to drag out
+their existence long after they have lost their true meaning. What
+has once existed will not be denied the right to exist for ever; what
+was once good, claims to be good for all times. At this period of
+superannuation come the interpreters, the speculatists, and talk of
+the profound sense, because they no longer know the true one. [88]
+Thus religious speculation deals with the dogmas torn from the
+connection in which alone they have any true meaning; instead of
+tracing them back critically to their true origin, it makes the
+secondary primitive, and the primitive secondary. To it God is
+the first, man the second. Thus it inverts the natural order of
+things. In reality, the first is man, the second the nature of man
+made objective, namely, God. Only in later times, in which religion
+is already become flesh and blood, can it be said--As God is, so is
+man; although, indeed, this proposition never amounts to anything
+more than tautology. But in the origin of religion it is otherwise;
+and it is only in the origin of a thing that we can discern its true
+nature. Man first unconsciously and involuntarily creates God in his
+own image, and after this God consciously and voluntarily creates man
+in his own image. This is especially confirmed by the development
+of the Israelitish religion. Hence the position of theological
+one-sidedness, that the revelation of God holds an even pace with
+the development of the human race. Naturally; for the revelation of
+God is nothing else than the revelation, the self-unfolding of human
+nature. The supranaturalistic egoism of the Jews did not proceed
+from the Creator, but conversely, the latter from the former; in the
+creation the Israelite justified his egoism at the bar of his reason.
+I assign no theoretical ground to what has no essential existence for me in theory. By attributing it to "Will," I emphasize its theoretical worthlessness. What we despise, we do not honor with a glance; what we observe has importance—contemplation is respect. Whatever impresses the theoretical sense withdraws from egoistic Will's dominion and presents resistance. That which devastating egoism devotes to death, benignant theory restores to life.
+It is true, and it may be readily understood on simply practical
+grounds, that even the Israelite could not, as a man, withdraw himself
+from the theoretic contemplation and admiration of Nature. But in
+celebrating the power and greatness of Nature, he celebrates only
+the power and greatness of Jehovah. And the power of Jehovah has
+exhibited itself with the most glory in the miracles which it has
+wrought in favour of Israel. Hence, in the celebration of this power,
+the Israelite has always reference ultimately to himself; he extols
+the greatness of Nature only for the same reason that the conqueror
+magnifies the strength of his opponent, in order thereby to heighten
+his own self-complacency, to make his own fame more illustrious. Great
+and mighty is Nature, which Jehovah has created, but yet mightier,
+yet greater, is Israel's self-estimation. For his sake the sun stands
+still; for his sake, according to Philo, the earth quaked at the
+delivery of the law; in short, for his sake all Nature alters its
+course. "For the whole creature in his proper kind was fashioned again
+anew, serving the peculiar commandments that were given unto them,
+that thy children might be kept without hurt." [89] According to Philo,
+God gave Moses power over the whole of Nature; all the elements obeyed
+him as the Lord of Nature. [90] Israel's requirement is the omnipotent
+law of the world, Israel's need the fate of the universe. Jehovah is
+Israel's consciousness of the sacredness and necessity of his own
+existence,--a necessity before which the existence of Nature, the
+existence of other nations, vanishes into nothing; Jehovah is the salus
+populi, the salvation of Israel, to which everything that stands in its
+way must be sacrificed; Jehovah is exclusive, monarchical arrogance,
+the annihilating flash of anger in the vindictive glance of destroying
+Israel; in a word, Jehovah is the ego of Israel, which regards itself
+as the end and aim, the Lord of Nature. Thus, in the power of Nature
+the Israelite celebrates the power of Jehovah, and in the power of
+Jehovah the power of his own self-consciousness. "Blessed be God! God
+is our help, God is our salvation."--"Jehovah is my strength."--"God
+himself hearkened to the word of Joshua, for Jehovah himself fought
+for Israel."--"Jehovah is a God of war."
+The ancient doctrine of matter's eternity implies only that Nature was a theoretical reality. Heathens were idolaters, meaning they contemplated Nature—just as Christian nations do today in admiring and investigating it. "But heathens worshipped natural objects." Certainly; worship is the primitive religious form of contemplation. I humble myself before what I contemplate, offering my heart and intelligence as sacrifice. The natural philosopher also falls on his knees before Nature when, at the risk of his life, he snatches from some precipice a lichen, an insect, or a stone, to glorify it in the light of contemplation. The study of Nature is worship—idolatry to the Israelite and Christian God. Idolatry is humanity's primitive contemplation of Nature.
+If, in the course of time, the idea of Jehovah expanded itself in
+individual minds, and his love was extended, as by the writer of the
+Book of Jonah, to man in general, this does not belong to the essential
+character of the Israelitish religion. The God of the fathers, to whom
+the most precious recollections are attached, the ancient historical
+God, remains always the foundation of a religion. [91]
+The Hebrews moved from worshipping idols to worshipping God, from creature to Creator—from the theoretical view that fascinated idolaters to a purely practical view that subjects Nature to egoism. "Lest you lift up your eyes to heaven, and when you see the sun, the moon, and the stars, even all the host of heaven, you should be driven to worship them and serve them, which the Lord your God has bestowed upon all nations under the whole heaven." Thus creation out of nothing had its origin only in Hebrew egoism.
+Creation out of nothing is thus not an object of philosophy. It cuts the root of speculation, offering theory nothing to grasp. Theoretically, it is a baseless, air-built doctrine that justifies utilitarianism and egoism, commanding that Nature be an object of use, not contemplation. Yet the emptier it is for natural philosophy, the more "speculative" significance it holds, allowing infinite room for groundless interpretation.
+In dogma and speculation, as in states, ancient customs outlive their meaning. Interpreters talk of "profound sense" when they no longer understand the true one. Speculation deals with dogmas torn from context, making the secondary primary: God first, man second. This inverts the natural order. In reality, man is first; God is the nature of man made objective. "As God is, so is man" is tautology possible only when religion has become "flesh and blood." But at religion's origin—where we discern its true nature—the order is reversed.
+> **Quote:** "Man first unconsciously and involuntarily creates God in his own image, and after this God consciously and voluntarily creates man in his own image."
+This is confirmed by Israelite religion's development, explaining why God's revelation keeps pace with humanity's: it is nothing but the revelation of human nature. Jewish egoism did not proceed from the Creator; the Creator proceeded from egoism. In creation, the Israelite justified his egoism before his own reason.
+It is true that even the Israelite could not withdraw entirely from theoretical admiration of Nature. But in celebrating Nature's power, he celebrated only Jehovah's power, exhibited most gloriously in miracles for Israel's sake. He extols Nature's greatness only as a conqueror magnifies his opponent: to heighten his own satisfaction. For Israel's sake, the sun stands still; for Israel's sake, says Philo, the earth quaked at the giving of the law; for Israel's sake, all Nature alters course.
+> **Quote:** 'For the whole creature in his proper kind was fashioned again anew, serving the peculiar commandments that were given unto them, that thy children might be kept without hurt.'
+Philo says God gave Moses power over all Nature; Israel's requirement is the omnipotent law of the world; Israel's need is the universe's fate. Jehovah is Israel's consciousness of its own sacred existence, before which Nature and other nations vanish. Jehovah is the *salus populi*, Israel's salvation, to which all must be sacrificed. Jehovah is exclusive, monarchical arrogance—the annihilating flash of anger in the vindictive glance of destroying Israel. In a word, Jehovah is Israel's ego, regarding itself as Nature's Lord. Thus in Jehovah's power, Israel celebrates its own self-consciousness: "Blessed be God! God is our help, God is our salvation." "Jehovah is my strength." "God himself listened to Joshua, for Jehovah fought for Israel." "Jehovah is a God of war."
+If over time Jehovah's idea expanded in some minds—Jonah extending his love to humanity—this does not belong to Israelite religion's essential character. The ancient God of the fathers remains the foundation.
 ### CHAPTER XII. - THE OMNIPOTENCE OF FEELING, OR THE MYSTERY OF PRAYER.
+Israel represents religious consciousness defined historically, yet limited by national interests. Remove these boundaries and we arrive at Christianity.
+Israel is the historical definition of the specific nature of the
+religious consciousness, save only that here this consciousness
+was circumscribed by the limits of a particular, a national
+interest. Hence, we need only let these limits fall, and we have the
+Christian religion. Judaism is worldly Christianity; Christianity,
+spiritual Judaism. The Christian religion is the Jewish religion
+purified from national egoism, and yet at the same time it is certainly
+another, a new religion; for every reformation, every purification,
+produces--especially in religious matters, where even the trivial
+becomes important--an essential change. To the Jew, the Israelite
+was the mediator, the bond between God and man; in his relation to
+Jehovah he relied on his character of Israelite; Jehovah himself was
+nothing else than the self-consciousness of Israel made objective
+as the absolute being, the national conscience, the universal law,
+the central point of the political system. [92] If we let fall the
+limits of nationality, we obtain--instead of the Israelite--man. As in
+Jehovah the Israelite personified his national existence, so in God
+the Christian personified his subjective human nature, freed from
+the limits of nationality. As Israel made the wants of his national
+existence the law of the world, as, under the dominance of these wants,
+he deified even his political vindictiveness; so the Christian made
+the requirements of human feeling the absolute powers and laws of the
+world. The miracles of Christianity, which belong just as essentially
+to its characterisation as the miracles of the Old Testament to
+that of Judaism, have not the welfare of a nation for their object,
+but the welfare of man:--that is, indeed, only of man considered
+as Christian; for Christianity, in contradiction with the genuine
+universal human heart, recognised man only under the condition,
+the limitation, of belief in Christ. But this fatal limitation will
+be discussed further on. Christianity has spiritualised the egoism
+of Judaism into subjectivity (though even within Christianity this
+subjectivity is again expressed as pure egoism), has changed the
+desire for earthly happiness, the goal of the Israelitish religion,
+into the longing for heavenly bliss, which is the goal of Christianity.
+> **Quote:** "Judaism is worldly Christianity; Christianity, spiritual Judaism."
+The highest idea, the God of a political community, of a people
+whose political system expresses itself in the form of religion,
+is Law, the consciousness of the law as an absolute divine power;
+the highest idea, the God of unpolitical, unworldly feeling is Love;
+the love which brings all the treasures and glories in heaven and
+upon earth as an offering to the beloved, the love whose law is the
+wish of the beloved one, and whose power is the unlimited power of
+the imagination, of intellectual miracle-working.
+Christianity is Judaism purified of national egoism, yet also a new religion. Every reformation produces essential change, especially in matters of religion where details carry weight. The Israelite's identity mediated between God and humanity; Jehovah was Israel's self-consciousness objectified as absolute being—national conscience, universal law, and political center. Set aside nationality and "man" replaces "Israelite." As Israel personified national existence in Jehovah, Christianity personifies subjective human nature in God. While Israel made national existence the law of the world, deifying even political vengeance, Christianity made human feeling the absolute power and law. Its miracles, as essential as Judaism's, aim not for a nation's welfare but humanity's—at least as Christianity defines it (this limitation will be discussed later). Christianity spiritualized Judaism's egoism into subjectivity (though this often remains egoism) and transformed earthly happiness into heavenly bliss. The political community's highest ideal is Law as absolute divine power; for unpolitical feeling, it is Love—offering all treasures, its law the beloved's wish, its power the unlimited reach of imagination.
+God is the Love that satisfies our wishes, our emotional wants; he
+is himself the realised wish of the heart, the wish exalted to the
+certainty of its fulfilment, of its reality, to that undoubting
+certainty before which no contradiction of the understanding,
+no difficulty of experience or of the external world, maintains
+its ground. Certainty is the highest power for man; that which is
+certain to him is the essential, the divine. "God is love:" this,
+the supreme dictum of Christianity, only expresses the certainty
+which human feeling has of itself, as the alone essential, i.e.,
+absolute divine power, the certainty that the inmost wishes of the
+heart have objective validity and reality, that there are no limits,
+no positive obstacles to human feeling, that the whole world, with
+all its pomp and glory, is nothing weighed against human feeling. God
+is love: that is, feeling is the God of man, nay, God absolutely,
+the Absolute Being. God is the nature of human feeling, unlimited,
+pure feeling, made objective. God is the optative of the human heart
+transformed into the tempus finitum, the certain, blissful "IS,"--the
+unrestricted omnipotence of feeling, prayer hearing itself, feeling
+perceiving itself, the echo of our cry of anguish. Pain must give
+itself utterance; involuntarily the artist seizes the lute that he
+may breathe out his sufferings in its tones. He soothes his sorrow
+by making it audible to himself, by making it objective; he lightens
+the burden which weighs upon his heart by communicating it to the air,
+by making his sorrow a general existence. But nature listens not to the
+plaints of man, it is callous to his sorrows. Hence man turns away from
+Nature, from all visible objects. He turns within, that here, sheltered
+and hidden from the inexorable powers, he may find audience for his
+griefs. Here he utters his oppressive secrets; here he gives vent to
+his stifled sighs. This open-air of the heart, this outspoken secret,
+this uttered sorrow of the soul, is God. God is a tear of love, shed
+in the deepest concealment over human misery. "God is an unutterable
+sigh, lying in the depths of the heart;" [93] this saying is the most
+remarkable, the profoundest, truest expression of Christian mysticism.
+God is Love that satisfies our wishes—the realized wish of the heart, elevated to certainty. This certainty, against which no contradiction or reality can stand, is supreme power; what is certain to us is divine.
+The ultimate essence of religion is revealed by the simplest act of
+religion--prayer; an act which implies at least as much as the dogma
+of the Incarnation, although religious speculation stands amazed
+at this, as the greatest of mysteries. Not, certainly, the prayer
+before and after meals, the ritual of animal egoism, but the prayer
+pregnant with sorrow, the prayer of disconsolate love, the prayer
+which expresses the power of the heart that crushes man to the ground,
+the prayer which begins in despair and ends in rapture.
+> **Quote:** "God is love"
+In prayer, man addresses God with the word of intimate affection--Thou;
+he thus declares articulately that God is his alter ego; he confesses
+to God, as the being nearest to him, his most secret thoughts, his
+deepest wishes, which otherwise he shrinks from uttering. But he
+expresses these wishes in the confidence, in the certainty that they
+will be fulfilled. How could he apply to a being that had no ear for
+his complaints? Thus what is prayer but the wish of the heart expressed
+with confidence in its fulfilment? [94] what else is the being that
+fulfils these wishes but human affection, the human soul, giving ear
+to itself, approving itself, unhesitatingly affirming itself? The man
+who does not exclude from his mind the idea of the world, the idea
+that everything here must be sought intermediately, that every effect
+has its natural cause, that a wish is only to be attained when it is
+made an end and the corresponding means are put into operation--such a
+man does not pray: he only works; he transforms his attainable wishes
+into objects of real activity; other wishes which he recognises as
+purely subjective he denies, or regards as simply subjective, pious
+aspirations. In other words, he limits, he conditionates his being
+by the world, as a member of which he conceives himself; he bounds
+his wishes by the idea of necessity. In prayer, on the contrary,
+man excludes from his mind the world, and with it all thoughts of
+intermediateness and dependence; he makes his wishes--the concerns
+of his heart, objects of the independent, omnipotent, absolute being,
+i.e., he affirms them without limitation. God is the affirmation [95]
+of human feeling; prayer is the unconditional confidence of human
+feeling in the absolute identity of the subjective and objective,
+the certainty that the power of the heart is greater than the power of
+Nature, that the heart's need is absolute necessity, the fate of the
+world. Prayer alters the course of Nature; it determines God to bring
+forth an effect in contradiction with the laws of Nature. Prayer is the
+absolute relation of the human heart to itself, to its own nature;
+in prayer, man forgets that there exists a limit to his wishes,
+and is happy in this forgetfulness.
+This expresses feeling's certainty in itself as absolute divine power—the conviction that heart's wishes have objective reality, that no obstacle exists for feeling, that the world is nothing against it. God is human feeling objectified. He is the heart's wish transformed into certain "IS"—unrestricted omnipotence of feeling, prayer hearing itself, the echo of our cry of anguish. Pain must express itself; the artist makes sorrow audible, turning private grief into general existence. But nature is indifferent, so we turn inward to find an audience for our grief. This "open-air" of the heart, this expressed sorrow, is God.
+Prayer is the self-division of man into two beings,--a dialogue
+of man with himself, with his heart. It is essential to the
+effectiveness of prayer that it be audibly, intelligibly, energetically
+expressed. Involuntarily prayer wells forth in sound; the struggling
+heart bursts the barrier of the closed lips. But audible prayer
+is only prayer revealing its nature; prayer is virtually, if not
+actually, speech,--the Latin word oratio signifies both: in prayer,
+man speaks undisguisedly of that which weighs upon him, which affects
+him closely; he makes his heart objective;--hence the moral power
+of prayer. Concentration, it is said, is the condition of prayer;
+but it is more than a condition; prayer is itself concentration,--the
+dismissal of all distracting ideas, of all disturbing influences from
+without, retirement within oneself, in order to have relation only
+with one's own being. Only a trusting, open, hearty, fervent prayer is
+said to help; but this help lies in the prayer itself. As everywhere
+in religion the subjective, the secondary, the conditionating, is the
+prima causa, the objective fact; so here, these subjective qualities
+are the objective nature of prayer itself. [96]
+> **Quote:** "God is a tear of love, shed in the deepest concealment over human misery."
+It is an extremely superficial view of prayer to regard it as an
+expression of the sense of dependence. It certainly expresses such a
+sense, but the dependence is that of man on his own heart, on his own
+feeling. He who feels himself only dependent, does not open his mouth
+in prayer; the sense of dependence robs him of the desire, the courage
+for it, for the sense of dependence is the sense of need. Prayer has
+its root rather in the unconditional trust of the heart, untroubled
+by all thought of compulsive need, that its concerns are objects
+of the Absolute Being, that the almighty, infinite nature of the
+Father of men is a sympathetic, tender, loving nature, and that thus
+the dearest, most sacred emotions of man are divine realities. But
+the child does not feel itself dependent on the father as a father;
+rather, he has in the father the feeling of his own strength, the
+consciousness of his own worth, the guarantee of his existence,
+the certainty of the fulfilment of his wishes; on the father rests
+the burden of care; the child, on the contrary, lives careless and
+happy in reliance on the father, his visible guardian spirit, who
+desires nothing but the child's welfare and happiness. The father
+makes the child an end, and himself the means of its existence. The
+child, in asking something of its father, does not apply to him as
+a being distinct from itself, a master, a person in general, but it
+applies to him in so far as he is dependent on, and determined by
+his paternal feeling, his love for his child. [97] The entreaty is
+only an expression of the force which the child exercises over the
+father; if, indeed, the word force is appropriate here, since the
+force of the child is nothing more than the force of the father's own
+heart. Speech has the same form both for entreaty and command, namely,
+the imperative. And the imperative of love has infinitely more power
+than that of despotism. Love does not command; love needs but gently
+to intimate its wishes to be certain of their fulfilment; the despot
+must throw compulsion even into the tones of his voice in order to
+make other beings, in themselves uncaring for him, the executors of
+his wishes. The imperative of love works with electro-magnetic power;
+that of despotism with the mechanical power of a wooden telegraph. The
+most intimate epithet of God in prayer is the word "Father;" the most
+intimate, because in it man is in relation to the absolute nature
+as to his own; the word "Father" is the expression of the closest,
+the most intense identity,--the expression in which lies the pledge
+that my wishes will be fulfilled, the guarantee of my salvation. The
+omnipotence to which man turns in prayer is nothing but the Omnipotence
+of Goodness, which, for the sake of the salvation of man, makes the
+impossible possible;--is, in truth, nothing else than the omnipotence
+of the heart, of feeling, which breaks through all the limits of
+the understanding, which soars above all the boundaries of Nature,
+which wills that there be nothing else than feeling, nothing that
+contradicts the heart. Faith in omnipotence is faith in the unreality
+of the external world, of objectivity,--faith in the absolute reality
+of man's emotional nature: the essence of omnipotence is simply the
+essence of feeling. Omnipotence is the power before which no law,
+no external condition, avails or subsists; but this power is the
+emotional nature, which feels every determination, every law, to be
+a limit, a restraint, and for that reason dismisses it. Omnipotence
+does nothing more than accomplish the will of the feelings. In prayer
+man turns to the Omnipotence of Goodness;--which simply means, that in
+prayer man adores his own heart, regards his own feelings as absolute.
+> **Quote:** "God is an unutterable sigh, lying in the depths of the heart."
+This reveals religion's essence in its simplest act—prayer, which implies as much as the Incarnation. I mean not the prayer before and after meals—the ritual of animal egoism—but the prayer of sorrow, heartbroken love, the prayer that begins in despair and ends in rapture.
+In prayer, one addresses God as "Thou," declaring God his *alter ego*. He confesses secret wishes with confidence they will be fulfilled—how else reach a being without ear for his complaints?
+> **Quote:** "What is prayer but the wish of the heart expressed with confidence in its fulfillment?"
+What else fulfills these wishes but human affection—the soul listening to and affirming itself? One who cannot set aside natural causation does not truly pray, but only works, limiting being by world's laws. In prayer, one excludes world and mediation, making heart's concerns the focus of an absolute being. God is affirmation of human feeling. Prayer is feeling's unconditional confidence in the identity of subjective and objective—the certainty that the heart's power exceeds nature's, and that its need is absolute necessity—the fate of the world. Prayer is seen as altering nature, moving God to contradict natural laws.
+> **Quote:** "Prayer is the self-division of man into two beings—a dialogue of man with himself, with his heart."
+Prayer must be expressed audibly; it bursts forth involuntarily, essentially speech. In prayer one makes heart objective—this is its moral power. Prayer *is* concentration: dismissal of distractions, retreat into oneself. Its subjective qualities are its objective nature.
+###  CHAPTER XIII. - THE MYSTERY OF FAITH--THE MYSTERY OF MIRACLE.
+To see prayer only as dependence is superficial. While it expresses dependence, it is dependence on one's own heart. One who feels only dependent cannot pray; prayer roots in unconditional trust that heart's concerns are the Absolute's concerns.
+A child does not feel restrictively dependent on a father, but finds in him his own strength, guarantee of existence, certainty wishes will be met. The father bears care; the child lives happily, relying on the father as guardian who makes the child the end and himself the means. When a child asks of his father, he approaches not a distant master but one moved by paternal love. The entreaty expresses the child's influence—in truth, the power of the father's own heart. Language uses the imperative for both request and command. Love's imperative exceeds a tyrant's command. Love need only signal its wishes; a despot must use force. Love's imperative works with electromagnetic power; that of despotism with the mechanical power of a wooden telegraph.
+Faith in the power of prayer--and only where a power, an objective
+power, is ascribed to it, is prayer still a religious truth--is
+identical with faith in miraculous power; and faith in miracles is
+identical with the essence of faith in general. Faith alone prays;
+the prayer of faith is alone effectual. But faith is nothing else
+than confidence in the reality of the subjective in opposition to
+the limitations or laws of Nature and reason,--that is, of natural
+reason. The specific object of faith, therefore, is miracle;
+faith is the belief in miracle; faith and miracle are absolutely
+inseparable. That which is objectively miracle or miraculous power
+is subjectively faith; miracle is the outward aspect of faith, faith
+the inward soul of miracle; faith is the miracle of mind, the miracle
+of feeling, which merely becomes objective in external miracles. To
+faith nothing is impossible, and miracle only gives actuality to
+this omnipotence of faith: miracles are but a visible example of
+what faith can effect. Unlimitedness, supernaturalness, exaltation of
+feeling,--transcendence is therefore the essence of faith. Faith has
+reference only to things which, in contradiction with the limits or
+laws of Nature and reason, give objective reality to human feelings
+and human desires. Faith unfetters the wishes of subjectivity from the
+bonds of natural reason; it confers what Nature and reason deny; hence
+it makes man happy, for it satisfies his most personal wishes. And
+true faith is discomposed by no doubt. Doubt arises only where I go
+out of myself, overstep the bounds of my personality, concede reality
+and a right of suffrage to that which is distinct from myself;--where
+I know myself to be a subjective, i.e., a limited being, and seek to
+widen my limits by admitting things external to myself. But in faith
+the very principle of doubt is annulled; for to faith the subjective
+is in and by itself the objective--nay, the absolute. Faith is nothing
+else than belief in the absolute reality of subjectivity.
+"Father" is the most intimate name for God in prayer, relating to absolute nature as one's own. It expresses closest identity, pledging fulfilled wishes and guaranteeing salvation. The omnipotence in prayer is "Omnipotence of Goodness," making the impossible possible. In truth, it is the omnipotence of feeling, breaking understanding's limits and soaring above nature. It wills that nothing exist but feeling, nothing contradict the heart. Faith in omnipotence is faith in the unreality of the external world and absolute reality of our emotional nature. Omnipotence is power before which no external law can stand; but this power is emotional nature itself, dismissing every law as restraint. Omnipotence fulfills our feelings' will. In prayer, turning to Omnipotence of Goodness means adoring our own hearts and regarding our feelings as absolute.
+"Faith is that courage in the heart which trusts for all good to
+God. Such a faith, in which the heart places its reliance on God alone,
+is enjoined by God in the first commandment, where he says, I am the
+Lord thy God.... That is, I alone will be thy God; thou shalt seek
+no other God; I will help thee out of all trouble. Thou shalt not
+think that I am an enemy to thee, and will not help thee. When thou
+thinkest so, thou makest me in thine heart into another God than I
+am. Wherefore hold it for certain that I am willing to be merciful
+to thee."--"As thou behavest thyself, so does God behave. If thou
+thinkest that he is angry with thee, he is angry; if thou thinkest
+that he is unmerciful and will cast thee into hell, he is so. As thou
+believest of God, so is he to thee."--"If thou believest it, thou hast
+it; but if thou believest not, thou hast none of it."--"Therefore,
+as we believe so does it happen to us. If we regard him as our God,
+he will not be our devil. But if we regard him not as our God, then
+truly he is not our God, but must be a consuming fire."--"By unbelief
+we make God a devil." [98] Thus, if I believe in a God, I have a God,
+i.e., faith in God is the God of man. If God is such, whatever it
+may be, as I believe him, what else is the nature of God than the
+nature of faith? Is it possible for thee to believe in a God who
+regards thee favourably, if thou dost not regard thyself favourably,
+if thou despairest of man, if he is nothing to thee? What else then
+is the being of God but the being of man, the absolute self-love
+of man? If thou believest that God is for thee, thou believest
+that nothing is or can be against thee, that nothing contradicts
+thee. But if thou believest that nothing is or can be against thee,
+thou believest--what?--nothing less than that thou art God. [99]
+That God is another being is only illusion, only imagination. In
+declaring that God is for thee, thou declarest that he is thy own
+being. What then is faith but the infinite self-certainty of man, the
+undoubting certainty that his own subjective being is the objective,
+absolute being, the being of beings?
+###  CHAPTER XIII. - THE MYSTERY OF FAITH--THE MYSTERY OF MIRACLE.
+Faith does not limit itself by the idea of a world, a universe,
+a necessity. For faith there is nothing but God, i.e., limitless
+subjectivity. Where faith rises the world sinks, nay, has already
+sunk into nothing. Faith in the real annihilation of the world--in an
+immediately approaching, a mentally present annihilation of this world,
+a world antagonistic to the wishes of the Christian, is therefore
+a phenomenon belonging to the inmost essence of Christianity;
+a faith which is not properly separable from the other elements
+of Christian belief, and with the renunciation of which, true,
+positive Christianity is renounced and denied. [100] The essence
+of faith, as may be confirmed by an examination of its objects down
+to the minutest speciality, is the idea that that which man wishes
+actually is: he wishes to be immortal, therefore he is immortal;
+he wishes for the existence of a being who can do everything which
+is impossible to Nature and reason, therefore such a being exists;
+he wishes for a world which corresponds to the desires of the heart,
+a world of unlimited subjectivity, i.e., of unperturbed feeling,
+of uninterrupted bliss, while nevertheless there exists a world
+the opposite of that subjective one, and hence this world must pass
+away,--as necessarily pass away as God, or absolute subjectivity,
+must remain. Faith, love, hope, are the Christian Trinity. Hope has
+relation to the fulfilment of the promises, the wishes which are not
+yet fulfilled, but which are to be fulfilled; love has relation to
+the Being who gives and fulfils these promises; faith to the promises,
+the wishes, which are already fulfilled, which are historical facts.
+Faith in prayer's objective power is identical to faith in miracles; the two are inseparable. Faith is confidence in subjective reality over nature and reason—its specific object is miracle. What appears objectively as miracle is subjectively experienced as faith: the miracle is the outward face of faith, while faith is the inward soul of miracle—the miracle of the mind and of feeling. To faith, nothing is impossible; miracles actualize this omnipotence. Faith concerns only what contradicts natural laws to give objective reality to human desires—it releases wishes from logic's constraints, granting what nature and reason deny. This is why it makes people happy.
+Miracle is an essential object of Christianity, an essential article of
+faith. But what is miracle? A supranaturalistic wish realised--nothing
+more. The Apostle Paul illustrates the nature of Christian faith by
+the example of Abraham. Abraham could not, in a natural way, ever hope
+for posterity; Jehovah nevertheless promised it to him out of special
+favour, and Abraham believed in spite of Nature. Hence this faith was
+reckoned to him as righteousness, as merit; for it implies great force
+of subjectivity to accept as certain something in contradiction with
+experience, at least with rational, normal experience. But what was
+the object of this divine promise? Posterity, the object of a human
+wish. And in what did Abraham believe when he believed in Jehovah? In
+a Being who can do everything, and can fulfil all wishes. "Is anything
+too hard for the Lord?" [101]
+> **Quote:** "Faith is that courage in the heart which trusts for all good to God. Such a faith, in which the heart places its reliance on God alone, is enjoined by God in the first commandment, where he says, I am the Lord thy God.... That is, I alone will be thy God; thou shalt seek no other God; I will help thee out of all trouble. Thou shalt not think that I am an enemy to thee, and will not help thee. When thou thinkest so, thou makest me in thine heart into another God than I am. Wherefore hold it for certain that I am willing to be merciful to thee."
+But why do we go so far back as to Abraham? We have the most striking
+examples much nearer to us. Miracle feeds the hungry, cures men born
+blind, deaf, and lame, rescues from fatal diseases, and even raises
+the dead at the prayer of relatives. Thus it satisfies human wishes,
+and wishes which, though not always intrinsically like the wish for the
+restoration of the dead, yet in so far as they appeal to miraculous
+power, to miraculous aid, are transcendental, supranaturalistic. But
+miracle is distinguished from that mode of satisfying human wishes
+and needs which is in accordance with Nature and reason, in this
+respect, that it satisfies the wishes of men in a way corresponding
+to the nature of wishes--in the most desirable way. Wishes own
+no restraint, no law, no time; they would be fulfilled without
+delay on the instant. And behold! miracle is as rapid as a wish is
+impatient. Miraculous power realises human wishes in a moment, at
+one stroke, without any hindrance. That the sick should become well
+is no miracle; but that they should become so immediately, at a mere
+word of command,--that is the mystery of miracle. Thus it is not in
+its product or object that miraculous agency is distinguished from
+the agency of Nature and reason, but only in its mode and process;
+for if miraculous power were to effect something absolutely new,
+never before beheld, never conceived, or not even conceivable, it
+would be practically proved to be an essentially different, and at
+the same time objective, agency. But the agency which in essence,
+in substance, is natural and accordant with the forms of the senses,
+and which is supernatural, supersensual, only in the mode or process,
+is the agency of the imagination. The power of miracle is therefore
+nothing else than the power of the imagination.
+> **Quote:** "As thou behavest thyself, so does God behave. If thou thinkest that he is angry with thee, he is angry; if thou thinkest that he is unmerciful and will cast thee into hell, he is so. As thou believest of God, so is he to thee."
+Miraculous agency is agency directed to an end. The yearning after the
+departed Lazarus, the desire of his relatives to possess him again,
+was the motive of the miraculous resuscitation; the satisfaction of
+this wish, the end. It is true that the miracle happened "for the
+glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby;" but
+the message sent to the Master by the sisters of Lazarus, "Behold,
+he whom thou lovest is sick," and the tears which Jesus shed,
+vindicate for the miracle a human origin and end. The meaning is:
+to that power which can awaken the dead no human wish is impossible
+to accomplish. [102] And the glory of the Son consists in this: that
+he is acknowledged and reverenced as the being who is able to do what
+man is unable but wishes to do. Activity towards an end is well known
+to describe a circle: in the end it returns upon its beginning. But
+miraculous agency is distinguished from the ordinary realisation
+of an object in that it realises the end without means, that it
+effects an immediate identity of the wish and its fulfilment; that
+consequently it describes a circle, not in a curved, but in a straight
+line, that is, the shortest line. A circle in a straight line is the
+mathematical symbol of miracle. The attempt to construct a circle
+with a straight line would not be more ridiculous than the attempt
+to deduce miracle philosophically. To reason, miracle is absurd,
+inconceivable; as inconceivable as wooden iron or a circle without
+a periphery. Before it is discussed whether a miracle can happen,
+let it be shown that miracle, i.e., the inconceivable, is conceivable.
+> **Quote:** "If thou believest it, thou hast it; but if thou believest not, thou hast none of it."
+What suggests to man the notion that miracle is conceivable is
+that miracle is represented as an event perceptible by the senses,
+and hence man cheats his reason by material images which screen the
+contradiction. The miracle of the turning of water into wine, for
+example, implies in fact nothing else than that water is wine,--nothing
+else than that two absolutely contradictory predicates or subjects
+are identical; for in the hand of the miracle-worker there is no
+distinction between the two substances; the transformation is only
+the visible appearance of this identity of two contradictories. But
+the transformation conceals the contradiction, because the natural
+conception of change is interposed. Here, however, is no gradual, no
+natural, or, so to speak, organic change; but an absolute, immaterial
+one; a pure creatio ex nihilo. In the mysterious and momentous act of
+miraculous power, in the act which constitutes the miracle, water is
+suddenly and imperceptibly wine: which is equivalent to saying that
+iron is wood, or wooden iron.
+> **Quote:** "Therefore, as we believe so does it happen to us. If we regard him as our God, he will not be our devil. But if we regard him not as our God, then truly he is not our God, but must be a consuming fire."
+The miraculous act--and miracle is only a transient act--is therefore
+not an object of thought, for it nullifies the very principle of
+thought; but it is just as little an object of sense, an object of
+real or even possible experience. Water is indeed an object of sense,
+and wine also; I first see water and then wine; but the miracle itself,
+that which makes this water suddenly wine,--this, not being a natural
+process, but a pure perfect without any antecedent imperfect, without
+any modus, without way or means, is no object of real, or even of
+possible experience. Miracle is a thing of the imagination; and on that
+very account is it so agreeable: for the imagination is the faculty
+which alone corresponds to personal feeling, because it sets aside
+all limits, all laws which are painful to the feelings, and thus makes
+objective to man the immediate, absolutely unlimited satisfaction of
+his subjective wishes. [103] Accordance with subjective inclination
+is the essential characteristic of miracle. It is true that miracle
+produces also an awful, agitating impression, so far as it expresses a
+power which nothing can resist,--the power of the imagination. But this
+impression lies only in the transient miraculous act; the abiding,
+essential impression is the agreeable one. At the moment in which
+the beloved Lazarus is raised up, the surrounding relatives and
+friends are awestruck at the extraordinary, almighty power which
+transforms the dead into the living; but soon the relatives fall
+into the arms of the risen one, and lead him with tears of joy to
+his home, there to celebrate a festival of rejoicing. Miracle springs
+out of feeling, and has its end in feeling. Even in the traditional
+representation it does not deny its origin; the representation which
+gratifies the feelings is alone the adequate one. Who can fail to
+recognise in the narrative of the resurrection of Lazarus the tender,
+pleasing, legendary tone? [104] Miracle is agreeable, because, as
+has been said, it satisfies the wishes of man without labour, without
+effort. Labour is unimpassioned, unbelieving, rationalistic; for man
+here makes his existence dependent on activity directed to an end,
+which activity again is itself determined solely by the idea of the
+objective world. But feeling does not at all trouble itself about
+the objective world; it does not go out of or beyond itself; it is
+happy in itself. The element of culture, the Northern principle of
+self-renunciation, is wanting to the emotional nature. The Apostles
+and Evangelists were no scientifically cultivated men. Culture, in
+general, is nothing else than the exaltation of the individual above
+his subjectivity to objective universal ideas, to the contemplation
+of the world. The Apostles were men of the people; the people live
+only in themselves, in their feelings; therefore Christianity took
+possession of the people. Vox populi vox Dei. Did Christianity conquer
+a single philosopher, historian, or poet of the classical period? The
+philosophers who went over to Christianity were feeble, contemptible
+philosophers. All who had yet the classic spirit in them were hostile,
+or at least indifferent to Christianity. The decline of culture was
+identical with the victory of Christianity. The classic spirit, the
+spirit of culture, limits itself by laws,--not indeed by arbitrary,
+finite laws, but by inherently true and valid ones; it is determined
+by the necessity, the truth of the nature of things; in a word, it is
+the objective spirit. In place of this, there entered with Christianity
+the principle of unlimited, extravagant, fanatical, supranaturalistic
+subjectivity; a principle intrinsically opposed to that of science,
+of culture. [105] With Christianity man lost the capability of
+conceiving himself as a part of Nature, of the universe. As long as
+true, unfeigned, unfalsified, uncompromising Christianity existed,
+as long as Christianity was a living, practical truth, so long did
+real miracles happen; and they necessarily happened, for faith in
+dead, historical, past miracles is itself a dead faith, the first
+step towards unbelief, or rather the first and therefore the timid,
+uncandid, servile mode in which unbelief in miracle finds vent. But
+where miracles happen, all definite forms melt in the golden haze
+of imagination and feeling; there the world, reality, is no truth;
+there the miracle-working, emotional, i.e., subjective being, is held
+to be alone the objective, real being.
+> **Quote:** "By unbelief we make God a devil."
+To the merely emotional man the imagination is immediately, without his
+willing or knowing it, the highest, the dominant activity; and being
+the highest, it is the activity of God, the creative activity. To
+him feeling is an immediate truth and reality; he cannot abstract
+himself from his feelings, he cannot get beyond them: and equally
+real is his imagination. The imagination is not to him what it is
+to us men of active understanding, who distinguish it as subjective
+from objective cognition; it is immediately identical with himself,
+with his feelings; and since it is identical with his being, it is
+his essential, objective, necessary view of things. For us, indeed,
+imagination is an arbitrary activity; but where man has not imbibed
+the principle of culture, of theory, where he lives and moves only
+in his feelings, the imagination is an immediate, involuntary activity.
+If I believe in God, I have God—faith in God is the God of man. If God is as I believe, then God's nature is faith's nature. Can you believe God favors you if you don't favor yourself? What is God but man's nature—absolute self-love? Believing God is on your side means believing nothing can oppose you; believing nothing can oppose you means believing you yourself are God. The separate God is illusion. Faith is man's infinite self-certainty—the conviction that his subjective existence is objective, absolute reality.
+The explanation of miracles by feeling and imagination is regarded
+by many in the present day as superficial. But let any one transport
+himself to the time when living, present miracles were believed in;
+when the reality of things without us was as yet no sacred article of
+faith; when men were so void of any theoretic interest in the world,
+that they from day to day looked forward to its destruction; when
+they lived only in the rapturous prospect and hope of heaven, that
+is, in the imagination of it (for whatever heaven may be, for them,
+so long as they were on earth, it existed only in the imagination);
+when this imagination was not a fiction but a truth, nay, the eternal,
+alone abiding truth, not an inert, idle source of consolation,
+but a practical moral principle determining actions, a principle to
+which men joyfully sacrificed real life, the real world with all its
+glories;--let him transport himself to those times and he must himself
+be very superficial to pronounce the psychological genesis of miracles
+superficial. It is no valid objection that miracles have happened,
+or are supposed to have happened, in the presence of whole assemblies:
+no man was independent, all were filled with exalted supranaturalistic
+ideas and feelings; all were animated by the same faith, the same
+hope, the same hallucinations. And who does not know that there are
+common or similar dreams, common or similar visions, especially among
+impassioned individuals who are closely united and restricted to their
+own circle? But be that as it may. If the explanation of miracles by
+feeling and imagination is superficial, the charge of superficiality
+falls not on the explainer, but on that which he explains, namely,
+on miracle; for, seen in clear daylight, miracle presents absolutely
+nothing else than the sorcery of the imagination, which satisfies
+without contradiction all the wishes of the heart. [106]
+Faith recognizes no world, universe, or necessity—only limitless subjectivity, only God. When faith rises, the world sinks into nothingness. Belief in the world's destruction, in annihilation of what contradicts Christian wishes, is Christianity's core. This cannot be separated from Christian doctrine; abandoning it means renouncing true Christianity. Faith's essence is that whatever one wishes for exists. Want immortality? You are immortal. Want a being beyond nature and reason? Such a being exists. Want a world matching your heart's desires? Then the actual world must end. Faith, love, and hope form the Christian Trinity: hope for future fulfillment, love for the promiser, faith for wishes already fulfilled as historical fact. Miracles are essential to Christianity.
+What is miracle? A supernatural wish fulfilled. Paul uses Abraham: he couldn't naturally hope for children, yet Jehovah promised them, and Abraham believed against nature. This faith was reckoned as "righteousness" because it requires a powerful force of subjectivity to accept as certain that which contradicts rational, normal experience. The object? Children—a human desire. What did Abraham believe in? A Being who can fulfill every wish. "Is anything too hard for the Lord?"
+Why look to Abraham? Miracles feed the hungry, cure the blind and lame, heal diseases, raise the dead at loved ones' request. They satisfy human wishes instantly, without limits or delays. It isn't miraculous that a sick person recovers, but that they recover immediately at a command. A miracle's distinction is its process, not its result. If it created something truly inconceivable, it would be a different objective force; but an action natural in substance yet supernatural in process is imagination's work. Miracle-power is imagination-power.
+Miraculous action aims at a goal. The longing for Lazarus motivated his resurrection; satisfying that wish was its purpose. Though said to be "for God's glory," the sisters' message and Jesus's tears prove its human origin. The meaning: to power that can raise the dead, no wish is impossible. Miracles bypass means, creating immediate identity between wish and fulfillment. Thus a miracle describes a circle as a straight line—the shortest path. To reason, this is as absurd as "wooden iron."
+> **Quote:** A circle in a straight line is the mathematical symbol of miracle.  People think miracles conceivable because sensory descriptions mask logical contradictions. Turning water into wine implies water *is* wine. The "transformation" hides the contradiction; it's not organic change but creation from nothing, as logical as iron being wood.
+A miracle—only a temporary act—is not an object of thought, for it negates thinking's principles. Nor is it an object of sense or experience. Water and wine are sensory, but the miracle itself cannot be experienced. Miracle is imagination's product. This is why it's appealing: imagination alone matches personal feeling, ignoring laws that feeling finds painful. It gives immediate, unlimited satisfaction of subjective wishes. Miracles seem frightening but this passes; the lasting impression is pleasure. When Lazarus rises, awe yields to joyful embrace. Miracles come from feeling and end in feeling. They satisfy wishes without labor—labor being rational and objective, requiring us to deal with the world as it is. Feeling cares nothing for the objective world. The Apostles were not scientifically trained; culture means rising above subjectivity to grasp objective truth. They were common folk living in feeling. Hence Christianity appealed to the masses: 'The voice of the people is the voice of God.' Did Christianity conquer a single philosopher, historian, or poet of the classical period? No; those who converted were weak thinkers, for the classic spirit is objective and limited by the true nature of things. Christianity replaced it with fanatical supernatural subjectivity opposed to science and culture. Once man adopted Christianity, he could no longer see himself as part of nature. While Christianity lived uncompromisingly, real miracles happened—and had to. Believing only in past miracles is dead faith, the first step to unbelief. In a world of miracles, reality melts into imagination's golden haze, and subjective being is seen as the only truth.
+For the emotional person, imagination is the highest power—often unconsciously. As highest power, it's seen as God's creative activity. Feeling is immediate reality; imagination is equally real, not the arbitrary activity of those who distinguish subjective thoughts from objective facts. For them, imagination is identical to being. Today, many find this explanation superficial. But imagine when miracles were present reality, when the external world wasn't yet sacred fact, when people expected the world's end daily. They lived for heaven's hope, existing only in imagination—which wasn't fiction but truth, the only eternal truth, a principle to die for. The psychological explanation isn't superficial. It doesn't matter if crowds supposedly saw miracles; no one was independent—all shared the same supernatural fever and hallucinations. Shared visions occur among those bound by common passion. If this explanation seems superficial, the fault lies with the miracle itself: clearly viewed, miracle is nothing but the sorcery of the imagination, which satisfies every wish of the heart without contradiction.
 ### CHAPTER XIV. - THE MYSTERY OF THE RESURRECTION AND OF THE MIRACULOUS CONCEPTION.
+The quality of satisfying subjective desires belongs not only to practical miracles but also to dogmatic ones like the Resurrection and Miraculous Conception.
+The quality of being agreeable to subjective inclination belongs not
+only to practical miracles, in which it is conspicuous, as they have
+immediate reference to the interest or wish of the human individual;
+it belongs also to theoretical, or more properly dogmatic miracles,
+and hence to the Resurrection and the Miraculous Conception.
+Humans naturally wish not to die. This instinct for self-preservation later becomes a positive desire for a better afterlife, which demands certainty. Reason cannot provide this—its proofs are general, not personal. Personal certainty requires immediate, practical demonstration: a dead person, verified as dead, rising again. And this must be the archetype of humanity, whose resurrection guarantees our own.
+Man, at least in a state of ordinary well-being, has the wish
+not to die. This wish is originally identical with the instinct of
+self-preservation. Whatever lives seeks to maintain itself, to continue
+alive, and consequently not to die. Subsequently, when reflection and
+feeling are developed under the urgency of life, especially of social
+and political life, this primary negative wish becomes the positive
+wish for a life, and that a better life, after death. But this wish
+involves the further wish for the certainty of its fulfilment. Reason
+can afford no such certainty. It has therefore been said that all
+proofs of immortality are insufficient, and even that unassisted reason
+is not capable of apprehending it, still less of proving it. And with
+justice; for reason furnishes only general proofs; it cannot give
+the certainty of any personal immortality, and it is precisely this
+certainty which is desired. Such a certainty requires an immediate
+personal assurance, a practical demonstration. This can only be given
+to me by the fact of a dead person, whose death has been previously
+certified, rising again from the grave; and he must be no indifferent
+person, but, on the contrary, the type and representative of all
+others, so that his resurrection also may be the type, the guarantee
+of theirs. The resurrection of Christ is therefore the satisfied
+desire of man for an immediate certainty of his personal existence
+after death,--personal immortality as a sensible, indubitable fact.
+> **Quote:** "The resurrection of Christ is therefore the satisfied desire of man for an immediate certainty of his personal existence after death,--personal immortality as a sensible, indubitable fact."
+Immortality was with the heathen philosophers a question in which
+the personal interest was only a collateral point. They concerned
+themselves chiefly with the nature of the soul, of mind, of the vital
+principle. The immortality of the vital principle by no means involves
+the idea, not to mention the certainty, of personal immortality. Hence
+the vagueness, discrepancy, and dubiousness with which the ancients
+express themselves on this subject. The Christians, on the contrary,
+in the undoubting certainty that their personal, self-flattering wishes
+will be fulfilled, i.e., in the certainty of the divine nature of their
+emotions, the truth and unassailableness of their subjective feelings,
+converted that which to the ancients was a theoretic problem into an
+immediate fact,--converted a theoretic, and in itself open question,
+into a matter of conscience, the denial of which was equivalent to
+the high treason of atheism. He who denies the resurrection denies the
+resurrection of Christ, but he who denies the resurrection of Christ
+denies Christ himself, and he who denies Christ denies God. Thus did
+"spiritual" Christianity unspiritualise what was spiritual! To the
+Christians the immortality of the reason, of the soul, was far too
+abstract and negative; they had at heart only a personal immortality,
+such as would gratify their feelings, and the guarantee of this lies
+in a bodily resurrection alone. The resurrection of the body is the
+highest triumph of Christianity over the sublime but certainly abstract
+spirituality and objectivity of the ancients. For this reason the
+idea of the resurrection could never be assimilated by the pagan mind.
+For pagan philosophers, immortality was primarily a question about the nature of the soul, not a personal concern. The immortality of a vital principle does not imply personal immortality, which explains ancient thinkers' vagueness and doubt. Christians, by contrast, possessed unwavering certainty that their personal wishes would be fulfilled. They transformed a theoretical problem into an immediate fact and a matter of conscience, where denial was equivalent to the high treason of atheism.
+As the Resurrection, which terminates the sacred history (to the
+Christian not a mere history, but the truth itself), is a realised
+wish, so also is that which commences it, namely, the Miraculous
+Conception, though this has relation not so much to an immediately
+personal interest as to a particular subjective feeling.
+> **Quote:** "He who denies the resurrection denies the resurrection of Christ, but he who denies the resurrection of Christ denies Christ himself, and he who denies Christ denies God."
+The more man alienates himself from Nature, the more subjective,
+i.e., supranatural or antinatural, is his view of things, the
+greater the horror he has of Nature, or at least of those natural
+objects and processes which displease his imagination, which affect
+him disagreeably. [107] The free, objective man doubtless finds
+things repugnant and distasteful in Nature, but he regards them as
+natural, inevitable results, and under this conviction he subdues
+his feeling as a merely subjective and untrue one. On the contrary,
+the subjective man, who lives only in the feelings and imagination,
+regards these things with a quite peculiar aversion. He has the eye of
+that unhappy foundling, who even in looking at the loveliest flower
+could pay attention only to the little "black beetle" which crawled
+over it, and who by this perversity of perception had his enjoyment
+in the sight of flowers always embittered. Moreover, the subjective
+man makes his feelings the measure, the standard of what ought to
+be. That which does not please him, which offends his transcendental,
+supranatural, or antinatural feelings, ought not to be. Even if that
+which pleases him cannot exist without being associated with that which
+displeases him, the subjective man is not guided by the wearisome
+laws of logic and physics, but by the self-will of the imagination;
+hence he drops what is disagreeable in a fact, and holds fast alone
+what is agreeable. Thus the idea of the pure, holy Virgin pleases
+him; still he is also pleased with the idea of the Mother, but only
+of the Mother who already carries the infant on her arms.
+In this way, "spiritual" Christianity stripped the spiritual of its true nature. The immortality of reason was too abstract; Christians demanded personal immortality that satisfied their feelings. The only guarantee was physical resurrection.
+Virginity in itself is to him the highest moral idea, the cornu copiæ
+of his supranaturalistic feelings and ideas, his personified sense
+of honour and of shame before common nature. [108] Nevertheless,
+there stirs in his bosom a natural feeling also, the compassionate
+feeling which makes the Mother beloved. What then is to be done in
+this difficulty of the heart, in this conflict between a natural and
+a supranatural feeling? The supranaturalist must unite the two, must
+comprise in one and the same subject two predicates which exclude each
+other. [109] Oh, what a plenitude of agreeable, sweet, supersensual,
+sensual emotions lies in this combination!
+> **Quote:** "The resurrection of the body is the highest triumph of Christianity over the sublime but certainly abstract spirituality and objectivity of the ancients."
+Here we have the key to the contradiction in Catholicism, that at
+the same time marriage is holy and celibacy is holy. This simply
+realises, as a practical contradiction, the dogmatic contradiction of
+the Virgin Mother. But this wondrous union of virginity and maternity,
+contradicting Nature and reason, but in the highest degree accordant
+with the feelings and imagination, is no product of Catholicism; it
+lies already in the twofold part which marriage plays in the Bible,
+especially in the view of the Apostle Paul. The supernatural conception
+of Christ is a fundamental doctrine of Christianity, a doctrine which
+expresses its inmost dogmatic essence, and which rests on the same
+foundation as all other miracles and articles of faith. As death,
+which the philosopher, the man of science, the free objective thinker
+in general, accepts as a natural necessity, and as indeed all the
+limits of nature, which are impediments to feeling, but to reason
+are rational laws, were repugnant to the Christians, and were set
+aside by them through the supposed agency of miraculous power; so,
+necessarily, they had an equal repugnance to the natural process of
+generation, and superseded it by miracle. The Miraculous Conception is
+not less welcome than the Resurrection to all believers; for it was
+the first step towards the purification of mankind, polluted by sin
+and Nature. Only because the God-man was not infected with original
+sin, could he, the pure one, purify mankind in the eyes of God, to
+whom the natural process of generation was an object of aversion,
+because he himself is nothing else but supranatural feeling.
+Just as the Resurrection concludes sacred history as a realized wish, so the Miraculous Conception begins it—though this relates less to immediate personal interest than to specific subjective feeling.
+Even the arid Protestant orthodoxy, so arbitrary in its criticism,
+regarded the conception of the God-producing Virgin as a great,
+adorable, amazing, holy mystery of faith, transcending reason. [110]
+But with the Protestants, who confined the speciality of the Christian
+to the domain of faith, and with whom, in life, it was allowable
+to be a man, even this mystery had only a dogmatic, and no longer
+a practical significance; they did not allow it to interfere with
+their desire of marriage. With the Catholics, and with all the old,
+uncompromising, uncritical Christians, that which was a mystery of
+faith was a mystery of life, of morality. [111] Catholic morality is
+Christian, mystical; Protestant morality was, in its very beginning,
+rationalistic. Protestant morality is and was a carnal mingling of
+the Christian with the man, the natural, political, civil, social
+man, or whatever else he may be called in distinction from the
+Christian; Catholic morality cherished in its heart the mystery of
+the unspotted virginity. Catholic morality was the Mater dolorosa;
+Protestant morality a comely, fruitful matron. Protestantism is
+from beginning to end the contradiction between faith and love; for
+which very reason it has been the source, or at least the condition,
+of freedom. Just because the mystery of the Virgo Deipara had with
+the Protestants a place only in theory, or rather in dogma, and no
+longer in practice, they declared that it was impossible to express
+oneself with sufficient care and reserve concerning it, and that it
+ought not to be made an object of speculation. That which is denied in
+practice has no true basis and durability in man, is a mere spectre
+of the mind; and hence it is withdrawn from the investigation of the
+understanding. Ghosts do not brook daylight.
+The more one alienates oneself from Nature, the more subjective—that is, supernatural or anti-natural—one's view becomes. The subjective person, living only in feeling and imagination, regards natural processes with unique aversion, like the unhappy foundling who, looking at the loveliest flower, noticed only the "black beetle" crawling over it. Moreover, the subjective person makes their feelings the measure of what ought to be. Whatever offends their supernatural feelings should not exist. Guided by imagination rather than logic, they discard the disagreeable and cling only to the agreeable. The idea of the pure, holy Virgin pleases them; so does the Mother—but only the Mother already carrying her infant.
+Even the later doctrine (which, however, had been already enunciated
+in a letter to St. Bernard, who rejects it), that Mary herself was
+conceived without taint of original sin, is by no means a "strange
+school-bred doctrine," as it is called by a modern historian. That
+which gives birth to a miracle, which brings forth God, must itself
+be of miraculous divine origin or nature. How could Mary have had
+the honour of being overshadowed by the Holy Ghost if she had not
+been from the first pure? Could the Holy Ghost take up his abode in
+a body polluted by original sin? If the principle of Christianity,
+the miraculous birth of the Saviour, does not appear strange to you,
+why think strange the naïve, well-meaning inferences of Catholicism?
+Virginity itself is their highest moral ideal, the fountainhead of supernatural feeling—the personified sense of honor and shame before common nature. Yet natural compassion also stirs: the Mother is beloved. How to resolve this conflict? The supernaturalist must unite two excluding qualities in one person. Oh, what a wealth of agreeable, sweet, sensual yet supersensual emotions lies in this combination!
+Here is the key to Catholicism's contradiction, where both marriage and celibacy are holy—simply the practical application of the Virgin Mother dogma. This wondrous union of virginity and motherhood, contradicting Nature and reason but perfect for feeling and imagination, appears already in the Bible, especially in Paul's view of marriage. The supernatural conception of Christ expresses Christianity's innermost essence, resting on the same foundation as all other miracles. Just as death—accepted by philosophers as natural necessity—was repugnant to Christians, so were Nature's limits. While reason sees these as rational laws, feeling sees them as impediments to be removed by miracle. They felt equal repugnance toward natural reproduction and replaced it with a miracle. The Miraculous Conception was the first step toward purifying humanity polluted by sin and Nature. Only because the God-man was untainted by original sin could he purify mankind in God's eyes—to whom natural reproduction was an object of aversion, because > **Quote:** "he himself is nothing else but supranatural feeling."
+Even dry Protestant orthodoxy regarded the Virgin's conception as a holy mystery transcending reason. But for Protestants, who restricted Christian elements to faith and lived as ordinary humans, this mystery had only dogmatic, not practical significance. It did not interfere with their desire to marry. For traditional Christians, what was mystery of faith was also mystery of life and morality. Catholic morality is Christian and mystical; Protestant morality was rationalistic from the start—a carnal mingling of the Christian with the natural, political, civil, and social man. Catholic morality cherished the mystery of unspotted virginity; it was the *Mater Dolorosa*. Protestant morality was a respectable, fertile matron. Protestantism is the contradiction between faith and love, which has been the source or condition of freedom. Precisely because the *Virgo Deipara* held a place only in dogma, not practice, Protestants declared it should be spoken of with caution and not subjected to speculation. What is denied in practice has no true basis in a person; it is a mere ghost of the mind, withdrawn from understanding. Ghosts do not brook daylight.
+Even the later doctrine—mentioned in a letter to St. Bernard, who rejected it—that Mary herself was conceived without original sin is no "strange school-bred doctrine." That which gives birth to a miracle must itself be miraculously divine. How could Mary have been overshadowed by the Holy Ghost if she had not been pure from the start? Could the Holy Ghost reside in a body polluted by original sin? If Christianity's central principle—the Savior's miraculous birth—does not seem strange, why find Catholicism's simple conclusions strange?
+### CHAPTER XV. - THE MYSTERY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHRIST, OR THE PERSONAL GOD.
+> **Quote:** "The fundamental dogmas of Christianity are realised wishes of the heart;—the essence of Christianity is the essence of human feeling."
+It is more pleasant to be passive than to act, redeemed by another than to free oneself; to make salvation depend on a person rather than one's own initiative; to be beloved by God than to possess mere self-love; to see one's image in another's loving eyes than in the hollow mirror of self or the cold depths of the ocean of Nature. In short, it is more pleasant to be moved by one's own feeling as if it were an external—yet identical—being than to discipline oneself through reason. Feeling is the ego in its passive state—the ego in the accusative, acted upon by itself as if by another. While Fichte's "I" lacks feeling because it is purely active, feeling transforms the active into passive and vice versa: to feeling, the thinker is the thought, and the thought is the thinker.
+### CHAPTER XV. - THE MYSTERY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHRIST, OR THE PERSONAL GOD.
+> **Quote:** "Feeling is the dream of Nature; and there is nothing more blissful, nothing more profound than dreaming."
+But what is dreaming? It is the reversal of waking consciousness. In dreams, the active is passive and the passive active; I mistake my mind's spontaneous activity for external influence, my emotions for actual events, my thoughts for real existences. The self in a dream is the same as the awake self; dreaming is simply a double refraction of the rays of light. In waking life the self acts on itself directly, while in dreaming it is acted upon by itself as if by another.
+The fundamental dogmas of Christianity are realised wishes of
+the heart;--the essence of Christianity is the essence of human
+feeling. It is pleasanter to be passive than to act, to be redeemed
+and made free by another than to free oneself; pleasanter to make
+one's salvation dependent on a person than on the force of one's
+own spontaneity; pleasanter to set before oneself an object of love
+than an object of effort; pleasanter to know oneself beloved by God
+than merely to have that simple, natural self-love which is innate
+in all beings; pleasanter to see oneself imaged in the love-beaming
+eyes of another personal being, than to look into the concave mirror
+of self or into the cold depths of the ocean of Nature; pleasanter,
+in short, to allow oneself to be acted on by one's own feeling,
+as by another, but yet fundamentally identical being, than to
+regulate oneself by reason. Feeling is the oblique case of the ego,
+the ego in the accusative. The ego of Fichte is destitute of feeling,
+because the accusative is the same as the nominative, because it is
+indeclinable. But feeling or sentiment is the ego acted on by itself,
+and by itself as another being,--the passive ego. Feeling changes the
+active in man into the passive, and the passive into the active. To
+feeling, that which thinks is the thing thought, and the thing thought
+is that which thinks. Feeling is the dream of Nature; and there is
+nothing more blissful, nothing more profound than dreaming. But what
+is dreaming? The reversing of the waking consciousness. In dreaming,
+the active is the passive, the passive the active; in dreaming, I
+take the spontaneous action of my own mind for an action upon me from
+without, my emotions for events, my conceptions and sensations for true
+existences apart from myself. I suffer what I also perform. Dreaming
+is a double refraction of the rays of light; hence its indescribable
+charm. It is the same ego, the same being in dreaming as in waking;
+the only distinction is, that in waking, the ego acts on itself;
+whereas in dreaming it is acted on by itself as by another being. I
+think myself--is a passionless, rationalistic position; I am thought by
+God, and think myself only as thought by God--is a position pregnant
+with feeling, religious. Feeling is a dream with the eyes open;
+religion the dream of waking consciousness: dreaming is the key to
+the mysteries of religion.
+> **Quote:** "I think myself—is a passionless, rationalistic position; I am thought by God, and think myself only as thought by God—is a position pregnant with feeling, religious. Feeling is a dream with the eyes open; religion the dream of waking consciousness: dreaming is the key to the mysteries of religion."
+The highest law of feeling is the immediate unity of will and deed,
+of wishing and reality. This law is fulfilled by the Redeemer. As
+external miracles, in opposition to natural activity, realise
+immediately the physical wants and wishes of man; so the Redeemer,
+the Mediator, the God-man, in opposition to the moral spontaneity of
+the natural or rationalistic man, satisfies immediately the inward
+moral wants and wishes, since he dispenses man on his own side from
+any intermediate activity. What thou wishest is already effected. Thou
+desirest to win, to deserve happiness. Morality is the condition,
+the means of happiness. But thou canst not fulfil this condition;
+that is, in truth, thou needest not. That which thou seekest to do has
+already been done. Thou hast only to be passive, thou needest only
+believe, only enjoy. Thou desirest to make God favourable to thee,
+to appease his anger, to be at peace with thy conscience. But this
+peace exists already; this peace is the Mediator, the God-man. He
+is thy appeased conscience; he is the fulfilment of the law, and
+therewith the fulfilment of thy own wish and effort.
+The highest law of feeling is the immediate unity of will and deed, wish and reality. This law is fulfilled by the Redeemer. Just as external miracles immediately satisfy physical needs, so the God-man immediately satisfies inner moral needs by exempting humans from their own moral effort. What you wish has already been accomplished. You desire to earn happiness through morality, but cannot fulfill the condition—and in truth, need not. What you seek to do has been done. You need only remain passive, believe and enjoy. You want God's favor, peace of mind. But this peace is the Mediator, the God-man. He is your satisfied conscience, the fulfillment of the law and therefore of your wishes.
+Therefore it is no longer the law, but the fulfiller of the law,
+who is the model, the guiding thread, the rule of thy life. He who
+fulfils the law annuls the law. The law has authority, has validity,
+only in relation to him who violates it. But he who perfectly fulfils
+the law says to it: What thou willest I spontaneously will, and
+what thou commandest I enforce by deeds; my life is the true, the
+living law. The fulfiller of the law, therefore, necessarily steps
+into the place of the law; moreover he becomes a new law, one whose
+yoke is light and easy. For in place of the merely imperative law,
+he presents himself as an example, as an object of love, of admiration
+and emulation, and thus becomes the Saviour from sin. The law does not
+give me the power to fulfil the law; no! it is hard and merciless;
+it only commands, without troubling itself whether I can fulfil it,
+or how I am to fulfil it; it leaves me to myself, without counsel
+or aid. But he who presents himself to me as an example lights up my
+path, takes me by the hand, and imparts to me his own strength. The law
+lends no power of resisting sin, but example works miracles. The law is
+dead; but example animates, inspires, carries men involuntarily along
+with it. The law speaks only to the understanding, and sets itself
+directly in opposition to the instincts; example, on the contrary,
+appeals to a powerful instinct immediately connected with the activity
+of the senses, that of involuntary imitation. Example operates on
+the feelings and imagination. In short, example has magical, i.e.,
+sense-affecting powers; for the magical or involuntary force of
+attraction is an essential property, as of matter in general, so in
+particular of that which affects the senses.
+Thus the one who fulfills the law replaces it. The law has authority only over lawbreakers, but the fulfiller says: "What you want, I want naturally; what you command, I enact. My life is the true, living law." Consequently he becomes a new law whose burden is light—presenting himself as an example rather than a command, an object of love and imitation, becoming the Savior from sin. The law gives no power to obey; it is hard and merciless, leaving you without guidance. But example lights the path, takes you by the hand, shares its strength. The law provides no power to resist sin, but example works miracles. The law is dead; an example animates and inspires through the instinct of involuntary imitation. Example operates on feeling and imagination; in short, it has a "magical"—that is, sensory—power.
+The ancients said that if virtue could become visible, its beauty
+would win and inspire all hearts. The Christians were so happy as
+to see even this wish fulfilled. The heathens had an unwritten, the
+Jews a written law; the Christians had a model--a visible, personal,
+living law, a law made flesh. Hence the joyfulness especially of
+the primitive Christians, hence the glory of Christianity that it
+alone contains and bestows the power to resist sin. And this glory
+is not to be denied it. Only, it is to be observed that the power
+of the exemplar of virtue is not so much the power of virtue as the
+power of example in general; just as the power of religious music is
+not the power of religion, but the power of music; [112] and that
+therefore, though the image of virtue has virtuous actions as its
+consequences, these actions are destitute of the dispositions and
+motives of virtue. But this simple and true sense of the redeeming
+and reconciling power of example in distinction from the power of
+law, to which we have reduced the antithesis of the law and Christ,
+by no means expresses the full religious significance of the Christian
+redemption and reconciliation. In this everything reduces itself to the
+personal power of that miraculous intermediate being who is neither
+God alone nor man alone, but a man who is also God, and a God who is
+also man, and who can therefore only be comprehended in connection
+with the significance of miracle. In this, the miraculous Redeemer
+is nothing else than the realised wish of feeling to be free from the
+laws of morality, i.e., from the conditions to which virtue is united
+in the natural course of things; the realised wish to be freed from
+moral evils instantaneously, immediately, by a stroke of magic, that
+is, in an absolutely subjective, agreeable way. "The word of God,"
+says Luther, for example, "accomplishes all things swiftly, brings
+forgiveness of sins, and gives thee eternal life, and costs nothing
+more than that thou shouldst hear the word, and when thou hast heard
+it shouldst believe. If thou believest, thou hast it without pains,
+cost, delay, or difficulty." [113] But that hearing of the word of
+God which is followed by faith is itself a "gift of God." Thus faith
+is nothing else than a psychological miracle, a supernatural operation
+of God in man, as Luther likewise says. But man becomes free from sin
+and from the consciousness of guilt only through faith,--morality is
+dependent on faith, the virtues of the heathens are only splendid sins;
+thus he becomes morally free and good only through miracle.
+The ancients said that if virtue could become visible, its beauty would win every heart. Christians felt this wish fulfilled. While pagans had an unwritten law and Jews a written one, Christians had a model—a visible, personal, living law made flesh. This explains the joy of early Christians and their claim of power to resist sin. Yet we must realize this power comes from example in general, not virtue specifically—like religious music: its power comes from music, not religion. While the image of virtue leads to virtuous actions, these may lack true virtue's inner disposition.
+That the idea of miraculous power is one with the idea of the
+intermediate being, at once divine and human, has historical proof
+in the fact that the miracles of the Old Testament, the delivery of
+the law, providence--all the elements which constitute the essence of
+religion, were in the later Judaism attributed to the Logos. In Philo,
+however, this Logos still hovers in the air between heaven and earth,
+now as abstract, now as concrete; that is, Philo vacillates between
+himself as a philosopher and himself as a religious Israelite--between
+the positive element of religion and the metaphysical idea of deity;
+but in such a way that even the abstract element is with him more
+or less invested with imaginative forms. In Christianity this Logos
+first attained perfect consistence, i.e., religion now concentrated
+itself exclusively on that element, that object, which is the basis
+of its essential difference. The Logos is the personified essence of
+religion. Hence the definition of God as the essence of feeling has
+its complete truth only in the Logos.
+But this simple understanding doesn't capture redemption's religious significance. In religion, everything comes down to the personal power of that miraculous "middle being" who is neither just God nor just man, but a God-man—understandable only through miracle. The miraculous Redeemer is the realized wish to be free from moral laws, freed from failures instantly and magically. Luther said:
+God as God is feeling as yet shut up, hidden; only Christ is the
+unclosed, open feeling or heart. In Christ feeling is first perfectly
+certain of itself, and assured beyond doubt of the truth and divinity
+of its own nature; for Christ denies nothing to feeling; he fulfils
+all its prayers. In God the soul is still silent as to what affects
+it most closely,--it only sighs; but in Christ it speaks out fully;
+here it has no longer any reserves. To him who only sighs, wishes
+are still attended with disquietude; he rather complains that what
+he wishes is not, than openly, positively declares what he wishes;
+he is still in doubt whether his wishes have the force of law. But
+in Christ all anxiety of the soul vanishes; he is the sighing soul
+passed into a song of triumph over its complete satisfaction; he is
+the joyful certainty of feeling that its wishes hidden in God have
+truth and reality, the actual victory over death, over all the powers
+of the world and Nature, the resurrection no longer merely hoped for,
+but already accomplished; he is the heart released from all oppressive
+limits, from all sufferings,--the soul in perfect blessedness, the
+Godhead made visible. [114]
+> **Quote:** "The word of God... accomplishes all things swiftly, brings forgiveness of sins, and gives thee eternal life, and costs nothing more than that thou shouldst hear the word, and when thou hast heard it shouldst believe. If thou believest, thou hast it without pains, cost, delay, or difficulty."
+To see God is the highest wish, the highest triumph of the
+heart. Christ is this wish, this triumph, fulfilled. God, as an object
+of thought only, i.e., God as God, is always a remote being; the
+relation to him is an abstract one, like that relation of friendship
+in which we stand to a man who is distant from us, and personally
+unknown to us. However his works, the proofs of love which he gives us,
+may make his nature present to us, there always remains an unfilled
+void,--the heart is unsatisfied, we long to see him. So long as we
+have not met a being face to face, we are always in doubt whether
+he be really such as we imagine him; actual presence alone gives
+final confidence, perfect repose. Christ is God known personally;
+Christ, therefore, is the blessed certainty that God is what the
+soul desires and needs him to be. God, as the object of prayer,
+is indeed already a human being, since he sympathises with human
+misery, grants human wishes; but still he is not yet an object to
+the religious consciousness as a real man. Hence, only in Christ
+is the last wish of religion realised, the mystery of religious
+feeling solved:--solved however in the language of imagery proper
+to religion, for what God is in essence, that Christ is in actual
+appearance. So far the Christian religion may justly be called the
+absolute religion. That God, who in himself is nothing else than the
+nature of man, should also have a real existence as such, should be
+as man an object to the consciousness--this is the goal of religion;
+and this the Christian religion has attained in the incarnation of
+God, which is by no means a transitory act, for Christ remains man
+even after his ascension,--man in heart and man in form, only that
+his body is no longer an earthly one, liable to suffering.
+Yet even hearing and believing is a "gift of God"—a psychological miracle. If freedom from sin comes only through faith, morality becomes dependent on faith; pagan virtues become "splendid sins." One becomes good only through miracle.
+The incarnations of the Deity with the Orientals--the Hindoos, for
+example--have no such intense meaning as the Christian incarnation;
+just because they happen often they become indifferent, they lose
+their value. The manhood of God is his personality; the proposition,
+God is a personal being, means: God is a human being, God is a
+man. Personality is an abstraction, which has reality only in an actual
+man. [115] The idea which lies at the foundation of the incarnations
+of God is therefore infinitely better conveyed by one incarnation,
+one personality. Where God appears in several persons successively,
+these personalities are evanescent. What is required is a permanent,
+an exclusive personality. Where there are many incarnations, room is
+given for innumerable others; the imagination is not restrained; and
+even those incarnations which are already real pass into the category
+of the merely possible and conceivable, into the category of fancies
+or of mere appearances. But where one personality is exclusively
+believed in and contemplated, this at once impresses with the power of
+an historical personality; imagination is done away with, the freedom
+to imagine others is renounced. This one personality presses on me
+the belief in its reality. The characteristic of real personality is
+precisely exclusiveness,--the Leibnitzian principle of distinction,
+namely, that no one existence is exactly like another. The tone,
+the emphasis, with which the one personality is expressed, produces
+such an effect on the feelings, that it presents itself immediately
+as a real one, and is converted from an object of the imagination
+into an object of historical knowledge.
+Historical evidence shows miraculous power is inseparable from an intermediate being both divine and human. Later Judaism attributed miracles, the law, and providence to the "Logos." In Philo, this Logos hovers between heaven and earth, sometimes abstract, sometimes concrete—wavering between philosophy and religion. Christianity made the Logos fully consistent. Religion focused exclusively on this figure, the personified essence of religion. Therefore, the definition of God as the essence of feeling finds complete truth only in the Logos.
+Longing is the necessity of feeling, and feeling longs for a personal
+God. But this longing after the personality of God is true, earnest,
+and profound only when it is the longing for one personality, when
+it is satisfied with one. With the plurality of persons the truth
+of the want vanishes, and personality becomes a mere luxury of the
+imagination. But that which operates with the force of necessity,
+operates with the force of reality on man. That which to the feelings
+is a necessary being, is to them immediately a real being. Longing
+says: There must be a personal God, i.e., it cannot be that there is
+not; satisfied feeling says: He is. The guarantee of his existence
+lies for feeling in its sense of the necessity of his existence the
+necessity of the satisfaction in the force of the want. Necessity
+knows no law besides itself; necessity breaks iron. Feeling knows
+no other necessity than its own, than the necessity of feeling,
+than longing; it holds in extreme horror the necessity of Nature,
+the necessity of reason. Thus to feeling, a subjective, sympathetic,
+personal God is necessary; but it demands one personality alone, and
+this an historical, real one. Only when it is satisfied in the unity
+of personality has feeling any concentration; plurality dissipates it.
+God, as God, represents feeling still closed off; only Christ is feeling fully opened. In Christ, feeling becomes perfectly sure of itself, confident in its nature's truth and divinity. Christ denies nothing to feeling; he fulfills every prayer. In God, the soul only sighs; in Christ, it speaks openly. For one who sighs, wishes still carry anxiety and doubt. But in Christ, all anxiety vanishes. He is the sighing soul transformed into triumph—the joyful certainty that wishes hidden in God are true, the victory over death and nature's powers.
+But as the truth of personality is unity, and as the truth of unity is
+reality, so the truth of real personality is--blood. The last proof,
+announced with peculiar emphasis by the author of the fourth Gospel,
+that the visible person of God was no phantasm, no illusion, but
+a real man, is that blood flowed from his side on the cross. If the
+personal God has a true sympathy with distress, he must himself suffer
+distress. Only in his suffering lies the assurance of his reality;
+only on this depends the impressiveness of the incarnation. To see God
+does not satisfy feeling; the eyes give no sufficient guarantee. The
+truth of vision is confirmed only by touch. But as subjectively
+touch, so objectively the capability of being touched, palpability,
+passibility, is the last criterion of reality; hence the passion
+of Christ is the highest confidence, the highest self-enjoyment,
+the highest consolation of feeling; for only in the blood of Christ
+is the thirst for a personal, that is, a human, sympathising, tender
+God allayed.
+> **Quote:** "To see God is the highest wish, the highest triumph of the heart. Christ is this wish, this triumph, fulfilled."
+"Wherefore we hold it to be a pernicious error when such (namely,
+divine) majesty is taken away from Christ according to his manhood,
+thereby depriving Christians of their highest consolation, which they
+have in ... the promise of the presence of their Head, King and High
+Priest, who has promised them that not his mere Godhead, which to us
+poor sinners is as a consuming fire to dry stubble, but he--he the
+Man--who has spoken with us, who has proved all sorrows in the human
+form which he took upon him, who therefore can have fellow-feeling
+with us as his brethren,--that he will be with us in all our need,
+according to the nature whereby he is our brother and we are flesh
+of his flesh." [116]
+God as object of thought alone is always distant. Our relationship is abstract, like friendship with an unknown person far away. However much his works may make his nature present, a void remains; the heart is unsatisfied, longing to see him. Until we meet face to face, we doubt whether he is as we imagine. Christ is God known personally—the blessed certainty that God is exactly what the soul desires. God as prayer's object is human in that he sympathizes and grants wishes, yet not yet a real man to religious consciousness. Only in Christ is religion's final wish realized and its mystery solved—though in religion's symbolic language: what God is in essence, Christ is in appearance. Thus Christianity may justly be called the absolute religion.
+It is superficial to say that Christianity is not the religion of one
+personal God, but of three personalities. These three personalities
+have certainly an existence in dogma; but even there the personality
+of the Holy Spirit is only an arbitrary decision which is contradicted
+by impersonal definitions; as, for example, that the Holy Spirit is
+the gift of the Father and Son. [117] Already the very "procession"
+of the Holy Ghost presents an evil prognostic for his personality, for
+a personal being is produced only by generation, not by an indefinite
+emanation or by spiratio. And even the Father, as the representative of
+the rigorous idea of the Godhead, is a personal being only according
+to opinion and assertion, not according to his definitions; he is
+an abstract idea, a purely rationalistic being. Only Christ is the
+plastic personality. To personality belongs form; form is the reality
+of personality. Christ alone is the personal God; he is the real
+God of Christians, a truth which cannot be too often repeated. [118]
+In him alone is concentrated the Christian religion, the essence of
+religion in general. He alone meets the longing for a personal God;
+he alone is an existence identical with the nature of feeling; on
+him alone are heaped all the joys of the imagination, and all the
+sufferings of the heart; in him alone are feeling and imagination
+exhausted. Christ is the blending in one of feeling and imagination.
+> **Quote:** "That God, who in himself is nothing else than the nature of man, should also have a real existence as such, should be as man an object to the consciousness—this is the goal of religion; and this the Christian religion has attained in the incarnation of God."
+Christianity is distinguished from other religions by this, that in
+other religions the heart and imagination are divided, in Christianity
+they coincide. Here the imagination does not wander, left to itself; it
+follows the leadings of the heart; it describes a circle, whose centre
+is feeling. Imagination is here limited by the wants of the heart,
+it only realises the wishes of feeling, it has reference only to the
+one thing needful; in brief, it has, at least generally, a practical,
+concentric tendency, not a vagrant, merely poetic one. The miracles of
+Christianity--no product of free, spontaneous activity, but conceived
+in the bosom of yearning, necessitous feeling--place us immediately
+on the ground of common, real life; they act on the emotional man with
+irresistible force, because they have the necessity of feeling on their
+side. The power of imagination is here at the same time the power of
+the heart,--imagination is only the victorious, triumphant heart. With
+the Orientals, with the Greeks, imagination, untroubled by the wants of
+the heart, revelled in the enjoyment of earthly splendour and glory;
+in Christianity, it descended from the palace of the gods into the
+abode of poverty, where only want rules,--it humbled itself under
+the sway of the heart. But the more it limited itself in extent, the
+more intense became its strength. The wantonness of the Olympian gods
+could not maintain itself before the rigorous necessity of the heart;
+but imagination is omnipotent when it has a bond of union with the
+heart. And this bond between the freedom of the imagination and the
+necessity of the heart is Christ. All things are subject to Christ;
+he is the Lord of the world, who does with it what he will; but this
+unlimited power over Nature is itself again subject to the power of
+the heart;--Christ commands raging Nature to be still, but only that
+he may hear the sighs of the needy.
+This incarnation is no temporary act, for Christ remains man even after ascension—man in heart and form, only his body no longer earthly.
+The incarnations of the Divine in Eastern religions—among Hindus, for example—do not carry the same intensity. Precisely because they occur so often, they become commonplace and lose value.
+> **Quote:** "The manhood of God is his personality; the proposition, God is a personal being, means: God is a human being, God is a man."
+Personality is an abstract concept that finds reality only in an actual human being. A single incarnation conveys this infinitely better than many. Where God appears in several people successively, those personalities are fleeting, leaving room for countless others; imagination is not restrained, and even "real" incarnations appear as mere fancies. But where one personality is exclusively believed in, it carries the power of an historical figure. Imagination is set aside, and this one personality compels belief. Real personality's characteristic is its exclusivity—the Leibnizian principle of distinction, that no two existences are exactly alike. The tone and emphasis with which this one personality is expressed affect feeling so deeply that it presents itself immediately as real, converted from imagination into historical knowledge.
+Longing is the requirement of feeling, and feeling longs for a personal God. But this longing is true, earnest, and profound only when it seeks a single personality. With multiple persons, the truth of the need vanishes, and personality becomes a luxury of imagination. That which operates with necessity operates with reality. That which feeling deems necessary is, to that feeling, immediately real. Longing says: "There must be a personal God"—meaning it is impossible he does not exist. Satisfied feeling says: "He is." For feeling, the guarantee of his existence lies in the sense that his existence is necessary. Necessity knows no law but itself; it breaks iron. Feeling knows no other necessity than its own. Thus, to feeling, a subjective, sympathetic, personal God is necessary; but it demands only one personality, and that one must be historical and real. Feeling only finds concentration when satisfied in the unity of a single person; plurality dissipates it.
+But as the truth of personality is unity, and the truth of unity is reality, so the truth of real personality is—blood. The ultimate proof—asserted with particular emphasis by the author of the Fourth Gospel—that the visible person of God was no phantom, but a real man, is that blood flowed from his side on the cross. If the personal God truly sympathizes with distress, he must suffer distress himself. Only in his suffering lies assurance of his reality. Merely seeing God does not satisfy feeling; the truth of sight is confirmed only by touch. Just as touch is the subjective test, the objective capacity to be touched—tangibility and capacity to suffer—is the final criterion of reality. Hence, the Passion of Christ is the highest confidence and greatest consolation of feeling; for only in Christ's blood is the thirst for a personal, human, sympathizing God finally quenched.
+> **Quote:** "Wherefore we hold it to be a pernicious error when such majesty is taken away from Christ according to his manhood, thereby depriving Christians of their highest consolation, which they have in... the promise of the presence of their Head, King and High Priest, who has promised them that not his mere Godhead, which to us poor sinners is as a consuming fire to dry stubble, but he—he the Man—who has spoken with us, who has proved all sorrows in the human form which he took upon him, who therefore can have fellow-feeling with us as his brethren,—that he will be with us in all our need, according to the nature whereby he is our brother and we are flesh of his flesh."
+It is superficial to claim Christianity is not the religion of one personal God, but of three. While these three exist in dogma, even there the Holy Spirit's personality is merely a dogmatic decree contradicted by impersonal definitions—he is the "gift" of Father and Son. Even the "procession" of the Spirit is a bad omen for personality, for personal beings are produced only by generation, not by emanation. Even the Father, as representative of rigorous Godhead, is personal only by assertion, not definition; he is an abstract idea, a purely rationalistic being. Only Christ is the vivid, tangible personality. Form belongs to personality; form is the reality of personality. Christ alone is the personal God—the real God of Christians, a truth that cannot be repeated too often.
+In him alone the Christian religion—and the essence of religion in general—is concentrated. He alone meets the longing for a personal God; he alone is an existence identical to the nature of feeling. Upon him are heaped all the joys of imagination and sufferings of the heart; in him, feeling and imagination are exhausted. Christ is the synthesis of feeling and imagination. Christianity is distinguished from other religions by the fact that while heart and imagination are divided elsewhere, in Christianity they coincide. Here, imagination does not wander aimlessly; it follows the heart, circling around a center of feeling. Imagination is limited by the heart's needs; it only realizes feeling's wishes and refers only to the "one thing needful." It has a practical, focused tendency rather than a wandering, merely poetic one. The miracles of Christianity are not products of free spontaneity, but born from yearning, desperate feeling. They act on the emotional person with irresistible force because they have the necessity of feeling on their side. Here, the power of imagination is simultaneously the power of the heart—imagination is the victorious, triumphant heart. Among Greeks and Eastern religions, imagination, untroubled by the heart's needs, reveled in earthly splendor. In Christianity, it descended from the palace of gods into poverty's home. But the more it limited its scope, the more intense its strength became. The indulgence of Olympian gods could not survive the heart's rigorous necessity; but imagination is omnipotent when bonded to the heart. This bond between imagination's freedom and the heart's necessity is Christ. All things are subject to Christ; he is Lord of the world. Yet this unlimited power over nature is itself subject to the heart's power—Christ commands the raging nature to be still, but only that he may hear the sighs of the needy.
 ### CHAPTER XVI. - THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN CHRISTIANITY AND HEATHENISM.
+> **Quote:** "Christ is the omnipotence of subjectivity, the heart released from all the bonds and laws of Nature, the soul excluding the world, and concentrated only on itself, the reality of all the heart's wishes, the Easter festival of the heart, the ascent to heaven of the imagination:—Christ therefore is the distinction of Christianity from heathenism."
+Christ is the omnipotence of subjectivity, the heart released from
+all the bonds and laws of Nature, the soul excluding the world,
+and concentrated only on itself, the reality of all the heart's
+wishes, the Easter festival of the heart, the ascent to heaven of
+the imagination:--Christ therefore is the distinction of Christianity
+from heathenism.
+Christians turned inward, severing connection to nature's causal chain. They saw themselves as absolute, extra- and supra-mundane beings, unlimited because subjectivity's only limit is the objective world. Thus they never doubted their personal wishes.
+In Christianity, man was concentrated only on himself, he unlinked
+himself from the chain of sequences in the system of the universe,
+he made himself a self-sufficing whole, an absolute, extra- and
+supra-mundane being. Because he no longer regarded himself as a being
+immanent in the world, because he severed himself from connection
+with it, he felt himself an unlimited being--(for the sole limit
+of subjectivity is the world, is objectivity),--he had no longer
+any reason to doubt the truth and validity of his subjective wishes
+and feelings.
+Pagans limited subjectivity through contemplation of externals, accepting matter's eternal existence. Christians, with intellectual intolerance, annihilated nature to secure personal immortality. Ancient freedom was indifference toward the self; Christian freedom was not rational but emotional—the freedom of miracle. Pagans lost themselves in cosmos; Christians despised it. What is creation compared to Creator? What are sun, moon, earth compared to the human soul?
+The heathens, on the contrary, not shutting out Nature by retreating
+within themselves, limited their subjectivity by the contemplation
+of the world. Highly as the ancients estimated the intelligence, the
+reason, they were yet liberal and objective enough, theoretically as
+well as practically, to allow that which they distinguished from mind,
+namely, matter, to live, and even to live eternally; the Christians
+evinced their theoretical as well as practical intolerance in their
+belief that they secured the eternity of their subjective life
+only by annihilating, as in the doctrine of the destruction of the
+world, the opposite of subjectivity--Nature. The ancients were free
+from themselves, but their freedom was that of indifference towards
+themselves; the Christians were free from Nature, but their freedom
+was not that of reason, not true freedom, which limits itself by
+the contemplation of the world, by Nature,--it was the freedom of
+feeling and imagination, the freedom of miracle. The ancients were so
+enraptured by the cosmos, that they lost sight of themselves, suffered
+themselves to be merged in the whole; the Christians despised the
+world;--what is the creature compared with the Creator? what are sun,
+moon, and earth compared with the human soul? [119] The world passes
+away, but man, nay, the individual, personal man, is eternal. If the
+Christians severed man from all community with Nature, and hence fell
+into the extreme of an arrogant fastidiousness, which stigmatised the
+remotest comparison of man with the brutes as an impious violation
+of human dignity; the heathens, on the other hand, fell into the
+opposite extreme, into that spirit of depreciation which abolishes
+the distinction between man and the brute, or even, as was the case,
+for example, with Celsus, the opponent of Christianity, degrades man
+beneath the brute.
+> **Quote:** "The world passes away, but man, nay, the individual, personal man, is eternal."
+But the heathens considered man not only in connection with the
+universe; they considered the individual man, in connection with other
+men, as member of a commonwealth. They rigorously distinguished the
+individual from the species, the individual as a part from the race as
+a whole, and they subordinated the part to the whole. Men pass away,
+but mankind remains, says a heathen philosopher. "Why wilt thou grieve
+over the loss of thy daughter?" writes Sulpicius to Cicero. "Great,
+renowned cities and empires have passed away, and thou behavest thus
+at the death of an homunculus, a little human being! Where is thy
+philosophy?" The idea of man as an individual was to the ancients a
+secondary one, attained through the idea of the species. Though they
+thought highly of the race, highly of the excellences of mankind,
+highly and sublimely of the intelligence, they nevertheless thought
+slightly of the individual. Christianity, on the contrary, cared
+nothing for the species, and had only the individual in its eye and
+mind. Christianity--not, certainly, the Christianity of the present
+day, which has incorporated with itself the culture of heathenism,
+and has preserved only the name and some general positions of
+Christianity--is the direct opposite of heathenism, and only when
+it is regarded as such is it truly comprehended, and untravestied
+by arbitrary speculative interpretation; it is true so far as its
+opposite is false, and false so far as its opposite is true. The
+ancients sacrificed the individual to the species; the Christians
+sacrificed the species to the individual. Or, heathenism conceived
+the individual only as a part in distinction from the whole of the
+species; Christianity, on the contrary, conceived the individual only
+in immediate, undistinguishable unity with the species.
+Severed from nature, Christians became elitists for whom human-animal comparison was sacrilege. Pagans fell into the opposite extreme, erasing the distinction—or, like the critic Celsus, ranking humans below animals.
+To Christianity the individual was the object of an immediate
+providence, that is, an immediate object of the Divine Being. The
+heathens believed in a providence for the individual only through his
+relation to the race, through law, through the order of the world,
+and thus only in a mediate, natural, and not miraculous providence;
+[120] but the Christians left out the intermediate process, and placed
+themselves in immediate connection with the prescient, all-embracing,
+universal Being; i.e., they immediately identified the individual
+with the universal Being.
+Pagans also saw individuals as community members, subordinating part to whole. "Individuals pass away, but humanity remains," said one. Sulpicius wrote to Cicero: "Why grieve your daughter's death when great cities have fallen? Where is your philosophy over a mere homunculus—a little human being?" The ancients valued species over individual. Christianity inverted this completely, caring nothing for species. (Not modern Christianity, which has absorbed pagan culture.) It is paganism's direct opposite—true only where the other is false.
+> **Quote:** "The ancients sacrificed the individual to the species; the Christians sacrificed the species to the individual."
+Paganism saw individual as part of species; Christianity saw individual as immediately one with species.
+But the idea of deity coincides with the idea of humanity. All divine
+attributes, all the attributes which make God God, are attributes of
+the species--attributes which in the individual are limited, but the
+limits of which are abolished in the essence of the species, and even
+in its existence, in so far as it has its complete existence only in
+all men taken together. My knowledge, my will, is limited; but my limit
+is not the limit of another man, to say nothing of mankind; what is
+difficult to me is easy to another; what is impossible, inconceivable,
+to one age, is to the coming age conceivable and possible. My life is
+bound to a limited time; not so the life of humanity. The history of
+mankind consists of nothing else than a continuous and progressive
+conquest of limits, which at a given time pass for the limits of
+humanity, and therefore for absolute insurmountable limits. But
+the future always unveils the fact that the alleged limits of the
+species were only limits of individuals. The most striking proofs
+of this are presented by the history of philosophy and of physical
+science. It would be highly interesting and instructive to write a
+history of the sciences entirely from this point of view, in order to
+exhibit in all its vanity the presumptuous notion of the individual
+that he can set limits to his race. Thus the species is unlimited;
+the individual alone limited.
+Christians made the individual direct object of divine providence. Pagans saw providence for individuals only through race, law, and nature—a mediated, natural providence. Christians skipped these steps, directly connecting individual with Universal Being.
+But the sense of limitation is painful, and hence the individual
+frees himself from it by the contemplation of the perfect Being;
+in this contemplation he possesses what otherwise is wanting to
+him. With the Christians God is nothing else than the immediate
+unity of species and individuality, of the universal and individual
+being. God is the idea of the species as an individual--the idea
+or essence of the species, which as a species, as universal being,
+as the totality of all perfections, of all attributes or realities,
+freed from all the limits which exist in the consciousness and feeling
+of the individual, is at the same time again an individual, personal
+being. Ipse suum esse est. Essence and existence are in God identical;
+which means nothing else than that he is the idea, the essence of the
+species, conceived immediately as an existence, an individual. The
+highest idea on the standpoint of religion is: God does not love,
+he is himself love; he does not live, he is life; he is not just, but
+justice itself; not a person, but personality itself,--the species,
+the idea, as immediately a concrete existence. [121]
+The idea of God coincides with humanity. All divine attributes are species attributes, unlimited in the collective but limited in individuals. My knowledge and will are bounded, but another's are not. What is inconceivable in one age becomes possible in the next. Human history is the progressive overcoming of supposed species limits that were merely individual limits. Thus species is unlimited; only individuals are limited.
+Because of this immediate unity of the species with individuality,
+this concentration of all that is universal and real in one personal
+being, God is a deeply moving object, enrapturing to the imagination;
+whereas, the idea of humanity has little power over the feelings,
+because humanity is only an abstraction; and the reality which
+presents itself to us in distinction from this abstraction is the
+multitude of separate, limited individuals. In God, on the contrary,
+feeling has immediate satisfaction, because here all is embraced in
+one, i.e., because here the species has an immediate existence,--is
+an individuality. God is love, is justice, as itself a subject; he
+is the perfect universal being as one being, the infinite extension
+of the species as an all-comprehending unity. But God is only man's
+intuition of his own nature; thus the Christians are distinguished from
+the heathens in this, that they immediately identify the individual
+with the species--that with them the individual has the significance
+of the species, the individual by himself is held to be the perfect
+representative of the species--that they deify the human individual,
+make him the absolute being.
+The pain of limitation drives individuals to contemplate a perfect Being. For Christians, God is the direct unity of species and individual—the species personified. *Ipse suum esse est*: his essence and existence are identical. God is the human race conceived as a living individual: not merely loving but love itself, not merely living but life, not merely just but justice, not a person but personality. He is the species existing as a concrete person.
+Especially characteristic is the difference between Christianity
+and heathenism concerning the relation of the individual to the
+intelligence, to the understanding, to the nous. The Christians
+individualised the understanding, the heathens made it a universal
+essence. To the heathens, the understanding, the intelligence, was the
+essence of man; to the Christians, it was only a part of themselves. To
+the heathens therefore only the intelligence, the species, to the
+Christians, the individual, was immortal, i.e., divine. Hence follows
+the further difference between heathen and Christian philosophy.
+This direct merger makes God emotionally captivating, while abstract "humanity" lacks power because we see only limited individuals. In God, species exists as direct individual—love and justice as living subject, the universal as single being.
+The most unequivocal expression, the characteristic symbol of this
+immediate identity of the species and individuality in Christianity is
+Christ, the real God of the Christians. Christ is the ideal of humanity
+become existent, the compendium of all moral and divine perfections
+to the exclusion of all that is negative; pure, heavenly, sinless
+man, the typical man, the Adam Kadmon; not regarded as the totality
+of the species, of mankind, but immediately as one individual, one
+person. Christ, i.e., the Christian, religious Christ, is therefore
+not the central, but the terminal point of history. The Christians
+expected the end of the world, the close of history. In the Bible,
+Christ himself, in spite of all the falsities and sophisms of our
+exegetists, clearly prophesies the speedy end of the world. History
+rests only on the distinction of the individual from the race. Where
+this distinction ceases, history ceases; the very soul of history is
+extinct. Nothing remains to man but the contemplation and appropriation
+of this realised Ideal, and the spirit of proselytism, which seeks
+to extend the prevalence of a fixed belief,--the preaching that God
+has appeared, and that the end of the world is at hand.
+A key difference concerns intelligence. Christians individualized it; pagans made it universal essence. To pagans, intelligence was humanity's essence and immortal; to Christians, the individual was immortal.
+Since the immediate identity of the species and the individual
+oversteps the limits of reason and Nature, it followed of course that
+this universal, ideal individual was declared to be a transcendent,
+supernatural, heavenly being. It is therefore a perversity to
+attempt to deduce from reason the immediate identity of the species
+and individual, for it is only the imagination which effects this
+identity, the imagination to which nothing is impossible, and which
+is also the creator of miracles; for the greatest of miracles is the
+being who, while he is an individual, is at the same time the ideal,
+the species, humanity in the fulness of its perfection and infinity,
+i.e., the Godhead. Hence it is also a perversity to adhere to the
+biblical or dogmatic Christ, and yet to thrust aside miracles. If
+the principle be retained, wherefore deny its necessary consequences?
+The clearest symbol of this identity is Christ, the ideal of humanity existing as one individual—the *Adam Kadmon*, summary of all perfections. He is not the race's sum but a single person. Thus Christ is not history's center but its terminal point; early Christians expected the world's imminent close.
+The total absence of the idea of the species in Christianity is
+especially observable in its characteristic doctrine of the universal
+sinfulness of men. For there lies at the foundation of this doctrine
+the demand that the individual shall not be an individual, a demand
+which again is based on the presupposition that the individual by
+himself is a perfect being, is by himself the adequate presentation
+or existence of the species. [122] Here is entirely wanting the
+objective perception, the consciousness, that the thou belongs to the
+perfection of the I, that men are required to constitute humanity,
+that only men taken together are what man should and can be. All
+men are sinners. Granted; but they are not all sinners in the same
+way; on the contrary, there exists a great and essential difference
+between them. One man is inclined to falsehood, another is not; he
+would rather give up his life than break his word or tell a lie; the
+third has a propensity to intoxication, the fourth to licentiousness;
+while the fifth, whether by favour of Nature, or from the energy of
+his character, exhibits none of these vices. Thus, in the moral as
+well as the physical and intellectual elements, men compensate for
+each other, so that, taken as a whole, they are, as they should be,
+they present the perfect man.
+> **Quote:** "History rests only on the distinction of the individual from the race. Where this distinction ceases, history ceases; the very soul of history is extinct."
+Hence intercourse ameliorates and elevates; involuntarily and
+without disguise, man is different in intercourse from what he is
+when alone. Love especially works wonders, and the love of the sexes
+most of all. Man and woman are the complement of each other, and
+thus united they first present the species, the perfect man. [123]
+Without species, love is inconceivable. Love is nothing else than the
+self-consciousness of the species as evolved within the difference
+of sex. In love, the reality of the species, which otherwise is
+only a thing of reason, an object of mere thought, becomes a matter
+of feeling, a truth of feeling; for in love, man declares himself
+unsatisfied in his individuality taken by itself, he postulates the
+existence of another as a need of the heart; he reckons another as
+part of his own being; he declares the life which he has through
+love to be the truly human life, corresponding to the idea of man,
+i.e., of the species. The individual is defective, imperfect, weak,
+needy; but love is strong, perfect, contented, free from wants,
+self-sufficing, infinite; because in it the self-consciousness of the
+individuality is the mysterious self-consciousness of the perfection
+of the race. But this result of love is produced by friendship also,
+at least where it is intense, where it is a religion, [124] as it was
+with the ancients. Friends compensate for each other; friendship is
+a means of virtue, and more: it is itself virtue, dependent however
+on participation. Friendship can only exist between the virtuous,
+as the ancients said. But it cannot be based on perfect similarity;
+on the contrary, it requires diversity, for friendship rests on a
+desire for self-completion. One friend obtains through the other what
+he does not himself possess. The virtues of the one atone for the
+failings of the other. Friend justifies friend before God. However
+faulty a man may be, it is a proof that there is a germ of good in him
+if he has worthy men for his friends. If I cannot be myself perfect,
+I yet at least love virtue, perfection in others. If therefore I am
+called to account for any sins, weaknesses, and faults, I interpose
+as advocates, as mediators, the virtues of my friend. How barbarous,
+how unreasonable would it be to condemn me for sins which I doubtless
+have committed, but which I have myself condemned in loving my friends,
+who are free from these sins!
+Nothing remains but to contemplate this realized Ideal and preach that God has appeared and the end is near.
+But if friendship and love, which themselves are only subjective
+realisations of the species, make out of singly imperfect beings an at
+least relatively perfect whole, how much more do the sins and failings
+of individuals vanish in the species itself, which has its adequate
+existence only in the sum total of mankind, and is therefore only
+an object of reason! Hence the lamentation over sin is found only
+where the human individual regards himself in his individuality as
+a perfect, complete being, not needing others for the realisation of
+the species, of the perfect man; where instead of the consciousness
+of the species has been substituted the exclusive self-consciousness
+of the individual; where the individual does not recognise himself
+as a part of mankind, but identifies himself with the species, and
+for this reason makes his own sins, limits and weaknesses, the sins,
+limits, and weaknesses of mankind in general. Nevertheless man cannot
+lose the consciousness of the species, for his self-consciousness is
+essentially united to his consciousness of another than himself. Where
+therefore the species is not an object to him as a species, it
+will be an object to him as God. He supplies the absence of the
+idea of the species by the idea of God, as the being who is free
+from the limits and wants which oppress the individual, and, in
+his opinion (since he identifies the species with the individual),
+the species itself. But this perfect being, free from the limits of
+the individual, is nothing else than the species, which reveals the
+infinitude of its nature in this, that it is realised in infinitely
+numerous and various individuals. If all men were absolutely alike,
+there would then certainly be no distinction between the race and
+the individual. But in that case the existence of many men would be
+a pure superfluity; a single man would have achieved the ends of the
+species. In the one who enjoyed the happiness of existence all would
+have had their complete substitute.
+Since this identity oversteps reason and Nature's limits, this universal individual was proclaimed transcendent, supernatural, heavenly.
+Doubtless the essence of man is one, but this essence is infinite;
+its real existence is therefore an infinite, reciprocally compensating
+variety, which reveals the riches of this essence. Unity in essence is
+multiplicity in existence. Between me and another human being--and this
+other is the representative of the species, even though he is only one,
+for he supplies to me the want of many others, has for me a universal
+significance, is the deputy of mankind, in whose name he speaks to me,
+an isolated individual, so that, when united only with one, I have a
+participated, a human life;--between me and another human being there
+is an essential, qualitative distinction. The other is my thou,--the
+relation being reciprocal,--my alter ego, man objective to me, the
+revelation of my own nature, the eye seeing itself. In another I
+first have the consciousness of humanity; through him I first learn,
+I first feel, that I am a man: in my love for him it is first clear to
+me that he belongs to me and I to him, that we two cannot be without
+each other, that only community constitutes humanity. But morally,
+also, there is a qualitative, critical distinction between the I and
+thou. My fellow-man is my objective conscience; he makes my failings
+a reproach to me; even when he does not expressly mention them, he
+is my personified feeling of shame. The consciousness of the moral
+law, of right, of propriety, of truth itself, is indissolubly united
+with my consciousness of another than myself. That is true in which
+another agrees with me,--agreement is the first criterion of truth;
+but only because the species is the ultimate measure of truth. That
+which I think only according to the standard of my individuality
+is not binding on another; it can be conceived otherwise; it is an
+accidental, merely subjective view. But that which I think according
+to the standard of the species, I think as man in general only can
+think, and consequently as every individual must think if he thinks
+normally, in accordance with law, and therefore truly. That is true
+which agrees with the nature of the species, that is false which
+contradicts it. There is no other rule of truth. But my fellow-man is
+to me the representative of the species, the substitute of the rest,
+nay, his judgment may be of more authority with me than the judgment
+of the innumerable multitude. Let the fanatic make disciples as the
+sand on the sea-shore; the sand is still sand; mine be the pearl--a
+judicious friend. The agreement of others is therefore my criterion
+of the normalness, the universality, the truth of my thoughts. I
+cannot so abstract myself from myself as to judge myself with perfect
+freedom and disinterestedness; but another has an impartial judgment;
+through him I correct, complete, extend my own judgment, my own
+taste, my own knowledge. In short, there is a qualitative, critical
+difference between men. But Christianity extinguishes this qualitative
+distinction; it sets the same stamp on all men alike, and regards
+them as one and the same individual, because it knows no distinction
+between the species and the individual: it has one and the same means
+of salvation for all men, it sees one and the same original sin in all.
+Thus it's an error to logically derive this identity; only imagination achieves it—the imagination that creates miracles.
+Because Christianity thus, from exaggerated subjectivity, knows nothing
+of the species, in which alone lies the redemption, the justification,
+the reconciliation and cure of the sins and deficiencies of the
+individual, it needed a supernatural and peculiar, nay, a personal,
+subjective aid in order to overcome sin. If I alone am the species,
+if no other, that is, no qualitatively different men exist, or, which
+is the same thing, if there is no distinction between me and others,
+if we are all perfectly alike, if my sins are not neutralised by
+the opposite qualities of other men: then assuredly my sin is a
+blot of shame which cries up to heaven; a revolting horror which
+can be exterminated only by extraordinary, superhuman, miraculous
+means. Happily, however, there is a natural reconciliation. My
+fellow-man is per se the mediator between me and the sacred idea of
+the species. Homo homini Deus est. My sin is made to shrink within
+its limits, is thrust back into its nothingness, by the fact that it
+is only mine, and not that of my fellows.
+> **Quote:** "the greatest of miracles is the being who, while he is an individual, is at the same time the ideal, the species, humanity in the fulness of its perfection and infinity, i.e., the Godhead."
+It's a distortion to keep Christ but discard miracles—why deny necessary consequences? The absence of species concept appears in universal sinfulness doctrine, which demands the individual not be individual, assuming one person expresses the entire species. This lacks awareness that the *thou* perfects the *I*, that many constitute humanity, and only together do they represent the complete human.
+All may be sinners, but differently. One lies, another would die first; one drinks, another lusts, a third has none. Through diverse qualities, people compensate. Together they represent the perfect human.
+Social interaction elevates us; love works wonders, especially between sexes.
+> **Quote:** "Man and woman are the complement of each other, and thus united they first present the species, the perfect man."
+Without the species concept, love is inconceivable. Love is species-consciousness unfolding through sexual difference, making the species a felt truth. In love, one admits solitary individuality is insufficient; another's existence becomes a heart's necessity. The individual is flawed, but love is perfect because it becomes the consciousness of racial perfection.
+Friendship produces the same result, especially when intense as among ancients. Friends compensate; friendship is virtue through diversity and self-completion. One's virtues atone for the other's failings.
+Friend justifies friend before God. A person with worthy friends proves a seed of good exists within. If I cannot be perfect, I can love perfection in others. How irrational to condemn me for sins my virtuous friends have already condemned!
+If love and friendship—subjective realizations of species—can perfect imperfect individuals, how much more do sins disappear within species itself? Species exists only in humanity's sum total, an object of reason. Lament over sin appears only when the individual sees themselves as complete, replacing species-consciousness with exclusive self-consciousness.
+The individual identifies as the species, projecting their limits onto humanity. Yet consciousness of species cannot be lost, as self-consciousness requires another. Where species is unrecognized, it becomes God. The individual fills the void with a perfect Being who is actually the species, revealing its infinite nature through diverse individuals.
+If all were alike, race and individual would be indistinguishable; a single person would suffice, rendering others redundant.
+Humanity's essence is one but infinite, existing as mutually compensating variety. Unity in essence is multiplicity in existence.
+Between me and another—who represents species as my *alter ego*, humanity objectified—there is qualitative distinction. Through another I first feel human; in love we belong to each other, and only community constitutes humanity.
+Morally, the "thou" is my objective conscience and personified shame. Awareness of moral law, right, and truth is tied to awareness of another.
+Truth is what another agrees with, because species is truth's measure. What I think individually is subjective; what I think by species-standard is what humanity thinks.
+> **Quote:** 'That is true which agrees with the nature of the species, that is false which contradicts it. There is no other rule of truth.'
+My fellow is species' representative, sometimes weightier than crowds. Let the fanatic gather disciples like sand; give me the pearl of a wise friend. Others' agreement is my criterion for truth.
+I cannot judge myself impartially, but another can. Through them I correct and expand my judgment. In short, people differ qualitatively.
+Christianity erases this distinction, stamping all men with the same mark and regarding them as one and the same individual, because it recognizes no distinction between species and individual.
+Because Christianity, in exaggerated subjectivity, knows nothing of the species—where sins are redeemed through compensation—it requires supernatural aid to overcome sin.
+If I alone am the species—if no different people offset my sins—then sin is a horror requiring miraculous erasure. Fortunately, natural reconciliation exists: my fellow human is mediator between me and species-ideal.
+> **Quote:** "Homo homini Deus est."
+My sin is reduced to nothingness by the simple fact that it is only mine, not my fellow's.
 ### CHAPTER XVII. - THE CHRISTIAN SIGNIFICANCE OF VOLUNTARY CELIBACY AND MONACHISM.
+Christianity's dominance erased the idea of humanity as a species and the significance of collective life. This proves Christianity lacks culture's fundamental principles. When the species is identified with the individual—as God—the need for culture vanishes. If humanity exists only as God, one believes they possess everything within themselves and need no supplementation through others or world exploration. Yet this need drives culture. The individual Christian reaches their destination through God alone. God is the already-realized highest aim, present to each separately.
+The idea of man as a species, and with it the significance of the
+life of the species, of humanity as a whole, vanished as Christianity
+became dominant. Herein we have a new confirmation of the position
+advanced, that Christianity does not contain within itself the
+principle of culture. Where man immediately identifies the species
+with the individual, and posits this identity as his highest being,
+as God, where the idea of humanity is thus an object to him only as
+the idea of Godhead, there the need of culture has vanished; man has
+all in himself, all in his God, consequently he has no need to supply
+his own deficiencies by others as the representatives of the species,
+or by the contemplation of the world generally; and this need is alone
+the spring of culture. The individual man attains his end by himself
+alone; he attains it in God,--God is himself the attained goal, the
+realised highest aim of humanity; but God is present to each individual
+separately. God only is the want of the Christian; others, the human
+race, the world, are not necessary to him; he is not the inward need
+of others. God fills to me the place of the species, of my fellow-men;
+yes, when I turn away from the world, when I am in isolation, I first
+truly feel my need of God, I first have a lively sense of his presence,
+I first feel what God is, and what he ought to be to me. It is true
+that the religious man has need also of fellowship, of edification in
+common; but this need of others is always in itself something extremely
+subordinate. The salvation of the soul is the fundamental idea,
+the main point in Christianity; and this salvation lies only in God,
+only in the concentration of the mind on him. Activity for others is
+required, is a condition of salvation; but the ground of salvation is
+God, immediate reference in all things to God. And even activity for
+others has only a religious significance, has reference only to God,
+as its motive and end, is essentially only an activity for God,--for
+the glorifying of his name, the spreading abroad of his praise. But
+God is absolute subjectivity,--subjectivity separated from the world,
+above the world, set free from matter, severed from the life of the
+species, and therefore from the distinction of sex. Separation from
+the world, from matter, from the life of the species, is therefore
+the essential aim of Christianity. [125] And this aim had its visible,
+practical realisation in Monachism.
+> **Quote:** "God only is the want of the Christian; others, the human race, the world, are not necessary to him; he is not the inward need of others."
+It is a self-delusion to attempt to derive monachism from the East. At
+least, if this derivation is to be accepted, they who maintain
+it should be consistent enough to derive the opposite tendency of
+Christendom, not from Christianity, but from the spirit of the Western
+nations, the occidental nature in general. But how, in that case,
+shall we explain the monastic enthusiasm of the West? Monachism
+must rather be derived directly from Christianity itself: it was
+necessary consequence of the belief in heaven promised to mankind
+by Christianity. Where the heavenly life is a truth, the earthly
+life is a lie; where imagination is all, reality is nothing. To him
+who believes in an eternal heavenly life, the present life loses
+its value,--or rather, it has already lost its value: belief in the
+heavenly life is belief in the worthlessness and nothingness of this
+life. I cannot represent to myself the future life without longing
+for it, without casting down a look of compassion or contempt on this
+pitiable earthly life, and the heavenly life can be no object, no law
+of faith, without, at the same time, being a law of morality: it must
+determine my actions, [126] at least if my life is to be in accordance
+with my faith: I ought not to cleave to the transitory things of this
+earth. I ought not;--but neither do I wish; for what are all things
+here below compared with the glory of the heavenly life? [127]
+They feel no internal need for fellowship. To the believer, God replaces the species and fellow human beings. Only in isolation does one truly feel the need for God and sense his presence. While religious people do feel a need for shared worship, it is always secondary. The salvation of the soul is Christianity's fundamental idea, lying only in total concentration on God. Serving others is required as a condition of salvation, but its ground is God; even service to others refers back to him, making it essentially activity for God. Since God is absolute subjectivity—separated from the world, freed from matter, and severed from the life of the species and sex—separation from world, matter, and species-life is Christianity's essential aim. This aim found its practical realization in monasticism.
+It is true that the quality of that life depends on the quality, the
+moral condition of this; but morality is itself determined by the faith
+in eternal life. The morality corresponding to the super-terrestrial
+life is simply separation from the world, the negation of this life;
+and the practical attestation of this spiritual separation is the
+monastic life. [128] Everything must ultimately take an external form,
+must present itself to the senses. An inward disposition must become
+an outward practice. The life of the cloister, indeed ascetic life in
+general, is the heavenly life as it is realised and can be realised
+here below. If my soul belongs to heaven, ought I, nay, can I belong to
+the earth with my body? The soul animates the body. But if the soul is
+in heaven, the body is forsaken, dead, and thus the medium, the organ
+of connection between the world and the soul is annihilated. Death,
+the separation of the soul from the body, at least from this gross,
+material, sinful body, is the entrance into heaven. But if death is
+the condition of blessedness and moral perfection, then necessarily
+mortification is the one law of morality. Moral death is the necessary
+anticipation of natural death; I say necessary, for it would be the
+extreme of immorality to attribute the obtaining of heaven to physical
+death, which is no moral act, but a natural one common to man and the
+brute. Death must therefore be exalted into a moral, a spontaneous
+act. "I die daily," says the apostle, and this dictum Saint Anthony,
+the founder of monachism, [129] made the theme of his life.
+It is delusion to trace monasticism to the East. At minimum, those who do so should argue that Christendom's opposite tendencies come from the Western spirit rather than Christianity itself. But then how explain the monastic enthusiasm that gripped the West? Monasticism derives directly from Christianity; it was a necessary consequence of belief in promised heaven.
+But Christianity, it is contended, demanded only a spiritual
+freedom. True; but what is that spiritual freedom which does not
+pass into action, which does not attest itself in practice? Or dost
+thou believe that it only depends on thyself, on thy will, on thy
+intention, whether thou be free from anything? If so, thou art greatly
+in error, and hast never experienced what it is to be truly made
+free. So long as thou art in a given rank, profession, or relation,
+so long art thou, willingly or not, determined by it. Thy will,
+thy determination, frees thee only from conscious limitations and
+impressions, not from the unconscious ones which lie in the nature
+of the case. Thus we do not feel at home, we are under constraint,
+so long as we are not locally, physically separated from one with whom
+we have inwardly broken. External freedom is alone the full truth of
+spiritual freedom. A man who has really lost spiritual interest in
+earthly treasures soon throws them out at window, that his heart may
+be thoroughly at liberty. What I no longer possess by inclination is
+a burden to me; so away with it! What affection has let go, the hand
+no longer holds fast. Only affection gives force to the grasp; only
+affection makes possession sacred. He who having a wife is as though he
+had her not, will do better to have no wife at all. To have as though
+one had not, is to have without the disposition to have, is in truth
+not to have. And therefore he who says that one ought to have a thing
+as though one had it not, merely says in a subtle, covert, cautious
+way, that one ought not to have it at all. That which I dismiss from
+my heart is no longer mine,--it is free as air. St. Anthony took the
+resolution to renounce the world when he had once heard the saying,
+"If thou wilt be perfect, go thy way, sell that thou hast and give to
+the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven; and come and follow
+me." St. Anthony gave the only true interpretation of this text. He
+went his way, and sold his possessions, and gave the proceeds to the
+poor. Only thus did he prove his spiritual freedom from the treasures
+of this world. [130]
+> **Quote:** "Where the heavenly life is a truth, the earthly life is a lie; where imagination is all, reality is nothing."
+Such freedom, such truth, is certainly in contradiction with the
+Christianity of the present day, according to which the Lord has
+required only a spiritual freedom, i.e., a freedom which demands
+no sacrifice, no energy,--an illusory, self-deceptive freedom;--a
+freedom from earthly good, which consists in its possession and
+enjoyment! For certainly the Lord said, "My yoke is easy." How harsh,
+how unreasonable would Christianity be if it exacted from man the
+renunciation of earthly riches! Then assuredly Christianity would
+not be suited to this world. So far from this, Christianity is in
+the highest degree practical and judicious; it defers the freeing
+oneself from the wealth and pleasures of this world to the moment of
+natural death (monkish mortification is an unchristian suicide);--and
+allots to our spontaneous activity the acquisition and enjoyment
+of earthly possessions. Genuine Christians do not indeed doubt
+the truth of the heavenly life,--God forbid! Therein they still
+agree with the ancient monks; but they await that life patiently,
+submissive to the will of God, i.e., to their own selfishness,
+to the agreeable pursuit of worldly enjoyment. [131] But I turn
+away with loathing and contempt from modern Christianity, in which
+the bride of Christ readily acquiesces in polygamy, at least in
+successive polygamy, and this in the eyes of the true Christian
+does not essentially differ from contemporaneous polygamy; but yet
+at the same time--oh! shameful hypocrisy!--swears by the eternal,
+universally binding, irrefragable sacred truth of God's Word. I turn
+back with reverence to the misconceived truth of the chaste monastic
+cell, where the soul betrothed to heaven did not allow itself to be
+wooed into faithlessness by a strange earthly body!
+To one who believes in eternal heavenly life, the present life loses its value—or rather, has already lost it. Belief in heaven is belief in this life's worthlessness. I cannot imagine a future life without longing for it and looking down with compassion or contempt on this pitiable existence. The heavenly life cannot be an object of faith without also being a law of morality: it must determine my actions. I should not cling to fleeting earthly things. I should not—and I do not wish to—for what are worldly things compared to heaven's glory?
+The unworldly, supernatural life is essentially also an unmarried
+life. The celibate lies already, though not in the form of a law,
+in the inmost nature of Christianity. This is sufficiently declared
+in the supernatural origin of the Saviour,--a doctrine in which
+unspotted virginity is hallowed as the saving principle, as the
+principle of the new, the Christian world. Let not such passages as,
+"Be fruitful and multiply," or, "What God has joined together let
+not man put asunder," be urged as a sanction of marriage. The first
+passage relates, as Tertullian and Jerome have already observed,
+only to the unpeopled earth, not to the earth when filled with men,
+only to the beginning, not to the end of the world, an end which
+was initiated by the immediate appearance of God upon earth. And
+the second also refers only to marriage as an institution of the Old
+Testament. Certain Jews proposed the question whether it were lawful
+for a man to separate from his wife; and the most appropriate way of
+dealing with this question was the answer above cited. He who has once
+concluded a marriage ought to hold it sacred. Marriage is intrinsically
+an indulgence to the weakness or rather the strength of the flesh,
+an evil which therefore must be restricted as much as possible. The
+indissolubleness of marriage is a nimbus, a sacred irradiance, which
+expresses precisely the opposite of what minds, dazzled and perturbed
+by its lustre, seek beneath it. Marriage in itself is, in the sense
+of perfected Christianity, a sin, [132] or rather a weakness which
+is permitted and forgiven thee only on condition that thou for ever
+limitest thyself to a single wife. In short, marriage is hallowed
+only in the Old Testament, but not in the New. The New Testament
+knows a higher, a supernatural principle, the mystery of unspotted
+virginity. [133] "He who can receive it let him receive it." "The
+children of this world marry, and are given in marriage: but they which
+shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection
+from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage: neither can
+they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels; and are the
+children of God, being the children of the resurrection." Thus in
+heaven there is no marriage; the principle of sexual love is excluded
+from heaven as an earthly, worldly principle. But the heavenly life is
+the true, perfected, eternal life of the Christian. Why then should
+I, who am destined for heaven, form a tie which is unloosed in my
+true destination? Why should I, who am potentially a heavenly being,
+not realise this possibility even here? [134] Marriage is already
+proscribed from my mind, my heart, since it is expelled from heaven,
+the essential object of my faith, hope, and life. How can an earthly
+wife have a place in my heaven-filled heart? How can I divide my
+heart between God and man? [135] The Christian's love to God is not
+an abstract or general love such as the love of truth, of justice, of
+science; it is a love to a subjective, personal God, and is therefore
+a subjective, personal love. It is an essential attribute of this love
+that it is an exclusive, jealous love, for its object is a personal
+and at the same time the highest being, to whom no other can be
+compared. "Keep close to Jesus [Jesus Christ is the Christian's God],
+in life and in death; trust his faithfulness: he alone can help thee,
+when all else leaves thee. Thy beloved has this quality, that he will
+suffer no rival; he alone will have thy heart, will rule alone in
+thy soul as a king on his throne."--"What can the world profit thee
+without Jesus? To be without Christ is the pain of hell; to be with
+Christ, heavenly sweetness."--"Thou canst not live without a friend:
+but if the friendship of Christ is not more than all else to thee,
+thou wilt be beyond measure sad and disconsolate."--"Love everything
+for Jesus' sake, but Jesus for his own sake. Jesus Christ alone is
+worthy to be loved."--"My God, my love [my heart]: thou art wholly
+mine, and I am wholly thine."--"Love hopes and trusts ever in God,
+even when God is not gracious to it [or tastes bitter, non sapit];
+for we cannot live in love without sorrow.... For the sake of the
+beloved, the loving one must accept all things, even the hard and
+bitter."--"My God and my all, ... in thy presence everything is
+sweet to me, in thy absence everything is distasteful.... Without
+thee nothing can please me."--"Oh, when at last will that blessed,
+longed-for hour appear, when thou wilt satisfy me wholly, and be
+all in all to me? So long as this is not granted me, my joy is only
+fragmentary."--"When was it well with me without thee? or when was
+it ill with me in thy presence? I will rather be poor for thy sake,
+than rich without thee. I will rather be a pilgrim on earth with thee,
+than the possessor of heaven without thee. Where thou art is heaven;
+death and hell where thou art not. I long only for thee."--"Thou
+canst not serve God and at the same time have thy joys in earthly
+things: thou must wean thyself from all acquaintances and friends,
+and sever thy soul from all temporal consolation. Believers in
+Christ should regard themselves, according to the admonition of the
+Apostle Peter, only as strangers and pilgrims on the earth." [136]
+Thus love to God as a personal being is a literal, strict, personal,
+exclusive love. How then can I at once love God and a mortal wife? Do
+I not thereby place God on the same footing with my wife? No! to a
+soul which truly loves God, the love of woman is an impossibility,
+is adultery. "He that is unmarried," says the Apostle Paul, "careth
+for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord;
+but he that is married careth for the things that are of the world,
+how he may please his wife."
+It is true that the future life's quality depends on one's moral condition here; but morality itself is shaped by faith in eternal life. The morality corresponding to an otherworldly life is simply separation from the world and denial of this life. The practical proof is monasticism. An internal disposition must become outward practice. The cloistered life is heavenly life as realizable here. If my soul belongs to heaven, how can my body belong to earth? Death—the separation of soul from this physical, material, sinful body—is entrance into heaven. If death is the condition for blessedness, then self-denial and "mortification" must be morality's primary law. Moral death is the necessary anticipation of natural death. It would be highly immoral to suggest heaven is earned through physical death alone, which humans share with animals. Death must therefore become a moral, voluntary act. "I die daily," said the apostle, and Saint Anthony, monasticism's founder, made this his life's theme.
+The true Christian not only feels no need of culture, because this
+is a worldly principle and opposed to feeling; he has also no need
+of (natural) love. God supplies to him the want of culture, and in
+like manner God supplies to him the want of love, of a wife, of a
+family. The Christian immediately identifies the species with the
+individual; hence he strips off the difference of sex as a burdensome,
+accidental adjunct. [137] Man and woman together first constitute
+the true man; man and woman together are the existence of the race,
+for their union is the source of multiplicity, the source of other
+men. Hence the man who does not deny his manhood, is conscious that
+he is only a part of a being, which needs another part for the making
+up of the whole of true humanity. The Christian, on the contrary,
+in his excessive, transcendental subjectivity, conceives that he is,
+by himself, a perfect being. But the sexual instinct runs counter to
+this view; it is in contradiction with his ideal: the Christian must
+therefore deny this instinct.
+Some argue Christianity demands only "spiritual freedom." This is true in a sense, but what is spiritual freedom if it does not translate into action? Do you believe liberation depends only on will or intention? If so, you are mistaken and have never experienced true liberation. As long as you remain in a specific rank, profession, or relationship, you are shaped by it. Your will only frees you from limitations you are conscious of, not from unconscious ones inherent in the situation itself. We feel constrained until physically separated from what we've broken with internally.
+The Christian certainly experienced the need of sexual love, but only
+as a need in contradiction with his heavenly destination, and merely
+natural, in the depreciatory, contemptuous sense which this word
+had in Christianity,--not as a moral, inward need--not, if I may so
+express myself, as a metaphysical, i.e., an essential need, which man
+can experience only where he does not separate difference of sex from
+himself, but, on the contrary, regards it as belonging to his inmost
+nature. Hence marriage is not holy in Christianity; at least it is so
+only apparently, illusively; for the natural principle of marriage,
+which is the love of the sexes,--however civil marriage may in endless
+instances contradict this,--is in Christianity an unholy thing, and
+excluded from heaven. [138] But that which man excludes from heaven he
+excludes from his true nature. Heaven is his treasure-casket. Believe
+not in what he establishes on earth, what he permits and sanctions
+here: here he must accommodate himself; here many things come athwart
+him which do not fit into his system; here he shuns thy glance,
+for he finds himself among strangers who intimidate him. But watch
+for him when he throws off his incognito, and shows himself in his
+true dignity, his heavenly state. In heaven he speaks as he thinks;
+there thou hearest his true opinion. Where his heaven is, there is his
+heart,--heaven is his heart laid open. Heaven is nothing but the idea
+of the true, the good, the valid,--of that which ought to be; earth,
+nothing but the idea of the untrue, the unlawful, of that which ought
+not to be. The Christian excludes from heaven the life of the species:
+there the species ceases, there dwell only pure sexless individuals,
+"spirits;" there absolute subjectivity reigns:--thus the Christian
+excludes the life of the species from his conception of the true
+life; he pronounces the principle of marriage sinful, negative;
+for the sinless, positive life is the heavenly one. [139]
+> **Quote:** "External freedom is alone the full truth of spiritual freedom."
+A person who has truly lost spiritual interest in earthly treasures will soon throw them out the window so their heart may be completely free. Whatever I no longer possess by choice becomes a burden; therefore, I cast it away. What the heart has let go, the hand no longer holds. Only affection gives strength to our grip; only affection makes possession feel sacred.
+> **Quote:** "He who having a wife is as though he had her not, will do better to have no wife at all."
+To have something "as though one had it not" is to possess it without desire—which, in truth, is not to have it at all. Whoever says we should have things as though we did not is merely saying, subtly, that we should not have them at all. What I dismiss from my heart is no longer mine. Saint Anthony resolved to renounce the world after hearing: "If thou wilt be perfect, go thy way, sell that thou hast and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven; and come and follow me." Anthony gave the only honest interpretation. He sold his possessions and gave the money to the poor. Only thus did he prove his spiritual freedom from earthly treasures.
+Such freedom and honesty certainly contradict today's Christianity. Modern Christianity claims the Lord required only a "spiritual freedom"—one demanding no sacrifice or effort. This is illusory, self-deceptive freedom: freedom from earthly goods consisting in continuing to own and enjoy them! Modern believers argue the Lord said, "My yoke is easy." How could Christianity be so unreasonable as to demand renunciation of wealth? If it did, they say, it would not suit this world. Instead, they view Christianity as highly practical; it postpones freeing oneself from wealth until natural death, while dedicating active life to acquiring and enjoying earthly things. Modern Christians do not doubt heaven's truth—God forbid! In that, they agree with ancient monks. But they wait patiently, submitting to "God's will"—which means submitting to selfishness and worldly pleasure. I turn with disgust from this modern Christianity, where the "bride of Christ" happily acquiesces in successive polygamy—which, to a true Christian, is no different from contemporaneous polygamy—while swearing by the eternal, sacred truth of God's Word. I look back with respect to the misunderstood truth of the chaste monastic cell, where the soul betrothed to heaven refused unfaithfulness to an earthly body.
+An unworldly, supernatural life is essentially an unmarried life. Celibacy is inherent to Christianity's nature, even if not always enforced. This is shown in the Savior's supernatural origin, where virginity is sanctified as the saving principle of the new Christian world. We should not use "be fruitful and multiply" or "what God has joined together let no man put asunder" to justify marriage here. The first passage, as Tertullian and Jerome noted, applied only to an unpopulated earth and the world's beginning, not its end times. The second refers to marriage as an Old Testament institution. Once made, marriage should be held sacred, but marriage itself is essentially a concession to fleshly weakness—an evil to restrict as much as possible. Marriage's indissolubleness is a nimbus, a sacred irradiance, which expresses the opposite of what minds, dazzled by its luster, seek beneath it. In the sense of perfected Christianity, marriage is a sin, or at least a weakness forgiven only on condition of limiting oneself to one spouse forever. Marriage is sanctified in the Old Testament, but not the New. The New Testament recognizes a higher principle: the mystery of virginity. "He who can receive it, let him receive it." We are told that "the children of this world marry, and are given in marriage: but they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world... neither marry nor are given in marriage: neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels."
+Since there is no marriage in heaven, sexual love is excluded as earthly. But heavenly life is the true, perfected, eternal Christian life. Why then should I, destined for heaven, form a bond dissolved at my true destination? Why should I, a potential citizen of heaven, not realize that potential here and now? Marriage is already dismissed from mind and heart because it is expelled from heaven—the object of faith and hope. How can an earthly wife have place in a heart filled with heaven? How can I divide my heart between God and a human being? The Christian's love for God is not abstract like love for truth or justice; it is love for a subjective, personal God, and therefore subjective, personal love. It is jealous and exclusive, for its object is the highest possible being. "Stay close to Jesus in life and death; trust his faithfulness, for he alone can help when all else fails. Your beloved is such that he will suffer no rival; he alone will have your heart and rule your soul like a king on a throne." Tradition tells us the world is worthless without Jesus, that being without Christ is hell's pain, and being with him is heavenly sweetness. We must love everything for Jesus' sake, but Jesus for his own sake. "My God, my love: thou art wholly mine, and I am wholly thine." The lover must accept all things, even the bitter, for the beloved's sake. "My God and my all... in thy presence everything is sweet, in thy absence everything is distasteful." The soul longs for when God will be all in all.
+> **Quote:** "I will rather be a pilgrim on earth with thee, than the possessor of heaven without thee. Where thou art is heaven; death and hell where thou art not. I long only for thee."
+Tradition says you cannot serve God and enjoy earthly things simultaneously; one must be a stranger and pilgrim on the earth.
+Thus, love for God as a personal being is literal, strict, exclusive personal love. How then can I love both God and a mortal spouse? Does that not put God on a level with a human? To a soul that truly loves God, love of a woman is impossible; it is adultery. As Paul said, the unmarried person cares for the Lord's things and how to please him, but the married person cares for worldly things and how to please their spouse.
+The true Christian feels no need for culture because culture is worldly. Likewise, they have no need for natural love. God fulfills the need for culture, and God fulfills the need for love, a wife, and family. The Christian identifies the species with the individual; therefore, they strip off the difference of sex as a burdensome, accidental adjunct. In reality, man and woman together constitute the "true man"; their union is the race's existence and source of all humans. A man who embraces his humanity knows he is only part of a being, needing another part to complete his humanity. The Christian, in radical subjectivity, believes they are a perfect being alone. But the sexual instinct contradicts this ideal; therefore, the Christian must deny it.
+The Christian certainly feels the need for sexual love, but sees it only as contradicting heavenly destiny. They view it as "merely natural" in a derogatory sense, not as moral or essential need. This is why marriage is not truly holy in Christianity, or only apparently so. Marriage's natural principle—sexual love—is viewed as unholy and excluded from heaven. But whatever one excludes from heaven, one excludes from true nature. Heaven is the repository of what one values most. Do not look at what one establishes on earth; here, one must compromise. Look instead at how one envisions heavenly state. In heaven, they speak their mind.
+> **Quote:** "Heaven is nothing but the idea of the true, the good, the valid—of that which ought to be; earth, nothing but the idea of the untrue, the unlawful, of that which ought not to be."
+The Christian excludes species-life from heaven; there, the race ends, and only sexless "spirits" remain. There, absolute subjectivity reigns. In doing so, the Christian excludes species-life from their conception of truth. They pronounce marriage's principle negative and sinful because the positive, sinless life is the heavenly one.
 ### CHAPTER XVIII. - THE CHRISTIAN HEAVEN, OR PERSONAL IMMORTALITY.
+The celibate, ascetic life is the direct path to heavenly immortality: heaven is life freed from species constraints—a supernatural, sexless, purely subjective existence. Belief in personal immortality rests on seeing sexual difference as merely external to individuality, as if individuals were essentially sexless, self-contained, absolute beings. But one without sex belongs to no species. Sex links individual to species; without it, one belongs only to oneself—an independent, divine, absolute being. Heavenly life becomes certain only when the concept of species vanishes from consciousness.
+The unwedded and ascetic life is the direct way to the heavenly,
+immortal life, for heaven is nothing else than life liberated from
+the conditions of the species, supernatural, sexless, absolutely
+subjective life. The belief in personal immortality has at its
+foundation the belief that difference of sex is only an external
+adjunct of individuality, that in himself the individual is a sexless,
+independently complete, absolute being. But he who belongs to no sex
+belongs to no species; sex is the cord which connects the individuality
+with the species, and he who belongs to no species, belongs only to
+himself, is an altogether independent, divine, absolute being. Hence
+only when the species vanishes from the consciousness is the heavenly
+life a certainty. He who lives in the consciousness of the species,
+and consequently of its reality, lives also in the consciousness of
+the reality of sex. He does not regard it as a mechanically inserted,
+adventitious stone of stumbling, but as an inherent quality, a chemical
+constituent of his being. He indeed recognises himself as a man in
+the broader sense, but he is at the same time conscious of being
+rigorously determined by the sexual distinction, which penetrates not
+only bones and marrow, but also his inmost self, the essential mode
+of his thought, will, and sensation. He therefore who lives in the
+consciousness of the species, who limits and determines his feelings
+and imagination by the contemplation of real life, of real man, can
+conceive no life in which the life of the species, and therewith the
+distinction of sex, is abolished; he regards the sexless individual,
+the heavenly spirit, as an agreeable figment of the imagination.
+Those conscious of species reality are also conscious of sex reality. They see sex not as an accidental obstacle but as inherent—a fundamental element of being. While recognizing themselves as broadly human, they are strictly defined by sexual distinctions that permeate not only their bodies but their deepest selves: their essential ways of thinking, willing, and feeling. Thus those who live with species-awareness, limiting imagination to real life and real people, cannot imagine abolishing species and sexual distinction. To them, the sexless heavenly spirit is merely fantasy.
+But just as little as the real man can abstract himself from the
+distinction of sex, so little can he abstract himself from his moral or
+spiritual constitution, which indeed is profoundly connected with his
+natural constitution. Precisely because he lives in the contemplation
+of the whole, he also lives in the consciousness that he is himself
+no more than a part, and that he is what he is only by virtue of the
+conditions which constitute him a member of the whole, or a relative
+whole. Every one, therefore, justifiably regards his occupation, his
+profession, his art or science, as the highest; for the mind of man
+is nothing but the essential mode of his activity. He who is skilful
+in his profession, in his art, he who fills his post well, and is
+entirely devoted to his calling, thinks that calling the highest and
+best. How can he deny in thought what he emphatically declares in act
+by the joyful devotion of all his powers? If I despise a thing, how can
+I dedicate to it my time and faculties? If I am compelled to do so in
+spite of my aversion, my activity is an unhappy one, for I am at war
+with myself. Work is worship. But how can I worship or serve an object,
+how can I subject myself to it, if it does not hold a high place in
+my mind? In brief, the occupations of men determine their judgment,
+their mode of thought, their sentiments. And the higher the occupation,
+the more completely does a man identify himself with it. In general,
+whatever a man makes the essential aim of his life, he proclaims to
+be his soul; for it is the principle of motion in him. But through
+his aim, through the activity in which he realises this aim, man
+is not only something for himself, but also something for others,
+for the general life, the species. He therefore who lives in the
+consciousness of the species as a reality, regards his existence
+for others, his relation to society, his utility to the public, as
+that existence which is one with the existence of his own essence--as
+his immortal existence. He lives with his whole soul, with his whole
+heart, for humanity. How can he hold in reserve a special existence
+for himself, how can he separate himself from mankind? How shall he
+deny in death what he has enforced in life? And in life his faith is
+this: Nec sibi sed toti genitum se credere mundo.
+Just as real people cannot separate from sexual distinctions, they cannot separate from their moral or spiritual nature, which is deeply connected to their physical constitution. Viewing life as a whole, they understand themselves as only a part of it—what they are only because of conditions that make them a community member. Therefore everyone naturally views their occupation, profession, art, or science as the highest pursuit; the human mind is simply the essential mode of its own activity. One skilled in a calling, devoted to it, considers it the best.
+The heavenly life, or what we do not here distinguish from it--personal
+immortality, is a characteristic doctrine of Christianity. It is
+certainly in part to be found among the heathen philosophers; but
+with them it had only the significance of a subjective conception,
+because it was not connected with their fundamental view of things. How
+contradictory, for example, are the expressions of the Stoics on this
+subject! It was among the Christians that personal immortality first
+found that principle, whence it follows as a necessary and obvious
+consequence. The contemplation of the world, of Nature, of the race,
+was always coming athwart the ancients; they distinguished between the
+principle of life and the living subject, between the soul, the mind,
+and self: whereas the Christian abolished the distinction between soul
+and person, species and individual, and therefore placed immediately
+in self what belongs only to the totality of the species. But the
+immediate unity of the species and individuality is the highest
+principle, the God of Christianity,--in it the individual has the
+significance of the absolute being,--and the necessary, immanent
+consequence of this principle is personal immortality.
+> **Quote:** "Work is worship."
+Or rather: the belief in personal immortality is perfectly identical
+with the belief in a personal God;--i.e., that which expresses the
+belief in the heavenly, immortal life of the person, expresses God
+also, as he is an object to Christians, namely, as absolute, unlimited
+personality. Unlimited personality is God; but heavenly personality, or
+the perpetuation of human personality in heaven, is nothing else than
+personality released from all earthly encumbrances and limitations;
+the only distinction is, that God is heaven spiritualised, while heaven
+is God materialised, or reduced to the forms of the senses: that what
+in God is posited only in abstracto is in heaven more an object of
+the imagination. God is the implicit heaven; heaven is the explicit
+God. In the present, God is the kingdom of heaven; in the future,
+heaven is God. God is the pledge, the as yet abstract presence and
+existence of heaven; the anticipation, the epitome of heaven. Our own
+future existence, which, while we are in this world, in this body, is a
+separate, objective existence,--is God: God is the idea of the species,
+which will be first realised, individualised in the other world. God
+is the heavenly, pure, free essence, which exists there as heavenly
+pure beings, the bliss which there unfolds itself in a plenitude of
+blissful individuals. Thus God is nothing else than the idea or the
+essence of the absolute, blessed, heavenly life, here comprised in
+an ideal personality. This is clearly enough expressed in the belief
+that the blessed life is unity with God. Here we are distinguished and
+separated from God, there the partition falls; here we are men, there
+gods; here the Godhead is a monopoly, there it is a common possession;
+here it is an abstract unity, there a concrete multiplicity. [140]
+How can someone deny in thought what they demonstrate through actions and joyful devotion? If I despise something, I cannot dedicate my time and talents to it. If forced, my work becomes miserable because I am at war with myself. How can I respect or serve what does not hold a high place in my mind? In short, occupation determines judgment, thinking, and feelings. The more significant the occupation, the more completely one identifies with it. Whatever one makes life's essential goal, they declare to be their very soul, their driving principle.
+The only difficulty in the recognition of this is created by
+the imagination, which, on the one hand by the conception of the
+personality of God, on the other by the conception of the many
+personalities which it places in a realm ordinarily depicted in the
+hues of the senses, hides the real unity of the idea. But in truth
+there is no distinction between the absolute life which is conceived
+as God and the absolute life which is conceived as heaven, save that
+in heaven we have stretched into length and breadth what in God is
+concentrated in one point. The belief in the immortality of man is the
+belief in the divinity of man, and the belief in God is the belief
+in pure personality, released from all limits, and consequently eo
+ipso immortal. The distinctions made between the immortal soul and
+God are either sophistical or imaginative; as when, for example, the
+bliss of the inhabitants of heaven is again circumscribed by limits,
+and distributed into degrees, in order to establish a distinction
+between God and the dwellers in heaven.
+But through this goal and its activity, a person exists not just for themselves but for others and for the species' collective life. Those who view species as reality see their existence for others—their social relationships and public utility—as identical to their own essence. This is their immortal existence. They live with whole soul and heart for humanity. How could they keep a separate existence or detach from mankind? How could they deny in death what they championed in life? Their faith is this: *Nec sibi sed toti genitum se credere mundo*—to believe oneself born not for oneself, but for the entire world.
+The identity of the divine and heavenly personality is apparent even
+in the popular proofs of immortality. If there is not another and a
+better life, God is not just and good. The justice and goodness of God
+are thus made dependent on the perpetuity of individuals; but without
+justice and goodness God is not God;--the Godhead, the existence of
+God, is therefore made dependent on the existence of individuals. If
+I am not immortal, I believe in no God; he who denies immortality
+denies God. But that is impossible to me: as surely as there is a God,
+so surely is there an immortality. God is the certainty of my future
+felicity. The interest I have in knowing that God is, is one with the
+interest I have in knowing that I am, that I am immortal. God is my
+hidden, my assured existence; he is the subjectivity of subjects,
+the personality of persons. How then should that not belong to
+persons which belongs to personality? In God I make my future into a
+present, or rather a verb into a substantive; how should I separate
+the one from the other? God is the existence corresponding to my
+wishes and feelings: he is the just one, the good, who fulfils my
+wishes. Nature, this world, is an existence which contradicts my
+wishes, my feelings. Here it is not as it ought to be; this world
+passes away; but God is existence as it ought to be. God fulfils my
+wishes;--this is only a popular personification of the position: God is
+the fulfiller, i.e., the reality, the fulfilment of my wishes. [141]
+But heaven is the existence adequate to my wishes, my longing; [142]
+thus there is no distinction between God and heaven. God is the power
+by which man realises his eternal happiness; God is the absolute
+personality in which all individual persons have the certainty of
+their blessedness and immortality; God is to subjectivity the highest,
+last certainty of its absolute truth and essentiality.
+Heavenly life—or personal immortality, which we will not distinguish here—is Christianity's defining doctrine. While ancient philosophers held similar ideas, these were merely subjective concepts unconnected to their worldview. The Stoics, for instance, were contradictory on this. Christianity first provided a principle from which personal immortality follows as necessary conclusion. The ancients distinguished between the principle of life and the living subject—between the soul, the mind, and the self. Christianity eliminated the distinction between soul and person, species and individual, placing within the "self" what belongs only to species totality. But the immediate unity of species and individual is Christianity's highest principle: God. In this view, the individual is an absolute being, and the necessary result is personal immortality.
+The doctrine of immortality is the final doctrine of religion; its
+testament, in which it declares its last wishes. Here therefore it
+speaks out undisguisedly what it has hitherto suppressed. If elsewhere
+the religious soul concerns itself with the existence of another
+being, here it openly considers only its own existence; if elsewhere
+in religion man makes his existence dependent on the existence of God,
+he here makes the reality of God dependent on his own reality; and
+thus what elsewhere is a primitive, immediate truth to him, is here
+a derivative, secondary truth: if I am not immortal, God is not God;
+if there is no immortality, there is no God;--a conclusion already
+drawn by the Apostle Paul. If we do not rise again, then Christ is
+not risen, and all is vain. Let us eat and drink. It is certainly
+possible to do away with what is apparently or really objectionable
+in the popular argumentation, by avoiding the inferential form; but
+this can only be done by making immortality an analytic instead of a
+synthetic truth, so as to show that the very idea of God as absolute
+personality or subjectivity is per se the idea of immortality. God
+is the guarantee of my future existence, because he is already the
+certainty and reality of my present existence, my salvation, my
+trust, my shield from the forces of the external world; hence I need
+not expressly deduce immortality, or prove it as a separate truth,
+for if I have God, I have immortality also. Thus it was with the
+more profound Christian mystics; to them the idea of immortality was
+involved in the idea of God; God was their immortal life,--God himself
+their subjective blessedness: he was for them, for their consciousness,
+what he is in himself, that is, in the essence of religion.
+Or rather, belief in personal immortality is identical to belief in a personal God. What expresses belief in heavenly, immortal life also expresses God as Christians perceive Him: as absolute, unlimited personality.
+Thus it is shown that God is heaven; that the two are identical. It
+would have been easier to prove the converse, namely, that heaven is
+the true God of men. As man conceives his heaven, so he conceives his
+God; the content of his idea of heaven is the content of his idea of
+God, only that what in God is a mere sketch, a concept, is in heaven
+depicted and developed in the colours and forms of the senses. Heaven
+is therefore the key to the deepest mysteries of religion. As heaven
+is objectively the displayed nature of God, so subjectively it is the
+most candid declaration of the inmost thoughts and dispositions of
+religion. For this reason, religions are as various as are the kingdoms
+of heaven, and there are as many different kingdoms of heaven as there
+are characteristic differences among men. The Christians themselves
+have very heterogeneous conceptions of heaven. [143]
+> **Quote:** Unlimited personality is God; but heavenly personality, or the perpetuation of human personality in heaven, is nothing else than personality released from all earthly encumbrances and limitations.
+The more judicious among them, however, think and say nothing definite
+about heaven or the future world in general, on the ground that it is
+inconceivable, that it can only be thought of by us according to the
+standard of this world, a standard not applicable to the other. All
+conceptions of heaven here below are, they allege, mere images,
+whereby man represents to himself that future, the nature of which
+is unknown to him, but the existence of which is certain. It is just
+so with God. The existence of God, it is said, is certain; but what
+he is, or how he exists, is inscrutable. But he who speaks thus has
+already driven the future world out of his head; he still holds it
+fast, either because he does not think at all about such matters, or
+because it is still a want of his heart; but, preoccupied with real
+things, he thrusts it as far as possible out of his sight; he denies
+with his head what he affirms with his heart; for it is to deny the
+future life, to deprive it of the qualities by which alone it is a real
+and effective object for man. Quality is not distinct from existence;
+quality is nothing but real existence. Existence without quality is a
+chimera, a spectre. Existence is first made known to me by quality;
+not existence first, and after that quality. The doctrines that God
+is not to be known or defined, and that the nature of the future life
+is inscrutable, are therefore not originally religious doctrines;
+on the contrary, they are the products of irreligion while still in
+bondage to religion, or rather hiding itself behind religion; and
+they are so for this reason, that originally the existence of God is
+posited only with a definite conception of God, the existence of a
+future life only with a definite conception of that life. Thus to the
+Christian, only his own paradise, the paradise which has Christian
+qualities, is a certainty, not the paradise of the Mahometan or the
+Elysium of the Greeks. The primary certainty is everywhere quality;
+existence follows of course when once quality is certain. In the New
+Testament we find no proofs or general propositions such as: there
+is a God, there is a heavenly life; we find only qualities of the
+heavenly life adduced;--"in heaven they marry not." Naturally;--it
+may be answered,--because the existence of God and of heaven is
+presupposed. But here reflection introduces a distinction of which
+the religious sentiment knows nothing. Doubtless the existence is
+presupposed, but only because the quality is itself existence, because
+the inviolate religious feeling lives only in the quality, just as to
+the natural man the real existence, the thing in itself, lies only in
+the quality which he perceives. Thus in the passage above cited from
+the New Testament, the virgin or rather sexless life is presupposed
+as the true life, which, however, necessarily becomes a future one,
+because the actual life contradicts the ideal of the true life. But
+the certainty of this future life lies only in the certainty of its
+qualities, as those of the true, highest life, adequate to the ideal.
+> **Quote:** "God is the implicit heaven; heaven is the explicit God."
+Where the future life is really believed in, where it is a certain
+life, there, precisely because it is certain, it is also definite. If
+I know not now what and how I shall be; if there is an essential,
+absolute difference between my future and my present; neither shall I
+then know what and how I was before, the unity of consciousness is at
+an end, personal identity is abolished, another being will appear in my
+place; and thus my future existence is not in fact distinguished from
+non-existence. If, on the other hand, there is no essential difference,
+the future is to me an object that may be defined and known. And so
+it is in reality. I am the abiding subject under changing conditions;
+I am the substance which connects the present and the future into a
+unity. How then can the future be obscure to me? On the contrary,
+the life of this world is the dark, incomprehensible life, which
+only becomes clear through the future life; here I am in disguise;
+there the mask will fall; there I shall be as I am in truth. Hence the
+position that there indeed is another, a heavenly life, but that what
+and how it is must here remain inscrutable, is only an invention of
+religious scepticism, which, being entirely alien to the religious
+sentiment, proceeds upon a total misconception of religion. That
+which irreligious-religious reflection converts into a known image
+of an unknown yet certain thing, is originally, in the primitive,
+true sense of religion, not an image, but the thing itself. Unbelief,
+in the garb of belief, doubts the existence of the thing, but it is too
+shallow or cowardly directly to call it in question; it only expresses
+doubt of the image or conception, i.e., declares the image to be only
+an image. But the untruth and hollowness of this scepticism has been
+already made evident historically. Where it is once doubted that the
+images of immortality are real, that it is possible to exist as faith
+conceives, for example, without a material, real body, and without
+difference of sex; there the future existence in general is soon a
+matter of doubt. With the image falls the thing, simply because the
+image is the thing itself.
+Unlimited personality is God; heavenly personality is simply personality freed from earthly burdens. The only difference: God is heaven spiritualized, heaven is God materialized. What is abstract in God is imaginative in heaven. Currently God is the kingdom of heaven; in the future, heaven is God. God is the promise—the abstract presence—of heaven. Our future existence, which while embodied remains a separate idea, *is* God. God is the species concept fully realized and individualized in the next world, the pure essence existing as blissful individuals. Thus God is nothing but the idea of absolute, blessed, heavenly life condensed into ideal personality. This is expressed in the belief that blessed life is unity with God. Here we are separate from God; there the barrier falls. Here we are human; there we are gods. Here divinity is a monopoly; there it is shared. Here it is abstract unity; there concrete multiplicity.
+The belief in heaven, or in a future life in general, rests on a mental
+judgment. It expresses praise and blame; it selects a wreath from the
+flora of this world, and this critical florilegium is heaven. That
+which man thinks beautiful, good, agreeable, is for him what alone
+ought to be; that which he thinks bad, odious, disagreeable, is
+what ought not to be; and hence, since it nevertheless exists, it is
+condemned to destruction, it is regarded as a negation. Where life is
+not in contradiction with a feeling, an imagination, an idea, and where
+this feeling, this idea, is not held authoritative and absolute, the
+belief in another and a heavenly life does not arise. The future life
+is nothing else than life in unison with the feeling, with the idea,
+which the present life contradicts. The whole import of the future
+life is the abolition of this discordance, and the realisation of a
+state which corresponds to the feelings, in which man is in unison
+with himself. An unknown, unimagined future is a ridiculous chimera:
+the other world is nothing more than the reality of a known idea,
+the satisfaction of a conscious desire, the fulfilment of a wish;
+[144] it is only the removal of limits which here oppose themselves
+to the realisation of the idea. Where would be the consolation, where
+the significance of a future life, if it were midnight darkness to
+me? No! from yonder world there streams upon me with the splendour
+of virgin gold what here shines only with the dimness of unrefined
+ore. The future world has no other significance, no other basis of
+its existence, than the separation of the metal from the admixture
+of foreign elements, the separation of the good from the bad,
+of the pleasant from the unpleasant, of the praiseworthy from the
+blamable. The future world is the bridal in which man concludes
+his union with his beloved. Long has he loved his bride, long has
+he yearned after her; but external relations, hard reality, have
+stood in the way of his union to her. When the wedding takes place,
+his beloved one does not become a different being; else how could he
+so ardently long for her? She only becomes his own; from an object
+of yearning and affectionate desire she becomes an object of actual
+possession. It is true that here below, the other world is only an
+image, a conception; still it is not the image of a remote, unknown
+thing, but a portrait of that which man loves and prefers before all
+else. What man loves is his soul. The heathens enclosed the ashes of
+the beloved dead in an urn; with the Christian the heavenly future
+is the mausoleum in which he enshrines his soul.
+The only thing making this hard to perceive is imagination. On one hand it creates God's personality; on the other it envisions many personalities in a sensually painted realm, hiding the underlying unity. In truth, there is no difference between absolute life conceived as God and as heaven, except that in heaven we expand into detail what is concentrated in God.
+In order to comprehend a particular faith, or religion in general,
+it is necessary to consider religion in its rudimentary stages,
+in its lowest, rudest condition. Religion must not only be traced
+in an ascending line, but surveyed in the entire course of its
+existence. It is requisite to regard the various earlier religions as
+present in the absolute religion, and not as left behind it in the
+past, in order correctly to appreciate and comprehend the absolute
+religion as well as the others. The most frightful "aberrations,"
+the wildest excesses of the religious consciousness, often afford the
+profoundest insight into the mysteries of the absolute religion. Ideas,
+seemingly the rudest, are often only the most childlike, innocent, and
+true. This observation applies to the conceptions of a future life. The
+"savage," whose consciousness does not extend beyond his own country,
+whose entire being is a growth of its soil, takes his country with him
+into the other world, either leaving Nature as it is, or improving it,
+and so overcoming in the idea of the other life the difficulties he
+experiences in this. [145] In this limitation of uncultivated tribes
+there is a striking trait. With them the future expresses nothing
+else than home-sickness. Death separates man from his kindred, from
+his people, from his country. But the man who has not extended his
+consciousness, cannot endure this separation; he must come back again
+to his native land. The negroes in the West Indies killed themselves
+that they might come to life again in their fatherland. And, according
+to Ossian's conception, "the spirits of those who die in a strange
+land float back towards their birthplace." [146] This limitation is
+the direct opposite of imaginative spiritualism, which makes man a
+vagabond, who, indifferent even to the earth, roams from star to star;
+and certainly there lies a real truth at its foundation. Man is what
+he is through Nature, however much may belong to his spontaneity;
+for even his spontaneity has its foundation in Nature, of which his
+particular character is only an expression. Be thankful to Nature! Man
+cannot be separated from it. The German, whose God is spontaneity,
+owes his character to Nature just as much as the Oriental. To find
+fault with Indian art, with Indian religion and philosophy, is to find
+fault with Indian Nature. You complain of the reviewer who tears a
+passage in your works from the context that he may hand it over to
+ridicule. Why are you yourself guilty of that which you blame in
+others? Why do you tear the Indian religion from its connection,
+in which it is just as reasonable as your absolute religion?
+> **Quote:** "The belief in the immortality of man is the belief in the divinity of man, and the belief in God is the belief in pure personality, released from all limits, and consequently eo ipso immortal."
+Faith in a future world, in a life after death, is therefore with
+"savage" tribes essentially nothing more than direct faith in the
+present life--immediate unbroken faith in this life. For them,
+their actual life, even with its local limitations, has all, has
+absolute value; they cannot abstract from it, they cannot conceive its
+being broken off; i.e., they believe directly in the infinitude, the
+perpetuity of this life. Only when the belief in immortality becomes a
+critical belief, when a distinction is made between what is to be left
+behind here, and what is in reserve there, between what here passes
+away, and what there is to abide, does the belief in life after death
+form itself into the belief in another life; but this criticism, this
+distinction, is applied to the present life also. Thus the Christians
+distinguish between the natural and the Christian life, the sensual or
+worldly and the spiritual or holy life. The heavenly life is no other
+than that which is, already here below, distinguished from the merely
+natural life, though still tainted with it. That which the Christian
+excludes from himself now--for example, the sexual life--is excluded
+from the future: the only distinction is, that he is there free from
+that which he here wishes to be free from, and seeks to rid himself
+of by the will, by devotion, and by bodily mortification. Hence this
+life is, for the Christian, a life of torment and pain, because he
+is here still beset by a hostile power, and has to struggle with the
+lusts of the flesh and the assaults of the devil.
+Any distinctions between immortal soul and God are clever wordplay or imagination—such as limiting heavenly bliss into ranks just to maintain a gap between God and residents.
+The faith of cultured nations is therefore distinguished from
+that of the uncultured in the same way that culture in general is
+distinguished from inculture: namely, that the faith of culture is
+a discriminating, critical, abstract faith. A distinction implies a
+judgment; but where there is a judgment there arises the distinction
+between positive and negative. The faith of savage tribes is a
+faith without a judgment. Culture, on the contrary, judges: to the
+cultured man only cultured life is the true life; to the Christian
+only the Christian life. The rude child of Nature steps into the other
+life just as he is, without ceremony: the other world is his natural
+nakedness. The cultivated man, on the contrary, objects to the idea of
+such an unbridled life after death, because even here he objects to
+the unrestricted life of Nature. Faith in a future life is therefore
+only faith in the true life of the present; the essential elements of
+this life are also the essential elements of the other: accordingly,
+faith in a future life is not faith in another unknown life; but in
+the truth and infinitude, and consequently in the perpetuity, of that
+life which already here below is regarded as the authentic life.
+The identity of divine and heavenly personality is evident in common immortality arguments. People say: if no better life hereafter, then God is not just or good. Thus God's justice depends on individual survival. But without justice, God is not God. Therefore God's existence depends on individuals' existence.
+> **Quote:** If I am not immortal, I believe in no God; he who denies immortality denies God.
+But that is impossible: as surely as God exists, immortality exists. God is the guarantee of my future happiness. My interest in God's existence is identical to my interest in my immortality. God is my hidden, assured existence; the subjectivity of subjects, personality of persons. How could what belongs to personality not belong to people? In God I turn my future into present reality; how could I separate them? God is existence matching my wishes: the just and good one fulfilling my desires. Nature contradicts my wishes; it passes away, but God is existence as it should be. The idea that "God fulfills my wishes" personifies the fact that God is the reality and fulfillment of my desires. Since heaven matches my longings, there is no difference between God and heaven. God is the power by which humans achieve eternal happiness; the absolute personality in which each individual finds certainty of their own immortality. To our subjectivity, God is ultimate proof of our own truth and essential nature.
+As God is nothing else than the nature of man purified from that
+which to the human individual appears, whether in feeling or thought,
+a limitation, an evil; so the future life is nothing else than the
+present life freed from that which appears a limitation or an evil. The
+more definitely and profoundly the individual is conscious of the limit
+as a limit, of the evil as an evil, the more definite and profound is
+his conviction of the future life, where these limits disappear. The
+future life is the feeling, the conception of freedom from those
+limits which here circumscribe the feeling of self, the existence of
+the individual. The only difference between the course of religion and
+that of the natural or rational man is, that the end which the latter
+arrives at by a straight line, the former only attains by describing
+a curved line--a circle. The natural man remains at home because he
+finds it agreeable, because he is perfectly satisfied; religion which
+commences with a discontent, a disunion, forsakes its home and travels
+far, but only to feel the more vividly in the distance the happiness
+of home. In religion man separates himself from himself, but only to
+return always to the same point from which he set out. Man negatives
+himself, but only to posit himself again, and that in a glorified form:
+he negatives this life, but only, in the end, to posit it again in
+the future life. [147] The future life is this life once lost, but
+found again, and radiant with all the more brightness for the joy of
+recovery. The religious man renounces the joys of this world, but only
+that he may win in return the joys of heaven; or rather he renounces
+them because he is already in the ideal possession of heavenly joys;
+and the joys of heaven are the same as those of earth, only that they
+are freed from the limits and contrarieties of this life. Religion
+thus arrives, though by a circuit, at the very goal, the goal of joy,
+towards which the natural man hastens in a direct line. To live in
+images or symbols is the essence of religion. Religion sacrifices
+the thing itself to the image. The future life is the present in the
+mirror of the imagination: the enrapturing image is in the sense of
+religion the true type of earthly life,--real life only a glimmer of
+that ideal, imaginary life. The future life is the present embellished,
+contemplated through the imagination, purified from all gross matter;
+or, positively expressed, it is the beauteous present intensified.
+The doctrine of immortality is religion's final doctrine—its last will and testament. Here religion speaks openly what it previously hid. Elsewhere the religious soul might focus on another Being's existence; here it focuses only on its own. While religion usually makes human existence dependent on God, here it makes God's reality dependent on human reality. What was once primary becomes secondary: "If I am not immortal, then God is not God." As Paul concluded: if we do not rise, Christ is not risen, and all is vain; let us eat and drink. One could avoid this bluntness by making immortality analytical—showing that the idea of God as absolute personality is itself the idea of immortality. God guarantees my future because He is already the reality of my present—my salvation, trust, shield from the world. Therefore I need not prove immortality separately; if I have God, I have immortality. This was the view of profound Christian mystics: to them, immortality was contained within the idea of God. God was their immortal life and personal bliss.
+Embellishment, emendation, presupposes blame, dissatisfaction. But
+the dissatisfaction is only superficial. I do not deny the thing to
+be of value; just as it is, however, it does not please me; I deny
+only the modification, not the substance, otherwise I should urge
+annihilation. A house which absolutely displeases me I cause to be
+pulled down, not to be embellished. To the believer in a future
+life joy is agreeable--who can fail to be conscious that joy is
+something positive?--but it is disagreeable to him that here joy
+is followed by opposite sensations, that it is transitory. Hence he
+places joy in the future life also, but as eternal, uninterrupted,
+divine joy (and the future life is therefore called the world of joy),
+such as he here conceives it in God; for God is nothing but eternal,
+uninterrupted joy, posited as a subject. Individuality or personality
+is agreeable to him, but only as unencumbered by objective forces;
+hence, he includes individuality also, but pure, absolutely subjective
+individuality. Light pleases him; but not gravitation, because this
+appears a limitation of the individual; not night, because in it man
+is subjected to Nature: in the other world, there is light, but no
+weight, no night,--pure, unobstructed light. [148]
+It is clear that God and heaven are identical. It might be easier to argue the reverse: that heaven is humanity's true God. As people imagine heaven, so they imagine God. Heaven's content is God's content, except what is sketch in God is fully painted in heaven. Heaven is the key to religion's deepest mysteries. Objectively, heaven displays God's nature; subjectively, it is religion's most honest declaration. Therefore religions are as diverse as their heavens; there are as many kingdoms of heaven as characteristic differences among people. Even Christians differ widely on heaven.
+As man in his utmost remoteness from himself, in God, always returns
+upon himself, always revolves round himself; so in his utmost
+remoteness from the world, he always at last comes back to it. The
+more extra- and supra-human God appears at the commencement, the more
+human does he show himself to be in the subsequent course of things,
+or at the close: and just so, the more supernatural the heavenly life
+looks in the beginning or at a distance, the more clearly does it,
+in the end or when viewed closely, exhibit its identity with the
+natural life,--an identity which at last extends even to the flesh,
+even to the body. In the first instance the mind is occupied with the
+separation of the soul from the body, as in the conception of God
+the mind is first occupied with the separation of the essence from
+the individual;--the individual dies a spiritual death, the dead
+body which remains behind is the human individual; the soul which
+has departed from it is God. But the separation of the soul from
+the body, of the essence from the individual, of God from man, must
+be abolished again. Every separation of beings essentially allied
+is painful. The soul yearns after its lost half, after its body;
+as God, the departed soul yearns after the real man. As, therefore,
+God becomes a man again, so the soul returns to its body, and the
+perfect identity of this world and the other is now restored. It
+is true that this new body is a bright, glorified, miraculous body,
+but--and this is the main point--it is another and yet the same body,
+[149] as God is another being than man, and yet the same. Here we
+come again to the idea of miracle, which unites contradictories. The
+supernatural body is a body constructed by the imagination, for which
+very reason it is adequate to the feelings of man: an unburdensome,
+purely subjective body. Faith in the future life is nothing else than
+faith in the truth of the imagination, as faith in God is faith in
+the truth and infinity of human feeling. Or: as faith in God is only
+faith in the abstract nature of man, so faith in the heavenly life
+is only faith in the abstract earthly life.
+The more cautious say nothing specific about heaven, arguing it is inconceivable and can only be imagined using worldly standards that don't apply. They claim descriptions are just images of an unknown but certain future. They say the same about God: existence certain, nature inscrutable. But anyone speaking this way has already dismissed the future world. They hold on only because they don't think deeply, or their heart still needs it. But since preoccupied with reality, they push it far away. They deny with their heads what they affirm with their hearts. To strip future life of qualities making it a real object of focus is to deny it altogether. Quality is not separate from existence; quality is real existence. Existence without quality is a chimera, a spectre. I only know existence through qualities. The idea that God or future life is inscrutable is not truly religious doctrine; it is lack of faith hiding behind religion. Originally, God's existence was proposed alongside a specific concept, and future life with a specific description. To a Christian, only their specific paradise is certain, not another's.
+But the sum of the future life is happiness, the everlasting bliss of
+personality, which is here limited and circumscribed by Nature. Faith
+in the future life is therefore faith in the freedom of subjectivity
+from the limits of Nature; it is faith in the eternity and infinitude
+of personality, and not of personality viewed in relation to the idea
+of the species, in which it for ever unfolds itself in new individuals,
+but of personality as belonging to already existing individuals:
+consequently, it is the faith of man in himself. But faith in the
+kingdom of heaven is one with faith in God--the content of both
+ideas is the same; God is pure absolute subjectivity released from
+all natural limits; he is what individuals ought to be and will be:
+faith in God is therefore the faith of man in the infinitude and truth
+of his own nature; the Divine Being is the subjective human being in
+his absolute freedom and unlimitedness.
+Certainty begins with quality; existence follows once quality is established. In the New Testament we find no abstract proofs for God or heaven; we find descriptions—"in heaven they do not marry." This is because heaven's existence is assumed. But this assumes a distinction religious feeling doesn't make. Existence is assumed because quality *is* existence. To the religious person, reality lies in quality, just as to a natural person a thing exists through perceived qualities. In the New Testament, sexless life is assumed to be true life, which must be future because actual life contradicts this ideal. Future life's certainty rests entirely on its qualities as ideal life. Where future life is truly believed, it is clearly defined. If I don't know what or how I will be—if total break exists between future and present—then I won't know who I was before. Consciousness unity would end, personal identity vanish, another being take my place. Then future existence would be no different from nonexistence. If, however, no Scrubbed essential difference exists, then future is something I can define and know. And that is how it is. I am the same subject under different conditions; I am the substance connecting present and future into one. How then could the future be a mystery? On the contrary, this world's life is the dark, incomprehensible one, which only becomes clear through the future life. Therefore, the claim that another heavenly life exists but remains inscrutable is merely religious skepticism's invention. Such view is entirely foreign to religious sentiment and proceeds from total misunderstanding. What irreligious-religious reflection turns into known image of unknown but certain thing is originally, in true primitive religion, not image but thing itself. Unbelief, wearing belief's clothes, doubts the thing's reality but is too shallow or cowardly to question directly; it only doubts image or concept—declaring image merely image. But this skepticism's falsehood and hollowness has been shown historically. Once images of immortality are doubted as real—that existence as faith imagines (without body or sex difference) is possible—then future existence itself soon becomes doubted.
+Our most essential task is now fulfilled. We have reduced the
+supermundane, supernatural, and superhuman nature of God to the
+elements of human nature as its fundamental elements. Our process
+of analysis has brought us again to the position with which we set
+out. The beginning, middle and end of religion is Man.
+> **Quote:** "With the image falls the thing, simply because the image is the thing itself."
+Belief in heaven is based on mental judgment. It expresses praise and blame; it selects a wreath from the flora of this world, and this critical florilegium is heaven. What one considers beautiful, good, and agreeable is what alone ought to be; what is bad, hateful, and disagreeable ought not be. Since the latter exists, it is condemned to destruction. Where life does not conflict with a feeling or idea held absolute, belief in heavenly life does not arise. Future life is life in harmony with the feeling or idea that present life contradicts. Future life's entire meaning is removal of this discord and realization of a state corresponding to one's feelings, where a person is at peace with themselves. An unknown, unimagined future is ridiculous fantasy: the other world is reality of known idea, satisfaction of conscious desire, fulfillment of wish; it is only removal of limits preventing idea's realization. What comfort or meaning would future life have if total darkness? No! From that world, what here shines as dull ore streams toward me with pure gold's brilliance. Future world has no other meaning than separation of metal from foreign elements—separation of good from bad, pleasant from unpleasant, praiseworthy from blameworthy. The future world is the bridal in which man concludes his union with his beloved. They have loved and yearned for bride; but external circumstances and harsh reality stood in union's way. When wedding occurs, beloved does not become different person; otherwise how could she have been passionately desired? She simply becomes his own; from longing's object, she becomes actual possession. True, here on earth the other world is only image or concept; yet it is not distant unknown thing's image, but portrait of what person loves and prefers above all. What person loves is their soul. Ancients enclosed beloved dead's ashes in urn; for Christian, heavenly future is mausoleum where they enshrine soul.
+To understand specific faith or religion generally, examine it in simplest, most primitive stages. Religion must be traced as it evolves but observed throughout existence. We must see earlier religions as present within "absolute" religion, not just past leftovers, to correctly understand both. The most terrifying "aberrations" and wildest excesses of religious consciousness often provide deepest insights into absolute religion's mysteries. Ideas seeming crude are often most childlike, innocent, and true. This applies to afterlife concepts. The "primitive" person, whose consciousness does not extend beyond their country and whose being is tied to its soil, takes country into next world—leaving nature as is or improving it, using afterlife to overcome this world's difficulties. In unrefined tribes' limitation, striking trait: future expresses nothing but homesickness. Death separates from family, people, country. But one not expanding consciousness cannot endure separation; must return homeland. The negroes in the West Indies killed themselves so they might come to life again in their fatherland. Per Ossian, "spirits of those dying in strange land float back toward birthplace." This limitation is direct opposite of imaginative spiritualism, turning person into wanderer indifferent even to earth, roaming star to star. Certainly real truth exists at foundation. Person is what they are through nature, no matter how much depends on initiative; for initiative is rooted in nature, of which specific character is expression. Be thankful to nature! Person cannot be separated from it. German identifying God with personal initiative owes character to nature as much as Oriental. To criticize Indian art, religion, philosophy is to criticize Indian nature. You complain about reviewer taking passage out of context to ridicule. Why guilty of same blame? Why tear Indian religion from context where it is as reasonable as your absolute religion?
+Among primitive tribes, faith in future world or afterlife is essentially direct belief in present life—immediate, unbroken faith in this life. For them actual life, even with local limits, has absolute value; cannot detach or imagine ending; they believe directly in this life's infinity and permanence. Only when immortality belief becomes critical—when distinction is made between what is left behind here and reserved there, between what passes and remains—does afterlife belief turn into belief in another life. But this criticism and distinction apply to present life too. Thus Christians distinguish between natural and Christian life, sensual/worldly and spiritual/holy life. Heavenly life is simply one already distinguished from merely natural earthly life, though still tied to it. What Christian excludes now—for example, sexual life—is excluded from future. Only difference: there they are free from what they wish free from here, what they try ridding through will, devotion, physical discipline. Therefore for Christian, this life is torment and pain because still besieged by hostile power, struggling against flesh's desires and devil's attacks.
+Cultured nations' faith is distinguished from uncultured as culture from lack of culture: faith of culture is discriminating, critical, abstract. Distinction implies judgment; where judgment exists, positive/negative distinction arises. Primitive tribes' faith is faith without judgment. Culture judges: to cultured person, only cultured life is true life; to Christian, only Christian life. Raw child of nature enters next life exactly as they are, without ceremony: other world is natural nakedness. Cultivated person objects to such unrestrained afterlife because even here they object to nature's unrestricted life. Faith in future life is therefore only faith in present life's true form. This life's essential elements are also next life's. Accordingly, faith in future life is not faith in unknown other life, but in truth and infinity—and consequently permanence—of life already regarded as authentic here.
+As God is nothing but human nature purified of what seems limitation or evil to individual, future life is nothing but present life freed from what seems limitation or evil. The more clearly and deeply individual perceives limit as limit, or evil as evil, the more definite and profound conviction of future life where these limits vanish. Future life is feeling or concept of freedom from limits restricting self and individual existence. Only difference between religion's path and natural/rational person's is that goal latter reaches straight, former attains only by circle. Natural person stays home because pleasant and satisfied; religion, beginning with discontent and division, leaves home and travels far, only to feel home's happiness more vividly from distance. In religion, person separates from themselves, only to always return to starting point. Person negates themselves only to affirm themselves again glorified: they negate this life only to affirm it again in future life. Future life is this life once lost, then found, shining brighter for recovery's joy. Religious person renounces this world's joys only to win heaven's joys; or rather, they renounce because they already possess heavenly joys in mind. Heaven's joys are earth's joys, only freed from this life's limits and conflicts. Religion reaches joy's goal by detour, while natural person moves direct. To live in images or symbols is religion's essence. Religion sacrifices thing itself for image. Future life is present reflected in imagination's mirror: in religious sense, enchanting image is true model of earthly life—real life is only glimmer of ideal, imaginary life. Future life is present embellished, viewed through imagination, purified of gross matter; or positively, beautiful present intensified. Embellishment and improvement presuppose criticism and dissatisfaction. But this dissatisfaction is superficial. I do not deny thing's value; I simply don't like it exactly as is. I deny only form, not substance; otherwise I would demand destruction. I have absolutely disliked house torn down, not remodeled. To afterlife believer, joy is agreeable—who could fail realizing joy is positive?—but disagreeable that here joy is followed by opposite feelings and is temporary. Therefore they place joy in future life too, but as eternal, uninterrupted, divine joy (why future life is called world of joy), just as they conceive it in God. For God is nothing but eternal, uninterrupted joy, personified as subject. Individuality or personality is agreeable, but only unburdened by external forces; thus they include individuality, but as pure, absolute subjectivity. Light pleases them, but not gravity, because gravity seems to limit individual; night does not please, because in it man is subject to nature. In other world, there is light but no weight, no night—only pure, unobstructed light.
+Just as person always returns to themselves even at furthest distance from themselves (in God), so at furthest distance from world they eventually return to it. The more extra-human and supra-human God appears initially, the more human he shows himself as things progress. Similarly, the more supernatural heavenly life looks at start or from distance, the more clearly it shows identity with natural life in end or viewed closely—identity finally extending even to flesh and body. At first mind focuses on soul's separation from body, just as in God concept mind first focuses on separating essence from individual. Individual dies spiritual death: dead body left behind is human individual, while departed soul is God. But separation of soul from body, essence from individual, God from man, must be undone. Every separation of naturally allied beings is painful. Soul yearns for lost half, its body; just as God, departed soul, yearns for real human being. Therefore, just as God becomes man again, soul returns to body, and perfect identity of this world and other is restored. True, this new body is bright, glorified, miraculous body, but—and this is key—it is another yet same body, just as God is another being than man, yet same. Here we return to miracle idea, which unites contradictions. Supernatural body is body constructed by imagination, which satisfies human feelings: it is weightless, purely subjective body. Faith in afterlife is nothing but faith in imagination's truth, just as faith in God is faith in human feeling's truth and infinity. Or: just as faith in God is only faith in man's abstract nature, faith in heavenly life is only faith in abstract earthly life.
+Future life's essence is happiness—everlasting bliss of personality, restricted and limited by nature here. Faith in afterlife is therefore faith in subjectivity's freedom from nature's limits. It is faith in personality's eternity and infinity—not personality as part of species unfolding in new individuals, but personality belonging to existing individuals. Consequently, it is person's faith in themselves. But faith in kingdom of heaven is one with faith in God—both ideas' content is same. God is pure, absolute subjectivity released from natural limits; what individuals ought be and will be. Faith in God is therefore person's faith in their own nature's infinity and truth. Divine Being is subjective human being in absolute freedom and unlimitedness.
+Our essential task is now complete. We have reduced God's otherworldly, supernatural, superhuman nature to elements of human nature as its fundamental parts. Our analysis has returned us to our starting position.
+> **Quote:** "The beginning, middle and end of religion is Man."
 ## PART II. - THE FALSE OR THEOLOGICAL ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
 ###  CHAPTER XIX. - THE ESSENTIAL STANDPOINT OF RELIGION.
+The fundamental perspective of religion is practical and subjective: its ultimate goal is the well-being, salvation, and eternal happiness of humanity. One's relationship to God is merely one's relationship to spiritual good.
+The essential standpoint of religion is the practical or
+subjective. The end of religion is the welfare, the salvation, the
+ultimate felicity of man; the relation of man to God is nothing else
+than his relation to his own spiritual good; God is the realised
+salvation of the soul, or the unlimited power of effecting the
+salvation, the bliss of man. [150] The Christian religion is specially
+distinguished from other religions in this,--that no other has given
+equal prominence to the salvation of man. But this salvation is not
+temporal earthly prosperity and well-being. On the contrary, the most
+genuine Christians have declared that earthly good draws man away from
+God, whereas adversity, suffering, afflictions lead him back to God,
+and hence are alone suited to Christians. Why? Because in trouble
+man is only practically or subjectively disposed; in trouble he has
+resource only to the one thing needful; in trouble God is felt to be a
+want of man. Pleasure, joy, expands man; trouble, suffering, contracts
+and concentrates him; in suffering man denies the reality of the world;
+the things that charm the imagination of the artist and the intellect
+of the thinker lose their attraction for him, their power over him; he
+is absorbed in himself, in his own soul. The soul thus self-absorbed,
+self-concentrated, seeking satisfaction in itself alone, denying the
+world, idealistic in relation to the world, to Nature in general,
+but realistic in relation to man, caring only for its inherent need
+of salvation,--this soul is God. God, as the object of religion,--and
+only as such is he God,--God in the sense of a nomen proprium, not of a
+vague, metaphysical entity, is essentially an object only of religion,
+not of philosophy,--of feeling, not of the intellect,--of the heart's
+necessity, not of the mind's freedom: in short, an object which is
+the reflex not of the theoretical but of the practical tendency in man.
+> **Quote:** "God is the realised salvation of the soul, or the unlimited power of effecting the salvation, the bliss of man."
+Religion annexes to its doctrines a curse and a blessing, damnation
+and salvation. Blessed is he that believeth, cursed is he that
+believeth not. Thus it appeals not to reason, but to feeling, to
+the desire of happiness, to the passions of hope and fear. It does
+not take the theoretic point of view; otherwise it must have been
+free to enunciate its doctrines without attaching to them practical
+consequences, without to a certain extent compelling belief in them;
+for when the case stands thus: I am lost if I do not believe,--the
+conscience is under a subtle kind of constraint; the fear of hell urges
+me to believe. Even supposing my belief to be in its origin free,
+fear inevitably intermingles itself; my conscience is always under
+constraint; doubt, the principle of theoretic freedom, appears to me
+a crime. And as in religion the highest idea, the highest existence
+is God, so the highest crime is doubt in God, or the doubt that God
+exists. But that which I do not trust myself to doubt, which I cannot
+doubt without feeling disturbed in my soul, without incurring guilt;
+that is no matter of theory, but a matter of conscience, no being of
+the intellect, but of the heart.
+Christianity is uniquely distinguished by its priority on human salvation, yet this salvation excludes worldly prosperity. The most sincere Christians hold that earthly wealth draws one from God, while hardship, suffering, and affliction lead back to Him—only these suit the Christian life. Why? Because in trouble, man is focused only on the 'one thing needful'; in distress, he becomes purely practical and subjective. While pleasure expands focus outward, suffering contracts it inward, denying external reality. The artist's imagination and thinker's intellect lose their power; the soul becomes self-absorbed—seeking satisfaction within, denying the world, idealistic toward nature but realistic toward its own needs. This soul is God.
+Now as the sole standpoint of religion is the practical or subjective
+standpoint, as therefore to religion the whole, the essential man is
+that part of his nature which is practical, which forms resolutions,
+which acts in accordance with conscious aims, whether physical or
+moral, and which considers the world not in itself, but only in
+relation to those aims or wants: the consequence is that everything
+which lies behind the practical consciousness, but which is the
+essential object of theory--theory in its most original and general
+sense, namely, that of objective contemplation and experience, of
+the intellect, of science [151]--is regarded by religion as lying
+outside man and Nature, in a special, personal being. All good, but
+especially such as takes possession of man apart from his volition,
+such as does not correspond with any resolution or purpose, such as
+transcends the limits of the practical consciousness, comes from God;
+all wickedness, evil, but especially such as overtakes him against
+his will in the midst of his best moral resolutions, or hurries him
+along with terrible violence, comes from the devil. The scientific
+knowledge of the essence of religion includes the knowledge of the
+devil, of Satan, of demons. [152] These things cannot be omitted
+without a violent mutilation of religion. Grace and its works
+are the antitheses of the devil and his works. As the involuntary,
+sensual impulses which flash out from the depths of the nature, and,
+in general, all those phenomena of moral and physical evil which are
+inexplicable to religion, appear to it as the work of the Evil Being;
+so the involuntary movements of inspiration and ecstasy appear to it as
+the work of the Good Being, God, of the Holy Spirit or of grace. Hence
+the arbitrariness of grace--the complaint of the pious that grace at
+one time visits and blesses them, at another forsakes and rejects
+them. The life, the agency of grace, is the life, the agency of
+emotion. Emotion is the Paraclete of Christians. The moments which
+are forsaken by divine grace are the moments destitute of emotion
+and inspiration.
+> **Quote:** "God, as the object of religion—and only as such is he God—God in the sense of a nomen proprium, not of a vague, metaphysical entity, is essentially an object only of religion, not of philosophy—of feeling, not of the intellect—of the heart's necessity, not of the mind's freedom: in short, an object which is the reflex not of the theoretical but of the practical tendency in man."
+In relation to the inner life, grace may be defined as religious
+genius; in relation to the outer life as religious chance. Man is
+good or wicked by no means through himself, his own power, his
+will; but through that complete synthesis of hidden and evident
+determinations of things which, because they rest on no evident
+necessity, we ascribe to the power of "chance." Divine grace is the
+power of chance beclouded with additional mystery. Here we have again
+the confirmation of that which we have seen to be the essential law
+of religion. Religion denies, repudiates chance, making everything
+dependent on God, explaining everything by means of him; but this
+denial is only apparent; it merely gives chance the name of the
+divine sovereignty. For the divine will, which, on incomprehensible
+grounds, for incomprehensible reasons, that is, speaking plainly,
+out of groundless, absolute arbitrariness, out of divine caprice, as
+it were, determines or predestines some to evil and misery, others
+to good and happiness, has not a single positive characteristic to
+distinguish it from the power of chance. The mystery of the election
+of grace is thus the mystery of chance. I say the mystery of chance;
+for in reality chance is a mystery, although slurred over and ignored
+by our speculative religious philosophy, which, as in its occupation
+with the illusory mysteries of the Absolute Being, i.e., of theology,
+it has overlooked the true mysteries of thought and life, so also
+in the mystery of divine grace or freedom of election, has forgotten
+the profane mystery of chance. [153]
+Religion attaches curse or blessing, damnation or salvation to its doctrines: "Blessed is he who believes; cursed is he who does not." Thus it appeals to feeling, happiness, hope and fear—not reason. It rejects the theoretical perspective, which would state doctrines without practical consequences or compulsion.
+But to return. The devil is the negative, the evil, that springs from
+the nature, but not from the will; God is the positive, the good, which
+comes from the nature, but not from the conscious action of the will;
+the devil is involuntary, inexplicable wickedness; God involuntary,
+inexplicable goodness. The source of both is the same, the quality only
+is different or opposite. For this reason, the belief in a devil was,
+until the most recent times, intimately connected with the belief
+in God, so that the denial of the devil was held to be virtually as
+atheistic as the denial of God. Nor without reason; for when men once
+begin to derive the phenomena of evil from natural causes, they at
+the same time begin to derive the phenomena of good, of the divine,
+from the nature of things, and come at length either to abolish the
+idea of God altogether, or at least to believe in another God than
+the God of religion. In this case it most commonly happens that they
+make the Deity an idle inactive being, whose existence is equivalent
+to non-existence, since he no longer actively interposes in life,
+but is merely placed at the summit of things, at the beginning of
+the world, as the First Cause. God created the world: this is all
+that is here retained of God. The past tense is necessary; for since
+that epoch the world pursues its course like a machine. The addition:
+He still creates, he is creating at this moment, is only the result
+of external reflection; the past tense adequately expresses the
+religious idea in this stage; for the spirit of religion is gone
+when the operation of God is reduced to a fecit or creavit. It is
+otherwise when the genuine religious consciousness says: The fecit
+is still to-day a facit. This, though here also it is a product of
+reflection, has nevertheless a legitimate meaning, because by the
+religious spirit God is really thought of as active.
+When belief becomes "I am lost if I do not believe," conscience faces subtle coercion. Fear of hell drives belief, mixing with any free choice. Conscience remains constrained; doubt—the principle of intellectual freedom—becomes a crime. Since God is religion's highest idea, doubting Him is the greatest crime. Yet what one dares not doubt, what causes soul-felt guilt if questioned, is not theory but conscience—a being of the heart, not the intellect.
+Religion is abolished where the idea of the world, of so-called
+second causes, intrudes itself between God and man. Here a foreign
+element, the principle of intellectual culture, has insinuated itself,
+peace is broken, the harmony of religion, which lies only in the
+immediate connection of man with God, is destroyed. Second causes are
+a capitulation of the unbelieving intellect with the still believing
+heart. It is true that, according to religion also, God works on man
+by means of other things and beings. But God alone is the cause, he
+alone is the active and efficient being. What a fellow-creature does
+is in the view of religion done not by him, but by God. The other
+is only an appearance, a medium, a vehicle, not a cause. But the
+"second cause" is a miserable anomaly, neither an independent nor a
+dependent being: God, it is true, gives the first impulse, but then
+ensues the spontaneous activity of the second cause. [154]
+Since religion's standpoint is purely practical, it identifies the essential self as that which decides, acts toward conscious goals, and views the world only in relation to needs. Consequently, everything behind practical consciousness—the true object of theory (objective observation, experience, intellect, science)—is projected outside humanity and Nature into a distinct, personal being.
+Religion of itself, unadulterated by foreign elements, knows nothing
+of the existence of second causes; on the contrary, they are a stone
+of stumbling to it; for the realm of second causes, the sensible
+world, Nature, is precisely what separates man from God, although
+God as a real God, i.e., an external being, is supposed himself to
+become in the other world a sensible existence. [155] Hence religion
+believes that one day this wall of separation will fall away. One day
+there will be no Nature, no matter, no body, at least none such as
+to separate man from God: then there will be only God and the pious
+soul. Religion derives the idea of the existence of second causes,
+that is, of things which are interposed between God and man, only
+from the physical, natural, and hence the irreligious or at least
+non-religious theory of the universe: a theory which it nevertheless
+immediately subverts by making the operations of Nature operations
+of God. But this religious idea is in contradiction with the natural
+sense and understanding, which concedes a real, spontaneous activity
+to natural things. And this contradiction of the physical view with
+the religious theory, religion resolves by converting the undeniable
+activity of things into an activity of God. Thus, on this view,
+the positive idea is God; the negative, the world.
+All good things—especially what seizes a person regardless of will, transcending practical consciousness—come from God. All wickedness and evil—especially what overcomes against will with terrifying violence—come from the devil. A scientific understanding of religion must include the devil, Satan, and demons—these cannot be removed without mutilating religion. Divine grace opposes the devil's works. As involuntary primal impulses and inexplicable evil appear as the Evil Being's work, so involuntary inspiration and ecstasy appear as God or the Holy Spirit's work. This explains grace's arbitrariness: the pious complain that grace blesses them at one time yet abandons them at another. Grace's life is emotion's life; emotion is the Paraclete of Christians. Grace's absence is simply the absence of emotion.
+On the contrary, where second causes, having been set in motion, are,
+so to speak, emancipated, the converse occurs; Nature is the positive,
+God a negative idea. The world is independent in its existence, its
+persistence; only as to its commencement is it dependent. God is here
+only a hypothetical Being, an inference, arising from the necessity of
+a limited understanding, to which the existence of a world viewed by
+it as a machine is inexplicable without a self-moving principle;--he
+is no longer an original, absolutely necessary Being. God exists not
+for his own sake, but for the sake of the world,--merely that he may,
+as a First Cause, explain the existence of the world. The narrow
+rationalising man takes objection to the original self-subsistence
+of the world, because he looks at it only from the subjective,
+practical point of view, only in its commoner aspect, only as a piece
+of mechanism, not in its majesty and glory, not as the Cosmos. He
+conceives the world as having been launched into existence by an
+original impetus, as, according to mathematical theory, is the case
+with matter once set in motion and thenceforth going on for ever:
+that is, he postulates a mechanical origin. A machine must have a
+beginning; this is involved in its very idea; for it has not the
+source of motion in itself.
+Inwardly, grace is religious genius; outwardly, it is religious chance. One becomes good or wicked not through will alone, but through hidden and obvious factors that lack obvious necessity—factors we attribute to "chance." Divine grace is essentially the power of chance, clouded with mystery. This confirms religion's essential law: it appears to deny chance by making all depend on God, but merely renames chance "divine sovereignty." The divine will—which for incomprehensible reasons, or frankly out of absolute caprice, predestines some to misery and others to happiness—has no characteristic to distinguish it from chance. The mystery of divine election is therefore the mystery of chance. I call it such because chance is indeed a mystery, though ignored by speculative religious philosophy. Just as that philosophy focuses on theology's illusory mysteries while overlooking thought and life's true mysteries, it also ignores chance's secular mystery in favor of divine grace's "freedom."
+All religious speculative cosmogony is tautology, as is apparent from
+this example. In cosmogony man declares or realises the idea he has
+of the world; he merely repeats what he has already said in another
+form. Thus here, if the world is a machine, it is self-evident that it
+did not make itself, that, on the contrary, it was created, i.e., had
+a mechanical origin. Herein, it is true, the religious consciousness
+agrees with the mechanical theory, that to it also the world is a mere
+fabric, a product of Will. But they agree only for an instant, only
+in the moment of creation; that moment past, the harmony ceases. The
+holder of the mechanical theory needs God only as the creator of
+the world; once made, the world turns its back on the Creator,
+and rejoices in its godless self-subsistence. But religion creates
+the world only to maintain it in the perpetual consciousness of its
+nothingness, its dependence on God. [156] To the mechanical theorist,
+the creation is the last thin thread which yet ties him to religion;
+the religion to which the nothingness of the world is a present truth
+(for all power and activity is to it the power and activity of God),
+is with him only a surviving reminiscence of youth; hence he removes
+the creation of the world, the act of religion, the non-existence
+of the world (for in the beginning, before the creation, there was
+no world, only God), into the far distance, into the past, while
+the self-subsistence of the world, which absorbs all his senses and
+endeavours, acts on him with the force of the present. The mechanical
+theorist interrupts and cuts short the activity of God by the activity
+of the world. With him God has indeed still an historical right,
+but this is in contradiction with the right he awards to Nature;
+hence he limits as much as possible the right yet remaining to God,
+in order to gain wider and freer play for his natural causes, and
+thereby for his understanding.
+The devil represents negative, involuntary, inexplicable wickedness from nature; God represents positive, involuntary, inexplicable goodness from nature. They share one source with opposite qualities. Hence, until very recently, belief in the devil was intimately linked to belief in God—and not without reason. Once people began attributing evil phenomena to natural causes, they naturally began attributing divine phenomena to nature as well. Eventually they either abandon God entirely or believe in a Deity different from religion's God—an idle, inactive being whose existence is practically non-existence, since He no longer intervenes. He is simply placed at the peak of existence as the First Cause; "God created the world" is all that remains of God. The past tense is necessary because since that moment, the world runs like a machine. Adding "He still creates" is merely secondary reflection; the past tense captures the idea. Religion's spirit vanishes when God's work reduces to a single past act—unlike genuine religious consciousness, which says creation remains present. Though also a product of reflection, this carries legitimate meaning because the religious spirit truly perceives God as active.
+With this class of thinkers the creation holds the same position as
+miracles, which also they can and actually do acquiesce in, because
+miracles exist, at least according to religious opinion. But not
+to say that he explains miracles naturally, that is, mechanically,
+he can only digest them when he relegates them to the past; for the
+present he begs to be excused from believing in them, and explains
+everything to himself charmingly on natural principles. When a
+belief has departed from the reason, the intelligence, when it is no
+longer held spontaneously, but merely because it is a common belief,
+or because on some ground or other it must be held; in short, when
+a belief is inwardly a past one; then externally also the object
+of the belief is referred to the past. Unbelief thus gets breathing
+space, but at the same time concedes to belief at least an historical
+validity. The past is here the fortunate means of compromise between
+belief and unbelief: I certainly believe in miracles, but, nota bene,
+in no miracles which happen now--only in those which once happened,
+which, thank God! are already plus quam perfecta. So also with
+the creation. The creation is an immediate act of God, a miracle,
+for there was once nothing but God. In the idea of the creation man
+transcends the world, he rises into abstraction from it; he conceives
+it as non-existent in the moment of creation; thus he dispels from
+his sight what stands between himself and God, the sensible world;
+he places himself in immediate contact with God. But the mechanical
+thinker shrinks from this immediate contact with God; hence he at
+once makes the præsens, if indeed he soars so high, into a perfectum;
+he interposes millenniums between his natural or materialistic view
+and the thought of an immediate operation of God.
+Religion is abolished when "second causes" come between God and humanity. This foreign element—intellectual culture—breaks the peace, destroying religion's harmony, which depends on direct connection between man and God. “Second causes” represent a capitulation of the skeptical intellect to the still-believing heart. True, even religion says God works through other beings. But God alone is cause and active force. From religion's perspective, what a fellow human does is done not by them but by God; the other is merely appearance, medium, vehicle—not cause. But "second cause" is a miserable contradiction, neither fully independent nor dependent. In this view, God might give the first push, but the second cause then acts spontaneously.
+To the religious spirit, on the contrary, God alone is the cause
+of all positive effects, God alone the ultimate and also the sole
+ground wherewith it answers, or rather repels, all questions which
+theory puts forward; for the affirmative of religion is virtually
+a negative; its answer amounts to nothing, since it solves the
+most various questions always with the same answer, making all the
+operations of Nature immediate operations of God, of a designing,
+personal, extra-natural or supranatural Being. God is the idea which
+supplies the lack of theory. The idea of God is the explanation of
+the inexplicable,--which explains nothing because it is supposed to
+explain everything without distinction; he is the night of theory,
+a night, however, in which everything is clear to religious feeling,
+because in it the measure of darkness, the discriminating light of the
+understanding, is extinct; he is the ignorance which solves all doubt
+by repressing it, which knows everything because it knows nothing
+definite, because all things which impress the intellect disappear
+before religion, lose their individuality, in the eyes of divine
+power are nothing. Darkness is the mother of religion.
+Pure religion, unmixed with outside elements, knows nothing of second causes; they are a stumbling block. The realm of second causes—material world and Nature—separates humanity from God, despite God becoming physical reality in the next world. Hence religion believes this wall will one day fall; eventually no Nature, matter, or body will separate soul from God. Then only God and the pious soul remain. Religion only adopts "second causes" from non-religious theories, yet immediately undermines them by claiming Nature's operations are God's operations. This contradicts common sense and intellect, which recognize natural things' spontaneous activity. Religion resolves this by transforming things' undeniable activity into God's activity: God becomes positive reality, the world negative.
+The essential act of religion, that in which religion puts into
+action what we have designated as its essence, is prayer. Prayer
+is all-powerful. What the pious soul entreats for in prayer God
+fulfils. But he prays not for spiritual gifts [157] alone, which
+lie in some sort in the power of man; he prays also for things which
+lie out of him, which are in the power of Nature, a power which it
+is the very object of prayer to overcome; in prayer he lays hold
+on a supernatural means, in order to attain ends in themselves
+natural. God is to him not the causa remota but the causa proxima,
+the immediate, efficient cause of all natural effects. All so-called
+secondary forces and second causes are nothing to him when he prays;
+if they were anything to him, the might, the fervour of prayer would
+be annihilated. But in fact they have no existence for him; otherwise
+he would assuredly seek to attain his end only by some intermediate
+process. But he desires immediate help. He has recourse to prayer in
+the certainty that he can do more, infinitely more, by prayer, than
+by all the efforts of reason and all the agencies of Nature,--in
+the conviction that prayer possesses superhuman and supernatural
+powers. [158] But in prayer he applies immediately to God. Thus God
+is to him the immediate cause, the fulfilment of prayer, the power
+which realises prayer. But an immediate act of God is a miracle;
+hence miracle is essential to the religious view. Religion explains
+everything miraculously. That miracles do not always happen is indeed
+obvious, as that man does not always pray. But the consideration that
+miracles do not always happen lies outside the nature of religion, in
+the empirical or physical mode of view only. Where religion begins,
+there also begins miracle. Every true prayer is a miracle, an act
+of the wonder-working power. External miracles themselves only make
+visible internal miracles, that is, they are only a manifestation in
+time and space, and therefore as a special fact, of what in and by
+itself is a fundamental position of religion, namely, that God is,
+in general, the supernatural, immediate cause of all things. The
+miracle of fact is only an impassioned expression of religion, a
+moment of inspiration. Miracles happen only in extraordinary crises,
+in which there is an exaltation of the feelings: hence there are
+miracles of anger. No miracle is wrought in cold blood. But it
+is precisely in moments of passion that the latent nature reveals
+itself. Man does not always pray with equal warmth and power. Such
+prayers are therefore ineffective. Only ardent prayer reveals the
+nature of prayer. Man truly prays when he regards prayer as in itself
+a sacred power, a divine force. So it is with miracles. Miracles
+happen--no matter whether few or many--wherever there is, as a basis
+for them, a belief in the miraculous. But the belief in miracle
+is no theoretic or objective mode of viewing the world and Nature;
+miracle realises practical wants, and that in contradiction with the
+laws which are imperative to the reason; in miracle man subjugates
+Nature, as in itself a nullity, to his own ends, which he regards
+as a reality; miracle is the superlative expression of spiritual or
+religious utilitarianism; in miracle all things are at the service
+of necessitous man. It is clear from this, that the conception of
+the world which is essential to religion is that of the practical
+or subjective standpoint, that God--for the miracle-working power
+is identical with God--is a purely practical or subjective Being,
+serving, however, as a substitute for a theoretic view, and is thus
+no object of thought, of the knowing faculty, any more than miracle,
+which owes its origin to the negation of thought. If I place myself
+in the point of view of thought, of investigation, of theory, in
+which I consider things in themselves, in their mutual relations,
+the miracle-working being vanishes into nothing, miracle disappears;
+i.e., the religious miracle, which is absolutely different from the
+natural miracle, though they are continually interchanged, in order
+to stultify reason, and, under the appearance of natural science, to
+introduce religious miracle into the sphere of rationality and reality.
+Conversely, when second causes are "emancipated" as independent, the opposite occurs: Nature becomes positive, God negative. The world appears independent in existence, dependent on God only for its beginning. Here God is merely hypothetical, an inference from intellect's inability to explain a world-machine without a "self-moving principle." He is no longer an absolutely necessary Being existing for His own sake, but for the world's sake—merely to explain its origin as First Cause. The narrow, rationalizing person objects to the world's inherent self-sufficiency because he looks at it only from a subjective, practical viewpoint—as mere mechanism rather than Cosmos. He imagines the world launched into existence by an initial force, like matter set in motion mathematically, continuing forever. In other words, he assumes a mechanical origin. A machine must have a beginning; this is inherent in the very idea of a machine, because it does not contain its own source of motion.
+But for this very reason--namely, that religion is removed from the
+standpoint, from the nature of theory--the true, universal essence
+of Nature and humanity, which as such is hidden from religion and
+is only visible to the theoretic eye, is conceived as another, a
+miraculous and supernatural essence; the idea of the species becomes
+the idea of God, who again is himself an individual being, but is
+distinguished from human individuals in this, that he possesses their
+qualities according to the measure of the species. Hence, in religion
+man necessarily places his nature out of himself, regards his nature
+as a separate nature; necessarily, because the nature which is the
+object of theory lies outside of him, because all his conscious
+existence spends itself in his practical subjectivity. God is his
+alter ego, his other lost half; God is the complement of himself;
+in God he is first a perfect man. God is a need to him; something is
+wanting to him without his knowing what it is--God is this something
+wanting, indispensable to him; God belongs to his nature. The world
+is nothing to religion, [159]--the world, which is in truth the sum
+of all reality, is revealed in its glory only by theory. The joys of
+theory are the sweetest intellectual pleasures of life; but religion
+knows nothing of the joys of the thinker, of the investigator of
+Nature, of the artist. The idea of the universe is wanting to it,
+the consciousness of the really infinite, the consciousness of the
+species. God only is its compensation for the poverty of life, for
+the want of a substantial import, which the true life of rational
+contemplation presents in unending fulness. God is to religion the
+substitute for the lost world,--God is to it in the stead of pure
+contemplation, the life of theory.
+All religious and speculative theories of how the world began are tautologies, as this example illustrates:
+That which we have designated as the practical or subjective view
+is not pure, it is tainted with egoism, for therein I have relation
+to a thing only for my own sake; neither is it self-sufficing,
+for it places me in relation to an object above my own level. On
+the contrary, the theoretic view is joyful, self-sufficing, happy;
+for here the object calls forth love and admiration; in the light of
+the free intelligence it is radiant as a diamond, transparent as a
+rock-crystal. The theoretic view is æsthetic, whereas the practical
+is unæsthetic. Religion therefore finds in God a compensation for
+the want of an æsthetic view. To the religious spirit the world
+is nothing in itself; the admiration, the contemplation of it is
+idolatry; for the world is a mere piece of mechanism. [160] Hence
+in religion it is God that serves as the object of pure, untainted,
+i.e., theoretic or æsthetic contemplation. God is the existence to
+which the religious man has an objective relation; in God the object
+is contemplated by him for its own sake. God is an end in himself;
+therefore in religion he has the significance which in the theoretic
+view belongs to the object in general. The general being of theory
+is to religion a special being. It is true that in religion man,
+in his relation to God, has relation to his own wants as well in a
+higher as in the lower sense: "Give us this day our daily bread;"
+but God can satisfy all wants of man only because he in himself has
+no wants,--because he is perfect blessedness.
+In studying the universe's origin, humans simply express their own world-concept, repeating what they've already said differently. If the world is viewed as a machine, it obviously did not create itself but was manufactured—meaning it had a mechanical origin. Religious consciousness agrees with mechanical theory: both see the world as construct, product of Will. But they agree only at creation's moment; once that passes, harmony ends. The mechanical theorist needs God only as creator; once made, the world turns godlessly independent. But religion creates the world only to keep it perpetually aware of its nothingness and dependence on God. Consequently, he pushes creation—the religious act, the world's non-existence—into the far past. Meanwhile, the world's independence, consuming his senses, influences him with present force. The mechanical theorist cuts short God's activity with the world's activity. For him, God retains historical rights, but this contradicts Nature's rights; therefore he limits God's authority to allow more room for natural causes and his own understanding.
+For such thinkers, creation occupies the same position as miracles. They accept miracles as existing per tradition, but can only stomach them when relegated to the past—even if they don't explain them mechanically. For the present, they excuse themselves from believing, explaining everything by natural principles. When belief loses its basis in reason—when held not spontaneously but only because it is common or must be held—when belief is internally a thing of the past, its object is also externally referred to the past. Unbelief thus breathes while granting belief historical validity. The past serves as compromise: I believe in miracles, but—take note—not now, only those long over and done with. The same applies to creation: it is an immediate act of God, a miracle, because once there was nothing but God. In creation's concept, man transcends and abstracts himself from the world, imagining it non-existent. He clears his vision of the material world—what stands between him and God—and places himself in direct contact with the divine. But the mechanical thinker shrinks from immediate contact with God, immediately turning the present into past—if he reaches that high—and placing millennia between his materialism and God's direct action.
+To the religious spirit, conversely, God alone is cause of all positive effects, the ultimate ground with which religion answers—or rather, deflects—all theoretical questions.
+> **Quote:** "The idea of God is the explanation of the inexplicable,—which explains nothing because it is supposed to explain everything without distinction; he is the night of theory, a night, however, in which everything is clear to religious feeling, because in it the measure of darkness, the discriminating light of the understanding, is extinct; he is the ignorance which solves all doubt by repressing it, which knows everything because it knows nothing definite, because all things which impress the intellect disappear before religion, lose their individuality, in the eyes of divine power are nothing. Darkness is the mother of religion."
+The essential act of religion—where it puts its essence into practice—is prayer. Prayer is all-powerful. Whatever the pious soul begs, God grants. He prays not only for spiritual gifts (somewhat within human power) but also for things outside himself, within Nature's power. Prayer's very purpose is to overcome natural power, grasping supernatural means to achieve natural ends. To him, God is not remote but the immediate, efficient cause of all natural effects. Secondary forces are nothing in prayer; if they were, prayer's power would be destroyed. They do not exist for him; otherwise he would seek his goal through natural process. He wants immediate help. He turns to prayer certain he can do infinitely more through it than through reason or Nature's mechanisms, convinced prayer possesses superhuman, supernatural powers. In prayer he appeals directly to God, making God the immediate cause who fulfills it. Since an immediate act of God is a miracle, miracle is essential to religion. Religion explains everything through miracles. While miracles don't happen constantly—nor does prayer—the observation of their rarity lies outside religion, belonging only to empirical viewpoint. Where religion begins, miracles begin. Every true prayer is a miracle—wonder-working power. External miracles make internal miracles visible, manifesting in time and space the fundamental religious position: God is the supernatural, immediate cause of all things. Factual miracles are passionate religious expression, moments of inspiration occurring only in extraordinary crises of heightened feeling—hence even miracles of anger. None are performed in cold blood, yet passion reveals hidden nature. Humans don't always pray with equal warmth; ineffective prayers thus abound. Only ardent prayer reveals prayer's true nature. One truly prays when regarding prayer as sacred, divine power. Miracles occur—many or few—wherever belief in the miraculous exists. But miracle belief is not theoretical or objective; miracles satisfy practical needs despite contradicting reason's laws. In a miracle, man treats Nature as nothing, subordinating it to his ends. A miracle is the ultimate expression of religious utility, where all things serve the person in need. Thus religion's essential worldview is practical/subjective. God—identical to miracle-working power—is purely practical/subjective, serving as substitute for theoretical view. He is no object of thought or knowledge, just as miracle originates from thought's rejection. From the perspective of thought, investigation, or theory—considering things in their own right and relations—the miracle-working being vanishes. This refers to the religious miracle, entirely different from natural miracle, though often confused to deceive minds and introduce religious miracles into reality under science's guise.
+Because religion stands apart from theory, Nature and humanity's true, universal essence (hidden from religion, visible only to the theoretical eye) is imagined as separate, miraculous, supernatural. The human species-concept becomes God. God appears as an individual being distinguished from humans by possessing species-scale human qualities. Thus religion inevitably places man's own nature outside himself as a separate entity, because theory's object lies outside him while all conscious life is spent in subjective needs.
+> **Quote:** "God is his alter ego, his other lost half; God is the complement of himself; in God he is first a perfect man. God is a need to him... God is this something wanting, indispensable to him; God belongs to his nature."
+The world is nothing to religion—the sum of all reality revealed in full glory only through theory. Theory's joys are life's most refined intellectual pleasures, yet religion knows nothing of the thinker's, investigator's, or artist's joy. It lacks the concept of the universe, awareness of the truly infinite, consciousness of the species. God is its only compensation for a poverty-stricken life and for the lack of meaning that rational contemplation provides abundantly. To religion, God is substitute for the lost world, taking the place of pure contemplation and theory's life.
+The practical/subjective perspective is not pure; it is tainted with egoism, relating to things only for my benefit. Nor is it self-sufficient, placing me in relation to an object above my level. The theoretical view, by contrast, is joyful, self-sufficient, happy; its object inspires love and admiration. In the light of free intelligence, the object is radiant as a diamond and transparent as rock-crystal. The theoretical view is aesthetic, the practical not. Religion thus finds in God compensation for lacking aesthetic perspective. To the religious spirit, the world is nothing in itself; admiring it is idolatry, because the world is mere mechanism. Consequently, God serves as object of pure, untainted—theoretical or aesthetic—contemplation. God is the being with whom the religious person has objective relationship, contemplating the object for its own sake. God is an end in himself, holding in religion the significance that the object holds in theoretical view. Theory's universal being becomes religion's specific being. True, in religion man relates to God regarding his needs, high and low, as in "Give us this day our daily bread"; yet God can satisfy all needs only because he has none—being perfect bliss.
 ### CHAPTER XX. - THE CONTRADICTION IN THE EXISTENCE OF GOD.
+> **Quote:** "Religion is the relation of man to his own nature,--therein lies its truth and its power of moral amelioration;--but to his nature not recognised as his own, but regarded as another nature, separate, nay, contradistinguished from his own: herein lies its untruth, its limitation, its contradiction to reason and morality;"
+Religion is the relation of man to his own nature,--therein lies
+its truth and its power of moral amelioration;--but to his nature
+not recognised as his own, but regarded as another nature, separate,
+nay, contradistinguished from his own: herein lies its untruth, its
+limitation, its contradiction to reason and morality; herein lies
+the noxious source of religious fanaticism, the chief metaphysical
+principle of human sacrifices, in a word, the prima materia of all
+the atrocities, all the horrible scenes, in the tragedy of religious
+history.
+This is the poisonous source of religious fanaticism and the metaphysical justification for human sacrifice—the *prima materia* of all the atrocities, the horrible scenes in the tragedy of religious history.
+The contemplation of the human nature as another, a separately
+existent nature, is, however, in the original conception of religion
+an involuntary, childlike, simple act of the mind, that is, one which
+separates God and man just as immediately as it again identifies
+them. But when religion advances in years, and, with years, in
+understanding; when, within the bosom of religion, reflection on
+religion is awakened, and the consciousness of the identity of the
+divine being with the human begins to dawn,--in a word, when religion
+becomes theology, the originally involuntary and harmless separation
+of God from man becomes an intentional, excogitated separation, which
+has no other object than to banish again from the consciousness this
+identity which has already entered there.
+In the original religious mindset, seeing human nature as separate is an involuntary, childlike act of mind—just as instinctively separating God from humanity as reuniting them. But as religion matures and becomes theology, this innocent separation becomes a deliberate division, manufactured to suppress the dawning awareness that divine and human are one.
+Hence the nearer religion stands to its origin, the truer, the more
+genuine it is, the less is its true nature disguised; that is to
+say, in the origin of religion there is no qualitative or essential
+distinction whatever between God and man. And the religious man is
+not shocked at this identification; for his understanding is still
+in harmony with his religion. Thus in ancient Judaism, Jehovah
+was a being differing from the human individual in nothing but in
+duration of existence; in his qualities, his inherent nature, he was
+entirely similar to man,--had the same passions, the same human, nay,
+even corporeal properties. Only in the later Judaism was Jehovah
+separated in the strictest manner from man, and recourse was had
+to allegory in order to give to the old anthropomorphisms another
+sense than that which they originally had. So again in Christianity:
+in its earliest records the divinity of Christ is not so decidedly
+stamped as it afterwards became. With Paul especially, Christ is
+still an undefined being, hovering between heaven and earth, between
+God and man, or in general, one amongst the existences subordinate to
+the highest,--the first of the angels, the first created, but still
+created; begotten indeed for our sake; but then neither are angels and
+men created, but begotten, for God is their Father also. The Church
+first identified him with God, made him the exclusive Son of God,
+defined his distinction from men and angels, and thus gave him the
+monopoly of an eternal, uncreated existence.
+The closer religion remains to its origin, the more genuine and less disguised it is. Initially, there is no essential difference between God and humanity—no shock in this identification, for understanding still harmonizes with faith. In ancient Judaism, Yahweh differed from humans only in his eternal duration; in qualities and inner nature, he was entirely human, with the same passions and physical traits. Only later did Judaism strictly separate Yahweh from humanity, turning to allegory to reinterpret those human-like descriptions. Christianity shows the same pattern: in Paul's writings, Christ is ambiguous, hovering between heaven and earth, God and man—one being among others subordinate to the Highest. He was the first of angels, the first created, yet still created. He was "begotten" for our sake, but angels and humans are also begotten, for God is their Father too. Only the later Church fully identified him with God, making him the exclusive Son and giving him a monopoly on eternal, uncreated existence.
+In the genesis of ideas, the first mode in which reflection on
+religion, or theology, makes the divine being a distinct being,
+and places him outside of man, is by making the existence of God the
+object of a formal proof.
+Theology first turns the divine into a distinct external being by making God's existence the subject of formal proof. Some argue these proofs contradict religion's nature—true, but only in their formal structure. Religion instinctively externalizes humanity's inner nature; the proof merely aims to validate this instinct.
+The proofs of the existence of God have been pronounced contradictory
+to the essential nature of religion. They are so, but only in their
+form as proofs. Religion immediately represents the inner nature of
+man as an objective, external being. And the proof aims at nothing
+more than to prove that religion is right. The most perfect being is
+that than which no higher can be conceived: God is the highest that man
+conceives or can conceive. This premiss of the ontological proof--the
+most interesting proof, because it proceeds from within--expresses
+the inmost nature of religion. That which is the highest for man,
+from which he can make no further abstraction, which is the positive
+limit of his intellect, of his feeling, of his sentiment, that is to
+him God--id quo nihil majus cogitari potest. But this highest being
+would not be the highest if he did not exist; we could then conceive
+a higher being who would be superior to him in the fact of existence;
+the idea of the highest being directly precludes this fiction. Not to
+exist is a deficiency; to exist is perfection, happiness, bliss. From
+a being to whom man gives all, offers up all that is precious to him,
+he cannot withhold the bliss of existence. The contradiction to the
+religious spirit in the proof of the existence of God lies only in
+this, that the existence is thought of separately, and thence arises
+the appearance that God is a mere conception, a being existing in
+idea only,--an appearance, however, which is immediately dissipated;
+for the very result of the proof is, that to God belongs an existence
+distinct from an ideal one, an existence apart from man, apart from
+thought,--a real self-existence.
+> **Quote:** "The most perfect being is that than which no higher can be conceived: God is the highest that man conceives or can conceive."
+The proof therefore is only thus far discordant with the spirit of
+religion, that it presents as a formal deduction the implicit enthymeme
+or immediate conclusion of religion, exhibits in logical relation,
+and therefore distinguishes, what religion immediately unites; for to
+religion God is not a matter of abstract thought,--he is a present
+truth and reality. But that every religion in its idea of God makes
+a latent, unconscious inference, is confessed in its polemic against
+other religions. "Ye heathens," says the Jew or the Christian, "were
+able to conceive nothing higher as your deities because ye were sunk
+in sinful desires. Your God rests on a conclusion, the premisses of
+which are your sensual impulses, your passions. You thought thus: the
+most excellent life is to live out one's impulses without restraint;
+and because this life was the most excellent, the truest, you made it
+your God. Your God was your carnal nature, your heaven only a free
+theatre for the passions which, in society and in the conditions
+of actual life generally, had to suffer restraint." But, naturally,
+in relation to itself no religion is conscious of such an inference,
+for the highest of which it is capable is its limit, has the force of
+necessity, is not a thought, not a conception, but immediate reality.
+This premise of the ontological proof—the most fascinating because it begins from within—expresses religion's deepest nature.
+The proofs of the existence of God have for their aim to make the
+internal external, to separate it from man. [161] His existence being
+proved, God is no longer a merely relative, but a noumenal being
+(Ding an sich): he is not only a being for us, a being in our faith,
+our feeling, our nature, he is a being in himself, a being external
+to us,--in a word, not merely a belief, a feeling, a thought, but
+also a real existence apart from belief, feeling, and thought. But
+such an existence is no other than a sensational existence; i.e.,
+an existence conceived according to the forms of our senses.
+> **Quote:** "That which is the highest for man, from which he can make no further abstraction, which is the positive limit of his intellect, of his feeling, of his sentiment, that is to him God--id quo nihil majus cogitari potest."
+The idea of sensational existence is indeed already involved in
+the characteristic expression "external to us." It is true that a
+sophistical theology refuses to interpret the word "external" in
+its proper, natural sense, and substitutes the indefinite expression
+of independent, separate existence. But if the externality is only
+figurative, the existence also is figurative. And yet we are here
+only concerned with existence in the proper sense, and external
+existence is alone the definite, real, unshrinking expression for
+separate existence.
+But this highest being would not be highest if he did not exist; we could then imagine a superior being that merely existed. The idea of the highest being directly precludes this fiction. To not exist is a flaw; to exist is perfection and bliss. From a being to whom we offer everything precious, we cannot withhold existence itself. The religious spirit finds the proof contradictory only because it treats existence as a separate concept, creating the impression that God is a mere idea—an impression immediately dismissed, because the proof concludes that God possesses an existence separate from thought, a reality independent of humanity.
+Real, sensational existence is that which is not dependent on my
+own mental spontaneity or activity, but by which I am involuntarily
+affected, which is when I am not, when I do not think of it or feel
+it. The existence of God must therefore be in space--in general, a
+qualitative, sensational existence. But God is not seen, not heard,
+not perceived by the senses. He does not exist for me, if I do not
+exist for him; if I do not believe in a God, there is no God for me. If
+I am not devoutly disposed, if I do not raise myself above the life
+of the senses, he has no place in my consciousness. Thus he exists
+only in so far as he is felt, thought, believed in;--the addition
+"for me" is unnecessary. His existence therefore is a real one, yet
+at the same time not a real one;--a spiritual existence, says the
+theologian. But spiritual existence is only an existence in thought,
+in feeling, in belief; so that his existence is a medium between
+sensational existence and conceptional existence, a medium full of
+contradiction. Or: he is a sensational existence, to which however all
+the conditions of sensational existence are wanting:--consequently an
+existence at once sensational and not sensational, an existence which
+contradicts the idea of the sensational, or only a vague existence in
+general, which is fundamentally a sensational one, but which, in order
+that this may not become evident, is divested of all the predicates
+of a real, sensational existence. But such an "existence in general"
+is self-contradictory. To existence belongs full, definite reality.
+The proof is out of sync with religion only because it formalizes what is an immediate religious conclusion. It uses logic to separate what religion instantly unites; for the religious person, God is not abstract but a present reality. Yet every religion makes a hidden, unconscious inference in its idea of God, as shown by its attacks on other faiths. "You heathens," says the Jew or Christian, "could not imagine anything higher than your deities because you were trapped in sinful desire. Your God is a conclusion from your own physical impulses. You believed the best life was to indulge every impulse, and because that seemed truest, you made it your God. Your God was your carnal nature; your heaven was a free stage for those passions that are restrained in everyday life. Naturally, no religion sees this inference in itself. The highest it can conceive is its own limit, possessing necessity's force; it is not a thought but immediate reality.
+A necessary consequence of this contradiction is Atheism. The existence
+of God is essentially an empirical existence, without having its
+distinctive marks; it is in itself a matter of experience, and yet
+in reality no object of experience. It calls upon man to seek it
+in Reality: it impregnates his mind with sensational conceptions
+and pretensions; hence, when these are not fulfilled--when, on the
+contrary, he finds experience in contradiction with these conceptions,
+he is perfectly justified in denying that existence.
+These proofs aim to make the internal external, separating it from humanity. Once proven, God is no longer a relative concept but a "thing-in-itself"—not merely a being for us, existing in our faith and feeling, but a being in himself, external to us. In short, he is not merely belief or thought, but a real existence independent of belief. But such existence is ultimately sensory—conceived through the lens of our senses.
+Kant is well known to have maintained, in his critique of the proofs
+of the existence of God, that that existence is not susceptible of
+proof from reason. He did not merit, on this account, the blame
+which was cast on him by Hegel. The idea of the existence of God
+in those proofs is a thoroughly empirical one; but I cannot deduce
+empirical existence from an à priori idea. The only real ground of
+blame against Kant is, that in laying down this position he supposed
+it to be something remarkable, whereas it is self-evident. Reason
+cannot constitute itself an object of sense. I cannot, in thinking,
+at the same time represent what I think as a sensible object, external
+to me. The proof of the existence of God transcends the limits of the
+reason; true; but in the same sense in which sight, hearing, smelling
+transcend the limits of the reason. It is absurd to reproach reason
+that it does not satisfy a demand which can only address itself
+to the senses. Existence, empirical existence, is proved to me by
+the senses alone; and in the question as to the being of God, the
+existence implied has not the significance of inward reality, of truth,
+but the significance of a formal, external existence. Hence there is
+perfect truth in the allegation that the belief that God is or is not
+has no consequence with respect to inward moral dispositions. It is
+true that the thought: There is a God, is inspiring; but here the is
+means inward reality; here the existence is a movement of inspiration,
+an act of aspiration. Just in proportion as this existence becomes
+a prosaic, an empirical truth, the inspiration is extinguished.
+The idea of sensory existence is already implied by "external to us." While deceptive theology might substitute this with vague terms like "independent existence," if externality is only metaphorical, then the existence is metaphorical too. Real, sensory existence does not depend on my mental activity; it affects me involuntarily and exists even when I do not think or feel it. Therefore, God's existence would have to be in space—a qualitative, sensory existence. But God is not seen, heard, or perceived by the senses. He does not exist for me if I do not believe; if I am not in a spiritual state, he has no place in my consciousness. Thus, he exists only as he is felt, thought, and believed. The addition "for me" is unnecessary.
+Religion, therefore, in so far as it is founded on the existence of
+God as an empirical truth, is a matter of indifference to the inward
+disposition. As, necessarily, in the religious cultus, ceremonies,
+observances, sacraments, apart from the moral spirit or disposition,
+become in themselves an important fact: so also, at last, belief in
+the existence of God becomes, apart from the inherent quality, the
+spiritual import of the idea of God, a chief point in religion. If
+thou only believest in God--believest that God is, thou art already
+saved. Whether under this God thou conceivest a really divine being
+or a monster, a Nero or a Caligula, an image of thy passions, thy
+revenge, or ambition, it is all one,--the main point is that thou
+be not an atheist. The history of religion has amply confirmed
+this consequence which we here draw from the idea of the divine
+existence. If the existence of God, taken by itself, had not rooted
+itself as a religious truth in minds, there would never have been
+those infamous, senseless, horrible ideas of God which stigmatise the
+history of religion and theology. The existence of God was a common,
+external, and yet at the same time a holy thing:--what wonder, then,
+if on this ground the commonest, rudest, most unholy conceptions and
+opinions sprang up!
+His existence is therefore real, yet not real. The theologian calls it "spiritual existence," but this is merely existence in thought and feeling—a middle ground between sensory reality and mere concept, full of contradictions. It claims to be sensory while lacking all conditions of sensory existence. It is an existence that contradicts the very idea of the sensory, or a vague "existence in general" that is actually sensory but stripped of its defining traits. Such "existence in general" is a contradiction; real existence requires definite reality.
+Atheism was supposed, and is even now supposed, to be the negation
+of all moral principle, of all moral foundations and bonds: if
+God is not, all distinction between good and bad, virtue and vice,
+is abolished. Thus the distinction lies only in the existence of
+God; the reality of virtue lies not in itself, but out of it. And
+assuredly it is not from an attachment to virtue, from a conviction
+of its intrinsic worth and importance, that the reality of it is
+thus bound up with the existence of God. On the contrary, the belief
+that God is the necessary condition of virtue is the belief in the
+nothingness of virtue in itself.
+Atheism is the necessary result. God's existence is presented as empirical fact without empirical characteristics; it claims to be matter of experience yet offers nothing to experience, filling the mind with sensory expectations. When these are not met, one is justified in denying that existence.
+It is indeed worthy of remark that the idea of the empirical
+existence of God has been perfectly developed in modern times,
+in which empiricism and materialism in general have arrived at
+their full blow. It is true that even in the original, simple
+religious mind, God is an empirical existence to be found in a place,
+though above the earth. But here this conception has not so naked,
+so prosaic a significance; the imagination identifies again the
+external God with the soul of man. The imagination is, in general,
+the true place of an existence which is absent, not present to
+the senses, though nevertheless sensational in its essence. [162]
+Only the imagination solves the contradiction in an existence which
+is at once sensational and not sensational; only the imagination
+is the preservative from atheism. In the imagination existence has
+sensational effects,--existence affirms itself as a power; with the
+essence of sensational existence the imagination associates also the
+phenomena of sensational existence. Where the existence of God is a
+living truth, an object on which the imagination exercises itself,
+there also appearances of God are believed in. [163] Where, on the
+contrary, the fire of the religious imagination is extinct, where
+the sensational effects or appearances necessarily connected with an
+essentially sensational existence cease, there the existence becomes
+a dead, self-contradictory existence, which falls irrecoverably into
+the negation of atheism.
+Kant argued that God's existence cannot be proven by reason, an insight Hegel wrongly criticized. In these proofs, the idea of God's existence is entirely empirical, and one cannot derive empirical fact from abstract idea. Kant's only fault was treating this self-evident truth as a discovery. Reason cannot constitute itself an object of sense; I cannot think something and simultaneously represent it as a sensible object external to me. Proving God's existence exceeds reason's limits, but only as seeing or hearing does. It is absurd to blame reason for failing to satisfy a sensory demand. Empirical existence is proven by senses alone.
+The belief in the existence of God is the belief in a special
+existence, separate from the existence of man and Nature. A special
+existence can only be proved in a special manner. This faith is
+therefore only then a true and living one when special effects,
+immediate appearances of God, miracles, are believed in. Where, on the
+other hand, the belief in God is identified with the belief in the
+world, where the belief in God is no longer a special faith, where
+the general being of the world takes possession of the whole man,
+there also vanishes the belief in special effects and appearances
+of God. Belief in God is wrecked, is stranded on the belief in the
+world, in natural effects as the only true ones. As here the belief
+in miracles is no longer anything more than the belief in historical,
+past miracles, so the existence of God is also only an historical,
+in itself atheistic conception.
+In the debate over God, "existence" usually means formal, external reality rather than inner truth. This is why believing or not believing in God doesn't necessarily change one's moral character. While "there is a God" can be inspiring, the "is" here refers to inner reality—an act of the soul. Once existence becomes dry, empirical truth, that inspiration vanishes.
+When religion bases itself on God's existence as empirical truth, it becomes indifferent to inner character. Just as rituals can overshadow moral spirit, mere belief that God *is* eventually becomes religion's core, regardless of what that God is like.
+> **Quote:** "Whether under this God thou conceivest a really divine being or a monster, a Nero or a Caligula, an image of thy passions, thy revenge, or ambition, it is all one,—the main point is that thou be not an atheist."
+Religious history confirms this: if God's existence alone had not become a truth detached from character, we would never have seen the horrific ideas that stain theology. Because existence was seen as holy but external, unholy conceptions could sprout from it.
+Atheism is still seen as denial of all moral principle. The fear is that without God, all distinction between good and evil disappears—implying virtue has no reality itself. Surely, tying virtue's reality to God's existence does not come from love of virtue. On the contrary,
+> **Quote:** "the belief that God is the necessary condition of virtue is the belief in the nothingness of virtue in itself."
+The idea of God's empirical existence has been most fully developed in modern times, alongside materialism and empiricism. Even in simple religious minds, God was seen as an empirical being inhabiting a place, usually above the earth—but there, imagination linked that external God back to the human soul. Imagination is the natural home for an existence absent from the senses yet sensory in essence. Only imagination can resolve the contradiction of a being both sensory and non-sensory; it is the true shield against atheism. Through imagination, this existence has real effects and reveals itself as a power, associating the essence of sensory existence with its phenomena. Where God's existence is a living truth engaging imagination, people believe in divine appearances. But when the fire of religious imagination goes out—when sensory effects cease—that existence becomes a dead contradiction falling inevitably into atheism.
+Belief in God's existence is belief in a specific existence separate from humanity and nature. A specific existence can only be proven in a specific way. This faith lives only when one believes in miracles and immediate divine interventions. When belief in God merges with belief in the natural world—when faith is no longer distinct and natural laws occupy the whole person—belief in divine acts vanishes. Faith in God is shipwrecked on the belief that world and natural causes are the only real ones. Then belief in miracles becomes merely belief in ancient history, and God's existence becomes a historical—and essentially atheistic—concept.
 ### CHAPTER XXI. - THE CONTRADICTION IN THE REVELATION OF GOD.
+Revelation is inseparable from God's existence—His own testimony, the only true proof. Logical proofs are merely subjective; revelation is objective. God speaks to man; His word thrills the soul with joyful certainty. This is the gospel of life, the measure of existence itself. Belief in revelation is the peak of religious objectivism: subjective conviction becomes external, historical fact. God's existence, merely conceived, remains doubtful; revelation converts this into real fact. A God who exists without revealing Himself is abstract and subjective; only a God who acts is objective. Faith in revelation is the immediate certainty that what the religious mind believes is actually real.
+With the idea of the existence of God is connected the idea of
+revelation. God's attestation of his existence, the authentic testimony
+that God exists, is revelation. Proofs drawn from reason are merely
+subjective; the objective, the only true proof of the existence of God,
+is his revelation. God speaks to man; revelation is the word of God;
+he sends forth a voice which thrills the soul, and gives it the joyful
+certainty that God really is. The word is the gospel of life,--the
+criterion of existence and non-existence. Belief in revelation is the
+culminating point of religious objectivism. The subjective conviction
+of the existence of God here becomes an indubitable, external,
+historical fact. The existence of God, in itself, considered simply
+as existence, is already an external, empirical existence; still,
+it is as yet only thought, conceived, and therefore doubtful; hence
+the assertion that all proofs produce no satisfactory certainty. This
+conceptional existence converted into a real existence, a fact, is
+revelation. God has revealed himself, has demonstrated himself: who
+then can have any further doubt? The certainty of the existence of God
+is involved for me in the certainty of the revelation. A God who only
+exists without revealing himself, who exists for me only through my own
+mental act, such a God is a merely abstract, imaginary, subjective God;
+a God who gives me a knowledge of himself through his own act is alone
+a God who truly exists, who proves himself to exist,--an objective
+God. Faith in revelation is the immediate certainty of the religious
+mind, that what it believes, wishes, conceives, really is. Religion
+is a dream, in which our own conceptions and emotions appear to us as
+separate existences, beings out of ourselves. The religious mind does
+not distinguish between subjective and objective,--it has no doubts;
+it has the faculty, not of discerning other things than itself, but of
+seeing its own conceptions out of itself as distinct beings. What is
+in itself a mere theory is to the religious mind a practical belief,
+a matter of conscience,--a fact. A fact is that which from being an
+object of the intellect becomes a matter of conscience; a fact is that
+which one cannot criticise or attack without being guilty of a crime;
+[164] a fact is that which one must believe nolens volens; a fact is a
+physical force, not an argument,--it makes no appeal to the reason. O
+ye shortsighted religious philosophers of Germany, who fling at our
+heads the facts of the religious consciousness, to stun our reason and
+make us the slaves of your childish superstition,--do you not see that
+facts are just as relative, as various, as subjective, as the ideas
+of the different religions? Were not the gods of Olympus also facts,
+self-attesting existences? [165] Were not the ludicrous miracles of
+paganism regarded as facts? Were not angels and demons historical
+persons? Did they not really appear to men? Did not Balaam's ass
+really speak? Was not the story of Balaam's ass just as much believed
+even by enlightened scholars of the last century, as the Incarnation
+or any other miracle? A fact, I repeat, is a conception about the
+truth of which there is no doubt, because it is no object of theory,
+but of feeling, which desires that what it wishes, what it believes,
+should be true. A fact is that, the denial of which is forbidden,
+if not by an external law, yet by an internal one. A fact is every
+possibility which passes for a reality, every conception which,
+for the age wherein it is held to be a fact, expresses a want, and
+is for that reason an impassable limit of the mind. A fact is every
+wish that projects itself on reality: in short, it is everything that
+is not doubted simply because it is not--must not be--doubted.
+> **Quote:** "Religion is a dream, in which our own conceptions and emotions appear to us as separate existences, beings out of ourselves."
+The religious mind, according to its nature as hitherto unfolded,
+has the immediate certainty that all its involuntary, spontaneous
+affections are impressions from without, manifestations of another
+being. The religious mind makes itself the passive, God the active
+being. God is activity; but that which determines him to activity,
+which causes his activity (originally only omnipotence, potentia)
+to become real activity, is not himself,--he needs nothing,--but man,
+the religious subject. At the same time, however, man is reciprocally
+determined by God; he views himself as passive; lie receives from God
+determinate revelations, determinate proofs of his existence. Thus in
+revelation man determines himself as that which determines God, i.e.,
+revelation is simply the self-determination of man, only that between
+himself the determined, and himself the determining, he interposes an
+object--God, a distinct being. God is the medium by which man brings
+about the reconciliation of himself with his own nature: God is the
+bond, the vinculum substantiale, between the essential nature--the
+species--and the individual.
+The religious mind does not distinguish subjective from objective; it externalizes its own ideas as distinct beings. What is theoretically a concept becomes a practical belief, a matter of conscience—a fact. A fact is untouchable; to criticize it is a moral crime. One must believe it *nolens volens*—as a matter of physical force rather than argument, making no appeal to reason. You short-sighted German philosophers who throw these "facts" at our heads—do you not see they are as relative as the ideas of different religions? Were not the gods of Olympus facts? Were not pagan miracles facts? Did not Balaam's donkey "really" speak, believed by scholars as firmly as the Incarnation? A fact is a concept protected from doubt by feeling—a wish projected onto reality, a need elevated to an impassable limit.
+The belief in revelation exhibits in the clearest manner the
+characteristic illusion of the religious consciousness. The general
+premiss of this belief is: man can of himself know nothing of God; all
+his knowledge is merely vain, earthly, human. But God is a superhuman
+being; God is known only by himself. Thus we know nothing of God beyond
+what he reveals to us. The knowledge imparted by God is alone divine,
+superhuman, supernatural knowledge. By means of revelation, therefore,
+we know God through himself; for revelation is the word of God--God
+declaring himself. Hence, in the belief in revelation man makes himself
+a negation, he goes out of and above himself; he places revelation
+in opposition to human knowledge and opinion; in it is contained a
+hidden knowledge, the fulness of all supersensuous mysteries; here
+reason must hold its peace. But nevertheless the divine revelation is
+determined by the human nature. God speaks not to brutes or angels,
+but to men; hence he uses human speech and human conceptions. Man
+is an object to God, before God perceptibly imparts himself to man;
+he thinks of man; he determines his action in accordance with the
+nature of man and his needs. God is indeed free in will; he can
+reveal himself or not; but he is not free as to the understanding;
+he cannot reveal to man whatever he will, but only what is adapted to
+man, what is commensurate with his nature such as it actually is; he
+reveals what he must reveal, if his revelation is to be a revelation
+for man, and not for some other kind of being. Now what God thinks in
+relation to man is determined by the idea of man--it has arisen out of
+reflection on human nature. God puts himself in the place of man, and
+thinks of himself as this other being can and should think of him; he
+thinks of himself, not with his own thinking power, but with man's. In
+the scheme of his revelation God must have reference not to himself,
+but to man's power of comprehension. That which comes from God to man,
+comes to man only from man in God, that is, only from the ideal nature
+of man to the phenomenal man, from the species to the individual. Thus,
+between the divine revelation and the so-called human reason or nature,
+there is no other than an illusory distinction;--the contents of the
+divine revelation are of human origin, for they have proceeded not
+from God as God, but from God as determined by human reason, human
+wants, that is, directly from human reason and human wants. And so in
+revelation man goes out of himself, in order, by a circuitous path, to
+return to himself! Here we have a striking confirmation of the position
+that the secret of theology is nothing else than anthropology--the
+knowledge of God nothing else than a knowledge of man!
+The religious mind views itself as passive, God as active—yet what moves God to act is not Himself but man, the religious subject. Man is reciprocally shaped by God, receiving specific revelations. Thus in revelation, man determines himself, placing God as the object between his shaping self and his shaped self. God is the medium through which man reconciles himself with his own nature—the substantial bond between the species and the individual.
+Indeed, the religious consciousness itself admits, in relation to past
+times, the essentially human quality of revelation. The religious
+consciousness of a later age is no longer satisfied with a Jehovah
+who is from head to foot a man, and does not shrink from becoming
+visible as such. It recognises that those were merely images in which
+God accommodated himself to the comprehension of men in that age,
+that is, merely human images. But it does not apply this mode of
+interpretation to ideas accepted as revelation in the present age,
+because it is yet itself steeped in those ideas. Nevertheless,
+every revelation is simply a revelation of the nature of man to
+existing men. In revelation man's latent nature is disclosed to
+him, because an object to him. He is determined, affected by his
+own nature as by another being; he receives from the hands of God
+what his own unrecognised nature entails upon him as a necessity,
+under certain conditions of time and circumstance. Reason, the mind
+of the species, operates on the subjective, uncultured man only under
+the image of a personal being. Moral laws have force for him only
+as the commandments of a Divine Will, which has at once the power
+to punish and the glance which nothing escapes. That which his own
+nature, his reason, his conscience says to him, does not bind him,
+because the subjective, uncultured man sees in conscience, in reason,
+so far as he recognises it as his own, no universal objective power;
+hence he must separate from himself that which gives him moral laws,
+and place it in opposition to himself, as a distinct personal being.
+The belief in revelation demonstrates religion's characteristic illusion: man can know nothing of God on his own; only God can reveal Himself. Yet revelation is determined by human nature. God speaks to humans in human language and concepts. He thinks of man and shapes His actions according to human needs. While God may be free to reveal or not, He cannot reveal what man cannot receive. What God thinks in relation to man has arisen from reflection on human nature; He thinks with man's mind. The distinction between divine revelation and human reason is an illusion—the contents are of human origin, proceeding from God as defined by human reason and needs.
+Belief in revelation is a childlike belief, and is only respectable so
+long as it is childlike. But the child is determined from without, and
+revelation has for its object to effect by God's help what man cannot
+attain by himself. Hence revelation has been called the education of
+the human race. This is correct; only revelation must not be regarded
+as outside the nature of man. There is within him an inward necessity
+which impels him to present moral and philosophical doctrines in the
+form of narratives and fables, and an equal necessity to represent that
+impulse as a revelation. The mythical poet has an end in view--that of
+making men good and wise; he designedly adopts the form of fable as
+the most appropriate and vivid method of representation; but at the
+same time, he is himself urged to this mode of teaching by his love
+of fable, by his inward impulse. So it is with a revelation enunciated
+by an individual. This individual has an aim; but at the same time he
+himself lives in the conceptions by means of which he realises this
+aim. Man, by means of the imagination, involuntarily contemplates his
+inner nature; he represents it as out of himself. The nature of man,
+of the species--thus working on him through the irresistible power
+of the imagination, and contemplated as the law of his thought and
+action--is God.
+> **Quote:** "The secret of theology is nothing else than anthropology—the knowledge of God nothing else than a knowledge of man!"
+Herein lie the beneficial moral effects of the belief in revelation.
+The religious consciousness admits this when viewing the past. It recognizes Jehovah as merely an image accommodating ancient understanding—human images. Yet it fails to apply this to present revelations, still immersed in them. Every revelation discloses human nature to its time; man's latent nature is revealed to him as if it were another being. Reason acts upon the unrefined person only through a personal being; moral laws have authority only as Divine commands. What his own nature tells him does not bind him, because he does not see reason as universal power. He must separate the source and place it in opposition as a distinct being. Belief in revelation is childlike faith, respectable only while childlike. Revelation aims to accomplish what man cannot achieve alone—why it has been called the education of the human race. There is an internal necessity to present truths as stories, and to call this a revelation. The mythical poet has a goal—he chooses the fable to make people good—but is driven by his own impulse. Through imagination, man involuntarily contemplates his inner nature and represents it as something outside himself. The nature of man, acting through imagination, is what we call God.
+But as Nature "unconsciously produces results which look as if they
+were produced consciously," so revelation generates moral actions,
+which do not, however, proceed from morality;--moral actions, but
+no moral dispositions. Moral rules are indeed observed, but they are
+severed from the inward disposition, the heart, by being represented
+as the commandments of an external lawgiver, by being placed in the
+category of arbitrary laws, police regulations. What is done is done
+not because it is good and right, but because it is commanded by
+God. The inherent quality of the deed is indifferent; whatever God
+commands is right. [166] If these commands are in accordance with
+reason, with ethics, it is well; but so far as the idea of revelation
+is concerned, it is accidental. The ceremonial laws of the Jews were
+revealed, divine, though in themselves adventitious and arbitrary. The
+Jews received from Jehovah the command to steal;--in a special case,
+it is true.
+This is where revelation's beneficial moral effects lie. But as Nature unconsciously produces results that look conscious, revelation generates moral actions without moral hearts. Rules are observed externally, severed from the heart and treated like arbitrary laws or police regulations. What is done is done not because it is good, but because God commands it. The ceremonial laws of the Jews were divine though trivial; in one case, Jehovah even commanded theft.
+But the belief in revelation not only injures the moral sense
+and taste,--the æsthetics of virtue; it poisons, nay it destroys,
+the divinest feeling in man--the sense of truth, the perception and
+sentiment of truth. The revelation of God is a determinate revelation,
+given at a particular epoch: God revealed himself once for all in the
+year so and so, and that, not to the universal man, to the man of all
+times and places, to the reason, to the species, but to certain limited
+individuals. A revelation in a given time and place must be fixed in
+writing, that its blessings may be transmitted uninjured. Hence the
+belief in revelation is, at least for those of a subsequent age, belief
+in a written revelation; but the necessary consequence of a faith in
+which an historical book, necessarily subject to all the conditions
+of a temporal, finite production, is regarded as an eternal, absolute,
+universally authoritative word, is--superstition and sophistry.
+A revelation tied to specific time and place must be recorded in writing; for later generations, belief becomes belief in a written record. The necessary result is superstition and sophistry. Faith in a written revelation is genuine only when everything is believed significant, true, and divine. When distinctions are made between human and divine, between historical and permanent—when not everything is unconditionally true—then unbelief has already entered. Divinity is characterized by unity and unconditionality. A book forcing me to discriminate is demoted to ordinary rank. What kind of revelation is it where I must sift through Paul, Peter, James, and the Evangelists until at last my soul, athirst for God, can cry out: 'Eureka! Here the Holy Spirit speaks!' How much more consistent was the old faith extending inspiration to every word and letter!
+Faith in a written revelation is a real, unfeigned, and so far
+respectable faith, only where it is believed that all in the sacred
+writings is significant, true, holy, divine. Where, on the contrary,
+the distinction is made between the human and divine, the relatively
+true and the absolutely true, the historical and the permanent,--where
+it is not held that all without distinction is unconditionally true;
+there the verdict of unbelief, that the Bible is no divine book, is
+already introduced into the interpretation of the Bible,--there, at
+least indirectly, that is, in a crafty, dishonest way, its title to the
+character of a divine revelation is denied. Unity, unconditionality,
+freedom from exceptions, immediate certitude, is alone the character of
+divinity. A book that imposes on me the necessity of discrimination,
+the necessity of criticism, in order to separate the divine from
+the human, the permanent from the temporary, is no longer a divine,
+certain, infallible book,--it is degraded to the rank of profane
+books; for every profane book has the same quality, that together
+with or in the human it contains the divine, that is, together with
+or in the individual it contains the universal and eternal. But that
+only is a truly divine book in which there is not merely something
+good and something bad, something permanent and something temporary,
+but in which all comes as it were from one crucible, all is eternal,
+true and good. What sort of a revelation is that in which I must
+first listen to the apostle Paul, then to Peter, then to James,
+then to John, then to Matthew, then to Mark, then to Luke, until
+at last I come to a passage where my soul, athirst for God, can cry
+out: Eureka! here speaks the Holy Spirit himself! here is something
+for me, something for all times and men. How true, on the contrary,
+was the conception of the old faith, when it extended inspiration
+to the very words, to the very letters of Scripture! The word is
+not a matter of indifference in relation to the thought; a definite
+thought can only be rendered by a definite word. Another word, another
+letter--another sense. It is true that such faith is superstition;
+but this superstition is alone the true, undisguised, open faith,
+which is not ashamed of its consequences. If God numbers the hairs
+on the head of a man, if no sparrow falls to the ground without his
+will, how could he leave to the stupidity and caprice of scribes his
+Word--that Word on which depends the everlasting salvation of man? Why
+should he not dictate his thoughts to their pen in order to guard
+them from the possibility of disfiguration? "But if man were a mere
+organ of the Holy Spirit, human freedom would be abolished!" [167] Oh,
+what a pitiable argument! Is human freedom, then, of more value than
+divine truth? Or does human freedom consist only in the distortion
+of divine truth?
+> **Quote:** "The word is not a matter of indifference in relation to the thought; a definite thought can only be rendered by a definite word. Another word, another letter—another sense."
+And just as necessarily as the belief in a determinate historical
+revelation is associated with superstition, so necessarily is it
+associated with sophistry. The Bible contradicts morality, contradicts
+reason, contradicts itself, innumerable times; and yet it is the Word
+of God, eternal truth, and "truth cannot contradict itself." [168]
+How does the believer in revelation elude this contradiction between
+the idea in his own mind of revelation as divine, harmonious truth,
+and this supposed actual revelation? Only by self-deception, only
+by the silliest subterfuges, only by the most miserable, transparent
+sophisms. Christian sophistry is the necessary product of Christian
+faith, especially of faith in the Bible as a divine revelation.
+Such faith is superstition, but it is the only honest faith not ashamed of its logic. If God counts hairs and sparrows, how could He leave His Word—on which salvation depends—to human blunder? Why not dictate directly? One might argue this abolishes human freedom. What a pathetic argument! Is freedom more valuable than divine truth?
+Truth, absolute truth, is given objectively in the Bible, subjectively
+in faith; for towards that which God himself speaks I can only be
+believing, resigned, receptive. Nothing is left to the understanding,
+the reason, but a formal, subordinate office; it has a false position,
+a position essentially contradictory to its nature. The understanding
+in itself is here indifferent to truth, indifferent to the distinction
+between the true and the false; it has no criterion in itself;
+whatever is found in revelation is true, even when it is in direct
+contradiction with reason. The understanding is helplessly given
+over to the haphazard of the most ignoble empiricism;--whatever
+I find in divine revelation I must believe, and if necessary, my
+understanding must defend it; the understanding is the watchdog of
+revelation; it must let everything without distinction be imposed
+on it as truth,--discrimination would be doubt, would be a crime:
+consequently, nothing remains to it but an adventitious, indifferent,
+i.e., disingenuous, sophistical, tortuous mode of thought, which
+is occupied only with groundless distinctions and subterfuges, with
+ignominious tricks and evasions. But the more man, by the progress of
+time, becomes estranged from revelation, the more the understanding
+ripens into independence,--the more glaring, necessarily, appears the
+contradiction between the understanding and belief in revelation. The
+believer can then prove revelation only by incurring contradiction
+with himself, with truth, with the understanding, only by the most
+impudent assumptions, only by shameless falsehoods, only by the sin
+against the Holy Ghost.
+Just as belief in specific revelation is tied to superstition, it is tied to sophistry. The Bible contradicts morality, reason, and itself countless times; yet it is eternal truth—and truth cannot contradict itself. How does the believer escape? Only through self-deception and transparent sophisms. Christian sophistry is the inevitable product of faith in the Bible as divine revelation. Absolute truth is presented objectively in the Bible and subjectively in faith; when God speaks, I can only believe. The intellect is left with a formal, subordinate role—contradicting its nature. It becomes indifferent to truth and falsehood; whatever is in revelation is accepted, even when it contradicts reason. The intellect becomes the watchdog of revelation, forced to defend everything imposed as truth. To discriminate would be to doubt—a crime. Nothing remains but a disingenuous, sophistical way of thinking, occupied with baseless distinctions and ignominious tricks. As humanity matures, the contradiction becomes increasingly glaring. The believer can then only attempt to prove revelation by contradicting himself and the truth, resorting to arrogant assumptions and the very 'sin against the Holy Ghost'—deliberate falsehood.
+### CHAPTER XXII. - THE CONTRADICTION IN THE NATURE OF GOD IN GENERAL.
+The core of Christian sophistry is the idea of God: essentially human nature projected as superhuman, universal abstract Being yet imagined as personal, with certain existence yet spiritual and unperceivable.
+> **Quote:** "One half of the definition is always in contradiction with the other half: the statement of what must be held always annihilates the statement of what is."
+A God who does not care, hear prayers, or love is no God—so humanity becomes essential to deity. Yet a God who does not exist outside and above man is a phantom—so non-human transcendence becomes essential. A God without consciousness or personal intelligence—such as Spinoza's 'substance'—is no God. Identity with us is the primary condition of deity; the idea of God depends on a personality *quo nihil majus cogitari potest* (than which nothing greater can be thought). Yet a God not essentially different from us is no God.
+> **Quote:** "The essence of religion is the immediate, involuntary, unconscious contemplation of the human nature as another, a distinct nature."
+When this projected image becomes an object of reflection, it becomes a source of falsehoods and contradictions.
+### CHAPTER XXII. - THE CONTRADICTION IN THE NATURE OF GOD IN GENERAL.
+A characteristic tactic is the doctrine of divine "unsearchableness." As we'll show, the secret of this incomprehensibility is merely turning a known quality into an unknown one—a natural quality into a supernatural, or rather *unnatural* one—to create the illusion that the divine nature is essentially different.
+Originally, divine incomprehensibility is just emotional expression—the exclamation of wonder, not intellectual failure. When struck by surprise we cry "incredible!" though later we understand. Religious incomprehensibility is passion, not dead end.
+The grand principle, the central point of Christian sophistry, is
+the idea of God. God is the human being, and yet he must be regarded
+as another, a superhuman being. God is universal, abstract Being,
+simply the idea of Being; and yet he must be conceived as a personal,
+individual being;--or God is a person, and yet he must be regarded as
+God, as universal, i.e., not as a personal being. God is; his existence
+is certain, more certain than ours; he has an existence distinct from
+us and from things in general, i.e., an individual existence; and yet
+his existence must be held a spiritual one, i.e., an existence not
+perceptible as a special one. One half of the definition is always in
+contradiction with the other half: the statement of what must be held
+always annihilates the statement of what is. The fundamental idea is
+a contradiction which can be concealed only by sophisms. A God who
+does not trouble himself about us, who does not hear our prayers,
+who does not see us and love us, is no God; thus humanity is made
+an essential predicate of God;--but at the same time it is said:
+A God who does not exist in and by himself, out of men, above men,
+as another being, is a phantom; and thus it is made an essential
+predicate of God that he is non-human and extra-human. A God who is
+not as we are, who has not consciousness, not intelligence, i.e., not
+a personal understanding, a personal consciousness (as, for example,
+the "substance" of Spinoza), is no God. Essential identity with us is
+the chief condition of deity; the idea of deity is made dependent on
+the idea of personality, of consciousness, quo nihil majus cogitari
+potest. But it is said in the same breath, a God who is not essentially
+distinguished from us is no God.
+The imagination is religion's primary organ. In primitive religion, the only difference between God and man is existence: God is self-sustaining, man dependent. Otherwise it's merely quantitative—a distinction of degrees, since imagination only deals in degrees. God's infinity is quantitative: he has everything man has, but infinitely more. [169]
+The essence of religion is the immediate, involuntary, unconscious
+contemplation of the human nature as another, a distinct nature. But
+when this projected image of human nature is made an object of
+reflection, of theology, it becomes an inexhaustible mine of
+falsehoods, illusions, contradictions, and sophisms.
+> **Quote:** "The nature of God is the nature of the imagination unfolded, made objective."
+A peculiarly characteristic artifice and pretext of Christian sophistry
+is the doctrine of the unsearchableness, the incomprehensibility
+of the divine nature. But, as will be shown, the secret of this
+incomprehensibility is nothing further than that a known quality
+is made into an unknown one, a natural quality into a supernatural,
+i.e., an unnatural one, so as to produce the appearance, the illusion,
+that the divine nature is different from the human, and is eo ipso
+an incomprehensible one.
+God is a being conceived through the senses but stripped of sensory limits—simultaneously unlimited and sensory. But what is the imagination? It is the limitless activity of the senses. God is eternal, omnipresent, omniscient.
+In the original sense of religion, the incomprehensibility of
+God has only the significance of an impassioned expression. Thus,
+when we are affected by a surprising phenomenon, we exclaim: It
+is incredible, it is beyond conception! though afterwards, when we
+recover our self-possession, we find the object of our astonishment
+nothing less than incomprehensible. In the truly religious sense,
+incomprehensibility is not the dead full stop which reflection places
+wherever understanding deserts it, but a pathetic note of exclamation
+marking the impression which the imagination makes on the feelings. The
+imagination is the original organ of religion. Between God and man,
+in the primitive sense of religion, there is on the one hand only a
+distinction in relation to existence, according to which God, as a
+self-subsistent being, is the antithesis of man as a dependent being;
+on the other hand, there is only a quantitative distinction, i.e.,
+a distinction derived from the imagination, for the distinctions
+of the imagination are only quantitative. The infinity of God in
+religion is quantitative infinity; God is and has all that man has,
+but in an infinitely greater measure. The nature of God is the nature
+of the imagination unfolded, made objective. [169] God is a being
+conceived under the forms of the senses, but freed from the limits
+of sense,--a being at once unlimited and sensational. But what is the
+imagination?--limitless activity of the senses. God is eternal, i.e.,
+he exists at all times; God is omnipresent, i.e., he exists in all
+places; God is the omniscient being, i.e., the being to whom every
+individual thing, every sensible existence, is an object without
+distinction, without limitation of time and place.
+Eternity and omnipresence are sensory qualities: they negate restriction to specific time or place, not existence in time/space. Similarly, omniscience is sensory knowledge. Religion does not hesitate to attribute the "nobler" senses to God: he sees and hears everything. Yet divine omniscience is defined as sensory knowledge while simultaneously denying what makes actual sensory knowledge possible. My senses show objects separately and sequentially; God sees all things at once, every location non-locally, all temporal things non-temporally, all sense-objects non-sensorily. [170] I expand my sensory horizon through imagination, projecting this website of whole existence as divine reality. I remove felt limitations, creating free space for feelings. This imaginative removal creates omniscience as divine power. Yet only degree separates omniscience from human knowledge; the quality remains the same. I could not attribute omniscience to a being if it were essentially different from my own knowledge—if it weren't a recognizable way of perceiving. What senses recognize is the content of both divine and human knowledge. Imagination only removes quantitative limits, not quality. To say our knowledge is "limited" means we know only some things, not everything.
+Eternity and omnipresence are sensational qualities, for in them
+there is no negation of existence in time and space, but only of
+exclusive limitation to a particular time, to a particular place. In
+like manner omniscience is a sensational quality, a sensational
+knowledge. Religion has no hesitation in attributing to God himself
+the nobler senses: God sees and hears all things. But the divine
+omniscience is a power of knowing through the senses while yet the
+necessary quality, the essential determination of actual knowledge
+through the senses is denied to it. My senses present sensible
+objects to me only separately and in succession; but God sees all
+sensible things at once, all locality in an unlocal manner, all
+temporal things in an untemporal manner, all objects of sense in an
+unsensational manner. [170] That is to say: I extend the horizon of
+my senses by the imagination; I form to myself a confused conception
+of the whole of things; and this conception, which exalts me above the
+limited standpoint of the senses, and therefore affects me agreeably,
+I posit as a divine reality. I feel the fact that my knowledge is tied
+to a local standpoint, to sensational experience, as a limitation;
+what I feel as a limitation I do away with in my imagination, which
+furnishes free space for the play of my feelings. This negativing of
+limits by the imagination is the positing of omniscience as a divine
+power and reality. But at the same time there is only a quantitative
+distinction between omniscience and my knowledge; the quality of
+the knowledge is the same. In fact, it would be impossible for me
+to predicate omniscience of an object or being external to myself,
+if this omniscience were essentially different from my own knowledge,
+if it were not a mode of perception of my own, if it had nothing in
+common with my own power of cognition. That which is recognised by the
+senses is as much the object and content of the divine omniscience as
+of my knowledge. Imagination does away only with the limit of quantity,
+not of quality. The proposition that our knowledge is limited, means:
+we know only some things, a few things, not all.
+The beneficial influence of religion rests on this extension of sensory consciousness. In religion, man is in the open air, *sub deo*; in the merely sensory consciousness, he is in his narrow, confined dwelling-house. Isolated, uneducated peoples keep religion in its original sense. The Hebrews had no art or science like the Greeks because Jehovah fulfilled every need.
+The beneficial influence of religion rests on this extension of the
+sensational consciousness. In religion man is in the open air, sub
+deo; in the sensational consciousness he is in his narrow confined
+dwelling-house. Religion has relation essentially, originally--and
+only in its origin is it something holy, true, pure, and good--to the
+immediate sensational consciousness alone; it is the setting aside of
+the limits of sense. Isolated, uninstructed men and nations preserve
+religion in its original sense, because they themselves remain in
+that mental state which is the source of religion. The more limited
+a man's sphere of vision, the less he knows of history, Nature,
+philosophy--the more ardently does he cling to his religion.
+In divine omniscience, man rises above his knowledge limits; [171] in divine omnipresence, above location limits; in divine eternity, above time limits. The religious person is happy in imagination, possessing everything essentially and portably. Jehovah goes everywhere; I need not step outside myself. In God I have all treasures. Culture, however, overcomes limits through real action, not imagination. Thus the Christian religion contains no inherent principle of culture, for it triumphs over earthly difficulties only in God, in heaven. God is everything the heart desires—all good things, all blessings.
+For this reason the religious man feels no need of culture. Why
+had the Hebrews no art, no science, as the Greeks had? Because they
+felt no need of it. To them this need was supplied by Jehovah. In
+the divine omniscience man raises himself above the limits of his
+own knowledge; [171] in the divine omnipresence, above the limits
+of his local standpoint; in the divine eternity, above the limits
+of his time. The religious man is happy in his imagination; he has
+all things in nuce; his possessions are always portable. Jehovah
+accompanies me everywhere; I need not travel out of myself; I have
+in my God the sum of all treasures and precious things, of all that
+is worth knowledge and remembrance. But culture is dependent on
+external things; it has many and various wants, for it overcomes the
+limits of sensational consciousness and life by real activity, not by
+the magical power of the religious imagination. Hence the Christian
+religion also, as has been often mentioned already, has in its essence
+no principle of culture, for it triumphs over the limitations and
+difficulties of earthly life only through the imagination, only in
+God, in heaven. God is all that the heart needs and desires--all
+good things, all blessings. "Dost thou desire love, or faithfulness,
+or truth, or consolation, or perpetual presence?--this is always in
+him without measure. Dost thou desire beauty?--he is the supremely
+beautiful. Dost thou desire riches?--all riches are in him. Dost thou
+desire power?--he is supremely powerful. Or whatever thy heart desires,
+it is found a thousandfold in Him, in the best, the single good,
+which is God." [172] But how can he who has all in God, who already
+enjoys heavenly bliss in the imagination, experience that want, that
+sense of poverty, which is the impulse to all culture? Culture has
+no other object than to realise an earthly heaven; and the religious
+heaven is only realised or won by religious activity.
+> **Quote:** "Dost thou desire love, or faithfulness, or truth, or consolation, or perpetual presence?—this is always in him without measure. Dost thou desire beauty?—he is the supremely beautiful. Dost thou desire riches?—all riches are in him. Dost thou desire power?—he is supremely powerful. Or whatever thy heart desires, it is found a thousandfold in Him, in the best, the single good, which is God."  [172]
+The difference, however, between God and man, which is originally only
+quantitative, is by reflection developed into a qualitative difference;
+and thus what was originally only an emotional impression, an immediate
+expression of admiration, of rapture, an influence of the imagination
+on the feelings, has fixity given to it as an objective quality, as
+real incomprehensibility. The favourite expression of reflection in
+relation to this subject is, that we can indeed know concerning God
+that he has such and such attributes, but not how he has them. For
+example, that the predicate of the Creator essentially belongs to God,
+that he created the world, and not out of matter already existing,
+but out of nothing, by an act of almighty power,--this is clear,
+certain--yes, indubitable; but how this is possible naturally passes
+our understanding. That is to say: the generic idea is clear, certain,
+but the specific idea is unclear, uncertain.
+But reflection develops this difference in degree into difference in kind, solidifying emotional impression into objective "incomprehensibility." The favorite phrase is that we can know *that* God has attributes, but not *how*. For example, it's clear that God is Creator—making the world from nothing by almighty power. But *how* this is possible exceeds our understanding. The general idea is clear, but specific details are not.
+The idea of activity, of making, of creation, is in itself a divine
+idea; it is therefore unhesitatingly applied to God. In activity, man
+feels himself free, unlimited, happy; in passivity, limited, oppressed,
+unhappy. Activity is the positive sense of one's personality. That is
+positive which in man is accompanied with joy; hence God is, as we
+have already said, the idea of pure, unlimited joy. We succeed only
+in what we do willingly; joyful effort conquers all things. But that
+is joyful activity which is in accordance with our nature, which we do
+not feel as a limitation, and consequently not as a constraint. And the
+happiest, the most blissful activity is that which is productive. To
+read is delightful, reading is passive activity; but to produce what
+is worthy to be read is more delightful still. It is more blessed to
+give than to receive. Hence this attribute of the species--productive
+activity--is assigned to God; that is, realised and made objective
+as divine activity. But every special determination, every mode of
+activity is abstracted, and only the fundamental determination, which,
+however, is essentially human, namely, production of what is external
+to self, is retained. God has not, like man, produced something in
+particular, this or that, but all things; his activity is absolutely
+universal, unlimited. Hence it is self-evident, it is a necessary
+consequence, that the mode in which God has produced the All is
+incomprehensible, because this activity is no mode of activity,
+because the question concerning the how is here an absurdity,
+a question which is excluded by the fundamental idea of unlimited
+activity. Every special activity produces its effects in a special
+manner, because there the activity itself is a determinate mode of
+activity; and thence necessarily arises the question: How did it
+produce this? But the answer to the question: How did God make the
+world? has necessarily a negative issue, because the world-creating
+activity in itself negatives every determinate activity, such as would
+alone warrant the question, every mode of activity connected with a
+determinate medium, i.e., with matter. This question illegitimately
+foists in between the subject or producing activity, and the object
+or thing produced, an irrelevant, nay, an excluded intermediate idea,
+namely, the idea of particular, individual existence. The activity in
+question has relation only to the collective--the All, the world; God
+created all things, not some particular thing; the indefinite whole,
+the All, as it is embraced by the imagination,--not the determinate,
+the particular, as, in its particularity, it presents itself to the
+senses, and as, in its totality as the universe, it presents itself
+to the reason. Every particular thing arises in a natural way;
+it is something determinate, and as such it has--what it is only
+tautology to state--a determinate cause. It was not God, but carbon
+that produced the diamond; a given salt owes its origin, not to God,
+but to the combination of a particular acid with a particular base. God
+only created all things together without distinction.
+The idea of activity and creation is divine; therefore it's applied to God. In activity man feels free, unlimited, happy; in passivity, limited and oppressed. Activity is the positive sense of personality. Whatever accompanies joy is positive; hence God is pure, unlimited joy. The happiest activity is production. Reading is delightful—passive activity—but producing is more delightful.
+It is true that according to the religious conception, God has created
+every individual thing, as included in the whole;--but only indirectly;
+for he has not produced the individual in an individual manner,
+the determinate in a determinate manner; otherwise he would be a
+determinate or conditioned being. It is certainly incomprehensible
+how out of this general, indeterminate, or unconditioned activity
+the particular, the determinate, can have proceeded; but it is
+so only because I here intrude the object of sensational, natural
+experience, because I assign to the divine activity another object
+than that which is proper to it. Religion has no physical conception
+of the world; it has no interest in a natural explanation, which can
+never be given but with a mode of origin. Origin is a theoretical,
+natural-philosophical idea. The heathen philosophers busied themselves
+with the origin of things. But the Christian religious consciousness
+abhorred this idea as heathen, irreligious, and substituted the
+practical or subjective idea of creation, which is nothing else than
+a prohibition to conceive things as having arisen in a natural way,
+an interdict on all physical science. The religious consciousness
+connects the world immediately with God; it derives all from God,
+because nothing is an object to him in its particularity and reality,
+nothing is to him as it presents itself to our reason. All proceeds
+from God:--that is enough, that perfectly satisfies the religious
+consciousness. The question, how did God create? is an indirect doubt
+that he did create the world. It was this question which brought man
+to atheism, materialism, naturalism. To him who asks it, the world
+is already an object of theory, of physical science, i.e., it is an
+object to him in its reality, in its determinate constituents. It
+is this mode of viewing the world which contradicts the idea of
+unconditioned, immaterial activity: and this contradiction leads to
+the negation of the fundamental idea--the creation.
+> **Quote:** "It is more blessed to give than to receive."
+The creation by omnipotence is in its place, is a truth, only when
+all the phenomena of the world are derived from God. It becomes, as
+has been already observed, a myth of past ages where physical science
+introduces itself, where man makes the determinate causes, the how of
+phenomena, the object of investigation. To the religious consciousness,
+therefore, the creation is nothing incomprehensible, i.e.,
+unsatisfying; at least it is so only in moments of irreligiousness,
+of doubt, when the mind turns away from God to actual things; but it
+is highly unsatisfactory to reflection, to theology, which looks with
+one eye at heaven and with the other at earth. As the cause, so is
+the effect. A flute sends forth the tones of a flute, not those of a
+bassoon or a trumpet. If thou hearest the tones of a bassoon, but hast
+never before seen or heard any wind-instrument but the flute, it will
+certainly be inconceivable to thee how such tones can come out of a
+flute. Thus it is here:--the comparison is only so far inappropriate
+as the flute itself is a particular instrument. But imagine, if it
+be possible, an absolutely universal instrument, which united in
+itself all instruments, without being in itself a particular one;
+thou wilt then see that it is an absurd contradiction to desire a
+particular tone which only belongs to a particular instrument, from
+an instrument which thou hast divested precisely of that which is
+characteristic in all particular instruments.
+Thus productive activity is assigned to God. But every specific detail is stripped away, leaving only the fundamental determination: production of something external. God produced not this or that thing, but all things. His activity is absolutely universal and unlimited. Therefore it's "incomprehensible," because it's not specific activity. Asking "how" is absurd: this activity concerns the collective whole—the "All"—not specific things. Every specific thing arises naturally with distinct causes. Carbon produces diamond, not God. God created all things together, without distinction.
+But there also lies at the foundation of this dogma of
+incomprehensibility the design of keeping the divine activity apart
+from the human, of doing away with their similarity, or rather their
+essential identity, so as to make the divine activity essentially
+different from the human. This distinction between the divine and
+human activity is "nothing." God makes,--he makes something external
+to himself, as man does. Making is a genuine human idea. Nature gives
+birth to, brings forth; man makes. Making is an act which I can omit,
+a designed, premeditated, external act;--an act in which my inmost
+being is not immediately concerned, in which, while active, I am not
+at the same time passive, carried away by an internal impulse. On
+the contrary, an activity which is identical with my being is not
+indifferent, is necessary to me, as, for example, intellectual
+production, which is an inward necessity to me, and for that reason
+lays a deep hold on me, affects me pathologically. Intellectual
+works are not made,--making is only the external activity applied
+to them;--they arise in us. To make is an indifferent, therefore a
+free, i.e., optional activity. Thus far then--that he makes--God is
+entirely at one with man, not at all distinguished from him; but an
+especial emphasis is laid on this, that his making is free, arbitrary,
+at his pleasure. "It has pleased God" to create a world. Thus man
+here deifies satisfaction in self-pleasing, in caprice and groundless
+arbitrariness. The fundamentally human character of the divine activity
+is by the idea of arbitrariness degraded into a human manifestation
+of a low kind; God, from a mirror of human nature, is converted into
+a mirror of human vanity and self-complacency.
+According to religion, God created individuals only indirectly, not in an individual way—otherwise he'd be limited. It's incomprehensible how distinct things could come from this general activity only because I'm forcing sensory objects into the equation. Religion has no physical concept of the world; "origin" is a scientific concept. Christian consciousness replaced it with "creation," which is nothing more than a ban on understanding through natural causes. That everything comes from God satisfies the religious mind. Asking how God created is veiled doubt. This question led to atheism and materialism.
+And now all at once the harmony is changed into discord; man, hitherto
+at one with himself, becomes divided:--God makes out of nothing;
+he creates,--to make out of nothing is to create,--this is the
+distinction. The positive condition--the act of making--is a human
+one; but inasmuch as all that is determinate in this conception is
+immediately denied, reflection steps in and makes the divine activity
+not human. But with this negation, comprehension, understanding
+comes to a stand; there remains only a negative, empty notion,
+because conceivability is already exhausted, i.e., the distinction
+between the divine and human determination is in truth a nothing,
+a nihil negativum of the understanding. The naïve confession of this
+is made in the supposition of "nothing" as an object.
+Creation by an all-powerful being is appropriate only when every phenomenon is traced back to God. It becomes myth the moment science investigates specific causes. To religious consciousness, creation is not incomprehensible; it only feels that way in irreligious doubt. But it's unsatisfying to theology, which looks with one eye toward heaven and the other toward earth. The effect must match the cause. A flute produces flute sounds, not bassoon. If you hear bassoon but have only seen flutes, it's inconceivable how such sounds could come from a flute. But imagine an absolutely universal instrument combining all instruments without being any one; it's absurd to expect a specific tone from what's stripped of specificity.
+God is Love, but not human love; Understanding, but not human
+understanding,--no! an essentially different understanding. But wherein
+consists this difference? I cannot conceive an understanding which
+acts under other forms than those of our own understanding; I cannot
+halve or quarter understanding so as to have several understandings;
+I can only conceive one and the same understanding. It is true that
+I can and even must conceive understanding in itself, i.e., free from
+the limits of my individuality; but in so doing I only release it from
+limitations essentially foreign to it; I do not set aside its essential
+determinations or forms. Religious reflection, on the contrary,
+denies precisely that determination or quality which makes a thing
+what it is. Only that in which the divine understanding is identical
+with the human is something, is understanding, is a real idea; while
+that which is supposed to make it another--yes, essentially another
+than the human--is objectively nothing, subjectively a mere chimera.
+At the heart of "incomprehensibility" lies the intent to separate divine from human action, making divine activity essentially different. Yet this distinction is meaningless. God makes things, creates something outside Himself, just as man does. The concept of "making" is purely human. Nature gives birth; man makes. "Making" is planned, premeditated, external—active without internal impulse. In contrast, activity identical to my being is necessary, not optional. Intellectual production is internal necessity, taking deep hold. Works of mind are not "made"—making is external labor—they emerge within us. To "make" is indifferent, free, optional activity. In this sense God is entirely identical to man. But emphasis is placed on His making being free, arbitrary, at His pleasure. "It pleased God" to create. Thus man deifies self-indulgence and caprice, transforming God from a mirror of human nature into one of human vanity.
+In all other definitions of the Divine Being the "nothing" which
+constitutes the distinction is hidden; in the creation, on the
+contrary, it is an evident, declared, objective nothing;--and is
+therefore the official, notorious nothing of theology in distinction
+from anthropology.
+Suddenly harmony turns to discord. God makes something out of nothing—He creates. The positive part—making—is human; but because every specific detail is denied, reflection declares divine activity not human. With this denial, understanding halts. All that remains is a negative, empty concept. The distinction between divine and human attributes is a "nothing"—a negative void of intellect. This is naively admitted by assuming "nothing" as literal object.
+But the fundamental determination by which man makes his own nature
+a foreign, incomprehensible nature is the idea of individuality
+or--what is only a more abstract expression--personality. The
+idea of the existence of God first realises itself in the idea of
+revelation, and the idea of revelation first realises itself in
+the idea of personality. God is a personal being:--this is the
+spell which charms the ideal into the real, the subjective into
+the objective. All predicates, all attributes of the Divine Being
+are fundamentally human; but as attributes of a personal being, and
+therefore of a being distinct from man and existing independently,
+they appear immediately to be really other than human, yet so as
+that at the same time the essential identity always remains at the
+foundation. Hence reflection gives rise to the idea of so-called
+anthropomorphisms. Anthropomorphisms are resemblances between God
+and man. The attributes of the divine and of the human being are not
+indeed the same, but they are analogous.
+God is Love, but not human love; He is Understanding, but not human understanding—no, an entirely different kind! But what is the difference? I cannot imagine understanding operating in other forms. I cannot divide understanding into types; there's only one understanding. I can conceive of understanding free from personal limits—but this only strips foreign limitations, not essential forms. Religious reflection denies the qualities that make a thing what it is. Only where divine understanding is identical to human is it something real. Whatever makes it different is objectively nothing, subjectively illusion. In the doctrine of creation, this "nothing" becomes an explicit, objective reality.
+Thus personality is the antidote to pantheism; i.e., by the idea of
+personality religious reflection expels from its thought the identity
+of the divine and human nature. The rude but characteristic expression
+of pantheism is: Man is an effluence or a portion of the Divine Being;
+the religious expression is: Man is the image of God, or a being akin
+to God;--for according to religion man does not spring from Nature, but
+is of divine race, of divine origin. But kinship is a vague, evasive
+expression. There are degrees of kinship, near and distant. What sort
+of kinship is intended? For the relation of man to God there is but
+one form of kinship which is appropriate,--the nearest, profoundest,
+most sacred that can be conceived,--the relation of the child to the
+father. According to this, God is the father of man, man the son, the
+child of God. Here is posited at once the self-subsistence of God and
+the dependence of man, and posited as an immediate object of feeling;
+whereas in pantheism the part appears just as self-subsistent as the
+whole, since this is represented as made up of its parts. Nevertheless
+this distinction is only an appearance. The father is not a father
+without the child; both together form a correlated being. In love
+man renounces his independence, and reduces himself to a part; a
+self-humiliation which is only compensated by the fact that the one
+whom he loves at the same time voluntarily becomes a part also; that
+they both submit to a higher power, the power of the spirit of family,
+the power of love. Thus there is here the same relation between God
+and man as in pantheism, save that in the one it is represented as
+a personal, patriarchal relation, in the other as an impersonal,
+general one,--save that pantheism expresses logically and therefore
+definitely, directly, what religion invests with the imagination. The
+correlation, or rather the identity of God and man is veiled in
+religion by representing both as persons or individuals, and God as
+a self-subsistent, independent being apart from his paternity:--an
+independence which, however, is only apparent, for he who, like the
+God of religion, is a father from the depths of the heart, has his
+very life and being in his child.
+> **Quote:** "It is therefore the official, notorious nothing of theology in distinction from anthropology."
+The reciprocal and profound relation of dependence between God as
+father and man as child cannot be shaken by the distinction that
+only Christ is the true, natural son of God, and that men are but his
+adopted sons; so that it is only to Christ as the only-begotten Son,
+and by no means to men, that God stands in an essential relation
+of dependence. For this distinction is only a theological, i.e., an
+illusory one. God adopts only men, not brutes. The ground of adoption
+lies in the human nature. The man adopted by divine grace is only
+the man conscious of his divine nature and dignity. Moreover, the
+only-begotten Son himself is nothing else than the idea of humanity,
+than man preoccupied with himself, man hiding from himself and the
+world in God,--the heavenly man. The Logos is latent, tacit man;
+man is the revealed, expressed Logos. The Logos is only the prelude
+of man. That which applies to the Logos applies also to the nature
+of man. [173] But between God and the only-begotten Son there is no
+real distinction,--he who knows the Son knows the Father also,--and
+thus there is none between God and man.
+The fundamental way man makes his nature foreign is through individuality, or personality. God's existence is realized through revelation, and revelation through personality. God is a personal being: this spell turns ideal into real, subjective into objective. All divine attributes are fundamentally human. But as attributes of a personal being—distinct and independent—they appear as something other, though essential identity remains. This creates "anthropomorphisms," similarities between God and man. The attributes are not identical but analogous.
+It is the same with the idea that man is the image of God. The
+image is here no dead, inanimate thing, but a living being. "Man is
+the image of God," means nothing more than that man is a being who
+resembles God. Similarity between living beings rests on natural
+relationship. The idea of man being the image of God reduces itself
+therefore to kinship; man is like God, because he is the child of
+God. Resemblance is only kinship presented to the senses; from the
+former we infer the latter.
+Personality is the remedy for pantheism. Through it, religious reflection removes identity of divine and human nature. Pantheism's crude expression: "Man is an outflow of the Divine." Religion's expression: "Man is the image of God." According to religion, man is of divine race, not nature. But kinship is slippery. Only one relationship fits: child to father. God is the father of man, man the son. This establishes God's independence and man's dependence. In pantheism the part seems independent like the whole. But this is appearance: a father isn't a father without a child; together they form reciprocal existence. In love, each gives up independence. The God-man relation is the same as pantheism—personal and paternal versus impersonal and general.
+But resemblance is just as deceptive, illusory, evasive an idea as
+kinship. It is only the idea of personality which does away with the
+identity of nature. Resemblance is identity which will not admit
+itself to be identity, which hides itself behind a dim medium,
+behind the vapour of the imagination. If I disperse this vapour,
+I come to naked identity. The more similar beings are, the less are
+they to to be distinguished; if I know the one, I know the other. It
+is true that resemblance has its degrees. But also the resemblance
+between God and man has its degrees. The good, pious man is more
+like God than the man whose resemblance to Him is founded only on
+the nature of man in general. And even with the pious man there is a
+highest degree of resemblance to be supposed, though this may not be
+obtained here below, but only in the future life. But that which man
+is to become belongs already to him, at least so far as possibility is
+concerned. The highest degree of resemblance is that where there is no
+further distinction between two individuals or beings than that they
+are two. The essential qualities, those by which we distinguish things
+from each other, are the same in both. Hence I cannot distinguish them
+in thought, by the reason,--for this all data are wanting;--I can
+only distinguish them by figuring them as visible in my imagination
+or by actually seeing them. If my eyes do not say, There are really
+two separately existent beings, my reason will take both for one
+and the same being. Nay, even my eyes may confound the one with the
+other. Things are capable of being confounded with each other which
+are distinguishable by the sense and not by the reason, or rather
+which are different only as to existence, not as to essence. Persons
+altogether alike have an extraordinary attraction not only for each
+other, but for the imagination. Resemblance gives occasion to all
+kinds of mystifications and illusions, because it is itself only an
+illusion; my eyes mock my reason, for which the idea of an independent
+existence is always allied to the idea of a determinate difference.
+This dependence cannot be undermined by claiming only Christ is the natural Son while humans are adopted—a theological illusion. God adopts humans, not animals, because of human nature itself. The "adopted" person is simply one conscious of their divine nature. The only-begotten Son is the idea of humanity—man finding refuge in God: the heavenly man.
+Religion is the mind's light, the rays of which are broken by the
+medium of the imagination and the feelings, so as to make the same
+being appear a double one. Resemblance is to the Reason identity,
+which in the realm of reality is divided or broken up by immediate
+sensational impressions, in the sphere of religion by the illusions
+of the imagination; in short, that which is identical to the reason
+is made separate by the idea of individuality or personality. I can
+discover no distinction between father and child, archetype and image,
+God and man, if I do not introduce the idea of personality. Resemblance
+is here the external guise of identity;--the identity which reason,
+the sense of truth, affirms, but which the imagination denies; the
+identity which allows an appearance of distinction to remain,--a mere
+phantasm, which says neither directly yes, nor directly no.
+> **Quote:** "The Logos is latent, tacit man; man is the revealed, expressed Logos."
+The Logos is merely the prelude to man. What applies to the Logos applies to humanity. Between God and the only-begotten Son, there is no real distinction—he who knows the Son knows the Father—thus no real distinction between God and man.
+It is the same with man as "image of God." This image is a living being, meaning man resembles God. Similarity between living beings implies natural relationship. So this returns to kinship: man is like God because he's God's child. Similarity is kinship made visible.
+> **Quote:** "Resemblance is identity which will not admit itself to be identity, which hides itself behind a dim medium, behind the vapour of the imagination."
+But similarity is as deceptive as kinship. Only personality prevents recognition of shared nature.
+The more similar two beings, the harder to distinguish. If I know one, I know the other. Similarity has degrees, as does resemblance between God and man. A pious person is more like God than one whose resemblance is merely general. We imagine perfect resemblance, though perhaps only in afterlife. But what one is destined to become already belongs potentially. The highest degree is where beings differ only as separate individuals, with identical essential qualities. Reason cannot distinguish them—only imagination or sight can. If eyes don't confirm separation, reason treats them as one. Even eyes might mistake one for another. Similarity leads to illusions because it's itself an illusion: eyes deceive reason, which links independent existence with specific difference.
+> **Quote:** "Religion is the mind's light, the rays of which are broken by the medium of the imagination and the feelings, so as to make the same being appear a double one."
+It is the same with "image of God." This similarity is identity to Reason, split by sensory impressions, divided by imagination's illusions. In short, personality makes identical things seem separate. I find no distinction between father and child, archetype and image, or God and man, unless I introduce personality. Similarity is identity's external mask—affirmed by reason, denied by imagination, leaving a phantom of distinction that says neither direct "yes" nor "no."
+*{Note: This analysis appears in Chapter XXII, 'The Contradiction in the Nature of God in General.'}*
 ### CHAPTER XXIII. - THE CONTRADICTION IN THE SPECULATIVE DOCTRINE OF GOD.
+The personality of God is the means by which humans transform their own nature into the attributes of another being—a being external to themselves.
+The personality of God is thus the means by which man converts the
+qualities of his own nature into the qualities of another being,--of
+a being external to himself. The personality of God is nothing else
+than the projected personality of man.
+> **Quote:** "The personality of God is nothing else than the projected personality of man."
+On this process of projecting self outwards rests also the Hegelian
+speculative doctrine, according to which man's consciousness of
+God is the self-consciousness of God. God is thought, cognised by
+us. According to speculation, God, in being thought by us, thinks
+himself or is conscious of himself; speculation identifies the two
+sides which religion separates. In this it is far deeper than religion,
+for the fact of God being thought is not like the fact of an external
+object being thought. God is an inward, spiritual being; thinking,
+consciousness, is an inward, spiritual act; to think God is therefore
+to affirm what God is, to establish the being of God as an act. That
+God is thought, cognised, is essential; that this tree is thought, is
+to the tree accidental, unessential. God is an indispensable thought,
+a necessity of thought. But how is it possible that this necessity
+should simply express the subjective, and not the objective also?--how
+is it possible that God--if he is to exist for us, to be an object to
+us--must necessarily be thought, if he is in himself like a block,
+indifferent whether he be thought, cognised or not? No! it is not
+possible. We are necessitated to regard the fact of God being thought
+by us, as his thinking himself, or his self-consciousness.
+This process of outward projection also underlies the Hegelian speculative doctrine, which claims that man's consciousness of God is actually God's own self-consciousness. Speculation thus joins what religion keeps separate. In this respect, it is far deeper than religion, because thinking God is not like thinking an external object. God is an inward, spiritual being, and consciousness is an inward, spiritual act. To think of God is to affirm what God is, establishing God’s being as an act. God is an indispensable thought, a necessity of mind. But how could this necessity be merely subjective and not objective as well? How is it possible that God—if he exists for us—must necessarily be thought, if he were in himself like a lifeless block, indifferent to being known? We are compelled to view our thinking about God as his own act of self-consciousness.
+Religious objectivism has two passives, two modes in which God
+is thought. On the one hand, God is thought by us, on the other,
+he is thought by himself. God thinks himself, independently of his
+being thought by us: he has a self-consciousness distinct from,
+independent of, our consciousness. This is certainly consistent
+when once God is conceived as a real personality; for the real human
+person thinks himself, and is thought by another; my thinking of him
+is to him an indifferent, external fact. This is the last degree of
+anthropopathism. In order to make God free and independent of all that
+is human, he is regarded as a formal, real person, his thinking is
+confined within himself, and the fact of his being thought is excluded
+from him, and is represented as occurring in another being. This
+indifference or independence with respect to us, to our thought,
+is the attestation of a self-subsistent, i.e., external, personal
+existence. It is true that religion also makes the fact of God being
+thought into the self-thinking of God; but because this process goes
+forward behind its consciousness, since God is immediately presupposed
+as a self-existent personal being, the religious consciousness only
+embraces the indifference of the two facts.
+Religious objectivism splits this in two. On one hand, God is thought by us; on the other, he is thought by himself, possessing a self-consciousness distinct from and independent of our own. This is consistent once God is conceived as a real person, just as a human thinks of themselves and is also thought of by others. This indifference toward us is the proof of a self-subsisting—that is, an external and personal—existence. Religion also turns the act of God being thought into God’s self-thinking, but because this happens behind the scenes of religious consciousness, the religious mind perceives these as separate facts.
+Even religion, however, does not abide by this indifference of the
+two sides. God creates in order to reveal himself: creation is the
+revelation of God. But for stones, plants, and animals there is no
+God, but only for man; so that Nature exists for the sake of man,
+and man purely for the sake of God. God glorifies himself in man:
+man is the pride of God. God indeed knows himself even without man;
+but so long as there is no other me, so long is he only a possible,
+conceptional person. First when a difference from God, a non-divine
+is posited, is God conscious of himself; first when he knows what
+is not God, does he know what it is to be God, does he know the
+bliss of his Godhead. First in the positing of what is other than
+himself, of the world, does God posit himself as God. Is God almighty
+without creation? No! Omnipotence first realises, proves itself in
+creation. What is a power, a property, which does not exhibit, attest
+itself? What is a force which affects nothing? a light that does not
+illuminate? a wisdom which knows nothing, i.e., nothing real? And what
+is omnipotence, what all other divine attributes, if man does not
+exist? Man is nothing without God; but also, God is nothing without
+man; [174] for only in man is God an object as God; only in man is
+he God. The various qualities of man first give difference, which
+is the ground of reality in God. The physical qualities of man make
+God a physical being--God the Father, who is the creator of Nature,
+i.e., the personified, anthropomorphised essence of Nature; [175]
+the intellectual qualities of man make God an intellectual being, the
+moral, a moral being. Human misery is the triumph of divine compassion;
+sorrow for sin is the delight of the divine holiness. Life, fire,
+emotion comes into God only through man. With the stubborn sinner
+God is angry; over the repentant sinner he rejoices. Man is the
+revealed God: in man the divine essence first realises and unfolds
+itself. In the creation of Nature God goes out of himself, he has
+relation to what is other than himself, but in man he returns into
+himself:--man knows God, because in him God finds and knows himself,
+feels himself as God. Where there is no pressure, no want, there is no
+feeling;--and feeling is alone real knowledge. Who can know compassion
+without having felt the want of it? justice without the experience
+of injustice? happiness without the experience of distress? Thou
+must feel what a thing is; otherwise thou wilt never learn to know
+it. It is in man that the divine properties first become feelings,
+i.e., man is the self-feeling of God;--and the feeling of God is the
+real God; for the qualities of God are indeed only real qualities,
+realities, as felt by man,--as feelings. If the experience of human
+misery were outside of God, in a being personally separate from him,
+compassion also would not be in God, and we should hence have again
+the Being destitute of qualities, or more correctly the nothing, which
+God was before man or without man. For example:--Whether I be a good
+or sympathetic being--for that alone is good which gives, imparts
+itself, bonum est communicativum sui,--is unknown to me before the
+opportunity presents itself of showing goodness to another being. Only
+in the act of imparting do I experience the happiness of beneficence,
+the joy of generosity, of liberality. But is this joy apart from
+the joy of the recipient? No; I rejoice because he rejoices. I feel
+the wretchedness of another, I suffer with him; in alleviating his
+wretchedness, I alleviate my own;--sympathy with suffering is itself
+suffering. The joyful feeling of the giver is only the reflex,
+the self-consciousness of the joy in the receiver. Their joy is a
+common feeling, which accordingly makes itself visible in the union
+of hands, of lips. So it is here. Just as the feeling of human misery
+is human, so the feeling of divine compassion is human. It is only
+a sense of the poverty of finiteness that gives a sense of the bliss
+of infiniteness. Where the one is not, the other is not. The two are
+inseparable,--inseparable the feeling of God as God, and the feeling
+of man as man, inseparable the knowledge of man and the self-knowledge
+of God. God is a Self only in the human self,--only in the human power
+of discrimination, in the principle of difference that lies in the
+human being. Thus compassion is only felt as a me, a self, a force,
+i.e., as something special, through its opposite. The opposite of God
+gives qualities to God, realises him, makes him a Self. God is God,
+only through that which is not God. Herein we have also the mystery
+of Jacob Böhme's doctrine. It must only be borne in mind that Jacob
+Böhme, as a mystic and theologian, places outside of man the feelings
+in which the divine being first realises himself, passes from nothing
+to something, to a qualitative being apart from the feelings of man
+(at least in imagination),--and that he makes them objective in the
+form of natural qualities, but in such a way that these qualities still
+only represent the impressions made on his feelings. It will then be
+obvious that what the empirical religious consciousness first posits
+with the real creation of Nature and of man, the mystical consciousness
+places before the creation in the premundane God, in doing which,
+however, it does away with the reality of the creation. For if God
+has what is not-God, already in himself, he has no need first to
+create what is not-God in order to be God. The creation of the world
+is here a pure superfluity, or rather an impossibility; this God
+for very reality does not come to reality; he is already in himself
+the full and restless world. This is especially true of Schelling's
+doctrine of God, who though made up of innumerable "potences" is yet
+thoroughly impotent. Far more reasonable, therefore, is the empirical
+religious consciousness, which makes God reveal, i.e., realise himself
+in real man, real nature, and according to which man is created purely
+for the praise and glory of God. That is to say, man is the mouth of
+God, which articulates and accentuates the divine qualities as human
+feelings. God wills that he be honoured, praised. Why? because the
+passion of man for God is the self-consciousness of God. Nevertheless,
+the religious consciousness separates these two properly inseparable
+sides, since by means of the idea of personality it makes God and
+man independent existences. Now the Hegelian speculation identifies
+the two sides, but so as to leave the old contradiction still at
+the foundation;--it is therefore only the consistent carrying out,
+the completion of a religious truth. The learned mob was so blind
+in its hatred towards Hegel as not to perceive that his doctrine, at
+least in this relation, does not in fact contradict religion;--that
+it contradicts it only in the same way as, in general, a developed,
+consequent process of thought contradicts an undeveloped, inconsequent,
+but nevertheless radically identical conception.
+Yet even religion does not maintain this separation. Religion teaches that God creates in order to reveal himself. But God does not exist for stones, plants, or animals; he exists only for man. Thus, Nature exists for man, and man exists for God. God glorifies himself in man; man is the pride of God. As long as there is no "other" to his "I," God is only a possible, conceptual person. Only when a non-divine element is established does God become conscious of himself. Only by establishing what is other than himself—the world—does God establish himself as God. Is God almighty without creation? No. Omnipotence only proves itself through creation. What is a power that never shows itself? What is wisdom that knows nothing real? And what is any divine attribute if man does not exist?
+But if it is only in human feelings and wants that the divine
+"nothing" becomes something, obtains qualities, then the being
+of man is alone the real being of God,--man is the real God. And
+if in the consciousness which man has of God first arises the
+self-consciousness of God, then the human consciousness is, per
+se, the divine consciousness. Why then dost thou alienate man's
+consciousness from him, and make it the self-consciousness of a being
+distinct from man, of that which is an object to him? Why dost thou
+vindicate existence to God, to man only the consciousness of that
+existence? God has his consciousness in man, and man his being in
+God? Man's knowledge of God is God's knowledge of himself? What
+a divorcing and contradiction! The true statement is this: man's
+knowledge of God is man's knowledge of himself, of his own nature. Only
+the unity of being and consciousness is truth. Where the consciousness
+of God is, there is the being of God,--in man, therefore; in the being
+of God it is only thy own being which is an object to thee, and what
+presents itself before thy consciousness is simply what lies behind
+it. If the divine qualities are human, the human qualities are divine.
+> **Quote:** "Man is nothing without God; but also, God is nothing without man."
+Only when we abandon a philosophy of religion, or a theology, which is
+distinct from psychology and anthropology, and recognise anthropology
+as itself theology, do we attain to a true, self-satisfying identity
+of the divine and human being, the identity of the human being with
+itself. In every theory of the identity of the divine and human
+which is not true identity, unity of the human nature with itself,
+there still lies at the foundation a division, a separation into two,
+since the identity is immediately abolished, or rather is supposed
+to be abolished. Every theory of this kind is in contradiction with
+itself and with the understanding,--is a half measure--a thing of
+the imagination--a perversion, a distortion; which, however, the more
+perverted and false it is, all the more appears to be profound.
+Only in man is God an object to himself as God. The physical qualities of man make God a physical being—God the Father, the creator of Nature. The intellectual qualities make God an intellectual being; moral qualities make him a moral being. Human misery is the triumph of divine compassion; sorrow for sin is the delight of divine holiness.
+> **Quote:** "Man is the revealed God: in man the divine essence first realises and unfolds itself."
+Life and emotion enter God only through man. Where there is no pressure or want, there is no feeling—and feeling is the only real knowledge. Who can know compassion without having felt need? Who can know justice without experiencing injustice? You must feel what a thing is; otherwise, you will never truly know it.
+In man, divine properties become feelings—man is the self-feeling of God. The feeling of God is the real God; for God’s qualities are only real as they are felt by man. If human misery existed in a being separate from God, compassion would not be in God. We would be left again with the "nothing" that God was before man. For example, whether I am a good being—for only that which imparts itself is truly good (*bonum est communicativum sui*)—is unknown until the opportunity arises to show goodness to another. In giving, I experience the happiness of beneficence. Is this joy separate from the recipient's joy? No—I rejoice because they rejoice. Their joy is a shared feeling. So too the feeling of divine compassion is only a sense of the poverty of the finite that gives a sense of the bliss of the infinite. The two are inseparable—the feeling of God as God and the feeling of man as man are one.
+God is a "Self" only within the human self. Compassion is only felt as distinct through its opposite. The opposite of God gives qualities to God, makes him real. God is God only through that which is not God. This is the mystery in Jacob Böhme’s doctrine. Böhme places the feelings in which the divine being realizes himself outside of man, making them objective as natural qualities. But then creation becomes superfluous. If God already contains everything "not-God" within himself, he has no need to create the world; such a God is already in himself the full and restless world. This is especially true of Schelling’s doctrine of God, who, despite innumerable "potencies," remains entirely impotent.
+Ordinary religious consciousness is far more reasonable. It sees God realizing himself in real humans and nature, holding that man was created purely for the glory of God. In this view, man is the mouth of God, articulating divine qualities as human feelings. God wills to be honored because man’s passion for God is actually God’s self-consciousness. Yet religion separates these inseparable sides by using "personality" to make God and man independent. Hegelian speculation identifies the two sides but leaves the old contradiction at the foundation; it is merely the consistent completion of a religious truth. The "learned mob" was so blinded by hatred of Hegel that it failed to see his doctrine does not actually contradict religion—only an undeveloped, inconsistent version of the same concept.
+If the divine "nothing" becomes "something" only through human feelings and needs, then man is the real God. If God's self-consciousness only arises within man's consciousness of God, then human consciousness is the divine consciousness. Why strip man of his own consciousness and make it the self-consciousness of a distinct being? Why grant existence to God, but to man only consciousness of that existence? What a confusion! The true statement is this:
+> **Quote:** "Man's knowledge of God is man's knowledge of himself, of his own nature."
+Only the unity of being and consciousness is truth. Where the consciousness of God exists, there is the being of God—therefore, it is in man. In the being of God, it is only your own being that is an object to you. If divine qualities are human, then human qualities are divine. Only when we recognize anthropology as theology itself do we achieve a true identity between the divine and human—the identity of the human being with itself. Any theory of identity that is not this true unity of human nature with itself remains a fundamental division, a contradiction with itself and common sense, a half-measure that appears profound only because it is fundamentally false.
 ### CHAPTER XXIV. - THE CONTRADICTION IN THE TRINITY.
+[176] Religion grants reality not only to divine nature as a personal being, but to the fundamental distinctions within that nature, treating them as persons. The Trinity is originally nothing more than the sum of the essential distinctions humans perceive within human nature, hypostasized as independent divine persons.
+Religion gives reality or objectivity not only to the human or divine
+nature in general as a personal being; it further gives reality to
+the fundamental determinations or fundamental distinctions of that
+nature as persons. The Trinity is therefore originally nothing else
+than the sum of the essential fundamental distinctions which man
+perceives in the human nature. According as the mode of conceiving
+this nature varies, so also the fundamental determinations on which
+the Trinity is founded vary. But these distinctions, perceived in one
+and the same human nature, are hypostasised as substances, as divine
+persons. And herein, namely, that these different determinations
+are in God, hypostases, subjects, is supposed to lie the distinction
+between these determinations as they are in God, and as they exist
+in man,--in accordance with the law already enunciated, that only
+in the idea of personality does the human personality transfer and
+make objective its own qualities. But the personality exists only in
+the imagination; the fundamental determinations are therefore only
+for the imagination hypostases, persons; for reason, for thought,
+they are mere relations or determinations. The idea of the Trinity
+contains in itself the contradiction of polytheism and monotheism,
+of imagination and reason, of fiction and reality. Imagination gives
+the Trinity, reason the Unity of the persons. According to reason, the
+things distinguished are only distinctions; according to imagination,
+the distinctions are things distinguished, which therefore do away
+with the unity of the divine being. To the reason, the divine persons
+are phantoms, to the imagination realities. The idea of the Trinity
+demands that man should think the opposite of what he imagines,
+and imagine the opposite of what he thinks,--that he should think
+phantoms realities. [176]
+The concept contains the contradiction between polytheism and monotheism, imagination and reason, fiction and reality.
+There are three Persons, but they are not essentially
+distinguished. Tres personæ, but una essentia. So far the conception is
+a natural one. We can conceive three and even more persons, identical
+in essence. Thus we men are distinguished from one another by personal
+differences, but in the main, in essence, in humanity we are one. And
+this identification is made not only by the speculative understanding,
+but even by feeling. A given individual is a man as we are; punctum
+satis; in this feeling all distinctions vanish,--whether he be
+rich or poor, clever or stupid, culpable or innocent. The feeling
+of compassion, sympathy, is therefore a substantial, essential,
+speculative feeling. But the three or more human persons exist apart
+from each other, have a separate existence, even when they verify
+and confirm the unity of their nature by fervent love. They together
+constitute, through love, a single moral personality, but each has
+a physical existence for himself. Though they may be reciprocally
+absorbed in each other, may be unable to dispense with each other,
+they have yet always a formally independent existence. Independent
+existence, existence apart from others, is the essential characteristic
+of a person, of a substance. It is otherwise in God, and necessarily
+so; for while his personality is the same as that of man, it is
+held to be the same with a difference, on the ground simply of this
+postulate: there must be a difference. The three Persons in God have
+no existence out of each other; else there would meet us in the heaven
+of Christian dogmatics, not indeed many gods, as in Olympus, but at
+least three divine Persons in an individual form, three Gods. The gods
+of Olympus were real persons, for they existed apart from each other,
+they had the criterion of real personality in their individuality,
+though they were one in essence, in divinity; they had different
+personal attributes, but were each singly a god, alike in divinity,
+different as existing subjects or persons; they were genuine
+divine personalities. The three Persons of the Christian Godhead,
+on the contrary, are only imaginary, pretended persons, assuredly
+different from real persons, just because they are only phantasms,
+shadows of personalities, while, notwithstanding, they are assumed to
+be real persons. The essential characteristic of personal reality,
+the polytheistic element, is excluded, denied as non-divine. But by
+this negation their personality becomes a mere phantasm. Only in the
+truth of the plural lies the truth of the Persons. The three persons
+of the Christian Godhead are not tres Dii, three Gods;--at least they
+are not meant to be such;--but unus Deus, one God. The three Persons
+end, not, as might have been expected, in a plural, but in a singular;
+they are not only Unum--the gods of Olympus are that--but Unus. Unity
+has here the significance not of essence only, but also of existence;
+unity is the existential form of God. Three are one: the plural is
+a singular. God is a personal being consisting of three persons. [177]
+> **Quote:** "Imagination gives the Trinity, reason the Unity of the persons."
+The three persons are thus only phantoms in the eyes of reason, for
+the conditions or modes under which alone their personality could
+be realised, are done away with by the command of monotheism. The
+unity gives the lie to the personality; the self-subsistence of the
+persons is annihilated in the self-subsistence of the unity--they
+are mere relations. The Son is not without the Father, the Father
+not without the Son: the Holy Spirit, who indeed spoils the symmetry,
+expresses nothing but the relation of the two to each other. But the
+divine persons are distinguished from each other only by that which
+constitutes their relation to each other. The essential in the Father
+as a person is that he is a Father, of the Son that he is a Son. What
+the Father is over and above his fatherhood, does not belong to his
+personality; therein he is God, and as God identical with the Son as
+God. Therefore it is said: God the Father, God the Son, and God the
+Holy Ghost:--God is in all three alike. "There is one person of the
+Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost. But the
+Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all
+one;" i.e., they are distinct persons, but without distinction of
+substance. The personality, therefore, arises purely in the relation
+of the Fatherhood; i.e., the idea of the person is here only a
+relative idea, the idea of a relation. Man as a father is dependent,
+he is essentially the correlative of the son; he is not a father
+without the son; by fatherhood man reduces himself to a relative,
+dependent, impersonal being. It is before all things necessary not
+to allow oneself to be deceived by these relations as they exist in
+reality, in men. The human father is, over and above his paternity,
+an independent personal being; he has at least a formal existence for
+himself, an existence apart from his son; he is not merely a father,
+with the exclusion of all the other predicates of a real personal
+being. Fatherhood is a relation which the bad man can make quite an
+external one, not touching his personal being. But in God the Father,
+there is no distinction between God the Father and God the Son as
+God; the abstract fatherhood alone constitutes his personality, his
+distinction from the Son, whose personality likewise is founded only
+on the abstract sonship.
+Imagination produces the Trinity; reason maintains the unity of the persons. To reason, these are mere relations; to imagination, separate entities that destroy divine unity. The Trinity demands we think the opposite of what we imagine and imagine the opposite of what we think—treating phantoms as realities.
+But at the same time these relations, as has been said, are maintained
+to be not mere relations, but real persons, beings, substances. Thus
+the truth of the plural, the truth of polytheism is again affirmed,
+[178] and the truth of monotheism is denied. To require the reality of
+the persons is to require the unreality of the unity, and conversely,
+to require the reality of the unity is to require the unreality of the
+persons. Thus in the holy mystery of the Trinity,--that is to say,
+so far as it is supposed to represent a truth distinct from human
+nature,--all resolves itself into delusions, phantasms, contradictions,
+and sophisms. [179]
+Three persons, one essence—a natural enough concept. We share one humanity despite personal differences, a truth felt not just intellectually but in compassion—a substantial, essential, and speculative feeling where all distinctions vanish. Yet human persons exist apart from one another; independent existence is the hallmark of real personality. Even in love's moral unity, each maintains formal independence.
+[177] In God it must be different. The three Persons have no existence apart from one another; otherwise we would have three Gods—not many gods as on Olympus, but three divine individuals. The Olympian gods were real persons because they existed independently, each a god in his own right. They shared one divine essence but were genuine, distinct personalities. By contrast, the Christian Trinity's persons are only imaginary—phantoms of personality precisely because the polytheistic element of real independence is excluded as un-divine.
+The three persons are not "three Gods" but "one God." They yield not a plural but a singular—not just *Unum* (one thing), but *Unus* (one individual). Unity here means shared existence itself; it is the very form of God's being. Three are one: the plural becomes singular. God is a personal being composed of three persons.
+[178] Thus to reason, the persons are phantoms, for monotheism abolishes the conditions of real personality. The unity contradicts the personality; the independent existence of the persons is destroyed by the independent existence of the unity—they are mere relations. The Son cannot exist without the Father, nor the Father without the Son; the Holy Spirit, who indeed spoils the symmetry, expresses only the relationship between them. The persons are distinguished solely by what constitutes their relationship: the Father's essence is fatherhood, the Son's is sonship. Anything beyond this does not belong to their personality; in that respect, each is simply God, identical to the others. Hence: God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit—God equally present in all three.
+> **Quote:** "There is one person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one"
+[179] They are distinct persons without any distinction in substance. Personality arises solely from relationship; the concept is purely relative. A human father, beyond his fatherhood, remains an independent person with existence apart from his son. Fatherhood can be an external relationship that doesn't touch his personal being. But in God the Father, there is no distinction between God the Father and God the Son as God; abstract fatherhood alone constitutes his personality and distinction from the Son, whose personality rests only on abstract sonship. As God, Father and Son are identical.
+Yet these relations are claimed to be not mere relations but real persons, beings, and substances—reaffirming polytheism's truth while denying monotheism's. To require real persons is to require an unreal unity; to require real unity is to require unreal persons. Thus in the Trinity's "holy mystery"—as a truth separate from human nature—everything dissolves into delusions, phantoms, contradictions, and sophisms.
 ### CHAPTER XXV. - THE CONTRADICTION IN THE SACRAMENTS.
+The subjective elements of religion—Faith and Love—dissolve into contradictions just as its objective nature does. Externally, they manifest as the two sacraments: Baptism (Faith) and the Lord's Supper (Love). Hope is merely faith directed toward the future; logically, it's as incorrect to treat it as a distinct mental act as it is to treat the Holy Spirit as a separate being.
+As the objective essence of religion, the idea of God, resolves itself
+into mere contradictions, so also, on grounds easily understood,
+does its subjective essence.
+Baptism uses common water, just as religion uses common humanity. Yet religion alienates this nature from us, portraying baptismal water as hyperphysical—the *Lavacrum regenerationis*, a cleansing of regeneration that purifies original sin and reconciles us to God. In appearance it is natural water; in reality, supernatural. Its supernatural effects exist only in the mind, in imagination.
+The subjective elements of religion are on the one hand Faith and Love;
+on the other hand, so far as it presents itself externally in a cultus,
+the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper. The sacrament of Faith
+is Baptism, the sacrament of Love is the Lord's Supper. In strictness
+there are only two sacraments, as there are two subjective elements
+in religion, Faith and Love: for Hope is only faith in relation to
+the future; so that there is the same logical impropriety in making
+it a distinct mental act as in making the Holy Ghost a distinct being.
+Yet baptism requires natural water—no other material will do. God could have attached these effects to anything, but chooses an element analogous to his purpose, preserving a certain naturalness. This creates the central contradiction: water's natural quality is both essential and irrelevant.
+The identity of the sacraments with the specific essence of religion as
+hitherto developed is at once made evident, apart from other relations,
+by the fact that they have for their basis natural materials or
+things, to which, however, is attributed a significance and effect
+in contradiction with their nature. Thus the material of baptism
+is water, common, natural water, just as the material of religion
+in general is common, natural humanity. But as religion alienates
+our own nature from us, and represents it as not ours, so the water
+of baptism is regarded as quite other than common water; for it has
+not a physical but a hyperphysical power and significance; it is the
+Lavacrum regenerationis, it purifies man from the stains of original
+sin, expels the inborn devil, and reconciles with God. Thus it is
+natural water only in appearance; in truth it is supernatural. In
+other words: the baptismal water has supernatural effects (and that
+which operates supernaturally is itself supernatural) only in idea,
+only in the imagination.
+Wine represents blood, bread represents flesh. Even miracles follow analogies: water becomes wine while remaining liquid. Water's clarity makes it an image of the Divine Spirit—so a natural meaning underlies baptism. But this is lost when water is said to have transcendental effects only through the Holy Spirit's power, not its own nature. Its natural quality becomes irrelevant.
+And yet the material of Baptism is said to be natural water. Baptism
+has no validity and efficacy if it is not performed with
+water. Thus the natural quality of water has in itself value and
+significance, since the supernatural effect of baptism is associated
+in a supernatural manner with water only, and not with any other
+material. God, by means of his omnipotence, could have united the same
+effect to anything whatever. But he does not; he accommodates himself
+to natural qualities; he chooses an element corresponding, analogous
+to his operation. Thus the natural is not altogether set aside; on the
+contrary, there always remains a certain analogy with the natural, an
+appearance of naturalness. In like manner wine represents blood; bread,
+flesh. [180] Even miracle is guided by analogies; water is changed into
+wine or blood, one species into another, with the retention of the
+indeterminate generic idea of liquidity. So it is here. Water is the
+purest, clearest of liquids; in virtue of this its natural character
+it is the image of the spotless nature of the Divine Spirit. In short,
+water has a significance in itself, as water; it is on account of its
+natural quality that it is consecrated and selected as the vehicle
+of the Holy Spirit. So far there lies at the foundation of Baptism a
+beautiful, profound natural significance. But, at the very same time,
+this beautiful meaning is lost again because water has a transcendental
+effect,--an effect which it has only through the supernatural power of
+the Holy Spirit, and not through itself. The natural quality becomes
+indifferent: he who makes wine out of water, can at will unite the
+effects of baptismal water with any material whatsoever.
+Baptism is itself a miracle—the same power that proved Christ's divinity through miracles. To deny baptism's miraculous power is to deny miracles entirely.
+Baptism cannot be understood without the idea of miracle. Baptism
+is itself a miracle. The same power which works miracles, and by
+means of them, as a proof of the divinity of Christ, turns Jews and
+Pagans into Christians,--this same power has instituted baptism and
+operates in it. Christianity began with miracles, and it carries
+itself forward with miracles. If the miraculous power of baptism
+is denied, miracles in general must be denied. The miracle-working
+water of baptism springs from the same source as the water which at
+the wedding at Cana in Galilee was turned into wine.
+> **Quote:** "Christianity began with miracles, and it carries itself forward with miracles."
+The faith which is produced by miracle is not dependent on me, on
+my spontaneity, on freedom of judgment and conviction. A miracle
+which happens before my eyes I must believe, if I am not utterly
+obdurate. Miracle compels me to believe in the divinity of the
+miracle-worker. [181] It is true that in some cases it presupposes
+faith, namely, where it appears in the light of a reward; but
+with that exception it presupposes not so much actual faith as a
+believing disposition, willingness, submission, in opposition to an
+unbelieving, obdurate, and malignant disposition, like that of the
+Pharisees. The end of miracle is to prove that the miracle-worker
+is really that which he assumes to be. Faith based on miracle is the
+only thoroughly warranted, well-grounded, objective faith. The faith
+which is presupposed by miracle is only faith in a Messiah, a Christ
+in general; but the faith that this very man is Christ--and this is
+the main point--is first wrought by miracle as its consequence. This
+presupposition even of an indeterminate faith is, however, by no
+means necessary. Multitudes first became believers through miracles;
+thus miracle was the cause of their faith. If then miracles do not
+contradict Christianity,--and how should they contradict it?--neither
+does the miraculous efficacy of baptism contradict it. On the
+contrary, if baptism is to have a Christian significance it must
+of necessity have a supernaturalistic one. Paul was converted by a
+sudden miraculous appearance, when he was still full of hatred to
+the Christians. Christianity took him by violence. It is in vain to
+allege that with another than Paul this appearance would not have
+had the same consequences, and that therefore the effect of it must
+still be attributed to Paul. For if the same appearance had been
+vouchsafed to others, they would assuredly have become as thoroughly
+Christian as Paul. Is not divine grace omnipotent? The unbelief
+and non-convertibility of the Pharisees is no counter-argument;
+for from them grace was expressly withdrawn. The Messiah must
+necessarily, according to a divine decree, be betrayed, maltreated
+and crucified. For this purpose there must be individuals who should
+maltreat and crucify him: and hence it was a prior necessity that
+the divine grace should be withdrawn from those individuals. It
+was not indeed totally withdrawn from them, but this was only in
+order to aggravate their guilt, and by no means with the earnest
+will to convert them. How would it be possible to resist the will
+of God, supposing of course that it was his real will, not a mere
+velleity? Paul himself represents his conversion as a work of divine
+grace thoroughly unmerited on his part; [182] and quite correctly. Not
+to resist divine grace, i.e., to accept divine grace, to allow it
+to work upon one, is already something good, and consequently is an
+effect of the Holy Spirit. Nothing is more perverse than the attempt
+to reconcile miracle with freedom of inquiry and thought, or grace
+with freedom of will. In religion the nature of man is regarded as
+separate from man. The activity, the grace of God is the projected
+spontaneity of man, Free Will made objective. [183]
+The miracle-working water of baptism shares its source with the water turned to wine at Cana.
+It is the most flagrant inconsequence to adduce the experience that
+men are not sanctified, not converted by baptism, as an argument
+against its miraculous efficacy, as is done by rationalistic orthodox
+theologians; [184] for all kinds of miracles, the objective power
+of prayer, and in general all the supernatural truths of religion,
+also contradict experience. He who appeals to experience renounces
+faith. Where experience is a datum, there religious faith and feeling
+have already vanished. The unbeliever denies the objective efficacy
+of prayer only because it contradicts experience; the atheist goes
+yet further,--he denies even the existence of God, because he does
+not find it in experience. Inward experience creates no difficulty
+to him; for what thou experiencest in thyself of another existence,
+proves only that there is something in thee which thou thyself art
+not, which works upon thee independently of thy personal will and
+consciousness, without thy knowing what this mysterious something
+is. But faith is stronger than experience. The facts which contradict
+faith do not disturb it; it is happy in itself; it has eyes only for
+itself, to all else it is blind.
+Miracle-based faith compels belief—it doesn't depend on my spontaneity or free judgment. Seeing a miracle forces belief in the performer's divinity. While miracles may presuppose faith, they generally require only a receptive disposition. Their purpose is to prove the miracle-worker's identity. Faith that *this specific man* is the Christ results from miracles themselves; many believers were converted this way. Paul was seized by a miraculous vision while still hating Christians. Arguing that others might not have responded similarly misses the point: divine grace is omnipotent. The Pharisees' stubbornness doesn't contradict this—grace was withheld from them by divine decree so they would crucify the Messiah. Paul's conversion was unmerited grace; even accepting grace is a good act caused by the Holy Spirit. Nothing is more backward than reconciling miracles with free inquiry or grace with free will.
+It is true that religion, even on the standpoint of its mystical
+materialism, always requires the co-operation of subjectivity, and
+therefore requires it in the sacraments; but herein is exhibited its
+contradiction with itself. And this contradiction is particularly
+glaring in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper; for baptism is given
+to infants,--though even in them, as a condition of its efficacy, the
+co-operation of subjectivity is insisted on, but, singularly enough,
+is supplied in the faith of others, in the faith of the parents,
+or of their representatives, or of the church in general. [185]
+> **Quote:** "In religion the nature of man is regarded as separate from man. The activity, the grace of God is the projected spontaneity of man, Free Will made objective."
+The object in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper is the body of
+Christ,--a real body; but the necessary predicates of reality are
+wanting to it. Here we have again, in an example presented to the
+senses, what we have found in the nature of religion in general. The
+object or subject in the religious syntax is always a real human or
+natural subject or predicate; but the closer definition, the essential
+predicate of this predicate is denied. The subject is sensuous,
+but the predicate is not sensuous, i.e., is contradictory to the
+subject. I distinguish a real body from an imaginary one only by this,
+that the former produces corporeal effects, involuntary effects, upon
+me. If therefore the bread be the real body of God, the partaking of
+it must produce in me immediate, involuntary sanctifying effects;
+I need to make no special preparation, to bring with me no holy
+disposition. If I eat an apple, the apple of itself gives rise to
+the taste of apple. At the utmost I need nothing more than a healthy
+stomach to perceive that the apple is an apple. The Catholics require
+a state of fasting as a condition of partaking the Lord's Supper. This
+is enough. I take hold of the body with my lips, I crush it with my
+teeth, by my oesophagus it is carried into my stomach; I assimilate
+it corporeally, not spiritually. [186] Why are its effects not held
+to be corporeal? Why should not this body, which is a corporeal,
+but at the same time heavenly, supernatural substance, also bring
+forth in me corporeal and yet at the same time holy, supernatural
+effects? If it is my disposition, my faith, which alone makes the
+divine body a means of sanctification to me, which transubstantiates
+the dry bread into pneumatic animal substance, why do I still need an
+external object? It is I myself who give rise to the effect of the
+body on me, and therefore to the reality of the body; I am acted on
+by myself. Where is the objective truth and power? He who partakes
+the Lord's Supper unworthily has nothing further than the physical
+enjoyment of bread and wine. He who brings nothing, takes nothing
+away. The specific difference of this bread from common natural bread
+rests therefore only on the difference between the state of mind at
+the table of the Lord, and the state of mind at any other table. "He
+that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation
+to himself, not discerning the Lord's body." [187] But this mental
+state itself is dependent only on the significance which I give to
+this bread. If it has for me the significance not of bread, but of
+the body of Christ, then it has not the effect of common bread. In
+the significance attached to it lies its effect. I do not eat to
+satisfy hunger; hence I consume only a small quantity. Thus to go no
+further than the quantity taken, which in every other act of taking
+food plays an essential part, the significance of common bread is
+externally set aside.
+Rationalist theologians inconsistently cite lack of sanctification through baptism as evidence against its miraculous power—yet all miracles, prayer, and supernatural truths contradict experience. To rely on experience is to abandon faith. The unbeliever rejects prayer's power because it contradicts experience; the atheist denies God for the same reason. Inner experience only proves something in you acts independently of your will—a mystery.
+But this supernatural significance exists only in the imagination;
+to the senses, the wine remains wine, the bread, bread. The Schoolmen
+therefore had recourse to the precious distinction of substance and
+accidents. All the accidents which constitute the nature of wine and
+bread are still there; only that which is made up by these accidents,
+the subject, the substance, is wanting, is changed into flesh and
+blood. But all the properties together, whose combination forms this
+unity, are the substance itself. What are wine and bread if I take
+from them the properties which make them what they are? Nothing. Flesh
+and blood have therefore no objective existence; otherwise they must
+be an object to the unbelieving senses. On the contrary: the only
+valid witnesses of an objective existence--taste, smell, touch,
+sight--testify unanimously to the reality of the wine and bread,
+and nothing else. The wine and bread are in reality natural, but in
+imagination divine substances.
+> **Quote:** "But faith is stronger than experience. The facts which contradict faith do not disturb it; it is happy in itself; it has eyes only for itself, to all else it is blind."
+Faith is the power of the imagination, which makes the real unreal,
+and the unreal real: in direct contradiction with the truth of the
+senses, with the truth of reason. Faith denies what objective reason
+affirms, and affirms what it denies. [188] The mystery of the Lord's
+Supper is the mystery of faith: [189]--hence the partaking of it is the
+highest, the most rapturous, blissful act of the believing soul. The
+negation of objective truth which is not gratifying to feeling,
+the truth of reality, of the objective world and reason,--a negation
+which constitutes the essence of faith,--reaches its highest point
+in the Lord's Supper; for faith here denies an immediately present,
+evident, indubitable object, maintaining that it is not what the reason
+and senses declare it to be, that it is only in appearance bread,
+but in reality flesh. The position of the Schoolmen, that according
+to the accidents it is bread, and according to the substance flesh,
+is merely the abstract, explanatory, intellectual expression of what
+faith accepts and declares, and has therefore no other meaning than
+this: to the senses or to common perception it is bread, but in truth,
+flesh. Where therefore the imaginative tendency of faith has assumed
+such power over the senses and reason as to deny the most evident
+sensible truths, it is no wonder if believers can raise themselves
+to such a degree of exaltation as actually to see blood instead of
+wine. Such examples Catholicism has to show. Little is wanting in order
+to perceive externally what faith and imagination hold to be real.
+Yet religion requires subjective cooperation even in sacraments—this is its contradiction, especially evident in the Lord's Supper. Baptism is administered to infants, yet demands subjective cooperation, supplied by the faith of parents, sponsors, or the church.
+So long as faith in the mystery of the Lord's Supper as a holy, nay
+the holiest, highest truth, governed man, so long was his governing
+principle the imagination. All criteria of reality and unreality, of
+unreason and reason, had disappeared: anything whatever that could
+be imagined passed for real possibility. Religion hallowed every
+contradiction of reason, of the nature of things. Do not ridicule the
+absurd questions of the Schoolmen! They were necessary consequences
+of faith. That which is only a matter of feeling had to be made a
+matter of reason, that which contradicts the understanding had to be
+made not to contradict it. This was the fundamental contradiction of
+Scholasticism, whence all other contradictions followed of course.
+The Lord's Supper claims Christ's body is really present, yet lacks reality's essential qualities. Religion always takes a real thing and denies its essential definition. A real body produces involuntary physical effects—so if the bread is God's body, eating it should sanctify me automatically, without preparation. An apple produces apple taste by itself; I need only a healthy stomach. Catholics require fasting before communion. I consume the host physically—crushing it with my teeth, absorbing it into my stomach. Why aren't its effects physical? If my faith alone sanctifies it, why need an external object? I produce the effect myself, acting on myself. Where is objective truth? He who brings nothing, takes nothing away. One who partakes without the proper spirit experiences only bread and wine. The difference from ordinary bread rests solely on one's state of mind.
+And it is of no particular importance whether I believe the Protestant
+or the Catholic doctrine of the Lord's Supper. The sole distinction
+is, that in Protestantism it is only on the tongue, in the act of
+partaking, that flesh and blood are united in a thoroughly miraculous
+manner with bread and wine; [190] while in Catholicism, it is before
+the act of partaking, by the power of the priest,--who however here
+acts only in the name of the Almighty,--that bread and wine are really
+transmuted into flesh and blood. The Protestant prudently avoids a
+definite explanation; he does not lay himself open, like the pious,
+uncritical simplicity of Catholicism, whose God, as an external object,
+can be devoured by a mouse: he shuts up his God within himself, where
+he can no more be torn from him, and thus secures him as well from the
+power of accident as from that of ridicule; yet, notwithstanding this,
+he just as much as the Catholic consumes real flesh and blood in the
+bread and wine. Slight indeed was the difference at first between
+Protestants and Catholics in the doctrine of the Lord's Supper! Thus
+at Anspach there arose a controversy on the question--"whether the body
+of Christ enters the stomach, and is digested like other food?" [191]
+> **Quote:** "He that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord's body."
+But although the imaginative activity of faith makes the objective
+existence the mere appearance, and the emotional, imaginary existence
+the truth and reality; still, in itself or in truth, that which is
+really objective is only the natural elements. Even the host in the pyx
+of the Catholic priest is in itself only to faith a divine body,--this
+external thing, into which he transubstantiates the divine being, is
+only a thing of faith; for even here the body is not visible, tangible,
+tasteable as a body. That is: the bread is only in its significance
+flesh. It is true that to faith this significance has the sense of
+actual existence;--as, in general, in the ecstasy of fervid feeling
+that which signifies becomes the thing signified;--it is held not to
+signify, but to be flesh. But this state of being flesh is not that of
+real flesh; it is a state of being which is only believed in, imagined,
+i.e., it has only the value, the quality, of a significance, a truth
+conveyed in a symbol. [192] A thing which has a special significance
+for me, is another thing in my imagination than in reality. The
+thing signifying is not itself that which is signified. What it is,
+is evident to the senses; what it signifies, is only in my feelings,
+conception, imagination,--is only for me, not for others, is not
+objectively present. So here. When therefore Zwinglius said that
+the Lord's Supper has only a subjective significance, he said the
+same thing as his opponents; only he disturbed the illusion of the
+religious imagination; for that which "is" in the Lord's Supper, is
+only an illusion of the imagination, but with the further illusion
+that it is not an illusion. Zwinglius only expressed simply, nakedly,
+prosaically, rationalistically, and therefore offensively, what the
+others declared mystically, indirectly,--inasmuch as they confessed
+[193] that the effect of the Lord's Supper depends only on a worthy
+disposition or on faith; i.e., that the bread and wine are the flesh
+and blood of the Lord, are the Lord himself, only for him for whom
+they have the supernatural significance of the divine body, for on
+this alone depends the worthy disposition, the religious emotion. [194]
+This mental state depends on the significance I give the bread. If it represents Christ's body, it doesn't act like common bread. I don't eat to satisfy hunger, only a small quantity—outwardly casting aside bread's ordinary significance.
+But if the Lord's Supper effects nothing, consequently is nothing,--for
+only that which produces effects, is,--without a certain state of mind,
+without faith, then in faith alone lies its reality; the entire event
+goes forward in the feelings alone. If the idea that I here receive
+the real body of the Saviour acts on the religious feelings, this
+idea itself arises from the feelings; it produces devout sentiments,
+because it is itself a devout idea. Thus here also the religious
+subject is acted on by himself as if by another being, through the
+conception of an imaginary object. Therefore the process of the
+Lord's Supper can quite well, even without the intermediation of
+bread and wine, without any church ceremony, be accomplished in the
+imagination. There are innumerable devout poems, the sole theme of
+which is the blood of Christ. In these we have a genuinely poetical
+celebration of the Lord's Supper. In the lively representation of the
+suffering, bleeding Saviour, the soul identifies itself with him;
+here the saint in poetic exaltation drinks the pure blood, unmixed
+with any contradictory, material elements; here there is no disturbing
+object between the idea of the blood and the blood itself.
+But this significance exists only in imagination; to the senses, wine remains wine and bread remains bread. The Schoolmen distinguished 'substance' from 'accidental properties,' claiming the properties remain while the underlying substance becomes flesh and blood. Yet properties combined *are* the substance—remove them and nothing remains. The senses testify unanimously to bread and wine, nothing else. Objectively they're natural substances; in imagination, divine.
+But though the Lord's Supper, or a sacrament in general, is nothing
+without a certain state of mind, without faith, nevertheless
+religion presents the sacrament at the same time as something in
+itself real, external, distinct from the human being, so that in the
+religious consciousness the true thing, which is faith, is made only
+a collateral thing, a condition, and the imaginary thing becomes the
+principal thing. And the necessary, immanent consequences and effects
+of this religious materialism, of this subordination of the human to
+the supposed divine, of the subjective to the supposed objective,
+of truth to imagination, of morality to religion,--the necessary
+consequences are superstition and immorality: superstition, because
+a thing has attributed to it an effect which does not lie in its
+nature, because a thing is held up as not being what it in truth is,
+because a mere conception passes for objective reality; immorality,
+because necessarily, in feeling, the holiness of the action as such
+is separated from morality, the partaking of the sacrament, even
+apart from the state of mind, becomes a holy and saving act. Such,
+at least, is the result in practice, which knows nothing of the
+sophistical distinctions of theology. In general: wherever religion
+places itself in contradiction with reason, it places itself also
+in contradiction with the moral sense. Only with the sense of truth
+coexists the sense of the right and good. Depravity of understanding is
+always depravity of heart. He who deludes and cheats his understanding
+has not a veracious, honourable heart; sophistry corrupts the whole
+man. And the doctrine of the Lord's Supper is sophistry.
+> **Quote:** "Faith is the power of the imagination, which makes the real unreal, and the unreal real: in direct contradiction with the truth of the senses, with the truth of reason."
+The Truth of the disposition, or of faith as a requisite to communion,
+involves the Untruth of the bodily presence of God; and again the
+Truth of the objective existence of the divine body involves the
+Untruth of the disposition.
+Faith denies what reason affirms and affirms what reason denies. The Lord's Supper's mystery is faith's mystery—its most ecstatic act. This negation of objective truth peaks here: faith denies an evident object, claiming bread is only apparently bread but really flesh. The Scholastic formula ('bread in properties, flesh in substance') merely intellectualizes this: to perception it's bread; in 'truth,' it's flesh. When faith's imagination so overpowers sense and reason that it denies evident physical truths, believers may actually see blood. Catholicism offers many such examples.
+When this mystery ruled as highest truth, imagination governed humanity. All criteria to distinguish reality from unreality vanished; anything imaginable seemed possible. Religion sanctified every contradiction of reason. We shouldn't mock Scholasticism's absurd questions—they were necessary consequences of faith forcing feeling into reason's mold and making the illogical seem logical.
+The difference between Protestant and Catholic doctrine is minor. In Protestantism, flesh and blood unite miraculously with bread and wine only on the tongue during communion. In Catholicism, the priest transforms them beforehand. The Protestant avoids definitive explanation, not exposing himself like Catholicism's uncritical simplicity—whose God, as an external object, could be devoured by a mouse. He consumes God within himself, safe from accident and ridicule. Yet Protestants consume real flesh and blood just as Catholics do. Initially the difference was slight: Anspach debated whether Christ's body is digested like other food.
+Yet only the natural elements are truly objective. Even the consecrated host is divine only to faith—not visible, tangible, or tasteable as a body. The bread is flesh only in significance. For faith, this significance has the weight of existence; the symbol becomes the thing symbolized. But this 'being flesh' is not real flesh—only a believed or imagined state, a truth conveyed through symbol.
+For me, a significant thing differs in imagination from reality. What it *is* is evident to senses; what it *signifies* exists only in my feeling and imagination. Zwingli argued the Lord's Supper has only subjective significance—saying what his opponents admitted when they made its effect depend on 'worthy disposition' or faith. The bread is Christ's body only for those who give it supernatural significance. Zwingli merely stated bluntly what others cloaked in mystery.
+If the sacrament produces no effect without faith, its reality lies in faith alone—the entire event occurs in feelings. The idea of receiving Christ's body arises from religious feeling and acts upon it; the subject is acted upon by himself through an imaginary object. This could occur without bread and wine. Devout poems celebrating Christ's blood offer a purely poetic communion, where the soul identifies with the Savior and drinks pure blood, unmixed with contradictory matter.
+Yet religion presents the sacrament as objectively real, making faith a secondary condition while imagination becomes primary. This focus on the material—subordinating human to divine, subjective to objective, truth to imagination, morality to religion—necessarily produces superstition and immorality. Superstition credits things with non-existent effects and treats concepts as reality. Immorality separates holiness from morality, making the sacrament itself saving regardless of mindset. When religion contradicts reason, it contradicts moral sense, for right and good can only coexist with truth.
+> **Quote:** "Depravity of understanding is always depravity of heart."
+He who cheats his understanding lacks a truthful heart; sophistry corrupts the whole person. The Lord's Supper doctrine is sophistry.
+> **Quote:** "The Truth of the disposition, or of faith as a requisite to communion, involves the Untruth of the bodily presence of God; and again the Truth of the objective existence of the divine body involves the Untruth of the disposition."
 ### CHAPTER XXVI. - THE CONTRADICTION OF FAITH AND LOVE.
+The sacraments express religion's core contradiction between idealism and materialism, subjective and objective—yet they mean nothing without Faith and Love. This sacramental contradiction thus returns us to the fundamental conflict between Faith and Love itself.
+The Sacraments are a sensible presentation of that contradiction
+of idealism and materialism, of subjectivism and objectivism,
+which belongs to the inmost nature of religion. But the sacraments
+are nothing without Faith and Love. Hence the contradiction in the
+sacraments carries us back to the primary contradiction of Faith
+and Love.
+Religion's hidden essence is the identity of divine and human being; its outward form is their distinction. God is the human being, yet to religious consciousness appears separate. Love reveals religion's core; faith constitutes its conscious form.
+The essence of religion, its latent nature, is the identity of the
+divine being with the human; but the form of religion, or its apparent,
+conscious nature, is the distinction between them. God is the human
+being; but he presents himself to the religious consciousness as a
+distinct being. Now, that which reveals the basis, the hidden essence
+of religion, is Love; that which constitutes its conscious form is
+Faith. Love identifies man with God and God with man, consequently it
+identifies man with man; faith separates God from man, consequently it
+separates man from man, for God is nothing else than the idea of the
+species invested with a mystical form,--the separation of God from
+man is therefore the separation of man from man, the unloosening of
+the social bond. By faith religion places itself in contradiction with
+morality, with reason, with the unsophisticated sense of truth in man;
+by love, it opposes itself again to this contradiction. Faith isolates
+God, it makes him a particular, distinct being: love universalises;
+it makes God a common being, the love of whom is one with the love of
+man. Faith produces in man an inward disunion, a disunion with himself,
+and by consequence an outward disunion also; but love heals the wounds
+which are made by faith in the heart of man. Faith makes belief in
+its God a law: love is freedom,--it condemns not even the atheist,
+because it is itself atheistic, itself denies, if not theoretically,
+at least practically, the existence of a particular, individual God,
+opposed to man. Love has God in itself: faith has God out of itself;
+it estranges God from man, it makes him an external object.
+> **Quote:** "Love identifies man with God and God with man, consequently it identifies man with man; faith separates God from man, consequently it separates man from man, for God is nothing else than the idea of the species invested with a mystical form,--the separation of God from man is therefore the separation of man from man, the unloosening of the social bond."
+Faith, being inherently external, proceeds even to the adoption
+of outward fact as its object, and becomes historical faith. It is
+therefore of the nature of faith that it can become a totally external
+confession; and that with mere faith, as such, superstitious, magical
+effects are associated. [195] The devils believe that God is, without
+ceasing to be devils. Hence a distinction has been made between faith
+in God, and belief that there is a God. [196] But even with this bare
+belief in the existence of God, the assimilating power of love is
+intermingled;--a power which by no means lies in the idea of faith
+as such, and in so far as it relates to external things.
+Faith makes religion contradict morality, reason, and natural truth; love opposes this contradiction. Faith isolates God as a distinct being; love universalizes, making God a common being whose love is human love. Faith creates division and conflict; love heals its wounds. Faith turns belief into law; love is freedom. Love does not condemn the atheist because it is itself practically atheistic; it denies, if not in theory then in practice, the existence of a particular, individual God who stands in opposition to man. Love has God within itself; faith has God outside, estranged.
+The only distinctions or judgments which are immanent to faith, which
+spring out of itself, are the distinctions of right or genuine, and
+wrong or false faith; or in general, of belief and unbelief. Faith
+discriminates thus: This is true, that is false. And it claims truth
+to itself alone. Faith has for its object a definite, specific truth,
+which is necessarily united with negation. Faith is in its nature
+exclusive. One thing alone is truth, one alone is God, one alone has
+the monopoly of being the Son of God; all else is nothing, error,
+delusion. Jehovah alone is the true God; all other gods are vain idols.
+Because faith is external, it adopts outward facts as objects, becoming historical faith. It can become mere confession with magical effects attached to belief. As scripture says, even demons believe God exists. Theologians distinguish believing in God from merely believing He exists, yet even bare belief often mixes in love's unifying power—which does not belong to faith, especially toward external things.
+Faith has in its mind something peculiar to itself; it rests on a
+peculiar revelation of God; it has not come to its possessions in an
+ordinary way, that way which stands open to all men alike. What stands
+open to all is common, and for that reason cannot form a special object
+of faith. That God is the creator, all men could know from Nature;
+but what this God is in person, can be known only by special grace,
+is the object of a special faith. And because he is only revealed
+in a peculiar manner, the object of this faith is himself a peculiar
+being. The God of the Christians is indeed the God of the heathens,
+but with a wide difference:--just such a difference as there is between
+me as I am to a friend, and me as I am to a stranger, who only knows
+me at a distance. God as he is an object to the Christians, is quite
+another than as he is an object to the heathens. The Christians
+know God personally, face to face. The heathens know only--and
+even this is too large an admission--"what," and not "who," God
+is; for which reason they fell into idolatry. The identity of the
+heathens and Christians before God is therefore altogether vague;
+what the heathens have in common with the Christians--if indeed
+we consent to be so liberal as to admit anything in common between
+them--is not that which is specifically Christian, not that which
+constitutes faith. In whatsoever the Christians are Christians,
+therein they are distinguished from the heathens; [197] and they are
+Christians in virtue of their special knowledge of God; thus their
+mark of distinction is God. Speciality is the salt which first gives a
+flavour to the common being. What a being is in special, is the being
+itself; he alone knows me, who knows me in specie. Thus the special
+God, God as he is an object to the Christians, the personal God, is
+alone God. And this God is unknown to heathens, and to unbelievers
+in general; he does not exist for them. He is, indeed, said to exist
+for the heathens; but mediately, on condition that they cease to be
+heathens, and become Christians. Faith makes man partial and narrow;
+it deprives him of the freedom and ability to estimate duly what
+is different from himself. Faith is imprisoned within itself. It is
+true that the philosophical, or, in general, any scientific theorist,
+also limits himself by a definite system. But theoretic limitation,
+however fettered, short-sighted and narrow-hearted it may be, has
+still a freer character than faith, because the domain of theory
+is in itself a free one, because here the ground of decision is the
+nature of things, argument, reason. But faith refers the decision to
+conscience and interest, to the instinctive desire of happiness; for
+its object is a special, personal Being, urging himself on recognition,
+and making salvation dependent on that recognition.
+Faith's only judgments are "true" vs "false," belief vs unbelief. It claims truth for itself alone, targeting a specific truth that requires rejecting others. By nature, faith is exclusive: only one truth, one God, one Son of God; all else is error. Jehovah alone is true God; other gods are idols. Faith relies on unique revelation, not ordinary channels. Anyone could know God as creator from Nature, but who God is as a person requires special grace.
+Faith gives man a peculiar sense of his own dignity and importance. The
+believer finds himself distinguished above other men, exalted above
+the natural man; he knows himself to be a person of distinction, in
+the possession of peculiar privileges; believers are aristocrats,
+unbelievers plebeians. God is this distinction and pre-eminence
+of believers above unbelievers, personified. [198] Because faith
+represents man's own nature as that of another being, the believer
+does not contemplate his dignity immediately in himself, but in this
+supposed distinct person. The consciousness of his own pre-eminence
+presents itself as a consciousness of this person; he has the sense of
+his own dignity in this divine personality. [199] As the servant feels
+himself honoured in the dignity of his master, nay, fancies himself
+greater than a free, independent man of lower rank than his master,
+so it is with the believer. [200] He denies all merit in himself,
+merely that he may leave all merit to his Lord, because his own
+desire of honour is satisfied in the honour of his Lord. Faith is
+arrogant, but it is distinguished from natural arrogance in this,
+that it clothes its feeling of superiority, its pride, in the idea
+of another person, for whom the believer is an object of peculiar
+favour. This distinct person, however, is simply his own hidden self,
+his personified, contented desire of happiness: for he has no other
+qualities than these, that he is the benefactor, the Redeemer, the
+Saviour--qualities in which the believer has reference only to himself,
+to his own eternal salvation. In fact, we have here the characteristic
+principle of religion, that it changes that which is naturally active
+into the passive. The heathen elevates himself, the Christian feels
+himself elevated. The Christian converts into a matter of feeling,
+of receptivity, what to the heathen is a matter of spontaneity. The
+humility of the believer is an inverted arrogance,--an arrogance
+none the less because it has not the appearance, the external
+characteristics of arrogance. He feels himself pre-eminent: this
+pre-eminence, however, is not a result of his activity, but a matter
+of grace; he has been made pre-eminent; he can do nothing towards
+it himself. He does not make himself the end of his own activity,
+but the end, the object of God.
+Specificity is the salt that gives flavor. What a being is in its specifics is the being itself; only he who knows me in my specifics truly knows me. Thus, the specific God—the personal God of Christians—is the only "true" God, unknown to non-believers. Faith makes a person narrow-minded; it robs them of freedom to fairly evaluate difference. Faith is a prisoner of itself. A scientist limits himself to a system, but theoretical limitation is freer—based on logic and reason. Faith bases decisions on conscience, personal interest, and the drive for happiness; its object is a specific Being who demands recognition and makes salvation depend on it.
+Faith is essentially determinate, specific. God according to the
+specific view taken of him by faith, is alone the true God. This
+Jesus, such as I conceive him, is the Christ, the true, sole prophet,
+the only-begotten Son of God. And this particular conception thou
+must believe, if thou wouldst not forfeit thy salvation. Faith is
+imperative. It is therefore necessary--it lies in the nature of
+faith--that it be fixed as dogma. Dogma only gives a formula to
+what faith had already on its tongue or in its mind. That when once
+a fundamental dogma is established, it gives rise to more special
+questions, which must also be thrown into a dogmatic form, that hence
+there results a burdensome multiplicity of dogmas,--this is certainly
+a fatal consequence, but does not do away with the necessity that
+faith should fix itself in dogmas, in order that every one may know
+definitely what he must believe and how he can win salvation.
+Faith gives a unique sense of dignity. The believer feels set apart, exalted above the "natural" person—an aristocrat among plebeians. God is the personified pride of the believer. Because faith projects human nature onto another being, the believer sees dignity not in himself but in this separate person. Like a servant honored by his master's status, the believer denies his own merit to credit his Lord, satisfying his desire for honor through another's. Faith masks its pride in the idea of a being who treats the believer as a special favorite.
+That which in the present day, even from the standpoint of believing
+Christianity, is rejected, is compassionated as an aberration, as a
+misinterpretation, or is even ridiculed, is purely a consequence of the
+inmost nature of faith. Faith is essentially illiberal, prejudiced;
+for it is concerned not only with individual salvation, but with
+the honour of God. And just as we are solicitous as to whether we
+show due honour to a superior in rank, so it is with faith. The
+apostle Paul is absorbed in the glory, the honour, the merits of
+Christ. Dogmatic, exclusive, scrupulous particularity, lies in the
+nature of faith. In food and other matters, indifferent to faith,
+it is certainly liberal; but by no means in relation to objects
+of faith. He who is not for Christ is against him; that which is
+not christian is antichristian. But what is christian? This must be
+absolutely determined, this cannot be free. If the articles of faith
+are set down in books which proceed from various authors, handed
+down in the form of incidental, mutually contradictory, occasional
+dicta,--then dogmatic demarcation and definition are even an external
+necessity. Christianity owes its perpetuation to the dogmatic formulas
+of the Church.
+Yet this distinct person is simply the believer's hidden self—the personified fulfillment of his desire for happiness. This God has no qualities beyond being Benefactor, Redeemer, and Savior—qualities relating only to the believer's salvation. Here is religion's core principle: turning what is naturally active into passive. The heathen elevates himself; the Christian feels himself elevated. The believer's humility is inverted arrogance—he feels superior, but this superiority is "grace," not his own work. He makes himself God's goal and object.
+It is only the believing unbelief of modern times which hides
+itself behind the Bible, and opposes the biblical dicta to dogmatic
+definitions, in order that it may set itself free from the limits
+of dogma by arbitrary exegesis. But faith has already disappeared,
+is become indifferent, when the determinate tenets of faith are
+felt as limitations. It is only religious indifference under the
+appearance of religion that makes the Bible, which in its nature and
+origin is indefinite, a standard of faith, and under the pretext of
+believing only the essential, retains nothing which deserves the name
+of faith;--for example, substituting for the distinctly characterised
+Son of God, held up by the Church, the vague negative definition of a
+Sinless Man, who can claim to be the Son of God in a sense applicable
+to no other being,--in a word, of a man, whom one may not trust oneself
+to call either a man or a God. But that it is merely indifference
+which makes a hiding-place for itself behind the Bible, is evident
+from the fact that even what stands in the Bible, if it contradicts
+the standpoint of the present day, is regarded as not obligatory,
+or is even denied; nay, actions which are essentially Christian,
+which are the logical consequences of faith, such as the separation
+of believers from unbelievers, are now designated as unchristian.
+Faith is essentially specific. To faith, God is only true when viewed through a specific lens: "This Jesus, as I conceive him, is the Christ, the only true prophet, the only-begotten Son of God. And you must believe this specific conception, or you will lose your salvation." Faith is a command; therefore it must be fixed as dogma. Dogma provides a formula for what faith already thinks. While establishing one dogma leads to endless questions and stifling theology, faith must define itself so everyone knows what to believe to be saved.
+The Church was perfectly justified in adjudging damnation to heretics
+and unbelievers, [201] for this condemnation is involved in the nature
+of faith. Faith at first appears to be only an unprejudiced separation
+of believers from unbelievers; but this separation is a highly
+critical distinction. The believer has God for him, the unbeliever,
+against him;--it is only as a possible believer that the unbeliever
+has God not against him;--and therein precisely lies the ground of
+the requirement that he should leave the ranks of unbelief. But
+that which has God against it is worthless, rejected, reprobate;
+for that which has God against it is itself against God. To believe,
+is synonymous with goodness; not to believe, with wickedness. Faith,
+narrow and prejudiced refers all unbelief to the moral disposition. In
+its view the unbeliever is an enemy to Christ out of obduracy, out
+of wickedness. [202] Hence faith has fellowship with believers only;
+unbelievers it rejects. It is well-disposed towards believers, but
+ill-disposed towards unbelievers. In faith there lies a malignant
+principle.
+Much that Christians reject or mock today is a direct consequence of faith's nature. Faith is narrow and prejudiced, concerned with personal salvation and "God's honor." Like showing respect to a superior, faith is scrupulous. Paul's devotion to Christ's glory exemplifies this dogmatic specificity. Faith can be liberal about indifferent matters like food, but never toward faith's objects. He who is not for Christ is against him; what is not Christian is anti-Christian. What counts as Christian must be strictly defined; if articles of faith are scattered across contradictory books, dogmatic boundaries become necessary. Christianity owes its survival to Church dogmas.
+It is owing to the egoism, the vanity, the self-complacency of
+Christians, that they can see the motes in the faith of non-christian
+nations, but cannot perceive the beam in their own. It is only in
+the mode in which faith embodies itself that Christians differ from
+the followers of other religions. The distinction is founded only
+on climate or on natural temperament. A warlike or ardently sensuous
+people will naturally attest its distinctive religious character by
+deeds, by force of arms. But the nature of faith as such is everywhere
+the same. It is essential to faith to condemn, to anathematise. All
+blessings, all good it accumulates on itself, on its God, as the
+lover on his beloved; all curses, all hardship and evil it casts on
+unbelief. The believer is blessed, well-pleasing to God, a partaker
+of everlasting felicity; the unbeliever is accursed, rejected of God
+and abjured by men: for what God rejects man must not receive, must
+not indulge;--that would be a criticism of the divine judgment. The
+Turks exterminate unbelievers with fire and sword, the Christians with
+the flames of hell. But the fires of the other world blaze forth into
+this, to glare through the night of unbelief. As the believer already
+here below anticipates the joys of heaven, so the flames of the abyss
+must be seen to flash here as a foretaste of the awaiting hell,--at
+least in the moments when faith attains its highest enthusiasm. [203]
+It is true that Christianity ordains no persecution of heretics, still
+less conversion by force of arms. But so far as faith anathematises,
+it necessarily generates hostile dispositions,--the dispositions
+out of which the persecution of heretics arises. To love the man who
+does not believe in Christ, is a sin against Christ, is to love the
+enemy of Christ, [204] That which God, which Christ does not love,
+man must not love; his love would be a contradiction of the divine
+will, consequently a sin. God, it is true, loves all men; but only
+when and because they are Christians, or at least may be and desire
+to be such. To be a Christian is to be beloved by God; not to be a
+Christian is to be hated by God, an object of the divine anger. [205]
+The Christian must therefore love only Christians--others only
+as possible Christians; he must only love what faith hallows and
+blesses. Faith is the baptism of love. Love to man as man is only
+natural love. Christian love is supernatural, glorified, sanctified
+love; therefore it loves only what is Christian. The maxim, "Love
+your enemies," has reference only to personal enemies, not to public
+enemies, the enemies of God, the enemies of faith, unbelievers. He
+who loves the men whom Christ denies, does not believe Christ, denies
+his Lord and God. Faith abolishes the natural ties of humanity;
+to universal, natural unity, it substitutes a particular unity.
+Modern "believing unbelief" hides behind the Bible, pitting biblical quotes against dogma to escape limits through creative interpretation. But faith has vanished the moment its tenets feel restrictive. This indifference uses the Bible (inherently indefinite) as a faith standard. Under the pretext of believing only "essentials," it retains nothing that deserves the name of faith. It replaces the clearly defined Son of God with a vague "sinless man"—someone one is afraid to call either human or God.
+Let it not be objected to this, that it is said in the Bible, "Judge
+not, that ye be not judged;" and that thus, as faith leaves to God
+the judgment, so it leaves to him the sentence of condemnation. This
+and other similar sayings have authority only as the private law of
+Christians, not as their public law; belong only to ethics, not to
+dogmatics. It is an indication of indifference to faith, to introduce
+such sayings into the region of dogma. The distinction between the
+unbeliever and the man is a fruit of modern philanthropy. To faith,
+the man is merged in the believer; to it, the essential difference
+between man and the brute rests only on religious belief. Faith
+alone comprehends in itself all virtues which can make man pleasing
+to God; and God is the absolute measure, his pleasure the highest
+law: the believer is thus alone the legitimate, normal man, man as
+he ought to be, man as he is recognised by God. Wherever we find
+Christians making a distinction between the man and the believer,
+there the human mind has already severed itself from faith; there man
+has value in himself, independently of faith. Hence faith is true,
+unfeigned, only where the specific difference of faith operates in
+all its severity. If the edge of this difference is blunted, faith
+itself naturally becomes indifferent, effete. Faith is liberal only in
+things intrinsically indifferent. The liberalism of the apostle Paul
+presupposes the acceptance of the fundamental articles of faith. Where
+everything is made to depend on the fundamental articles of faith,
+there arises the distinction between essential and non-essential
+belief. In the sphere of the non-essential there is no law,--there
+you are free. But obviously it is only on condition of your leaving
+the rights of faith intact, that faith allows you freedom.
+This indifference is clear because whenever the Bible contradicts modern perspectives, it is ignored. Even logically Christian actions—like separating believers from unbelievers—are now called "unchristian." The Church was justified in sentencing heretics to damnation because this condemnation is built into faith. Faith seems a neutral separation, but is actually critical and judgmental: the believer has God on his side; the unbeliever has God against him. The unbeliever is only potentially not God's enemy, which is why they must leave unbelief behind.
+It is therefore an altogether false defence to say, that faith leaves
+judgment to God. It leaves to him only the moral judgment with respect
+to faith, only the judgment as to its moral character, as to whether
+the faith of Christians be feigned or genuine. So far as classes
+are concerned, faith knows already whom God will place on the right
+hand, and whom on the left; in relation to the persons who compose
+the classes faith is uncertain; but that believers are heirs of the
+Eternal Kingdom is beyond all doubt. Apart from this, however, the God
+who distinguishes between believers and unbelievers, the condemning and
+rewarding God, is nothing else than faith itself. What God condemns,
+faith condemns, and vice versâ. Faith is a consuming fire to its
+opposite. [206] This fire of faith regarded objectively, is the anger
+of God, or what is the same thing, hell; for hell evidently has its
+foundation in the anger of God. But this hell lies in faith itself, in
+its sentence of damnation. The flames of hell are only the flashings of
+the exterminating, vindictive glance which faith casts on unbelievers.
+Whatever God opposes is worthless; to be against God is inherently evil. Belief equals good; unbelief equals wicked. Narrow and prejudiced, faith attributes all unbelief to moral defect. From faith's perspective, the unbeliever is an enemy out of stubborn malice. Therefore, faith only has fellowship with believers and rejects others. It is well-disposed toward its own but hostile toward outsiders. A malignant principle lies at faith's heart.
+Thus faith is essentially a spirit of partisanship. He who is
+not for Christ is against him. [207] Faith knows only friends or
+enemies, it understands no neutrality; it is preoccupied only with
+itself. Faith is essentially intolerant; essentially, because with
+faith is always associated the illusion that its cause is the cause
+of God, its honour his honour. The God of faith is nothing else than
+the objective nature of faith--faith become an object to itself. Hence
+in the religious consciousness also the cause of faith and the cause
+of God are identified. God himself is interested: the interest of
+faith is the nearest interest of God. "He who toucheth you," says the
+prophet Zachariah, "toucheth the apple of His eye." [208] That which
+wounds faith, wounds God, that which denies faith, denies God himself.
+Due to Christian egoism, they see flaws in others' faith but not their own massive faults. Christians differ from other religions only in expression, often based on climate or temperament. A warlike people proves faith through force. But faith's nature is the same everywhere: it must condemn and curse. It piles all blessings onto itself and its God—like a lover with a beloved—and casts all evil onto unbelief. The believer is blessed; the unbeliever is cursed by God and man. What God rejects, man must not accept; to do so would criticize God's judgment.
+Faith knows no other distinction than that between the service of God
+and the service of idols. Faith alone gives honour to God; unbelief
+withdraws from God that which is due to him. Unbelief is an injury to
+God, religious high treason. The heathens worship demons; their gods
+are devils. "I say that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they
+sacrifice to devils, and not to God: and I would not that ye should
+have fellowship with devils." [209] But the devil is the negation of
+God; he hates God, wills that there should be no God. Thus faith is
+blind to what there is of goodness and truth lying at the foundation
+of heathen worship; it sees in everything which does not do homage
+to its God, i.e., to itself, a worship of idols, and in the worship
+of idols only the work of the devil. Faith must therefore, even in
+feeling, be only negative towards this negation of God: it is by
+inherent necessity intolerant towards its opposite, and in general
+towards whatever does not thoroughly accord with itself. Tolerance
+on its part would be intolerance towards God, who has the right to
+unconditional, undivided sovereignty. Nothing ought to subsist,
+nothing to exist, which does not acknowledge God, which does not
+acknowledge faith:--"That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
+of things in heaven and things on earth, and things under the earth;
+and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to
+the glory of the Father." [210] Therefore faith postulates a future,
+a world where faith has no longer an opposite, or where at least
+this opposite exists only in order to enhance the self-complacency
+of triumphant faith. Hell sweetens the joys of happy believers. "The
+elect will come forth to behold the torments of the ungodly, and at
+this spectacle they will not be smitten with sorrow; on the contrary,
+while they see the unspeakable sufferings of the ungodly, they,
+intoxicated with joy, will thank God for their own salvation." [211]
+While Turks used fire and sword, Christians use hell's flames. But the fires of the next world often bleed into this one to light up the "night" of unbelief. Just as believers anticipate heaven's joys on earth, the abyss's flashes must be seen as hell's foretaste—when faith reaches peak enthusiasm. Christianity does not officially mandate persecution or conversion by sword. But because faith condemns, it naturally creates the hostile mindset that leads to persecution. To love one who does not believe in Christ is seen as sinning against Christ. Man must not love what God or Christ does not love; such love would contradict divine will and be sin.
+Faith is the opposite of love. Love recognises virtue even in
+sin, truth in error. It is only since the power of faith has been
+supplanted by the power of the natural unity of mankind, the power
+of reason, of humanity, that truth has been seen even in polytheism,
+in idolatry generally,--or at least that there has been any attempt
+to explain on positive grounds what faith, in its bigotry, derives
+only from the devil. Hence love is reconcilable with reason alone,
+not with faith; for as reason, so also love is free, universal, in its
+nature; whereas faith is narrow-hearted, limited. Only where reason
+rules, does universal love rule; reason is itself nothing else than
+universal love. It was faith, not love, not reason, which invented
+Hell. To love, Hell is a horror; to reason, an absurdity. It would
+be a pitiable mistake to regard Hell as a mere aberration of faith,
+a false faith. Hell stands already in the Bible. Faith is everywhere
+like itself; at least positive religious faith, faith in the sense in
+which it is here taken, and must be taken unless we would mix with it
+the elements of reason, of culture,--a mixture which indeed renders
+the character of faith unrecognisable.
+God supposedly loves all—if they are Christians or wish to be. To be Christian is to be loved by God; to not be Christian is to be hated, an object of divine anger. The Christian must love only Christians—or others only as potential Christians. He must love only what faith sanctifies. Faith is the "baptism" of love. Loving a human simply as human is merely "natural" love. Christian love is supernatural and sanctified; therefore, it loves only what is Christian. The command to "love your enemies" refers only to personal enemies, not to God's enemies. He who loves those Christ rejects does not truly believe; he denies his Lord. Faith destroys natural human bonds, replacing universal unity with narrow, specific unity.
+Thus if faith does not contradict Christianity, neither do those
+dispositions which result from faith, neither do the actions which
+result from those dispositions. Faith condemns, anathematises; all the
+actions, all the dispositions, which contradict love, humanity, reason,
+accord with faith. All the horrors of Christian religious history,
+which our believers aver not to be due to Christianity, have truly
+arisen out of Christianity, because they have arisen out of faith. This
+repudiation of them is indeed a necessary consequence of faith; for
+faith claims for itself only what is good, everything bad it casts on
+the shoulders of unbelief, or of misbelief, or of men in general. But
+this very denial of faith that it is itself to blame for the evil in
+Christianity, is a striking proof that it is really the originator
+of that evil, because it is a proof of the narrowness, partiality,
+and intolerance which render it well-disposed only to itself, to its
+own adherents, but ill-disposed, unjust towards others. According to
+faith, the good which Christians do, is not done by the man, but by
+the Christian, by faith; but the evil which Christians do, is not done
+by the Christian, but by the man. The evil which faith has wrought in
+Christendom thus corresponds to the nature of faith,--of faith as it
+is described in the oldest and most sacred records of Christianity,
+of the Bible. "If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that
+ye have received, let him be accursed," [212] anathema esto,
+Gal. i. 9. "Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers:
+for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and
+what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath
+Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an
+infidel? And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye
+are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in
+them and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my
+people. Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith
+the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you,"
+Cor. iv. 14-17. "When the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven
+with his mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that
+know not God, and that obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ:
+who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence
+of the Lord, and from the glory of his power; when he shall come to
+be glorified in his saints, and admired in all them that believe,"
+Thess. i. 7-10. "Without faith it is impossible to please God,"
+Heb. xi. 6. "God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten
+Son, that whosoever believeth in him, should not perish, but have
+everlasting life," John iii. 16. "Every spirit that confesseth that
+Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: and every spirit that
+confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God:
+and this is the spirit of antichrist," 1 John iv. 2, 3. "Who is a
+liar, but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist
+that denieth the Father and the Son," 1 John ii. 22. "Whosoever
+transgresseth, and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not
+God: he that abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he hath both the
+Father and the Son. If there come any unto you, and bring not this
+doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed:
+for he that biddeth him God speed, is partaker of his evil deeds,"
+John ix. 11. Thus speaks the apostle of love. But the love which
+he celebrates is only the brotherly love of Christians. "God is the
+Saviour of all men, specially of those that believe," 1 Tim. iv. 10. A
+fatal "specially!" "Let us do good unto all men, especially unto them
+who are of the household of faith," Gal. vi. 10. An equally pregnant
+"especially!" "A man that is a heretic, after the first and second
+admonition reject; knowing that he that is such is subverted, and
+sinneth, being condemned of himself," [213] Titus iii. 10, 11. "He
+that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth
+not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him,"
+[214] John iii. 36. "And whosoever shall offend one of these little
+ones that believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone
+were hanged about his neck, and that he were cast into the sea," Mark
+ix. 42; Matt, xviii. 6. "He that believeth and is baptized shall be
+saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned," Mark xvi. 16. The
+distinction between faith as it is expressed in the Bible and faith
+as it has exhibited itself in later times, is only the distinction
+between the bud and the plant. In the bud I cannot so plainly see
+what is obvious in the matured plant; and yet the plant lay already
+in the bud. But that which is obvious, sophists of course will not
+condescend to recognise; they confine themselves to the distinction
+between explicit and implicit existence,--wilfully overlooking their
+essential identity.
+Do not object by citing "Judge not, that you be not judged," claiming faith leaves judgment to God. Such sayings are merely Christians' "private law"—belonging to ethics, not core dogma. It is indifference to bring ethical sayings into dogma. The distinction between "the person" and "the unbeliever" is modern humanitarianism. To faith, the person is swallowed up by the believer; the only essential difference between human and animal is religious belief. Faith alone contains virtues that make a person pleasing to God, whose pleasure is the highest law. Thus, the believer is the only "normal" human being—man as he ought to be, recognized by God. Whenever Christians distinguish between a human and a believer, the human mind has already moved away from faith; the human being now has value independent of belief. Faith is only genuine when its sharp distinctions are maintained in all severity. If those edges are blunted, faith becomes indifferent and weak. Faith is liberal only in things that don't matter. St. Paul's "liberalism" assumes core articles of faith are already accepted. Only within the "non-essential" are you free—on condition that faith's rights remain untouched.
+Faith necessarily passes into hatred, hatred into persecution, where
+the power of faith meets with no contradiction, where it does not
+find itself in collision with a power foreign to faith, the power
+of love, of humanity, of the sense of justice. Faith left to itself
+necessarily exalts itself above the laws of natural morality. The
+doctrine of faith is the doctrine of duty towards God,--the highest
+duty of faith. By how much God is higher than man, by so much higher
+are duties to God than duties towards man; and duties towards God
+necessarily come into collision with common human duties. God is not
+only believed in, conceived as the universal being, the Father of men,
+as Love:--such faith is the faith of love;--he is also represented as
+a personal being, a being by himself. And so far as God is regarded as
+separate from man, as an individual being, so far are duties to God
+separated from duties to man:--faith is, in the religious sentiment,
+separated from morality, from love. [215] Let it not be replied
+that faith in God is faith in love, in goodness itself; and that
+thus faith is itself an expression of a morally good disposition. In
+the idea of personality, ethical definitions vanish; they are only
+collateral things, mere accidents. The chief thing is the subject,
+the divine Ego. Love to God himself, since it is love to a personal
+being, is not a moral but a personal love. Innumerable devout hymns
+breathe nothing but love to the Lord; but in this love there appears
+no spark of an exalted moral idea or disposition.
+It is false defense to claim faith leaves judgment to God. It only leaves Him moral judgment of whether faith is sincere. Regarding groups, faith already knows who God will place on His right and left. While faith may be uncertain about individuals, it is beyond doubt that "believers" are heirs of the Eternal Kingdom. Beyond that, the God who distinguishes believers from unbelievers—who rewards and condemns—is nothing other than faith itself. What God condemns, faith condemns, and vice versa.
+Faith is the highest to itself, because its object is a divine
+personality. Hence it makes salvation dependent on itself, not on
+the fulfilment of common human duties. But that which has eternal
+salvation as its consequence, necessarily becomes in the mind of
+man the chief thing. As therefore inwardly morality is subordinate
+to faith, so it must also be outwardly, practically subordinate,
+nay, sacrificed, to faith. It is inevitable that there should be
+actions in which faith exhibits itself in distinction from morality,
+or rather in contradiction with it;--actions which are morally bad,
+but which according to faith are laudable, because they have in view
+the advantage of faith. All salvation depends on faith: it follows that
+all again depends on the salvation of faith. If faith is endangered,
+eternal salvation and the honour of God are endangered. Hence
+faith absolves from everything; for, strictly considered, it is the
+sole subjective good in man, as God is the sole good and positive
+being:--the highest commandment therefore is: Believe! [216]
+> **Quote:** "Faith is a consuming fire to its opposite."
+For the very reason that there is no natural, inherent connection
+between faith and the moral disposition, that, on the contrary, it
+lies in the nature of faith that it is indifferent to moral duties,
+[217] that it sacrifices the love of man to the honour of God,--for
+this reason it is required that faith should have good works as its
+consequence, that it should prove itself by love. Faith destitute of
+love, or indifferent to love, contradicts the reason, the natural sense
+of right in man, moral feeling, on which love immediately urges itself
+as a law. Hence faith, in contradiction with its intrinsic character,
+has limits imposed on it by morality: a faith which effects nothing
+good, which does not attest itself by love, comes to be held as not a
+true and living faith. But this limitation does not arise out of faith
+itself. It is the power of love, a power independent of faith, which
+gives laws to it; for moral character is here made the criterion of
+the genuineness of faith, the truth of faith is made dependent on the
+truth of ethics:--a relation which, however, is subversive of faith.
+This fire, viewed objectively, is the "wrath of God," or hell—for hell is founded on God's anger. But this hell exists within faith itself, in its own sentence of damnation. The flames are merely the flashes of the destructive, vengeful look faith casts upon the unbeliever. Thus, faith is essentially a spirit of partisanship: anyone not for Christ is against him. Faith recognizes only friends or enemies; it has no concept of neutrality, as it is entirely self-absorbed. Faith is fundamentally intolerant—and must be—because it is always accompanied by the illusion that its cause is God's cause and its honor is His. The God of faith is nothing more than the objective nature of faith itself—faith becoming its own object. Consequently, in religious consciousness, the cause of faith and the cause of God are one. God Himself is personally invested; faith's interests are God's immediate interests.
+Faith does indeed make man happy; but thus much is certain: it infuses
+into him no really moral dispositions. If it ameliorate man, if it
+have moral dispositions as its consequence, this proceeds solely
+from the inward conviction of the irreversible reality of morals:--a
+conviction independent of religious faith. It is morality alone, and
+by no means faith, that cries out in the conscience of the believer:
+thy faith is nothing, if it does not make thee good. It is not to be
+denied that the assurance of eternal salvation, the forgiveness of
+sins, the sense of favour and release from all punishment, inclines
+man to do good. The man who has this confidence possesses all things;
+he is happy; [218] he becomes indifferent to the good things of
+this world; no envy, no avarice, no ambition, no sensual desire, can
+enslave him; everything earthly vanishes in the prospect of heavenly
+grace and eternal bliss. But in him good works do not proceed from
+essentially virtuous dispositions. It is not love, not the object
+of love, man, the basis of all morality, which is the motive of his
+good works. No! he does good not for the sake of goodness itself,
+not for the sake of man, but for the sake of God;--out of gratitude
+to God, who has done all for him, and for whom therefore he must on
+his side do all that lies in his power. He forsakes sin, because it
+wounds God, his Saviour, his Benefactor. [219] The idea of virtue is
+here the idea of compensatory sacrifice. God has sacrificed himself
+for man; therefore man must sacrifice himself to God. The greater the
+sacrifice the better the deed. The more anything contradicts man and
+Nature, the greater the abnegation, the greater is the virtue. This
+merely negative idea of goodness has been especially realised and
+developed by Catholicism. Its highest moral idea is that of sacrifice;
+hence the high significance attached to the denial of sexual love,--to
+virginity. Chastity, or rather virginity, is the characteristic virtue
+of the Catholic faith,--for this reason, that it has no basis in
+Nature. It is the most fanatical, transcendental, fantastical virtue,
+the virtue of supranaturalistic faith;--to faith, the highest virtue,
+but in itself no virtue at all. Thus faith makes that a virtue which
+intrinsically, substantially, is no virtue; it has therefore no sense
+of virtue; it must necessarily depreciate true virtue because it so
+exalts a merely apparent virtue, because it is guided by no idea but
+that of the negation, the contradiction of human nature.
+> **Quote:** "He who touches you touches the apple of His eye."
+But although the deeds opposed to love which mark Christian religious
+history, are in accordance with Christianity, and its antagonists
+are therefore right in imputing to it the horrible actions resulting
+from dogmatic creeds; those deeds nevertheless at the same time
+contradict Christianity, because Christianity is not only a religion
+of faith, but of love also,--pledges us not only to faith, but to
+love. Uncharitable actions, hatred of heretics, at once accord and
+clash with Christianity? how is that possible? Perfectly. Christianity
+sanctions both the actions that spring out of love, and the actions
+that spring from faith without love. If Christianity had made love
+only its law, its adherents would be right,--the horrors of Christian
+religious history could not be imputed to it; if it had made faith only
+its law, the reproaches of its antagonists would be unconditionally,
+unrestrictedly true. But Christianity has not made love free; it has
+not raised itself to the height of accepting love as absolute. And
+it has not given this freedom, nay, cannot give it, because it is a
+religion,--and hence subjects love to the dominion of faith. Love is
+only the exoteric, faith the esoteric doctrine of Christianity; love
+is only the morality, faith the religion of the Christian religion.
+Whatever wounds faith wounds God; whatever denies faith denies God Himself. Faith knows no distinction other than that between serving God and serving idols. Faith alone gives honor to God; unbelief withholds what is due. Unbelief is seen as injury to God, religious high treason. To the believer, heathens worship demons: "I say that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God: and I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils." But the devil is the negation of God; he hates God and wishes God did not exist. Thus, faith is blind to any goodness or truth at paganism's foundation. It sees anything not paying homage to its God—which is to say, to itself—as idolatry, and idolatry only as the devil's work.
+God is love. This is the sublimest dictum of Christianity. But
+the contradiction of faith and love is contained in the very
+proposition. Love is only a predicate, God the subject. What, then,
+is this subject in distinction from love? And I must necessarily ask
+this question, make this distinction. The necessity of the distinction
+would be done away with only if it were said conversely: Love is
+God, love is the absolute being. Thus love would take the position
+of the substance. In the proposition "God is love," the subject is
+the darkness in which faith shrouds itself; the predicate is the
+light, which first illuminates the intrinsically dark subject. In
+the predicate I affirm love, in the subject faith. Love does not
+alone fill my soul: I leave a place open for my uncharitableness by
+thinking of God as a subject in distinction from the predicate. It is
+therefore inevitable that at one moment I lose the thought of love,
+at another the thought of God, that at one moment I sacrifice the
+personality of God to the divinity of love, at another the divinity of
+love to the personality of God. The history of Christianity has given
+sufficient proof of this contradiction. Catholicism, especially, has
+celebrated Love as the essential deity with so much enthusiasm, that
+to it the personality of God has been entirely lost in this love. But
+at the same time it has sacrificed love to the majesty of faith. Faith
+clings to the self-subsistence of God; love does away with it. "God
+is love," means, God is nothing by himself: he who loves, gives up
+his egoistical independence; he makes what he loves indispensable,
+essential to his existence. But while Self is being sunk in the
+depths of love, the idea of the Person rises up again and disturbs
+the harmony of the divine and human nature which had been established
+by love. Faith advances with its pretensions, and allows only just so
+much to Love as belongs to a predicate in the ordinary sense. It does
+not permit love freely to unfold itself; it makes love the abstract,
+and itself the concrete, the fact, the basis. The love of faith is
+only a rhetorical figure, a poetical fiction of faith,--faith in
+ecstasy. If faith comes to itself, Love is fled.
+By nature, faith must feel negatively toward this negation. It is inherently intolerant toward its opposite and anything not fully aligned with it. To be tolerant would be intolerance toward God, who has absolute sovereignty. Nothing should exist that does not acknowledge God and faith:
+This theoretic contradiction must necessarily manifest itself
+practically. Necessarily; for in Christianity love is tainted by faith,
+it is not free, it is not apprehended truly. A love which is limited
+by faith is an untrue love. [220] Love knows no law but itself; it is
+divine through itself; it needs not the sanction of faith; it is its
+own basis. The love which is bound by faith is a narrow-hearted, false
+love, contradicting the idea of love, i.e., self-contradictory,--a love
+which has only a semblance of holiness, for it hides in itself the
+hatred that belongs to faith; it is only benevolent so long as faith
+is not injured. Hence, in this contradiction with itself, in order
+to retain the semblance of love, it falls into the most diabolical
+sophisms, as we see in Augustine's apology for the persecution of
+heretics. Love is limited by faith; hence it does not regard even
+the uncharitable actions which faith suggests as in contradiction
+with itself; it interprets the deeds of hatred which are committed
+for the sake of faith as deeds of love. And it necessarily falls
+into such contradictions, because the limitation of love by faith is
+itself a contradiction. If it once is subjected to this limitation,
+it has given up its own judgment, its inherent measure and criterion,
+its self-subsistence; it is delivered up without power of resistance
+to the promptings of faith.
+> **Quote:** "That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and things on earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of the Father."
+Here we have again an example, that much which is not found in the
+letter of the Bible, is nevertheless there in principle. We find the
+same contradictions in the Bible as in Augustine, as in Catholicism
+generally; only that in the latter they are definitely declared,
+they are developed into a conspicuous, and therefore revolting
+existence. The Bible curses through faith, blesses through love. But
+the only love it knows is a love founded on faith. Thus here already
+it is a love which curses, an unreliable love, a love which gives
+me no guarantee that it will not turn into hatred; for if I do not
+acknowledge the articles of faith, I am out of the sphere of love, a
+child of hell, an object of anathema, of the anger of God, to whom the
+existence of unbelievers is a vexation, a thorn in the eye. Christian
+love has not overcome hell, because it has not overcome faith. Love
+is in itself unbelieving, faith unloving. And love is unbelieving
+because it knows nothing more divine than itself, because it believes
+only in itself as absolute truth.
+Therefore, faith requires a future where it has no opponent, or where that opponent exists only to highlight triumphant belief's self-satisfaction. Hell even adds sweetness to the blessed's joys.
+Christian love is already signalised as a particular, limited love, by
+the very epithet, Christian. But love is in its nature universal. So
+long as Christian love does not renounce its qualification of
+Christian, does not make love, simply, its highest law, so long is it a
+love which is injurious to the sense of truth, for the very office of
+love is to abolish the distinction between Christianity and so-called
+heathenism;--so long is it a love which by its particularity is in
+contradiction with the nature of love, an abnormal, loveless love,
+which has therefore long been justly an object of sarcasm. True love is
+sufficient to itself; it needs no special title, no authority. Love is
+the universal law of intelligence and Nature;--it is nothing else than
+the realisation of the unity of the species through the medium of moral
+sentiment. To found this love on the name of a person, is only possible
+by the association of superstitious ideas, either of a religious or
+speculative character. For with superstition is always associated
+particularism, and with particularism, fanaticism. Love can only be
+founded on the unity of the species, the unity of intelligence--on
+the nature of mankind; then only is it a well-grounded love, safe
+in its principle, guaranteed, free, for it is fed by the original
+source of love, out of which the love of Christ himself arose. The
+love of Christ was itself a derived love. He loved us not out of
+himself, by virtue of his own authority, but by virtue of our common
+human nature. A love which is based on his person is a particular,
+exclusive love, which extends only so far as the acknowledgment of
+this person extends, a love which does not rest on the proper ground
+of love. Are we to love each other because Christ loved us? Such
+love would be an affected, imitative love. Can we truly love each
+other only if we love Christ? Is Christ the cause of love? Is he not
+rather the apostle of love? Is not the ground of his love the unity
+of human nature? Shall I love Christ more than mankind? Is not such
+love a chimerical love? Can I step beyond the idea of the species? Can
+I love anything higher than humanity? What ennobled Christ was love;
+whatever qualities he had, he held in fealty to love; he was not the
+proprietor of love, as he is represented to be in all superstitious
+conceptions. The idea of love is an independent idea; I do not first
+deduce it from the life of Christ; on the contrary, I revere that
+life only because I find it accordant with the law, the idea of love.
+> **Quote:** "The elect will come forth to behold the torments of the ungodly, and at this spectacle they will not be smitten with sorrow; on the contrary, while they see the unspeakable sufferings of the ungodly, they, intoxicated with joy, will thank God for their own salvation."
+This is already proved historically by the fact that the idea of love
+was by no means first introduced into the consciousness of mankind with
+and by Christianity,--is by no means peculiarly Christian. The horrors
+of the Roman Empire present themselves with striking significance
+in company with the appearance of this idea. The empire of policy
+which united men after a manner corresponding with its own idea, was
+coming to its necessary end. Political unity is a unity of force. The
+despotism of Rome must turn in upon itself, destroy itself. But
+it was precisely through this catastrophe of political existence
+that man released himself entirely from the heart-stifling toils
+of politics. In the place of Rome appeared the idea of humanity;
+to the idea of dominion succeeded the idea of love. Even the Jews,
+by imbibing the principle of humanity contained in Greek culture, had
+by this time mollified their malignant religious separatism. Philo
+celebrates love as the highest virtue. The extinction of national
+differences lay in the idea of humanity itself. Thinking minds had
+very early overstepped the civil and political separation of man
+from man. Aristotle distinguishes the man from the slave, and places
+the slave, as a man, on a level with his master, uniting them in
+friendship. Epictetus, the slave, was a Stoic; Antoninus, the emperor,
+was a Stoic also: thus did philosophy unite men. The Stoics taught
+[221] that man was not born for his own sake, but for the sake of
+others, i.e., for love: a principle which implies infinitely more
+than the celebrated dictum of the Emperor Antoninus, which enjoined
+the love of enemies. The practical principle of the Stoics is so
+far the principle of love. The world is to them one city, men its
+citizens. Seneca, in the sublimest sayings, extols love, clemency,
+humanity, especially towards slaves. Thus political rigour and
+patriotic narrowness were on the wane.
+Faith is the antithesis of love. Love recognizes virtue even in sin and truth within error. Only because faith's power has been superseded by humanity's natural unity—reason and humanism—have we begun seeing truth in polytheism or idolatry. Only recently have we attempted to explain through objective reasoning what faith attributes solely to the devil. Love is compatible with reason alone, not faith; for reason and love are universal and free, whereas faith is narrow. Universal love only rules where reason rules; reason itself is universal love. Faith, not love or reason, invented Hell. To love, Hell is horror; to reason, absurdity. It would be pitiful to view Hell as mere mistake or "false" faith. Hell is already in the Bible. Faith is always consistent with itself—at least positive religious faith, unless diluted with reason and culture that make its true character unrecognizable.
+Christianity was a peculiar manifestation of these human tendencies;--a
+popular, consequently a religious, and certainly a most intense
+manifestation of this new principle of love. That which elsewhere
+made itself apparent in the process of culture, expressed itself
+here as religious feeling, as a matter of faith. Christianity thus
+reduced a general unity to a particular one, it made love collateral
+to faith; and by this means it placed itself in contradiction with
+universal love. The unity was not referred to its true origin. National
+differences indeed disappeared; but in their place difference of faith,
+the opposition of Christian and un-Christian, more vehement than a
+national antagonism, and also more malignant, made its appearance
+in history.
+If faith does not contradict Christianity, then neither do attitudes and actions stemming from it. Faith condemns and excommunicates. All actions contradicting love, humanity, and reason are perfectly harmonious with faith. All Christian history's atrocities, which believers claim are unrepresentative, actually arose from it because they arose from faith. This denial of responsibility is itself a necessary result of faith; for faith claims only what is good for itself, while placing all evil on the unbeliever, heretic, or humanity. Yet this very denial proves faith is evil's true source, demonstrating the narrowness, bias, and intolerance that make faith kind only to itself but hostile toward others. According to faith, the good a Christian does is done not by the man, but by the Christian—by faith. But the evil a Christian does is done not by the Christian, but by the man.
+All love founded on a special historical phenomenon contradicts,
+as has been said, the nature of love, which endures no limits,
+which triumphs over all particularity. Man is to be loved for man's
+sake. Man is an object of love because he is an end in himself,
+because he is a rational and loving being. This is the law of the
+species, the law of the intelligence. Love should be immediate,
+undetermined by anything else than its object;--nay, only as such
+is it love. But if I interpose between my fellow-man and myself
+the idea of an individuality, in whom the idea of the species is
+supposed to be already realised, I annihilate the very soul of love,
+I disturb the unity by the idea of a third external to us; for in that
+case my fellow-man is an object of love to me only on account of his
+resemblance or relation to this model, not for his own sake. Here all
+the contradictions reappear which we have in the personality of God,
+where the idea of the personality by itself, without regard to the
+qualities which render it worthy of love and reverence, fixes itself
+in the consciousness and feelings. Love is the subjective reality of
+the species, as reason is its objective reality. In love, in reason,
+the need of an intermediate person disappears. Christ is nothing
+but an image, under which the unity of the species has impressed
+itself on the popular consciousness. Christ loved men: he wished to
+bless and unite them all without distinction of sex, age, rank, or
+nationality. Christ is the love of mankind to itself embodied in an
+image--in accordance with the nature of religion as we have developed
+it--or contemplated as a person, but a person who (we mean, of course,
+as a religious object) has only the significance of an image, who is
+only ideal. For this reason love is pronounced to be the characteristic
+mark of the disciples. But love, as has been said, is nothing else than
+the active proof, the realisation of the unity of the race, through the
+medium of the moral disposition. The species is not an abstraction;
+it exists in feeling, in the moral sentiment, in the energy of
+love. It is the species which infuses love into me. A loving heart
+is the heart of the species throbbing in the individual. Thus Christ,
+as the consciousness of love, is the consciousness of the species. We
+are all one in Christ. Christ is the consciousness of our identity. He
+therefore who loves man for the sake of man, who rises to the love of
+the species, to universal love, adequate to the nature of the species,
+[222] he is a Christian, is Christ himself. He does what Christ did,
+what made Christ Christ. Thus, where there arises the consciousness
+of the species as a species, the idea of humanity as a whole, Christ
+disappears, without, however, his true nature disappearing; for he
+was the substitute for the consciousness of the species, the image
+under which it was made present to the people, and became the law of
+the popular life.
+The evil faith has produced reflects faith's nature as described in Christianity's oldest, most sacred records: the Bible.
+> **Quote:** "If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed."
+"Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God" (2 Cor. 4:14-17). We are told that when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven, he will take "vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: who shall be punished with everlasting destruction" (2 Thess. 1:7-10).
+> **Quote:** "Without faith it is impossible to please God."
+> **Quote:** "God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him, should not perish, but have everlasting life."
+Scripture states any spirit not confessing Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is the spirit of antichrist (1 John 4:2-3), and whoever does not remain in Christ's doctrine "hath not God." We are told not to welcome such a person or wish them well, for to do so is to share in their "evil deeds" (2 John 9-11). This is the language of the "apostle of love." But the love he celebrates is only the brotherly love of Christians. As the scripture says: 'God is the Saviour of all men, specially of those that believe.' That 'specially' is fatal! 'Let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith' (Gal. 6:10). This "especially" is equally significant. A heretic is to be rejected after a few warnings, as he is "subverted" and "condemned of himself" (Titus 3:10-11).
+> **Quote:** "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned."
+> **Quote:** "The distinction between faith as it is expressed in the Bible and faith as it has exhibited itself in later times, is only the distinction between the bud and the plant. In the bud I cannot so plainly see what is obvious in the matured plant; and yet the plant lay already in the bud."
+Those using clever but shallow arguments refuse to recognize this; they focus only on potential vs. actual, willfully ignoring their essential identity.
+Faith inevitably turns to hatred and persecution when its power is not countered by forces foreign to it—love, humanity, or justice. Left to itself, faith places itself above natural morality. The doctrine of faith defines duty toward God as highest. Since God is infinitely higher than man, divine duties are infinitely higher than human duties, inevitably clashing with common obligations. God is not just believed as universal Love—which would be faith's love—but represented as a personal, separate being. Because God is viewed as distinct, duties toward God separate from duties toward man. In the religious mind, faith separates from morality and love. It is useless to argue faith in God is faith in love or goodness, thus expressing moral character. In "personality," ethical definitions fade to the background; they become secondary. The focus is the divine Ego. Love for God, as love for a personal being, is personal rather than moral. Countless devout hymns express love for the Lord yet contain no spark of high moral ideal.
+Faith views itself as supreme because its object is a divine personality. Consequently, it makes salvation depend on belief rather than fulfilling human duties. Whatever results in eternal salvation becomes most important. As morality is internally subordinate to faith, it must also be subordinate—and even sacrificed—in practice. Inevitably, faith distinguishes itself from, or contradicts, morality—actions morally wrong but praised by faith because they serve its interests. Since all salvation depends on faith, everything depends on protecting it. If faith is threatened, eternal salvation and God's honor are threatened. Therefore, faith can justify anything; strictly speaking, it is the only subjective good in man, just as God is the only objective good. The highest commandment is simply: Believe!
+Because no inherent connection exists between faith and moral character—and because faith is indifferent to moral duties and sacrifices human love for God's honor—society demands faith prove itself through "good works" and love. Faith that does nothing good or shows no love is "dead" or "false." However, this restriction does not come from faith itself. It is love, an independent force, imposing these laws. When moral character tests genuine faith, faith's truth becomes dependent on ethics—a relationship that undermines faith's supremacy.
+Faith may make a person feel happy, but it does not instill truly moral dispositions. If it improves a person or leads to moral behavior, this happens only because of an inner conviction in morality's undeniable reality—independent of religious belief. Morality alone, not faith, speaks to conscience: "your faith is worthless if it does not make you good." The assurance of salvation and sense of forgiveness can make one inclined to do good. With this confidence, one feels they have everything; they become indifferent to greed, envy, or ambition. Earthly things fade beside eternal bliss. Yet good works do not stem from virtuous character. It is not love for human beings—the basis of all morality—that motivates them. No, they do good not for goodness' or others' sake, but for God's sake. They act from gratitude to God, who has done everything for them. They avoid sin because it "wounds" God, their Benefactor. Here, virtue is reduced to "compensatory sacrifice." God sacrificed Himself for man; therefore, man must sacrifice himself for God. The greater the sacrifice, the better the deed. The more an action contradicts human nature and self-denies, the greater the virtue. This negative idea of goodness is fully realized by Catholicism. Its highest moral ideal is sacrifice; this is why it values denial of sexual love—virginity. Chastity, or virginity, is Catholicism's characteristic virtue precisely because it has no basis in nature. It is a fanatical, transcendental virtue—the virtue of supernatural faith. To faith it is highest virtue, but in itself it is no virtue at all. Thus, faith turns something into virtue that essentially is not one. It has no real sense of virtue; it inevitably undervalues true virtue because it exalts mere appearance, guided only by negation of human nature.
+Although violence against love marks Christian history and is consistent with it—and critics rightly blame it for horrors resulting from dogmatic creeds—those deeds also contradict Christianity. This is because Christianity is not only a religion of faith, but of love; it binds us not only to faith, but to love. How can uncharitable actions both agree and clash with Christianity? It is simple. Christianity sanctions both actions springing from love and those from faith without love. Had Christianity made love its only law, its followers would be right—history's horrors could not be blamed on it. Had it made faith its only law, critics would be entirely right. But Christianity has not freed love; it has not reached accepting love as absolute. It cannot—because it is a religion, and therefore subjects love to faith's dominion. Love is the outer doctrine; faith is the inner doctrine. Love is the morality, but faith is the religion of the Christian religion.
+> **Quote:** "God is love."
+This is Christianity's most sublime pronouncement. Yet the contradiction between faith and love is contained in this very sentence. Love is only a predicate; God is the subject. What, then, is this subject distinct from love? The need for this distinction would disappear only if reversed: "Love is God; love is absolute being." In that case, love would be substance. In the proposition 'God is love,' the subject is the darkness in which faith shrouds itself, while the predicate is the light that first illuminates it. In the predicate I affirm love, but in the subject I affirm faith. Love does not fill my soul alone; I leave a place open for uncharitableness by conceiving of God as a subject separate from the predicate. It is inevitable I will sometimes lose the thought of love and sometimes the thought of God—sometimes sacrificing God's personality to love's divinity, and sometimes sacrificing love's divinity to God's personality. Christian history has proven this contradiction. Catholicism has celebrated love as essential deity so enthusiastically that God's personality was entirely lost in it—yet simultaneously sacrificed love to faith's majesty. Faith clings to God's independent existence; love dissolves it. 'God is love' means God is nothing by himself; one who loves gives up selfish independence and makes the beloved essential. But while self is immersed in love, the 'Person' idea rises again, disturbing the harmony between divine and human nature that love established. Faith makes demands, allowing love only as much room as a minor attribute. It does not let love unfold freely; it makes love abstract while making itself concrete and foundational. The love in faith is merely a rhetorical figure, a poetic fiction—faith in ecstasy. When faith returns to its senses, love has fled.
+This theoretical contradiction must inevitably show itself in practice, because in Christianity, love is tainted by faith; it is not free and is not truly understood.
+> **Quote:** "A love which is limited by faith is an untrue love."
+[220] Love knows no law but itself; it is divine in its own right and needs no approval from faith; it is its own foundation. Love bound by faith is narrow-minded and false, contradicting love's very idea—it is self-contradictory. Such love has only holiness' appearance, for it hides faith's hatred; it remains benevolent only as long as faith is not offended. Thus trapped in this internal contradiction, it resorts to diabolical fallacies to maintain love's appearance, as seen in Augustine's defense of persecuting heretics. Because faith limits love, it does not see even cruel actions suggested by faith as conflicting with itself; it interprets hatred's acts committed for faith's sake as love's acts. It inevitably falls into such contradictions because limiting love by faith is itself contradictory. Once love is subjected to this limit, it gives up its own judgment, standards, and independence; it is handed over, defenseless, to faith's impulses.
+Here we see again that much not found in the Bible's literal text is there in principle. We find the same contradictions in the Bible as in Augustine and Catholicism; the difference is that in later history, these contradictions are explicitly declared and developed into conspicuous—and therefore revolting—existence. Through faith, the Bible curses; through love, it blesses. But the only love it recognizes is founded on faith. Thus, even here it is a love that curses—an unreliable love offering no guarantee it won't turn to hatred. If I do not accept the articles of faith, I am outside love's circle; I am a child of hell, a target for anathema and God's anger, to whom unbelievers' existence is a thorn. Christian love has not conquered hell because it has not conquered faith. Love, in itself, is unbelieving, while faith is unloving. Love is "unbelieving" because it recognizes nothing more divine than itself, believing only in itself as absolute truth.
+The very term "Christian" marks Christian love as particular and limited. But love is universal by nature. As long as Christian love refuses to abandon its "Christian" label and does not make love its highest law, it remains a love harming truth's sense. Love's purpose is to abolish the distinction between Christianity and "paganism." As long as it remains exclusive, it contradicts love's nature; it is an abnormal, loveless love long deserving sarcasm. True love is self-sufficient; it needs no special title or authority.
+> **Quote:** "Love is the universal law of intelligence and Nature;—it is nothing else than the realisation of the unity of the species through the medium of moral sentiment."
+To base this love on a specific person's name is only possible through superstitious ideas, religious or speculative. Superstition is always linked to exclusivity, and exclusivity to fanaticism. Love can only be founded on human species' unity, intelligence's unity—on humanity's nature itself. Only then is it well-grounded, secure, guaranteed, and free, fed by love's original source from which Christ's love itself arose. Christ's love was derived love. He did not love us out of himself or by his own authority, but by virtue of our common human nature. Love based on his person is exclusive, extending only as far as recognition of that person; it does not rest on love's true foundation. Are we to love one another simply because Christ loved us? Such love would be affected, imitative. Can we truly love each other only if we love Christ? Is Christ love's cause, or rather its apostle? Isn't his love's basis the unity of human nature? Should I love Christ more than humanity? Isn't such love illusory? Can I go beyond our species? Can I love anything higher than humanity? What ennobled Christ was love; whatever qualities he possessed served love. He was not love's "owner," as superstitious views portray. The idea of love is independent; I don't derive it from Christ's life. On the contrary, I revere that life only because it harmonizes with love's law and idea.
+This is proven historically by the fact that Christianity did not first introduce love to human consciousness; it is not uniquely Christian. The Roman Empire's horrors appear with striking significance alongside this idea's emergence. The political empire, uniting people through force, was ending. Roman despotism had to collapse. But through this political catastrophe, humanity released itself from politics' suffocating grip. In Rome's place appeared the idea of humanity; dominion's idea was succeeded by love's idea. Even Jews, adopting humanity's principle from Greek culture, had softened their hostile religious isolation. Philo celebrates love as highest virtue. National differences' erasure was inherent in humanity's idea itself. Thinking minds had long moved past civic and political divisions. Aristotle distinguished person from slave, recognizing the slave as human, placing him on a level with his master, uniting them in friendship. Epictetus, the slave, was a Stoic; Marcus Aurelius, the emperor, was also a Stoic. Thus philosophy united people. [221] The Stoics taught humans were not born for their own sake but for others—that is, for love. This principle implies far more than Emperor Antoninus's famous command to love enemies. The Stoics' practical principle is essentially love's principle. To them, the world is one city and all people its citizens. Seneca, in the most sublime passages, praises love, mercy, and humanity, especially toward slaves. Thus political harshness and patriotic narrowness were fading.
+Christianity was a specific expression of these human tendencies—a popular, religious, intense manifestation of this new love principle. What appeared elsewhere through culture was expressed here as religious feeling and faith. However, Christianity reduced universal unity to specific unity by placing love alongside faith; in doing so, it placed itself in conflict with universal love. This unity was not attributed to its true origin. National differences disappeared, but in their place rose faith's difference—the opposition between Christian and non-Christian—which was more intense and malicious than any national antagonism.
+All love based on a specific historical phenomenon contradicts love's nature, which accepts no limits and triumphs over all exclusivity. Humans should be loved for humanity's sake. A person is an object of love because they are an end in themselves—a rational and loving being. This is the species' law and intelligence's law. Love should be immediate, not determined by anything but its object; it is only truly love when like this. But if I place an individual's idea (in whom the species' idea is supposedly realized) between my fellow human and myself, I destroy love's soul. I disturb unity by introducing a third party; then I love my neighbor only for their resemblance to this model, not for their own sake. Here appear all contradictions of a personal God, where the "person" idea alone—regardless of qualities making them worthy of love—takes over consciousness. Love is the species' subjective reality, as reason is its objective reality. In love and reason, the middleman disappears. Christ is nothing but an image through which human race unity impressed itself on public mind. Christ loved people; he wished to bless and unite everyone regardless of sex, age, rank, or nationality. Christ is humanity's love for itself, embodied in an image—or, given religion's nature, seen as a person. But this person has only image significance; he is an ideal. For this reason, love is called his disciples' identifying mark. But love is simply active proof of race unity through our moral character. The species is not an abstraction; it exists in our feelings, moral sense, and love's energy. It is the species that inspires love in me.
+> **Quote:** "A loving heart is the heart of the species throbbing in the individual."
+[222] Thus Christ, as love's consciousness, is the species' consciousness. We are all one in Christ. Christ is consciousness of our shared identity. Therefore, anyone who loves humanity for its own sake—who rises to love of the species, to universal love matching humanity's nature—is a Christian; they are Christ himself. They do what Christ did, which made Christ who he was. Thus, when we become aware of the human species as a whole, Christ's idea disappears without his true nature disappearing. He was substitute for species-awareness—the image through which it was presented to people and became their life's law.
 ### CHAPTER XXVII. - CONCLUDING APPLICATION.
+The contradiction between Faith and Love reveals a practical necessity to rise above Christianity—to move beyond religion's standpoint. We have shown that religion's substance is entirely human; that divine wisdom is human wisdom; that "the secret of theology is anthropology" and the absolute mind merely the finite, subjective mind. Yet religion denies its human origins, setting itself in opposition to humanity. The necessary turning-point of history is the open confession that the consciousness of God is nothing else than the consciousness of the species.
+In the contradiction between Faith and Love which has just been
+exhibited, we see the practical, palpable ground of necessity that
+we should raise ourselves above Christianity, above the peculiar
+stand-point of all religion. We have shown that the substance and
+object of religion is altogether human; we have shown that divine
+wisdom is human wisdom; that the secret of theology is anthropology;
+that the absolute mind is the so-called finite subjective mind. But
+religion is not conscious that its elements are human; on the contrary,
+it places itself in opposition to the human, or at least it does
+not admit that its elements are human. The necessary turning-point of
+history is therefore the open confession, that the consciousness of God
+is nothing else than the consciousness of the species; that man can
+and should raise himself only above the limits of his individuality,
+and not above the laws, the positive essential conditions of his
+species; that there is no other essence which man can think, dream of,
+imagine, feel, believe in, wish for, love and adore as the absolute,
+than the essence of human nature itself. [223]
+Man should raise himself only above the limits of individuality, not above the laws and essential conditions of his species. There is no other essence man can think, dream, imagine, feel, believe, wish, love, and adore as absolute than the essence of human nature itself.
+Our relation to religion is therefore not a merely negative, but a
+critical one; we only separate the true from the false;--though we
+grant that the truth thus separated from falsehood is a new truth,
+essentially different from the old. Religion is the first form
+of self-consciousness. Religions are sacred because they are the
+traditions of the primitive self-consciousness. But that which in
+religion holds the first place--namely, God--is, as we have shown,
+in itself and according to truth, the second, for it is only the
+nature of man regarded objectively; and that which to religion is the
+second--namely, man--must therefore be constituted and declared the
+first. Love to man must be no derivative love; it must be original. If
+human nature is the highest nature to man, then practically also the
+highest and first law must be the love of man to man. Homo homini Deus
+est:--this is the great practical principle:--this is the axis on which
+revolves the history of the world. The relations of child and parent,
+of husband and wife, of brother and friend--in general, of man to
+man--in short, all the moral relations are per se religious. Life as
+a whole is, in its essential, substantial relations, throughout of a
+divine nature. Its religious consecration is not first conferred by
+the blessing of the priest. But the pretension of religion is that
+it can hallow an object by its essentially external co-operation;
+it thereby assumes to be itself the only holy power; besides itself
+it knows only earthly, ungodly relations; hence it comes forward in
+order to consecrate them and make them holy.
+Our relationship to religion is therefore critical, not merely negative—we separate the true from the false, acknowledging that this separated truth is new and fundamentally different. Religion is the first form of self-consciousness, sacred as the tradition of our primitive self-awareness. But what religion places first—God—is actually second: merely human nature objectified. Conversely, what it places second—man—must be recognized as first. Love for man must be original, not derivative. If human nature is man's highest nature, then the highest law must be love of man for man.
+But marriage--we mean, of course, marriage as the free bond of love
+[224]--is sacred in itself, by the very nature of the union which is
+therein effected. That alone is a religious marriage, which is a true
+marriage, which corresponds to the essence of marriage--of love. And
+so it is with all moral relations. Then only are they moral,--then
+only are they enjoyed in a moral spirit, when they are regarded as
+sacred in themselves. True friendship exists only when the boundaries
+of friendship are preserved with religious conscientiousness, with
+the same conscientiousness with which the believer watches over the
+dignity of his God. Let friendship be sacred to thee, property sacred,
+marriage sacred,--sacred the well-being of every man; but let them
+be sacred in and by themselves.
+> "Homo homini Deus est:—this is the great practical principle:—this is the axis on which revolves the history of the world."
+In Christianity the moral laws are regarded as the commandments
+of God; morality is even made the criterion of piety; but ethics
+have nevertheless a subordinate rank, they have not in themselves a
+religious significance. This belongs only to faith. Above morality
+hovers God, as a being distinct from man, a being to whom the
+best is due, while the remnants only fall to the share of man. All
+those dispositions which ought to be devoted to life, to man--all
+the best powers of humanity, are lavished on the being who wants
+nothing. The real cause is converted into an impersonal means, a
+merely conceptional, imaginary cause usurps the place of the true
+one. Man thanks God for those benefits which have been rendered to
+him even at the cost of sacrifice by his fellow-man. The gratitude
+which he expresses to his benefactor is only ostensible; it is
+paid, not to him, but to God. He is thankful, grateful to God,
+but unthankful to man. [225] Thus is the moral sentiment subverted
+into religion! Thus does man sacrifice man to God! The bloody human
+sacrifice is in fact only a rude, material expression of the inmost
+secret of religion. Where bloody human sacrifices are offered to God,
+such sacrifices are regarded as the highest thing, physical existence
+as the chief good. For this reason life is sacrificed to God, and it
+is so on extraordinary occasions; the supposition being that this is
+the way to show him the greatest honour. If Christianity no longer, at
+least in our day, offers bloody sacrifices to its God, this arises, to
+say nothing of other reasons, from the fact that physical existence is
+no longer regarded as the highest good. Hence the soul, the emotions
+are now offered to God, because these are held to be something
+higher. But the common case is, that in religion man sacrifices some
+duty towards man--such as that of respecting the life of his fellow,
+of being grateful to him--to a religious obligation,--sacrifices
+his relation to man to his relation to God. The Christians, by
+the idea that God is without wants, and that he is only an object
+of pure adoration, have certainly done away with many pernicious
+conceptions. But this freedom from wants is only a metaphysical idea,
+which is by no means part of the peculiar nature of religion. When
+the need for worship is supposed to exist only on one side, the
+subjective side, this has the invariable effect of one-sidedness,
+and leaves the religious emotions cold; hence, if not in express
+words, yet in fact, there must be attributed to God a condition
+corresponding to the subjective need, the need of the worshipper, in
+order to establish reciprocity. [226] All the positive definitions
+of religion are based on reciprocity. The religious man thinks of
+God because God thinks of him; he loves God because God has first
+loved him. God is jealous of man; religion is jealous of morality;
+[227] it sucks away the best forces of morality; it renders to man
+only the things that are man's, but to God the things that are God's;
+and to him is rendered true, living emotion,--the heart.
+The relationships of child and parent, husband and wife, brother and friend—all moral relations are religious in themselves. Life's essential relations are divine by nature, not made sacred by priests. Yet religion claims exclusive power to hallow objects, recognizing only earthly relations outside itself and stepping forward to "consecrate" them.
+When in times in which peculiar sanctity was attached to religion,
+we find marriage, property, and civil law respected, this has not
+its foundation in religion, but in the original, natural sense of
+morality and right, to which the true social relations are sacred
+as such. He to whom the Right is not holy for its own sake will
+never be made to feel it sacred by religion. Property did not become
+sacred because it was regarded as a divine institution, but it was
+regarded as a divine institution because it was felt to be in itself
+sacred. Love is not holy because it is a predicate of God, but it is
+a predicate of God because it is in itself divine. The heathens do
+not worship the light or the fountain because it is a gift of God,
+but because it has of itself a beneficial influence on man, because
+it refreshes the sufferer; on account of this excellent quality they
+pay it divine honours.
+Marriage—as a free bond of love—is sacred in itself, by the nature of the union. Only a true marriage, corresponding to love's essence, can be religious. This applies to all moral relations: they are only moral when regarded as sacred in their own right. True friendship requires the same conscientiousness a believer gives his God. Let friendship, property, marriage, the well-being of every person be sacred—but sacred in themselves.
+Wherever morality is based on theology, wherever the right is made
+dependent on divine authority, the most immoral, unjust, infamous
+things can be justified and established. I can found morality on
+theology only when I myself have already defined the Divine Being by
+means of morality. In the contrary case, I have no criterion of the
+moral and immoral, but merely an unmoral, arbitrary basis, from which I
+may deduce anything I please. Thus, if I would found morality on God,
+I must first of all place it in God: for Morality, Right, in short,
+all substantial relations, have their only basis in themselves, can
+only have a real foundation--such as truth demands--when they are thus
+based. To place anything in God, or to derive anything from God, is
+nothing more than to withdraw it from the test of reason, to institute
+it as indubitable, unassailable, sacred, without rendering an account
+why. Hence self-delusion, if not wicked, insidious design, is at the
+root of all efforts to establish morality, right, on theology. Where
+we are in earnest about the right we need no incitement or support
+from above. We need no Christian rule of political right: we need only
+one which is rational, just, human. The right, the true, the good,
+has always its ground of sacredness in itself, in its quality. Where
+man is in earnest about ethics, they have in themselves the validity
+of a divine power. If morality has no foundation in itself, there is
+no inherent necessity for morality; morality is then surrendered to
+the groundless arbitrariness of religion.
+In Christianity, moral laws are God's commandments; morality is piety's criterion. Yet ethics holds a subordinate rank, lacking religious significance in themselves. God hovers above morality as a distinct being, receiving the best while man gets only remnants. Devotion owed to life and humanity is lavished on a being who needs nothing. The real cause becomes an impersonal means; an imaginary cause usurps the true one. Man thanks God for benefits rendered by fellow man—his gratitude to his benefactor is mere show. He is thankful to God but unthankful to man. Thus moral sentiment is subverted—man sacrifices man to God!
+Thus the work of the self-conscious reason in relation to religion
+is simply to destroy an illusion:--an illusion, however, which is
+by no means indifferent, but which, on the contrary, is profoundly
+injurious in its effect on mankind; which deprives man as well of the
+power of real life as of the genuine sense of truth and virtue; for
+even love, in itself the deepest, truest emotion, becomes by means
+of religiousness merely ostensible, illusory, since religious love
+gives itself to man only for God's sake, so that it is given only in
+appearance to man, but in reality to God.
+Bloody human sacrifice is the crude expression of religion's deepest secret. Where offered, they are deemed the highest tribute because physical existence is seen as the greatest good. Christianity no longer sacrifices blood because it no longer prizes physical existence highest; instead it offers soul and emotions to God. But typically, religion sacrifices a duty toward man—respecting life, showing gratitude—to a religious obligation. It sacrifices relationship to man for relationship to God. Though Christians conceive God as without needs, this "freedom from needs" is merely a metaphysical concept. In practice, God must be attributed a condition corresponding to the worshipper's needs to establish reciprocity—the basis of all positive religion. The religious man thinks of God because God thinks of him; loves because God first loved. God is jealous of man; religion is jealous of morality—it sucks away morality’s best forces. It renders to man only what is man's, but to God what is God's; and to Him is rendered the heart—true, living emotion.
+And we need only, as we have shown, invert the religious
+relations--regard that as an end which religion supposes to be a
+means--exalt that into the primary which in religion is subordinate,
+the accessory, the condition,--at once we have destroyed the illusion,
+and the unclouded light of truth streams in upon us. The sacraments
+of Baptism and the Lord's Supper, which are the characteristic symbols
+of the Christian religion, may serve to confirm and exhibit this truth.
+When religion reigned uniquely sacred, marriage, property, and civil law were respected—but this respect originated not in religion but in the natural sense of morality and right. Property was not sacred because divine, but seen as divine because sacred in itself. Love is not holy because God's attribute, but God's attribute because inherently divine. The ancients worshipped light or springs not as God's gifts, but for their beneficial influence on human life.
+The Water of Baptism is to religion only the means by which the Holy
+Spirit imparts itself to man. But by this conception it is placed
+in contradiction with reason, with the truth of things. On the one
+hand, there is virtue in the objective, natural quality of water;
+on the other, there is none, but it is a merely arbitrary medium of
+divine grace and omnipotence. We free ourselves from these and other
+irreconcilable contradictions, we give a true significance to Baptism,
+only by regarding it as a symbol of the value of water itself. Baptism
+should represent to us the wonderful but natural effect of water on
+man. Water has, in fact, not merely physical effects, but also, and
+as a result of these, moral and intellectual effects on man. Water
+not only cleanses man from bodily impurities, but in water the scales
+fall from his eyes: he sees, he thinks more clearly; he feels himself
+freer; water extinguishes the fire of appetite. How many saints have
+had recourse to the natural qualities of water in order to overcome
+the assaults of the devil! What was denied by Grace has been granted
+by Nature. Water plays a part not only in dietetics, but also in moral
+and mental discipline. To purify oneself, to bathe, is the first,
+though the lowest of virtues. [228] In the stream of water the fever of
+selfishness is allayed. Water is the readiest means of making friends
+with Nature. The bath is a sort of chemical process, in which our
+individuality is resolved into the objective life of Nature. The man
+rising from the water is a new, a regenerate man. The doctrine that
+morality can do nothing without means of grace has a valid meaning if,
+in place of imaginary, supernatural means of grace, we substitute
+natural means. Moral feeling can effect nothing without Nature; it
+must ally itself with the simplest natural means. The profoundest
+secrets lie in common everyday things, such as supranaturalistic
+religion and speculation ignore, thus sacrificing real mysteries
+to imaginary, illusory ones; as here, for example, the real power
+of water is sacrificed to an imaginary one. Water is the simplest
+means of grace or healing for the maladies of the soul as well as of
+the body. But water is effectual only where its use is constant and
+regular. Baptism, as a single act, is either an altogether useless
+and unmeaning institution, or, if real effects are attributed to it,
+a superstitious one. But it is a rational, a venerable institution,
+if it is understood to typify and celebrate the moral and physical
+curative virtues of water.
+Where morality rests on theology, the most immoral things can be justified. I can only base morality on God if I've already defined God through morality; otherwise I have an amoral, arbitrary basis. Morality, Right, and human relations have their only foundation in themselves. Deriving them from God withdraws them from reason's test, establishing them as sacred without explanation. Self-delusion, if not wicked design, lies at the root of theological morality. When serious about right, we need no support from above—only what is rational, just, and human. The true and good carry sacredness within their quality; without self-foundation, morality surrenders to religion's whims.
+But the sacrament of water required a supplement. Water, as a universal
+element of life, reminds us of our origin from Nature, an origin
+which we have in common with plants and animals. In Baptism we bow
+to the power of a pure Nature-force; water is the element of natural
+equality and freedom, the mirror of the golden age. But we men are
+distinguished from the plants and animals, which together with the
+inorganic kingdom we comprehend under the common name of Nature;--we
+are distinguished from Nature. Hence we must celebrate our distinction,
+our specific difference. The symbols of this our difference are bread
+and wine. Bread and wine are, as to their materials, products of
+Nature; as to their form, products of man. If in water we declare:
+Man can do nothing without Nature; by bread and wine we declare:
+Nature needs man, as man needs Nature. In water, human mental activity
+is nullified; in bread and wine it attains self-satisfaction. Bread
+and wine are supernatural products,--in the only valid and true sense,
+the sense which is not in contradiction with reason and Nature. If in
+water we adore the pure force of Nature, in bread and wine we adore
+the supernatural power of mind, of consciousness, of man. Hence this
+sacrament is only for man matured into consciousness; while baptism is
+imparted to infants. But we at the same time celebrate here the true
+relation of mind to Nature: Nature gives the material, mind gives the
+form. The sacrament of Baptism inspires us with thankfulness towards
+Nature, the sacrament of bread and wine with thankfulness towards
+man. Bread and wine typify to us the truth that Man is the true God
+and Saviour of man.
+Self-conscious reason's work regarding religion is simply to destroy a profoundly harmful illusion. It deprives man of real life's power and genuine truth and virtue. Even love, the deepest emotion, becomes mere show through religiousness, given to man only for God's sake—in appearance to man, but in reality to God.
+Eating and drinking is the mystery of the Lord's Supper;--eating
+and drinking is, in fact, in itself a religious act; at least, ought
+to be so. [229] Think, therefore, with every morsel of bread which
+relieves thee from the pain of hunger, with every draught of wine
+which cheers thy heart, of the God who confers these beneficent gifts
+upon thee,--think of man! But in thy gratitude towards man forget not
+gratitude towards holy Nature! Forget not that wine is the blood of
+plants, and flour the flesh of plants, which are sacrificed for thy
+well-being! Forget not that the plant typifies to thee the essence of
+Nature, which lovingly surrenders itself for thy enjoyment! Therefore
+forget not the gratitude which thou owest to the natural qualities of
+bread and wine! And if thou art inclined to smile that I call eating
+and drinking religious acts, because they are common everyday acts, and
+are therefore performed by multitudes without thought, without emotion;
+reflect, that the Lord's Supper is to multitudes a thoughtless,
+emotionless act, because it takes place often; and, for the sake of
+comprehending the religious significance of bread and wine, place
+thyself in a position where the daily act is unnaturally, violently
+interrupted. Hunger and thirst destroy not only the physical but also
+the mental and moral powers of man; they rob him of his humanity--of
+understanding, of consciousness. Oh! if thou shouldst ever experience
+such want, how wouldst thou bless and praise the natural qualities of
+bread and wine, which restore to thee thy humanity, thy intellect! It
+needs only that the ordinary course of things be interrupted in order
+to vindicate to common things an uncommon significance, to life,
+as such, a religious import. Therefore let bread be sacred for us,
+let wine be sacred, and also let water be sacred! Amen.
+We need only invert religious relations—view as ends what religion treats as means, elevate what it subordinates—and the illusion is destroyed. The sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper illustrate this.
+To religion, baptismal water is merely the Holy Spirit's means of imparting itself—a contradiction. It claims water has natural virtue yet is merely an arbitrary tool for grace. We give Baptism true significance only by viewing it as a symbol of water's own value. Water has not just physical but moral and intellectual effects. It not only cleanses the body, but in water the scales fall from man's eyes: he sees and thinks more clearly, feels himself freer, and the fire of appetite is extinguished. It dissolves individuality into Nature through a chemical process. How many saints have turned to water to overcome the "assaults of the devil"! What was denied by Grace was granted by Nature. The regenerated man rising from water shows morality needs not supernatural but natural means. The deepest secrets lie in common things that supernatural religion ignores. Water heals soul and body—but only through constant use. Baptism as a single act is useless or superstitious; only as symbol of water's ongoing curative power is it rational.
+Yet the water sacrament requires supplement. Water reminds us of our natural origin, shared with plants and animals—the element of equality and freedom, a mirror of the golden age. But humans are distinct from Nature, and bread and wine celebrate this difference. In materials they are Nature's products; in form, man's. Water declares: Man needs Nature. Bread and wine declare: Nature needs man. They are "supernatural" in the only valid sense—the power of mind, consciousness, humanity. Hence this sacrament belongs to conscious adults, while Baptism is for infants. Baptism inspires thankfulness toward Nature; bread and wine inspire thankfulness toward man.
+> **Quote:** Bread and wine typify to us the truth that Man is the true God and Saviour of man.
+Eating and drinking is the mystery of the Lord's Supper; in fact, it is a religious act itself. With every morsel, think of the "God" who confers these benefits—think of man! Yet don't forget gratitude toward holy Nature: wine is the blood of plants and flour the flesh of plants—sacrificed for your well-being. If you smile at calling eating religious, remember the Lord's Supper is also thoughtless for many because it is routine. But interrupt these acts, and hunger robs you not just physically but of humanity, understanding, consciousness. Then you would bless bread and wine's natural qualities that restore your humanity! Interruption reveals the uncommon significance of common things. Therefore, let bread be sacred, let wine be sacred, let water be sacred. Amen.

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