3. Our proposition does not assert, but it does tacitly presuppose the possibility, that there are other forms of piety which are related to Christianity as different forms on the same level of development, and thus so far similar. But this does not contradict the conviction, which we assume every Christian to possess, of the exclusive superiority of Christianity. In the realm of Nature also we distinguish perfect and imperfect animals as different stages of the development of animal life, and again on each of these stages different genera, which thus resemble each other as expressions of the same stage; but this does not mean that one genus of the lower stage may not be nearer to the higher, and thus more perfect, than the others. Similarly, though several kinds of piety belong to the same stage as Christianity, it may yet be more perfect than any of them.

Our proposition excludes only the idea, which indeed is often met with, that the Christian religion (piety) should adopt towards at least most other forms of piety the attitude of the true towards the false. For if the religions belonging to the same stage as Christianity were entirely false, how could they have so much similarity to Christianity as to make that classification requisite? And if the religions which belong to the lower stages contained nothing but error, how would it be possible for a man to pass from them to Christianity? Only the true, and not the false, can be a basis of receptivity for the higher truth of Christianity. The whole delineation which we are here introducing is based rather on the maxim that error never exists in and for itself, but always along with some truth, and that we have never fully understood it until we have discovered its connexion with truth, and the true thing to which it is attached. With this agrees what the apostle says when he represents even Polytheism as a perversion of the original consciousness of God which underlies it, and when, in this evidence of the longing which all these fancies have failed to satisfy, he finds an obscure presentiment of the true God.¹

§ 8. Those forms of piety in which all religious affections express the dependence of everything finite upon one Supreme and Infinite Being, i.e. the monotheistic forms, occupy the highest level; and all others are related to them as subordinate forms, from which men are destined to pass to those higher ones. 1. As such subordinate stages we set down, generally speaking, Idol-worship proper (also called Fetichism) and Polytheism; of which, again, the first stands far lower than the second. The idol-worshipper may quite well have only one idol, but this does not give such Monolatry any resemblance to Monotheism, for it ascribes to the idol an influence only over a limited field of objects or processes, beyond which its own interest and sympathy do not extend. The addition of several idols is merely an accident, usually caused by the experience of some incapacity in the original one, but not aiming at any kind of completeness. Indeed, the main reason why people remain on this level is that the sense of totality has not yet developed. The old ξόανα of the original Greek tribes were probably idols in the proper sense, each being something in itself alone. The unification of these different worships, by which one Being was substituted for several such idols, and the rise of several cycles of myths by which these creations were brought into connexion with each other—this was the development through which the transition from Idol-worship to Polytheism proper took place. But the more the idea of a multiplicity of local habitations clung to the Beings thus constituted, the more did Polytheism continue to savour of Idol-worship. Polytheism proper is present only when the local references quite disappear, and the gods, spiritually defined, form an organized and coherent plurality, which, if not exhibited as a totality, is nevertheless presupposed and striven after as such. The more, then, any single one of these Beings is related to the whole system of them, and this system, in turn, to the whole of existence as it appears in consciousness, the more definitely is the dependence of everything finite, not indeed on a Highest One, but on this highest totality, expressed in the religious self-consciousness. But in this state of religious faith there cannot fail to be here and there at least a presentiment of One Supreme Being behind the plurality of higher Beings; and then Polytheism is already beginning to disappear, and the way to Monotheism is open.

2. As for this difference, of believing in one God on whom the religious man regards himself as being (along with the world of which he is a part) absolutely dependent, or in a group of gods to whom he stands in different relations according as they divide the government of the world among them, or finally in particular idols which belong to the family or the locality or the particular occupation in which he lives: it seems at first, indeed, to be only a difference in the mode of representation, and therefore, from our point of view, only a derivative difference. And only a difference in the immediate self-consciousness can for us be a fit measure of the development of religion. But it is also very easy to show that these different representations depend on different states of self-consciousness. Idol-worship proper is based upon a confused state of the self-consciousness which marks the lowest condition of man, since in it the higher and the lower are so little distinguished that even the feeling of absolute dependence is reflected as arising from a particular object to be apprehended by the senses. So, too, with Polytheism: in its combination of the religious susceptibility with diverse affections of the sensible self-consciousness, it exhibits this diversity in such a very preponderant degree that the feeling of absolute dependence cannot appear in its complete unity and indifference to all that the sensible self-consciousness may contain; but, instead, a plurality is posited as its source. But when the higher self-consciousness, in distinction from the sensible, has been fully developed, then, in so far as we are open in general to sensible stimulation, i.e. in so far as we are constituent parts of the world, and therefore in so far as we take up the world into our self-consciousness and expand the latter into a general consciousness of finitude, we are conscious of ourselves as absolutely dependent. Now this self-consciousness can only be described in terms of Monotheism, and indeed only as we have expressed it in our proposition. For if we are conscious of ourselves, as such and in our finitude, as absolutely dependent, the same holds true of all finite existence, and in this connexion we take up the whole world along with ourselves into the unity of our self-consciousness. Thus the different ways of representing that existence outside of us to which the consciousness of absolute dependence refers, depend partly on the different degrees of extensiveness of the self-consciousness (for as long as a man identifies himself only with a small part of finite existence, his god will remain a fetich); and partly on the degree of clearness with which the higher self-consciousness is distinguished from the lower. Polytheism naturally represents in both respects an indeterminate middle stage, which sometimes is very little different from Idol-worship, but sometimes, when in the handling of the plurality there appears a secret striving after unity, may border very closely on Monotheism; whether it be that the gods rather represent the forces of Nature, or that they symbolize the human qualities which are operative in social relationships, or that both these tendencies are united in the same cult. Otherwise it could not in itself be explained how the correlative term in the feeling of absolute dependence could be reflected as a plurality of beings. But if the higher consciousness has not become quite distinct from the lower, then the correlative can only be conceived in a sensible way, and then for that very reason it contains the germs of plurality. Thus it is only when the religious consciousness expresses itself as capable of being combined with all the states of the sensible self-consciousness without discrimination, but also as clearly distinct from the latter, in such a way that in the religious emotions themselves no sharper distinction appears than that between the joyful and the depressing tone—it is only then that man has successfully passed beyond those two stages, and can refer his feeling of absolute dependence solely to one Supreme Being.

3. It can therefore justly be said that as soon as piety has anywhere developed to the point of belief in one God over all, it may be predicted that man will not in any region of the earth remain stationary on one of the lower planes. For this belief is always and everywhere very particularly engaged, if not always in the best way, in the endeavour to propagate itself and disclose itself to the receptive faculties of mankind; and this succeeds eventually, as we can see, even among the rudest human races, and by a direct transition from Fetichism without any intermediate passage through a stage of Polytheism. On the other hand, there is nowhere any trace, so far as history reaches, of a relapse from Monotheism, in the strict sense. In the case of most of those Christians who under persecution went back to heathenism, it was only an apparent return. Where it was a matter of real earnest, these people must, previously, at their conversion to Christianity, have been simply carried on by a general movement, without having appropriated the essence of this belief into their own personal consciousness. However, we must not, from all this, draw the conclusion that the existence of Fetichism requires for its explanation the assumption of a still lower stage, in which religious emotion would be altogether lacking. Many have, indeed, described the original state of mankind as such a brute-existence; but, even if we cannot deny all trace of such a state, it can be neither proved historically nor imagined in a general way how of itself this state should have given rise to the development of something higher. No more can it be shown that Polytheism has anywhere transformed itself, by a sheer process from within, into genuine Monotheism; although this can at least be conceived as possible, as has been indicated above. In any case, we must secure ourselves against the demand that, since we have definitely exhibited such a gradation, we are bound also to give a definite account of such an original state of religion; for in other connexions also it is the case that we never get back to origins. If, then, we keep simply to our presuppositions, without resorting to any historical statements about a period which is altogether prehistoric, we are left with a choice between two ways of conceiving it. Either that quite obscure and confused form of religion was everywhere the original form, and advanced to Polytheism through the concentration of several small tribes into one larger community; or a childish Monotheism (which for that very reason was subject to a confused mingling of the higher and the lower) was the original stage, and among some people darkened completely into idol-worship, while among others it clarified into a pure belief in God.

4. On this highest plane, of Monotheism, history exhibits only three great communions—the Jewish, the Christian, and the Mohammedan; the first being almost in process of extinction, the other two still contending for the mastery of the human race. Judaism, by its limitation of the love of Jehovah to the race of Abraham, betrays a lingering affinity with Fetichism; and the numerous vacillations towards idol-worship prove that during the political heyday of the nation the monotheistic faith had not yet taken fast root, and was not fully and purely developed until after the Babylonian Exile. Islam, on the other hand, with its passionate character, and the strongly sensuous content of its ideas, betrays, in spite of its strict Monotheism, a large measure of that influence of the sensible upon the character of the religious emotions which elsewhere keeps men on the level of Polytheism. Thus Christianity, because it remains free from both these weaknesses, stands higher than either of those other two forms, and takes its place as the purest form of Monotheism which has appeared in history. Hence there is strictly no such thing as a wholesale relapse from Christianity to either Judaism or Mohammedanism, any more than there is from any monotheistic religion to Polytheism or idol-worship. Individual exceptions will always be connected with pathological states of mind; or, instead of religion, it will prove to be simply one form of irreligion that is exchanged for another, which indeed is what always happens in the case of renegades. And so this comparison of Christianity with other similar religions is in itself a sufficient warrant for saying that Christianity is, in fact,² the most perfect of the most highly developed forms of religion.

Postscript 1.—The above account is at variance with the view which sees no real piety at all, but only superstition, in the religions of the lower levels, mainly because they are supposed to have had their source simply in fear. But the honour of Christianity does not at all demand such an assertion. For since Christianity itself affirms³ that only perfect love casts out all fear, it must admit that imperfect love is never entirely free from fear. And likewise it is always the case, even in idol-worship, if the idol is worshipped as a protector at all, and not as an evil being, that the fear is by no means quite without any impulses of love, but is rather an adaptation. corresponding to the imperfect love, of the feeling of absolute dependence. Moreover (quite apart from the fact that many of these religions are too cheerful to be explicable by fear), if we should set out to discover for them a quite different origin from that of true religion, it would be difficult to show what sort of tendency this is in the human soul, and what its inner aim is, which engenders idol-worship, and which must again be lost when the latter gives place to Religion. The truth is, rather, that we must never deny the homogeneity of all these products of the human spirit, but must acknowledge the same root even for the lower powers.

Postscript 2.—But for the assonance of the names there would scarcely be any occasion for us expressly to remark that it is not at all our present business to say anything about that way of thinking which is called Pantheism. For it has never been the confession of a religious communion which actually appeared in history, and it is only with these that we are concerned. Moreover, this name was not originally used even by individuals to designate their own views, but crept in as a taunt and nickname; and in such cases it always remains difficult to hold consistently to any one meaning. The one thing concerning the subject which can be discussed in this place (and indeed only in such a place as this) is the question of the relation of this way of thinking to piety. It is admitted that it does not, like the three above-described theories, spring from the religious emotions, by direct reflection upon them. But it may be asked whether, having once arisen in some other way—by the way of speculation or simply of reasoning—it is yet compatible with piety. To this question an affirmative answer may be given without hesitation, provided that Pantheism is taken as expressing some variety or form of Theism, and that the word is not simply and solely a disguise for a materialistic negation of Theism. If we look at idol-worship, and consider how it is always conjoined with a very limited knowledge of the world, and is also full of magic and sorcery of every sort, it is very easy to see that in very few cases can one speak of a clear distinction on this level between what is assigned to God and what is assigned to the world, and why could not a Hellenic polytheist, embarrassed by the entirely human shapes of the gods, have identified his great gods with the evolved gods of Plato, leaving out the God whom Plato represents as addressing them, and positing only the enthroned Necessity? This would not imply any change in his piety, yet his representation of it would have become pantheistic. But let us think of the highest stage of religion, and let us accordingly hold Pantheism fast to the usual formula of One and All: then God and world will remain distinct at least as regards function, and thus such a man, since he reckons himself as belonging to the world, can feel himself, along with this All, to be dependent on that which is the corresponding One. Such states of mind can scarcely be distinguished from the religious emotions of many a Monotheist. At any rate, the distinction (always rather a curious one, and, if I may say so, roughly drawn) between a God who is outside of and above the world, and a God who is in the world, does not particularly meet the point, for nothing can strictly be said about God in terms of the antithesis between internal and external without imperilling in some way the divine omnipotence and omnipresence.

§ 9. The widest diversity between forms of piety is that which exists, with respect to the religious affections, between those forms which subordinate the natural in human conditions to the moral and those which, on the contrary, subordinate the moral to the natural.

1. It is primarily in the interests of Christianity, and therefore only for the highest level, that we shall here attempt a conceptual division of religions which appear as co-ordinate (a cross-division, i.e., in relation to our division of the whole field). Whether this division holds for the subordinate stages too, is a question that does not here concern us. But for the highest stage the attempt is necessary. For even if this stage is, as a matter of history, exhausted in the three above-mentioned communions, yet we need a more exactly defined position in which to fix Christianity; for otherwise we could only distinguish it empirically from the other two, and could never be certain whether the more essential differences were being brought to light or whether we were only getting hold of accidental characteristics. Hence our attempt cannot be held to have succeeded until we find a basis of division by which Christianity is either clearly distinguished, in itself, from the two others, or along with one of the others distinguished from the third.

Now, since the feeling of absolute dependence is in itself perfectly simple, and the conception of it provides no basis of differentiation, such a basis can be derived only from the fact that that feeling, in order to realize itself in an actual moment, must first unite with a sensible stimulation of self-consciousness, and that these sensible stimuli must be regarded as infinitely various. Now it is true that the feeling of absolute dependence in itself is equally related to all these stimulations, and is highly susceptible to them all alike. But nevertheless it may, by analogy, be assumed that this relationship in actual reality differentiates itself variously not only in individual men but also in larger masses. And thus with some people a certain class of sensible feelings develops easily and surely into religious emotion, and another opposite class with difficulty or not at all, while with other people the case is precisely reversed. Or it may be that the same sensible states of self-consciousness develop into religious moments with some people in one set of conditions, and with other people in the opposite set of conditions. As regards the former alternative, we might first of all divide these states into the more physical and the more spiritual, into those which arise through the influence of men and their actions and those which arise through the influence of external Nature. But this could only hold of individual men, that some are more susceptible to religious emotion through the impressions of external Nature, and others through social relationships and the temper which they produce. The difference between one religious communion and another cannot be thus explained, since every such communion includes all these diversities, and none excludes from its pale either the one or the other kind of emotion, or even makes the one less prominent than the other to any significant extent. Again, we might point to the fact that, our whole life being an interpenetration and succession of activity and passivity, a man is sometimes more conscious of himself, as active and sometimes more as passive. And this might be held better to provide a common constitution for larger masses of people—the fact that in certain quarters the active form of self-consciousness more easily rises into religious emotion, and the passive remains on the sensible level, while in other quarters this is reversed. Only, of course, this so simply conceived distinction remains a merely fluid one between a more and a less, so that the same moment may be conceived as either more active or more passive according as it is compared with one or with another. If a grand division of universal application is to be made between the different forms of piety, the above fluid distinction must be transformed into such a subordination as is indicated in our proposition. This subordination is on the one side most strongly marked when the passive states (whether pleasant or unpleasant, whether occasioned by external Nature or by social relationships) only arouse the feeling of absolute dependence in so far as they are referred to the spontaneous activity, i.e. in so far as we know that some particular thing (just because we stand in that relation to the totality of existence which is expressed in our passive state) has to be done by us, so that the action which depends on and proceeds from that state has thus precisely this God-consciousness as its impulse. Thus where piety has taken this form, the passive states, having risen into religious emotion, become simply an occasion for the development of a definite activity which can only be explained as the result of a God-consciousness of that particular description. And in the realm of such religious emotions all passive relations of man to the world appear as simply means for evoking the totality of his active states, whereby the antithesis between the sensibly pleasant and the unpleasant therein is overcome and retires into the background; while, on the contrary, it of course remains predominant in the cases in which the sensible feeling does not rise into religious emotion. This subordination we designate teleological Religion; an expression which indeed is elsewhere somewhat differently used, but which is here meant to signify simply that a predominating reference to the moral task constitutes the fundamental type of the religious affections. Now if the action which is prefigured in the religious emotion is a practical contribution to the advancement of the Kingdom of God, the mental state is an elevating one, whether the feeling which occasioned it be pleasant or unpleasant. But if the action is a retreat into oneself, or a seeking for help to relieve a perceptible obstruction of the higher life, the mental state is a subduing one, whether the feeling which occasioned it was pleasant or unpleasant. The reverse form of this subordination appears in its completeness when the self-consciousness of a state of activity is taken up into the feeling of absolute dependence only in proportion as the state itself appears as a result of those relations which exist between the subject and all the rest of existence, and is thus referred to the passive side of the subject. But every individual state of activity is simply a particular expression of the disposition of common human faculties which exists in the subject and constitutes his personal peculiarity. Consequently, in every religious emotion of this sort, that disposition itself is posited as the result of the influences, ordered by the Supreme Being, of all things upon the subject; and thus in the elevating emotions, as harmony, i.e. as beauty of the individual life, and in the unpleasant or subduing emotions, as discord or ugliness. Now this form of piety, in which each moment of spontaneous activity, simply as a determination of the individual by the whole of finite existence, and thus as referred to the passive side, is taken up into the feeling of absolute dependence, we will call æsthetic Religion. These two fundamental forms are definitely opposed to each other, in virtue of the opposite subordination of the elements which are common to both; and every kind of religious fellow-feeling or sympathy is naturally found in both forms, just as is the personal feeling, since the former is simply an expanded, the latter a contracted, self-consciousness.

2. A general demonstration as to whether the actual historical faiths can best be classified according to this antithesis would be the business only of a general critical History of Religions. Here we are simply concerned as to whether the division so far justifies itself, as to provide a means of distinguishing Christianity from religions co-ordinate with it, and by more narrowly determining its position to facilitate the task of isolating its peculiar essence. As a matter of fact, the religion which is chiefly present to our minds, as being sharply opposed in this respect to Christianity, is not co-ordinate with it, but belongs to a lower level, namely, Greek Polytheism. In this religion the teleological trend falls entirely into the background. Neither in their religious symbols nor even in their Mysteries is there any considerable trace of the idea of a totality of moral ends to which a man’s mental states are in general to be related. On the contrary, what we have called the æsthetic outlook very definitely predominates, inasmuch as even the gods are principally intended to exhibit different dispositions of the activities of the human soul, and thus a peculiar form of inward beauty. Now no one can well deny that Christianity, even apart from the fact that it belongs to a higher level, is sharply opposed to this type. In the realm of Christianity the consciousness of God is always related to the totality of active states in the idea of a Kingdom of God. As for the idea of a beauty of the soul, regarded as the result of all the influences of Nature and the world, this has always remained so foreign to Christianity (in spite of Christianity’s early absorption of Hellenism en masse) that it has never been adopted into the cycle of current expressions in the realm of Christian piety, and has never been maintained in any treatise of Christian morals. But that figure of a Kingdom of God, which is so important and indeed all-inclusive for Christianity, is simply the general expression of the fact that in Christianity all pain and all joy are religious only in so far as they are related to activity in the Kingdom of God, and that every religious emotion which proceeds from a passive state ends in the consciousness of a transition to activity.

But now we have to determine whether the above-mentioned antithesis between the teleological and the æsthetic trend is not, after all, necessarily bound up with the distinction between the two levels, so that all Polytheism would necessarily belong to the æsthetic side and all Monotheism to the teleological. To this end we must simply take our stand upon the highest level, and ask whether the two other monotheistic faiths are like Christianity in this respect or not. As for Judaism, then, though it relates the passive states to the active rather in the form of divine punishments and rewards than in the form of moral challenge and influence, nevertheless the predominating form of God-consciousness is that of the commanding Will; and thus, even when it proceeds from passive states, it necessarily turns to the active. Islam, on the other hand, in no way shows this subordination of the passive to the active. Rather does this form of piety come to complete rest in the consciousness of immutable divine appointments, and even the consciousness of spontaneous activity is only united with the feeling of absolute dependence in the sense that its determination is supposed to rest upon those appointments, and this fatalistic character reveals in the clearest manner a subordination of the moral to the natural. Thus the monotheistic stage appears divided, the teleological type being most expressed in Christianity, and less perfectly in Judaism, while Mohammedanism, which is quite as monotheistic, unmistakably expresses the æsthetic type. All this points us for our present task to a definitely limited field, and what we are going to establish as the peculiar essence of Christianity must no more deviate from the teleological line than it may descend from the monotheistic level.

§ 10. Each particular form of communal piety has both an outward unity, as a fixed fact of history with a definite commencement, and an inward unity, as a peculiar modification of that general character which is common to all developed faiths of the same kind and level; and it is from both of these taken together that the peculiar essence of any particular form is to be discerned.

Note.—Cf. Speeches on Religion (Eng. trans.), pp. 210 ff. 1. The first part of this proposition would be false if it could be shown, or even conceived as possible, that Christian piety could anywhere arise, as it were of itself, quite apart from any historical connexion with the impulse which proceeded from Christ. The same thing would in that case be true of Mohammedan and Jewish piety too, with reference to Moses and Mohammed. But the possibility of it will be admitted by nobody. Of course this outward unity is not so rigid on the subordinate levels of religion; partly because in these cases the starting-point often falls in the prehistoric period (as it does in the case of the pre-Mosaic monotheistic worship of Jehovah); partly because many of these historical forms, such as the Greek, and still more the Roman, Polytheism, present to us a composite whole which, from many very diverse starting-points, has gradually been woven together or even grown together of itself. The same might indeed be said of the Norse and Indian systems. But these apparent exceptions rather confirm the rule laid down in our proposition. For the less the outward unity can be definitely exhibited, the more precarious becomes the inward unity too. It appears that, just as in the realm of Nature the species are less definite on the lower levels of life, so in this realm of religion also the uniform consummation of the outward and the inward unity is reserved for the higher development; and thus in the most perfect form (which we may say in advance is Christianity) the inward peculiarity must be most intimately bound up with that which forms the historical basis of the outward unity.

The second part of our proposition would be false if it could be asserted that the different religious communions were really separated only by space and time without having any genuinely inward difference. But this would imply that whenever two such communions came into contact spatially they would necessarily recognize their identity with each other, and so become one, and that nothing could hinder this except (to a certain extent) a foolish self-will which was anxious to cling to the name of the founder. It would also imply that each individual could, without undergoing any inward change, pass from his own religious communion to a quite different one, simply by dissolving the one historical connexion and entering into another. But this would be contrary to all experience. Indeed it would, on this hypothesis, be impossible that one religious communion should spring up within another and break away from it; for if nothing new came in, there could be no new beginning where the same elements had been already present.

2. With respect to the actual beginning of each religious communion there need be no further discussion. Whether a new variety of the feeling of absolute dependence takes shape first simply in one individual or in several simultaneously, is a matter of indifference, though everyone will see that the latter is, generally speaking, less probable than the former. It would also be futile to try to distinguish the different ways in which such a new form can arise in the soul, since the communion can only arise through its communication and transmission. But what our proposition says about the inward difference requires some further discussion. Our proposition makes the statement (which, however, in accordance with our present purpose, we are going to apply only to the religious communions of the highest level) that the same thing is present in all, but present in a quite different way in each. The prevailing view, on the contrary, is that the greater part is the same in all communions of the highest level, and that to this common matter there is simply added in each some special element of its own; so that perhaps, to give a rough illustration, the belief in one God, with all that it involves, is the element common to all these communions, but in the one there is added obedience to commandment, in another the belief in Christ, and in a third the belief in the prophets. But if the belief in Christ had no influence upon the separately pre-existing consciousness of God and on its mode of uniting with the sensible emotions, either that belief would stand quite outside the realm of religion, and would consequently (since no other realm can be assigned to it) be a mere nothing, or Christ would at any rate be only one particular object producing impressions which could be united with the consciousness of God, in which case also one could not properly speak of a belief in Christ. Suppose however the meaning is that the belief in Christ has an influence only on some of the religious emotions, while the majority of them take exactly the same form in Christianity as in other monotheistic faiths. This would involve the assertion that this belief has not so much an influence on the consciousness of God (which, after all, must be the same in all religious emotions of the same man at the same time, i.e. so long as he belongs to the same religious communion), but rather has an influence merely upon the sensibly stimulated consciousness; and such an influence could not be the basis of a distinctive way of faith. Hence there remains for us only the view adopted in our proposition, which implies that in each really distinctive religious communion the self-consciousness itself must have a different determination, since only on this condition can the religious emotions be all differently determined. Now just as each individual instance necessarily makes it clear that the presence of an absolutely identical element in two different ways of faith can be only in appearance, if the God-consciousness itself is differently determined in the two: so also it is only in appearance that each faith has some element which is entirely absent in others. Otherwise, if in other faiths also we find God becoming Man, and a communication of the Divine Spirit, what would be the absolutely new thing in Christianity? But the same thing may be seen in a general way. For if, on the supposition of a quite similarly determined consciousness of God, some element is found in one faith which is not found in another, this could only be caused by a different field of experience, and so the whole difference would necessarily disappear if the experiences were brought into line with each other.

3. Though it was only in a somewhat indefinite way that we were able to establish the conception of kind in our present province, the conception of the Individual has here a firmer basis, and the formula set up in our proposition is the same which holds for all individual differences within the same kind. For every man has in him all that another man has, but it is all differently determined; and the greatest similarity is only a diminishing or (relatively) vanishing difference. So also every species has the same characteristics as every other species of its genus, and everything which is really additional is merely accidental. But the discovery of this differentiating matter in any individual existence is a task which can never be perfectly, but only approximately, discharged in words and sentences. And hence naturalists and historians are wont to bring forward only certain marks as distinguishing signs, without meaning to assert that these express everything distinctive and characteristic; and the man who describes religion must in most cases be content with the same procedure. But if we must make an attempt at some kind of general statement, in order that the apologist of any particular faith may be the less likely to fall into error, we should be content with saying this: in every individual religion the God-consciousness, which in itself remains the same everywhere on the same level, is attached to some relation of the self-consciousness in such an especial way that only thereby can it unite with other determinations of the self-consciousness; so that all other relations are subordinate to this one, and it communicates to all others its colour and its tone. If it should seem that by this we are expressing merely a different rule for the connecting of religious moments, rather than a difference of form or of content, we have only to note that every moment is itself a connexion, as being the transition from the preceding to the following moment, and thus must become a different moment when the religious self-consciousness is placed in a different connexion.

Postscript.—It is only by means of the two points set up in our proposition (namely, the distinctive beginning to which each religious communion goes back, and the peculiar form which the religious emotions and their utterances take in each communion) that it is possible to regulate the usage of the familiar terms ‘positive’ and ‘revealed.’ It is well known that these terms are used somewhat confusedly, being often applied in exactly the same manner at one moment to the individual doctrines, at another to the faith in general, and being at one time opposed to the natural, at another to the rational. Hence it would be a difficult task so to fix their meaning as to secure for them a uniformly consistent usage in the realm of scientific theology. For the former of the two terms we are given a good lead by the use made of it in the theory of Law, where positive rights are contrasted with natural rights. If we compare the two, one finds that natural right never appears in the same sense as positive, namely, as the basis of a civic community. Even the simplest and most original relationships, such as paternal authority or the marriage union, are in each society defined in a distinctive manner—in the developed State by express legislation, and in earlier stages by prevailing custom. Natural right, however, is simply what can be abstracted in a similar manner from the legislation of all societies. And even if, as pure knowledge, it were to come into existence in another way, yet everyone would admit that when you come to the application of it, it must first be more precisely defined, and therefore, as applicable to practice, can only be traced back to this act of more precise definition. Now it is the same with Natural Religion. It never appears as the basis of a religious communion,⁴ but is simply what can be abstracted uniformly from the doctrines of all religious communions of the highest grade, as being present in all but differently determined in each. Such a natural religion would mark out the common elements in all religious affections which are found in the ecclesiastical communions, and if we conceive of all religious communions as already given, and also of all the different philosophical systems as having adjusted their differences as regards the terminology of such a doctrine, this natural religion would be everywhere the same, and would remain ever self-identical. But it would never anywhere be more than a mere private possession, which would belong, in addition to their definite type and manner of piety and its expression in doctrine, to those individuals in the various religious communions who, acknowledging from their own standpoint the other communions in their inter-relation, were able to view together in a higher unity things which are separated in actuality. Moreover, it would not be difficult to show that what is called natural religion did actually arise in this way, and, further, that any attempt to make this secondary product the basis of an ecclesiastical communion has always failed, and must always fail. But that is hardly our business here. Agreed, then, that in any case, even if it should have arisen in a different way, such a natural religion, or rather, properly speaking, natural theology, being a mere collocation of doctrines, would be simply the common element in all monotheistic faiths: then the positive element in each would be seen to be the individualized element, which, as shown above, is found in each of them not simply here and there but, strictly considered, all over them, though it may be more prominent at one point than at another. It simply betrays a misapprehension when people attempt to distinguish the actually existing religious communions from each other by the principle that the positive element is found in one at one point and in another at another point, as, e.g., that in Christianity it is the doctrines, in Judaism the commandments.⁵ For if in one communion the commands are more elaborated and the doctrines less, and in another vice versa, it is simply that in the one case the doctrine is concealed in the command as in a symbol, and in the other the doctrine itself appears as a command that it be expressed and confessed. Moreover, it would be equally false to deny that the precepts of Christian morals are positive and to deny that the doctrine of Jehovah in Judaism is positive. In any case, neither the command, as the expression of a common mode of action, nor the doctrine, as the expression of a common mode of representation, is an original element: both are based on a common distinctive quality of the religious emotions. Now since without this the particular communion itself could not have come into existence, and since it has maintained an existence dating from, and in relation to, the fact which marked its beginning, it must be dependent on that fact for the peculiar stamp of its religious emotions. This, then, is what is to be signified by the term ‘positive’: the individual content of all the moments of the religious life within one religious communion, in so far as this content depends on the original fact from which the communion itself, as a coherent historical phenomenon, originated.

The words ‘reveal,’ ‘revealed,’ ‘revelation,’ present still further difficulties, since even originally they sometimes signify the illumination of what was obscure, confused, unobserved, and sometimes rather the disclosing and unveiling of what was hitherto concealed and kept secret, and still further confusion has been introduced by the distinction between mediate and immediate (direct and indirect) revelation. To begin with, all will at once agree that the word ‘revealed’ is never applied either to what is discovered in the realm of experience by one man and handed on to others, or to what is excogitated in thought by one man and so learned by others; and further, that the word presupposes a divine communication and declaration. And in this sense we find the word very generally applied to the origin of religious communions. For of what religious mysteries and varieties of worship, either among the Greeks or among the Egyptians and Indians, would it not be asserted that they originally came from heaven or were proclaimed by Deity in some way which fell outside the human and natural order? Not seldom, indeed, we find even the beginning of civic communities (just as from the beginning we often find the moral and the religious unseparated) traced to a divine sending of the man who first gathered the tribe together into a civic union, and so the new organization of life is based on a revelation. Accordingly we might say that the idea of revelation signifies the originality of the fact which lies at the foundation of a religious communion, in the sense that this fact, as conditioning the individual content of the religious emotions which are found in the communion, cannot itself in turn be explained by the historical chain which precedes it.

Now the fact that in this original element there is a divine causality requires no further discussion; nor does the fact that it is an activity which aims at and furthers the salvation of man. But I am unwilling to accept the further definition that it operates upon man as a cognitive being. For that would make the revelation to be originally and essentially doctrine; and I do not believe that we can adopt that position, whether we consider the whole field covered by the idea, or seek to define it in advance with special reference to Christianity. If a system of propositions can be understood from their connexion with others, then nothing supernatural was required for their production. But if they cannot, then they can, in the first instance, only be apprehended (we need only appeal for confirmation to the first principles of Hermeneutics) as parts of another whole, as a moment of the life of a thinking being who works upon us directly as a distinctive existence by means of his total impression on us; and this working is always a working upon the self-consciousness. Thus the original fact will always be the appearing of such a being, and the original working will always be upon the self-consciousness of those into whose circle he enters. That this does not exclude doctrine, but implies it, is obvious. For the rest, it always remains very difficult, indeed almost impossible, to give definite limits to this idea, and, if it is thus definitely grasped, to explain its rise wherever it appears. For everywhere in the realm of mythology, Greek as well as Oriental and Norse, these divine communications and declarations border so closely on the higher states of heroic and poetic inspiration that it is difficult to distinguish them from each other. And thus it becomes difficult to avoid a widened application of the idea, to the effect that every original ideal which arises in the soul, whether for an action or for a work of art, and which can neither be understood as an imitation nor be satisfactorily explained by means of external stimuli and preceding mental states, may be regarded as revelation. For the fact that the one is greater and the other less cannot here make a dividing line. And, indeed, the inward generation of a new and peculiar idea of God in a moment of inspiration has often been one and the same thing with the rise of a distinctive worship. Indeed, it would be difficult to draw any clear dividing line at all between what is revealed and what comes to light through inspiration in a natural way, unless we are prepared to fall back on the position that revelation is only to be assumed when not a single moment but a whole existence is determined by such a divine communication, and that what is then proclaimed by such an existence is to be regarded as revealed. This, in the polytheistic religions, would include not only the divine declarations and oracles attached to certain holy places which the divinity has made known to be his specially chosen habitations, but also those persons who, because they are descended from the divinity, make known the divine archetype in a human life in an original way which cannot be explained by the historical context. In this same sense Paul calls even the world the original revelation of God.⁶ But this may again lead us to the conclusion that no particular thing, since it always belongs to the world, can in itself be regarded as divine revelation. For just as the dawning of an archetypal idea in an individual soul, even if it cannot be explained by the previous states of that very soul, can certainly be explained by the total state of the society to which the individual belongs: so even the men who are credited with divine descent always appear as determined by the character of their people, and thus it is from the total energy of the people that their existence is to be explained or comprehended. Hence even if we do venture to establish, in the way we have done above, the relation of the idea of ‘revelation’ and ‘revealed’ to the idea of the ‘positive’ for the whole realm of historically actual religious communions, we shall nevertheless naturally and inevitably find that the application of the idea to the fact which forms the basis of any particular religious communion will be contested by all other communions, while each will claim it for its own basal fact.

Finally, this must be added: that if one faith wishes to establish the validity of its own application of the idea as against the others, it cannot at all accomplish this by the assertion that its own divine communication is pure and entire truth, while the others contain falsehood. For complete truth would mean that God made Himself known as He is in and for Himself. But such a truth could not proceed outwardly from any fact, and even if it did in some incomprehensible way come to a human soul, it could not be apprehended by that soul, and retained as a thought; and if it could not be in any way perceived and retained, it could not become operative. Any proclamation of God which is to be operative upon and within us can only express God in His relation to us; and this is not an infra-human ignorance concerning God, but the essence of human limitedness in relation to Him. On the other hand, there is the connected fact that a consciousness of God which arose in a realm of complete barbarity and degradation might be really a revelation, and might nevertheless, through the fault of the mind in which it arose, become, in the form in which it was apprehended and retained, an imperfect one. And therefore it may truly be said even of the imperfect forms of religion, so far as they can be traced, in whole or in part, to a particular starting-point and their content cannot be explained by anything previous to that point, that they rest upon revelation, however much error may be mingled in them with the truth.

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Footnotes

1. Rom. 1²¹ff., Acts 17²⁷⁻³⁰. ↩

2. Cf. § 7, 3. ↩

3. 1 John 4¹⁸. ↩

4. Cf. § 6, Postscript. ↩

5. See M. Mendelssohn’s Jerusalem. ↩

6. Rom. i²⁰. ↩