Footnotes

1. The rhetorical character of this book and the impossibility of continuing the subject, had my opinion really been that religion is this restored unity of knowledge, would have allowed me to say so by a very slight suggestion of irony. My meaning would then have been that I would not now press this truth upon my opponents, but that elsewhere and in another form I would carry it to a victorious issue. Wherefore it seems necessary to guard myself against this interpretation, especially as so many theologians seem to maintain at present that religion, and not religion generally, but the Christian religion, is the highest knowledge. Not only in dignity but in form is it identified with metaphysical speculations. It is the most successful and pre-eminent, and all speculations that do not reach the same results, as for example, if they cannot deduce the Trinity, have failed. The assertion of others that the more imperfect, especially the Polytheistic religions have no kinship with Christianity is similar. I reject both, and in respect of the latter I have sought, in the further progress of this book, and in the Introduction to my “Glaubenslehre,” to show how all forms of religion, even the most imperfect, are the same in kind. In respect of the former position, if a philosopher as such will attempt to prove a Trinity in the Highest Being, he does it at his risk, and I would maintain that this is not a Christian Trinity because, being a speculative idea, it has its origin in another part of the soul. Were religion really the highest knowledge, the scientific method alone would be suitable for its extension, and religion could be acquired by study, a thing not hitherto asserted. Philosophy would be the first round in the ladder, the religion of the Christian laity would as πίστις be an imperfect way of having the highest knowledge, and theology as γνῶσις would be the perfect way and stand at the top, and no one of the three stages would be consistent with the other two. This I cannot at all accept; therefore I cannot hold religion the highest knowledge, or indeed knowledge at all. Wherefore, what the Christian layman has in less perfection than the theologian and which manifestly is a knowledge is not religion itself, but something appended to it. ↩

2. In rhetorical exposition generally, strict definitions are dispensed with, and descriptions are substituted. This whole speech is simply an extended description, mixed with criticism of other conceptions, which in my opinion are false. The chief points being scattered are of necessity repeated in different places, under different expressions. This change of expression presents different sides of the matter, and I find it useful even in more scientific treatment for avoiding the scrupulosity of too rigid a terminology. In this kind of writing it seemed specially appropriate. Wherefore three different expressions follow in rapid succession. It is said here of religion that *through it, the universal existence of all finite things in the Infinite lives immediately in us.*On page 39 it stands *religion is sense and taste for the Infinite.*Sense may be capacity of perception or capacity of sensibility. There it is the latter. In the former editions, sensibility and tastestood not quite correctly for sense and tastefor the Infinite. What I am conscious of or feel, must be imagined, and that is what I call the life of the object in me. But the Infinite, meaning not something unconditioned, but the infinity of existence generally, we cannot be conscious of immediately and through itself. It can only be through a finite object, by means of which our tendency to postulate and seek a world, leads us from detail and part to the All and the Whole. Hence sense for the Infinite and the immediate life of the finite in us as it is in the Infinite, are one and the same. If then, in the first expression, taste be now added to sense, and in the latter expression, the universal existence of all finite things in the Infinite be made explicit, both become essentially identical. Taste includes liking as well as mere faculty, and it is by this liking, this desire to find not merely the finite thing, but to be conscious through it of the Infinite, that the pious person finds that the existence of the finite in the Infinite is universal. There is a similar passage on page 36. The connection shows that the expression contemplation is to be taken in the widest sense, not as speculation proper, but as all movement of the spirit withdrawn from outward activity. What, however, has struck most readers is that the Infinite Existence does not appear to be the Highest Being as cause of the World but the World itself. I do not think that God can be placed in such a relation as cause, and I leave you to say whether the World can be conceived as a true All and Whole without God. Therefore I remained satisfied with that expression, that I might not decide on the various ways of conceiving God and the World as together or as outside of one another, which did not fall to be considered here, and could only have limited the horizon in a hurtful manner. ↩

3. This passage on the departed Novalis was first inserted in the second edition. Many I believe will wonder at this juxtaposition, not seeing that he is like Spinoza, or that he holds the same conspicuous position in art as Spinoza in science. Without destroying the balance of the Speech, I could only suggest my reason. There is now another reason why I should say no more. During these fifteen years the attention to Spinoza, awakened by Jacobi’s writings and continued by many later influences, which was then somewhat marked, has relaxed. Novalis also has again become unknown to many. At that time, however, these examples seemed significant and important. Many coquetted in insipid poetry with religion, believing they were akin to the profound Novalis, just as there were advocates enough of the All in the One taken for followers of Spinoza who were equally distant from their original. Novalis was cried down as an enthusiastic mystic by the prosaic, and Spinoza as godless by the literalists. It was incumbent upon me to protest against this view of Spinoza, seeing I would review the whole sphere of piety. Something essential would have been wanting in the exposition of my views if I had not in some way said that the mind and heart of this great man seemed deeply influenced by piety, even though it were not Christian piety. The result might have been different, had not the Christianity of that time been so distorted and obscured by dry formulas and vain subtilties that the divine form could not be expected to win the regard of a stranger. This I said in the first edition, somewhat youthfully indeed, yet so that I have found nothing now needing to be altered, for there was no reason to believe that I ascribed the Holy Spirit to Spinoza in the special Christian sense of the word. As interpolation instead of interpretation was not then so common or so honorable as at present, I believed that a part of my work was well done. How was I to expect that, because I ascribed piety to Spinoza, I would myself be taken for a Spinozist? Yet I had never defended his system, and anything philosophic that was in my book was manifestly inconsistent with the characteristics of his views and had quite a different basis than the unity of substance. Even Jacobi has in his criticism by no means hit upon what is most characteristic. When I recovered my astonishment, in revising the second edition, this parallel occurred to me. As it was known that Novalis in some points had a tendency to Catholicism, I felt sure that, in praising his art, I should have his religious aberrations ascribed me as Spinozism had been because I praised Spinozas piety. Whether my expectation has deceived me I do not yet very well know. ↩

4. Even among the few who admit that religion originally is feeling stirred in the highest direction, there will be many to whom it will appear that I assert too much when I say that all healthy feelings are pious, or at least that, in order not to be diseased, they should be pious. Even were this granted of all social feelings, it must be shown how piety is to be found in all those feelings that unite men for a higher or even a more sensuous enjoyment of life. Yet I can retract nothing from the universality of the statement and in no way admit that it was a rhetorical hyperbole. To take one example, Protestantism can only completely and consistently defend the domestic and paternal relations of the clergy against the melancholy folly of the peculiar holiness of the celibate life, by showing that wedded love and all foregoing natural attraction of the sexes are not, in the nature of the case, absolutely inconsistent with a pious state. This only happens when the feeling is diseased, when there is a tendency in it to the rage of Bacchus or the folly of Narcissus. In accordance with this analogy I believe that the same could be shown of each department of feeling not inconsistent with morality. But, if it be inferred from this passage that, as all true human feelings belong to the religious sphere, all ideas and principles of every sort are foreign to it, the connection seems to show my meaning. Religion itself is to be rigidly distinguished from what merely belongs to it. Yet, even those feelings which are usually separated from the religious sphere, require ideas for their communication and representation, and principles to exhibit their due measure. But these principles and ideas do not belong to the feelings themselves, and it is similar with the dogmatic and ascetic in respect of religion, as is shown more fully further on. ↩

5. For understanding my whole view I could desire nothing better than that, my readers should compare these Speeches with my “Christliche Glaubenslehre.” In form they are very different and their points of departure lie far apart, yet in matter they are quite parallel. But to provide the Speeches for this purpose with a complete commentary was impossible, and I must content myself with single references to such passages as seem to me capable of appearing contrary or at least of lacking agreement. Thus every one perhaps might not find the description here given of an action of things upon us underlying all religions emotions, in agreement with the declaration which goes through the whole “Glaubenalehre,” that the essence of the religious emotions consists in the feeling of an absolute dependence. The matter stands thus. Even there it is admitted that we cannot really have this feeling except it is occasioned by the action of single things. But if the single things are in their action only single, the sole result is definiteness of the sensuous self-consciousness. In the “Glaubenslehre,” likewise this is postulated as the substratum of religious emotion. Yet, let the single thing be great or small, our single life reacts against it, and there can be no feeling of dependence except fortuitously in so far as the reaction is not equal to the action. If, however, the single thing does not work upon us as a single thing, but as part of the Whole, it will be, in acting upon us, an opening for the Whole. This result will depend entirely on the mood and attitude of the mind. But then our reaction will appear to us determined by the same cause and in the same way as the action, and being over against the Universe, our state must be the feeling of entire dependence. And this also shows that however we exhibit the World and God they cannot be divided. We do not feel ourselves dependent on the Whole in so far as it is an aggregate of mutually conditioned parts of which we ourselves are one, but only in so far as underneath this coherence there is a unity conditioning all things and conditioning our relations to the other parts of the Whole. Only on this condition can the single thing be, as it is here put, an exhibition of the Infinite, being so comprehended that its opposition to all else entirely vanishes. ↩

6. By mythology I understand in general a purely ideal subject enunciated in historical form. Exactly in accordance with the analogy of Polytheistic Mythology, it seems to me that we have a Monotheistic and a Christian. For this a dialogue of divine persons, such as is found in Klopstock’s poems and elsewhere, is not necessary. It is found in more rigid didactic form when something is represented as happening in the Divine Being, as divine resolves made in respect of something that has happened in the world, or again to modify former resolves, not to speak of the special divine resolves that give reality to the idea that prayer is heard. The representations of many divine attributes also have this historical form and are therefore mythological. The divine pity for example, as the idea is mostly understood, is only something when the divine will that lightens the evil is separated from the will that ordained it. Are both regarded as one, then one cannot limit the other, but the divine will that decrees the evil, decrees it only in a definite measure, and the idea of pity is out of place. Similarly, in the idea of the veracity of God, promise and fulfilment are separated, and both together exhibit a historical transaction. But when the activity that promises, is regarded as the same that accomplishes the fulfilment, the conception of divine veracity is something only in so far as many divine activities are linked or not to one expression of them. In this distinction also a history is told, but if the activity that brings to pass and its expression are regarded in general as one, there is hardly place for a special idea of the divine veracity. The same may be shown in other things. By applying this name to them I in nowise blame these representations. Rather I acknowledge them as indispensable, for otherwise the subject could not be spoken of in such a way that any distinction could be drawn between the more correct and less correct. Even in more scientific presentations of religion, the use of such mythology has no danger, for there it is always incumbent to think away the historical and the time form generally. In the sphere of religious poetry and oratory also it is indispensable. There we have only to do with the like-minded, and for them the chief worth of those presentations is that by them they communicate and realize their own religious moods. They naturally at once adjust the defective expression. But I blame it as vain mythology when this, that is only a help in need, is regarded as exact knowledge, and treated as the essence of religion. ↩

7. If here the system of marks or attributes which in its completest form composes the theological outline is represented rather as being determined by outward circumstances than as coming forth of itself from the religious capacity, the oft-repeated assertion, so contemptuous of all historical sense, that the religious movements which in Christianity have determined a great body of the most important ideas, were merely accidental and the fruit of entirely alien interests, is not to be made. I only wished to recall what is also expounded in my “Kurze Darstellung” and in the Introduction to the “Glaubenslehre,” that the formation of the idea depends here, as elsewhere, on the dominating language, the degree, manner, and quality of its scientific development embracing of course the manner and quality of the philosophizing. But in respect of religion in and for itself, these are only external circumstances. Apart from the universal, divine connection of all things, we can say, for example, that if Christianity had had a great and preponderating Eastern extension, the Hellenic and Western being, on the contrary, kept back, without being essentially different, it might have been contained in another type of doctrines. ↩

8. This passage also might occasion various misconceptions. First, in respect of the opposition between true and false religion, I refer to my “Glaubenslehre,” §§ 7 and 8 (2nd edit.). It is there treated fully, and I would simply add that, in religion, error only exists by truth and not merely so, but it can be said that every man’s religion is his highest truth, Error therein would not only be error, it would be hypocrisy. In religion then everything is immediately true, as nothing is expressed at any moment of it, except the state of mind of the religious person. Similarly, all types of religious association are good, for the best in the existence of each man must be stored up in them. But how little this prejudices the superiority of one type of faith to another is in part plainly stated and in part easy to infer. One may be the utterance of a superior state of mind, or there may be in the religious communion a higher spiritual power and love. Furthermore, the rejection here of the thought of the universality of any one religion and the assertion that only in the sum of all religions is the whole extent of this bias of the mind comprehended, in no way expresses a doubt that Christianity will be able to extend itself over the whole human race, though perhaps among many races, this greatest of all religions may suffer important changes. Just as little did this passage express a wish that other religions should always continue alongside of Christianity. The influence of Judaism and Hellenic Heathenism on Christianity was through a long period visible in hostile, raging commotions. Thus both still appear in Christianity, and therefore in the history of Christianity have a place. The same thing would happen if Christianity should annex the territory of all existing great religions. Consequently the religious sphere would not be enclosed in narrower borders, but all religions would in a historical way be visible in Christianity. From the connection again it is clear that I only deny that a religion is universally true in the sense that everything that exists or has existed outside of it, is not to be called religion at all. Similarly, what follows is to be understood, about every truly pious person willingly acknowledging that to other types of religion much belongs for which the sense fails him. Even if Christianity had supplanted all other religions, he would not have a sense for all that would thereby be historically mirrored in Christianity, for just as little then as now would the Christianity of all Christian people be quite the same. And if no one has an adequate sense for all that is Christian, there can be none with the sense for all there is in other religions that may be the germ of some future Christian peculiarity. ↩

9. There are still Christian divines who reject the whole purpose of Christian dogmatics, and there was a far greater number when this passage was first written. They believe that Christianity would have been a healthier development and would have shown a freer, fairer form if no one had ever thought of presenting the Christian conceptions in a finished connection. Hence they labour to prune it, to abolish it, as much as possible, and to have it acknowledged as merely a collection of monographs, as an accidental aggregate of single theses of very unequal value. Their good intentions I do not question, but even then, I was far removed from agreeing with them. It would be a grave misunderstanding to believe that this invective against the mania for system makes light of the endeavour to present the Christian faith in the closest possible connection. The mania for system is merely a morbid degeneration of this praiseworthy and wholesome endeavour. That systematic treatment of religious conceptions is the best which, on the one side, does not take the conception and the idea for original and constitutive, and on the other, that the living mobility of the letter be secured, that it may not die and the spirit be drawn to death with it. Within the great conformity characteristic difference is not only to be endured, it is to be assigned its place. If this were to be taken for the chief aim in my presentation of the Christian faith, I would fain believe that I am in perfect agreement with myself. ↩

10. I feel that this passage gives a two-fold, grave offence. First I prefer Heathen Rome, on account of its boundless mixture of religious, to Christian Rome which, in comparison, I call godless, and that I condemn the expulsion of heretics, while I myself declare certain views to be heretical, and even seek to systematize heresy. I begin with the latter as the deeper and more important. It does not appear to me possible that there can be a sound dogmatic procedure without a formula of the character of what is Christian, by the application of which it would be possible, from any point of the line of cleavage, to cut off the ordinates, and so to describe the extent of Christian conceptions by approximation. It naturally follows that what lies outside of this extent, and would yet be considered Christian, is what has long been called in the Christian Church heretical. In my dogmatics I could not avoid offering such a formula, and I can only wish to attain my object as fully as possible. But this definition of the subject has nothing to do with the treatment of persons. That many, while contending for the defence of their own opinion, may use a heretical expression without meaning anything heretical, is apparent, and I have declared myself fully on it in the “Glaubenslehre,” § 22, 3 and note, and § 25, note. On many sides the wish has been expressed in the Evangelical Church to renew church discipline in a judicious manner that a Christian congregation may be in a position to withdraw a measure of fellowship from persons disproving by their lives their Christian disposition. This makes it specially necessary to obviate the confusion between this proceeding and the right to pronounce the bann on all we may choose to consider heretics. If heretics are not also without a Christian disposition, the Evangelical Church will rather acknowledge that its sole duty towards them is to maintain fellowship with them that, by mutual understanding, they may the sooner be led into the right way. If individuals or small societies employ a contrary method and, regardless of disposition, exclude from their fellowship all who do not agree with them in the same letter of doctrine, they do not act in an Evangelical spirit, but assume an authority our church grants to none. And now passing to the second point, my preference of Heathen to Christian Rome, and my statement that through tolerance the former was full of gods, and that through persecution of heretics, the latter was godless. First, the character of the expressions used shows that this passage bears specially the rhetorical cast of the book. What, however, is to be taken literally is that the dogmatizing love of system which scorns to assign its place to difference, but rather excludes all difference, plainly suppresses, as much as it can, the living knowledge of God, and changes doctrine into a dead letter. A rule so rigid that it condemns everything of another shade, crashes out productiveness. As this alone contains living knowledge of God, the system itself must become dead. This is the history of the Roman Catholic system in contrast to the Protestant. From this point of view the rise of the Evangelical Church was simply to rescue its own productiveness from fellowship with such a rule. My praise of the receptivity of ancient Rome for strange worships is also to be taken seriously. It involved an acknowledgment of the narrowness and one-sidedness of each individualized Polytheism, and the desire to free the religious need from the limits of political forms. Now these two things were not only praiseworthy in themselves, but were much more favourable to the spread of Christianity than heresy hunting, however well meant, could ever be for its establishment and preservation. ↩

11. In the “Glaubenslehre,” also § 8, note 1, I have declared myself against the opinion that idolatry, embracing, according to the somewhat perspective usage of the Holy Scriptures, all kinds of Polytheism, has arisen from fear. There, however, I wished to show that, in essence, the lower and the higher stages of religion were alike, which could not be if the former arose from fear and the latter did not. There I am dealing with the conception that piety generally has had its source in fear. Despite the somewhat variable use of δεισιδαιμονία the proof here given in general would apply to the particular instance, for it could not be said of the Greek and Roman Polytheists that their faith in the gods would have been extinct if, in the courageous use of life, they had shaken off all fear. Similarly, what is said there may here be applied generally, for if fear is not in some way a perversion of love, it can only regard its object as malevolent. Where then higher beings are not worshipped or rather entreated as bad, the motive cannot be fear entirely separated from love. Hence it remains true that in all religious from the beginning love is operative, and all growth towards perfection is simply a progressive purification of love. ↩

12. It should hardly be necessary to justify the use of the expression World-Spirit where I wish to indicate the object of pious adoration in a way that would include all different forms and stages of religion. In particular, I do not believe it can be said with justice that, by this choice of expression, I have sacrificed the interests of the most perfect form of religion to the inferior. On the contrary, I believe, not only that it is a perfectly Christian name for the Highest Being, but that the expression could only have arisen on Monotheistic soil, and is as free from Jewish Particularism as from the incompleteness of the Mohammedan Monotheism which I have attempted to specify in the “Glaubenslehre,” § 8, 4. No one will confuse it with World-Soul. It neither expresses reciprocal action between the World and the Highest Being, nor any kind of independence of the World from Him. I believe therefore that Christian authors are justified in using the term, even though it has not directly proceeded from the special standpoint of Christianity. ↩

13. In my “Glaubenslehre,” the Introduction of which contains the outlines of what I take to be the philosophy of religion, and therefore has many points of contact with this book, my chief division was into what I have called the aesthetic and the teleological form. Here another ground of classification seems to be assumed. The peculiar world of religion seems to be the mind, regarded as an individual thing having one or more things standing over against it—the mind in our sphere and at our stage of culture. In the same way on the other side, as there indicated, the world of religion may be external nature. Two things there rigidly distinguished seem here to be both ascribed to the religion of the mind, for whether the active state be referred to the passive, or the passive to the active, all religious emotions are states of mind. Hence the distinction that is here regarded as the higher, is there quite overlooked. By a natural religion, however, I do not mean that religious emotions can come to man through contemplation of the external world. This contemplation is exalted by speculative natural science, which, however, always remains science, and only gives rise to religious emotions in proportion as the soul is conscious of itself in the contemplation, and therefore again by the mental state. In the same way they arise from the immediate relation of nature to our life and existence, only in proportion to its effect upon our mood at any moment, and therefore, again from the mental state. The classification given in the “Glaubenslehre” therefore remains. The religious emotions, whether from nature or the historical life, have all this two-fold form. If the influence of the contemplation of nature is referred to the soul and its activities and its laws, it has a teleological or ethical character; if it is referred to nature, it has an aesthetic character. ↩

14. This is only to be taken as an application of the narrative, not as the author’s own opinion. I believe it can be shown that the narrative necessarily implies that neither can man come to a consciousness of God, nor can he form general ideas, until he has gained a consciousness of the species, of his subordination as an individual in it and his difference from it. And, it appears as clearly, that neither the consciousness of the Highest Being, nor the endeavour to order the world for itself can be quite lost to the soul till the consciousness of the species has quite vanished. I will here also explain two passages not specially marked in the text. On page 79 *humility,*formerly given as a natural form of religious emotion, is spoken of as if it were opposed to an exalted feeling of personal existence, and *contrition,*similarly depicted as natural and essential to piety, as if it must be changed to joyful self-sufficiency. Now, I do not consider that a contradiction, for I think that all pious emotions both exalt and debase. Even in Christianity that spreads itself only by awaking the emotions that debase, penitence is quenched in the consciousness of the divine forgiveness. The words “satisfy thyself with my mercy,” express just that very joyful self-sufficiency here meant. The opposite feeling to humility, the feeling that in each one the whole of humanity lives and works is just the consciousness to which the Christian of all men should rise. He should feel that all believers form a living organic whole, wherein not only is each member, as Paul puts it, indispensable to all the others. But each one presupposes the characteristic activity of all the others. Further, when it is said that a man who has thus combined both forms of emotion needs no mediator any more, but can himself be a mediator for many, this statement is only to be taken in the limited meaning indicated by earlier expositions, namely, each man has not in himself the right key for understanding all men. To almost everyone much is so alien that he can only acknowledge it when he finds it in a form more akin to himself or linked to something else that has a special value for him. In this sense, therefore, those who unite the most alien elements with those most acknowledged, mediate an understanding. Chiefly in that feeling which is in contrast to humility, the self-consciousness advances to such transparency and accuracy that the most distant ceases to appear strange and ceases to repel. But this feeling will be purest when all human limits are seen in Him from whom all limitation was banished. Hence there is here no derogation from the higher mediatorship of the Redeemer. ↩

15. Without wishing to retract anything from the leading position in this Speech, which is that all higher feelings belong to religion, or to deny that single actions should not proceed directly from stimulus of single feelings, I would say that this passage is specially applicable only to the ethics of that time, to Kant and Fichte, and particularly Kant. So long as ethics adhered to the imperative method so rigidly followed in those systems, feelings could find no place in morals, for there could not be a command, thou shalt have this or that feeling. Such a system should logically say of them all only what has been said of friendship, that man must have no time to begin it or to cherish it. But ethics should not be restricted to the narrow imperative form. It should assign to these feelings their place in the human soul. It should also acknowledge their ethical worth, not as something that can or ought to be made for some purpose and for which guidance is given in morals, but as a free, natural function of the higher life in close connection with the higher maxims and modes of acting. Ethics would then so far embrace religion, just as a presentation of religion would embrace ethics, yet both would not be on that account one and the same. ↩

16. The expression here employed that miracle is only the religious name for event, and that all that happens is miracle might easily be suspected of being a practical denial of the miraculous, for if everything is a miracle then nothing is. This stands in close connection with the explanations given in the “Glaubenslehre,” § 14 note, § 34, 2, 3 and § 47. If the reference of an event to the Divine omnipotence and the contemplation of it in its natural connection do not exclude one another but may be parallel, which view is first taken depends upon the direction of the attention. Where the bearing of an event on our aims most interests us, and the examination of the connection goes too much into details, the divine provision will be least observed and the course of nature best. But which of the two views will most satisfy us depends on the one side, on how certain we are that we have grasped the full all meaning of the event, so that we can say with some assurance that this is willed of God, and on the other how deeply we can penetrate into the natural connection. All this is mere subjective difference. Hence it is plainly true that all the events that most awake religious attention, and in which at the same time the natural connection is most hidden, are most regarded as miracle. Yet it is equally true that in themselves and in respect of the divine causality all events alike are miracle. As in the expositions of the “Glaubenslehre,” though absolute miracle is rejected, the religious interest in the miraculous is acknowledged and guarded, so here I merely seek to exhibit miracle in its purity and to remove all foreign ingredients which are more akin to stupid amazement than to the joyful anticipation of a higher meaning. ↩

17. It is difficult to treat an idea like the *effects of grace,*which is scarcely at all current except in a peculiarly Christian form, in such a general way as to embrace everything analogous to be found in other religious forms. To it belongs all that distinguishes a human being as a special favourite of the gods. Revelation is more receptivity, inspirationmore productivity. Now both are combined in the idea of grace, and pious persons are always characterized by both. In what follows, however, the expression entrance of the, world into manis substituted for revelation, and the original outgoing of man into the worldfor inspiration. The latter will admit of little doubt, for every inspiration must go forth and accomplish something in the world, and everything original must be at least occasioned from without, and for the most part is regarded as inspiration. The former also is in agreement with the preceding explanation of revelation, and because here it was necessary to make it general it could not otherwise be conceived. Yet it may easily be charged to it that, for the sake of the less perfect forms of religion, it puts the Christian in the background. But it is not to be overlooked that the idea of the Deity does not enter our consciousness except along with the idea of the World, and that this entrance is looked upon religiously, not speculatively, is shown sufficiently further on. ↩

18. By what is said in my “Glaubenslehre,” § 3-5, I trust that what is here said, and especially the statement that all pious emotions exhibit through feeling the immediate presence of God in us, may be set in a clearer light. It is hardly necessary to remind you that the existence of God generally can only be active, and as there can be no passive existence of God, the divine activity upon any object is the divine existence in respect of that object. It may, however, require to be explained why I represent the unity of our being in contrast to the multiplicity of function, as the divine in us. And you may ask why I say of this unity that it appears in the emotions of piety, seeing it can be shown from other manifestations also that self-consciousness is but a single function. In respect of the former the divine in us must be that in which the capacity to be conscious of God has its seat. Even were the criticisms just, it might still be the divine that is awakened in us in the pious emotions, and that is here the main point. For the rest, the unity of our being cannot, certainly, appear by itself, for it is absolutely inward. Most immediately it appears in the self-consciousness, in so far as single references are in the background. On the other hand, when references to single things are most prominent, the self-consciousness then most appears as a single function. ↩

19. This exposition also, it is hoped, will be made clearer and at the same time be completed by what is said in the “Glaubenslehre,” especially in § 8, note 2. As everyone can compare them, it is not necessary for me to enter on a defence of myself against the supposition—I would not willingly call it accusation—which men whom I greatly honour, and some of whom have already gone hence, have drawn from this Speech. For myself I am supposed to prefer the impersonal form of thinking of the Highest Being, and this has been called now my atheism and again my Spinozism. I, however, thought that it is truly Christian to seek for piety everywhere, and to acknowledge it under every form. I find, at least, that Christ enjoined this upon his disciples, and that Paul obeyed not only among the Jews and the Proselytes, but among the Heathen at Athens. When I had said in all simplicity, that it is still not indifferent whether one does not acquire or quite rejects a definite form of representing the Highest Being, and thereby obstructs generally the growth of his piety, I did not think it necessary to protest further against all consequences. I did not remember how often a person going straightforward seems to be going to the left to a person going to the right. But none who reflect on the little that is said about pantheism will suspect me of any materialistic pantheism. And if any one look at it rightly, he will find that, on the one side, every one must recognize it as an almost absolute necessity for the highest stage of piety to acquire the conception of a personal God, and on the other he will recognize the essential imperfection in the conception of a personality of the Highest Being, nay, how hazardous it is, if it is not most carefully kept pure. The conception is necessary whenever one would interpret to himself or to others immediate religious emotions, or whenever the heart has immediate intercourse with the Highest Being. Yet the profoundest of the church fathers have ever sought to purify the idea. Were the definite expressions they have used to clear away what is human and limited in the form of personality put together, it would be as easy to say that they denied personality to God as that they ascribed it to Him. As it is so difficult to think of a personality as truly infinite and incapable of suffering, a great distinction should be drawn between a personal God and a living God. The latter idea alone distinguishes from materialistic pantheism and atheistic blind necessity. Within that limit any further wavering in respect of personality must be left to the representative imagination and the dialectic conscience, and where the pious sense exists, they will guard each other. Does the former fashion a too human personality, the latter restrains by exhibiting the doubtful consequences; does the latter limit the representation too much by negative formulas, the former knows how to suit it to its need. I was specially concerned to show that, if one form of the conception does not in itself exclude all piety, the other as little necessarily includes it. How many men are there in whose lives piety has little weight and influence, for whom this conception of personality is indispensable as a general supplement to their chain of causality which on both sides is broken off; and how many, on the other band, show the deepest piety who, in what they say of the Highest Being, have never rightly developed the idea of personality! ↩

20. This passage is different from the former edition. Partly the statement that morality generally cannot be manipulated, though right in the connection, seemed to require closer definition if there was not to be misunderstanding; partly the whole view seemed to me only rightly completed by the addition that freedom and morality would be endangered by the prospect of divine recompense. In the strife on this point, especially as it is carried on between the Kantians and the Eudaimonists, the great difference between presenting divine recompense as an inducement and using it theoretically to explain the order of the world has very often been overlooked. The former is an immoral and therefore specially an unchristian procedure, and is never employed by true heralds of Christianity and has no place in the Scriptures; the other is natural and necessary, for it alone shows how the divine law extends over the whole nature of man, and so far from causing a rift in human nature, it most fully guards its unity. But this explanation will be very different in proportion as love of truth and desire of knowledge are free from all foreign ingredients. It is hardly to be denied that the demands of self-love will most claim arbitrariness for the divine recompense, and as arbitrariness can only have its seat in personality, it will be accompanied by the narrowest conceptions of the divine personality. ↩

21. This passage has met very much the same fate as the passage which treated of the personality of God. It was also directed against narrow and impure conceptions and it has raised the same misunderstandings. I am supposed to disparage the hope of immortality in the usual sense of the word, representing it as a weakness and contending against it. But this was not the place to declare myself in respect of the truth of the matter, or to offer the view of it which I, as a Christian, hold. This will be found in the second part of my “Glaubenslehre,” and both passages should supplement each other. There I had only to answer the question whether this hope was so essential to a pious direction of the mind that the two stood or fell together. What could I do but answer in the negative, seeing it is now usually accepted that the people of the old Covenant did not, in earlier times, have this hope, and seeing also that it is easy to show that, in the state of pious emotion, the soul is rather absorbed in the present moment than directed towards the future? Only it appears hard that this Speech should deduce not doubtfully the hope so widely diffused among the noblest men of a restoration of the individual life not again to be interrupted, from the lowest stage of self-love, seeing it might as well have been ascribed to the interest of love in the beloved objects. All the forms under which the hope of immortality can present itself as the highest self-consciousness of the spirit being before me, just in contrast to the opponents of the faith it seemed to me natural and necessary to utter the warning that any particular way of conceiving immortality and especially that which has unmistakable traces of a lower interest hidden behind it, is not to be confused with the reality. I thus sought to prepare for grasping the question, not as it is entirely limited to personality or to a self-consciousness chained to single affinities, but as it is natural in one in whom personal interest is purified by subordination to a self-consciousness that is ennobled by the consciousness of the human race and of human nature. On the other side, in order to avoid endless and wide-spreading explanations, it was necessary to make the opponents of religion observe that there could be no religious discussion of this matter except among those who have already cultivated in themselves the higher life, given by true piety, which is worthy to conquer death. If I am somewhat severe on the self-deception of a mean way of thinking and feeling, which is proud that it can comprehend immortality and that it is guided by the accompanying hope and fear, I can only say in self-defence that there is nothing of mere rhetoric in it, but that it has always been with me a very strong feeling. I desire no more than that each man, if he would test his piety, should see, not merely, as Plato says, that souls appear before the judges of the Underworld stripped of all alien ornament conferred by the external relations of life, but, laying aside these claims to endless existence and considering himself just as he is, that he then decide whether these claims are anything more than the titles of lands, never possessed and never to be possessed, wherewith the great ones of the earth often think they must adorn themselves. If, thus stripped, he still find that that eternal life is with him to which the end of this Speech points, he will readily understand what I am aiming at in my presentation of the Christian faith. Furthermore, the parallel between the two ideas of God and immortality in respect of the different ways of conception here indicated, is not to be overlooked. The most anthropomorphic view of God usually presupposes a morally corrupt consciousness, and the same holds of such a conception of immortality as pictures the Elysian fields as just a more beautiful and wider earth. As there is a great difference between inability to think of God as in this way personal and the inability to think of a living God at all, so there is between one who does not hold such a sensuous conception of immortality and one who does not hope for any immortality. As we call everyone pious who believes in a living God, so without excluding any kind or manner we would hold the same of those who believe in an eternal life of the spirit. ↩