Problems of Metaphysics

Cosmological-Theological Problem

The Historical Development of the Concept of God and the World

Following the critical and dogmatic discussion of the cosmological theological problem, I present an outline of its historical exposition. I have already stated that the development of human thought appears to move towards idealistic monism: on one hand, scientific and philosophical contemplation converges towards it; on the other, the evolution of religious worldview flows into monotheism, which, when logically pursued to its conclusion, strips God of all finitude and limitation, along with the definiteness of the finite, leaving no space for a world that stands independently beside God. If one reflects on monotheism to its ultimate implications, its most general formula for the world coincides with pantheism: “God is one.”

The question of the truth of this formula for the world cannot, of course, be resolved through historical examination alone. Nevertheless, historical evidence—if one wishes to call this examination so—is not without significance, as philosophers acknowledge by generally presenting their own worldview as the endpoint of preceding philosophical development. Just as Hegel or Comte construct their philosophy as a necessary conclusion of a series, so too do Feuerbach and Büchner. And they are correct; where it concerns the knowledge of specific facts of the historical or physical world, the investigator will rely solely on methodological inquiry and will demand that the resolution be exclusively entrusted to this latter method. However, where the matter pertains to ultimate truths, where one aims to convey the general impression that the world makes on humanity, there arises within the individual a need to lean on collectively shared thought, making it essential for them to secure a consensus gentium, or, if that is impossible, at least a consensus historiae, that is, to ascertain that their thoughts genuinely represent the sought-after goal to which prior development leads with inner necessity.

In the natural history of religion, three fundamental forms or stages of belief in God are generally distinguished: fetishism or spiritism (also referred to as animism or naturism), polytheism, and monotheism. All share a belief in the super-sensible, which manifests itself in the sensible world through its actions; however, the form attributed to this super-sensible and its actions varies. Fetishism or spiritism is prevalent among primitive peoples across all parts of the world, often accompanied by shamanism, the magical priesthood. A fetish (from the Portuguese feitico, meaning amulet or idol) can be any object imbued with magical power or spirit. A stone, a shard, a bone, a bundle of herbs or hair, a crudely carved image—such items are worn on the body or hung in a hut; they receive certain honors, offerings of food and drink, with the expectation that they will fulfill desires and provide protection from illness, malevolent sorcery, and various misfortunes. If such expectations are disappointed, the fetish is discarded as powerless, and efforts are made to acquire a more effective one. The production of fetishes and their care constitutes a significant science for sorcerer-priests, who wield authority over spirits. Animals, trees, groves, mountains, rivers, lakes, the sea, the moon, and the sun are also frequently regarded as abodes of spirits and are surrounded by cultic actions. It is also common for reverence to be directed towards the souls of deceased ancestors. Finally, one encounters gods—more in name than in cult—who possess a mythological cosmogonic character: references are made to gods or a God who originally created the world and humanity. This essentially reflects the same form in which religious notions appear among Black people and Indians, among Northern Asian peoples and the inhabitants of the Australian archipelago. The most prominent elements are fetishism and shamanism, alongside which the nascent cosmogonic mythology emerges, and occasionally, the discourse mentions a singular great Spirit or God who created all things and from whom humanity also originates; one occasionally finds that the old and mighty gods are displaced by newer and lesser ones.

When inquiring about the essence of the “divine” venerated here, it is difficult to define; the uncertainty surrounding the essence of divinity and the unreliability of its activity are characteristic of this stage. However, it would be a misunderstanding to think that the object of cult is this arbitrary visible entity; rather, it is always the super-sensible, the “spirit,” which acts upon and through which actions occur. According to the perspective of a Black person, every tangible object contains, or at least can contain, a spirit, and it is entirely possible that even seemingly insignificant objects harbor a spirit that is very great and powerful. This spirit is not perceived as bound to a physical object; it has only its usual or principal abode within it. What this demonstrates is that the individual is not devoid of metaphysical capability, as shown by the account that follows: “When a Black person had just honored a tree and offered it food, he was pointedly reminded that the tree, after all, eats nothing. He defended himself against this by responding, ’Oh, the tree is not a fetish; the fetish is the spirit and is invisible, but it resides here, in this tree. Of course, it cannot consume our corporeal food, but it absorbs its spiritual essence and leaves the corporeal, which we can see.’”

The second fundamental form is polytheism. Its distinction from the first lies in the fact that the super-sensible here takes the form of personal beings; instead of idols—indeterminate, transient, nameless, and shapeless embodiments of magical powers—we have gods who are constant, well-formed, personal, and historical entities. The Greek pantheon exemplifies this form in its most perfected manner; each member of the realm of gods is a well-characterized historical being; both their physical and spiritual forms reveal common traits of human nature, albeit as elevated beings without the limits imposed on mortal creatures. They are not subject to the natural laws governing our existence; space, time, and causality bear no significance for the gods. They are not incorporeal beings per se but can take on any form; they are not omnipresent, yet they appear wherever they wish, without the cumbersome movement characteristic of our existence; they are not timeless, yet they do not age or die— their existence is eternal youth; they are not omnipotent, but their will shapes reality without the complex means necessary for human action.

The natural realm of polytheism coincides with the youth of historical nations. Among all peoples that have borne historical life, we find a pantheon of gods, fundamentally similar to the Greek, among the Egyptians and Semites, the Indians and Persians, the Germans and Slavs. In the New World, tribes showing the beginnings of historical life, such as the inhabitants of Mexico and Peru, are also characterized by having created a world of gods.

This coincidence is not accidental: the historical pantheon serves as a transcendent reflection of their own historical life. In fetishism, the mutable fears and desires of primitive humanity are mirrored; lacking sustained thoughts and memories, life goals, and ideals that extend beyond sensory, particular existence, they live in the given moment, subjugated to their sensuous nature. Their gods resemble themselves: they are transient, momentary creations, akin to the fears and desires that birthed them. Thus, the gods of peoples awakened to historical life are akin to their creators: just as the permanent community, fragmented into familial units, grants individuals a share in the historical life of the whole and thereby elevates them above the brevity and frailty of animal existence, so too do gods become historical beings, standing in constant relation to one another and to humans. With the people settling down, so too do their gods; beside the public building, a temple is erected as the permanent dwelling of the gods.

Upon closer examination of the essence of the gods, one can discern three elements that, in the consciousness of the believer, form an inseparable unity of personal life: 1) personified magical powers, 2) personified natural forces, and 3) personified ideal images.

In the first element, a kinship with fetishism is evident: by influencing the gods, one can indirectly affect the natural order of things; cultic actions serve as means to achieve supernatural ends that are unattainable through the natural powers of humanity. In actual religion, this remains the primary and most important element everywhere; true religion does not reside in mythology but in cultic practice; health and wealth, abundance of harvest and children, victory, happiness, and great knowledge of the future—these are the aspirations that believers everywhere seek to attain from their gods through prayer and sacrifice. Priesthoods are ubiquitous, dedicating their endeavors to the arts of cult and the study of the future; everywhere there exists a plethora of superstitions and magical means indistinguishable from fetishism.

Secondly, the gods are the personified forces or entities of nature. This aspect is primarily the domain of mythologists. Zeus represents the clear sky or the celestial force that manifests in weather, chiefly through lightning; Demeter embodies the visible earth, producing bread and fruits from its depths; Poseidon is the sea or the marine force, encircling the land and shaking the earth; Apollo and Artemis both stand as great brotherly luminaries of day and night. The inexhaustible imagination of the Greeks wove these myriad forms into countless relations with one another and with humanity; as the traits of natural beings intertwine with human characteristics, a vibrant tapestry of myths emerges. The analyst discerns within it an anthropomorphically symbolic representation of natural phenomena, historical recollections imported from outside, tribal tales, and legends of local cults, along with etymological and geographical fictions: the analysis labors under the hopeless endeavor of clarifying the historical development of this world or, even more hopelessly, of bringing it into systematic unity.

Finally, the gods possess yet a third aspect: they are personified ideals, depicted in concrete forms that express to the people their visions of human perfection. Zeus embodies the ideal of the sovereign man; dignity and power, grounded in strength and right, are the elements of his essence. In the figure of Apollo is represented the Greek people's idea of elevated and liberated spiritual life; spiritual freedom and self-control are perfectly balanced in him; the Muses are his companions. Thus, Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite exemplify the archetypes of feminine perfection.

And we revere The immortal gods, As if they were human And accomplished in grandeur What the best among men do in modesty Or are capable of achieving.

Before turning to monotheism, I shall make a few remarks regarding whether we might see in fetishism, polytheism, and monotheism not merely three abstractly distinguishable fundamental forms but also sequential stages of development following one another in time; in particular, was not fetishism the universally preceding primary form of religion? It is undeniable that monotheism historically evolved from polytheism as its preliminary stage. This perspective, as Max Müller shows, gained significance from the middle of the last century; prior to this time, the dominant theological view held that in polytheism and fetishism we encounter vague and distorted memories of the original, pure, monotheistic religion of Adam. Müller, while rejecting this latter view as unscientific, is also unwilling to acknowledge the former: fetishism is nowhere original, representing instead a declining remnant of the original higher concept of the divine; with the fall of civilization, the higher spiritual significance of the cult was lost, and what remained as the last vestige was the "veneration of sticks and stones."

In truth, if we understand fetishism as the cult of "soulless" objects—which might also be found among individuals or among declining tribes—then Müller is undoubtedly correct: such senseless fetishism presupposes "preceding forms" that made it possible, and it persists as a "soulless" remnant due to the loss of their meaning. However, if we understand fetishism— as done above and as, according to Weitz, whom Müller references, can only align with the facts—as the cult of spirits, who temporarily reside in any object, then the matter appears otherwise. If the historical life of cultural peoples was preceded by an evolutionary stage of non-historical or prehistoric existence, then historical gods must also be preceded by an evolutionary stage of non-historical deities. Indeed, in these matters, few assertions can be more reliable than the general principle that, in essence, the gods reflect the essence of the people who venerate them. Non-historical gods are precisely those vague, amorphous "spirits" of fetishism.

This does not contradict, in my view, the history of Indian religion. The oldest stratum we can reach in the religious literature of the Indians, as Müller describes it, he refers to as "genotheism": the divine manifests in many mutable spirit-like forces of nature, among which one or another emerges as the first and highest. This stratum, as depicted by Müller, can be viewed as a transitional form from the primitive belief in spirits to the later polytheism of the Indians, characterized by its personally historical gods. It likely was preceded by an undocumented evolutionary stage fully fitting the conventional concept of fetishistic spiritism. Fetishism leaves no historical monuments; indeed, essentially, only its vestiges persist, and these latter anthropologists encounter, of course, everywhere.

To this perspective, it seems, any attempt to resolve the question of the primary origin of belief in gods or supernatural beings leads. The origins of religion have been explained from three different starting points. The first attempt begins from a theoretical impulse, stemming from humanity's need for causal explanations of phenomena. Thus, Peschel, in his Volkerkunde, begins the section on religion with the assertion: "At all levels of civilization and among all tribes, religious feelings are always stirred by the same inner drive, namely the need to find a cause or a perpetrator for every event and occurrence." In his conclusion, he reiterates this assertion, adding that with limited powers of reason, the need for causality is satisfied by fetishism. The first and closest form of causality to humanity is itself as an acting being; with this category, one views the surrounding world, and all phenomena in heaven and earth are conceived as the actions of willing beings; thus, mythology arises as a product of anthropomorphic apperception.

The second explanation takes not the mind but the will as its starting point, focusing not on theoretical needs but on practical ones. Ludwig Feuerbach addresses this matter in his work on the essence of religion; however, he has predecessors in D. Hume, Spinoza, and Hobbes, and in recent times, he has garnered numerous followers in the most general direction of his view. According to Feuerbach, sorcery is the essence of all primitive religion; the gods are beings of desire, intended to fulfill all human wishes that one cannot fulfill oneself. Just as need is the mother of all arts, so too is it the mother of sorcery. In this context, the role of the intellect is secondary; it provides the will with a means, the representation of a "spirit" or "god," that is, a supernatural force upon which it can act and thus forge its path in nature.

The third foundational point is the belief in the afterlife of souls. Herbert Spencer places this point at the forefront; his teaching on religion (in the first volume of "The Principles of Sociology") asserts that "ancestor worship is the root of all religion."

In my view, all these explanations do not exclude but rather complement one another. Regarding Peschel's perspective, which is primarily intellectualist and largely underlies the attempts at explanation by mythologists, it is evident that this view is insufficient; it exaggerates the rational or causal needs of primitive humanity. If humanity had entered the world suddenly, in one day, endowed, as the creation story in the Book of Genesis describes, with all the capabilities it possesses today—or even greater powers, albeit without knowledge—then indeed, its first feeling might have been wonder, and its first concern, the question of the cause of these things. However, since humanity emerged from lower life forms, we can scarcely attribute significant importance to wonder at the beginning of its journey. Animals demonstrate daily how fleeting the celestial phenomena, which mythologists believe should have prompted the urge to seek causal explanations, are for beings of purely sensory perception—specifically, the rising sun, the morning dawn, darkness, and storms. Only a highly developed spiritual being reaches the point of wonder before these phenomena, which have long been familiar to its perception. I believe that the category of "spirit" must have existed before it became possible to have a mythological understanding of the sun and moon, storms and clouds, earth and sea. In this regard, it seems to me that Spencer is undoubtedly correct in deriving the initial concept of spirit in general from the continuing life of the deceased in the form of ghosts. The remarkably comprehensive and well-organized anthropological material he has gathered demonstrates how widespread this belief is while simultaneously clarifying how it could have arisen and become the starting point for an all-pervading animism, an anthropomorphic apperception of natural phenomena, and finally—a mythological understanding of nature.

It then becomes clear how, in a being possessing will, the belief in spirits could have served as a starting point for a practical series of magic and cult. The primary form of cult everywhere seems to have been addressing the spirits of the deceased in speech and offering them participation in food. However, since the spirits themselves are actual beings not in the ordinary sense, communication with them possesses a peculiar, one might say, ghostly character; they do not truly consume food like the living and do not provide audible responses to speech. Appearing here and there, sometimes in one form, sometimes in another, unbound by the laws of corporeality, space, and time, they perform supernatural actions characteristic of ghosts. If one knew how to manipulate them to one’s advantage, one could accomplish many things that would otherwise be impossible. If one could only ask them properly, they might reveal much that no one else could know, above all—the future; for they themselves do not exist in time, at least not in the ordinary sense.

Thus, the possibility of sorcery arises. To make it a widespread reality, to integrate shamanism and sacrificial cults, augury and prophecy as essential components of human activity—this, as Feuerbach rightly states, is a matter of will. The desire to assert one's will exists, along with countless obstacles and limits that cannot be overcome through natural actions; finally, there is the fervent wish to foresee the future, which is shrouded in impenetrable darkness for mortals. Here, the category of spirit and its supernatural activity and knowledge offer their services; in striving to master them, the inventive will, in times of need, produces the infinite variety of supernatural and transcendental actions and inquiries encountered at every turn in anthropological and historical research. Were necessity not so pressing and the will to live not so strong, the belief in spirits would not have attained such immense significance for spiritual-historical development. Spinoza already observed this: "If men," he begins the preface to the Theologico-Political Treatise, "could confidently direct their affairs or if happiness always favored them, there would be no superstition. But since they are often reduced to a helpless state by necessity and, for the sake of unreliable goods of happiness, which they desire immensely, are almost constantly in a pitiful oscillation between fear and hope, their spirit continually clings to every belief and superstition."

Yet, in the end, the intellectualist understanding of mythologists is not devoid of a moment of truth. If Herbert Spencer wishes to reduce the entire world of gods directly to deified ancestors and kings, it is not difficult for mythologists to demonstrate the insufficiency of this explanation. Zeus and Demeter, Apollo and Artemis, Indra and Rudra, Mithras and Varuna are certainly not deified kings and queens. With greater justification, they can be called personified or deified forces of nature. Of course, for them, the initial possibility of emergence lies in the continued life of the deceased; but once the category of spirit has emerged, it detaches from its origin. While natural phenomena are interpreted in a spiritual manner or anthropomorphically apprehended, it becomes the starting point for new, independent formations. How this process occurs in detail—how gods become personified forces of nature or natural forces embodied spirits—cannot, of course, be demonstrated concretely; we cannot trace the history of individual gods to their birth in the soul of the people. We can only attempt to outline the general psychological possibilities. Here, together with M. Müller, one might also consider the power that the primitive, wholly personifying language had over thought: it continuously provoked the imagination to mentally attribute to natural phenomena—thunder, rain, storms, and so forth—some subject, some being that causes all this. What else could this being be but a spirit, as it resides in the nearby, tangible earthly things? While internal relations are established between the spirit and the phenomenon of the thing in which it has its seat, it becomes the spirit of nature, a personified force of nature: Apollo or Mithras becomes the all-seeing god of the sun and light, dispelling darkness with his far-reaching arrows. Zeus or Indra becomes the god of the sky, holding the forces of the heights in his hand, gathering clouds, sending down rain and snow, and primarily hurling the mighty lightning bolt. Thus, while at the same time the poetic-religious imagination translates external phenomena into internal, moral states and events, the gods arise—these astonishing beings in which the physical-cosmic and spiritual-historical aspects are woven into a strange, contradictory unity.

We now turn to the third and final fundamental form of religion: monotheism. Its sphere of influence is the more highly developed spiritual culture of historical peoples. A characteristic feature of great monotheistic religions is, first, their emergence in historical time and through historical personalities; next, the spiritualization of the divine. Gods are sensibly super-sensible beings; monotheism entirely strips away the sensuous aspect; God is a formless, incorporeal spirit, inaccessible to sensual imagination. With this, all embodiment of the transcendent world in anthropomorphic images disappears, at least in principle, though the masses may still be unable to fully relinquish sensuous representations of the spiritual. By losing human limitations, God simultaneously ceases to exist as a separate being; a separate being is one limited by space and time; a being that has entirely discarded these boundaries ceases to be a separate being; God is the very essence, the unified All-Being, the power and essence of which permeate and fulfill all times and all spaces. And with this, something further disappears: national limitations. The gods of polytheism are the gods of a given people; other peoples have their gods. The one God, the God of the world, is the one true God, alongside whom there are no other gods. Monotheistic religions all exhibit a tendency toward international propagation, while polytheistic religions lack this inclination. Certainly, both the Greeks and the Romans brought their gods to foreign lands, but the thought of subjugating the souls of other peoples to them remained alien to them. The desire for conversion, manifesting in various ways through missionary efforts and the Crusades, is characteristic only of monotheistic religions.

Historically, monotheism represents progress in comparison to polytheism. Within the Greek world, this development can be traced to some extent. Progressive spiritual education exerts a disintegrating effect on anthropomorphic polytheism. The old gods can no longer satisfy either the demands of the advancing moral consciousness or those of theoretical consciousness.

First and foremost, there emerges a tendency to distill from their moral essence those traits that become intolerable for a more sensitive consciousness. If the gods are indeed what their worshippers believe them to be—founders of order, bestowers of good, guardians of law and morals—then they cannot and should not encompass all that legend and myth attribute to them. Priests, philosophers, poets, and artists partake in the process of purification whereby, from the sixth century onward, all mythically anthropomorphic and magical fetishistic characteristics are excised from the essence of the gods. Concurrently, development progresses towards unity. Whereas Homer sees no contradiction in the gods interfering in human affairs in opposing ways, akin to their own internecine hostilities, such discord becomes unbearable for later sensibilities. The good and the just are one and cannot dispute with themselves; thus, the gods can manifest their activities only in unanimity and in a single direction. Initially, the ethical postulate rests not on a metaphysical unity of divine essence but on the unity and concord of divine will. In the term "divine" (το θείον), customary since the time of Herodotus, the demand for unity acquires a verbal expression that does not exclude multiplicity of beings; one might also say—of names or persons (roles or forms of manifestation); for without these latter, the religious sentiment of the Greek people could not possibly prevail. "All the beauty, all the warmth, all the sublimity of their religion rests for them (and for us, it is only through this lens that it reproduces itself in all its brilliance) primarily on the realm of the gods, whose images, from the heavens and throughout the earth, lead their own blissful lives, separately and together, in omnipresence and caring solicitude, participating in the beloveds and their fates, loving, protecting, punishing, and establishing order"; stringent monotheism, with its chilling, desolate solitude, would appear to the Greeks as atheism.

Thus, polytheism remains morally permissible. Its existence, conversely, faces a threat from the development of theoretical reasoning. The hallmark that chiefly and from the outset caught the eye of Greek philosophy in the order of reality was the unity of nature. All endeavors of the earliest philosophy are directed towards the discovery of a singular principle of reality. Since this principle is spiritually personal, it can only be one. The cosmos resembles not a work in which many participated but a creation of a single governing intelligence.

In the speculative thoughts of the Eleatics, philosophy, seemingly for the first time, encounters a resolutely antagonistic stance against popular polytheism. The ancient gods could hardly withstand the burgeoning empirical science that developed rapidly from the fourth century onward. An age engaged in zoology and botany, anatomy and physiology, may view the Olympian gods merely as legendary beings. A person endowed with scientific knowledge, avoiding confrontation with the traditional religion of the people, may treat them with condescension; he may reinterpret them and aesthetically enjoy them, or he may place them in interstitial spaces where they do not disrupt the natural course of events, but he can no longer truly believe in them.

The philosophical worldview that supplants mythology and, in a certain sense, replaces the old religion of the gods is idealistic pantheism. I will outline in a few strokes the historical development of this perspective, which remains one of the foundational forms of thought, if not the principal form of philosophical thought in the West, up to the present time. The philosophy of Plato constitutes the first substantial articulation of this view. In any case, alongside it, there exists another understanding of reality, its antithesis: the materialistic atomism of Democritus. However, already in the ancient world, and even more so in the Middle Ages and the Modern era, the direction stemming from Plato prevails. Here, having entered into the doctrines of the Church, it has indeed become—though with substantial modifications—an element of common representation, initially opposing it with hostility. The facts from which it originates are universal to all Greek thought: the prevailing order in nature, especially in the heavens, and the justice reigning in the lives of men—both in private life and in the life of nations. These facts (which neither Democritus nor Epicurus deny, but merely seek to explain in their own way) are interpreted by Plato in his theory of ideas, employing certain thoughts from his predecessors and developing them further: reality is, in truth, nothing other than a unified system of beings harmonizing thoughts.

This monstrous paradox ultimately severs Western philosophical thought from conventional opinion. "Opinion," which perceives reality solely through the senses, halts at the representation that the world consists of an aggregate of things that are situated and move in space, arising and transitioning in time. The philosopher, however, perceiving reality not through sensation but through reason, comprehends it in its truth; in dialectical reasoning, in contemplative thought, he grasps it as it is in itself: as a being that is timeless and spaceless, eternal and immutable, a system of thoughts. Just as a poetic work, like philosophy or a geometric system, constitutes a living system of thoughts, so does reality itself, κοσμος νοητος, mundus intelligibilis. As there, the multiplicity of moments binds together in an inner logical or aesthetic necessity into a unity that exists as such outside of time (though subjective consciousness can only grasp it in temporal motion), so the world of being exists as a multiplicity of thoughts and ideas, internally connected by a logical aesthetic necessity. It is self-evident that, just as the being of some thought consists in its thinkability, so the being of reality in itself consists in the eternal thinkability of a unified system of thoughts or in the self-awareness of the idea, which is reality; or—so we may also say—in the living being-for-itself of God, who is the All-Acting and All-Good.

Thus thinks the philosopher about reality: he endeavors to reflect on the existent thoughts—the thoughts constituting the essence of God or the real. Indeed, he perceives reality in another way; like others, he also sees it through the senses, and here it presents itself to him as it does to them: as an aggregate of scattered things in space, changing, arising, and transitioning in time. But appearance does not deceive him; he knows that Being cannot arise and transition. Nevertheless, through this world of phenomena, the truly real shines through everywhere. The eye of the knowing perceives, even in the spatial-temporal world, the idea everywhere; in all things, the rational, spiritual factor is present; it exists as mathematical regularity in the order of the celestial system, as a teleological, meaningful connection of parts and functions in living beings. Of course, here it is somewhat obscured or suppressed by the "other," the irrational factor; in all corporeal things, alongside what is rational and expressible in concepts and therefore comprehensible, alongside the form or the lawful, exists the formless and inexpressible in concepts, absolutely impenetrable to thought; this is what makes them extensive in space. This "other," not belonging to the realm of thoughts, is in fact not real; it is μη ον, mere illusion. Meanwhile, in natural philosophical accounts, particularly in the "Timaeus," it again acquires a certain form of reality; as "co-cause," alongside the primary cause, the existent thoughts which now become formative, teleological thoughts, it is used to explain the sensory world, mainly to burden it with violations and irregular formations. In pure contemplation, these imperfections are linked, indeed, not to reality itself, but merely to our sensory representation of reality. Reality and perfection here (similar to how later realitas and perfectio) are identical concepts: God, the living, self-existent being, the world thought encompassing an infinite wealth of internal determinations, is at once the All-Acting and the All-Good.

The thoughts herein closely resonate with those that find their culmination in the worldview of Aristotle’s philosophy. Indeed, Aristotle himself perceives and acknowledges the opposition; he primarily sees it in his refusal to separate, as Plato does, the essence of thought from reality. For him, "ideas" do not exist outside or alongside things; rather, they exist within things as essences, manifesting as purposeful thoughts. To express this differently (for such a representation would be rejected by Plato as foreign to his own views: ideas are not something that exists alongside another; rather, they are the very reality itself), for Aristotle, the true world is the world of the sensibly given, of individual things; the κόσμος αἰσθητός, the world of multiplicity, the world of emergence and rebirth, which Plato presents merely as a shadow cast upon our sensory perception by the realm of ideal thoughts, constitutes for him the essence of reality. This world serves as the object of his theoretical interest and unrelenting investigation. However, in his actual explanations of things, in metaphysics and natural philosophy, he continues unwaveringly to follow in the footsteps of his teacher. He likewise finds in all things a duality: a rational factor, "form," idea, and purposeful thought, juxtaposed with something irrational, the "other," matter, which in itself is formless, ineffable in concepts, incomprehensible and unresolved in thought. In the relationship between soul and body, we confront a scheme of duality in its most expressive case: the soul represents the rational and ideal factor of a living being, while the matter from which it constructs the body is the irrational factor. For him, the rational factor, constituting the knowable within a thing, is also inherently real; matter, in itself, is something nonexistent or merely possible, which becomes definite, concrete, and actual only upon receiving the idea or purposeful thought. Yet even the purposeful thought, in its essence, remains ineffective; it only becomes effective through its realization in substance. Ultimately, in the concluding synthesis of his thoughts in theology, the ideal factor attains the status of the sole and self-sufficient essence of reality. All ideas, in the end, culminate in one all-encompassing idea, the world form, which is God. God is pure form devoid of matter, actus purus; and the form of His reality manifests as pure thought; His existence is the thought of absolute content (νόησις οὐσίας), the self-actualization of the idea, which embodies reality in self-consciousness. This is entirely in accordance with Plato’s thought: the singular, self-sufficient essence that actualizes itself in thought, the system of ideas, represents absolute reality, God, the unity of thought and being. The only distinction lies in the fact that Aristotle posits ideas of the individual, while in Plato’s realm of thought, one encounters only kinds, not the singular. However, Plato does not strictly maintain this thought, as he also acknowledges "individual ideas" — souls. Similarly, he would recognize his own thoughts in Aristotle's conception of the relationship between God and nature: all of nature is teleologically inclined, directed towards the good; the good is not something external to it, but rather its own fulfilled form. This holds true at least for humanity: for man, the good consists solely in the complete realization of the idea of humanity in individual form. In the fundamental concept of ethics, both philosophers converge once more.

The Stoic school remains aligned in the same direction of thought. The all-governing reason, penetrating through its inner necessity all of reality and creating order, rational and good, everywhere constitutes the ultimate world principle or reality in its own essence. Alongside this ideal or rational factor of reality, the Stoics also acknowledge "the other," in addition to the rational; they recognize the corporeal. However, they then somewhat forcibly attempt to overcome dualism, asserting that the rational is simultaneously corporeal or, conversely, that the material principle, the primordial fire from which all arises and in which all dissolves, is also an ideal principle, the Universal Reason. If we overlook the somewhat stark formulation, this perspective evidently harbors rational meaning. Essentially, this is the same aim that later philosophers seek to achieve with their doctrine of the parallelism of thought and extension or the identity of the ideal and the real, akin to what Plato attained by considering corporeality as mere phantasm: indeed, monistic ontology.

In the theosophical speculations into which Greek philosophy ultimately devolves, the fundamental features of idealistic pantheism are clearly evident. They emphasize the transcendence of God: His essence lies beyond all given definitions, including those of spirit. However, spirit remains the thought closest to Him; it is His first manifestation, and its formal definitions are the age-old concepts of unity and goodness. Let one of the last thinkers of the ancient Greek world, the Peripatetic Simplicius, articulate this overarching thought in conclusion. His commentary on Epictetus' "Manual" begins with these assertions: "The source and origin of all things is the good. For it is both the beginning and the goal of all things, toward which all strives and is directed. The good itself produces all things, first, middle, and last. The first and nearest to it it produces in likeness to itself; one goodness produces many goods, one simplicity and unity, standing above all unities — many unities, one origin — many origins. For the same is the One, and the Origin, and the Good, and God."

The development of thoughts about God and the world has similarly led to a comparable conclusion within the grand eastern branch of the Aryan peoples, the Indians, and I would like to remind you of this in a brief note. After the Indian spirit creatively fashioned a realm of clear and eternal gods among the devas, it ascended in philosophical reflection to a principled negation of the reality of many images and names of the Divine, ultimately recognizing in Brahman the singular absolute self of the world. Brahman no longer possesses the form of a separate Self; it transcends the oppositions of gender. It is the supra-individual, super-sensory, super-existing All-Spirit, manifesting in the separate soul in a connected, divided, sensate form: "Atman, the self within you, is the true Brahman, from whom you were but temporarily estranged through birth or death, who will, however, reclaim you as soon as you come to Him and to yourself." Nonetheless, alongside this, polytheism and sacrificial cults continued to be acknowledged without hindrance. In a highly distinctive manner, instructive for understanding our historical world, various stages of the development of the national spirit have been preserved here, akin to the stages of individual life: "Every pious thought that has ever found its voice, its expression, in India, and has been passed down from generation to generation as a sacred family possession, has remained, and all the wealth of three historical periods — childhood, maturity, and old age (represented in literature: childhood — primarily by the hymns of the Vedas, the years of maturity — by the Brahmanas, old age — by the Upanishads) — was utilized to satisfy the diverse needs of the heart and spirit of each individual in his childhood, maturity, and old age. There still exist Brahmin families in which the son learns by heart the ancient sacred songs word for word, in which the father daily performs his sacred duties and sacrifices, while the grandfather considers all rites and ceremonies empty, perceiving in the gods of the Vedas nothing more than names for that which, as he knows, is above all names, and seeks solace where it can truly be found — in the highest philosophical knowledge, which simultaneously serves as the highest religion. It is the Vedanta, the conclusion, the goal, the fulfillment of the entire Veda."

Before following the further course of thought in the West, it is necessary to glance at the second significant stream that shapes its spiritual world — the development of monotheistic worldview among the Semitic people, the people of Israel. Here, this goal has been achieved not through speculative reasoning but through practical religious experience. This corresponds to all the faculties of this people, which stand in stark contrast to those of the Greeks. While the particular gift of the latter lies in intellect, highly sensitive perception, and an astonishingly agile mind, the distinctive endowment of the Israeli people is found in the seriousness and depth with which they grasp moral and religious matters. The prophets of Israel correspond to the philosophers of Greece, embodying a stern strength and greatness unmatched by any other nation. Beginning with Elijah, who stands at the forefront, and concluding with the Baptist, the shared fundamental characteristic of prophecy consists in its following the inner voice of God, rising in condemnation against the world and the people, against the rich and powerful lords at court or in public opinion, against all that is traditional and dominant in life, and serving God; it measures the people by their ideal of being chosen by God and finds them all too frivolous: instead of leading lives of justice, love, and humility before their God, they despise the lowly, consume the goods of widows and orphans, and pursue other gods that gratify the desires of their hearts. From this premise, the prophet then discerns the interpretation of history; in the destinies of nations, he reveals the hand of God. Philosophy of history, it might be said, is the creation of Israel, just as mathematics and cosmology are the creations of the Greeks. Indeed, this is not a favored science; its preaching finds no favorable listeners, hence solitude and exile are the lot of the prophet, and the desert serves as his refuge.

When we enter the narrative of the Israelite people in history, we find them at a juncture not of theoretical but of practically cultic monotheism, which can best be characterized as a form of exclusive worship. The first commandment, "You shall have no other gods before me," does not merely prohibit belief in the existence of other gods, which it tacitly presupposes, but rather forbids their veneration. Israel is to serve one Jehovah, who will aid His people against their oppressors. The path by which this people transitioned from the polytheism of all Semitic peoples, still resonating in their traditions, to the exclusive worship of the one God is historically challenging to discern. In contrast, the evolution from exclusive worship to full monotheism can be traced through the existing literature. This development is the collective endeavor of prophecy and priesthood. It emerges as a consequence of the initial step; the people are intrinsically motivated to establish their God as the singular true God, elevating their national deity to the status of the God of the world. In the Psalms, in the Prophets, and in the account of creation, Jehovah is portrayed not merely as the God of Israel but as the sole true God, the Creator of heaven and earth; the gods of other nations are mere idols, crafted from stone and wood, powerless and lacking autonomy.

Several key elements manifest in this evolution: firstly, the centralization of worship facilitated by the monarchy and the priesthood; secondly, the deepening of the moral conception of God among the prophets, liberating Him from naturalistic and nationalistic confines. Under the weight of the significant historical destinies of the people, the prophets formulated the belief that Jehovah is not a God beholden to Israel with blind favoritism or subject to external rituals; rather, His people consist not of the descendants of Abraham offering sacrifices in Jerusalem, but of the righteous. "Do you think the Lord delights in thousands of rams? Or in rivers of oil? It has been told to you, O mortal, what is good and what the Lord your God requires of you: to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God" (Micah 6:7). Should Israel fail to fulfill His will, they cease to be His people; He will cast them away. "The prophets could envision that Jehovah might now destroy the kingdom and people He had established. To them, He was predominantly a God of justice; as the God of Israel, He was so only to the extent that Israel fulfilled His demands for justice. Thus, they inverted the traditional order of the two fundamental tenets of faith. In this way, Jehovah was spared the danger of being at odds with the world and suffering defeat; the dominion of justice extended even beyond that of the Assyrians. This constitutes the ethical monotheism of the prophets; they believed in a moral order to the universe, in the universally applicable significance of justice as the highest law for all creation."

The process of liberating Jewish monotheism from its naturalistic and nationalistic character culminated in Christianity. Jesus draws the final conclusion: the Kingdom of God is not of this world. Judaism, along with the prophets, held firmly to the belief that the righteous would be rewarded in this world and that Israel, if it served Jehovah rightly, would rise again, restoring the kingdom of David. Jesus nullifies this messianic hope; He also negates the assumption of Jewish piety that, ultimately, the righteous would receive prosperity in this world, while the unrighteous would face disgrace. "My kingdom is not of this world"; therefore, neither is the Kingdom of God of this world and has no resemblance whatsoever to the old kingdom of David or to what is typically perceived by ordinary people as beautiful, great, and desirable. The Kingdom of God exists within you; it is the hidden fullness of bliss and peace, imperceptible to the world, and is wholly distinct from the goods that this world can offer or receive; poverty and humiliation in the world are perfectly compatible with it. The Kingdom of God is found in the communion of believers and the saints, in the community of Jesus' disciples who, scattered across the kingdoms of this world, live in them as foreigners, neither partaking in nor seeking participation in them. Ultimately, the Kingdom of God embodies that eternal future glory of God, neither bound by space nor time, which His followers will witness when neither nature nor the world remains.

Under the influence of these two forms of monotheism—Jewish-Christian and Greek—the prevailing conception of God and the world was formed, which became dominant in the Church and subsequently in the entire European world. From Israel, we derive practical religious definitions concerning the nature of God: God is holy and just, but also merciful and compassionate in Christ. From the Greeks arises the speculative or metaphysical aspect: infinity, wisdom, omnipotence, and self-sufficiency—words that define God as the One in whom and through whom all that exists and has essence finds its being. The ongoing attempts to reconcile Greek philosophy and psychology with Christian religion into a cohesive system of doctrine led to the emergence of Christian ecclesiastical theology and philosophy. Their fundamental philosophical viewpoint is monistic theism. The Church, as a practical institution, emphasizes theism: God is a personal, supernatural, transcendent being who engages in personal relationships with humanity; in the common conception, He becomes an anthropomorphic entity with feelings and aspirations akin to human ones. Conversely, in speculative thought, the monistic element takes precedence. As soon as one attempts to define the nature of that being who originally created all other beings from nothing and whose will alone preserves them in existence, it becomes evident that this being is the sole self-sufficient entity, leaving no space alongside it for other autonomous beings. Monotheism is understood to mean that there is only one God; it transitions into pantheism: God as the All-One.

Throughout the history of the Church, one can trace how these two motivations—the religious and the speculative—intertwine and encroach upon each other in diverse ways. This is particularly evident in Augustine, whose powerful nature embodies both impulses to a significant extent. Neoplatonism led him out of the labyrinth of Manichaeism, leaving him with the notion of God as All-Being: there is no other existence but in God; outside of Him, there exists only non-being. This acosmic pantheism serves him, however—as Garnack puts it—as a foundation upon which he later overlays the Christian perspective derived from his own inner life experience: that the highest being is the holy good, as omnipotent love acting upon the will.

These thoughts resonate throughout Western European theology; wherever speculative interest intensifies, the pantheistic notion emerges more sharply. Thus, even in the Middle Ages, the Church repeatedly finds reasons to take measures against pantheistic deviations in doctrine, whether of a rationalistic or mystical nature.

This tendency intensifies particularly since the advent of modern times, as the constraints of ecclesiastical doctrine increasingly lose their grip and theoretical interest grows. In this context, a fundamental change in cosmological views plays a significant role; the dismantling of the celestial structure strips the anthropomorphic representation of God of the support of sensory perception. One might say that when new philosophy embarks on its path freely, following its own inclination and unrestrained by external or internal pressures from the ecclesiastical system, or, conversely, by the influence of scientific thought, it tends to adopt a pantheistic or monotheistic stance in accordance with the aforementioned formula: God exists alone, μόνος ὁ Θεός.

I will now address the main points of this historical development.

In the seventeenth century, modern thought, having been cleared of obstacles by the great revolutionary century, initiated the first grand constructions of philosophical systems. Descartes and Hobbes can be regarded as the leaders in this domain—the former representing theoretical philosophy, the latter practical philosophy of the modern era. However, Descartes, in his metaphysics, remains noticeably tethered to the aspiration to construct a system of thought that would not provoke opposition from the Church. In contrast, Hobbes is primarily a political thinker, and secondarily a thinker of natural science; his metaphysics lacks independence as well.

In Spinoza, on the other hand, we encounter the first great metaphysician of the modern era; unconcerned with the demands of his time, he meticulously develops his thoughts in the solitude of his attic. His "Ethics" articulates, in clear and distinct terms, the doctrine of consistent pantheism: God is Being, the singular self-sufficient entity or substance, while the world is the immanent unfolding of His essence. The things that ordinary perception, ensnared by sensory experience, regards as independent entities, are, in truth, not independent; reason recognizes in them dependent determinations of the One, modifications of substance that have their existence and being only within the latter. Or, to put it in more common terms, if we wish to call God the cause of things, we must add: He is not a cause in the sense that a separate thing can be the cause of another that possesses independent existence alongside the first; rather, He is the immanent cause of all things, dwelling within them—or more accurately, they exist within Him; He is the cause not only of their form and motion but also of their essence and being.

Regarding the essence of God Himself, both primary forms of reality that present themselves to our understanding—the physical world and the spiritual—indicate two aspects of His being, which we can attribute to Him as attributes: extension and thought; in accordance with this, we can describe God as an extended and thinking being (res extensa — res cogitans). However, even here, it holds true that the expressions we use concerning God should not be employed in the same sense as those we use for individual entities. God is body, but not as a separate, limited thing with an external form and mobility; He is the singular principle of the corporeal world. God is Spirit, but not as a distinct spirit; we cannot ascribe to Him representation, sensation, feeling, or desire; He is the singular principle of the world of consciousness, yet He lacks the determinations that characterize Him in the finite.

These concepts are further defined and restricted by closely adjacent oppositions—on one side, anthropomorphic theism, and on the other, materialistic atomism. Spinoza often and emphatically marks the first opposition. According to ordinary anthropomorphic theism, God acts according to intentions akin to those of humans. It is easy to see that such a conception of God is incompatible with a thoroughly developed monotheism; an omnipotent Creator does not first form pure intentions and then proceed to realize them through various means; this is a mode of action belonging to finite beings who direct their independent reality according to their intentions. Creation is specifically distinct from acting according to intentions; the latter category is characteristic of polytheism: gods, like humans, are beings who act externally on things independent of them in their being. Monotheism, by contrast, is characterized by the concept of creation ex nihilo; if there is but one God who is original and exists through Himself, then His activity can only take the form of creation that provides reality in essence and being, certainly not with the result that this reality then stands independently in relation to Him. The one thing that God cannot do is create things that are independent of Him. Creation is a development within God. In the formula Deus sive Natura, Spinoza opposes the philosophical concept of God to the ordinary notion.

He does not often and emphatically mark the other opposition—the opposition to atomistic atheism. The foundation for this may lie in the fact that during his time, this opposition barely existed in philosophy. Had Spinoza foreseen that for an entire century, atheism and naturalism would serve as technical designations for his philosophy, or if he had lived to see our days, when atomistic atheism is so loudly and decisively proclaimed as the only worldview possible in the face of science, he would likely have pointed with greater force to the potential inversion of the aforementioned formula: Natura sive Deus. Of course, he might have said, I know nothing of a God who possesses any reality beyond the world. But conversely, I do not know the world that materialists construct from countless tiny, completely independent substances, atoms. The first and most certain thing that reason tells me about the world is that it is not a random coexistence of many substances, but rather a unity in which each individual thing is absolutely defined by the whole; thus, there is but one substance that provides the multiplicity purely through its essence and in its essence. If this is monotheism—and I would not know what else could be implied by this name without reverting to the perspective of polytheism, which views the gods as separate beings alongside others—then my system is a completed monotheism: God is one, and all.

Of course, he would not have succeeded in convincing his contemporaries; they would continue to accuse him of confounding God with nature, of atheism and naturalism. Words, as Hobbes once remarked, serve not only to denote concepts but also to express judgments; just as the term atheism was ill-suited to denote Spinoza's worldview, it was well-suited to provoke and express aversion. For an entire century, the "Ethics" was the most notorious philosophical work, a liber horrendus, and its author was a man marked with the stamp of rejection on his brow.

Locke and Leibniz are the philosophers who follow in the wake of the eighteenth century. Both reject Spinoza's philosophy: Leibniz openly, Locke silently. Both seek—and, in line with the convictions of their time, believe they have found—a philosophy that better unites modern scientific knowledge with the old faith.

The structure of Leibniz’s thought is wholly defined by his relation to Spinoza. Initially, he felt a significant positive influence from this strong and relentless thinker, especially after he clearly grasped the metaphysical consequences of Cartesian natural philosophy. Later, when youthful impetus for philosophy had tempered with the prudence and caution of a politician, his main concern became to dissociate himself from the "impure" (profanus) Spinoza and his unacceptable ideas. Such was indeed the purpose of monads; they were to serve as a means to combat pantheism; Spinoza would be right if there were no monads. Monads intervene between God and nature, hindering their coincidence. Monads are the ultimate independent elements of reality, metaphysical points, unextended spiritual atoms. In themselves, or for reason, they are defined by internal life (sensation and striving); the connection of monads, viewed externally, appears in the vague representation of sensuality as an extended body. Thus, monads possess both attributes of Spinoza's substance: cogitatio and extensio, spirituality and materiality, at least in such a way that spirituality constitutes their essence, while materiality is only their appearance, whereas in Spinoza, both sides are placed side by side, having equal significance; indeed, since body and thing are everywhere identified, extension is here granted a certain greater reality. Monads further resemble Spinoza's substance in that each of them unfolds the content of its essence from within, without external influence, thus being in a certain sense causa sui. However, this occurs in a pre-established harmony with the development of all other monads.

In this way, pantheism is undoubtedly fundamentally defeated; Spinoza's singular macrocosmic substance breaks down into countless microcosmic substances, each of which can exist and be considered independently; moreover, each should, in truth, regard itself as a substance exclusively. Yet, one might say that the matter has been addressed too fundamentally here; from the Scylla of pantheism, we find ourselves in the Charybdis of atomism and atheism. Now Leibniz seeks to avoid this danger by adding to the many substances that constitute reality one more "necessary substance," "the essence of which includes existence," and then asserting: this substance, called God, is the original unity or the first substance; all created or derivative monads are its progeny and are continuously produced by it as if through constant radiation.

"Well," Spinoza would say, "if you truly believe this, then we can reconcile; your first substance is, in that case, precisely what I simply call substance, and its emissions, the ordinary monads, are almost what I refer to as modes, modi, for which I readily acknowledge relative independence and unity. As for determinism, I find no essential difference between us; mechanical necessity (necessitas brutorum) is not at stake in my system, and we are only concerned with logical-mathematical necessity, hence, ideal necessity—a concept from which, as far as I can see, you do not withdraw: the maximum of jointly possible reality or perfection is also sought and realized by you through a kind of logical calculation occurring in the intellectus infinitus—by means of "metaphysical mechanics." I do not wish to dispute the name, nor am I concerned with the seemingly benevolent intentions of either."

Locke sought and found a reconciliation between modern science and ecclesiastical doctrine through a different path; it was not metaphysics but rather the epistemological critique of metaphysics that presented itself to him as the most direct route toward this objective. This critique reveals that our knowledge is necessarily limited by experience; however, experience does not encompass or exhaust reality. Thus, alongside science, there remains space for faith. This is the perspective that dominated England until the nineteenth century. Frequently, it took on a rather lamentable character: a strict abstinence in thought, linked with ecclesiastical and political orthodoxy, became the foundation of social respectability. The dogma of these restrained and respectable individuals is as follows: on one hand, we possess sciences—mathematics and physics, psychology, and “studies of the human mind”; on the other hand, we adhere to the 39 articles of confession. Conversely, we have no need for metaphysics, nor do we desire it; instead, these 39 articles serve us. They form the foundation of the Church, and the Church is an integral component of the “best constitution.” Anyone who does not comprehend this cannot be helped; he is suspected of not belonging to the respectable members of society. Thus, there is nothing more to be said about it. The utmost that remains permissible is to diligently seek various types of evidence—philosophical, natural-scientific, historical—to demonstrate the necessity and invulnerability of ecclesiastical teaching. Locke, through his empiricism and positivism, paved the way for this restraint in thought. He also exemplified how, despite principled abstinence, one might still construct a benevolent metaphysics when the occasion arises: with “mathematical certainty,” he sought to prove the existence of an “eternal, supremely powerful and wise being” (Essay IV, 10), which elicited sharp yet not undeserved criticism from Kant.

Thus, a conciliatory direction was introduced that prevailed throughout the eighteenth century; Leibniz—an illustrious name in Germany, Locke—in England, and soon thereafter in France. Both sought to reconcile the latest sciences with ancient dogma. They turned away from the scholasticism that still dominated universities at that time; both were adherents and enthusiasts of the modern sciences; yet, alongside this, they both demonstrated the concord between faith and reason. Leibniz wrote on de la conformité de la foi avec la raison; Locke argued for the reasonableness of Christianity. The principal dogmas of faith, the existence of God and the immortality of the soul, philosophy can demonstrate by its own means; alongside these, there are, of course, dogmas that it cannot prove, which arise from revelation. Nevertheless, even for these latter, philosophy can still do something; if it cannot prove their truth, it can at least demonstrate their possibility: fides pop contra, sed supra rationem. One of the many merits of Leibniz's philosophy, often extolled by him, is that it, in the interest of agreement with Catholicism, accommodates the possibility of transubstantiation.

The discipline dealing with the dogmas of faith that are subject to proof by reason is the so-called natural theology or rational theology, in contrast to theologia revelata. It constitutes, in fact, the central element of philosophy in the past century. It proves, first of all, the existence of God from theoretical and practical grounds. Theoretical grounds distill down to two proofs that Kant distinguishes as cosmological and physico-theological. The cosmological proof, arising from the conditioned and contingent nature of what exists in the natural world, concludes the existence of an unconditioned and necessary being; through the physico-theological contemplation, the nature of this being is subsequently defined by the predicates of wisdom and goodness. The new sciences, by revealing, on one hand, the regularity of the cosmic order, and on the other, penetrating ever deeper into the regularity of organic formations, place themselves at the service of “rational” theology.

Philosophy also proves, secondarily, the immortality of the soul. From the unity of self-consciousness, one infers the simplicity of the soul; and from the nature of a simple, immaterial substance, one concludes its indissolubility and incorruptibility, which is then equated with immortality. This is complemented by practical grounds: the desire for further development of the inherent gifts within humanity and the demand for reconciling justice imply a future life and a judge after death. Without this faith, even ordinary decency and the existence of civil society would not be secured. The cynical words: “if God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him” encapsulate this thought, which, however, has not become foreign to our time.

Such is the worldview of the Age of Enlightenment. It is based on a compromise between theology and the new sciences. Modern thought, which has grown from the new sciences, concedes in its conception of God: God is a being above the world, who, by intention and design, created the world and humanity, and prescribed to them His law. Theology, for its part, concedes in terms of the regularity of natural processes; miracles, which were once the primary proof of religion, are gradually set aside as an element of old faith incompatible with the spirit of the times (though philosophy, when necessary, still provides a place for them—supra, pop contra rationem). “Miraculous Providence,” as the esteemed Samuel Reimarus illustrates in the same chapter in which he demonstrates “the insignificance of doubts regarding God’s Providence,” “would equally contradict both the perfections of God and His deeds, would not be beneficial for humankind, nor would it foster their development in virtue.” Indeed, theology itself gradually becomes accustomed to initially doing without miracles and ultimately, in resolute rationalism, becomes embarrassed by them and seeks to rid itself of them.

The cessation of this compromise occurred around the end of the eighteenth century; and, just as it was introduced by two thinkers of English and German nationality, so it was dismantled by two individuals of the same nationalities: Hume and Kant mark the conclusion of it. Almost simultaneously appeared Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (1781) and Hume’s posthumous Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1780). Both works subject natural religion, or rather philosophical theology, to a devastating critique: so-called rational theology is a fictitious science; from the grounds of reason, one cannot in any way prove the existence of a transcendent creator of the world and the immortality of the soul.

Hume begins with an empirical theory of knowledge; thus, he does not linger on a priori proofs. The only method of proof he employs is teleological; yet, to be a valid proof, it is lacking nothing less than everything. The origin of the world lies entirely beyond our experience; there exists no analogy whatsoever between human artificial activity and creation ex nihilo; the purpose of the world is entirely unclear to us; whatever conception of the creator's intention we might posit—be it happiness, development, or the perfection of living beings—the reality presents us with an infinite multitude of contradictory instances. If we were informed of the existence of a wise and all-good creator from some other source, we could attribute this mystery to the limitations of our knowledge. But on this ground, rational theology cannot retreat; it precisely seeks to derive the nature of its author from the reality at hand; conclusions can only be drawn from what we know, not from what we do not know.

In Kant, we find a distinct point of departure; however, he ultimately arrives at a similar conclusion: all attempts to prove the existence of God and the immortality of the soul based on rational foundations are in vain. He meticulously examines each argument in order, revealing their inadequacies at every turn. The inference drawn from the unity of consciousness regarding the simplicity of the soul's substance—and consequently, from this substance to its indestructibility and the continuation of personal life and consciousness after death—amounts to nothing more than a series of manipulations. The ontological proof of God's existence fares no better: it seeks to establish God's existence from the concept of God itself. According to its definition, the all-actual being, ens realissimum, encompasses all positive predicates; thus, it must include existence. Yet, existence is not a logical attribute akin to gravity, magnitude, wisdom, or goodness; therefore, it cannot be extracted from the subject's concept through an analytic judgment. All statements regarding existence are synthetic and can only be substantiated through experience.

The cosmological proof attempts to infer the unconditional from the conditioned, positing this unconditional in a being whose existence is necessary in itself, rather than contingent upon something else. However, the regressus in the causal series invariably leads us back to something contingent, which raises further questions about its conditions; it would be entirely arbitrary to assert that we have reached the unconditional at some point without questioning. At the very least, experience can never lead to this ultimate reality. Consequently, it should be understood as a necessary being, known through its concept; thus, the cosmological proof ultimately transforms into the ontological. Lastly, the physico-theological proof, no matter how far it may reach, leads only to the notion of a cosmic architect within the limited scope of our experience, rather than to the ecclesiastical conception of a Creator who brings all things into existence from nothing. Furthermore, it remains uncertain whether the purposiveness of nature represents anything beyond a subjective contemplation aligned with our understanding. Therefore, the speculative reason cannot claim to possess scientific knowledge of these matters.

Hume arrives at a negative conclusion; he merely remarks in passing that, were he to adopt any cosmological perspective, he would find none more satisfactory than that of the ancient philosophers, who "ascribe to the world an eternal principle of order inherent to its essence" (in the sixth dialogue). Kant, who, under the guise of epistemological perspective, reveals the old idealistic pantheistic metaphysics, is never alien to the thought he develops in his work on the only possible foundation for the proof of God's existence (1763): God is the unifying totality of all possibilities and, consequently, of all actuality, which can only be conceived as a limitation within itself. In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant juxtaposes his negative resolution to the question with a positive conclusion in practical philosophy; ideas concerning God, freedom, and immortality—whose reality cannot be proven by reason—constitute, nevertheless, the most reliable aspect of a worldview informed by the facts of practical reason. These are not theoretically applicable concepts that enable us to understand and explain nature: in physics, the notion of God, and in history, the notion of freedom, serve no purpose. Yet nature is not reality itself; it is something other than the sum of possible phenomena. In the concept of duty, that order of things emerges which we cannot help but perceive as absolutely real. Thus arises the idea of an absolute cosmic order, a higher and seemingly more actual order than that of nature; and to this cosmic order, we belong, thanks to the practical reason residing within us.

It may be said that in this thought, Kant re-engages and fully realizes the most original inclination of the Lutheran Reformation: the separation of religious faith from theoretical knowledge. What so troubled Luther in the scholastic (i.e., church-approved) theology was the conflation of the Word of God with the philosophy of the "godless pagan" Aristotle. To expel reason from theology and place faith upon its own feet was his primary task. However, this thought emerged too prematurely; soon, Protestant theology, in turn, began to construct dogmatic systems where metaphysics and revelation were fused into a single edifice. This is quite understandable: the entirety of medieval science and philosophy, its geocentric cosmology, and the anthropocentric worldview stemming from it, alongside its ecclesiocentric historical narrative—these all urgently called for scientific knowledge of the world to serve as the foundation for faith. It was first necessary to dismantle the foundations of the medieval worldview; as long as they remained solid, so too did their philosophy and their "natural" theology. This gradually transpired in the century following Luther. In the seventeenth century, Copernicus's cosmology began to spread slowly; new physical, physiological, and biological perspectives started to gain traction; and the historical horizon, through closer contact with the worlds of East and West, of the past and the future, expanded. Facts everywhere fractured the bonds of the medieval system. From this new state of affairs, Kant resolutely concludes: scientific knowledge of the world, in its current form, cannot serve as a foundation for faith. If faith is to be preserved, it must be established on new grounds, which can only be found in the facts of the moral realm. Luther sought to ground faith in written letters and verified historical facts. Kant grounds it in one living and ever-present fact: moral consciousness. This— and this alone—takes us beyond the order of nature, albeit not through knowledge and proofs, but in practical faith. Thus, the demand of the Reformation is here truly fulfilled: the foundation of faith is neither philological nor historical evidence drawn from canonical texts, nor metaphysical and physical speculations, nor external authority; faith rests upon itself; the will for the good is the foundation of faith in the Good, i.e., in God.

It is now quite challenging for us to grasp the depth of the upheaval instigated in the minds of its time by critical philosophy. Natural theology served as the foundation of all thought in the eighteenth century; it appeared to be the basis of all life; to infringe upon it meant to upend every divine and human order. Consider, for instance, a free-thinking individual such as Wieland.

"Belief in God, not only as the primary cause of all things but also as the unlimited and supreme legislator, ruler, and judge of humanity, alongside belief in a future state after death, constitutes the foremost foundational dogmas of religion. To bolster and support this belief in every possible way is one of the noblest and most beneficial pursuits of philosophy, and in light of its necessity, it is indeed a duty; to assault it with various doubts and seemingly sound reasons that shake it within the hearts of people or even to annihilate it is not only of no service but is, in essence, no better than a public attack on the fundamental structure of the state, a substantial part of which comprises religion, and on the public tranquility and safety that it upholds. Therefore, I would not hesitate to append to my unauthoritative counsel for the king or prince—should he, contrary to all expectations, inquire about these matters some fifty years hence—the following article: that disgraceful and indecent disputation against the existence of God or against the accepted proofs of His existence, unless superior ones are put forth, as well as public challenges to the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, be declared an assault on humanity and civil society and prohibited by a specific punitive law."

The protest of the elders proved in vain. Kant seized the moment and its profound necessity. Younger thinkers sensed that here was a redemptive word; the shackles of compromise between knowledge and faith had been shattered; now knowledge could boldly pursue its course to the end; religion had its inherent realm in the heart. On the ground liberated by the defeat of "rational theology," philosophy, in the bright consciousness of newfound freedom, immediately embarked on the joyful endeavor of constructing idealistically pantheistic systems. The philosophy of the nineteenth century, particularly the German variety, stands as the boldest and freest, consistently pantheistic or monotheistic in the sense of the formula: God is the sole existence; all that exists exists and must be comprehended within God.

It is remarkable, by the way, that philosophers were forewarned by poets. Lessing, Herder, and Goethe allied themselves with Spinoza at a time when philosophers dismissed him as “a dead dog” (see, for instance, the essay on the history of natural theology in the logic and metaphysics of Feder). A year before his death, in a conversation with Jacobi, Lessing confessed: “Orthodox concepts of the Divine no longer exist for me; I cannot be satisfied with them. One and all!” And when a friend, taken aback, countered that he had come seeking his support against Spinoza, Lessing replied: “Rather, become his friend entirely. There is no other philosophy but the philosophy of Spinoza.”

Following this, Herder presented his work “God: Several Conversations on the System of Spinoza” (1787). Goethe’s early poems are thoroughly imbued with a pantheistic sentiment and a perspective on nature.

What kind of divinity would only push from the outside And spin the universe around its finger! It ought to move the world from within, to preserve nature within itself and itself within nature, So that all that lives, breathes, and exists, Never forgets its power and its spirit.

In literature, the “stormy passions” are followed by “stormy passions” in philosophy. Just as, during the great political revolution of that time, new states and dynasties arose and vanished each passing year, so in Germany, every advancing spring brought forth a new speculative philosopher and a new system, each claiming absolute universal dominance. They all converge in their unmasked disdain for the old theological and philosophical orthodoxy, and they also align in the direction in which they seek new truths. The old philosophy is deistic, while the new philosophy is pantheistic monotheism. Deism posits God as an entity standing above the world. God, by design, created the world with all that is in it; He set it outside Himself, and now it moves along the thread of natural laws just as a machine crafted by an ingenious artisan for some specific purpose. This notion of God and the world seems to the new philosophers incredibly flat and vulgar; it belongs to the same shallow rationalism that traces all spiritual and historical phenomena back to the plans and intentions of individuals: language and religion, law and state, all were conceived and set in motion by inventive people for the great utility of these things; and for the same utility or pleasure, as per rationalistic aesthetics, poets create poetry, artists paint pictures, and musicians compose musical works. Now these enlightened individuals are precisely concerned with inventing perfect education and devising a flawless state constitution, to then create a perfect human being, just as Wagner, in a retort, produces a homunculus without resorting to vulgar natural force, relying solely on reason and art. Thus, in their own image, they have now fashioned the figure of God: He is the great mechanic who invented and fabricated this grand puppet theater of the world.

Disdain for such a worldview marks the first sign of a new era. Against the mechanical worldview of the Enlightenment, it opposes its thoughts as an organic worldview; the category of doing by intentions is discarded, replaced by organic development. The transformation primarily occurs in the realm of aesthetics; art and poetry emerge not from premeditated planning; it is about true and original art and poetry, for the verses composed by professores poeseos and their students for the birthdays of high-ranking individuals and other occasions can certainly always be produced with the aid of Gottsched’s poetics or some other “reasonable” guidance, whereas a true poetic work grows from within, developing, like an organic formation, with inner necessity. This holds for every piece of folk poetry, as well as for the greatest poetic work of the national soul: its religion. Herder is the first to impart a new understanding of spiritual-historical matters, while Goethe embodies the figure of the poet, graced by God or nature. This new contemplation of all things finds its culmination in a new conception of God, in Spinoza’s notion: God is the One, manifesting itself in nature and history. Both the organism and the poetic idea, as well as the essence of God, unfold with an inner aesthetic-theological necessity in the fullness of actual forms. The role of philosophy is to articulate this process of self-development of the absolute through the dialectical self-revelation of the concept.

Fichte was the first to bring forth new thoughts in a destructive struggle against old concepts. Whereas Kant dealt with the deistic notions of God and immortality cautiously, allowing them back into his system without true internal transformation, merely altering the sign: not theoretically valid concepts, but practically necessary ideas—Fichte set himself the task of annihilating these very concepts as unworthy, even degrading. He found that they originated from eudemonism, thus condemning them: in natural theology, God is a separate entity alongside others, whose sole purpose is to ensure the happiness of sensual man in this life or, at the very least, in the afterlife. Against this, Fichte's stern, if not fanatical, moralism rebels—such a God is not God, but an idol. In the moral realm alone exists God; within the inner voice of duty manifests something supersensible—this is God. Yet to conceive this supersensible again as a separate substance, that is, according to the understanding of critical philosophy, as an entity existing and acting in space and time, meant to create happiness, is utterly impossible and contradictory. In his appeal to the public, in which he defends himself against the charge of atheism leveled at him, he sharpens the opposition between the new philosophy and the old orthodoxy into a strong indictment: the eudemonistic dogmatism, which created its system of the world in natural theology, those philosophers “who embrace the infinite within the finite concept and marvel at God's wisdom, as if He arranged everything just as they would have done themselves,” or those who render Him a cosmic judge, punishing vice and rewarding virtue with bliss—by which function He earns the merit of “providing assistance to unsatisfactory police institutions”—these are the true atheists. “A God who must serve desire is a despicable and vile being, for He sustains and perpetuates human ruin and the degradation of reason. Such a God is indeed the prince of this world.” These philosophers serve precisely that last figure; “they are therefore true atheists; they have no God at all, and they have created for themselves a wicked idol. What I do not wish to invoke is their idol instead of the true God—that is what they call atheism.”

Along with the great turn induced in Fichte’s life by his stance toward prevailing notions (his resignation from the professorship in Jena and his relocation to Berlin), there also came a shift in the direction of his thinking. Indeed, the fundamental view remains the same: the starting point and foundation of any worldview transcending the physical perspective lies in the experiences of moral life; these lead to a belief in the supersensible, which certainly must not be conceived as a separate being or particular substance. However, he shifts his front: until now, his offensive stance had been directed against state-church orthodoxy in philosophy and theology; now, however, it is aimed against negative enlightenment. Thus, his reasoning takes on a more positive character; he articulates what God and divine life truly are in speeches directed at an educated audience, which, as he perceives, suffers not from an excess of dogmas of faith, but from a deficiency of belief.

In the year of the dispute over atheism (1799), Schleiermacher's discourses on religion also emerged, addressed to the educated among its detractors. These discourses resolutely reject traditional notions of philosophical ecclesiastical orthodoxy. Religion does not primarily reside in doctrine or deeds but in feeling; within it, the finite directly experiences the infinite and the eternal. Every genuine feeling that arises from the wholeness of the soul and relates to the wholeness of things is religious; reverence, astonishment, joy, love, gratitude, humility, and awe, awakened by contact with the life of nature and humanity, become movements of piety. In these or with these individual things, “the whole touches us as the revelation of God; thus, in our soul enters not the individual and finite, but precisely God, in whom the particular is one with the all; similarly, within ourselves, through feeling, what is stirred and manifested is not some specific function but our entire being, as we engage with the world while simultaneously existing within it; hence, it is the Divine directly in us.” Conversely, “the ordinary conception of God as a separate being outside the world and beyond it is not the sole and total expression of religion but merely one way of its expression, rarely entirely pure and always insufficient. Those who form such a concept not in a pure manner—specifically, to envision it as a being they could employ for clarification and assistance—may believe in such a God without being pious. Similarly, the goal and character of religious life is not immortality, as many desire and believe in it—an immortality outside of time and beyond time, or rather merely after this time, but still within time—rather, it is the immortality that we can directly possess even in this temporal life, which is the task we are continually engaged in. Amidst finitude, to become one with the infinite and to be eternal in each given moment—this is the immortality of religion.”

In Schelling, moralistic pantheism is followed by naturalistic pantheism. Nature is not merely a shadow cast by the divine but, akin to Spinoza, one side of reality, the other side of which is spirit, whose development constitutes history. The system of identity, as presented in lectures on the philosophy system delivered in 1804, is so closely aligned with Spinoza's categories that nearly every proposition from the “Ethics” can be found therein. Schelling considers his immediate task to elevate the science of nature from the wretched state in which it lies, as perceived by the young philosopher—to transform a heap of random and scattered knowledge into a system of rationally discerned truths. His aim is to present the entirety of nature as a unified system governed by an inner logically aesthetic necessity or to uncover the reason inherent within it.

Finally, Hegel's philosophy has been aptly described as logical pantheism. It seeks to encompass nature and history within one all-encompassing system, as the self-developing idea unfolds with an inner logical or dialectical necessity of reality’s ideal content. Just as in the spirit of a poet, the idea of a certain work—“Hamlet,” “Faust”—unfolds into a multitude of moments, actions, and characters, eventually rising before us as a unified whole, wherein all the particulars occupy their necessary places, so too the world or reality, extending before us in nature and history, is a unified whole where each particular occupies its place with logically aesthetic necessity. Just as we suppose we understand a poetic work when we see how each scene and each phenomenon is necessary for representing a single idea, such that omitting anything would be felt as a noticeable gap, so we would achieve perfect knowledge of the great Divine poem, which we call the world, if we could likewise present within it every natural force, every historical formation, as an internally necessary moment for the representation of the whole. Sciences do not provide us with this; they do not even have this in mind. Natural sciences collect facts and strive to fit them under formulas that express only external relationships, causal laws; yet for them, facts and laws remain blind, crude facts. Historical research proceeds similarly; it too gathers endless masses of facts, attempting to construct some causal framework, but it does not answer the question of the meaning of these facts, nor do they even pose it to themselves. This is the task of philosophy. What does nature mean? What lies behind the inner necessity of all these phenomena and their laws, mechanical, chemical, organic? What does history mean as a whole, what significance is expressed in it? Why did all these peoples—Chinese and Indians, Persians and Egyptians, Greeks and Romans—have to traverse their earthly paths and undergo specific developments in state and law, in religion and art? These are the questions Hegelian philosophy seeks to answer! It aims to elucidate what each thing truly is, demonstrating the meaning of each thing in the totality of things. In developing thus a unified, all-pervasive meaning, the idea of reality, it presents us with the essence and life of God Himself: God is none other than the singular, existing, living, self-developing thought of the world. Yet reality is not something else, precisely reality as it exists by itself; it is entirely a living, developing idea that encompasses itself in self-consciousness; dead, inert, merely existing being is not encountered in reality, but only in the futile representations of a philosophy that dwells in abstractions. Therefore, since the world itself is thought, it is embraced within the thoughts of true philosophy. Thus, in Hegel, the new philosophy returns to its point of departure in Platonic-Aristotelian philosophy: reality is a developing system of thoughts moving toward self-consciousness, νόησις νοήσεως; philosophy is the mental reiteration of the objective movement of thought.

The time when such ideas dominated the spiritual world of Germany has long passed, when the ever-hungry youth flocked in streams to partake in the experience of the moment of awakening of the absolute spirit to complete self-consciousness. The dialectical repetition of the self-moving idea has fallen silent. The belief that Schelling's or Hegel's philosophy elucidates nature and history in their inner necessity, akin to how a superior interpreter elucidates a drama by Shakespeare or Goethe, is scarcely comprehensible to us now; we can see in it little more than a mere arbitrary schematization of the distribution of common forms of reality. It seems entirely strange to us that the arrogance with which these vague reflections on reality in general, assuming, like a swirling fog, one form or another, rise against scientific inquiry as a matter infinitely more important and noble.

Nevertheless, a single legacy remains for German philosophy: that overarching view of reality from which speculative philosophy originated. We too seek the culmination of thoughts that contemplation of reality leads us to, still in the same direction: idealistic monotheism or pantheism—this is the goal in which even to this day converge the thoughts of the strongest and most sagacious thinkers; Fechner and Lotze can be named as leaders on this path. Lotze strives to approach the goal through abstractly metaphysical reflection; for support, he relies on historical and religious contemplation. Fechner remains a natural philosopher—he everywhere seeks and finds symbols of the invisible world in the visible one.

More timidly and as if only from a distance does he point to this goal and positive direction. Mr. Spencer may serve as his representative. In a remarkable discourse concluding his “Sociology” (§ 659 and following), he demonstrates the thought that the result of scientific inquiry into reality in no way signifies the end of religious concepts in general. “Amidst all these mysteries, which become ever more enigmatic for the researcher the more he reflects upon them, he remains constantly assured that he stands before an infinite and eternal energy from which all being flows.” What is this energy? “The ultimate result of the speculative work, begun by primitive man (in the form of animism), is, therefore, that the force which manifests in that whole we distinguish as the material world is one with that force which flows from our own inner being in the form of consciousness.” “When a naturalist sees how solid bodies, however lifeless they may appear to us, are nevertheless responsive to infinitely weak forces; when a spectroscope demonstrates to him how certain molecules on earth harmoniously oscillate with molecules in distant stars; when he is compelled to accept the conviction that every point in space is filled with countless oscillations traversing it at every moment in all directions, he becomes significantly less inclined to conceive of the universe as consisting solely of dead matter than to envision a world that is alive everywhere—albeit not in the ordinary limited sense, but in a more general one.”

In this context, the stage is cleared for symbolic anthropomorphism and the idealizing metaphysical poetry of concepts, deemed necessary by A. Aange, a representative of positivism in Germany. Various paths converge toward the same goal.

Reflecting in conclusion upon the entire course of this lengthy intellectual journey, we may articulate it thus: Religion increasingly distills from itself the elements that once stood at the forefront: theurgical practices and mythological cosmogonic narratives. As universal culture rises, so too do scientific understandings of nature and the dominion that rests upon it; simultaneously, the old enchantments and myths recede. In contrast, the ethical dimension increasingly asserts itself, initially emerging merely as a peripheral stream; the essence of the divine is defined as morally good. On the other hand, science gradually distances itself from the realm of religion. Dogmatic orthodoxy, which sought to delineate the nature of the otherworldly through concepts deemed (at least theoretically) provable, has been abandoned, along with the natural theology of the 18th century that shared its grounds—except that it constrained the realm of what could be proven even further. Philosophical speculative constructions, which attempted to exhaust reality through absolute concepts, have also been forsaken. Philosophy has become more modest; yet, it believes it is reasonable to think that the facts compel our reasoning to posit a final all-encompassing unity of the essence of reality—an unity that cannot be an external and contingent one of a mechanical system, but must be conceivable as the internal unity of a spiritual being. However, it renounces the development of this thought, leaving it to the creative poetry of religious genius. The latter, like a creator-artist, gives the idea of the perfect a tangible form; through word and deed, teaching and life, it interprets the meaning of that great mystery we call reality.

I am well aware that others perceive the course and purpose of historical development differently. Many, along with L. Feuerbach, are convinced that the great consciousness of our century consists in the realization that man did not create God, but rather God was created by man. The exposition provided here will seem to them outdated and obsolete.

I do not wish to disturb anyone in their contentment with their thoughts. Nevertheless, I cannot refrain from remarking that the truth of the first formula, it seems to me, does not exclude the truth of the second. I am fully prepared to agree with the proposition that man created God—in his own image and in his own conception. However, this is not incompatible with the second proposition: that God created man in His image, but not merely in conception, rather in reality. This philosophy asserts that man is a product of nature. Indeed. But what is nature? A vast heap of absolutely solid grains of sand? And from them, merely by arranging them alongside one another, should sensitive and thinking beings have emerged? Surely, something anonymous must have intervened here, to echo Goethe. These philosophers, who believe they have grasped the end of belief in God, should feel somewhat disconcerted by the mere fact that, according to their theory, the product, transformation, and ultimately the expulsion of the fantastic specter of imagination has constituted the essential content of all human history. It is an undeniable fact that all the greatest historical movements were of a religious nature: Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, the Reformation—these are the grand themes of our past. Is it truly so strange that the world and the human spirit, upon colliding with one another, should invariably produce this great delusion?

"But the future," they argue, "all infinite future, belongs to reason, free from prejudices and superstitions; it belongs to pure knowledge, unblinded by fantasy and poetry." I do not know what the spiritual content of the future will be. However, I would not contradict anyone who ventured to assert that the conception that reality is, in fact, nothing more than an agglomeration of very small grains of sand may one day appear to future generations as an episode of the most bizarre delusion of the human spirit. They might declare: the remarkable progress of mathematical and physical knowledge, meeting the coercion of confessionalism and the political corruption of religion, momentarily (measuring here by the scale of centuries) produced in some minds such blindness that they fell into the illusion that spirit is something absolutely alien to reality and that it is entirely mysterious how it could possibly find itself therein. In comparison to such a delusion, which moreover emerged with the proud consciousness of standing atop human education, the most unfortunate idolater, kneeling before some spirit within things, will be seen—as future judgment would have it—as a being who nonetheless grasped some foreboding of the great meaning and essence of things.

Once, I read the following words of Jean Paul: "What pride the clouds take, as if they belong to the sky and the stars, while they stand apart from us only slightly farther than the vapor of our breath!" These words may also apply to the opinions of those who, due to the fog of their limited thoughts, cannot see the infinite sky and assert that there is no such thing as heaven, that it is merely an old superstition, something no one has ever seen.

The negative dogmatism of materialism appears to me to be a mere pendant to the positive dogmatism of the old theological orthodoxy. Both converge in their understanding of religion as a sum of literally comprehensible and cognitively grasped propositions, except that the former asserts "no" where the latter says "yes." They meet in their arid intellectualism, devoid of any sense of poetry and art. They often converge in their stern moralism, lacking an appreciation for individuality and freedom; they converge as well in that tyrannical fanaticism which demands absolute submission from all to its own dogmas, whether negative or positive.