Table of Contents
Four Sermons (1792–1793)
First Sermon
Second Sermon
Third Sermon
Fourth Sermon
Studies (1792/93–1794)
In What Respect Is Religion…
But the Principle Material…
Our Tradition…
Already in the Architecture…
Religion Is One of the Most Important Matters…
Aside from Oral Instruction…
It Cannot Be Denied…
The Constitutions of States…
How Little Objective Religion…
Public Authority…
On the Difference in the Scene of Death
On Objective Religion…
It Would Be a Difficult Task…
When One Speaks of the Christian Religion…
Today the Masses Need…
Four Sermons
(1792-1793)
I.
Isaiah 61:7–8
Instead of your shame there shall be a double portion, and for your disgrace you shall rejoice in your inheritance; therefore in their land they shall possess a double portion; they shall have everlasting joy. For I, the LORD, love justice; I hate robbery and wrong. I will faithfully give them their recompense, and I will make an everlasting covenant with them.
Nothing is more consoling, nothing more encouraging for our hearts than to occupy ourselves with thoughts of the great perfections of God. Such reflections awaken our deepest admiration, fill us with humility, and inspire us to worship the greatness of the Creator. Such reflection further brings with it the most compelling motives for joyful fulfillment of our duties—since neglecting them would be, at the same time, an offense against our greatest benefactor and an act of ingratitude toward Him. This reflection also strengthens our courage in suffering, teaches us to bear it patiently—knowing that it is God who has brought it upon us, and that all our destinies lie in the hands of the One who always wills our good.
Guided by the words of the text, I will speak of the justice of God:
- as it manifests itself in punishment, and
- as it manifests itself in reward.
I. God, our Creator, has inscribed in our souls an indelible law—a law that is independent of our senses and circumstances, and which is meant to be the steadfast rule of our actions. This law He has accompanied with a feeling that rewards good and dutiful actions with contentment, but becomes troubling and unpleasant in the case of contrary deeds. This voice of conscience, when we transgress this sacred law, pronounces a judgment of deserved punishment upon us, fills us with fear of inevitable consequences, or—even if we have nothing outward to fear—compels us to despise ourselves in our own eyes.
Aside from this divine revelation given to every human being, God has also made His will known in manifold and more explicit ways: that same voice of conscience demands an even firmer incentive in order to be developed more fully in man. For in our natural condition, sensibility is so powerful that we give little heed to the inner voice of reason, permitting it no room to grow. How much more is this true when, from our youth onward, we become habituated to so many needs—when things that are often secured only with great effort, sometimes at the expense of others’ rights, become indispensable to our lives. In such circumstances, the intensified power of sensibility, which is implanted so early in the soul, would easily overwhelm our inner sense of right and wrong, if it were not for another, stronger dam set against that torrent. This dam is the law of God revealed to us, partly in the Old Testament and still more purely through His Son in the New. That divine order corresponds exactly to what our conscience itself proclaims; and we are so bound to it that we feel ourselves under obligation to observe it, or we deem ourselves worthy of contempt—and we also become convinced that others despise us, that God is displeased, and that we are unworthy of our own blessedness.
Moreover, this divine law is so designed that only by following it can both the general welfare of humankind and the particular wellbeing of every individual be most surely attained. Only through the most faithful observance of these divine laws can the wish of every person to be happy—both here and in the world to come—be fulfilled. Conversely, he who turns away from the will of his Creator and the noblest impulse of his heart must expect the greatest degree of misery. According to His holiness and justice, God has so arranged our nature and the constitution of all beings outside us that punishment follows transgression. By its very nature, immorality must punish itself. Many ties bind us to this earth; many kinds of pleasures are prepared for our senses—but if a person lets himself be too strongly bound by these ties, if he indulges excessively in pleasure, he destroys his own constitution, renders himself incapable and unfit for higher and nobler enjoyments, and brings upon himself exhaustion and physical suffering, which further depress an already disturbed mind. This mind is tormented by remorse, by dissatisfaction, presents to him only the image of his own worthlessness, and torments him with the thought that he himself has caused these sufferings, that he has let the time given him for better occupations pass not only unused, but has even turned it to his own harm.
Other crimes lower him just as much, rob him of the respect and love of others, and deprive him of the favor and blessing of God. These misfortunes are further increased by others: the failure of his endeavors and schemes is often shared with one who had good intentions in his efforts—but the wicked man lacks the comfort of receiving compensation for fruitless labor; on the contrary, he is vexed to see his plans foiled and dreads punishment in the future.
Finally, God has threatened those who, despite so many encouragements toward good, do not walk the path He has laid out for us, with special punishments, which, according to His truthfulness, He will surely execute one day. And in doing so He acts all the more justly, since He has never withheld opportunities or encouragements to lead people toward the good; since He has beforehand made known these threats, so that everyone knows what fate awaits him; so that no excuse can be made that he was unaware of the law and the punishments attached to it.
As strict as God appears when He has cause to punish, so gloriously does He manifest His
II. rewarding justice, which is as inexhaustible as it is infinitely great. God does not repay us according to our sins, but according to His great mercy. Faithful fulfillment of duty, even if sometimes imperfect, God already rewards here with temporal happiness. The death of His Son has freed us from the fear of punishment, to which every human being was once subject, for all have sinned. And thus, joy and contentment may now enter undisturbed into the heart of the person who fears God and strives to do what is right in trust and reliance on Him and His help.
In his endeavors, because he uses righteous means, he is accompanied by success and blessing; or, if he finds that his plans fail, he is convinced that they did not accord with the design of Providence, and that it was therefore more advantageous for the whole and for him individually that they did not succeed. His peaceful conscience enables him to partake in pure joys and sweetens his enjoyment of them. The final transformation before which all humans tremble—death—is for him merely a transition to a new stage in the perfection of creation and the greatness of the Creator, a transition toward further development of his abilities and to greater joys.
Text prepared 10 January 1792
II.
One of the most distinguished merits and most important blessings of the Christian religion is that it has taught us to recognize true virtues and distinguish them from false ones. All those loud, ostentatious virtues with which people often deceive others—and often themselves and their own conscience—lose their luster the moment they do not flow from the right source, when they are not grounded in love for God and love for fellow human beings. Only the person who acts from such motives is truly worthy of being called a Christian and acts in the spirit of Christ’s teaching. There are virtues which are easy to practice and which easily catch the eye, but which lack precisely that essential element which gives them worth in the eyes of God, and which is often the hardest to attain: namely, a complete transformation and betterment of the heart. Such a soul, purified of sensual passions, moved only by love for God and His commandments and by love for all people, alone is capable of the virtue that is the subject of our further reflection. I will, according to the instruction of today’s Gospel, speak about forgiveness and reconciliation—first, what kind of nature this virtue must have if it is to be genuine, and second, that we may only be assured of the forgiveness of our sins if we truly possess this virtue.
O God of love and peace, fill our hearts with Your Spirit, and make us ready and able to fulfill Your commandment that bids us to be patient with the faults of our fellow humans, to forgive those who offend us, and to love those who hate us. Amen.
Before we consider the nature that forgiveness must have, let us first seek the sources from which unforgiveness arises. Pride, or self-love—which leads to so many faults and vices—plays a primary role in this vice as well. We see it often among people, even among friends, that when one has offended the other, and both may be inclined toward reconciliation, yet pride or wounded self-love prevents either from taking the first step. Even if the offending party feels remorse, it is difficult for him to go to his brother and say, “I have wronged you, forgive me.” Not infrequently, however, we find even baser and more degrading passions at play in such states of heart: vengeance, hatred, and resentment often make us wholly unwilling to forgive. They close the heart against the voice of humanity, against the call of God. People who carry bitterness and hatred in their hearts are to be pitied no less than those who must associate with them. They embitter the lives of others whom they should make happy; they increase the burdens which they ought to help lighten and sweeten, and they render themselves incapable of enjoying even the good things which God bestows upon them with gratitude and joy. Because inner peace does not dwell in their hearts, they are not inclined to do good to others. Acts of kindness shown to them by other people or by God, or examples of generosity, make little impression upon them; they do not move them to gentleness and forbearance toward others.
Such a hardened disposition is vividly illustrated in today’s Gospel, where Christ presents to us a king who, moved by compassion for the misery he would cause through strictness, forgives a servant a large debt—far more than the servant could have ever hoped for. At most, he might have hoped for a partial remission of the debt or for an extension of time so that he could repay it without the ruin of his household. But this undeserved grace, instead of making him gentler and more forgiving, has the opposite effect: immediately afterward, he meets a fellow servant who owes him a small sum, especially in comparison to what he had just been forgiven, and he demands payment with the utmost severity, casting him and his family into ruin. Yet he did not long enjoy the fruit of his harshness and the slight gain it brought him. His fellow servants, outraged by this injustice, reported the matter to their master, who then judged him according to his deeds.
Let us apply this example to ourselves and ask whether we too do not often find ourselves in a similar situation. Every person will admit that they frequently need forbearance, and no one will claim to fulfill every duty without sometimes failing in one way or another, offending others in anger or the heat of passion, or simply out of bad temper. Each of us at times neglects to help the unfortunate as promptly or fully as duty requires and our circumstances allow. Every person will admit to faults for which they need forgiveness from others. Only pride and vanity could convince someone otherwise. But if one desires forgiveness from others and wishes not to be dealt with harshly, then one must likewise be gentle and forbearing toward others, bear the faults of one’s neighbors with love, and willingly forgive injuries. Still more will one realize that there is no reason to be harsh and unforgiving toward others when one reflects on how patient and long-suffering God has been toward oneself.
If we honestly examine ourselves, our conscience will soon teach us that we are unworthy of God’s many blessings, that we have not earned them by our behavior toward Him, and that, by our lack of forgiveness, we contradict both His law and His example, which He has given us to imitate and which should be our highest ambition and greatest honor. A spirit of unforgiveness is the very opposite of the spirit with which true Christianity should fill us, the opposite of the behavior by which, according to Christ’s own words, His true disciples are to be recognized: “Love one another,” He says, “by this shall all people know that you are my disciples.” Only such Christian love can enable us to truly forgive our offenders from the heart.
Therefore, when people do us wrong, when they harm our honor or anything else dear to us, this Christian love commands us not to return injury for injury, even if we are able to take revenge, even if we could do to them what they did to us. The Christian suppresses the desire for revenge—a desire which only base and coarse natures find sweet. But if forgiveness is to be complete, it must go even further: we must not harbor resentment in our hearts; even if we cannot love our enemies, we must not hate them, but rather extend to them our compassion.
There exists, beyond open revenge and returning evil for evil, a subtler form of vengeance that may be less dangerous for the one who commits it, but is often more hurtful for the victim: slander and malicious gossip. A slanderer may present himself as magnanimous, claiming he does not wish to retaliate, yet meanwhile secretly ruins the other’s good name—and thus harms him more than direct revenge ever could. Such behavior is the mark only of small and cowardly souls. A person sincerely committed to forgiveness will scorn it and instead do good to his enemy. He will not withhold his compassion and help, even when he sees him in misery. He will not remind the unfortunate person—who once did him harm—that now the power to repay him in kind is in his hands.
Equally far from true forgiveness is another false virtue that sometimes passes for magnanimity: when someone “forgives” their enemy, but secretly hopes and wishes that misfortune will eventually come upon him—and when it does, they cite Scripture to justify their attitude, saying, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord,” and greet the sufferer with the thought: “This is what you once deserved from me.” Such malicious glee has no place in a heart renewed by love for God. It may loathe wicked deeds, but it also pities those who commit them.
The true Christian is equally forbearing toward those faults and shortcomings of others that cause no personal harm. Rather than offer useless rebuke, he tries to lead them to betterment more through his example than by words. He is cautious in judgment, knowing that humans are too shortsighted to see into the hearts of others, that only the omniscient Creator can judge actions according to their true inner worth. Only He knows all the motives from which an action springs, the capacities granted to a person, and the circumstances which can exert powerful influence even on the most virtuous. The evil intentions we suspect in others’ actions often arise from our own corrupt hearts, which are conscious of acting with no better motives in similar cases. Whoever is truly concerned with doing good does not busy himself with finding faults in others and crying them out, but rather examines his own conscience, admits his own faults, and seeks to amend them. He bears the follies of others and does not grow weary of forgiving. It is not enough to think we have done something great by overlooking an insult once or twice, only to become angry when wrongs are repeated. When Peter asked the Lord whether it was enough to forgive his enemy seven times, Jesus replied: “Not only seven times, but seventy-seven times.” Your patience, your love for humanity must not be exhausted even by repeated offenses.
But one might ask: does the Christian religion command me to let others rob me of my possessions, my honor, to let myself be plunged into poverty and want without defending myself? Must I submit to the caprice and injustice of those who steal what is mine without resistance? Does Christianity demand too much of us?
One would misunderstand the spirit of Christ if they believed He required such things. On the contrary, we are to care for what is ours, to seek to increase it by just means, and to protect it against unjust claims. But if what is ours is taken from us, then Christian love requires that we pursue our right only so far as to recover what was taken—and renounce all vengeance.
Though the Gospel strongly urges patience toward the faults of others, it requires just as strongly that we not be lenient with ourselves. One might easily fall into the error of thinking that since one is patient with others and overlooks their faults, others will do the same for him. But such complacency would directly oppose the endeavor to become ever more perfect and to progress in goodness. Least of all may such a pact of mutual leniency be made with God. The true Christian must be strict with himself and gentle with others.
The most exalted model of such forgiveness, of a heart entirely free from resentment and bitterness toward its persecutors and filled only with compassion and love for them, is found in Christ Himself. Sent into the world to teach His fellow men the truth, to proclaim salvation and eternal blessedness, He is rejected by them and repaid with ingratitude. Even when His efforts bear little fruit among the masses, He does not tire of forgiving them their offenses. As He approaches Jerusalem and beholds the city sinking into ruin, He does not recall what He has suffered and is yet to suffer there. Instead, deep compassion moves Him to tears—not the impotent tears of wrath, but tears of sorrow. He foretells the destruction that awaits Jerusalem not as a wish, but with the deepest sadness.
Nor does He show the slightest schadenfreude, as many might feel when foretelling the misery of an enemy. When Peter, confident in his loyalty, believed he could follow Jesus into suffering and even death, Jesus told him with love that he would deny Him three times. And when Peter, later filled with shame, felt unworthy of his Master, Jesus did not withdraw His love or confidence, did not reject him as many would reject a friend who had failed them in distress. Instead, He showed him compassion and sympathy for the weakness of human nature.
The most sublime example of love for His enemies Jesus gave at last when, mocked, beaten, and nailed to the cross, He looked upon the whole crowd of His murderers—their coarse cruelty and triumphant malice—but this sight did not stir bitterness in His heart. At the hour of death—when a person often drops the mask worn through life—He showed the same serenity. Amid the torments prepared for Him by His enemies, He prayed to His heavenly Father, filled with compassion: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
Let us not let this great example be presented to us in vain. With continual vigilance over the stirrings of evil inclinations in our hearts, let us strive to reach that high degree of love and forgiveness which Jesus displayed in the purest form: that neither self-love nor pride, nor lowly vengefulness make us unwilling to forgive; that only goodwill and joy in the happiness of others fill our hearts.
II. I still have briefly to show that we can only be assured of the forgiveness of our sins by God through sincere forgiveness and reconciliation. When John appeared among the people, he called them to repentance and to turn away from sin. Jesus gave us a higher commandment; He taught that it is not enough to guard against flagrant sins and prevent gross outbursts of passion, but that to be pleasing to God requires a heart entirely pure and filled with love. He gave us a new commandment—the commandment of love—which Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 13 in the spirit of Christ. Only such love can serve as the foundation for true faith—the kind of faith which, in childlike trust, commits itself to God in all circumstances, expects all happiness from His goodness, and bears misfortune with patience, because the thought gives it courage that even this has come from the hand of the Father and will turn to the best.
Not the faith that confesses Jesus merely with the lips, without producing the true fruits of faith—but only the faith that springs from love for Him—can become capable of the blessings God has bestowed on humanity through Christ. With such faith and such love, forgiveness is most intimately connected; it is the true distinguishing mark of genuine faith. How can someone love God, whom they do not see, while hating their brother, whom they do see? How can love for God coexist with hatred and harshness toward human beings? In a heart filled with thoughts of God, with reverence for the most exalted Being, there is no place for base passions, for malicious joy or hardness of heart. Such a heart sees all people as children of one Father and loves them as brothers. It is ready to be patient with their weaknesses, to forgive them their faults, and may then be assured that Jesus will not leave unfulfilled the promises He has attached to such forgiveness. “If you forgive people their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.” Only then can we hope that God will hear our daily petition in the Lord’s Prayer: “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive…” In this, we pronounce our own sentence: we ask God to forgive our debts and, at the same time, pledge to extend love to our neighbor. Let us, my friends, walk in this divine spirit, follow the commandments and example of Christ, so that we may have hope of sharing in the blessedness He has won for us through His suffering and death, and that we may enter the abodes of peace—where we will no longer have any wrongs to forgive, but where God will still have much to forgive us.
Through meekness (fulfill only the duty),
You will conquer your enemy.
O do not rob your soul
Of this divine delight;
Then the Lord will also forgive you,
Be your Father and your Rewarder.
Lord, in obedience to You,
I will not avenge myself;
I forgive gladly, and then for me
The righteous cause will speak.
The spirit of gentleness comes only from You—
Through Your Spirit, Lord, give it to me!
III.
On the Feast of St. Philip and St. James, 1793
To attain true faith and, as far as it is possible for human beings, complete virtue, long practice is required. The corrupted heart of man, the power of sensuality—an example is found in the Apostles, whose memory we celebrate today. They had already received Jesus’ instruction into the third year, and could still ask questions of Him to which any of us would now know how to give the answer. The extraordinary nature of the event—they saw Him act like an ordinary man, He walked among them as one of their own; they indeed saw that God gave Him special assistance, they had an intimation of His future glory—but they had not yet experienced the resurrection of Christ, the cornerstone of Christian faith.
Even though we now know more about the person of Christ than the Apostles did at the time of the conversation we read in today’s Gospel, we must not assume that true faith consists merely in knowledge—that the more our memory can recall, the firmer, better, or more living our faith becomes. True faith must be grounded on the conviction that the Father dwelled in Jesus—and then we will also perceive the genuine fruits of faith.
What true faith must be like:
- Founded on the conviction that Christ was truly the Son of God.
- The nature of true faith is to be known by the works it produces.
You have placed us, O God, in a position where we are raised from youth in your blessed religion; from youth we learn that Jesus is your only begotten Son, whom you sent into the world to show us the path to eternal life. Grant that this knowledge may become living faith in us, that it may abound in good fruits. Bestow upon us, O God, your Spirit, that He may guide us into all truth and to all good. Amen.
I. Why are we called Christians? Not because we know that Christ is the founder of our religion, but:
a) True knowledge of God already requires us to view Christ in this light—this great arrangement and benefit for humanity—a greater proof of His goodness demands greater gratitude, greater love, and a closer union with Him. Christ alone opened the way to God. (Ephesians 2:18)
b) Christ Himself required us to regard Him as such. He must have known best whence He came, who had sent Him, and what charges God had given Him concerning mankind. Our trust must rest on His assurances.
c) And not only on His assurances, but also on His works (John 15:24); for sensual people need such signs.
B) Testimonies of the Father: at His birth, at His baptism, and also in John 12:28. The greatest testimony: His resurrection from the dead—the power of the Father—and finally His ascension.
II. This faith is not merely a matter of the intellect.
a) But neither is it an enthusiastic, miraculous faith, as there are still people who take our Gospel text as an excuse for such beliefs. This is a misunderstanding—it applies only to the Apostles and the earliest days of Christianity, when extraordinary arrangements were needed for the spread of the faith. Our passage refers only to the Apostles, as does Matthew 17:19–20. But even in Apostolic times such miraculous gifts were not always evidence of true faith (Matthew 7:22). We are so prone to cling to the external—like the Jews, we desire signs and wonders—and we do not press inward to the spirit, to the power.
b) What are the true fruits of faith? “By their fruits…” etc. Not prayer or fasting—the Pharisees (Matthew 6:1–2). The purpose of doing good—not to boast in prayer (Matthew 6:5). In general, not external actions—God sees the heart. The widow who gave but a mite into the treasury. Do we believe we render service to God thereby? Do we glorify Him? He remains what He is. It is easier to perform outward religious actions than to restrain one’s desires, favorite inclinations, and evil lusts of the heart—our corrupted nature—the flesh lusts against the spirit—the spirit is weak. The commandment of love.
c) If we make the effort, God aids our weakness, He supports us with His Spirit, who will dwell within us so that we may be one with Him as Christ is one with Him—that we may be perfect as Christ was—into friendship, freedom, and sonship with God.
IV.
On Matthew 5:1–16, 3rd Sunday after Trinity, 1793
Our text is taken from the Sermon on the Mount, the essential compendium of the duties Christ demands from his true disciples, in which he fully portrays the spirit by which a true citizen of the Kingdom of God must be animated. Moreover, most of Jesus’ teachings, and the many beautiful parables preserved for us in the Gospels, aim toward this same goal: to lead his disciples—and us—toward the correct understanding of the Kingdom of God, and to educate and form us into citizens of this Kingdom. Let us speak, then, of the Kingdom of God, and
I. Show that it is not something external, but internal.
II. That Christ has opened the way to it.
You, only begotten Son of the heavenly Father—whom the power of God has raised as Lord over all things, as ruler and king of this spiritual, this heavenly Kingdom—and you, Spirit of the Son, take your dwelling in our hearts, that we may learn to despise the earthly, and become children of God, heirs of the light. Hear our daily prayer, that your Kingdom may also come to us, and that your will be done on earth as it is done by your saints in heaven. Amen.
I. Jesus came into the world to call sinners to repentance, to proclaim to them that the Kingdom of God is at hand—he came into the world to secure our access to it, and to teach us the path by which we may become worthy citizens of this Kingdom.
a) This Kingdom is not a worldly state—as his disciples and contemporaries long hoped it would be. But everything in his teaching testifies against this expectation. His form was that of a servant; he renounced the power with which he could have established such a realm. Before Pilate he declared plainly: My kingdom is not of this world. What is considered great in this world is not so in the Kingdom of God.
b) Nor is the Kingdom identical with the visible church. We all call ourselves Christians—the Christian religion is widespread across the earth—today it is proclaimed from the pulpits of half the world—the teaching of Christ is preached, his name praised everywhere, before his majesty knees are bent, worship offered. But is that already the Kingdom of God? Are we, by external association with the church, thereby made citizens of the Kingdom of God? That we confess his name outwardly, are baptized in his name, say “Lord, Lord,” partake of the Lord’s Supper?
c) The Kingdom of God does not manifest itself in external ceremonies. Worship of God is not rooted in outward religious service (Luke 17:20–21). Baptism, participation in the Eucharist, confession with the mouth—these do not yet make us children of God. The Spirit of Christ must dwell in us; it is this Spirit that must teach us to pray to God. The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. We must be born again by the grace of God (John 3:3; 1 Peter 1:22–23), put off the old man and put on the new (Ephesians 4:22–24), clothe ourselves with Christ (Romans 13:14).
When we are thus born of God—when we have become new men, that is, when we have died to sin, laid aside our evil habits, become masters over our sensuality, when our hearts have been improved through love for God and Christ, so that we fulfill his commandments willingly and joyfully—then we are citizens of his Kingdom, then the Kingdom of God has come upon us, then we are assured of our future salvation.
This Spirit of God causes us to be poor in spirit and humble, peaceful, and comforted in suffering—for it assures us of the hope that we shall be comforted, that we shall be called children of God and shall see God.
II.
a) That it is difficult—whoever imagines it to be easy either lacks knowledge of their duties and what is required for perfection, or suffers from complacency and pride, refusing to acknowledge the innate corruption of the human heart, the power of the world and its lusts, the force of habit and favorite inclinations, and a deep attachment to the treasures of this earth (Matthew 19:24).
b) As hard as it is, God offers comfort (v. 26). However mighty sin may be, the grace of God is mightier still. God does not demand more of a person than he can bear. He has opened for us in Christ a source of salvation and blessedness. Christ has freed us from the bondage of Mosaic law, and now we may expect not punishment from God, but help and salvation.
Yet this does not mean we are already entirely free, already raised to the status of children of God. We are no longer under the dominion of the Law, but still under the bondage of sin, under a superficial service of words. We can only become free through firm faith in the grace and promises of God, and in the merit of Christ. This confidence, this faith, is supported by the Spirit of God. But man must not remain inactive; he must never grow weary in combating his self-love, his lusts, and his desires—only then can true faith arise, a faith fruitful in good works, a faith that makes a person peaceful, humble, merciful, and courageous in suffering.
If we possess such a faith, then we are children of light—that is, we hate the works of darkness, wickedness which must hide, and we love truth in word and deed, truth which may appear openly before all. Then we are sons of God—that is, we place childlike trust in Him, as a child expects good gifts from his father, so we hope for all good things from Him—and we do receive them from Him. Thus the Spirit of God dwells in us, thus we are citizens of the Kingdom of God—that is, fellow citizens of that Kingdom in which God is worshiped as the highest lawgiver and ruler, in spirit and in truth—not with cries of “Lord, Lord,” but through imitation, according to human frailty, of His will. We are diligent in good works, let our light shine before men, and offer Him the most pleasing worship: that we do good and what is right. Then we are heirs of His blessedness, which He has prepared for all who forsake the broad road of vice and enter through the narrow and difficult gate of Christian virtue into His Kingdom, and will be richly rewarded in heaven.
How blessed he who is born of Thee,
Receives from Thee a heart renewed,
And chosen for Thy own shall be,
Who shuns all sin, in holy mood,
And lives divine! How blest is he,
Thy child, Thy own—
The true Christian indeed.
Studies
(1792/93–1794)
In What Respect Is Religion…
In what respect is religion to be appreciated as subjective or as objective—particularly with regard to feelings? Objective religion is rather theology (cf. Fichte, Introduction). How far may reasoning intervene before it ceases to be religion? From this question, the common invective against idolaters is to be judged.
Sacrifices and the concepts on which they are based can never be introduced into a people that has attained a certain degree of enlightenment! They must have arisen from the childlike spirit of a nation and have been propagated by tradition. How can they, once established, endure within an enlightened nation? What is required, or what sustains them, is a spirit of cheerfulness, of well-being—an offering presupposes voluntariness.
Whatever absurd notions the Greeks may have had of their gods, however contradictory they may appear to our ideal (cf. Mendelssohn, Jerusalem, p. 101), however debasing—one must consider that these were intimately connected with the general concept of fate—a thoroughly human theory. Ridiculous by contrast is the rationalistic speculation on God’s permission of certain events—and the supposed grounds for such divine permission, by which one seeks to “rescue” divine providence (cf. Campe’s Discovery of America).
Parallel between priests and pastors.
Mendelssohn, Jerusalem, p. 125: The Jewish nation demanded a king—people would rather obey a monarch than be continually bothered by the nagging of their equals. Many a peasant is more hostile to his advocate, judge, etc., than to the oppression and exactions of his princes on a grander scale. That, Mendelssohn says (p. 121), is the spirit of the Jewish religion.
The Christian [cf. Tertullian, Apologeticus, c. 39], and after the Reformation, when people sought to restore the purity of religion and morals of the early centuries—censorship, ecclesiastical penance; among the Jews, too much penitential ritual and punishment—pettiness of character—instead of shaping national character on a grand scale: petty despotism, etc. Did the Jewish ceremonial law unite public and private religion?
What is the role of a general teacher and overseer in a religion that is essentially private religion? Censorship, individual education, correction, exhortation—such a role is incompatible. What is the real relation and proper office of our pastors?
Piety among the Greeks and Romans.
Mendelssohn, Jerusalem, p. 121: With the destruction of the temple—thus lived the Roman and the Greek in his homeland. Cato embraced his whole fatherland, and the fatherland filled his whole soul. Cosmopolitanism is only possible for a few; wherever it arises, the state must already be flawed—thus it was also for the early Christians (Tertullian, c. 38).
[Margin note: The Reformers recognized the value of subjective religion and strove to improve humanity thereby; they sought to render this art into a system of words. This is still evident in all theological compendia, where the loci from the locus de gratia to the unio mystica occupy a large and significant place. But today it is recognized that subjective religion cannot be forced into a dogmatics, and objective religion is preferred—more efficient in a compendium, perhaps, but as a means of moral reform it is futile. Today one is learned—the locus de scriptura sacra now takes a large place, whereas older compendia presupposed the scriptural ground of belief in God.]
“One size fits all” thinking—despite nature’s diversity. The issue is not merely that one wants to claim all men have the same duties, that the same thing is duty for all; rather, one wants to force the pathology of the human soul into a single model. What results from this? (cf. Longinus, ch. ult.) Justice has its laws and they perhaps concern individuals more directly—who would presume to prescribe laws for the passions in general? For whom are the innumerable cautionary rules in moral treatises? For perhaps one single person.
The entire array of motives and drives by which such-and-such virtue is motivated—the entire apparatus of restrictions and qualifications delineating how far one may go in each passion, in each active force of the senses—is suited to perhaps only one individual. Only in the already wise and good are these motives effective. They are, at best, rules by which I might shape this or that person—but that is the slow work of private cultivation.
A Christian is supposed to be a perfect person! If he sins, he ceases to be a Christian—quoad ecclesiam invisibilem—yet he still professes the popular religion, still remains a member of the Christian Church. What is the Christian Church? A multitude of individuals (not a unified community of individuals) who have achieved a certain moral perfection. Or is Christianity merely a popular religion—the memorization of dogma—which the wicked Christian has in common with the true one?
Petty virtuous acts—no greatness—a communal spirit that sets aside petty passions and knows how to act for the whole—many small things make one great effect, which may be quite meager, quite impoverished.
Is this the joint effect of religion and despotism?
Why are women more religious than men?
[Margin note: The Christian religion, as a popular religion, required public ecclesiastical discipline—and this is wholly unnatural, ineffective, and harmful, because of the immense shame it imposes.]
But the Principle Material…
But the principal mass, the material out of which everything is actually formed, is nothing but sensibility.
The well-known result—mentioned here only because it is so often overlooked—is that the human being is a being composed of both sensibility and reason. That each human being under— (breaks off)
Atheism appears to the common crowd as such a dreadful vice—or even the mere deviation from common notions of the deity is immediately branded as atheism—because all the feelings of humility, gratitude, all hopes, were bound to these notions. And this entire fabric of feeling is torn apart, destroyed, when those conceptions are altered.
The Greeks and Romans permitted an Aristophanes, a Plautus, to mock their gods, to ascribe to them the most ridiculous actions—as long as the playwright left intact their characteristic symbolic representations. Jupiter could err as much as he liked, as long as he retained his thunderbolt. He could appear in Prometheus as a tyrant—but they would not forgive a Socrates or an Aristotle for showing them ton theon in a pure idea, elevated above thunderbolts and loincloths.
The Christian religion has produced many martyrs—heroes in suffering, but not heroes in action.
By impressing upon people the many separate duties in their particularity, one blurs the greatness—the wholeness—one loses sight of the greater whole. The sense of how much one ought to do becomes confused, and the awareness of one’s own strength is not allowed to emerge. The spirit from whose abundance virtue and all dutifulness must spring is not cultivated.
The Christian religion offers a vast realm for the imagination, from which our great Christian epic poets have drawn more majestic images, more dreadful scenes, and more moving traits than had ever before entered a poet’s soul. But the imagination of the common people has no guidance—no beautiful representations of these images set before them, neither in painting, nor in sculpture, nor in poetry—nothing to follow, nothing to cling to. And this would also seem unsuitable for a religion which teaches to worship God in spirit and in truth, and which, by its original essence, declared war on all images of divine beings.
[Margin note continuation: But they have not descended to the common people—they cannot, for they are not publicly recognized, they are not sanctioned by anything. Moreover, a reason capable of grasping the idea behind such a poem—a heart capable of deep and refined feeling—will, in turn, reject much of what is digestible and believable for coarser people, who for their part would pass over the higher beauties meant for cultivated reason and a sensitive heart.]
Our Tradition…
Our tradition—folk songs, etc.
There is no Harmodius, no Aristogeiton, whom eternal fame accompanied because they struck down the tyrant and gave equal rights and laws to their fellow citizens, who lived on in the mouth of our people, in its songs—
What constitutes the historical knowledge of our people? They lack a distinctive, patriotic tradition—
Memory and imagination are filled instead with the primeval history of humanity, with the history of a foreign people, with the deeds and misdeeds of their kings, which concern us not at all—and wit exercises itself just as easily upon their absurdities as Aristophanes’ wit once did upon his gods.
[Margin note, deleted: We teach our children table prayers, morning and evening blessings…]
Already in the Architecture…
Already in the architecture, the differing genius of the Greeks and the Germans reveals itself. The former lived freely, in wide streets; in their houses were open, uncovered courtyards; in their cities, frequent large squares. Their temples were built in a beautiful, noble style—simple like the spirit of the Greeks, sublime like the god to whom they were consecrated. The images of the gods—supreme ideals of beauty—the most beautiful human form as it might emerge in the dawn of resurrection—everything portrayed in the highest intensity of being and life; no images of decay—the hideous mask of death, among them, was the gentle genius, the brother of sleep.
Whatever is beautiful in Catholic worship is borrowed from the Greeks and Romans—the fragrant incense, the beautiful Madonnas—but the churches are Gothic masses; the greatest works of art usually buried in a corner and heaped over with childish, petty ornamentation—like a child who cannot yet grasp something great, something sublime, whose soul has not yet reached the youth or manhood of taste.
The forms of other images are taken from the clumsiest human types that surround the painter. If the faces express emotion—pain or joy—they are grinning caricatures, contorted distortions of the muscles. The brush that produced most of the older paintings seems to have been dipped in night—the appearance is gloomy—no bright, joyful imagination animated them.
Our cities have narrow, stinking streets—the rooms are cramped, darkly paneled, with dim windows—large halls are low and oppressive when one is inside them—just to have nothing free or open, pillars were placed in the middle wherever possible. It is more intimate to sit together in a small room—more domestic. Formerly, indeed, rooms were large, but typically the entire household was in them—servants and maids—there one slept and dined. The earlier spirit of the Germans, especially in terms of culture, was domesticity—their greatest delight, for example, frightful drinking—in general (as also in loyalty and faith), solidity. The joy of the Greeks was purer—more cheerful—more moderate—more lighthearted.
The Germans did not drink a carefree, Socratic cup—but goblets over which one either bellowed like a bacchant—or, if more moderate, still drank with concern. The Gothic architecture: eerily sublime.
Religion Is One of the Most Important Matters…
A.1)
Religion is one of the most important matters of our lives. As children, we were already taught to stammer out prayers to the deity; already our little hands were folded, to raise them toward the Most High. Into our memory was loaded a collection of phrases—then still incomprehensible—for future use and comfort in our affairs.
As we grow older, occupations related to religion fill a great part of our lives; indeed, for some, the entire orbit of their thoughts and inclinations is connected to it, just as the outer rim of a wheel is connected to its center. Aside from other occasional festivals, we dedicate to it the first day of each week, which has appeared to us from our youth on in a more beautiful and festive light than all other days. We see around us a special class of people exclusively designated for the service of religion; to all the major events and actions of human life—on which private happiness depends—already at birth, in marriage, at death and burial, something religious is added.
Does the human being, when older, reflect on the nature and qualities of this being—especially on the relationship of the world to this being—toward which all his feelings are directed? Human nature is so constituted that what is practical in the doctrine of God—what becomes for him a motivating force for action, a source of the knowledge of duties, and a source of consolation—readily presents itself to the unspoiled sense of man. And the instruction we are given from youth about it—the concepts, all the outward forms connected to it, and everything that makes an impression on us—is of such a kind that it is grafted onto a natural need of the human spirit—often immediately, but sadly too often only through arbitrary connections, neither grounded in the nature of the soul, nor in the truths to be drawn from the concepts themselves and developed from them.
…of human life, to set it in motion—the exalted demands of reason upon humanity, whose legitimacy we so often acknowledge with full conviction when our hearts are filled with it—and the attractive portrayals that a pure and beautiful imagination paints of innocent or wise human beings—these should never so overpower us that we begin to hope to find much of them in the real world, or believe we might catch sight of this beautiful mirage here or there in reality. Discontent with what we actually encounter, a gloomy disposition, would then more rarely cloud our minds.
Let us not be alarmed, then, when we find ourselves compelled to acknowledge that sensibility is the principal element in all human action and striving; how difficult it is to distinguish whether mere prudence or genuine morality is the determining ground of the will. If the pursuit of happiness is accepted as the highest aim of life, and if one simply knows how to calculate well, it will produce externally much the same results as if the law of reason determined our will. Just as in a moral system, pure morality must be strictly separated from sensibility in the abstract, and the latter subordinated to the former—so too must we, in considering the human being as a whole and human life in its entirety, above all take into account his sensibility, his dependence on both external and internal nature—on that which surrounds him and in which he lives—and on his sensuous inclinations and his blind instinct.
The nature of man is, as it were, only impregnated with the ideas of reason. Like salt that permeates a dish and, when properly prepared, should never appear in lumps, yet imparts its flavor to the whole; or like light that penetrates everything, fills all, manifests its influence throughout nature, and yet cannot be represented as a substance—though it gives form to objects, refracts differently in each, and draws forth healing air from plants—so too do the ideas of reason animate the entire web of human feeling. Through their influence, actions appear in their own particular light. The ideas themselves rarely show their essence directly, but their effect permeates everything like a subtle matter, giving each inclination and impulse its own specific tone.
A.1)
It lies in the very concept of religion that it is not merely a science of God—of His attributes, of our relation and the world’s relation to Him, and of the continued existence of our soul—something which might be, in some cases, acceptable to us through reason alone, or made known to us by some other means. Nor is it merely historical or rational knowledge. Rather, religion concerns the heart; it exerts an influence on our feelings and on the determination of our will. This is the case in part because our duties and the laws gain greater weight by being presented to us as laws of God, and in part because the idea of God’s sublimity and goodness toward us fills our hearts with awe, with feelings of humility and gratitude.
Religion therefore imparts to morality and its motives a new, more exalted momentum; it provides a new, stronger dam against the force of sensuous impulses. For sensuous beings, religion is also sensuous—its moral incentives must themselves be sensuous in order to be capable of acting upon the sensuous nature. Admittedly, in so doing, they often lose some of their dignity insofar as they are moral motivations; but they have, through this very adaptation to our feelings, taken on such a deeply human appearance, have conformed themselves so well to our affective nature, that—attracted by our hearts and flattered by the beauty of the accompanying imagery—we often forget that a cold reason might disapprove of such representations, or even forbid us from speaking of them at all.
When one speaks of public religion, one understands by this the concepts of God and immortality, and whatever is related to them insofar as they constitute the conviction of a people, and insofar as they exert an influence on the actions and mode of thought of that people. Furthermore, this also includes the means by which these ideas are, on the one hand, taught to the people, and on the other, made compelling to their hearts.
By this influence, not only the immediate effect is to be understood—for instance, that I do not steal because God forbade it—but especially the more remote effects must be taken into account and are often to be valued as more important. These include above all the elevation and ennoblement of a nation’s spirit—that the so often dormant feeling of its dignity be awakened within the soul of the people, that it not cast itself away nor allow itself to be cast away, that it not only feel itself as human, but that also gentler hues of humanity and goodness be introduced into the overall picture.
The principal doctrines of the Christian religion have, since its inception, largely remained the same; yet depending on the historical circumstances, one doctrine has at times been entirely cast into shadow, while another has been elevated, brought into the light, and—at the expense of the obscured one—distorted, either overextended or overly restricted.
The entire body of religious principles, and of the sentiments that flow from them, and especially the degree of intensity with which they can influence modes of action, is the central point of a people’s religion. Upon a subjugated spirit, one that has lost its youthful vigor under the weight of its chains and begins to grow old, religious ideas make little impression.
The youthful genius of a people… the aging one—
The youthful genius feels itself and exults in its strength, flies with hunger for the new, becomes deeply engaged, but may then abandon it again and seize upon something else—yet it can never be something that would wish to lay fetters upon its proud and free neck. The aging genius, by contrast, is marked above all by firm attachment to inherited tradition in every respect, and thus wears its fetters like an old man wears his gout: grumbling over it, but unable to cast it off. It allows itself to be pushed and pulled according to its ruler’s will, yet it enjoys only with a half-conscious mind—not freely, not openly, not with that cheerful and radiant joy that invites others to share its sympathy. Its festivals are chatter, just as nothing pleases an old man more than idle talk—not loud exclamation, not full-blooded enjoyment.
Distinction between objective and subjective religion — importance of this distinction with respect to the entire question.
Objective religion is the fides quae creditur—the faith that is believed. Understanding and memory are the faculties that operate here, as they investigate, contemplate, retain, or at least believe the doctrines. Practical knowledge may also belong to objective religion, but only insofar as it remains a dead capital. Objective religion can be systematized in the mind, reduced to a book, and delivered to others in speech. Subjective religion, by contrast, expresses itself only through feelings and actions. When I say of a person “he has religion,” I do not mean he possesses extensive knowledge of it, but rather that his heart feels the deeds, the wonders, the nearness of the divinity; that he recognizes and sees God in nature, in the destinies of human beings; that he casts himself down before Him, thanks Him, and praises Him in His works.
He does not act merely according to whether something is good or prudent; the thought that it is pleasing to God is itself a motive—often the strongest one. In joy, in a moment of happiness, he simultaneously casts a glance toward God and thanks Him. Subjective religion is living: it is activity within the being, and outward action. Subjective religion is something individual; objective religion is abstraction. The former is like the living book of nature—plants, insects, birds, and animals, each living from and with one another, each alive, each enjoying; they are intermixed—everywhere one encounters all types together. The latter is like the cabinet of the naturalist, who has killed the insects, dried the plants, stuffed the animals or preserved them in alcohol—and has arranged everything together that nature had separated, ordering them all according to a single purpose, whereas nature had interwoven an infinite diversity of purposes in a harmonious whole.
The entire body of religious knowledge belonging to objective religion may be the same among a great people—it could even, in itself, be the same across the entire earth. It is interwoven with subjective religion, but constitutes only a small, and rather ineffectual, part of it. It is modified differently in each individual person. What is decisive in the case of subjective religion is whether—and how far—a person’s soul is disposed to be determined by religious motives; how sensitive it is to them; and then, what kinds of representations make the greatest impression on the heart; which types of feelings are most cultivated in the soul and most easily aroused.
One person may have no receptivity for gentler representations of love; motives drawn from the love of God may make no impression on his heart. His coarser faculties of feeling are stirred only by fear—by thunder and lightning. The strings of his heart do not resonate with the gentle tones of love. Others are deaf to the voice of duty—it is useless to point them to the inner judge of actions, who has erected his tribunal in the heart of man: that voice has never spoken within them. Self-interest is the pendulum whose oscillations keep their mechanism in motion.
On this disposition—on this receptivity—depends how subjective religion should be shaped in each individual. Objective religion is taught to us from early youth in schools; it is imposed on our memory so early that the still-unformed understanding, the beautiful tender plant of open and free thinking, is often pressed down under the weight—or, like roots that struggle through loose soil, absorbing and intertwining with it and drawing nourishment from it, yet bent aside by a stone and forced to seek other directions. So the burden placed on the memory remains unresolved; the maturing faculties of the soul either shake it off entirely, or leave it aside without drawing any nourishing sap from it.
In every person, nature has implanted a seed of the finer feelings that arise from morality—a sense for moral things, for purposes beyond mere sensuality. That these beautiful seeds do not wither, that a true receptivity for moral ideas and sentiments develops—this is the task of education, of cultivation. Religion is not the first thing that can take root in the soul; it must encounter a prepared soil in which it can then flourish.
Everything depends on subjective religion; this alone has a true value. Let the theologians argue over dogmas, over what belongs to objective religion, over the precise formulation of its doctrines. Every religion rests on a few fundamental principles that, across the different religions, are more or less modified, distorted, or presented more or less purely. They form the foundation of all belief, of all the hopes that religion offers us. When I speak of religion, I abstract entirely from all scientific—or rather, metaphysical—knowledge of God, of ourselves, and of the world’s relation to Him. Such knowledge, which involves only the reasoning faculty, is theology, no longer religion. I count only that knowledge of God and immortality as religion which the needs of practical reason require, and whatever stands in a readily comprehensible connection with it. Closer inferences regarding particular dispensations of God for the benefit of mankind are not excluded.
I speak of objective religion only insofar as it constitutes a part of subjective religion.
My intention is not to examine which religious doctrines most stir the heart, which offer the soul the greatest comfort and elevation—not how the teachings of a religion must be constituted in order to make a people better and happier—but rather, what institutions are required so that the doctrines and the power of religion may be woven into the fabric of human feeling, joined to the springs of action, and manifest themselves in them as living and effective—so that they become wholly subjective. Once they do, religion does not express its existence merely through folded hands, bent knees, and the bowing of the heart before the holy; it spreads into all branches of human inclinations (without the soul necessarily being conscious of it) and works everywhere—though only indirectly. It acts, so to speak, negatively: in the joyful enjoyment of human pleasures or in the performance of noble deeds and the exercise of gentler virtues of love for mankind, even if it does not act directly, it nonetheless exerts a subtle influence in that it allows the soul to remain free and open in its activity, without paralyzing the sinews of its energy.
For the expression of human powers—whether of courage, of compassion, or of joyful vitality and enjoyment of life—freedom from malicious moods of the soul such as envy and similar tendencies is necessary; innocence, a clear conscience—and these two qualities religion helps to foster. In this way, it also has influence in that innocence, when joined with it, knows precisely where to draw the line, where joy turns into excess, courage and decisiveness into violations of others’ rights.
Subjective religion.
If theology is a matter of understanding and memory—its origin may be whatever it is, even from religion itself—while religion is a matter of the heart, interesting to us because of a need of practical reason, then it follows immediately that different faculties of the soul are at work in religion and theology, and that different dispositions of the soul are required for each.
In order to be able to hope that the highest good—which we are commanded to make a real component of our duty—will actually come to pass, practical reason requires belief in a deity, in immortality.
This is at least the seed from which religion springs—and conscience, the inner sense of right and wrong, and the feeling that wrongdoing must be punished and right action rewarded with happiness—this only dissolves the deduction of religion into its component parts, into clear concepts. Whether the idea of a mighty invisible being arose in the human soul from some terrifying natural event, or whether God first revealed himself to humans in the thunderstorm—where one feels his presence more immediately—or in the gentle whisper of the evening breeze, it struck that moral feeling which found in that idea the perfect correspondence to its need.
Religion becomes mere superstition when it is invoked in situations where only prudence should advise; when fear of the deity compels a person to perform certain acts in hopes of averting divine displeasure. In many sensual nations, religion may indeed be of this nature—the concept of God and his manner of dealing with humans is then limited to what accords with the laws of human sensibility, and is effective only on their sensuality—and very little that is moral is mixed into that concept. The notion of God, and the idea of turning to him, is already more moral—that is, it already indicates a consciousness of a higher order governed by greater ends than mere sensuality. Even if the aforementioned superstition is also mixed in, yet when the inquiry into the deity regarding the future or the outcome of an undertaking is also joined with invocation of his help, with the feeling that everything depends on his decisions, and if belief underlies it—or at least stands alongside belief in fate or natural necessity—then there is at least the faith that he dispenses happiness only to the just, and misfortune to the unjust and the arrogant.
And when moral motives for action are drawn from religion, then it becomes genuine.
Subjective religion is essentially the same among good people—no matter what color objective religion may take.
“What makes you a Christian to yourselves, makes you a Jew to me.”
So says Nathan [the Wise], for religion is a matter of the heart, which often acts inconsistently with the dogmas that its intellect or memory accepts. The most venerable human beings are certainly not always those who have speculated the most about religion—those who often transform their religion into theology, i.e., who exchange the fullness and sincerity of faith for cold knowledge and rhetorical display.
Religion gains something from the intellect—but not much. Its operations, its doubts, may even cool the heart more than they warm it. And he who has discovered that the representations of other nations, or of the so-called pagans, contain much absurdity, and who rejoices greatly in his own superior insight, in the reach of his reason—greater than that of the greatest men—that person does not understand the essence of religion.
He who calls his Jehovah “Jupiter” or “Brahma,” and is a true worshipper of God, offers his thanks and his sacrifice just as childlike as the true Christian does. Who is not moved by that beautiful simplicity, when innocence remembers its greatest benefactor in the good that nature offers it, and presents to him the best, the unblemished, the firstfruits of its grain and sheep?
Who does not admire Coriolanus, when in the height of his fortune, fearing Nemesis, just as Gustavus Adolphus in the battle of Lützen humbled himself before God, he prays—not to the genius of Roman greatness—but to be humbled?
Such expressions are meant for the heart and must be enjoyed with the heart, with simplicity of spirit and feeling—not judged with cold intellect. Only the self-conceit of sectarianism, which fancies itself wiser than all people of other factions, could fail to appreciate the pure final will of Socrates—to offer a rooster to the god of healing in gratitude for what he considered a recovery through death—and instead make the spiteful remark that Tertullian offers in Apologeticus 46.
Where the heart, as in the friar in the scene from Nathan the Wise from which the earlier quotation is drawn, does not speak louder than the intellect—where it remains silent and gives the intellect time to reason about an action—there the heart is already not worth much; love does not dwell there. Nowhere is the voice of unspoiled feeling, of a pure heart, and the pedantry of the intellect more beautifully opposed than in the Gospel story where Jesus accepts the anointing of his body by a woman formerly of ill repute as the open, uninhibited outpouring of a soul filled with repentance, trust, and love, undeterred by the surrounding company. He accepts it with favor and affection. But some of his apostles had hearts too cold to perceive the depth of this feminine feeling, to share in the beauty of this act of trust, and were able to dress their callous remark in the guise of charitable concern. What a barren and forced comment it is when the well-meaning Gellert says somewhere that a little child today knows more of God than the wisest pagan—just like Tertullian in Apologeticus 46: “deum quilibet opifex…” (every craftsman knows God). As though the compendium of morality that sits here in my bookshelf—where I alone decide whether to use it to wrap a piece of stinking cheese—had more value than the perhaps sometimes unjust heart of a Frederick II. For the difference between Tertullian’s opifex, the catechism-stuffed child of Gellert, and the paper on which morality is printed is, in this regard, not very great: both lack genuinely acquired, experiential moral consciousness in nearly equal measure.
Enlightenment—reform through intellect.
The intellect serves only objective religion—refining its principles, presenting them in purity. It has borne excellent fruit, such as Lessing’s Nathan, and deserves the praise it constantly receives.
But principles are never made practical through the intellect.
The intellect is a courtier who adjusts himself willingly to his master’s whims. He can find justifications for any passion, for any venture. Above all, he serves self-love, which is always ingenious in giving committed or intended faults a pleasing hue—often even praising itself for having found such a good excuse.
Enlightenment of the intellect may make one cleverer, but not better. Even if one tries to derive virtue from prudence, showing someone that they cannot attain happiness without virtue, the calculation remains far too subtle, too cold, to have real effect in the moment of action—or to influence life at all.
Whoever takes the best manual of morals, familiarizes themselves with both the general principles and the specific duties and virtues, and then attempts to apply them in action—such a person, if they tried to think through this heap of rules and exceptions before acting, would end up with a behavior so entangled, so perpetually anxious and self-contradictory, that it would be paralyzing. No moralist ever wrote a book expecting there to be a person who would memorize it and consult it every time they felt a desire—checking to see if it were moral or permitted. And yet that is, strictly speaking, the demand that morality places on a person: that no bad inclination even arise, that it never reaches a certain intensity. But no printed morality, no enlightenment of the intellect can achieve this.
This is the negative critique raised in Campe’s Theophron—the human being must act for themselves, must make their own decisions, must not let others act in their stead. Otherwise, they are nothing more than a mechanical device.
When we speak of “enlightening a people,” it presupposes that error prevails among them—popular prejudices, especially those tied to religion, which are the most persistent. These are usually grounded in sensuality, in blind expectation that an effect will follow which is wholly unconnected to the supposed cause.
In a people ruled by prejudice, the concept of causality often rests on mere succession—things are taken to be causes simply because they follow each other. Even where causes are spoken of, the intervening links in a chain of consequences are frequently omitted or not understood. Sensuality and imagination are the primary sources of prejudice. Even propositions that are objectively true—ones that would hold up under rational scrutiny—are still prejudices for the common folk insofar as they believe them without knowing the reasons why.
So prejudices may be of two kinds: (a) genuine falsehoods; or (b) genuine truths, which are not recognized as truths through reason, but rather are accepted on faith. In this latter case, no subjective merit accrues.
To “enlighten” the people, then—especially in regard to practical prejudices, those that influence the will—is not about stripping away all prejudices indiscriminately. Rather, it means cultivating the understanding with respect to certain matters so that it may (a) free itself from the coercive power of falsehoods and (b) be genuinely convinced of the truth by reasoned grounds.
But to begin with: who among mortals has the right to decide what truth is?
Still, for practical purposes—for the sake of civil society—we must assume certain common principles to be universally valid. They must be self-evident to sound human reason, and must also lie at the foundation of any religion worthy of the name—no matter how distorted that religion might be. (a) These core principles are few in number, and (b) precisely because they are so abstract and universal—or, if they are to be rendered in the clarity that reason demands, because they contradict experience and sensory appearance (which they are not meant to regulate, but only to correct)—they are not easily embraced as living convictions by the people. And even if memory retains them, they still form no part of the human being’s real structure of desire and motivation.
Furthermore: since it is impossible for a religion meant for the people to be composed purely of such abstract truths—truths that only a few exceptional individuals in each era have fully grasped and loved—it follows that additions must always be mixed in, which are accepted solely on trust and belief. Or the purer principles must be clothed in more sensual forms to be understood and found agreeable by the senses. And in addition, customs must be introduced whose necessity or benefit must be accepted either through heartfelt faith or lifelong habituation.
From this it follows clearly: popular religion, and indeed religion itself, insofar as it is to be effective in life and action, cannot be founded on pure reason alone.
Positive religion necessarily rests on faith in tradition—through which it has been transmitted to us. And thus, we can speak of the binding nature of its religious practices only on the basis of the belief that God regards them as pleasing, as duties he demands from us. But if I consider them purely from the standpoint of reason, I can say of them only that they serve for edification, for the awakening of pious feelings, and that their suitability for that end may be examined.
But as soon as I am convinced that God is not honored in himself by these practices, that righteous action is the most pleasing service to him—yet I still recognize that these practices serve edification—then precisely for that reason, these practices will have lost a great part of their possible impression on me.
As religion, in general, is a matter of the heart, one could ask to what extent reasoning may interfere and still remain religion. When one reflects too much on the origin of feelings, on the customs one is expected to participate in and through which pious sentiments are to be awakened—on their historical origin, on their appropriateness and similar things—then they surely lose some of the sacred aura with which we were once accustomed to behold them, just as the dogmas of theology lose their authority when we examine them through the lens of church history.
But how little such cold reflection offers true support to a person is seen all too often, when someone finds themselves in a situation where the torn heart needs a firmer staff to lean on—when despair again grasps at that which once offered comfort, and now clings to it all the more anxiously, lest it slip away again, while the ear deliberately shuts itself against the sophistries of the intellect.
Something other than enlightenment, other than reasoning, is wisdom—but wisdom is not science. Wisdom is an elevation of the soul that has, through experience combined with reflection, risen above the sway of opinion and the impressions of sensuality. And if it is practical wisdom—not mere self-satisfied or boastful wisdom—it must necessarily be accompanied by a quiet warmth, a gentle fire. It reasons little. It does not proceed methodically from definitions and a chain of syllogisms in barbara et barocco to what it holds to be true. It did not purchase its conviction in the public market, where knowledge is sold to anyone who pays the price, nor could it count out its truth in coined currency, in the circulating denominations of the schools. Rather, it speaks from the fullness of the heart.
The cultivation of understanding and its application to objects of interest—that remains a noble privilege. As does clarity about one’s duties, enlightenment concerning practical truths. But these are not of such a kind that they can give morality to a person. In worth, they stand infinitely behind goodness and purity of heart; indeed, they are not even commensurable with them.
Cheerfulness is a defining trait in the character of a well-disposed youth. If circumstances hinder it—if he must withdraw more into himself—and he resolves to form himself into a virtuous man, but does not yet have sufficient experience to know that books cannot accomplish this alone, then he may reach for Campe’s Theophron, hoping to make these lessons in wisdom and prudence his guide in life. He reads a section every morning and evening and thinks about it all day long. What will be the result? Actual self-improvement? That would require years of practice and experience.
But the meditations on Campe and his pedagogical ruler will grow tiresome in eight days! He moves about gloomy and anxious in society, where only those are welcome who know how to cheer others. He experiences joy timidly, joy which is only truly savored by those whose hearts are already cheerful. Overwhelmed by the sense of his own shortcomings, he bows awkwardly before everyone. Social interaction with women does not lift his spirits, because he fears that a mere touch from a young girl might ignite a burning flame through his veins—and this gives him an awkward, stiff demeanor. But he won’t endure this for long; he will soon shake off the supervision of this grumpy tutor and be all the better for it.
If Enlightenment is to achieve what its greatest proponents claim for it—if it is to deserve its accolades—then it must become true wisdom. Otherwise, it remains nothing more than pseudo-wisdom (afterweisheit), which boasts and exalts itself in its lumières, imagining itself far superior to its many weaker brethren. This conceit is common among many young men who, through books, acquire new insights and begin to abandon the beliefs they had shared with most around them—often with vanity playing a particularly large role. Whoever speaks much of the incomprehensible stupidity of humankind, who can demonstrate to the hair’s breadth how foolish it is that a people should hold a certain prejudice, who constantly throws around terms like “Enlightenment,” “knowledge of mankind,” “history of humanity,” “happiness,” and “perfection”—he is nothing but a mountebank of Enlightenment, a street vendor hawking bland universal remedies.
They feed each other hollow words and overlook the sacred, delicate fabric of human feeling. Each of us likely hears such chatter around us; many may well have experienced it in themselves. For in our age, so crammed with books, this developmental trajectory is quite common. If now and then, through life itself, someone learns to truly understand what had previously lain dormant in their soul as dead capital, yet still a mass of undigested book-learning remains in their intellectual stomach—a mass which, because the stomach is overburdened, prevents healthier nourishment from being digested, and deprives the rest of the system of any truly sustaining juices—then the bloated appearance may perhaps give the illusion of health, but a bloodless phlegm paralyzes all free movement in the limbs.
A task of the enlightening intellect is to examine objective religion. But just as intellect has little weight when it comes to actually improving people—raising them to great, resolute convictions, to noble feelings, to determined self-reliance—so too its product, objective religion, carries little weight in this regard.
It flatters the human intellect to behold its own creation—a vast and lofty edifice of the knowledge of God, of human duties, and of nature. Indeed, it has assembled the tools and materials for it; it has fashioned from them a building and continually labors to refine it—sometimes embellishing it with ornamentation. Yet the more expansive and complex the construction becomes—a building on which all humanity labors—the less does it belong to any one individual.
He who merely copies this general edifice, who gathers only from it, who does not build for himself and from himself a little house of his own to dwell in—with rafters and framework in which he feels at home, where every stone, if not wholly hewn by him from raw form, was at least shaped and turned in his hands—he is a man of letters only, not one who has lived and woven from within.
Whoever merely constructs a palace after the pattern of that great house lives in it like Louis XIV in Versailles—hardly familiar with all the rooms of his own property—and occupies only a tiny cabinet within it. But a father in his ancestral home knows everything better; he can give an account of every screw and every cupboard, of its use and its history. (Compare: Lessing’s Nathan — “Of most things I can still say where, how, and why I learned them.”)
The little house that a man can call truly his own—that is what religion must help to build. And how much it can help him in doing so!
Between pure religion of reason, which worships God in spirit and in truth and sees His service only in virtue, and fetish-belief, which imagines that it can make itself pleasing to God through something other than a genuinely good will—there lies so vast a difference that the latter, in contrast to the former, has no value at all; both are of entirely different kinds. And as important as it is for humanity to be led ever more toward religion of reason and for fetish-belief to be displaced, the question remains:
Since a purely spiritual church remains only an ideal of reason—and since it is hardly possible to establish a public religion that removes all opportunity for deriving fetish-belief from it—how must a popular religion be generally organized so that:
a) Negatively, it gives as little occasion as possible for people to cling to the letter and to external practices, and
b) Positively, that the people be led toward religion of reason and become receptive to it?
If in morality the idea of holiness is posited as the highest peak of virtue and as the ultimate goal of striving, then the objections of those who say such an idea is unreachable for man (which even those moralists themselves admit), and that, beyond pure reverence for the law, man still needs other motives related to his sensuous nature, prove not so much that man should not strive toward this idea—were it even for eternity—but rather only that, given the coarseness and powerful inclination toward sensuality among most people, one must often be content with merely achieving legality—and legality requires no purely moral motivation, for which they have little sensitivity.
And it is already a gain if only crude sensuality is refined, and if instead of truly animal impulses, there emerge feelings that are more susceptible to the influence of reason and come somewhat closer to the moral—where it is only possible for moral sentiments to germinate if the loud clamoring of sensuality has been somewhat quieted. Indeed, even mere culture is already a gain. They wish only to assert that it is unlikely—either for mankind as a whole or for any individual—that humanity could ever entirely dispense with non-moral impulses.
Such feelings are woven into our very nature—feelings which, though not moral, not springing from reverence for the law, and thus neither entirely firm nor possessing inherent worth or deserving of reverence—are nevertheless lovable, inhibit evil inclinations, and promote the best in humanity. These include all benevolent tendencies: compassion, goodwill, friendship, etc.
To this empirical character, which is enclosed within the circle of inclinations, belongs also the moral feeling, which must extend its delicate threads into the entire fabric of being. The foundational principle of the empirical character is love, which is something analogous to reason in that love finds itself in others—or rather, forgetting itself, it places itself outside its own existence, lives, feels, and acts, so to speak, in others. In the same way, reason, as the principle of universally valid laws, recognizes itself in every rational being as a fellow-citizen of an intelligible world.
The empirical character of man is indeed affected by pleasure and displeasure. Yet love, even if it is a pathological principle of action, is unselfish. It acts not because it has calculated that the pleasures resulting from its actions will be purer and longer-lasting than those of sensuality or from satisfying some passion. Thus, it is not the principle of refined self-love, in which the I is always the ultimate end.
Empiricism is certainly unsuited for the formulation of fundamental principles. But when it comes to the question of how to influence people, one must take them as they are, and seek out all good impulses and emotions by which, even if not directly their freedom is increased, yet their nature may be ennobled. Especially in a popular religion, it is of the greatest importance that imagination and the heart not remain unsatisfied—that the former be filled with grand and pure images, and that in the latter the most beneficent feelings be awakened. That both are given a proper direction is all the more essential in religion, whose subject is so great, so sublime, where both are all too easily left to forge their own paths or be led astray—either the heart clinging to externals through false representations and its own comfort-seeking nature, or finding nourishment in lowly, falsely humble feelings, while believing it is serving God thereby.
Or the imagination may associate things as causes and effects whose sequence is purely coincidental, and expect extraordinary effects contrary to nature. Man is such a multifaceted being that anything can be made of him; the intricately interwoven fabric of his emotions has so many loose ends that, if not through one thread, then through another, it can be seized—hence he has been capable of the most foolish superstition, of the greatest hierarchical and political servitude. To weave these fine natural threads into a noble band must be above all the task of popular religion.
Popular religion differs from private religion primarily in this: its purpose—by working powerfully on imagination and heart—is to inspire the soul with the strength and enthusiasm, the spirit, indispensable for great and noble virtue. The development of the individual according to his character, instruction in resolving conflicts of duty, particular means of promoting virtue, comfort and support in moments of suffering and misfortune—these belong to private religious education. And that they do not qualify for public religion is evident:
a) Instruction regarding conflicts of duty—these are so manifold that one can be guided only either by the counsel of upright and experienced men, or by the conviction that duty and virtue are the highest principles—convictions that may indeed have been instilled and solidified through public religion and made maxims of action. Yet public instruction—like moral instruction, as already noted—is too dry, and no more than that can it succeed in ensuring that, in the moment of action, the mind be guided by such subtle casuistic rules. On the contrary, it would tend to generate an endless scrupulosity that stands in stark opposition to the determination and strength required for virtue.
b) If virtue is not a product of teaching and chatter, but rather a plant which—though requiring proper cultivation—nonetheless grows from its own impulse and strength, then the many artifices devised to cultivate virtue as in a greenhouse, where nothing can be left to chance, do more to harm than to help. Religious public instruction by its very nature entails not only that the understanding be enlightened concerning the idea of God and our relation to Him, but also that one attempt to derive all other duties from the obligations we supposedly have toward God—and to impress them upon us all the more strongly by presenting them as all the more binding.
However, this derivation has something contrived about it, something artificially deduced. It establishes a connection that is evident only to the understanding, often highly artificial and at the very least not convincing to common sense. And typically, the more motives one adduces for a duty, the colder one becomes toward it.
c) The only true comfort in suffering (for pain there is no comfort—only strength of soul can oppose it) is trust in God’s providence. All else is empty talk that slides off the heart.
How must popular religion be constituted? (Here popular religion is taken in the objective sense.)
a) With regard to its objective doctrines
b) With regard to its ceremonies
A:
I. Its doctrines must be grounded in universal reason.
II. Imagination, heart, and sense must not be left unfulfilled.
III. It must be constituted such that all needs of life—including public, state-level actions—can be connected to it.
B:
What must it avoid?
Fetish-belief—above all that which is widespread in our verbose age: the illusion that one has satisfied reason’s demands merely by delivering tirades about Enlightenment, etc.; or that one can argue endlessly over dogmatic doctrines while meanwhile improving neither oneself nor others.
I. The doctrines must necessarily—even if their authority is grounded in divine revelation—be such that they are, in principle, authorized by universal human reason. Their obligation must be immediately comprehensible and palpable to every human being who is made attentive to them.
Otherwise, such doctrines—which promise to provide us with special means to gain God’s favor, or to impart special, superior knowledge, or closer insight into inaccessible subjects supposedly for the benefit of reason, not merely for fantasy—will sooner or later become the target of attack by thinking individuals and the subject of unending controversy. In such disputes, practical interest is always lost. Or, to prevent the controversy, rigid and intolerant creeds are established. And because their connection to the genuine needs and demands of reason remains unnatural—and if, nonetheless, this connection becomes firm through habit—they easily give rise to abuse. They will never, in the soul, attain the weight of a pure, genuine, morally grounded practical moment.
These doctrines must also be simple—and if they are truths of reason, then they are for that very reason simple, because they then require neither scholarly apparatus nor the laborious effort of complex proofs. And it is precisely through this quality of simplicity that they exert all the more force and emphasis upon the soul, upon the determination of the will toward action—and thus, they concentrate far more influence, far more participation in shaping the spirit of a people, than when commandments are accumulated, artificially ordered, and for that very reason always require many exceptions.
These general doctrines must simultaneously be human—a great and difficult demand—and indeed, so human that they are appropriate to the level of intellectual culture and the stage of morality at which a people stands. Precisely some of the loftiest and most profoundly moving ideas for humanity are perhaps least suited to be taken up as general maxims; they seem to belong solely to a few individuals, tested through long experience and advanced to wisdom—individuals for whom they have become firm beliefs, unshakable convictions, especially in those situations where they are meant to bring consolation. Of this kind, in particular, is belief in a wise and benevolent Providence, accompanied—if it is of the right kind and alive—by complete surrender to God.
This doctrine, as much as it and everything associated with it is a central doctrine in the Christian churches, insofar as everything presented therein is reduced to the inaccessible love of God, toward which all things tend—further, since we are presented year in, year out with God as ever-present, ever-near, effecting everything around us—as strongly as all this is not only presented as being necessarily connected with our morality and that which is holiest to us, but also elevated to the fullest certainty through frequent affirmations from God Himself, and through other facts meant to convince us incontrovertibly—yet in practice, we see in the masses that a thunderclap, a cold night, is sufficient to make them faint-hearted in their trust in Providence and in the patient resignation to God’s will that ought to follow from it.
Indeed, it seems that such trust and patience is the portion only of a wise man—only he can rise above impatience, irritation at disappointed hopes, and bitterness in the face of misfortune. That sudden collapse of trust in God, the swift turn toward discontent with Him, is made all the easier because the Christian masses have not only from youth been trained to pray unceasingly, but are also continually persuaded of the absolute necessity of prayer by being promised its fulfillment.
Furthermore, for the benefit of suffering humanity, an enormous store of consolations in misfortune has been gathered from every end and corner—so much so that one could almost regret not losing a father or mother every eight days, or not being struck blind. This method of reflection has become so overdeveloped that with incredible subtlety the physical and moral effects of suffering have been traced out and dissected—and by presenting these effects as the purposes of Providence, people have come to believe they have attained more intimate insights into its plans for humanity, not merely in general but even in specific instances.
Yet as soon as we fail to rest content in this matter—fail to place our fingers upon our lips in reverent silence—it is only too common for presumptuous curiosity to step in, claiming mastery over the ways of Providence. This tendency, to be sure, is not further reinforced among the general populace by the many idealistic ideas currently in fashion. But all of this contributes very little to the cultivation of surrender to God’s will or to the promotion of genuine contentment.
It would be most interesting to compare this with the religion of the Greeks. Among them, on the one hand, there was the belief that the gods favored the righteous and handed over evil to the dreadful Nemesis—a belief grounded in the deep moral need of reason, delightfully animated by the warm breath of feeling—not in the cold conviction, deduced from individual cases, that all turns to the best, which can never truly be brought into life.
On the other hand, misfortune was for them truly misfortune, pain was truly pain. What had happened and could not be changed—they did not speculate about its meaning, for their moîra, their anankē tychnē (blind necessity), was indeed blind. But to this necessity they submitted willingly, with all possible resignation, and thereby had at least the advantage that one endures more easily what one has from youth been accustomed to regard as necessary—and that misfortune, beyond the pain and suffering it brings, does not also give rise to the far more burdensome and unbearable additions of bitterness, gloom, and discontent.
This belief—since it includes both reverence for the current of natural necessity and, at the same time, the conviction that human beings are governed by the gods according to moral laws—appears to be humanly appropriate to both the sublimity of divinity and the weakness, dependency on nature, and limited horizon of the human being.
Simple doctrines grounded in universal reason are compatible with any level of popular education, and this education will gradually modify them as it develops, though more externally—more in terms of the pictorial elements that pertain to sensory imagination.
These doctrines, if they are truly founded upon universal human reason, can, by their very nature, have no other purpose than to exert influence, both directly and through the magical power of deeply penetrating ceremonies, upon the spirit of the people as a whole—such that they neither interfere in the administration of civil justice, nor presume to impose private censorship. And since their formulas are also simple, they will give little cause for dispute, and because they require and posit little that is positive, their formulation of the laws of reason remains merely formal—thus the authoritarianism of priests in such a religion is inherently limited.
II. Every religion that is to be a public religion must necessarily be structured in such a way that it engages both the heart and the imagination. Even the purest religion of reason becomes incarnate in the souls of people—still more so among the general population—and it might indeed be beneficial, in order to forestall extravagant excesses of imagination, to already bind mythology to religion itself, so as to offer the imagination at least a beautiful path, one which it might then adorn with flowers.
The doctrines of the Christian religion are, for the most part, connected with history or are represented through it, and the stage upon which they are enacted is the Earth—even if not merely humans are the actors. Here, then, the imagination is offered a clearly recognizable goal—but still, many places remain where it is left a free and open field, and if tinged with dark bile, it may conjure up a terrifying world. On the other hand, it is also prone to fall into childishness, since the gentle, sensuous colors drawn from nature are excluded by the spirit of our religion—and we, generally being overly rationalistic and word-minded, do not love beautiful images.
As for ceremonies, on the one hand, it is almost inconceivable that a public religion could exist without them; but on the other hand, there is scarcely anything more difficult than to prevent the common people from mistaking them for the essence of religion itself.
Religion consists of three elements:
a) concepts,
b) essential practices, and
c) ceremonies.
If we regard baptism and the Lord’s Supper as rituals to which certain extraordinary blessings and acts of grace are attached, which are imposed upon us as duties in themselves, whose performance renders us more perfect and moral in and of themselves, then they belong to the second category. But if we regard them merely as means whose purpose and effect is simply to awaken pious sentiments, then they belong to the third category.
Sacrifices also fall under this heading, though they can only be called ceremonies in a figurative sense, because in the religions with which they are associated, they are essential—they belong to the building itself, whereas ceremonies are but its adornment—its external form.
Sacrifices too can be viewed from two perspectives:
a) First, when they were offered to the altars of the gods as atonements, as pardons, as commutations of feared physical or moral punishments into monetary fines, as a means of currying favor with the estranged grace of the Supreme Lord, the dispenser of rewards and punishments. In evaluating the deficiency of such a practice, it is certainly correct to criticize the irrationality and the corruption of the concept of morality that it entails. Yet we must also keep in mind that the idea of sacrifice was never held in so crude a form—except perhaps in the Christian Church!—and that the value of the feelings operative in such contexts—the holy reverence before the sacred being, the humbling surrender and contrition of the heart before it, the trust with which the soul burdened and longing for peace sought refuge in this anchor—must not be entirely disregarded.
A pilgrim, weighed down by the burden of his sins, who leaves behind the comfort of wife and child, forsakes his native soil to traverse the world barefoot and in a rough garment, seeking rugged paths to cause his feet pain, and wets the sacred places with his tears—seeking rest for his battling, tormented spirit, finding relief in every tear shed, in every penance, in every act of self-denial—and who, at the thought “Here Christ walked, here He was crucified for me,” is emboldened, receives strength anew, rediscovers trust in himself—should such a pilgrim, in the simplicity of his heart, become an object of Pharisaical arrogance for one in whom such a religious disposition is no longer possible due to the concepts of his age? Should we, in our superior cleverness, awaken in ourselves the smug thought: I am wiser than such people? Should such holy sentiments become objects of ridicule for us?
Even these penances are a kind of sacrifice of the same sort I have described here—sacrifices stemming from the same spirit as those penitential practices.
b) Another, gentler form of sacrifice, which seems to have arisen in milder climates, is likely the original and more universal one: it is rooted in gratitude and goodwill—where the feeling of a being superior to man, the consciousness that one owes everything to it, and that what one offers it in innocence is not despised; the sentiment of first seeking its blessing at the start of every endeavor—of turning to it in every joy, in every happiness attained—of presenting to it the first fruits, the blossoms of every good, inviting this being to dwell kindly among humans, hoping that it will graciously abide with them. The disposition that offered such a sacrifice was far removed from the idea that something had been expiated, that punishment for sin had been averted, or that Nemesis had been satisfied and had withdrawn her claims and annulled the laws that restore moral equilibrium.
Such essential practices of religion should not, in truth, be more intimately connected with religion itself than with the spirit of the people—and should in fact have sprouted forth from it—otherwise their performance will be lifeless, cold, devoid of power; the sentiments experienced in them will be artificial, pumped up—or they are practices not essential to public religion, though they may be meaningful for private religion—such as the Lord’s Supper in its current form among Christians, even though its original purpose was a meal taken in communal enjoyment.
Necessary properties of the ceremonies of a public religion:
a) And foremost, that they give as little occasion as possible for idolatrous worship (Fetischdienst)—that they are not constructed in such a way that only the mechanical act remains, and the spirit vanishes. Their sole purpose must be to elevate devotion, to heighten sacred sentiments—and as such a pure means, least prone to abuse and most effective in producing this effect, perhaps only sacred music and the communal singing of an entire people remain—perhaps also public festivals, in which religion must take part.
II. As soon as a dividing wall—or even just a gap—between life and doctrine arises, suspicion emerges that the form of the religion is defective—either because it relies too much on word-peddling (Wortkrämerei) or because it makes too lofty and affected demands upon people.
If joy, if human cheerfulness must be ashamed before religion—if someone who has made merry at a public festival must then creep into the temple in secret—then the religion’s outward form is too gloomy to expect that people would surrender life’s pleasures for its demands. Religion must dwell amiably among all the affairs of life—without intruding—but be welcome everywhere. If religion is to influence the people, it must accompany them kindly everywhere—stand at their side in the serious concerns of life as well as in festivals and joys—but not in such a way as to impose itself, or appear as a burdensome governess, but rather as a guide and encourager.
The public festivals of the Greeks were virtually all religious festivals—held in honor of a god or a man who had earned divine honors by serving the state. Even the excesses of the Bacchantes were consecrated to a god—even their public theater had a religious origin, which it never disowned in its later development. Thus Agathon did not forget the gods when he won the prize for his tragedy—on the following day he gave the gods a feast (cf. Symposium, p. 166).
A public religion that produces and nourishes great sentiments walks hand in hand with freedom.
Our religion wants to train men as citizens of heaven, whose gaze is always directed upward—and in doing so, it alienates them from human sentiments. At our greatest public festival, one approaches the enjoyment of the sacred gift clothed in mourning, with downcast gaze—at a feast that ought to be a celebration of universal brotherhood, many fear to drink from the fraternal cup, lest they be infected with venereal disease by the one who drank before them—and so that one’s soul is not distracted from holy sentiments, one must, during the act itself, reach into one’s pocket to retrieve the offering and place it on the plate.
Instead of the Greeks—crowned with the friendly gifts of nature, accompanied by the colors of joy, spreading cheerfulness upon their open, friendly, love-inviting faces—approaching the altars of their kind gods.
The spirit of the people, their history, their religion, and the degree of their political freedom cannot be viewed in isolation from one another, neither in terms of their mutual influence nor of their specific characteristics—they are interwoven into one band, like three colleagues in office, none of whom can do anything without the others, but each of whom also receives something from the others. The morality of individual persons is the domain of private religion—of parents, of one’s own effort and circumstance. The spirit of a people is, in part, the responsibility of public religion and, in part, of political institutions.
The father of this spirit is Chronos, from whom he remains dependent all his life (i.e., the temporal circumstances); his mother is the mole, the constitution; his nurse and wet nurse is religion; his helpers in education are the fine arts—music, the movement of the body and mind. Aetheric in nature, he is tethered to the Earth by a light bond which, enchanted by a magical charm, resists all attempts to break it—for it is wholly entwined in his being. This bond, whose coarse foundation is necessity, is woven from a thousand threads of nature; and in the fact that he becomes more firmly bound to nature with each new thread, he feels not constraint but rather, since it is the work of his own activity, the expansion of his enjoyment, the extension of his life—he finds enlargement, multiplication of these threads as a free self-enlargement.
All the finer, more beautiful feelings have developed in him, which bring myriad variations of joy into experience and sociability. Around him dance cheerfulness and joy, his more serious companions are friendship and love—not the woodland faun, but the mischievous yet tender-souled Amor. This wealth of beautiful sentiments can only be cultivated, only sprout and bloom and ripen slowly like any fruit of nature—and this beautiful son can only be raised if his mother—the nurturing spirit—does not act as a stepmother toward him, if she is not scolding and harsh, but entrusts him to the education of nature as far as possible, which raises every plant best when it is least grafted, least manipulated. (Cf. Longinus, On the Sublime, final section; Plato, Symposium, p. 186.)
As the nurse in Greece remained a house-friend and friend of the child throughout life, so too she remained always his friend, to whom he offered his undiminished thanks, his free love, who shared in his games, whose soul led his own—and who did not disturb his joys. She retained her dignity through it all, and his own conscience punished any neglect of her. She preserved her rule forever, for it was founded upon love, upon gratitude, upon the noblest feelings of her foster son. In her adornment she flattered the whims of his imagination—but she taught him to honor iron necessity, she taught him to follow this unalterable fate without complaint.
We know this spirit only by hearsay—only a few traces of him remain to us in copied outlines of his form, which we are allowed to behold with love and admiration, evoking only a painful longing for the original. He is the beautiful youth, whom we love even in his frivolity, together with the full retinue of the Graces—with them, the balsamic breath of nature, the soul breathed into him by them, which he drew from every flower—he has fled the Earth.
The father of this spirit is Chronos (Time and Circumstance), from whom he remains dependent throughout his life; his mother, in whose womb he is born, is the politeia, the constitution; his wet nurse, his foster mother, is religion, which adopts as assistants in his upbringing the fine arts, music, and the harmonious movement of body and spirit. Aetheric in essence, he is drawn gently toward the earth by a light bond—a magical force that resists all attempts to sever it, for it is wholly woven into his being. This bond, whose coarse foundation is necessity, is interlaced with a thousand threads of nature; and in binding himself more firmly with each new thread, he feels not constraint but rather, since it is the product of his own activity, the expansion of his enjoyment, the extension of his life in this voluntary enlargement and multiplication of the threads.
All the nobler, more refined sentiments have developed within him, bringing myriad variations of pleasure into experience and interaction. Around him dance joy and gladness; his more serious companions are friendship and love—not the woodland faun, but the mischievous, sensitive, soulful Amor. This wealth of beautiful feeling can only be cultivated, can only sprout, blossom, and ripen slowly, like every fruit of nature. And this beautiful son can only be raised if his mother—the nurturing power—does not treat him like a stepmother; if she is neither scolding nor harsh, but instead entrusts him as far as possible to the education of nature, which cultivates every plant best the less it is grafted, the less it is artificially manipulated (cf. Longinus, On the Sublime, final section; Plato, Symposium, p. 186).
As the nurse in ancient Greece remained a lifelong companion and friend of the child, so too did she remain always his friend, to whom he, unspoiled, offers free gratitude and unforced love, sharing his joys and games with her. She is the soul that leads him, and in his joys he is not disturbed by her presence. She maintains her dignity throughout, and his own conscience punishes any neglect toward her. She retains her rule forever, for it is built on love, gratitude, and the noblest feelings of her ward. In her adornments, she flatters the whims of his imagination, but she teaches him to honor iron necessity and to follow this unchangeable fate without complaint.
We know this spirit only by hearsay—only a few traces of him remain to us in copied outlines of his form, which we are permitted to view with love and admiration, awakening only a painful longing for the original. He is the beautiful youth whom we love even in his frivolity, accompanied by the entire train of the Graces, with them the balsamic breath of nature—the soul they breathe into him, which he drew from every flower—he has fled the Earth.
(The West has brought forth another genius of nations—his form is aged—he was never beautiful, but a few faint traces of manliness still remain. His neck is bent; he dares not lift it, neither to cast a joyful gaze upon the world nor to rise up in the feeling of himself. He is short-sighted and can see only small objects at a time; without courage, without trust in his strength, he attempts no bold leap. Iron chains bind him, though the Graces entwine them with roses—and in the end, the coarse threads of the foundation become so refined, so manifoldly intertwined, that the additions can no longer be separated from them. Around him dance…)
(From here the text resumes as previously rendered.)
If the father of this spirit is fortunate, manages his affairs well, and can provide his son with a secure livelihood—not one of too much ease, but also not of hardship—if the mother is not obstinate in wrapping his delicate limbs in swaddling clothes, not capricious in her treatment of him, then the wet nurse—the governess—must also not raise this child of nature with threats of the rod (of Hell and of a stern ruler), nor with the sugar bread of mysticism, which sours the stomach and rots the teeth, nor by the reins of empty words. She must not seek to shape him into a youth through such means, but instead let him act early of his own accord; as a social friend she should share in his joys and games, be his soul’s leader, so that he believes he can only half enjoy anything without her presence, and practice gratitude toward her as the most joyful and beautiful of duties. (Marginal note: The nurse was in Greece a household friend and lifelong companion of the child.)
Ah! From the distant days of the past, a vision shines forth to the soul that feels for human beauty and greatness in their grandeur—the image of a genius of peoples, a son of happiness, of freedom, a ward of beautiful imagination. He too was bound by the iron band of necessity to Mother Earth, but he refined and adorned it through his sentiments, through his imagination, with the help of the Graces, winding it with roses so that it appeared entirely his own work. His servants were joy, cheerfulness, and grace; his soul was filled with the consciousness of its power and freedom; his more serious companions were friendship and love—not the woodland faun, but the sensitive, soulful Amor, adorned with all the charms of the heart and lovely dreams.
From his father, a favorite of fortune and a son of strength, he inherited confidence in his luck and pride in his deeds. His lenient mother, not a scolding, harsh woman, entrusted her son to the education of nature, did not force his tender limbs into confining swaddling, and, as a good mother, followed more the whims and inspirations of her favorite than that she restricted them. In harmony with this, the child of nature was not to be raised by the wet nurse with fear of the rod or with a specter of darkness, nor with the sweet-sour sugar bread of mysticism that slackens the stomach, nor with the leading-strings of words that would have kept him in eternal minority. Rather, she nourished him with the pure, wholesome milk of true feeling. At the hand of beautiful and free imagination, she adorned with flowers the impenetrable veil that conceals the deity from our eyes, populating and enchanting the space behind it with living images upon which he projected the great ideas of his own heart, with the full richness of elevated and beautiful emotion.
Apart from oral instruction…
Apart from oral instruction—which always has a very limited sphere of influence, extending only to those whom nature has placed in close proximity to us—the only truly wide-reaching mode of effect is through writing. Here the teacher places himself upon an invisible pulpit before the entire public; and because he cannot be seen, he is able to address their hearts more directly, to present the most vivid images of their moral corruption, treating them with a severity that he would scarcely use with even the most despised individual in person. Rarely, if ever, has one seen a moralist—when not acting in an official capacity—who had the courage, driven purely by an inner vocation to improve humanity, to say even half of what he dares to proclaim to an entire, socially and officially honored audience. And yet he often derives these depictions precisely from the very people he is addressing—unless, of course, his portrayals are mere ranting, and his remedies mere theoretical quackery.
In general, the method of instruction must conform to the spirit and tone that a given people will respond to. Thus we find the mode of delivery differing across contexts. Socrates, living in a republican state where each citizen spoke freely with the other—and where even the lowest classes participated in a refined civic urbanity—would climb, in the most casual way imaginable, onto the roofs of their minds through conversation. Without adopting a didactic tone or even appearing to instruct, he began with everyday discourse and, with great subtlety, led it to a conclusion that revealed a teaching which presented itself as self-evident and which not even a Diotima could have found intrusive.
The Jews, by contrast, were already accustomed—from their forefathers and their national poets—to being addressed in a harsher tone. From their synagogues onward, their ears had grown attuned to moral preaching and to direct modes of instruction, and to the rough style of argumentation used by scribes and Pharisees. They were therefore used to a combative style of address—and so, a speech beginning with “You brood of vipers and serpents!” did not strike them as harshly as it would have offended Greek ears.
One might think that a person, even with the best natural endowments and most excellent upbringing, should never cease throughout their life to strive for intellectual and moral perfection. An open-minded and active man, placed in various relations—whether by chance or his own initiative—should always have something to learn, and should never think himself finished or perfected. This is all the more true in the complex circumstances of our civil life, where even the most righteous conscience may find itself caught in ambiguous collisions of duty—such as frequent conflicts between individual fairness and compassion on one hand, and general principles of justice or established rights on the other.
In such conditions, prudence must all the more be exercised as a duty, especially when one is not merely attending to one’s own affairs, but is helping to promote the welfare of many others, whether on a large or small scale. This is why many a conscientious Nathanael, unwilling to do violence to his conscience or to spare himself difficult entanglements, has preferred to remove himself entirely from such relations. For the more complex the relations, the more complex the duties; the simpler the one, the simpler the other. And it usually requires more effort to withdraw from a situation than never to enter it—just as it is easier to do without a necessity than to renounce it once embraced.
A Diogenes, then—whose temperament is satisfied with a handful of water and a crust of bread, whose ambition is fulfilled not by purple robes but by a tattered cloak, and who, as neither friend nor father, and through no profession, has significant duties toward others (except not to strike them)—such a man has taken the easy path toward being a morally perfect individual. He may even earn the right to be called a great man and still have time enough to work on improving others.
Among the Romans, no Christ, no Socrates arose. No Roman, in the era of their power, when only one form of virtue was recognized, could have found himself uncertain about what he ought to do—there were only Romans in Rome, not human beings. In contrast, the Greeks cultivated studia humanitatis—humane feelings, human affections, and the arts. Among them, many deviations from natural virtue could be found, which gave Socrates or another wise man grounds for redirection and reflection. To deviate from Roman virtue, however, was a state crime.
Wherever people have fixed one definite model of perfection, and tied virtue to something objective—such that even the passions can be transformed into virtues when serving that goal—it is easier to judge what approaches or diverges from that ideal. But when a higher interest is in play, when duties collide in complex ways, or when natural human inclinations and obligations intensify, then the boundary between virtue and excess—and the extent to which nature should submit to reason—becomes infinitely harder to discern.
Christ had twelve apostles. The number twelve was a fixed and enduring one. He had more disciples, to be sure, but the apostles were those who had access to his most intimate companionship, who had renounced all other ties in order to partake of his teaching and to become, as far as possible, like him in all things. Over time, through instruction and his living example, they sought to possess his spirit. And though, in the beginning, their expectations, hopes, and ideas remained narrowly Jewish and entirely earthly—and though they long looked with heart and mind toward a Messiah who would found a kingdom and distribute positions of power like General and Court Marshal—they could not yet elevate themselves from selfish ambition to the mere honor of becoming fellow citizens in the Kingdom of God.
Christ was not content to have disciples like Nathanael, Joseph of Arimathea, or Nicodemus—that is, men of intellect and noble heart, with whom he merely had thoughtful conversations or in whom he kindled a few new ideas or sparks of inspiration. If the soil in which such sparks fall is not fertile—if it lacks fuel—they are lost.
Such men, living either happily and contentedly in the bosom of their families, or actively and usefully engaged in their spheres of influence, and familiar with the world and its prejudices (and thus tolerant toward it, though strict with themselves), would not have been susceptible to a calling that demanded them to become a kind of adventurer. Christ says: The Kingdom of God does not come with outward signs. It seems, then, that his disciples misunderstood his command, Go into all the world… and baptize them, by interpreting this baptism—an external sign—as universally necessary. But this is all the more harmful because distinguishing people through external signs breeds sectarianism and separation from others.
In general, when a moral distinction is supplemented by another kind of distinction, it is weakened, as though it were already stripped of its proper light. Christ says: Whoever believes… but he does not say: Whoever believes in me. Whether that is to be understood or not, the apostles took it that way. And so the shibboleth of their friends—the citizens of their Kingdom of God—was not virtue or integrity, but Christ, baptism, and so on. Had their Christ not been such a good man—see Nathan—it could have all turned out very differently.
Socrates had students of all kinds—or rather, he had none at all. He was merely a teacher and mentor in the same way that every man distinguished by righteousness and exceptional reason becomes one by his example—even if one never hears him preach from a pulpit or from atop a mountain. How could it even have occurred to a Socrates in Greece to preach? His aim was to instruct people in what should awaken their highest interest, to enlighten them, to vitalize them toward it. He took no payment for his wisdom; nor did he, for its sake, drive away his ill-tempered wife to avoid having to deal with her. Instead, without resistance and without harming his wisdom, he remained in the relationships of husband and father.
The number of his close friends was indeterminate—the thirteenth, the fourteenth, and so on were just as welcome to him as the first, as long as they were his equals in spirit and heart. They were his friends and, to a degree, his students, though each remained who he was: Socrates did not live in them, nor was he their head, from whom they drew the sap of life as limbs from a body. He had no mold into which he sought to cast their characters; no standard by which he aimed to level their differences. That would have suited only small minds, whom he indeed supported, but who were not among his most intimate companions. He had no interest in forming a small corps as his personal guard, all in the same uniform, trained in the same drills, repeating the same slogans, collectively possessing only one spirit—sanded down and smoothed into ideological conformity, and destined to forever bear his name.
Hence there were “Socratics,” but never a guild that could be recognized like masons by hammer and trowel. Each of his students became a master in his own right. Many founded their own schools; several became great generals, statesmen, heroes of every kind—not all of the same mold, but each in his own domain. Not heroes of martyrdom and suffering, but of action and life.
Moreover, whoever had been a fisherman remained one; no one was expected to leave house and home. Socrates began with each man’s trade, and from there led him gently from the hand to the mind—from matters where each felt at home to conversations with him. From the souls of his interlocutors, he brought forth the concepts that were already latent within them, requiring nothing more than a midwife. He gave no cause for anyone to say: “Wait—isn’t that the son of Sophroniscus? Where does he get the wisdom to presume to teach us?” He offended no one through presumptuous airs or self-importance, nor with mysterious, lofty rhetoric that might impress only the ignorant and credulous—among the Greeks, such a man would have been laughed at.
Before his death—and he died as a Greek, sacrificing a rooster to Asclepius, not like Maupertuis in a Capuchin cowl, and not in the fashion you have described—Socrates spoke to his students about the immortality of the soul in the way a Greek speaks to reason and to imagination. He spoke so vividly, and presented this hope through his entire being so intimately and convincingly, that the premises for this postulate had already been gathered by his students over the course of their lives.
This hope—the hope that it contradicts human nature and the faculties of the human spirit that so much would be given to us only for it to be lost, instead of becoming certainty—he enlivened to the point that the human spirit, forgetting its mortal companion, could lift itself out of its confines. So much so that even if a spirit were to rise from its grave and bring us a report from the great avenger beyond, it could tell us nothing more than what is already contained in the tablets of Moses and the oracles of the prophets—that we already carry within our own hearts. And even if such a resurrection did occur, contrary to the laws of human nature, Socrates would not have needed it to strengthen this hope.
Only in paltry souls—in whom the premises for such hope, that is, the idea of virtue and the highest good, are not alive—is the hope for immortality also weak. Socrates left behind no masonic signs, no command to proclaim his name, no method for scaling the soul’s roof and pouring morality into it. The agathon is born with us; it is not something that can be preached. He pointed to no detour leading over himself to train people in the art of goodness; he prescribed no ordo salutis, no spiritual program where every character, class, age, or temperament must pass through fixed stages of suffering or specific inner states.
Rather, he knocked directly at the proper door—without a mediator—and led man only into himself. Not to prepare a home for some foreign guest-spirit arriving from a distant land, but simply to allow more light and space for the old householder already dwelling within, whom the noise of fiddlers and pipers had driven into a forgotten attic room.
It cannot be denied…
It cannot be denied that the Jews held distorted and immoral conceptions of wrath, partiality, hatred toward other nations, and intolerance in their God Jehovah—conceptions which unfortunately passed into both the practice and the theory of the Christian religion, and which have caused too much harm for one not to wish they had originated in a more humane religion or had at least been less adopted by it.
And it is not to their priests, but to philosophy—which for that reason was hated by them—and to the gentler light of our times, that we owe the diminishment of their grim contentiousness, their intolerance, and their pride. As the champions of orthodoxy defended these beliefs against the giants who attacked them, they gradually adopted the views of their adversaries themselves. The only remaining way to preserve the main fortress was to abandon the indefensible outworks—and, so as not to concede anything to the enemy’s honor, to afterwards claim that one had never intended to defend them at all.
Like the general who still held the battlefield at the close of combat, had the triumphal horns of the postillions announce his victory in the capital, and impressed the mob sufficiently for them to intone a thankful Te Deum—yet who later betrays his actual defeat by withdrawing from the region—so too it was not theology that had the final word, but rather the evolving content of their theological compendia, altered within ten or twenty years.
How many things were heresies thirty years ago that no longer are today! (The sentence breaks off.)
“If you want to be perfect, sell what you have and give your possessions to the poor,” said Christ to the young man. This image of perfection, which Christ here presents, contains in itself the clearest proof that his teaching was directed solely toward the cultivation and perfection of the individual—and how little it could be extended to a society at large.
The opponents of Christianity have bitterly emphasized the corruption of Christians, especially the clergy, as evidence against its truth and benevolence. Its defenders consider this the weakest, albeit most dazzling, form of attack. Yet if Christianity is to have any efficacy, its essence should surely be recognizable—namely, moral improvement—especially among those whose profession it is to meditate upon it from youth: mente revolvere.
Their usual excuse is that Christianity has been misunderstood. But they had the Bible just as we do. They suggest it was merely their compendium that was lacking—and had that been correct, everything would have turned out differently. Has Christianity opposed despotism? How long did it take before it opposed the slave trade? Its priests sailed with the ships to Guinea. As for the slave trade: chaplains were sent along. And war? And despotism in every form? The arts of the Enlightenment have improved our morals—yet afterward, it is said that Christianity did this, and that without it, philosophy could not have discovered its own principles.
When reason, drawing on the human spirit and centuries of experience, erects a structure of concepts with self-satisfaction and takes pride in its own work, confronting those who claim a monopoly on truth, showing that it can dispense with their sources—when it is then alleged that theology had already provided the building materials long ago, and knew just as much or more even before those discoveries were made—such a claim is as vain as if a country squire were to boast before Newton that he had seen apples fall from trees since the age of ten and had known since then that the sun does not fall to earth.
Where, before a fortunate shift in the trajectory of scientific culture, has one ever seen a transformation in religious beliefs precede and cause such a shift? Is it not, rather, that the expansion of the sciences and the spirit of inquiry within them has always drawn the clarification of theological concepts after itself—indeed, always under the greatest resistance from the custodians of those concepts?
ON CONSTITUTIONS …
The constitutions, legislation, and religions of nations long retain traces of their original childlike spirit, even when that spirit has long since vanished. For a long time, power remains in the hands of a single person, from whom a family—as from its father—allowed it to be exercised in a childlike manner, even though the people have long ceased to be a family, and the prince a father.
With regard to constitutions and legislation, the nations soon felt—once they had somewhat expanded—that their childlike trust had been abused, and they restricted the arbitrary will of their rulers, whether good or bad, through fixed laws. But the childlike spirit lingered longer in religion, and religion still bears traces of it, even when in the state no one is trusted to do good except insofar as it is permitted or commanded.
This childlike spirit in religion views God as a mighty lord, who moreover has inclinations, passions—even whims—like earthly rulers, and who therefore does not always punish or reward according to the rule of justice. One can flatter him, one devotes to him more reverence than love—just as, in earlier times and still today, princes of the Orient are treated, or as innocence offers gifts to its benefactors and friends, from the good gifts of nature—cheerfulness, contentment—often offering the fairest and earliest as a voluntary tribute of trust and joy.
He is imagined to be nearer here or there, the imagination feels him drawn more readily to linger in some places or people, which therefore seem more sacred, more venerable. To the childlike mind, God appears to act more directly in storms, floods, plagues, in the heaving sea or the threatening cliffs, and the imagination transfers the concerns and relations of human life onto him.
This childlike spirit gave rise to religious institutions, customs, and representations which often appear bizarre and ridiculous to reason, and at times even detestable—most of all when it sees that the lust for domination has deceived the good-hearted through them. Yet to the spirit and imagination, which regress into that earlier sense, they are often charming, sometimes sublime, and even, at the highest level, profoundly moving.
These customs are sanctified by tradition and passed on; the interests of many become so intricately entangled in them that both the greatest degeneration on the one hand, and the progress of reason on the other, are required to cast off such a system—woven into the fabric of general custom—through violent upheaval.
The more the original spirit that once animated these practices fades, the more these sacred customs and rites become a burden—one that genuine piety did not formerly feel—and the more reason gains ground, the nearer these practices come to their downfall.
The religiosity that brings gifts and sacrifices to the temples of the deity—or seeks solace through acts of penance, mortification, fasting, or prolonged, intense prayer—or that indulges in devout feelings of love and mystical emotions—this religiosity becomes incompatible with reason, which demands actions of duty.
As reason advances, many of the sentiments it displaces are lost. Many otherwise moving associations of the imagination grow weaker—associations we call the simplicity of customs—whose images delight and move us, and whose loss we often justly lament.
Traces of it—secret vestiges, where the person who wants to be purely rational is still, as it were, surprised—always remain. Why, even in our own day, are relics of Frederick the Great or of Rousseau eagerly sought and sold at high prices?
These are the traits, for example, that, beyond their bravery and loyalty, make the scenes of the age of chivalry so captivating. The disappearance of such associations is what old age mistakes for the disappearance of morality itself—and is the source of its laments.
When the simplicity of customs still prevails widely in a nation—when things are just as sacred to its princes and priests as they are to the people—there exists no nobler, more beneficent spectacle. That is the happiness of the South Sea islanders, and perhaps it once existed in Peru before the quarrel between Atahualpa and Huáscar.
But when a class—the ruling or the priestly class, or both—loses this spirit of simplicity that once founded and animated its laws and institutions, then not only is that spirit irretrievably lost, but the subjugation, humiliation, and degradation of the people is inevitable.
(Thus the division into estates is dangerous to liberty, for it can give rise to an esprit de corps that soon comes into conflict with the spirit of the whole.)
Even if no more sacrifices or acts of penance are demanded of the people than they were previously accustomed to, the whole is no longer a community that approaches the altars of its gods with unanimous spirit—but rather a mass from whom their leaders extract sacred emotions without themselves sharing them.
It is like the conjurer who elicits admiration from the gawking audience without himself feeling awe—or even pretending to feel it—while others feign sympathy in posture, expression, and words.
This contrast is all the more disturbing to the calm observer the more deeply he is moved by the innocence and simplicity of the crowd: the sight of the devout people, their upward gaze toward heaven, folded hands, bent knees, deep sighs, and burning prayer would irresistibly elevate his heart with pure warmth—were it not for the bitterness stirred in him by the central actors of the drama.
HOW LITTLE OBJECTIVE RELIGION…
How little objective religion in itself, without corresponding institutions of state and government, has achieved—this is demonstrated by its history since the emergence of Christianity. How little has it been able to overcome the corruption of all classes, the barbarism of the times, and the crude prejudices of nations.
Opponents of Christianity—whose hearts were filled with humane sentiment and who read with bleeding hearts the history of the Crusades, the discovery of America, the contemporary slave trade, and not just these spectacular events in which Christianity played a distinguished role—but the entire chain of princely depravity and national depravity—such critics were inevitably filled with a bitterness and hatred toward the Christian religion, which its defenders often attributed to diabolical malice of heart.
To the brilliant and horrifying tableaux of atrocities and misery incited by zeal for one particular religion—images painted with all the force of the brush and all the sharpness of wit by Christianity’s critics—its defenders counter that these weapons are worn out, and that the arguments drawn from them have long since been refuted. Above all, they suggest: all this evil would not have occurred if, to humanity’s good fortune, their catechisms had only been available earlier.
But did the popes and their cardinals, did Kukupeter and the priests of his time—did they not have Moses and the prophets? Could they not hear the same gospel? Did they not have access to the same pure source of morality that we still have today? Did that source really need our paraphrases and academic formulations? Was it, in and of itself, so incomplete—was it not capable, I do not say of improving the morals or restraining the brutality of the people, but at least of exerting a stronger influence on that class of people whose entire profession it was to understand it, and to apply it to themselves?
Was it not capable of moderating the lust for domination among the clergy—who committed either great indecencies or petty basenesses—while donning spiritual humility as a shield, and while finding daily in the teachings of the man to whom they claimed to dedicate their whole lives, the praises and rewards of precisely those virtues they lacked?
Which vice did not flourish among them? And which was not explicitly forbidden by their Lord and Master? Were not the times when princes were led by their confessors—and the lands where clerics held rule—the most miserable?
How easy it is to toss into the balance the entire plan of salvation, along with the most elaborate and scholarly commentaries, and to weigh it against the real-world power of passions, circumstances, education, example, and governance—which launch these into the air far more forcefully.
The intended effect and chief aim of the Christian religion is said to be moral improvement and divine approval. And as the condition under which one can possess the true religion or true faith, it is demanded that one already be either so pleasing to God that He grants one the true faith spontaneously—or so morally upright that one already hates evil and thirsts after righteousness. In other words, one becomes good through the Christian religion—provided one was already good beforehand.
As Montesquieu wrote (L. 24, ch. 2):
“It is bad reasoning against religion to gather, in a great work, a long list of the evils it has produced, without also producing a similar list of the good it has done. If I wanted to recount all the evils produced in the world by civil laws, monarchy, and republican government, I would say terrifying things.”
Among the commandments Christ gave to his disciples and listeners, there are many whose application—if carried out not in the spirit of virtue but merely in the letter—would be either useless or even harmful.
Just as a legal code is incomplete and inapplicable in a society where morals prevail over law, for another society where everything not forbidden by law is permitted—so too many of Christ’s commandments are incompatible with the foundational laws of civil society, the principles of property rights, self-defense, and so on.
A state that would introduce Christ’s commandments as its constitution today could only do so in their external form, for the spirit of these commandments is not something that can be commanded—and it would soon dissolve itself.
One has never heard of a man whose coat was stolen, who still had his vest and trousers left, being rebuked by a Christian teacher for not handing those over as well.
Even with the oath—which the clergy certainly know Christ explicitly forbade—the clergy still play the most solemn part in its performance.
What particularly aroused the hatred of the scribes and the ritualists among the Jews toward Christ? Was it not his individual manner, both in his own actions and in his judgments of others’ actions—actions that not only violated their sacred customs but also transgressed civil laws?
When matters of legal judgment arose, Christ attacked the administrators of these laws—and even if those administrators had been the most blameless men and fully aligned with his spirit, they would nonetheless have had to judge not by that spirit, but according to the law.
The judge must often speak differently than the man; the former must often condemn what the latter would excuse.
From all of this it becomes clear that the teachings of Jesus, his fundamental principles, were truly intended only for the cultivation of individuals—as when he tells the young man who asks him, “Master, what must I do to be perfect?” to sell all he has and give it to the poor.
If this instruction were taken as a principle and implemented even in a small community or village, it would soon lead to consequences so absurd that no one would dream of applying it to an entire people.
And even if a community—like the first Christians—were to adopt this principle of communal property while living amidst another nation, the very moment of its institutionalization would see the spirit of such a commandment already vanish. That spirit, which renders such resignation benevolent, would shrink its effects to its members alone—to those who share its rites and marks of distinction—and thereby contradict the spirit of universal human love, which pours its blessings upon circumcised and uncircumcised, baptized and unbaptized alike.
Public Authority…
Public authority, which presumes to penetrate into the sanctuary of the heart—where only a friend is freely admitted—proceeds to fabricate explanations of intentions, assembled from circumstantial speculation.
The presumption to examine hearts and kidneys, to judge and punish consciences, crept in gradually, and could easily do so, since its seed was already contained in the very origin of Christianity—when that which concerned only a small household was falsely extended to civil society at large. This presumption, which established itself in an almost unbelievable way—for it should seem incredible that people would forget their rights so far and feel so little the loss—has led to the most revolting excesses in violent institutions and the stupefaction of humanity.
Auricular confession, excommunication, penances, and the entire chain of these degrading instruments of human abasement—introduced by the idea of humiliation—these were made possible by that claim. The Reformers, who in their doctrines cited the pronouncements of the New Testament, and in their ecclesiastical police ordinances—because without such they believed the practice of religion could not occur—failed to think of establishing ecclesiastical authority as a counterweight to princely power in support of freedom of conscience. Rather, they subjected Christianity to secular power.
In their church ordinances they wished to follow the simplicity of the early Church, but this led them to overlook the difference between necessary arrangements for a dominant popular religion and the private rules of a partial association, a club. How could they have torn themselves away from the idea of the Church as a kind of status in statu, a visible, uniform community bound together by a defined ritus?
How far, for instance, Luther was removed from the idea of worshiping God in spirit and in truth is shown by his dismal disputes with Zwingli, Oecolampadius, and others. He deprived the clergy of their power to rule through coercion and money, but still wished to dominate over opinions. Princes, together with their court preachers, as guardians of their people, gave their children tutors—who were to guide, admonish, and, in case of need, even discipline them with the rod.
From this came ecclesiastical punishments in addition to political ones, church penances and the like; thus, confession was retained—the actual auricular confession abolished—but clergy were still maintained as confessors, to assist troubled consciences which they themselves continually agitated and made anxious.
This occurred by reducing religion to a matter of heart-improvement, repentance, and conversion—but then not resting in these general terms, which in every human heart signify something different depending on temperament, inclination, and imagination—but analyzing these conditions, indulging in the machinery of feelings, and representing such states as something tangible and sensible, such that their arrival or presence could supposedly be known as easily as reading twelve o’clock on a clock.
They produced detailed psychological descriptions of these states, as if they were identical for all people—descriptions based not on any real knowledge of the human heart, but on theological prejudices about an innate depravity of human nature, assembled artificially by a ridiculous exegesis lacking all knowledge of humanity, and arranged in sequence. All of this was then relentlessly drummed or trifled into the memory and conscience of common people.
The result had to be that such sour leaven necessarily corrupted their healthy, vigorous, active juices. Innumerable misunderstandings arose between their own inclinations and movements; an anxious, disorganized conscience took the place of fullness of feeling, of action, of confidence in oneself, of self-respect—and in its place came insipid sentimentality, undigested verbiage, hypocritical humility, spiritual vanity always preoccupied with itself and its own movements, constantly chattering about its feelings, devotions, and temptations.
At this point, the clergy certainly had their hands full—disentangling doubts, strengthening against temptations, warning of secret demonic influences, comforting in sufferings brought on by the world, the temptations of Satan, and one’s own evil desires and lusts. These are patients who can no longer bear healthy air or fresh water, but must now live on insipid broths and apothecary mixtures, keeping a diary of every wind pressing their intestines, every sneeze and cough—and having no more to do with anyone but themselves—perhaps offering their teas to some supplicant and commending him to the care of God.
One sees this clearly in the theological compendia, where proper knowledge of religion is replaced by something that is merely a knowledge of the psychological process or of how to bring about certain soul-states. These comprise the principal content, in accordance with the principle that repentance and conversion are the most important things—yet the path to them is so convoluted, so divided into stages, furnished with so many alien names all expressing the same thing, but seeming—through their strangeness and diversity—to conceal mysterious secrets and importances, adorned from gratia applicatrix to unio mystica, that one can no longer recognize the simplest matters within them.
And when one looks at it in the light with healthy eyes, one is ashamed that all this art and scholarship has been expended on something the common sense of a person could understand in fifteen minutes. Nowadays, it is recognized that subjective religion cannot be crammed into dogmatics, and objective religion now takes up the greater part—teachings which, if not always rational, at least occupy memory and understanding.
This ecclesiastical discipline of Christians is not something newly introduced into the statutes of the Christian society after its origin, but—as we have seen—it was already included in its first undeveloped draft, and then exploited and expanded by ambition and hypocrisy. Even if the traces of its grossest abuses have begun to fade, much of its spirit still lingers, offering yet another example among many that institutions and laws appropriate for a small society—where every citizen is free to be a member or not—are never suitable when extended to the large civil society, and cannot coexist with civic freedom.
Just as in a state where not every citizen is the natural defender of the fatherland, but where there are enough volunteers willing to assume that office for some pay, a society may form in which members agree never to take up arms, never to participate in wars whose legality they know as little as the benefits of the state’s victory in which they live—and who in no case believe themselves justified in undertaking the murder of other people, instead responding to all individual acts of violence with patience and submission.
But if such a society were to grow into a state, it could no longer maintain such principles universally—unless it were willing to risk, by suppressing all natural feeling, surrendering the entire structure of the nation’s happiness to the insolence of a handful of bandits.
Just as the best education for children is the good example they see daily around them—and just as they become more inclined to disobedience and sullen obstinacy the more they are constantly commanded—so it is also with the education of humankind at large. People resist, they shy away (as the French say, ils ne se prêtent pas, ils se refusent) from a religion that wants to shepherd them forever—preaching to them about countless virtues and vices they’ve never seen in such abstraction as described here, and that may be entirely unsuited to the human condition.
All the more, without realizing it, people are secretly influenced; even the freest person depends on the spirit of the people around him. He, who would otherwise most vigorously resist moralization, is affected when from the pulpit a general virtue or repentance and conversion are recommended: he receives it as spoken to himself because it applies to all as much as to him.
But when a detailed, vivid portrayal of prevalent depravity is presented—when individual features are woven in—it acts directly upon the one who sees himself reflected in it, who feels his own conduct criticized. The result is resentment: he recognizes no authority as entitled to assume such judgment over him.
(Children are guided by mere sense—by love and fear. Adults, however, are also capable of being guided by reason; at the very least, unlike the child, the adult does not do what is best for him only to please someone else, from love alone, without first seeing that it is indeed good.)
Everyone finds it intolerable when outsiders meddle in his affairs, especially his conduct. Most unbearable are moralists publicly set up to judge. The one who acts from a pure heart is most often misunderstood—by those who carry the moral and religious measuring stick.
On the Difference in the Scene of Death
The entire life of a Christian is meant to be a preparation for this transformation. His wishes are even directed toward it. Daily contact with images of death and the hopes of that life—compared to which the enjoyments and pleasures of this world, to which he is not attached and in which he takes only a weak, passing interest like a stranger—are unworthy of attention. These are meant to make his departure from this stage of activity not only not frightening but even pleasant.
Still less than fearing the moment of death itself does he dread annihilation, the end of harmony when the instrument is broken, or his future fate. His entire life has been a meditatio mortis; it appears to him merely as a preparatory school for what is to come. It has no value in itself, only in reference to the future. What are fifty or eighty years, devoted and consumed in preparation, when measured against the boundless eternity in which the entire duration of our existence is but a moment? Who could, in the span of sixty years, forget even for a moment the terrible alternative: eternal salvation—or eternal damnation?
Who would not flee from the ever-renewed fear of unworthiness toward the means of grace offered by the very doctrine that makes us aware of these terrors? Who would not prepare for the moment of this dreadful catastrophe, in which he not only bids farewell to everything dear to him, but within a few hours or minutes will never again see the radiance of this sun—but will instead behold the shimmer of the judgment throne before which his fate is now decided for eternity?
Who would not gather around himself all the weapons of consolation for this moment of anxious expectation? Who would not, even then, hurriedly pack together his spiritual belongings like someone suddenly forced to undertake a journey for which he had no time to prepare—as much as his time and illness permit?
Hence we see the beds of the sick surrounded by clergy and friends, who whisper the printed and prescribed sighs into the anxious soul of the dying. Hence we hear that in all memorials and admonitions, the conclusion is always the same refrain: memento mori. The most powerful of all motives for action is summoned from beyond the grave. Dying well or piously—still having enough presence of mind to recall the verses and rhymes learned with sweat in school and to be able to recite one or another of them—that is the hope.
Heroes of all nations die in the same way, because they have lived, and in living have learned to recognize the power of nature. But resistance to it, even to its lesser evils, leaves one unfit to endure its greater workings. How else could it be that peoples whose religion makes preparation for death a central point—a cornerstone of the entire edifice—die, on the whole, so unmanly, while other nations approach this moment more freely, like coming to a banquet?
One person begins in the early morning to curl his hair, to put on his finery, to harness his horses—full of the importance of the forthcoming enterprise, he spends the whole time considering how he will behave, how he will carry the conversation, and like a young orator, fears whether he will perform well. Another, by contrast, goes about his business in the morning and remembers the invitation only a few minutes before the banquet hour, joining simply and calmly—as if he were at home.
How different are the images of death that have passed into the imaginations of our people compared to the Greeks. Among the Greeks, death was represented as a beautiful genius, the brother of sleep, immortalized in monuments over their graves. Among us, it is the skeletal figure, the grinning skull parading above all coffins. For them, death reminded them of the enjoyment of life—for us, it teaches us to suffer through it. For them, it was a fragrance of life; for us, of death.
Just as, in respectable society, one does not speak of certain natural matters—or even write of them—so too did they euphemize death, soften its images. Their speakers and preachers did not seek to frighten them, nor to spoil their enjoyment of life by painting death with every possible ghastly hue.
On Objective Religion
By objective religion I understand the entire system of the connection between our duties and desires with the idea of God and the immortality of the soul. It is therefore also to be called theology, insofar as it does not merely occupy itself with the knowledge of the existence and attributes of God, but does so in relation to human beings and the needs of their reason.
Insofar as this theory does not merely exist in books, but the concepts are grasped by human beings, the love of duty and reverence for the moral law are felt and are strengthened by the idea—so far, religion is subjective. Now, since civil legislation does not aim at morality but only at legality, and since it makes no special provisions for the promotion of reverence toward the moral law or for the disposition to fulfill laws according to their spirit, and since this is instead regarded as belonging to religion—we do not want to separate the two here either. We shall regard as the aim of religious institutions not merely the promotion of morality through the idea of God, but the promotion of morality as such.
Not all drives of human nature—such as procreation and so on—have morality as their goal. But the highest end of the human being is morality, and among the faculties that promote this end, the disposition toward religion is one of the most excellent. The knowledge of God cannot, by its nature, be lifeless; it originates in a practical need, and from it morality springs anew. Or should the spread of Christ’s glory—or Muhammad’s—be its primary purpose, then Orpheus or Homer would deserve to be as famous and honored in Greece as Jupiter and Pallas. Then it would have reason to take the most pride in Charlemagne, the converter of the Saxons; or in the Spaniards who made proselytes in America; or in the missionary Schulz, who sought out Jews. Or if it is about glorifying the name of God, then there would be no better Christians than the hymn-singing Brigitte sisters, and the Pope at High Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica would be a more worthy object of divine favor than the corporal (Woltemar) who saved thirteen people from shipwreck at the risk of his own life and died during the attempt to save a fourteenth, in service to humanity.
To make objective religion subjective must be the great task of the state. Its institutions must accord with freedom of conviction, must not violate conscience and freedom, but instead act indirectly on the grounds for determination of the will. But how much can the state do? And how much must be left to each individual?
The promotion of morality—this aim of religion—is accomplished (a) through its teachings, (b) through ceremonies. Every religion has already provided for both and contains the basis for both. The state contributes through its constitution, through the spirit of its governance.
In what way does the Christian religion qualify for this?
a) Its practical teachings are pure and mostly present the good through examples. For instance, in Matthew 5, 6, and so forth, the spirit of morality is presented in general terms—not restricted merely to the formal—but also containing material prescriptions. For this reason, it is susceptible to misunderstanding, and indeed has been misunderstood.
b) The historical truths on which it is built always expose it to unbelief where the miraculous is concerned. As long as it remains a private religion, each person is free to believe or not—but as a public religion, unbelievers must necessarily exist.
c) It has not cared for the imagination the way Greek religion did. It is sorrowful, melancholic, Oriental—not born of our soil, never able to assimilate to it.
d) The ceremonies, meaningful in private religion, have lost their spirit and meaning when made public religion. Moreover, as means of grace, they are not united with a spirit of joy. Yet, once made public, they could have promoted tolerance—if only they had not been bound up with violently exclusive hypotheses. Now, unfortunately, they serve as distinguishing marks of sects—whereas they might have served as instruments of unity.
e) Other commands regarding lifestyle:
- Withdrawal from public affairs
- Distribution of alms
- Collection of one’s property
All of this is possible in private religion, but not practicable in a state. And what are otherwise acts of piety are now entangled with public honor.
It Should Seem a Difficult Task…
a)
It should seem a difficult task to establish a system of religious and moral truths that could win the free assent of all—or at least of most—since we regard it as a necessary condition of a popular religion that it not impose its teachings, nor violate anyone’s conscience through coercion. It appears difficult if one considers merely the vast diversity of systems and hypotheses devised by philosophers and theologians since reason began to develop ideas and to speculate about them. Precisely this experience—that such a variety of representations is possible, that many seem bizarre to us yet remain connected to universal ideas or needs of humanity and always find adherents—along with the additional experience that, as soon as public decree or prohibition attaches importance to a particular form of representation, not only is the freedom of conscience violated, but a dangerous fanaticism is easily inflamed—these experiences yield the very rule for the dogmas of a popular religion: that they must be as simple as possible, contain nothing not recognized by universal human reason, and nothing dogmatically asserted that exceeds the bounds of reason—even if the supposed authority for doing so stems from heaven itself.
Such doctrines are invariably exposed to the danger—sooner or later—of being challenged by reason. The premature fruits of speculation may perhaps be stifled, suppressed, cast down. But with advancing intellectual maturity, neither the burning of authors nor the banning of their books nor solemnly sworn symbols will stop the evil whose seed lies indestructibly in human nature. For reason leads irresistibly to the great principle of the self-sufficiency of duty and virtue—virtue, which cannot be genuinely promoted through more far-fetched or heterogeneous motives than through their own intrinsic worth. To attempt to promote them merely through association with the idea of God is already a profanation.
And if men of such conviction do not go so far as to deem the marvelous teachings harmful to morality and advantageous to despotism, they nevertheless consider their role as no more than a bridle for the vulgar mob. Now, convinced of the identity of their essence with their rational faith, each attempts to disarm his opponent in his own way. One refutes positive religion with arguments drawn from within it or from its own documents. Another uses the weapons of wit. A third is content with his conviction that the positive doctrines are in fact insignificant—yet, since they are something sacred in the beliefs of the people, he seeks to accommodate them to his own ideas.
We find this attitude in so many men who have developed the idea of morality purely from their own hearts—who beheld its beauty in that mirror and were enraptured by it, whose souls were most filled with reverence for virtue and moral greatness—in Spinoza, Shaftesbury, Rousseau, Kant. The greater their esteem for morality and for the moral teachings of Christ, the more foreign, the more dispensable the rest appears to them.
The mysteries, the incomprehensible dogmas—neither representable by reason nor by understanding—precisely because they are incomprehensible, are likewise unfit for the imagination, to which they are wholly contradictory. When such doctrines are brought forward, all three faculties—reason, understanding, and imagination—must suspend their usual operations; they must accept that one must, for the time being, wholly renounce their use. For their laws are just as unsuitable here as if one were to measure wine by the yardstick or fit a caricature into the form of an Apollo’s head.
Thus, only memory remains, which retains certain word-combinations, isolates them, and reveals them as little as possible to the understanding. Their chief remaining function lies in the extent to which such incomprehensible teachings concern the heart: the practical demands they make on the human being, the impulses they provide, the hopes they promise.
Some of these teachings are such that they have no practical aspect in themselves but only acquire such significance through association with others.
In general, the first law of all such teachings must be that they prescribe to the human being no way to please God other than by leading a good life; and that they offer no motives for moral conduct other than purely moral ones. Religion presents the idea of pleasing God in a more or less pure form: from the notion of striving to stand before God as the ideal of holiness, to the crude notion of gaining special favor with Him for some sensual ritual. There are many such gradations, which are rarely sufficiently distinguished or clearly thought. And since the notion of pleasing God, which religion presents as the highest aim, is so prone to impure admixtures, religion must take the greatest care to prevent practically harmful representations from slipping in.
The demand is inherently contradictory: that teachings which transcend reason and imagination, once placed in relation to the practical, should nonetheless show us no other way than that of a good life, no other means to please God than this. For if they show us no new path, they are not incomprehensible teachings, not mysteries. Doctrines that demand from us only certain rituals—be it verbal, or involving hands and feet; a concert of feelings; or certain privations, bodily punishments, or propositions to be believed—in order to please the holy being, as though one might thereby be exempted from the law of morality, are a web of teachings that, however sacredly sealed in the faith of peoples and in history, must be rejected by reason. In its demand for moral goodness, reason cannot make any concessions.
How corrupt are the structures of those states, or even just classes of people, where such principles prevail—where all natural relations are distorted by this immoral-religious hodgepodge—history has taught in every age, and teaches still today through the sad examples of states where these systems continue to reign, e.g., the Papal States, Naples, and only the never entirely extinguishable goodness of human nature—which here is indeed badly deformed—and the necessity of civil laws, which, in order to make society at least barely hold together, must somewhat correct those principles, prevent vice and evil inclinations from becoming entirely consistent with the teachings that nourish, absolve, and justify them.
I count among such teachings the publicly authorized belief that one may not only buy off one’s sins through attending Mass and indulgence trade, but also be in no way inferior to a good man; furthermore, that physical and other punishments are imposed for differences of opinion; that criminals are withdrawn from the arm of justice through asylums and taken under the protection of the interpreters of the deity; that it is not only considered more meritorious to believe, but is also publicly instituted, that only the beggar is favored, while the industrious man fares badly. And here we are not speaking merely of the doctrines of a few sophists or empiricists, who, perhaps with philosophical acumen, did not find the principles which fix the distinction between virtue and vice sufficiently well grounded, or of libertines who never troubled themselves about such matters or whose passions prevented them from listening to the voice of virtue—not of such isolated individuals, as there are everywhere—but of the fact that those principles which distort morality and dishonor both humanity and divinity are not merely discussed by idle heads in study rooms or on academic chairs—nor simply, without noticeable harm to the commonwealth, adopted by some professor who might take happiness, or otherwise empirical principles, as the foundation of morality or natural law—but that these principles are not only publicly taught, but also, which speaks more forcefully than teaching, are most intimately interwoven into the entire fabric of the state. Men who feel the need for better principles—as well as otherwise good people—cannot, in such states, walk the permitted highway of humility and vice; they must bring their better sentiments into accord with those principles by means of such contrivances as they must conceal from their reason but which nevertheless satisfy their hearts.
Such teachings must therefore be unconditionally rejected by reason, whether they are selected as principles for the individual or for broader concerns that touch the economy of the entire state.
Aside from this, however, the positive doctrines of a religion—those which the development of human reason could not itself discover—may aim at a better end. Especially in more recent times, great effort has been made to extract and cultivate the practical moment from every dogmatic teaching.
Attempts to render the mysteries of religion palatable to reason have been abandoned, and nowadays great value is placed on the distinction that such teachings are above reason but not contrary to it—a distinction that, though it expresses a certain cautious regard and reverence for reason’s authority, ultimately does not go very far. For if reason is the highest judge of its belief, it will not accept, nor believe, what it considers itself incapable of attaining within the full range of its use and application—just as geography, after all attempts at navigation fail to discover a northwest passage through America, will boldly assert that no such passage exists. Such words, therefore, that are lost to reason—because it cannot comprehend them, are unthinkable for the understanding, and unimaginable for the imagination—can only have importance for the heart, insofar as they influence the determination of the will.
It is undeniable that certain aspects of the supernatural Christian doctrines do not aim at genuine morality but only at legality. If they can be refined and transformed to become moral, it must nonetheless be admitted that such attempts were only made in response to the objections and criticisms of opponents, and for a long time they were actually only used to storm the imagination of dreamers when the torch of the law burned dimly—or they inspired hope that morality might arrive by supernatural means, or intensified the fear of being worsened by precisely such supernatural mechanisms. I need only refer to the representations—on the one hand of rewards cast in mystical beatitudes, childish, frivolous, or grounded in immoral pride; on the other, of punishments more vividly portrayed than the rewards, in their lurid, sensual images—of the torments of hell, where the devil, with ever-renewed inventiveness, eternally and without hope of salvation tortures the souls—eternally, eternally. It is no wonder that some imaginations succumbed under the power of these representations, became deranged, and drove many people to despair or madness.
When the imagination of Greek bacchantes went wild with the delusion of seeing the deity present and led to the wildest outbursts of lawless intoxication, that was a frenzy of joy and jubilation—a rapture that soon returned to ordinary life. But those religious excesses of the imagination are eruptions of the saddest, most fearful despair, which disintegrate the organs from their very foundation and are often incurable. The details, even the more definite features of these images, are supplied not just by the doctrine but by dogmatics themselves—it is left only to the more or less vivid imagination of the preacher to render them more or less terrifying.
The expectation of rewards and punishments in another world is so naturally grounded in the practical need of reason to establish a connection between this life and the next, that it has always been a central tenet of all religions. But to be worthy of a moral religion, its treatment must be careful in order to secure its place in the belief of the people.
As for the cultivation of imagination, that is not under consideration here—only the doctrine, insofar as it is based on the supra-rational principles which Christian religion offers—although belief in the products of the imagination is also demanded as dogma. The doctrine of the resurrection of the body has no great moral importance; it has merely had the consequence—though itself insignificant—that through it, the concept of the human soul as a more spiritual, incorporeal being could not become widespread, or rather, the hope of the continuation of personal existence—which death, so naturally, seems to extinguish—was aided by the notion that the soul, lacking the idea of an incorporeal, imperishable, immortal being, would be resurrected as the body, not merely as its intimate companion, but as its very self.
The hope of compensation for endured suffering is a consoling thought, a thought we demand from justice. But we must accustom ourselves not to regard everything that goes contrary to our expectations as an injustice. We must learn to view ourselves as more dependent on nature. The development of our political and civil relations and the inequality in lifestyle and goods has not only increased misery of all kinds, but also our susceptibility and sensitivity to it. To the sufferings we are exposed to by nature and by our lifestyle, which so often deviates from it, there is very often added discontent and impatience—springing from the demand that everything should go well and according to our wishes, and from the belief that misfortune is itself a form of injustice.
Behind the supposed contempt for the goods and honors of this world often lurks a poorly disguised envy of those who possess them; the contempt is often mere resentment, and the deprivation of such things is then regarded as an injustice, as suffering deserving of compensation. Many people, convinced that the sufferings of this world are not worthy of the glory in the next, believe that without suffering, they cannot partake in it at all; even while living a peaceful life and fulfilling their duties, they remain not only vigilant over their virtue but genuinely anxious—and create for themselves a host of real or imagined sufferings, lamenting this world as a vale of tears, even though they truly have nothing to complain about. All such dispositions lead away from the spirit and the truth of a hoped-for moral connection between this life and the next.
WHEN ONE WRITES ABOUT THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION…
Whenever one writes about the Christian religion, one is constantly exposed to the risk of being accused of misrepresenting its purpose and essence. And whenever one finds something objectionable in the conception one has formed of it, the reply is immediately at hand: this does not apply to the Christian religion itself, but only to a particular conception of it. If one then asks to be shown the doctrinal concept in which the pure system of Christianity may reliably be found, all the gentlemen will respond with one voice: “Are you not familiar with my compendium?” But, gentlemen, your self-authored compendia, or those which you take as the basis of your system of faith, are themselves so diverse that one must ask you first to come to agreement among yourselves before you dismiss something as not belonging to Christianity.
What will here be regarded as belonging to the Christian religion is either drawn directly from the New Testament or, aside from a few enlightened textbooks and the convictions of a small number of enlightened individuals, still represents the publicly acknowledged popular doctrine recognized by consistories and church councils—the doctrine still heard from most pulpits and schools, and the system in which the now grown-up generation was largely educated. For this reason, it remains important to illuminate certain aspects of this economy of salvation—at least until healthier ideas have taken more universal hold, and those systems remain of interest only to the curious researcher examining the spirit of past times.
I therefore do not believe myself to have fallen into the error of those who fabricate a target only to be able to strike it. No assurance would bring me more satisfaction than being told, with regard to certain notions which seemed offensive to me, that it was unnecessary to bring them up, since they have long been forgotten—if I could otherwise accept this assurance as generally true.
The effect of religion lies in strengthening the motives of morality through the idea of God as moral lawgiver, and in the satisfaction of the demands of our practical reason concerning the highest good as the end it sets for us. Because of these effects, religion can become an object of legislation and administration by the state, and the natural human need for it can be met by special institutions. Usually, the will of a nation has already long declared itself for a particular religion before governments were able to make it their own purpose. Only the propagation, maintenance, and continual renewal of knowledge of this religion can be made the aim of governance.
When one considers how great the influence of public institutions is—especially among the masses in monarchies—for preserving a specific religious system, and how rarely the people are in a position to investigate or choose for themselves, but generally remain passive in their instruction, it becomes fair to ask: Is the religion which was once appropriate for the people—otherwise it would not have turned to it—still appropriate in the same form under completely changed circumstances? Was the religion, in its original form, of such a nature that it could maintain its dignity and suitability as both a public and private religion, and exercise its effectiveness equally under all changes in government and enlightenment? Has the spirit of the people gradually discarded or transformed what in it was merely temporal? Or have those in power taken it into their hands, laying claim to the religion, and invested themselves in preserving its inherited form as a precious trust to be handed unchanged to posterity?
Whenever changes became the collective need of a nation, they were no longer preventable—but they always required centuries to occur. The people were usually content with a single upheaval and then allowed the reins to be taken from their hands again, which—through attachment to the new foundation and the fear that it might be taken away from them again—rendered further progress and reform impossible for centuries.
A religion can be considered:
a) with respect to its teachings
b) with respect to its traditions
c) with respect to its ceremonies
d) with respect to its relation to the state, or as a public religion (i.e., institutional arrangements)
What are the requirements for a public religion from these points of view—and are these fulfilled by the Christian religion?
a) Practical reason posits for the human being the highest goal of all striving: the realization of the highest good in the world—morality in union with appropriate happiness. I believe one can take it as a fairly general doctrine of Christianity that the hope of eternal blessedness is the greatest interest of the Christian—compared to which all else has only subordinate value. God’s favor is important to the Christian because He is the dispenser of that blessedness. The concept of blessedness in Christianity, regarding its content, largely coincides with what reason posits.
But the supreme condition for the possibility of the highest good, according to reason, is the moral disposition’s conformity to the moral law. According to the Christian religion, however, the supreme condition for eternal blessedness is belief in Christ and in the power of His atoning death—and not because such faith might ultimately lead to morality, which would then be the true condition and faith only the means. Rather, faith in itself is the ground of God’s favor, and this favor bestows eternal blessedness on those who believe in Christ, who could never truly earn it themselves.
This difference regarding what is supposed to be the highest commandment for humanity leads to further consequences—or rather, it is built upon certain important prior theses: namely, that through all efforts, through all sincere striving for the good, the human being, because of total incapacity for morality, can never achieve the merit of blessedness. The degree of blessedness allotted to him is due solely to the undeserved grace of God. From God’s justice, he would have nothing to expect but misfortune and punishment. Thus, the principle is presupposed: the good person deserves blessedness; he may claim it as a right; he is worthy of it. But this possibility—that someone could even become a good person—is precluded.
These doctrines have repeatedly been countered—often to the point of tedium—by appeals to Socrates, to so many virtuous pagans, to entire nations of innocent people. Yet the miserable answer always returns—an answer offensive to any feeling person who believes in virtue, hatched by some heartless Church Father and parroted ad nauseam by equally hollow followers: that these were only “glittering vices.”
The principle so deeply rooted in the general moral nature of humanity—that the good person is worthy of blessedness, a principle which expresses itself universally in the judgments of common sense—is acknowledged even by theologians in their doctrine of divine justice. But it is a principle that troubles them. They seek to hide it, are unwilling to admit it outright, for it conflicts in some measure with their fundamental doctrine of the all-sufficient suffering and death of Christ.
The doctrine of the depravity not only of all humans, but of human nature itself—despite being contradicted by experience (except where corrupt governments have degraded humanity)—was not established merely by the weak exegesis of a few scattered scriptural passages that seemed to suggest it. It was developed and maintained because of the central importance it holds in the overall system. From this supposed depravity and aversion to the good—against which reason feels an “irresistible disgust”—people even believed they had found the physical cause in Holy Scripture. They failed to consider that this hereditary transmission—where the human will has absolutely no influence and even children are declared worthy of punishment—effectively exonerates the human being of all guilt. For where there is no practical freedom, there can be no moral responsibility. If one is deprived of the capacity to recognize the good as such, to value it, and to prefer it over sensual impulses, then imputation is impossible.
Thus, it was only consistent that the pagans were condemned without grace or mercy—and the more humane sentiment of those theologians today who no longer dare to pronounce such verdicts so openly stands in stark contradiction to the rest of their system.
Since morality cannot be made the highest condition for blessedness—because human beings are supposedly incapable of it—something else had to be substituted by God’s merciful grace: namely, faith in Christ. One may demand good works as a necessary part of that faith, yet according to the theologians’ own formulation, it is not those works—which alone could give us merit or personal worth—that first draw God’s favor. Rather, faith comes first.
And faith depends, in turn, on a conviction of the understanding or imagination, requiring one to accept as true things that are partly based on historical credibility, and partly of such a nature that reason cannot reconcile itself with them. Faith in Christ as a historical person is not grounded in any need of practical reason, but in the testimony of others.
What is of interest to reason—what sets a highest final end for the existence and activity of the human being, what constitutes the keystone of the entire system of his reassurance, the resolution of questions that are important to him—must, according to reason itself, have its principle, its foundation, in reason. The only thing needed is the development of this reason in order to provide each person with the solution to those problems. Access to this solution is therefore open to everyone who wishes to listen to the voice of reason (“day unto day uttereth speech…”). Historical faith, on the other hand, is limited by its very nature. Its dissemination depends on contingent circumstances; it is a source from which not everyone can draw—and yet the condition for God’s favor toward us, our eternal fate, is supposed to depend on it.
One may humble oneself as much as one likes before the unknowability of the ways and purposes of Providence—though in other cases people think they have traced it with great precision. We do not ask why nature denied animals the talents of humanity, its capacity for reason and morality. But if a wretched pride—resting on the assumed depravity of our nature—refuses to place us above so many countless other nations, then we are entitled to expect that the means, the schooling toward a perfection which alone gives worth to man, be open to the whole human race.
There are only two possibilities: either the greater part of humanity was excluded from the blessing that faith brings—while we, whose depravity is at least equal (by our own admission) to that of the rest of humankind and thus deserved no better, were chosen to receive it. In that case, we must deny our reason and the general human moral sense the important concept of worthiness for happiness—a worthiness based on morality—and negate the moral relationship of divinity to the world and to human beings, as well as the concept of divine justice, which alone makes God’s existence meaningful to us. We must deny that God’s moral attributes are in any way knowable, that we can form any idea of His moral nature—of how He judges humans, of what virtue is in His eyes—even while we are expected to learn about His many transcendental and utterly mysterious attributes from Christian religion. Either we must give up this entire undertaking, or else we must admit that such faith is not of the enormous importance people claim for it—not the sole, exclusive condition under which human beings can grasp their purpose in the world or possess worth before God and reason.
The grounds for belief in Christ rest on history. Where simplicity of customs has preserved a people from great inequalities of class, and where history unfolded on their own soil, legends are passed from parents to children and become the property of all. But once special estates arise in a nation, once the father of the family is no longer also the high priest, a distinct estate emerges that becomes the depository of the legends, and from it knowledge of them spreads to the people. This is especially the case when the legends originate in a foreign land, among foreign customs, in a foreign language. Then the content of the legends in their original form can no longer be common property; for to learn that form requires time and a broad apparatus of knowledge.
In this way, that estate soon acquires control over the public faith, extending its power over religious teachings or at least retaining control over them. Faith in what others tell us—people who possess our trust or who have been granted state authority to be believed—is an infinitely more convenient thing than accustoming oneself to independent thought. Historical faith is indeed capable of stimulating inquiry, but it is not in its nature to awaken a spirit of reflection. With moral or prudential rules, everyone feels entitled and obliged to bring them into connection with personal feeling and experience and to judge their truth and applicability. But in the case of historical truths, the people are trained to believe what they have been taught from youth and to never doubt it—condemned never to engage in an examination of its truth.
If the ground of our salvation is not to rest in what our reason, our attention to ourselves and others, and our own thinking can examine, but in the authority of those whom the state has specially entrusted with preserving these historical truths, then perhaps it lies in the nature of the matter that use and cultivation of reason, trust in one’s own insights, and independence of conviction are so little promoted and so rarely widespread.
Faith is, ultimately, still exposed to contingency. However tightly surrounded it may be by authorities, however finely and ingeniously the surrounding system may be constructed—such that one can hardly challenge it without becoming entangled in an endless web of hypotheses and possibilities—yet in the end reason dares to examine that faith from within itself, to draw the principles of possibility and probability from its own resources. It casts aside the elaborate historical edifice and claims primacy for rational conviction over any beliefs based on historical grounds.
Once reason has been cultivated enough to feel its own autonomy, its conviction—drawn from and grounded in itself—becomes so strong that it either completely disregards that historical faith and its arguments, becomes utterly indifferent to it, and is then reproached for criminal frivolity; or, if one does not cease to confront reason with that faith and attempt to batter it with it, and if reason does not succeed in refuting the historical faith on its own grounds—perhaps due to lack of scholarly apparatus—then it is accused of willful blindness. Or else reason attempts to undermine historical faith by wit, by exposing the absurdity of certain narratives; or it treats sacred history like any other human work, presupposing that its stories may have changed or originated only in folk belief, just as with other traditions. Or it attacks the historical faith with its own weapons and does not find in its foundational texts what the faith draws from them, even as it tries to conform itself to them in every possible way. In such cases, reason is accused of lacking reverence for the divine word—of malice and dishonesty.
Faith in Christ is faith in a personified ideal (see note 3). But why are examples of other human beings not sufficient to strengthen us in the struggle for virtue, to awaken within us the divine spark, the power we carry within to master the sensuous? Why do we not recognize in virtuous people not only “flesh of our flesh, bone of our bone,” but also, in moral sympathy, “spirit of our spirit, strength of our strength”?
Ah! We have been persuaded that these capacities are alien to us, that humanity belongs merely to the order of natural beings—and corrupt ones at that. The idea of holiness has been completely isolated and attributed solely to a distant being. It has been deemed incompatible with embodiment in a sensuous nature. Thus, if moral perfection is to be ascribed anywhere, it cannot be understood as a part of our own being. It must be made possible only through the union (unio mystica) of that supreme being with us—through His indwelling and operation within us.
This degradation of human nature has prevented us from recognizing ourselves in virtuous individuals. For an ideal that would serve us as the image of virtue, there had to be a God-man. Fortunate are we, if we still find the truly divine in Him—not precisely in His being the second person of the Godhead, begotten by the Father from eternity, and so on, but in the fact that His spirit and disposition were in harmony with the moral law—the idea of which we must, after all, draw from ourselves, even if its letter has been given in signs and words.
That the truly divine in Him has often been misunderstood or ignored is shown, on the one hand, by the life-or-death disputes of theologians and priests—those whose duty it was to keep attention on those moral attributes—over predicates so fruitless for morality as the eternal generation, or the mode of union between the divine and the human nature, and so forth. Over these non-essential attributes one finds the most exhaustive distinctions in scholastic compendia—distinctions so refined that they slip through one’s fingers. These various opinions have been elevated into essential tenets of religion; they did not remain in the study but enlisted the people and governments to persecute dissenters with force, bloodshed, and imprisonment.
On this path, the essential nature of the ideal has clearly been overlooked and misunderstood—the quality that made it an ideal, something divine, for us. Equally tragic are the many experiences that show this was not the only way it could be misunderstood. People clung to still more irrelevant attributes, sacrificing their own and others’ blood for His mere name, for words associated with Him, or allegedly derived from Him (see note 4). As to how arrangements could be made so that in Christ one does not merely recognize the man or the name, but virtue itself—and love it—this question rests on the resolution of the broader problem: how can a people be raised to a receptivity for moral ideas and to morality itself?
The elaboration of that problem goes too far for our present purposes. We are only concerned with the incidental role that Christian religion might play, through the detour of its faith, in contributing to that end. But the axis on which the entire hope of our salvation turns is the faith in Christ as the reconciler of God with the world—as the one who, in our place, bore the punishment that humanity deserved, either through natural depravity or through its own guilt. These sufferings—those of an innocent being (for He was God)—are supposed to be deducted from the immeasurable guilt of the human race and credited to our account.
Against this keystone in the structure of Christian faith, all other doctrines are to be understood as mere supporting columns. That is why it was necessary to assert the worthlessness of human beings and their natural incapacity ever to possess value. That is why the doctrine of Christ’s divinity was introduced—only the suffering of such a being could balance the guilt of humankind. That is why the doctrine of God’s free grace was needed: because the history to which our salvation is bound could remain unknown to half the world without fault of their own—and why many other related doctrines had to be developed.
Even if one discards the crude notion that Christ literally bore the punishment for the whole world in His suffering—and instead merely says that God tied the forgiveness of our sins to those sufferings, that they were the condition for the return of His grace—this remains incomprehensible from the standpoint of our moral relation to God and does little to remedy the absurdity. The core idea remains: that on account of another’s merit, humanity is forgiven its guilt—if only it believes this.
NOW THE MASSES NEED…
Now the masses, which no longer possess any public virtue, which live discarded and oppressed, require other supports, other comforts, in order to have some compensation for their misery—which they no longer dare to diminish. The inner certainty of faith in God and immortality must be replaced by external assurances, by trust in men who claim to know more about such things, who know how to create the impression that they can.
The free republican who, in the spirit of his people, expends his strength and his life for his fatherland out of a sense of duty, does not value his effort so highly as to demand recompense or compensation for it. He has acted for his idea, for his duty—what else is there to demand? He merely hopes that, because he was virtuous, he may live among heroes in Elysium or Valhalla, there to be happier than here only because he is freed from the torments of frail humanity. Likewise, one who has internalized obedience to nature and necessity as a maxim of reason, and who honors that law—though it be incomprehensible to us—as sacred, what claims for compensation can remain for him? What compensation can an Oedipus demand for his undeserved suffering, if he believed himself to be in the service of fate?
But to make blind obedience to the evil whims of depraved men into a maxim—that is something only a people of the highest corruption, of the deepest moral impotence, is capable of. Only the passage of time, only the complete forgetting of a better condition, can bring them to such a state. A people like this, abandoned by themselves and by all the gods, leading a merely private life, needs signs and wonders. It needs divine assurances that there is a life after this one—because it can no longer sustain this belief within itself. And yet it is not capable of grasping the idea of morality, of founding its faith on that idea. The ideas themselves have withered and become chimeras. Its faith can only cling to an individual, can only lean on a person who serves as an example, as the object of its admiration.
Hence the open, enthusiastic reception of the Christian religion during the time when public virtue among the Romans had disappeared, when their external greatness was in decline. Hence, when after centuries humanity once again becomes capable of ideas, the interest in the individual fades. The experience of human depravity remains, but the doctrine of human reprobation diminishes. And what once made the individual interesting now gradually emerges in its own right as an idea, in its beauty—something we think ourselves, something that becomes our property.
We come to recognize joyfully as our own creation the beauty of human nature, which we had formerly projected onto that foreign individual, retaining only what is disgusting and vile as belonging to ourselves. We re-appropriate that beauty and thereby learn to feel self-respect—whereas before we believed that only what was contemptible belonged to us.
In private life, love of life—comfort and its embellishment—had to be our highest interest. These, when brought into a system of prudence, formed our morality. Now, however, if moral ideas are able to take root in man, those goods decline in value, and constitutions that guarantee only life and property are no longer regarded as the best. The whole anxious apparatus, the artificial system of motives and consolations in which so many thousands of weak souls found their sustenance, becomes dispensable. The system of religion, which always took on the coloring of the times and of the state constitutions—whose highest virtue was humility, the awareness of one’s impotence, of needing everything from elsewhere, even expecting evil to come partly from within—will now receive its own true, independent dignity.
Simon Gros 
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