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THE
Essence
of
Religion
BY
LUDWIG FEUERBACH
["From
the
German.'
“No one has demonstrated and explained the purely human
origin of the idea of God better than Ludwig Feuerbach.”
—Buchner.
“ I confess that to Feuerbach I owe a debt of inestimable grati
tude. Feeling about in uncertainty for the ground, and finding
everywhere shifting sands, Feuerbach cast a sudden blaze in the
darkness and disclosed to me the way.”
—Rev, S. Baring-Gould.
ONE SHILLING.
^foiibou:
PROGRESSIVE PUBLISHING COMPANY,
28 Stonecutter Street, E.C.
1890.
��national secular society
THE
ESSENCE OF RELIGION
GOD THE IMAGE OF MAN.
MAN’S DEPENDENCE UPON NATURE
THE LAST AND ONLY SOURCE OF RELIGION.
BY
LUDWIG FEUERBACH
(Author of “ The Essence of Christianity,” <£•<?.)
TRANSLATED BY
ALEXANDER LOOS.
^onboix:
PROGRESSIVE PUBLISHING COMPANY,
28 Stonecutter Street, E.C.
1890.
�LONDON:
PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY G. W. EOOTE,
28 STONECUTTER STREET, E.C.
�LUDWIG
FEUERBACH.
A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.
---------- o------ —
Ludwig Feuerbach was the fourth of the five sons of
th celebrated German criminalist Anselm von Feuer
bach, and born July 28, 1804, at Landshut in Bavaria.
The vicissitudes of his simple life do not present any
sensational features, and neither his position in life,
nor his inclination, tended to bring him prominently
before the public. His life was eminently a life of
thought, and his writings are his real biography.
What Feuerbach was at any time of his life, he was
with his whole soul. In his youth, as a pupil of the
Gymnasium at Anspach, he was a pious Christian—
pious with all the energy of his character. In the
fervor of his piety, he devoted himself from free
choice to the study of theology at the University of
Heidelberg, but without finding there any satisfactory
nourishment for the restless cravings of his aspiring
mind. He therefore left Heidelberg in 1824 for Berlin,
whence he wrote to his father as follows : “ I have
abandoned theology, not, however, wantonly or reck
lessly or from dislike, but because it does not satisfy
me, because it does not give me what I indispensably
need. I want to press Nature to my heart, from whose
depth the cowardly theologian shrinks back ; I want
to embrace man, but man in his entirety.” Feuerbach
�iv.
LUDWIG FEUERBACH.
could not resist the power with which Hegel then
attracted the young students; but he possessed too
independent a mind to swear upon the master’s word,
and gradually not only emancipated himself from
Hegel’s philosophy, but determined to throw off specu
lative philosophy altogether, and to exclusively devote
himself to the only true science, that of Nature. But
the death of King Max the First of Bavaria, whose
liberal patronage had enabled Anselm von Feuerbach
to give to each of his five talented sons a liberal educa
tion, frustrated this intention, and prevented Ludwig
Feuerbach from continuing his studies. He accordingly
settled in 1828 as a private tutor at the University of
Erlangen and lectured on Logic and Metaphysics, but
he soon realised that the prevailing scholasticism of
a royal university was not a congenial atmosphere for
his independent mind, and throwing up all official
connection with licensed institutions and systems, he
retired into the rural solitude of Bruckberg, a small
village near Anspach, where Nature and Science
absorbed all the fervor of his enthusiasm and inspired
him, during a residence of twenty-five years, with the
most important of his literary creations—a residence that
was interrupted only by a short visit at Heidelberg in
1848, whither he had been invited by the student
youth to give a course of lectures before a promiscuous
audience on “ The Essence of Religion.” The feelings
with which he hailed this self-emancipation from the
thraldom of office and scholastic influences can best be
realised from the words in which he gave vent to his
exultation, when in 1838 he had been united in blissful
wedlock to the sister-in-law of the friend who had
secured for him the asylum at Bruckberg: “ Now I
can do homage to my genius ; now I can devote myself
independently, freely, regardlessly to the development
of my own being ! ”
�LUDWIG FEUERBACH.
V.
Among his writings which have been published in a
uniform edition comprising ten volumes, the following
deserve especially to be mentioned : Thoughts on
Death and Immortality (1830); History of Modern
Philosophy from Bacon of Verulam to Spinoza (1833) ;
Representation, Development and Criticism of
Leibnitz's Philosophy (1837) ; Pierre Bayle (1838) ;
Essence of Christianity (1841, second edition 1843,
third edition 1848 — translated by George Eliot);
Essence of Religion (1845). This last-named work
which is here for the first time presented to the
English public in translation, forms the principal
basis for the thirty lectures on “ The Essence of
Religion,” which Ludwig Feuerbach, as before stated,
held in the winter of 1848-1849 at Heidelberg before
a promiscuous audience, and in which he endeavored
to fill a gap left in his Essence of Christianity, by
enlarging the argument of the latter, according to
which “ all theology is anthropology ” by the addition
of “ and physiology,” so that his doctrine and conception
of religion is embraced in the two words Nature and
Man. The last principal work of Ludwig Feuerbach
is Theogony according to the sources of Classic, Hebrew
and Christian antiquity, which forms the ninth
volume of his works; the tenth volume (1866)
consisting of a promiscuous collection of essays on
“ Deity, liberty, and immortality from the stand-point
of anthropology.”
Afterwards Feuerbach transferred his residence from
Bruckberg to Rechenberg near Nuremberg, where he
lived exclusively to his family and a small circle of
intimate friends. Solely devoted as he had been to
the service of science, he had not hoarded up any
riches and in consequence suffered toward the evening
of his life from severe and annoying deprivations. A
due sense of gratitude on the part of his contemporaries
�vi.
LUDWIG FEUERBACH.
in Europe and America, secured the success of a
national subscription, intended to relieve him and
his family from want and cares for the rest of his life.
But his health, undermined by severe mental labor
and deprivation, failed more and more rapidly and
disabled him even from fully realizing the enjoyment
of a nation’s grateful recognition, when a repeated
stroke of apoplexy overshadowed his existence with
the gloom of partial unconsciousness, until, on the 12th
of Sept., 1872, he died at Rechenberg.
In trying to briefly point out, in conclusion, the sub
stance of Ludwig Feuerbach’s writings in general and
of the subsequent argument in particular, we do not
know how to do this better or more strikingly, than in
his own words in which he speaks of his life-work as
follows :
“ My business was, and above everything is, to
illumine the dark regions of religion with the torch of
reason, that man at last may no longer be a sport to
the hostile powers that hitherto and now avail them
selves of the mystery of religion to oppose mankind.
My aim has been to prove that the powers before
which man crouches are creatures of his own limited,
ignorant, uncultured, and timorous mind, to prove
that in special the being whom man sets over against
himself as a separate supernatural existence is his own
being. The purpose of my writing is to make men
an#iropologians instead of ^eologians ; man-lovers
instead of God-lovers ; students of this world instead
of candidates of the next; self-reliant citizens of the
earth instead of subservient and wily ministers of a
celestial and terrestrial monarchy. My object is
therefore anything but negative, destructive, it is
positive ; I deny in order to affirm. I deny the
illusions of theology and religion that I may afinmthe
substantial being of man.”
�THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION
GOD THE IMAGE OF MAN
man’s dependence upon nature
the last and
ONLY SOURCE OF RELIGION.
-------- «-------1. That being which is different from and inde
pendent of man, or, which is the same thing, of God,
as represented in the Essence of Christianity,—the
being without human nature, without human qualities
and without human individuality is in reality nothing
but Nature.1
2. The feeling of dependence in man is the source
of religion ; but the object of this dependence, viz.,
that upon which man is and feels himself dependent,
is originally nothing but Nature. Nature is the first
original object of religion, as is sufficiently proved by
the history of all religions and nations.
3. The assertion that religion is innate with and
natural to man, is false, if religion is identified with
Theism ; but it is perfectly true, if religion is con
sidered to be nothing but that feeling of dependence
by which man is more or less conscious that he does
not and cannot exist without another being, different
from himself, and that his existence does not originate
in himself. Religion, thus understood, is as essential
1 Nature, according to my conception, is nothing but a general
word for denoting those beings, things, and objects which man
distinguishes from himself and his productions, and which he
embraces under the common name of “ Nature,” but by no means
a general being, abstracted and separated from the .real objects
and then personsified into a mystical existence.
�8
THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
to man as light to the eye, as air to the lungs, as food
to the stomach. Religion is the manifestation of man’s
conception of himself. But above all man is a being
who does not exist without light, without air, without
water, without earth, without food,—he is, in short, a
being dependent on Nature. This dependence in the
animal, and in man as far as he moves within the
sphere of the brute, is only an unconscious and
unreflected one ; but by its elevation into consciousness
and imagination, by its consideration and profession,
it becomes religion. Thus all life depends on the
change of seasons; but man alone celebrates this
change by dramatic representations and festival acts.
But such festivals, which imply and represent nothing
but the change of the seasons, or of the phases of the
moon, are the oldest, the first, and the real confessions
of human religion.
4. Man, as well as any individual nation or tribe
considered in its particularity, does not depend on
nature or earth in general, but on a particular locality,
not on water generally, but on some particular water,
stream, or fountain. Thus the Egyptian is no Egyptian
out of Egypt; the Indian is no Indian out of India.
For this very reason those ancient nations which were
so firmly attached to their native soil, and not yet
attained to the conception of their true nature as mem
bers of mankind, but which clung to their individuality
and particularity as nations and tribes, were fully jus
tified in worshiping the mountains, trees, animals,
rivers and fountains of their respective countries as
divine beings ; for their whole individuality and
existence were exclusively based upon the particularity
of their country and its nature—just as he who recog
nises the universe as his home, and himself as a part
of it, transfers the universal character of his being into
his conception of God.
�THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
9
5. It is a fantastic notion that man should have
been enabled only by “ Providence,” through the
assistance of “ superhuman ” beings, such as gods,
spirits, genii and angels, to elevate himself above the
state of the animal. Of course man has become what
he is not through himself alone ; he needed for this
the assistance of other beings. But these were no
supernatural creatures of imagination, but real, natural
beings—no beings standing above but below himself ;
for in general everything that aids man in his con
scious and voluntary actions, commonly and pre
eminently called humaD, every good gift and talent,
does not come from above, but from below ; not from
on high, but from the very depths of Nature. Such
assistant beings, such tutelary genii of man, are
especially the animals. Only through them man raised
himself above them ; only by their protection and
assistance, the seed of human perfection could grow.
Thus we read in the book of Zendavesta, and even in
its very oldest and most genuine part, Vendidad:
“ Through the intellect of the dog is the world upheld.
If he did not protect the world, thieves and wolves
would rob all property.” This importance of the
animals to man, particularly in times of incipient
civilisation, fully justifies the religious adoration with
which they are looked upon. The animals were
necessary and indispensable to man; on them his
human existence depended—but on what his life and
existence depends, that is his God. If the Christian
no longer adores Nature as God, it is only because in
his belief his existence does not depend on Nature,
but on the will of a being different from Nature ; but
still he considers and adores this being as a divine, i.e.
supreme being, only because he deems it to be the
author and preserver of his existence and life. Thus
the worship of God depends only on the self-adoration
�10
THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
of man, and is nothing but the manifestation of the
latter : for suppose I should despise myself and my
life—and man originally and normally does not make
any distinction between himself and his life—how
should I praise and worship that upon which such
pitiful and contemptible life depends? The value
which I consciously attribute to the source of life
reflects therefore only the value which I unconsciously
attribute to life and myself. The higher therefore the
value of life, the higher also the value and dignity of
those who give life, viz., of the gods. How could the
gods possibly be resplendent in gold and silver, unless
man knew the value and the use of gold and silver ?
What a difference between the fulness and love of life
among the Greeks, and the desolation and contempt of
life among the Indians—but at the same time what
a difference between the Greek and Indian mythology,
between the Olympian father of the gods and of man
and the huge Indian opossum or the rattlesnake—the
ancestor of the Indians !
6. The Christian enjoys life just as much as the
heathen, but he sends his thankoflferings for the
enjoyments of life upward to the Father in Heaven ;
he accuses the heathen of idolatry for the very reason
that they confine their adoration to the creature and
do not rise to the first cause as the only true cause of
all benefits. But do I owe my existence to Adam, the
first man ? Do I revere him as my parent ? Why
shall I not stop at the creature ? Am I myself not a
creature ? Is not the very nearest cause which is
equally defined and individual with myself, the last
cause for me, who myself am not from afar, as I
myself am a defined and individual being ? Does not
my individuality, inseparable and undistinguishable
as it is from myself and my existence, depend on the
individuality of my parents ? Do I not, if I go further
�THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
11
back, at last lose all traces of my existence ? Is there
not a necessary limit to my thus going back in search
of the first cause ? Is not the beginning of my
existence absolutely individual ? Am I begotten and
conceived in the same year, in the same hour, with the
same disposition, in short under the same internal and
external conditions as my brother ? Is not therefore
my origin just as individually my own as my life
without contradiction is my own life ? Shall I there
fore extend my filial love and veneration back to
Adam? No, I am fully entitled to stop with my
religious reverence at those things which are nearest
to me, viz., my parents, as the cause of my existence.
7. The uninterrupted series of the finite causes or
objects, so-called, which was defined by the Atheists of
old as an infinite and bv the Theists as a finite one,
exists only in the thoughts and the imagination of man,
like time, in which one moment follows another
without interruption or distinction. In reality the
tedious monotony of this causal series is interrupted
and destroyed by the difference and individuality of
the objects, which individuality causes each by itself
to appear new, independent, single, final, and absolute.
Certainly water, which in the conception of natural
religion is a divine being, is on the one hand a
compound, depending on hydrogen and oxygen, but
at the same time it is something new, to be compared
to itself only, and original, wherein the qualities of its
two constituent elements, as such, have disappeared
and are destroyed. Certainly the moonlight, which the
heathen, in his religious simplicity, adored as an inde
pendent light, is derived from the immediate light of
the sun, but at the same time, different from the latter,
the peculiar light of the moon, changed and modified
by the moon’s resistance, and therefore a light which
could not exist without the moon, and whose particu
�12
THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
larity has its source only in her. Certainly the dog,
whom the Persian addresses in his prayers as a
beneficial and therefore divine being on acconnt of his
watchfulness, his readiness to oblige and his faithful
ness, is a creature of Nature, which is not what he is
through himself ; but still it is only the dog himself,
this particular and no other being, which possesses
those qualities that call for my veneration. Shall I
now in recognition of these qualities look up to the
first and general cause, and turn my back on the dog ?
But the general cause is without distinction just as
much the cause of the friendly dog as of the hostile
wolf, whose existence I am obliged to destroy, in spite
of the general cause, if I will sustain the better right
of my own existence.
8. The Divine Being which is revealed in Nature, is
nothing but Nature herself, revealing and representing
herself with irresistible power as a Divine Being.
The ancient Mexicans adored among their many gods
also a god (or rather a goddess) of the salt. This god
of the salt may reveal to us in a striking exemplification
the God of Nature in general. The salt (rock-salt)
represents in its economical, medicinal and other
effects, the usefulness and beneficence of Nature, so
highly praised by the Theists ; in its effect on the eye,
in its colors, its brilliancy and transparency, her
beauty; in its crystalline structure and form, her
harmony and regularity; in its composition of
antagonistic elements, the combination of the opposite
elements of Nature into one whole—a combination
which by the Theists was always considered as an
unobjectionable proof for the existence of a ruler of
Nature, different from her, because in their ignorance
of Nature they did not know that antagonistic elements
and things are most apt to attract one another and
combine into a new whole. But what now is the god
�THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
13
of the salt ? That god whose domain, existence, mani
festation, effects and qualities are contained in the salt ?
Nothing but the salt itself which appears to man on
account of its qualities and effects as a divine, i.e., as
a beneficent, magnificent, praiseworthy and admirable
being. Homer expressively calls the salt divine.
Thus, as the god of the salt is only the impression and
expression of the deity or divinity of the salt, so also
is the God of the world or of Nature in general, only
the impression and expression of Nature’s divinity.
9. The belief that in Nature another being is mani
fested, distinct from Nature herself, or that Nature is
filled and governed by a different from herself, is in
reality identical with the belief that spirits, demons,
devils, etc., manifested themselves through man, at
least in a certain state, and that they possess him ; it is
in very truth the belief, that Nature is possessed by a
strange, spirtual being. And indeed Nature, viewed
in the light of such a belief, is really possessed by a
spirit, but this spirit of man, his imagination, his soul,
which transfers itself involuntarily into Nature and
makes her a symbol and mirror of his being.
10. Nature is not only the first and original object
but also the lasting source, the continuous, although
hidden background of religion. The belief that God,
even when he is imagined as a supernatural being,
different from Nature, is an object existing outside of
man, an objective being, as the philosophers call it ;
this belief has its only source in the fact, that the
objective being, which really exists outside of man,
viz., the world or Nature, is originally God. The
existence of Nature is not, as Theism imagines, based
upon the existence of God, but vice versa, the existence
of God, or rather the belief in his existence, is only
based upon the existence of Nature. You are obliged
to imagine God as an existing being, only because you
�14
THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
are obliged by Nature herself to pre-suppose the
existence of Nature as the cause and condition of your
existence and consciousness, and the very first idea
connected with the thought of God is nothing but the
very idea that he is the existence preceding your own
and presupposed to it. Or the belief that God exists
absolutely outside of man’s soul and reason, no matter
whether man exists or not, whether he contemplates
him or not, whether he desires him or not—this belief
or rather its object, does not reflect anything to your
imagination but Nature, whose existence is not based
upon the existence of man, much less upon the action
of the human intellect and imagination. If, therefore,
the theologians, particularly the Rationalists, find the
honor of God pre-eminently in his having an existence
independent of man’s thoughts, they may consider
that the honor of such an existence likewise must be
attributed to the Gods of blinded heathenism, to the
stars, stones and animals, and that in this respect the
existence of their god does not differ from the
existence of the Egyptian Apis.
Those qualites which imply and express the difference
between the divine being and the human being or at
least the human individual, are originally and im
plicitly only qualities of Nature. God is the most
powerful or rather the almighty being, z.e., he can do
what man is not able to do, what infinitely surpasses
his powers, and what therefore inspires him with the
humiliating feeling of his limitedness, weakness and
nullity. “ Canst thou,” says God to Job, “bind the
sweet influences of Pleiades or loose the bands of
Orion ? Canst thou send lightnings, that they may go
unto thee and say here we are ? Hast thou given the
horse strength ? Does the hawk fly by thy wisdom ?
Hast thou an arm like God, or canst thou thunder with
a voice like him?” No, that man cannot do, with the
�THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
15
thunder the human voice cannot be compared. But
■what power is manifest in the power of the thunder,
in the horse’s strength, in the flight of the hawk, in
he restless course of the Pleiades? The power of
N ature.
God is an eternal being. But in the Bible itself we
read: “ One generation passeth away and another
generation cometh : but the earth abideth forever.”
In the books of Zendavesta, sun and moon are expres
sively called “ immortal,” on account of their duration
And a Peruvian Inca said to a Dominican monk, “ You
adore a God who died on the cross, but I worship the
Sun, which never dies.”
God is the all-kind being, “ for he maketh the sun to
rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on
the just and on the unjustbut that being which
does not distinguish between good and evil, between
just and unjust, which distributes the enjoyments of
life not according to moral merits ; which in general
imp resses man as a kind being, because its effects, such
as for instance the refreshing sunlight and rain-water
are the sources of the most beneficial sensations : that
being is Nature.
God is an all-embracing, universal and unchangeable
being ; but it is also one and the same sun which
shines for all men and beings on the earth ; it is one
and the same sky which embraces them all ; one and
the same earth which bears them all. “ That there is
one God,” says Ambrosius, “ is proved by common
Nature ; for there is only one world.” “ Just as the sun
the sky, the moon, the earth and the sea are common
to all,” says Plutarch, “although they are differently
called by each one, so exists also one spirit, who rules
the universe, but he has different names and is wor
shipped in different ways.”
God “ dwelleth not in temples made with hands,”
�16
THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
but Nature neither. Who can enclose the light, the
sky, the sea, within human limits ? The ancient
Persians and Germans worshipped only Nature, but
they had no temples. The worshipper of Nature finds
the artificial, well-measured halls of a temple or of a
church too narrow, too sultry ; he feels at his ease only
under the lofty, boundless sky which appears to the
contemplation of his senses.
God is that being which cannot be defined with
human measure, a great, immeasurable, infinite being ;
but he is such a being only because his work, the
universe, is great, immeasurable and infinite, or at
least appears to be so. The work praises its master :
the magnificence of the creator has its origin only in
the magnificence of his product. “ How great is the
sun, but how much greater is he who made it ! ”
God is a superterrestrial, superhuman, supreme
being, but even this supreme being is in its origin and
basis nothing but the highest being in space, optically
considered : the sky with its brilliant phenomena. All
religions of some imagination transfer their gods into
the region of the clouds, into the ether of the sun,
moon and stars : all gods are lost at last in the blue
vapor of heaven. Even the spiritual God of Christianity
has his seat, his basis above in heaven.
God is a mysterious, inconceivable being, but only
because Nature is to man, especially to religious man,
a mysterious inconceivable being. “ Dost thou know,”
says God to Job, “ the balancings of the clouds ? Hast
thou entered into the springs of the sea ? Hast thou
perceived the breadth of the earth ? Hast thou seen
the treasures of the hail ? ”
Finally, God is that being which is independent of
the human will, unmoved by human wants and
passions, always equal to himself, ruling according to
unchangeable laws, establishing his institutions un
�17
THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
changeable for all time. But this being again is
nothing but Nature, which remains the same in all
changes, never exhibiting the vacillations of an
arbitrary, wilful ruler, but subject in all her mani
festations to unalterable laws : inexorable, regardless
Nature.2
12. Although God, as the author of Nature, is
imagined and represented as a being different from
Nature, still what is implied and expressed by this
being, its real contents, is nothing but Nature. “Ye
shall know them by their fruits,” we read in the Bible,
and the apostle Paul points expressively to the world
as to the work wherein God’s existence and being can
be understood, for what one produces, that contains
his being and shows what he is able to do. What we
have in Nature, that we have in God, only imagined as
the author or cause of Nature—therefore no moral and
spiritual, but only a natural, physical being. A
worship founded only upon God as the author of
Nature, without attributing to him any other qualities,
derived from man, and without imagining him at the
same time as a political and moral, i.e. human lawgiver
— such worship would be a mere worship of Nature.
Ic is true that the author of Nature is thought to be
endowed with intellect and will; but what his will
desires, what his intellect thinks, is just that which
es no will nor intellect, but only mechanical,
2 All those qualities which originally are derived only from the
contemplation of Nature, become in later times abstract, meta
physical qualities, just as Nature herself becomes an abstraction
or creation of human reason. On this later standpoint, where
man forgets the origin of God in Nature, when God no longer is
an object of the senses, but an imaginary being, we must say : God
without human qualities, who is to be distinguished from the
properly human God, is nothing but the essence of reason. So
much as regards the relation between this work and my former
ones, Luther and The Essence of Christianity.
B
�18
THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
physical, chemical, vegetable and animal forces and
impulses.
13. As little as the formation of the child in the
womb, the pulsations of the heart, digestion and other
organic functions are effects of the intellect and
will, so little is Nature in general the effect or
production of a spiritual being, i.e, of a being that
wills and knows or thinks. If Nature was originally
a product of mind, and therefore a manifestation
of mind, then also the natural phenomena of the
present time would be spiritual effects and
manifestations.
A supernatural commencement
necessarily requires a supernatural continuation. For
man thinks intellect and will to be the cause of
Nature only where the effects defy his own will, and
surpass his intellect, where he explains things only
through human analogies and reasons, where he knows
nothing of the natural causes, and therefore derives
also the special and present phenomena from God, or—
as for instance the movements of the stars which he
cannot understand—from subordinate spirits. But if
now-a-days the fulcrum of the earth and of the stars
is no longer the almighty word of God, and the motive
of their movement no spiritual or angelic but a
mechanical one : then the first cause of this movement
is also necessarily a mechanical, or, in general, a natural
one. To derive Nature from intellect and will, or in
general from the mind, is to reckon without the host,
is to bring forth the savior of the world from the virgin
without the co-operation of a man, through the Holy
Ghost—is to change water into wine—is to appease
storms with words, to transfer mountains with words,
to restore sight to the blind with words. What weak
ness and narrow-mindedness does it betray to do away
with the secondary causes of superstition, such as
miracles, devils, spirits, etc., in explaining the pheno
�THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
19
mena of Nature, but to leave untouched the first cause
of superstition!
14. Several of the ancient ecclesiastical writers assert,
that the Son of God is not a product of God’s will,
but of God’s nature ; that the product of Nature is
earlier than the product of the will, and that, therefore,
the act of begetting, as an act of Nature, precedes the
act of creation as an act of will. Thus the acknowledg
ment of Nature and her omnipotent laws prevails even
within the sphere of the belief in the supernatural
God, although in the plainest contradiction of his own
will and being. The act of begetting is presupposed
to the act of the will ; the activity of Nature is con
sidered as preceding the activity of thought and will.
This is perfectly true. Nature must necessarily exist
before anything exists which distinguishes itself from
Nature, and which places Nature, as an object of the
act of thinking and willing, in opposition to itself.
The true way of philosophy leads from the want of
intelligence to intellect; but the direct way into the
madhouse of theology, goes from the intellect to the
want of intellect. To base the mind not upon Nature,
but, vice versa, Nature upon the mind, is the same as
to place the head, not upon the abdomen, but the latter
upon the former. Every higher degree of development
presupposes the lower one, not vice versa3, for the
simple reason, that the higher one must have something
below it, in order to be the higher one. And the
higher a being stands and the greater its value or
dignity is, the more it presupposes. For this very
reason not the first being, but the latest, the last, the
most depending, the most needful, the most compli
cated being is the highest one, just as in the history of
3 This may be true in a iogical sense, but never as far as the
real genesis is concerned.
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THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
the earth’s formation, not the oldest and first works,
such as the slate and granite, but the latest and most
recent products, such as the basalts and the dense lavas,
are the heaviest and weightiest ones. A being which
has the honor of presupposing nothing, has also the
honor of being nothing. But it is true that the Chris
tians understand well the art of making something out
of nothing.
15. “ All things come from and depend upon God,”
so the Christian says in harmony with his godly faith
“ but,” he adds immediately with his ungodly intellect,
“ only indirectly.” God is only the first cause after
which comes the endless host of subordinate gods, the
regiment of intermediate causes. But the intermediate
causes, so-called, are the only real and effective ones,
the only objective and sensible causes. A God who
no longer casts down man with the arrows of Apollo,
who no longer arouses the soul with Jove’s thunder
and lightning, who.no longer threatens the sinner with
comets and other fiery phenomena, who no longer
with his own high hand attracts the iron to the load
stone, produces ebb and tide, and protects the
continent against the overbearing power of the waters
which always threaten another deluge—in short, a God
driven from the empire of the intermediate causes is
only a cause by name, a harmless and very modest
creature of imagination—a mere hypothesis for the
purpose of solving a theoretical problem, for explain
ing the commencement of Nature or rather of organic
life. For the assumption of a being different from
Nature, with the purpose of explaining her existence,
has its origin only in the impossibility—although this
is only a relative and subjective one—of explaining
organic and particularly human life from Nature,
inasmuch as the Theist makes his inability to explain
life through Nature, an inability of Nature to produce
�THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
21
life out of herself, and thus extends the limits of his
intellect to limits of Nature.
16. Creation and preservation are inseparable. If,
therefore, a being different from Nature—a God—is
our creator, he is also our preserver, and not the power
of the air, of heat, of the water, or of bread, but the
power of God sustains and preserves us. “ In him we
live and move and have our being.” “Not bread,’’
says Luther, “ but the word of God nourishes also the
body naturally, as it creates and preserves all things.”
“ Because it exists, he (God) nourishes by it and under
it, so that we do not see it, and think that the bread
does it. But where it does not exist, he nourishes
without the bread, through his word only, as he does it
by the bread.” “In fine, all creatures are God’s masks
and mummeries which he permits to assist him in all
kind of work that he otherwise can, and really does
perform without their co-operation.” But if, instead
of Nature, God is our preserver, Nature is a mere
disguise of the Deity, and, therefore, a superfluous and
imaginary being, just as vice versa God is a superfluous
and imaginary being if Nature preserves us. But now
it is manifest and undeniable that we owe our preserva
tion only to the peculiar effects, qualities, and powers
of natural beings, therefore we are not only entitled,
but compelled, to conclude that we owe also our origin
to Nature. We are placed right in the midst of Nature,
and should our beginning, our origin, lie outside of
Nature ? We live within Nature, with Nature, by
Nature, and should we still not be of her ? What a
contradiction I
17. The earth has not always been in its present
state ; on the contrary, it has come to its actual condi
tion through a series of developments and revolutions,
and geology has discovered that in the different stages
of its development several species of plants and animals
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THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
existed, which no longer exist nor even have existed
for ages. Thus, for instance, there exist no longer any
Trilobites nor any Encinites or Ammonites or
Pterodactyles or Ichthyosauri, or Plesiosauri, or
Megatheria or Dinotheria, etc.
And why not?
Apparently because the condition of their existence no
longer exists. But if the end of any life coincides
with the end of its conditions, then also the beginning,
the origin of such life coincides with the origin
of its conditions.
Even now-a-days where plants,
at least those of higher organisations, come to
life only by organic procreation, they can—in
a very remarkable, yet unexplained manner—be seen
to appear in numberless multitudes as soon as the
peculiar conditions of their life are given. The origin
of organic life cannot, therefore, be thought of as an
isolated act, as an act after the origin of the conditions
of life, but rather as the act by which and the moment
in which the temperature, the air, the water, the earth
in general, received such qualities, and oxygen, hydro
gen, carbon, nitrogen entered into such combinations
as were necessary for the existence of organic life—
this moment must also be considered as the moment
when these elements combined for the formation of
organic bodies. If, therefore, the earth, by virtue of its
own nature, has in the course of time developed and
cultivated itself to such a degree that it adopted a
character agreeable to the existence of man and suitable
to man’s nature, or so to say, a human character : then
it could produce man also by its own power.
18. The power of Nature is not unlimited like the
power of God, i.e., the power of human imagination ;
she cannot do everything at all times and under all
circumstances—her productions and effects on the
contrary are dependent on conditions. If therefore,
Nature now-a-days cannot or does not produce any
�THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
23
organic bodies by generatio cequivoca, this is no proof
that she could not do it in former times. The present
character of the earth is that of stability ; the time of
revolutions is gone by, the earth has done raging. The
volcanos only are some single turbulent heads which
have no influence on the masses, and which therefore
do not disturb the existing order of things. Even the
grandest volcanic event within the memory of man,
viz., the rising of Jorullo in Mexico, was nothing but
a local rebellion. But as man manifests only in extra
ordinary times extraordinary powers, or as he can do
only in times of the highest exaltation and emotion
what at other times is impossible for him, and as the
plant only at certain epochs, such as the period of
germinating, blooming and impregnation produces
heat and consumes carbon and hydrogen, thus ex
hibiting an animal function, which is directly in con
tradiction to its ordinary vegetable functions ; so also
the earth only in the time of its geological revolutions,
when all its powers and elements were in a state of
highest fermentation, ebullition and tension, developed
its power of producing animals. We know Nature
only in its present state ; how, then, could we co nclude
that what does not happen now by Nature, might not
happen at all—even at entirely different times, under
entirely different conditions and relations ?4
19. The Christians have not been able to express
with sufficient strength their astonishment that the
4 It is self-evident that I do not intend to finally dispose in
these few words of the great problem of the origin of organic life ;
but they are sufficient for my argument, as I give here only the
indirect proof that life cannot have any other source but Nature.
As regards the direct proofs of natural science, we are still far
from the end, but in comparison with former times—especially in
consequence of the lately proved identity of organic and inorganic
phenomena—at least far enough to be able to be convinced of the
natural origin of life, although the manner of this origin is yet
unknown to us, or even if it never should be revealed to us.
�24
THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
heath en adored created beings as divine ones, but they
might rather have admired them on that account, for
such adoration was based on a perfectly true contem
plation of Nature. To be produced, to come into life,
is nothing else but to be individualised. All individual
beings are produced, but the general fundamental
elements or beings of Nature which have no individu
ality are not produced. Matter is not produced. But
an individual being is of a higher, more divine quality
than that without individuality. It is true that birth
is disgraceful and death painful, but he who does not
wish to begin and to end may resign the rank of a
living being. Eternity excludes life, and life excludes
eternity. Certainly does the individual presuppose
another being which produces it; but the latter does
not stand above, it stands below its product. True,
the producing being is the cause of existence and in
that respect the first being ; still it is at the same time
the mere means and material ; the basis of another
being’s existence, and therefore a subordinate being.
The child consumes the mother, disposes of her
strength and of her substance to his own advantage,
paints his cheeks with her blood. And the child is
the mother’s pride ; she places it above herself, sub
ordinating her existence and welfare to that of the
child ; even the animal mother sacrifices her own life
for that of her young ones. The deepest disgrace of
any being is death, but the source of death is the act
of begetting. To beget is nothing but to throw one’s
self away, to make one’s self common, to be lost among
the multitude, - to sacrifice one’s singleness and ex
clusiveness to other beings. Nothing is more full of
contradiction, more perverse and void of sense, than to
consider the natural being as produced by a supreme,
perfectual being. According to such a process, and in
consistency with the creature’s being only an image of
�THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
25
the creator, also the human children ought not to
originate in the disgraceful, lowly placed organ of the
womb, but in the highest organisation, the head.
20. The ancient Greeks derived all springs, wells,
streams, lakes and oceans from Oceanos ; and the
ancient Persians made all mountains of the earth
originate in the mountain Albordy. Is the derivation
of all beings from one perfect being anything different
or better ? No, it is based upon the same manner of
thinking. As Albordy is a mountain like all those
which have their origin in it, so also the divine being,
as the source of those derived from it, is like them, not
different from them as to species ; but as the Albordy
is distinguished from all other mountains by
preserving their qualities pre-eminently, i.e. in a
degree exaggerated by imagination to the utmost, up to
heaven, beyond the sun, moon and stars, so also the
divine being is distinguished from all other beings.
Unity is unproductive ; only dualism, contrast,
difference is productive. That which produces the
mountains is not only different from them, but some
thing manifold in itself. And those elements which
produce water, are not only different from the water,
but also from themselves, nay, even antagonistic to
one another. Just as genius, wit, acumen and
judgment are produced and developed only by
contrasts and conflicts, so also life was produced only
by the conflict of different, nay, of antagonistic
elements, forces and beings.
21. “ How should he who made the ear not hear ?
How should he who made the eye not see ?” This
biblical or theistical derivation of the being endowed
with the senses of hearing and seeing from another
being endowed with the same senses, or to use an
expression of the modern, philosophic language, the
derivation of the spiritual and subjective being from
�26
THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
another spiritual and subjective being, is based upon
the same foundation, and expresses the same as the
biblical explanation of the rain from heavenly masses
of water collected beyond or in the clouds, or the
Persian derivation of the mountains from the
original mountain, Albordy, or the Grecian explanation
of fountains and rivers from Oceanos. Water from
water, but from an immensely great and all-embracing
water ; mountain from mountain, but from an infinite
all-embracing mountain ; so spirit from spirit, life
from life, eye from eye—but from an infinite,
all-embracing eye, life and spirit.
22. When children inquire about the origin of babes,
we give them the explanation that the nurse takes
them from the well where they swim like fishes. The
explanation which theology gives us of the origin of
organic or natural beings in general is not much
different. God is the deep or beautiful well of
imagination in which all realities, all perfections, all
forces are contained, in which all things swim already
made like little fishes. Theology is the nurse who
takes them from this well, but the chief person,
Nature, the mother who brings forth the children with
pangs, who bears them during nine months under her
heart, is left entirely out of consideration in such an
explanation, which originally was only childlike, but
now-a-days is childish. Certainly such an explanation
is more beautiful, more pleasant to the heart, easier,
more intelligible and conceivable to the children of
God than the natural way, which only by degrees and
through numberless obstacles rises from darkness to
light. But also the explanation which our pious
forefathers gave of hailstorms, epidemics among cattle,
drought and thunderstorms, by tracing them to the
agency of weather-makers, sorcerers, and witches, is
far more practical, easier, and, to uneducated men even
�THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
27
now-a-days much more intelligible than the explanation
of these phenomena from natural causes.
23. “ The origin of life is inexplicable and incon
ceivable.” Be it so ; but this incomprehensibility does
not justify us in drawing from the superstitious conse
quences which theology draws from the deficiencies
of human knowledge, nor in going beyond the sphere
of natural causes : for we can only say, “ we cannot
explain life from these natural phenomena and causes
which are known to us, or as far as they are known to
us ”—but we cannot say, “ life cannot be explained at
all from Nature,” without pretending to have exhausted
already the ocean of Nature even to the last drop.
This incomprehensibility does not justify us in explain
ing the inexplicable by the supposition of imagined
beings, and in deceiving and deluding ourselves and
others by an explanation which explains nothing. It
does not justify us in changingan ignorance of natural
material causes into a non-existence of such causes,
and in deifying, personifying, representing our ignor
ance in a being which is to destroy such ignorance,
and which yet does not express anything but the
nature of such ignorance, the deficiency of positive,
material reasons of explanation. For what else is the
immaterial, incorporeal, non-natural, extra-mundane
being to whom we thus try to trace back all life, but
the precise expression of the intellectual absence of
material, corporeal, natural, cosmical causes ? But
instead of being so honest and modest as to say
frankly : “We do not know any reason, we do not
know how to explain it, we have no data nor materials,”
you change these deficiencies, these negations, these
vacancies of your head by the activity of your
imagination into positive beings, into immaterial
beings, «.e., into beings which are not material nor
natural, because you do not know of any material or
�28
THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
natural causes. While ignorance, however, is contented
with immaterial, incorporeal, unnatural beings, her
inseparable companion, wanton imagination, which
always and exclusively indulges in the intercourse
with beings of the highest perfection, immediately
elevates these poor creatures of ignorance to the rank
of supermaterial, supernatural beings.
24. The idea that Nature or the universe in general
has a real beginning, and that consequently at some
time there was no Nature, no universe, is a narrow idea,
which seems acceptable to man only as long as he has
a narrow, limited conception of the world. It is an
imagination without sense and foundation—this
imagination that at some time nothing real existed, for
the universe is the totality of all reality. All qualities
or definitions of God which make him an objective,
real being are only qualities abstracted from Nature,
which presuppose and define Nature, and which there
fore would not exist if Nature did not exist. It is true,
if we abstract from Nature ; if in our thoughts or our
imagination we destroy her existence, i.e., if we shut
our eyes and extinguish all images of natural things
reflected by our senses, and conceive Nature not with
our senses (not in concrete as the philosophers say),
there is left a being, a totality of qualities such as
infinity, power, unity, necessity, eternity ; but this
being which is left after deducting all qualities and
phenomena reflected by our senses is in truth nothing
but the abstract essence of Nature, or Nature “ in
abstract," in thought. And such derivation of Nature
or the universe from God is therefore in this respect
nothing but the derivation of the real essence of
Nature, as it appears to our senses, from her abstract,
imagined essence, which exists only in our idea—a
derivation which appears to be reasonable because in
the act of thinking we are accustomed to consider the
�THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
29
abstract and general as that which is nearer to thought,
and which therefore must be presupposed to the
individual, the real, the concrete, as that which is
higher and earlier in thought,, although in reality just
the reverse takes place, inasmuch as Nature exists
before God, i.e., the concrete before the abstract, that
which we conceive with our senses before that which
is thought. In reality, where everything passes on
naturally, the copy follows the original, the image the
thing which it represents, the thought its object—but
on the supernatural, miraculous ground of theology,
the original follows the copy, the thing its own like
ness. “ It is strange,” says St. Augustine, “ but never
theless true, that this world could not exist if it was
not known to God.” That means : the world is known
and thought before it exists ; nay, it exists only because
it was thought of—the existence is a consequence of
the knowledge or of the act of thinking, the original a
consequence of the copy, the object a consequence of
its likeness.
25. If we reduce the world or Nature to a totality of
abstract qualities, to a metaphysical, i.e., to a merely
imagined object, and consider this abstract world as the
real world, then it is a logical necessity to consider it as
finite. The world is not given to us through the act of
thinking, not at least through the metaphysical and
hyperphysical thinking which abstracts from the real
World and founds its true and highest existence upon
such abstraction—the world is given to us through life,
by perception, by the senses. For an abstract being
which only thinks there exists no light, because it has
no eyes, no warmth, because it has no feeling, in
general no world because it has no organ for its
perceptions ; for such a being there exists in reality
nothing. The world, therefore, exists for us only
because we are no logical or metaphysical beings,
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THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
because we are other beings, because we are more
than mere logicians and metaphysicians. • But just
this plus appears to the metaphysical thinker, as a
minus, this negation of the art of thinking as an abso
lute negation. Nature to him is nothing but the
opposite of mind. This merely negative and abstract
definition he makes her positive definition, her essence.
Consequently it is a contradiction to consider as a
positive being that being, or rather that nonentity
which is only the negation of the act of thinking,
which is an imagined thing, but according to its nature
an object of the senses, that is antagonistic to the act
of thinking and to the mind. The being which exists
in thought is for the thinker the true essence, therefore
it is self-evident to him that a being which does not
exist in thought cannot be a true, eternal, original
essence. It implies already a contradiction for the
mind to think only of its opposite ; it is only in
harmony with itself when it thinks only itself (on the
standpoint of metaphysical speculation), or at least
(on the standpoint of theism) when it thinks an essence
which expresses nothing but the nature of the act of
thinking, which is given only by thought, and which
therefore in itself is nothing but an imagined being.
Thus Nature disappears into nothing. But still she
exists, though according to the thinker she neither can
nor should be. How then does the metaphysician
explain her existence ? By a self-privation, a self
negation, a self-denial of the mind which apparently
is a voluntary one, but which in very truth is
contradictory to, and only enforced upon his inner
nature. But if Nature on the standpoint of abstract
thinking disappears into nothing, on the other hand on
the standpoint of the real observation and contempla
tion of the world, that creative mind disappears into
nothing. On this standpoint all deductions of the
�THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
31
world from. God, of Nature from the mind, of physics
from metaphysics, of the real from the abstract, are
proved to be nothing but logical plays.
26. Nature is the first and fundamental object of
religion, but she is such an object even where she is
the direct and immediate object of religious adoration,
as e.g. in the natural religions so-called, not as such, as
Nature, i.e., in the manner and in the sense in which
we regard her from the standpoint of theism or of
philos ophy and of the natural sciences. Nature is to
man originally, i.e., where he regards her with a
religious eye, rather an object of his own qualities, a
per sonal, living, feeling being. Man originally does
not distinguish himself from Nature, nor consequently
Nature from himself, therefore the sensations which
any object in Nature excites in him appear to him
im mediately as qualities of the object. The beneficial,
go od sensations and effects are caused by good and
benevolent Nature ; the bad, painful sensations, such
as heat, cold, hunger, pain, disease, by an evil being,
or at 1 east by Nature in a state of evil disposition, of
mal evolence, of wrath. Thus man involuntarily and
unc onsciously, i.e., necessarily—although this necessity
is only a relative and historical one—transforms the
essence of Nature into a feeling, i.e., a subjective, a
human being.
No wonder that he then also
expressively, knowingly and willingly transforms her
into an object of religion, of prayer, i.e., an object
which can be influenced by the feelings of man, his
prayers, his services. Really, man has made Nature
already subservient and subdued her to himself by
assimilating her to his feelings and subduing her to his
passions. Besides, uneducated natural man does not
only presuppose human motives, impulsesand passions
in Nature, he sees even real men in natural bodies.
Thus the Indians on the Orinoco thi nk the sun, the moon
�32
THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
and the stars, to be men, “those up there,” they say “are
men like unto us ; ” the Patagonians think the stars to
be “ former Indians ; ” the Greenlanders think the
sun, moon and stars, to be their ancestors, who at a
particular occasion were translated into heaven. Thus
also the ancient Mexicans believed that the sun and
the moon which they adored as gods had been men in
former times. Behold thus' the assertion made in my
“ Essence of Christianity ” that man in religion is in
relation to an intercourse with himself only, and that
his God in reality reflects only his own essence—this
assertion is confirmed even by the most uncultivated,
primary manifestations of religion ; where man adores
things the most distant from and most unlike to him
self, such as stars, stones, trees, nay, even the claws of
crabs, and snail shells; for he adores them only
because he transfers himself into them, because he
believes them to be such beings, or at least to be
inhabited by such beings as himself. Religion there
fore exhibits the remarkable contradiction, which
however is easily understood, nay, even necessary,
that, while on one hand (from the standpoint of theism
or anthropologism) she worships the human essence as
a divine one, because it appears to her as different
from man, as an essence not human—on the other
hand (from the materialistic standpoint) she adores
vice versa the essence which is not human as a divine
one, because it appears to her as a human one.
27. The mutability of Nature, especially in those
phenomena which most of all cause man to feel his
dependence on her, is the principal reason why she
appears to man as a human, arbitrary being, and why
she is religiously adored by him. If the sun stood
always in the sky, he would never have kindled the
fire of religious passion in man. Only when he dis
appeared from man’s eye and inflicted upon him the
�THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
33
terrors of night, and when again he re-appeared, man
fell down on his knees before him, overcome by joy at
his unexpected return. Thus the ancient Apalachites
in Florida greeted the sun with hymns at his rising
and setting, and prayed to him at the same time that
he might return and bless them with his light. If the
earth always produced fruits, where would there be a
motive for religious celebrations of the time of sowing
and harvesting ? Only in consequence of her now
opening, now closing her womb, her fruits appear to
be her voluntary gifts which oblige man to be grateful.
The changes in Nature make man uncertain, humble,
religious. It is uncertain, whether the weather to
morrow will be favorable to my undertakings ; it is
uncertain whether I shall harvest what I sow, and
therefore I cannot depend upon the gifts of Nature as
upon a tribute due, or an infallible consequence. But
where mathematical certainty is at an end, there
theology commences, even now-a-days, in weak minds.
Religion is the conception of the necessary—or of the
accidental—as of something arbitrary, or voluntary.
The opposite sentiment, that of irreligion and ungod
liness, on the other hand, is represented by the Cyclops
of Euripides, when he says : “ Earth must produce
grass for feeding my flock, whether she be willing to
do so or not.”
28. The feeling of dependence upon Nature in com
bination with the imagination of her as of an arbitrarily
acting, personal being, is the motive of the sacrifice,
the most essential act of natural religion. The depend
ence upon Nature is particularly sensible to me by my
want of her. The want is the feeling and expression of
my nothingness without Nature ; but inseparable from
want is enjoyment, the opposite feeling, the feeling of
my self-existence, of my independence in distinction
from Nature. Want, therefore, is pious, humble, relic
�34:
THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
gious—but enjoyment is haughty, ungodly, void of
respect, frivolous. And such frivolity, or at least want
of respect in enjoyment, is a practical necessity for
man, a necessity upon which his existence is founded
—but a necessity which is in direct contradiction to
his theoretical respect for Nature as for an egotistic,
sensible being, which suffers as little as man that any
thing be taken from her. The appropriation or the
use of Nature appears therefore to man, as if it were
an encroachment upon her right, as an appropriation
of another one’s property, as an outrage. In order
now to propitiate his conscience as well as the
object of his imaginary offence ; in order to sho w that
his robbery has its origin in want, not in arrogan ce, he
diminishes his enjoyment and returns to the object a
part of its plundered property. Thus the Greeks
believed that if a tree were cut down, its soul, the
Dryad, lamented and cried to Fate for revenge against
the trespasser. Thus no Roman ventured to cut down
a tree on his ground without sacrificing a farrow for
the propitiation of the god or goddess of this grove.
Thus the Ostiaks, after having slain a bear, suspend its
skin on a tree, pay to it all sorts of reverences, and
apologise as well as they can to the bear for having
killed him. “ They believe in this manner politely to
avert the damage which the spirit of the animal possibly
could inflict upon them.” Thus North American tribes
by similar ceremonies propitiate the departed souls of
slain beasts. Thus the Phillippines asked the plains
and mountains for their permission, if they wished to
cross them, and deemed it a crime to cut down any
old tree. And the Brahmin hardly dares to drink water
or to tread upon the ground with his feet, because each
step, each draught of water causes pain and death to
sentient beings, plants as well as animals, and he must
therefore do penance “ in order to atone for the death
�THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
35
of creatures which he possibly, although unconsciously,
might destroy by day or night.”5
29. The sacrifice makes perceptible to the senses
the whole essence of religion. Its source is the feeling
of dependence, fear, doubt, the uncertainty of success,
of future events, the scruples of conscience on account
of a sin committed ; but the result, the purpose of the
sacrifice, is self-consciousness, courage, enjoyment, the
certainty of success, liberty and happiness. As a ser
vant of Nature I observe the sacrifice ; as her master
I depart from it. Therefore, although the feeling of
dependence upon Nature is the source and motive of
religion : its very purpose and end is the destruction
of such feeling, the independence from Nature. Or,
although the divinity of Nature is the basis, the
foundation of religion generally and of Christian reli
gion in particular, still its end is the divinity of man.
30. Religion has for its presupposition the contra
diction between will and ability, desire and satisfaction,
intention and success, imagination and reality, thought
and existence. In his desire, in his imagination, man
is unlimited, free, almighty—God ; but in his ability,
in reality, he is bound, dependent, limited—man ; man
in the sense of a finite being, in contradistinction from
God. “ Man proposes, God disposes,” as the saying is.
“ Man plans and Jove accomplishes it differently.”
The thought, the will is mine ; but what I think and
will is not mine, is outside of me, does not depend on
me. The destruction of such a contradiction is the
tendency, the purpose of religion ; and that being in
which it is destroyed, and wherein that which I wish
5 Under this head we may also mention the many rules of
etiquette which the ancient religions lay upon man in his inter
course with Nature,in order not to pollute or to violate her. Thus,
e.g., no worshipper of Ormuzd was permitted to tread barefoot on
the ground, because earth was sacred; no Greek was allowed to
ford a river with unwashed hands.
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THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
and imagine as possible, which, however, my limited
power proves to be impossible for me, is possible, nay
even real—that being is the divine being.
31. That which is dependent from the will and the
knowledge of man is the original, proper, characteristic
cause of religion—the cause of God. “ I have planted,”
says Paul, “ Apollos watered, but God gave the increase.
So then neither is he that planteth anything, neither
he that watereth, but God that giveth the increase.”
And Luther says: “ We must praise and thank God
that he suffers grain to grow, and acknowledge that it
is not our work, but his blessing and his gift, if grain
and wine and all sorts of fruit grow which we eat and
drink to satisfy our wants.” And Hesiod says, that
the industrious husbandmen will richly harvest if
Jove grants a good end. The tilling of the soil then,
the sowing and watering of the seed, depends on me,
but not the success. This is in God’s hand, therefore
it is said : “ God’s blessing is the main thing.” But
what is God ? Originally nothing but Nature, or the
essence of Nature ; but Nature as an object of prayer,
as an exorable and consequently willing being. Jove
is the cause or the essence of meterorological
phenomena ; but this does not yet constitute his divine,
his religious character ; also he who is not religious
assumes a cause of the rain, of the thunderstorm, of
the snow. He is God only, because and in so far as
these phenomena depend on his good will. That
which is independent of man’s will is, therefore, by
religion, made dependent upon God’s will as far as the
object itself is concerned (objectively); but subjectively
(as far as man is concerned) it is made dependent on
prayer, for what depends on will is an object of
prayer and can be changed. “Even the gods are
pliable. A mortal can change their minds by incense
and humble vows, by libations and perfume.”
�THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
37
32. The only or at least the 'principal object of
religion is an object of human purposes and wants, at
least where man has once risen beyond the unlimited
arbitrariness, helplessness and accidentalness of
Fetishism proper. For this very reason those
natural beings which are most necessary and
indispensable to man enjoyed also the most general
and the highest religious adoration. But whatever is
an object of human wants and purposes, is for the same
reason an object of human wishes. I need rain and
sunshine for the successful growth of my seeds.
In times of continuous drought I therefore wish for
rain ; in times of continuous rain I wish for sunshine.
This wish is a desire whose gratification is not within
my power ; a will, but without the might to prevail,
although not absolutely so, yet at least at a given time,
under certain circumstances and conditions, and such
as man wishes it on the stand point of religion. But
just what my body, my power in general, is unable to
do, is within the power of my wish. What I ask and
wish for, that I enchant and inspire by my wishes.6
While under the influence of an affect—and religion
roots only in affect, in feeling—man places his
essence without himself; he treats as living what is
without life, as arbitrary what has no will ; he
animates the object with his sighs, for he cannot
possibly in a state of affect address himself to an
insensible being. Feeling does not confine itself
within the limits prescribed by intellect; it gushes
over man; his breast is too narrow for it; it must
communicate itself to the outer world and by so doing
make the insensible essence of Nature a sympathetic
one. Nature enchanted by human feeling, Nature agree
* The expression for to wish is in the ancient German language
the same as that for to " enchant.”
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THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
ing with and assimilated to man’s feeling, i.e., N ature
herself endowed with feeling, is Nature such as she is
an object of religion, a divine being. The wish is the
origin, the very essence of religion the essence of the
gods is nothing but the essence of the wish.7 The gods
are superhuman and supernatural beings ; but are not
wishes also of a superhuman and supernatural nature ?
e.g., am I in my wish, in my imagination still a man if I
wish to be an immortal being, free from the fetters of
the earthly body ? No ! He who has no wishes has no
gods either. Why did the Greeks lay such a stress
upon the immortality and happiness of the gods ?
Because they themselves did not wish to be mortal
and unhappy. Where no lamentations about man’s
mortality and misery are heard, no hymns are heard in
honor of the immortal and happy gods. Only the
water of tears shed within the human heart evaporates
in the sky of imagination into the cloudy image of the
divine being. From the universal stream, Ocean os,
Homer derives the gods ; but this stream abounding
with gods is in reality only an efflux of human feelings.
33. The irreligious manifestations of religion are
best adapted to disclose in a popular manner the origin
and essence of religion. Thus it is an irreligious
manifestation of religion and therefore most severely
criticised already by the pious heathen, that as a gene
7 The gods are blissful beings. The blessin g is the result, the
fruit, the end of an action which is independent fiom, but desired
by me. “ To bless,” says Luther, “ means to wish something good.”
“If we bless, we do nothing else but to wish something good, but we
cannot g ve what we wish; but God’s blessing sounds fulfilment and
soon proves its effect.” That means: men are desiring beings;
the gods are those beings which fulfil th desire. Thus even in
common fife the wor.l God. so frequently used, is nothing but the
expression of a wish. “ May God grant you childrenI” That
means: I wish you children, with the only difference that the
latter expression contains the wish as a subjective, not religious
one, while the former implies it as an objective religious one.
�THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
39
ral thing man takes recourse to religion, that he applies
to God and thinks of him, only in times of misfortune ;
but this very fact reveals to us the source of religion.
In times of misfortune or distress, no matter whether
it be his own or another one’s, man realises the painful
experience of his inability to do what he wishes—he
finds his hands tied. But the palsy of the motory
nerves is not at the same time also the palsy of the
sensory nerves ; the fetters of my physical power are
not also at the same time the fetters of my will, of my
heart. On the contrary, the more my hands are tied,
the more boundless are my wishes, the more ardent is
my desire for redemption, the more energetic my strife
after freedom, my will not to be limited. The power
of the human heart or will which by the influence of
distress has been exaggerated and over-excited to a
superhuman one, is the power of the gods for whom
there is no necessity nor limit. The gods are able to
do what man desires, i.e., they obey the laws of the
human heart. What man is only in regard, to his soul,
the gods are also physically ; what he can do only
within his will, his imagination, his heart, i.e., mentally,
as e.g., to be in the twinkling of an eye at a distant
place, that the gods are able to do physically. The
gods are the embodied, realised wishes of man—the
natural limits of man’s heart and will destroyed—
creatures of the unlimited will, creatures whose
physical powers are equal to those of the will. The
irreligious manifestation of this supernatural power of
religion is the practice of witchcraft among uncivilised
nations, where in a palpable manner the mere wilj
of man appears as God, commanding over Nature.
But when the God of Israel at Joshua’s command
bids the sun stand still or suffers it to rain in com
pliance with Elijah’s prayer, and when the God
of the Christians for the sake of proving his divinity,
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the essence of religion.
essence9 of Nature, or at least what appears to them
as such. Upon the standpoint of natural religion man
declares his loves to a statue, to a corpse ; no wonder
therefore, that in order to make himself heard he
resorts to the most desperate, most insane means ; no
wonder that he divests himself of his humanity in
order to render Nature humane, that he even sheds the
blood of man in order to inspire her with human
feelings.
Thus the northern Germans believed
expressly that “sanguinary sacrifices were apt to
bestow human language and feel ings to wooden idols
and to endow with the gifts of language and divination
the stones which they adored in the houses devoted to
gory sacrifices.” But in vain are all attempts to imbue
her with life ; Nature does not respond to man’s
lamentations and questions ; she throws him inexorably
back upon himself.
36. As the limits which man imagines or at least
such as he imagines them on the standpoint of
religion (as e.g. the limit which is the cause that he
does not know the future, or does not live forever, or
does not enjoy happiness without interruption and
molestation, or has no body withou t weight, or cannot
fly like the gods, or cannot thunde r like Jove, or cannot
add anything to his size nor make himself invisible at
will, or cannot, like the angels, live without sensual
wants and impulses, or in short cannot do what he
wills and desires)—as all these limits are such only in
his imagination and mind, while in reality they are
no limits, because they have their necessary foundation
in the essence, in the nature of things ; so also is that
being which is free from such limits, the unlimited
divine being, only a creature of imagination, of
reflection, and of a mental disposition which is
9 Under this head we may also consider the adoration of per
nicious animals.
�THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
43
governed by imagination Whatever therefore may
be the object of religion, be it even only a snail shell
or pebble, it is such an object only in its quality as a
creature of the heart, of reflection, of imagination.
This justifies the assertion that men d o not adore the
stones, the trees, the animals, the rivers themselves,
but the gods within them, their manitous, their spirits.
But these spirits of natural objects are nothing but
their reflected images or they as reflected objects, as
creatures of imagination in distinction from them as
real, sensual objects, just as the spirits of the dead are
nothing but the imagined images of the dead which
live in our remembrance—beings that once really
existed, as imagined beings, which however by
religious man, i.e., by him who does not discriminate
between the object and its idea, are considered to be
real, self-existing beings. Man’s pious, involuntary
self-deception upon the standpoint of religion is
therefore within the natural religion an apparent, selfevident truth ; for here man gives to his religious
object eyes and ears which he knows and sees to be
artificial eyes and ears of stone or wood, and yet
believes to be real eyes and ears. Thus religious man
has his eyes only in order not to see, to be stone blind,
and his reason only in order not to reason, to be block
headed. Natural religion is the manifest contradiction
between idea and reality, between imagination and
truth. What in reality is a dead stone or log, is in the
conception of natural religion a living individual;
apparently, no God, but something entirely different,
yet invisibly, according to belief, a God. For this
reason, natural religion is always in danger of being
most bitterly undeceived, as it requires only a blow
with an axe in order to satisfy her, e.g., that no blood
flows from adored trees, and that therefore no living,
divine beiug dwells within them. But how does
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THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
religion escape these strong contradictions aud dis
appointments to which she is exposed by adoring
Nature ? Only by making her object an invisible, not
sensual one, by making it a being that exists only in
faith, reflection, imagination—in short, within the
mind, which therefore itself is a spiritual being.
37. As soon as man from a merely physical being
becomes a political one, or in general a being dis
tinguishing himself from Nature, and concentrating
himself within himself, his God is also changed from
a merely physical being into a political one, different
from Nature. That which leads man to a distinction
of his essence from Nature, and in consequence to a
God distinguished from Nature, is therefore only his
association with other men to a commonwealth, wherein
the objects of his consciousness and of his feeling of
dependence are powers distinguished from those of
Nature and existing only in thought or imagination ;
political, moral, abstract powers, such as the power of
law, of public opinion,1 of honor, of virtue—while his
physical existence is subordinated to his human,
political or moral existence, and where the power of
Nature, the power over death and life, is degraded to
an attribute and instrument of political or moral power.
Jove is the God of lightning and thunder; but he
possesses these terrible weapons only in order to crush
those who disobey his commandments, the perjurer,
the perpetrators of violence. Jove is father of the
kings—“ from Jove are the kings.”
With lightning and thunder, therefore, Jove sustains
the power and dignity of the Kings.2 “ The King,”
1 Hesiod expressly says; also pheme (i.e., fame, rumor, public
opinion) is a deity.
* The original kings, however, are well to be distinguished from
the legitimate ones, so-called. The latter, except in some extra
ordinary instances, are ordinary individuals, insignificant in
�THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
45
we read in the law-book of Menu, “ burns eyes and
hearts like the sun, therefore no human creature upon
earth is able even to look upon him. He is fire and
air, he is sun and moon, he is the God of criminal laws.
Fire burns only a single one who by carelessness may
have approached too near to it, but a King’s fire when
he is in wrath burns a whole family with all their
cattle and property ... In his courage dwelleth con
quest and death in his wrath.” In a similar manner
the God of the Israelites commands amid lightning
and thunder his people to walk in all ways which he
has commanded them “ in order that they may prosper
and live long in the land.” Thus the power of Nature
as such and the feeling of dependence on her disappears
before political or moral power ! Whilst the slave of
Nature is so blinded by the brilliancy of the sun, that
he like the Katchinian Tartar daily prays to him ; “4o
not kill me,” the political slave on the other hand is so
much blinded by the splendor of royal dignity, that he
prostrates himself before it as before a divine power,
because it commands over death and life. The titles
of the Roman Emperors, even still among the Chris
tians were : “ Your divinity,” “ Your eternity.” Nay,
even now-a-days among Christians “Holiness” and
“ Majesty,” the titles and attributes of Deity, are titles
and attributes of kings. It is true the Christians try
to justify this political idolatry with the notion that
the king is nothing but God’s representative upon earth,
themselves, while the former were extraordinary, dis tinguished,
historical individuals. The deification of distinguished men,
especially after their death, forms therefore the most natural
transition from the properly naturalistic religions to the mytho
logical and anthropological ones, although it may also take place
at the same time with natural adoration. The worshipping of
distinguished men, however, is by no means confined to fabulous
times. Thus the Swedes deified their king Erich at the time of
Christianity and sacrificed unto him after his death.
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THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
God himself being the King of kings. But such a
justification is only a self-deception. Not considering
that the king’s power is a very sensible, direct, and
sensual one which represents itself, while that of the
King of kings is only an indirect and reflected one—
God is defined and regarded as the world’s ruler, as a
royal or political being in general, only where the
royal being occupies, influences and rules man so as to
be considered by him as the supreme being. “ Brahma,”
says Menu, “formed in the beginning of time for
his service the genius of punishment with a body of
pure light as his own son, nay even as the author of
criminal justice, as the protector of all things created.
Fear of punishment enables this universe to enjoy its
happiness.” Thus man makes even the punishment of
his criminal code divine, world-governing powers, the
criminal code itself the code of Nature. No wonder
that he makes Nature to sympathise most warmly with
his political sufferings and passions, nay, that he even
makes the preservation of the world dependent on the
preservation of a royal throne or of the Holy See.
What is important to him naturally is also of import
ance for all other beings ; what dims his eye, that also
dims the brilliancy of the sun ; what agitates his heart,
that also moves heaven and earth—his being to him is
the universal being, the world’s being, the being of
beings.
38. Why has the East not a living, progressive history
such as the West ? Because in the East to man Nature
is not concealed by man, nor the brilliancy of the
stars and precious stones by the brilliancy of the eye,
nor the meteorological lightning and thunder by the
rhetorical “ lighting and thunder,” nor the course of
the sun by the course of daily events, nor the change
of the year’s seasons by the change of fashion. It is
true, the eastern man prostrates himself into the dust
�THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
47
before the magnificence of royal, polical power and
dignity, but this magnificence itself is only a reflex of
the sun and the moon ; the king is an object of his
adoration not as an earthly and human, but as a
heavenly and divine being. But man disappears by
the side of a God ; only where the earth is depopulated
of gods, where the gods ascend into heaven and change
fr om real beings to imagined ones ; only there men
have space and room for themselves, only there they
can show themselves without any restraint as men and
put themselves forward as such. The eastern man
bears the same relation to the western man as the
husbandman to the inhabitants of the city. The
former depends on Nature, the latter on man ; the
former is led by the barometer, the latter by the state
of the stock-market ; the former by the ever equal
constellations of the zodiac, the latter by the ever
fluctuating signs of honor, fashion and public opinion.
Only the inhabitants of cities, therefore, make up
history, only human “ vanity ” is the principle of
history, only he who can sacrifice Nature’s power to
that of opinion, his life to his name, his physical
existence to his existence in the mouth and in the
remembrance of generations to come—he only is
capable of historical deeds.
39. According to Athenseus, the Greek writer of
comic plays, Anaxandrides addresses the Egyptians as
follows : “ I am not fit for your society ; our manners
and laws do not agree,—you adore the ox which I
sacrifice to the gods ; the eel to you is a great god, but
to me a great dainty ; you shun pork, I enjoy it with a
relish ; you revere the dog, I beat him if he snaps a
morsel from me ; you are startled if something is the
matter with the cat, I am glad of it and strip off her
skin ; you give a great deal of importance to the shrewmouse, I none.” This address perfectly characterises
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THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
the contrast between the bound and the unbound, z'.e.,
between the religious and irreligious, free, human con
sideration of Nature. There Nature is an object of
adoration, here of enjoyment; there man exists for
Nature’s sake, here Nature for man’s sake ; there she
is the end, here the means ; there she stands above,
here below man.8 For this very reason man is there
eccentric, out of himself, out of the sphere of his des
tination, which points him only to himself ; here, on
the other hand, he is considerate, sober within himself,
self-conscious. There man degrades himself con
sistently even to coition with animals (according to
Herodotus), in order to prove his religious humility
before Nature ; but here he rises in the full conscious
ness of his power and dignity up to amalgamation with
the gods as a striking proof that even in the heavenly
god’s courses no other than human blood, and that the
peculiar ethereal blood of the gods, is only a poetical
imagination which does not hold good in reality and
practice.
40. As the world, as Nature appears to man, so she
is, i.e. for him, according to his imagination ; his sen
sations and imaginations are to him directly and
unconsciously the measure of truth and reality ; and
Nature appears to him just as he is himself. As soon
as man perceives that in spite of sun and moon, heaven
and earth, fire and water, plants and animals, man’s
life requires the application and even the just applica
tion of his own powers ; as soon as he perceives that
“the mortals unjustly complain of the gods, and that
they themselves, in spite of faith, through imprudence,3
3 I range here the Greeks with the Israelites, while in my
Essence of Christianity I contrast them with each other. This is
by no means a logical contradiction, for things which, when com
pared with one another are different, coincide in co nparison with
a third thing. Besides, enjoyment of Nature includes also her
aesthetic, theoretical enjoyment.
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THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
produce their misery,” that the consequences of vice
and folly are disease, unhappiness and death, but those
of virtue and wisdom, health, life and happiness, and
that, therefore, those powers which influence man’s
destiny are intellect and will ; as soon, therefore, as
man, no more like the savage, is a being governed by
the habits of momentary impressions and effects, but
becomes a being which decides himself by principles,
rules of wisdom, laws of reason—i.e., a thinking,
intelligent being—then also Nature, the world, appears
and is to him a being dependent on, and influenced by,
intellect and will.
41. When man with his will and intellect rises above
Nature and becomes a supernaturalist, then also God
becomes a supernatural being. When man established
himself as a ruler “ over the fishes in the sea, and over
the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all
the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth
over the earth,” then the Government of Nature is to
him the highest idea, the highest being ; the object of
his adoration, of his religion therefore, the creator of
Nature, for creation is a necessary consequence, or
rather presupposition, of Government. If the Lord of
Nature is not also her author, then she is independent
of him as to her origin and existence, his power is
limited and deficient;—for if he had been able to
create her, why should he not have created her ?—his
government is only an usurped one, no inherent, legal
one. Only what I produce and make is entirely within
my power. Only from authorship the right of
property is to be derived. Mine is the child, because I
am his father. Therefore, only in creation government
is acknowledged, realised, exhausted. The gods of the
heathen were also already masters of Nature, it is true,
but no creators of hers, therefore they were only
constitutional, limited, not absolute monarchs of
D
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THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
Nature, i.e. the heathen were not yet absolute,
unconditional, radical supernaturalists.
42. The Theists have declared the doctrine of the
unity of God a revealed doctrine of supernatural origin,
without considering that the source of Monotheism is
in man, that the source of God’s unity is the unity of
the human conscience and mind. The world is spread
before my eyes in endless multitude and diversity, but
still all these numberless and various objects : sun,
moon and stars, heaven and earth, the near and the
distant, the present and the absent, are embraced by
my mind, my head. This being of the human mind
or conscience, so wonderful and supernatural for
religious, i.e. uneducated man, this being which is not
restrained by any limits of time or space, which is not
limited to any particular species of things, and which
embraces all things and beings without being himself
an object or visible being—this being is, by Monotheism,
placed at the head of the world, and made its cause
God speaks, God thinks the world and it is, he says
that it is not, he thinks and wills it not, and it does
not exist, i.e. I can in my imagination cause at will all
things and consequently also the world itself to come
and to disappear, to originate and to pass away. That
God has also created the world from nothing, and, if
he will, thrusts it again into nothing, is nothing but
the personification of the human power of abstraction
and imagination, which enables me at will to imagine
the world as existing or not existing, and to affirm or
deny its existence. This subjective or imagined
non-existence of the world, is by Monotheism made
its objective, real non-existence. Polytheism and
natural religion in general make the real objects
imagined ones. Monotheism, on the other hand,
makes imagined objects and thoughts real objects, or
rather the essence of intellect, will and imagination
�THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
51
the most real, absolute, supreme being. The power of
God, says a theologian, extends as far as the imaginative
power of man, but where is the limit of this power ?
What is impossible to imagination ? I can imagine
everything that is, as not existing, and everything
that does not exist as real ; thus I can imagine “ this ”
world as not existing, and on the other hand, number
less other worlds as existing. What is imagined as
real is possible. But God is the being to whom
nothing is impossible, he is the creator of numberless
worlds, as far as his power is concerned, the possibility
of all possibilities, of everything that can be imagined ;
i.e. in reality, he is nothing but the realisation or
personification of human imagination, intellect and
reflection, thought or imagined as real, nay, as the
most real, as the absolute being.
43. Theism, properly so-called, or Monotheism,
arises only where man refers Nature only to himself,
because she suffers herself to be used without will
and consciousness, not only to his necessary, organic
functions, but also to his arbitrary, conscious purposes
and enjoyments, and where he makes this relation her
essence, consequently making himself the purpose, the
centre and unity of Nature.4 Where Nature has her
end outside of herself, she necessarily has also her
cause and beginning without herself ; where she exists
only for another being, she necessarily exists also by
another being, and that by a being whose intention or
end at the time of her creation was man, as that being
who was to enjoy and to use Nature for his good.
4 An ecclesiastical writer expressively calls man “ the tie of all
things” (syndesmon hapantori), because God in him wished to
embrace the universe into a unity, and because, therefore, in him
all things as in their end are combined, and result in his advantage.
And certainly man, as Nature's individualised essence, is her con
clusion, but not in the anti-natural and supernatural sense o:
teleology and theology.
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THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
The beginning of Nature coincides therefore with God
only where her end coincides with man, or in other
words, the doctrine that God is the creator of the
world has its source and sense in the doctrine that man
is the end of creation. If you feel ashamed of the
belief that the world is created, made for man, then
you must feel ashamed of the belief that it is created,
made at all. Where it is written : “ In the beginning
God created the heaven and the earth,” there it is also
written : “ God made two great lights. He made the
stars also, and set them in the firmament of the heaven,
to give light upon the earth, and to rule over the day
and the night.” If you declare the belief in man as
the end of Nature to be human pride, then you must
also declare the belief in the creator of Nature to be
human pride. That light only which shines on
account of man is the light of theology, that light only
which exists exclusively on account of the seeing being,
presupposes also a seeing being as its cause.
44. The spiritual being which man places above
Nature and pre-supposes as her founder and creator, is
nothing but the spiritual essence of man himself,
which, however, appears to him as another one,
different from and incomparable to himself, because
he makes it the cause of Nature, the cause of effects
which man’s mind, will, and intellect cannot produce,
and because he consequently combines with that
spiritual essence of man the essence of Nature, which
is different.® It is the divine spirit who makes the
grass grow, who forms the child in the womb, who
holds and moves the sun in his course, who piles up
6 This union, or the amalgamation of the "moral’’ and
“physical ” of the human and not human being, produces a third,
which is neither Nature nor man, but which participates of both,
like an amphibial, and which, for this very mystery of its nature,
is the idol of mysticism and speculation.
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the mountains, commands the winds, encloses the sea
within its limits. What is the human mind compared
with this spirit! How small, how limited, how vain !
If, therefore, the rationalist rejects God’s incarnation,
the union of the divine and human nature, he does so
particularly because the idea of God in his head hides
only the idea of Nature, especially of Nature such as
she was disclosed to the human eye by the telescope
of astronomy. How should—thus, he exclaims, pro
voked—how should that great, infinite, universal
being, which has its adequate representation and effect
only in the great, infinite universe, descend for man’s
sake upon the earth, which certainly disappears into
nothing before the immeasurable greatness and fulness
of the universe ? What unworthy, mean, “ human ”
imagination ! To concentrate God upon earth, to
plunge God into man, is about the same as to try to
condense the ocean into one drop, to reduce the ring
of Saturn into a finger-ring. Truly it is a rather
narrow idea to think the universal being as limited
only to earth or man, and to believe that Nature exists
only on his account, that the sun shines only on account
of the human eye. You do not see, however, short
sighted rationalist, that it is not the idea of God, but
the idea of Nature, which within yourself objects to
a union of God and man, and shows it to be a non
sensical contradiction ; you do not see that the centre
of union, tertium comparationis, between God and
man is not that being to which you directly or indi
rectly attribute the power and effects of Nature, but
rather that being which sees and hears because you
see and hear ; which possesses consciousness, intellect,
and will because you possess these faculties, or, in
other words, that being which you distinguish from
Nature because you distinguish yourself from her.
What, then, can you really object if this being finally
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THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
appears as a real man before your eyes ? How can
you reject the consequences if you adhere to the pre
mises ? How can you deny the son if you acknow
ledge the father ? If the God-man to you is a creature
of human imagination and self-deification, then you
must acknowledge also the creator of Nature to be a
creature of human imagination and self-exaltation over
Nature. If you wish for a being without any anthro
pomorphism, without any human additions, be they
additions of the intellect, or the heart, or of imagina
tion, then be courageous and consistent enough to give
up God altogether, and to appeal only to pure, naked,
godless Nature as to the last basis of your existence.
As long as you admit a difference, so long you incar
nate in God your own difference, so long you incor
porate your own essence and nature in the universal
and primary being ; for as you do not have nor know
in distinction from human nature any other being
than Nature, so, on the other hand, you neither have
nor know any other being in distinction from Nature
than the human one.
45. The conception of man’s essence as an objective
being different from man, or, in short, the personifica
tion of the human essence, has for its pre-supposition
the incarnation of the objective being which is dif
ferent from man, i.e., the conception of Nature as of a
human being.6 Will and intellect therefore appear to
man as the primary powers or causes of Nature only
because the unintentional effects of Nature appear to
him in the light of his intellect as intentional ones, as
ends and purposes ; Nature herself consequently as an
6 Viewed from this standpoint the creator of Nature istherefore
nothing but the essence of Nature, which, by means of abstracting
from Nature, has been distinguished and abstracted from Nature,
and such as she is an object of the senses and by the power of
imagination has been changed into a human or man-like being,
and thus popularised, anthropomorphised, personified.
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intelligent being (or at least as a mere thing of intel
lect). As everything is seen by the sun—the God of
the sun, “ Helios,” hears and sees everything—
because man sees everything in the sunlight, so every
thing in itself has been thought, because man thinks
it; a work of intellect, because for him an object of
his intellect. Because he measures the stars and their
distances, they are measured; because he applies
mathematics in order to understand Nature and her
laws, they have also been applied to her production;
because he sees the end of a certain motion, the result
of a certain development, the function of a certain
organ, this end, function, or result is in itself a fore
seen one ; because he can imagine the opposite of the
position or direction of a heavenly body, nay even
numberless other directions, while at the same time
he perceives that if this direction were changed, also
a series of fruitful, benevolent consequences would be
made impossible, so that he considers this series of
consequences as the motive of that very direction :
therefore such direction has really and originally been
selected with admirable wisdom, and only with regard
to its benevolent consequences, from the multitude of
other directions which also exist only in man’s head.
Thus the principle of thinking is to man, directly
and without discrimination, the principle of existence ;
the thing thought, the thing existing ; the idea of the
object, its essence (the a posteriori the a^rzon). Man
thinks Nature otherwise than she really is; no wonder
that he also pre-supposes as her cause and the cause of
her existence another being than herself, a being
which exists only in his mind—nay, which is even
only the essence of his own mind. Man reverses the
natural order of things ; he founds the world in the
very sense of the word upon its head, he makes the
apex of the pyramid its basis—the first thing in or for
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THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
the head, the reason, why something is, the first thing
in reality, the cause through which it exists. The
motive of a thing precedes in the mind the thing
itself. This is the reason why to man the essence of
reason or intellect, the essence of thinking not only
logically but also physically, is the first, the primary
being.
46. The mystery of teleology is based upon the con
tradiction between the necessity of Nature and the
arbitrary will of man, between Nature such as she
really is and such as man imagines her. If the
earth were placed somewhere else, if e.g. it were
placed where Mercury now is, everything would
perish in consequence of insupportable heat. How
wisely, therefore, is the earth placed just where
it appears best according to its quality. But in
what does this wisdom consist ? Only in the con
tradiction, in the contrast to human folly, which arbi
trarily in thought places the earth somewhere else than
where it is in reality. If you first tear asunder what
in Nature is inseparable, as for instance, the astronomi
cal place of a heavenly body from its physical quality,
then certainly the unity in Nature must afterwards
appear to you as expediency, necessity of plan, the real
and necessary place of a planet which agrees with its
nature in contrast to the unfit one which you have thought
of and chosen as the reasonable one which has been
justly chosen and wisely selected. “ If the snow had
a black color, or if such color prevailed in the arctic
regions, all the arctic countries of the earth would be
a gloomy desert, unfit for organic life. Thus the
arrangement of the colors of bodies offers one of the
most beautiful proofs for the wise arrangement of the
world.” Certainly, if man did not change white into
black, if human folly had not disposed arbitrarily of
Nature, no divine wisdom would rule over Nature.
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47. “ Who has told the bird that it has only to raise
its tail if it wants to fly downward, or to depress it, if
it wants to ascend ? He must be perfectly blind who,
in observing the flight of birds, does not perceive any
higher wisdom that has thought in their stead.” Cer
tainly he must be blind, not for Nature, but for man,
who makes his nature the original of Nature, the
power of intellect the original power, who makes
the birds’ flight dependent upon the insight into the
mechanical laws of flying, and who elevates his ideas
abstracted from Nature into laws which the birds apply
to their flight, just as the rider applies the rules of the
art of riding, or the swimmer the rules of the art of
swimming ; with the only difference that to the birds
the application of the art of flying is created with them.
But the flight of birds is founded on no art. Art is
only where also the opposite of art is to be found,
where an organ performs a function which is not
directly and necessarily connected with it, which does
not exhaust its essence, and is only a particular function
by the side of many other real or possible functions of
the same organ. But the bird cannot fly otherwise
than it does, nor is it at liberty not to fly ; it must fly.
The animal always knows how to do only that which it
is able to do, and for this very reason it can do this
one thing so perfectly, so masterly, so unsurpassably,
because it does not know anything else, because its
power is exhausted in this one function, because this
one function is identical with its nature. If we there
fore are unable to explain the actions and functions of
the animals, especially those of the lower ones, which
are endowed with certain artistic impulses, without
presupposition of an intellect which has thought in
their stead, this is only because we think that the
objects of their activity are objects to them in the same
manner as they are objects to our consciousness and
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THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
intellect. As soon as we consider the works of the
animals as work of art, as arbitrary works, we must
necessarily also consider the intellect as their cause,
for a work of art presupposes choice, intention, in
tellect, and consequently, as we know by experience
that animals do not think themselves, another beingas thinking in their behalf.7 “Do you know how
to advise the spider how it is to carry and to fasten
the threads from one tree to another, from one house
top to another, from a height this side of the water to
another one on the other side ?” Certainly not ; but
do you indeed believe that there is any advice needed
in this instance, that the spider is in the same condition
in which you would be, if you were to solve this
problem theoretically, that for it, as well as for you,
there is any difference between “ this side ” and “ that
side ?” Between the spider and the object to which it
fastens the threads of its net, there is as necessary a
connection as between your bone and muscle ; for the
object without it is for it nothing but the support of
its thread of life, as the support of its fangs. The
spider does not see what you see ; all the separations,
differences and distances which, or at least such as
7 Thus, generally, in all syllogisms from Nature to a God, the
antecedent, the presupposition is a human one; no wonder therefore
that their result is a human being or being similar to man. If the
world, is a machine there must necessarily be an architect. If the
natural beings are as indifferent toward one another as the human
individuals which can be employed and united only by means of
higher power for any arbitrary purpose of state, as for instance
war, there must naturally also be a ruler, a governor, a chief
general of nature—a captain of the cloud—if she shall not' be
dissolved into nothing. Thus man first makes Nature un
consciously a human work, i.e., he makes his essence her funda
mental essence, but as he afterwards or at th t same time perceives
the difference between the works of Nature and those of human
art, his own essence appears to him as another, but analogous,
similar one. All arguments for God’s existence have therefore
cnly a logical or rather anthropological signification, since also
the logical forms are forms of human nature.
�THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
591
your intellectual eye perceives them, do not at all
exist for it. What therefore to you is an insolvable
theoretical problem, that is done by the spider without
any intellect, and consequently without all those
difficulties which exist only for your intellect. “ Who
has told the vine-fretters that they find their food
in the fall of the year in greater abundance at the
branch and at the bud than at the leaf ? Who has
shown them the way to the bud and to the branch ?
For the vine-fretter which was born upon the leaf, the
bud is not only a distant but an entirely unknown
province. I adore the creator of the vine-fretter and
of the cochineal and remain silent.” Certainly you
must be silent if you make the vine-fretters and
cochineals preachers of Theism, if you endow them
with your thoughts, for only to the vine-fretter viewed
from the standpoint of man is the bud a distant and
unknown province, but not to the vine-fretter itself, to
which the leaf and the bud are objects not as such, but
only as matter which can be assimilated and is chemi
cally related to it. It is therefore only the reflex of
your eye which shows you Nature as the work of an
eye, which obliges you to derive the threads the spider
draws from its hind part, from the head of a thinking
being. Nature is for you only a spectacle, a delight of
the eye ; therefore you think that what delights your
eye, also rules and moves Nature. Thus you make the
heavenly light in which she appears to you, the
heavenly being which has created her ; the rays of the
eye the lever of Nature ; the optic nerve the motory
nerve of the universe. To derive Nature from a wise
creator is to produce children with a look ; to satisfy
hunger with the perfume of food ; to move rocks by
the harmony of sounds. If the Greenlander derives
the shark’s origin from human urine because it smells
to man like it, this zoological genesis has the same
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THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
foundation as as the cosmological genesis of the Theist,
when he derives Nature from intellect, because she
makes upon man the impression of intellect, and
intention. Certainly the manifestation of Nature for
us is reason, but the cause of such manifestation is as
little reason as the cause of light is light.
48. Why does Nature produce monsters ? Because
the result of a formation to her is not the object of a
pre-existing purpose. Why supernumerary limbs ?
Because she does not number. Why does she place at
the left hand side what generally lies on the right
hand side, and vice versa ? Because she does not know
what is right or left. Monsters are therefore popular
arguments, which for this very reason have been
insisted on already by the Atheists of old, and even by
such Theists as emancipated Nature from the guardian
ship of theology, in order to prove that the productions
of Nature are unforeseen, unintentional, involuntary
ones ; for all reasons which are adduced for the sake
of explaining monsters, even those of the most modern
naturalists, according to which they are only
consequences of diseases of the foetus, would be
done away with, if with the creative or pro
ductive power of Nature at the same time will,
intellect, forethought and consciousness were connected.
But although Nature does not see, she is not therefore
blind; although she does not live (in the sense of
human, that is subjective, sensible life) she is not dead;
and although she does not produce according to
purposes, still her productions are not accidental ones ;
for where man defines Nature as dead and blind, and
her productions as accidental ones, he defines her only
so in contrast to himself, and declares her to be deficient
because she does not possess what he possesses. Nature
works and produces everywhere only in and with conconnection—a connection which is reason for man, for
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61
wherever he perceives connection, he finds sense,
material for thinking, “ sufficient reason;” system—
only from and with necessity. But also the necessity
of Nature is no human, i.e., no logical, metaphysical or
mathematical, in general no abstracted one ; for natural
beings are no creatures of thought, no logical or mathe
matical figures, but real sensual individual beings ; it is
a sensual necessity and therefore eccentric, exceptional,
irregular, which in consequence of these anomalies of
human imagination, appears even as freedom, or at
least as a product of free will. Nature generally can be
understood only through herself ; she is that being
whose idea depends on no other being ; she alone
admits of a discrimination between what a thing is in
itself and what it is for our conception ; she alone
cannot be measured with any human measure, although
we compare and designate her manifestations with
analogous human manifestations in order to make them
intelligible for us, and although in general we apply,
and are obliged to apply to her, human expressions and
ideas, such as order, purpose, in accordance with the
nature of our language, which is founded only upon
the subjective appearance of things.
49. The religious admiration of divine wisdom in
Nature is only an incident of enthusiasm ; it refers only
to the means, but is extinguished in reflecting on the
purposes of Nature. How wonderful is the spider’s web,
how wonderful the funnel of the ant-lion in the sand !
But what is the purpose of these wise arrangements ?
Nothing but nourishment—a purpose which man in
regard to himself degrades to a mere means. “Others,”
said Socrates—but these others are animals and brutish
men —“ others live in order to eat, but I eat in order to
live.” How magnificent is the flower, how admirable
its structure ! But what is the purpose of this structure,
of this magnificence ? Only to magnify and protect the
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THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
genitals which man in himself either hides from shame,
or even mutilates from religious zeal. “ The creator of
the vine-fretters and of the cochineals ” whom the
naturalist, the man of theory adores and admires, who
has only natural life for his purpose, is therefore not
the God and creator in the sense of religion. No ! only
the creator of man, and that of man such as he dis
tinguishes himself from Nature, and rises above Nature,
the creator in whom man has the consciousness of
himself, in whom he finds represented the qualities
which constitute his nature in distinction from external
Nature, and that in such a manner as he imagines them
in religion, is the God and creator such as he is an
object of religion.
“ The water,” says Luther, “ which is used in baptism
and poured over the child is also water not of the creator
but of God the Savior.” Natural water I have in common
with animals and plants, but not the water of baptism ;
the former amalgamates me with the other natural
beings, the latter distinguishes me from them. But
the object of religion is not natural water, but the
water of baptism ; consequently not the creator or
author of natural, but of baptismal water, is an object
of religion. The creator of natural water is neces
sarily himself a natural, and therefore no religious,
i.e., supernatural being. Water is a visible being,
whose qualities and effects therefore do not lead us to
a supernatural cause; but the baptismal water is no
object for the corporeal eye ; it is a spiritual, invisible,
supersensuous being, i.e, one that exists and works
only for faith, in thought, in imagination—a being
which therefore requires also for its cause a spiritual
being that exists only in faith and imagination.
Natural water cleanses me only of my physical, but
baptismal water of my moral impurities and diseases ;
the former only quenches my thirst for this temporal,
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transient life, but the latter satisfies my desire for life
eternal; the former has only limited, defined, finite
effects, but the latter infinite, all-powerful effects
which surpass the nature of water, and which there
fore represent and show the nature of the divine
being, which is bound by no limit of Nature, the un
limited essence of man’s power to believe and to
imagine, bound to no limit of experience and reason.
But is not also the creator of baptismal water the
creator of natural water ? In what relation therefore
does the former stand to the latter ? In the very same
as baptismal to natural watei’ ; the former cannot exist
if the latter does not exist; this one is the condition,
the means of that one. Thus the creator of Nature is
only the condition for the creator of man. How can
he who does not hold the natural water [in his hand
combine with it supernatural effects ? How can he
who does not rule over temporal life give life eternal ?
How can he whom the elements of Nature do not
obey, restore my body turned to dust ? But who is
the master and ruler of Nature unless it be he who
had power and strength to produce her from naught
by his mere will? He, therefore, who declares the
union of the supernatural essence of baptism with
natural water a contradiction, without sense, may
also declare the union of the supernatural essence of
the creator with Nature such a contradiction ; for
between the effects of baptismal and common water
is just as much or as little connection as between the
supernatural creator and natural Nature. The creator
comes from the same source from which the super
natural, wonderful water of baptism gushes forth.
In the baptismal water we see only the essence of the
creator, of God, in a sensible illustration. How,
therefore, can you reject the miracle of baptism and
other miracles if you admit the essence of the creator,
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THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
i.e., the essence of the miracle ? Or, in other words,,
how can you reject the small miracle if you admit the
great miracle of creation ? But it is in the world of
theology as in the political world : the small thievesare hanged, the great ones are suffered to escape.
50. That providence which is manifested in the
order, conformity to purpose and lawfulness of Nature,
is not the providence of religion. The latter is based
upon liberty, the former upon necessity ; the latter isunlimited and unconditional, the former limited,
depending on a thousand different conditions; thelatter is a special and individual one, the former isextended only over the whole, the species, while the
individual is left to chance. A Theistic naturalist
says : “ Many (or rather all those in whose conception.
God was more than the mathematical, imagined origin
of Nature) have imagined the preservation of the
world, and especially of mankind, as direct and special,
as if God ruled the actions of all creatures, and led
them according to his pleasure. But, after the con
sideration of the natural laws, we are unable to admit
such a special government and superintendence over
the actions of men and other creatures. . . . We learn
this from the little care which Nature takes of single
individuals.8 Thousands of them are sacrificed
without hesitation or repentance in the plenty of
» Nature however “ cares” just as little for the species or genus.
The latter is preserved because it is nothing but the totality of
tl e individuals which by coition propagate and multiply them
selves. While sin le individuals are exposed to accidental,
destructive influences, others escape them. The plurality is thus
preserved. But still, or rather from the same reasons which
cause the single ii dividual to perish, even species die away. Thus
the Dronte has disappeared, thus the Irish gigantic deer, thus
even nowadays many animal species disappear in consequence of
man’s persecution and of the evermore extending civilisation
from regions where they once or even a short time ago still
existed in great numbers, as, e.g. the seal from some inlands; and
in time will disappear entirely from the earth.
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Nature. . . . Even with regard to man we make the
same experience. Not one half of the human race
reach the second year of their age, but die almost
without having known that they ever lived. We
learn this very thing also from the misfortunes and
mishaps of all men, the good as well as the bad, which
cannot well be made to agree with the special pre
servation or co-operation of the creator.”
But a government, a providence which is no special
one, does not answer to the purpose, the essence, the
idea of providence; for providence is to destroy acci
dent, but just that is upheld by a merely general
providence, which therefore is no better than no pro
vidence at all. Thus, e.g., it is a “ law of divine order
in nature,” i.e., a consequence of natural causes, that
according to the number of years also the death of
man occurs in a definite ratio ; that, for instance, in
the first year one child dies out of from three to four
children, in the fifth year one out of twenty-five, in
the seventh one out of fifty, in the tenth one out of
one hundred ; but still it is accidental, not regulated
by this law, depending on other accidental causes, that
just this one child dies, while those three or four
others survive. Thus marriage is an “ institution of
God,” a law of natural providence, in order to multiply
the human race, and consequently a duty for me.
But whether I am to marry just this one, whether she
is not perhaps in consequence of an accidental
organic deficiency unfit or unproductive, that I am
not told. But just because natural providence, which
in reality is nothing but Nature herself, does not come
to my assistance when I come to apply the law to the
special, single case, but leaves me to myself just in
the critical moment of decision, in the pressure of
necessity; I appeal from her to a higher court, to the
supernatural providence of the gods whose eye shines
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THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
upon me just where Nature’s light is extinguished ;
whose rule begins just where that of natural provi
dence is at an end. The gods know and tell me, they
decide what Nature leaves in the darkness of igno
rance and gives up to accident. The region of what
commonly, as well as philosophically, is called acci
dental, “ positive,” individual, not to be foreseen, not
to be speculated upon, is the region of the gods, the
region of religious providence. And oracles and
prayer are the religious means by which man makes
the accidental, obscure, uncertain, an object of cer
tainty, or at least of hope.9
51. The gods, says Epicurus, exist in the intervals
of the universe. Very well ; they exist only in the
void space, in the abyss which is between the world
of imagination and the world of reality, between the
law and its application, between the action and its
result, between the present and the future. The gods
are imagined beings, beings of imagination which
therefore owe also their existence, strictly speaking,
not to the present, but only to the future and the
past. Those gods who owe their existence to the
past are those who no longer exist, the dead ones,
those beings which live only in mind and imagina
tion, whose worship among some nations constitutes
the whole religion, and with most of them an important
essential part of religion. But far more mightily than
by the past, is the mind influenced by the future ; the
former leaves behind only the quiet perception of re
membrance, while the latter stands before us with the
terrors of hell or the happiness of heaven. The gods
which rise from the tombs are therefore themselves
only shades of gods; the true living gods, the
rulers over rain, and sunshine, lighting and
9 Compare in regard to this matter the expresions of Socrates
in Xenophon’s writings as to oracles.
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thunder, life and death, heaven and hell, owe their
existence likewise only to the powers of fear and
hope, which rule over life and death, and which
illuminate the dark abyss of the future with beings of
the imagination. The present is exceedingly prosaic,
ready made, determined, never to be changed, final,
exclusive ; in the present, imagination coincides with
reality ; in it therefore there is no place for the gods ;
the present is godless. But the future is the empire of
poetry, of unlimited possibility and accident—the
future may be according to my wishes or fears ; it is
not yet subject to the stern lot of unchangeableness ; it
still hovers between existence and non-existence, high
over “ common ” reality and palpability; it still belongs
to another “ invisible ” world, which is not put in
motion by the laws of gravitation, but only by the
sensory nerves. This world is the world of the gods.
Mine is the present, but the future belongs to the gods.
I am now; this present moment, although it will
immediately be past, cannot be taken any more from
me by the gods ; things that have happened cannot be
undone even by divine power, as the ancients have
already said. But shall I exist the next moment?
Does the next moment of my life depend on my will,
or is it in any necessary connection with the present
one ? No ; a numberless multitude of accidents ; the
ground under my feet, the ceiling over my head, a flash
of lightning, a bullet, a stone, even a grape which
glides into my wind pipe instead of passing into the
aesophagus, can at any moment tear for ever
the coming moment from the present one. But
the good gods prevent this violent breach; they
fill with their external, invulnerable bodies, the pores
of the human body which are accessible to all possible
destructive influences ; they attach the coming
moment to the one that is past ; they unite the future
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THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
with the present; they are, and possess in uninterrupted
continuity, what men—the porous gods—are and
possess, only in intervals and with interruptions.
52. Goodness is an essential quality with the gods ;
but how can they be good if they are not almighty and
free from the laws of natural providence, z.e., from the
fetters of natural necessity, if they do not appear in the
individual instances which decide between life and
death, as masters of nature, but as friends and benefac
tors of men, and if they consequently do not work any
miracles? The gods, or rather Nature, has endowed man
with physical and mental powers in order to be able to
sustain himself. But are these natural means of sustain
ing himself always sufficient ? Do I not frequently come
into situations where I am lost without hope if no super
natural hand stops the inexorable course of natural order?
The natural order is good, but is it always good ? This
continuous rain or drought e.g., is entirely in order ; but
must not I or my family, or even a whole nation, perish
in consequence of it, unless the gods give their aid and
stop it ?1 Miracles therefore are inseparable from the
divine government and providence ; nay, they are the
only proofs, manifestations and revelations of the gods,
as of powers and beings distinguished from Nature ;
to deny the miracles is to deny the gods themselves.
By what are gods distinguished from men ? Only by
their being without limits, what the latter are in a
limited manner, and especially by their being always
what the latter are only for a certain time, for a
i The Christians pray likewise to their God for rain as the
Greeks did to Jove, and believe that they are heard with such
prayers. “ There was,” says Luther, in his table-discourses, « a
o-reat drought, as it had not rained for a long time, and the grain
?n the field began to dry up when Dr. M. L. praye I continually
and said finally with heavy sighs: 0, Lord, pray regard our
petition in behalf of thy promise........... I know that we cry to
thee and sigh desirously: why dost thou not hear us ? And the
very next night came a very fine fruitful rain.”
�THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
69
moment.2 Men live—living existence is divinity,
essential quality and primary condition of the Deity—
but alas ! not for ever ; they die—but the gods are the
immortal ones who always live ; men are also happy,
but not without interruption as the gods ; men are
also good but not always, and just this constitutes
according to Socrates the difference between Deity and
and humanity, that the former is always good ; accord
ing to Aristotle, men also enjoy the divine happiness
of thinking, but their mental activity is interrupted by
other functions and actions. Thus the gods and men
have the same qualities and rules of life, only that the
former possess them without, the latter with limitations
and exceptions. As the life to come is nothing but the
continuation of this life uninterrupted by death, so the
divine being is nothing but the continuation of the
human being uninterrupted by Nature in general—the
uninterrupted, unlimited nature of man. But how are
miracles distinguished from the effects of Nature?
Just as the gods are distinguished from men. The
miracle makes an effect or a quality of Nature which
in a given case is not good, a good or at least a harmless
one ; it causes that I do not sink and drown in the
water, if I have the misfortune of falling into it; that
fire does not burn me ; that a stone, falling upon my
head, does not kill me—in short, it makes that essence
which now is beneficent, then destructive, now
philanthropic, then misanthropic, an essence always
good. The gods and miracles owe their existence only
to the exceptions of the rule. The Deity is the
destruction of the deficiencies and weaknesses in man
which are the very causes of the exceptions; the miracle
is the destruction of the deficiencies and limits in
Nature. The natural beings are defined and con
2 It is true the omission of the limits has increase and change
for its consequences; but it does not destroy the essential identity.
�70
THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
sequently limited beings. This limit of theirs is in
some abnormal cases the cause of their injuriousness
to man ; but in the sense of religion it is not a
necessary one, but an arbitrary one, made by God and
therefore to be destroyed if necessity, i.e., the welfare of
man requires it. To deny the miracles under the pre
text that they are not becoming to God’s dignity and
wisdom in virtue of which he has fixed and deter
mined everything from the beginning in the best
manner, is to sacrifice man to Nature, religion to
intellect, is to preach Atheism in the name of God. A
God who fulfills only such prayers and wishes of men
as can be fulfilled also without him, the fulfilment of
which is within the limits and conditions of natural
causes, who therefore helps only as long as art and
Nature help, but who ceases helping as soon as the
materia medica is at an end—such a god is nothing but
the personified necessity of Nature hidden behind the
name of God.
53. The belief in God is either the belief in Nature
(the objective being) as a human (subjective) being, or
the belief in the human essence as the essence of nature.
The former is the natural religion, polytheism ;3 the
latter, spiritual or human religion, monotheism. The
polytheist sacrifices himself to Nature, he gives to the
human eye and heart the power and government over
Nature ; the polytheist makes the human being depend
ent on Nature, the monotheist makes Nature dependent
on the human being ; the former says : if Nature does
not exist, I do not exist; but the latter says vice versa:
if I do not exist, the world, Nature does not exist. The
first principle of religion is : I am nothing compared
with Nature, everything compared with me is God ;
3 The definition of polytheism generally and without further
explanation as natural religion, holds good only relatively and
comparatively.
�THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
71
everything inspires me with the feeling of dependence ;
everything can bring me, although only accidentally,
fortune and misfortune, welfare and destruction (but
man originally does not distinguish between cause and
accidental motive) ; therefore everything is a motive
of religion. Religion on the standpoint of such noncritical feeling of dependence is fetishism so-called,
the basis of polytheism. But the conclusion of religion
is : everything is nothing compared with me—all the
magnificence of the stars, the supreme gods of poly
theism disappear before the magnificence of the human
soul ; all the power of the world before the power of
the human heart; all the necessity of dead unconscious
Nature, before the necessity of the human, conscious
being ; for everything is only a means for me. But
Nature would not exist for me, if she existed by her
self, if she were not from God. If she were by herself
and therefore had the cause of her existence in herself,
she would for this very reason have also an indepen
dent essence, an original existence and essence without
any relation to myself, and independent from me.
The signification of Nature according to which she
appears to be nothing for herself, but only a means for
man, is therefore to be traced back only to creation ;
but this signification is manifested above all in those
instances where man—as, e.g., in distress, in danger of
death—comes into collision with Nature, which, how
ever, is sacrificed to man’s welfare—in the miracles.
Therefore the premiss of the miracle is creation ; the
miracle is the conclusion, the consequence, the truth of
creation. Creation is in the same relation to the miracle
as the species to the single individual; the miracle is the
act of creation in a special single case. Or, creation is
theory ; its practice and application is the miracle.
God is the cause, man the end of the world, i.e., God is
the first being in theory, but man is the first being in
�72
THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
practice. Nature is nothing for God—nothing but a
plaything of his power—but only in order that in an
exigency, or rather generally, she is and can do nothing
against man. In the creator man drops the limits of
his essence, of his “ soul,” in the miracle the limits of
his existence, of his body ; there he makes his invisible,
thinking and reflected essence, here his individual,
practical, visible essence, the essence of the world ;
then he legitimates the miracle; here he only performs
it. The miracle accomplishes the end of religion in a
sensual, popular way—the dominion of man over
Nature, the divinity of man becomes a palpable truth.
God works miracles, but upon man’s prayer, and
although not upon an especial prayer, still in man’s
sense, in agreement with his most secret innermost
wishes. Sarah laughed when in her old age the Lord
promised her a little son, but nevertheless even then
descendants were still her highest thought and wish.
The secret worker of miracles therefore is man, but
in the progress of time—time discloses every secret—
he will and must become the manifest, visible worker
of miracles. At first man receives miracles, finally
he works miracles himself ; at first he is the object
of God, finally God himself ; at first God only in heart,
in mind, in thought, finally, God in flesh. But thought
is bashful, sensuality without shame ; thought is silent
and reserved, sensuality speaks out openly and frankly ;
its utterances therefore are exposed to be ridiculed
if they are contradictory to reason, because here the
contradiction is a visible, undeniable one. This is the
reason why the modern rationalists are ashamed to
believe in the God in the flesh, i.e., in the sensual,
visible miracle, while they are not ashamed to believe
in the not-sensual God, i.e., in the not sensual, hidden
miracle. Still, the time will come when the prophecy
of Lichtenberg will be fulfilled, and the belief in God
�THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
73
in general, consequently also the belief in a rational
God will be considered as superstition just as well as
already the belief in the miraculous Christian God in
flesh is considered as superstition, and when, therefore,
instead of the church light of simple belief, and instead
of the twilight of rationalistic belief, the pure light of
Nature and reason will enlighten and warm mankind.
54. He who for his God has no other material than
that which natural science, philosophy, or natural
o bservation generally furnishes to him, who therefore
construes the idea of God from natural materials and
considers him to be nothing but the cause or the prin
ciple of the laws of astronomy, natural philosophy,
geology, mineralogy, physiology, zoology and anthro
pology, ought to be honest enough also to abstain from
using the name of God, for a natural principal, is
always a natural essence and not what constitutes the
idea of a God.4 As little as a church which has been
turned into a museum of natural curiosities, still is and
can be called a house of God, so little is a God really a
God, whose nature and efforts are only manifested in
astronomical, geological, anthropological works. God
is a religious word, a religious object and being, not a
physical, astronomical, or in general a cosmical one.
“ Dues et cultus” says Luther, in his table discourses,
“ sunt relativa.” God and worship correspond to one
4 Arbitrariness in the use of words is unbounded. But still no
words are used so arbitrarily, nor taken in such contradictory
significations as the words God and religion. Whence this
arbitrariness and confusion ? Because people from reverence or
from fear to contradict opinions sanctioned by age, retain the old
names (for only the name, the appearance, rules the world, even the
world of believers in God), although they connect entirely different
ideas with them which have been gained only in the course of
time. Thus it was in regard to the Grecian gods which in the
course of time received tbe most contradictory significations;
thus in regard to the Christian God, Atheism calling itself theism
is the religion, anti-Christianity calling itself Christianity is the
true Christianity of the present day.—Mundus vult decipi.
�74
THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
another, one cannot be without the other, for God must
ever be the God of a man or of a nation and is always
in praedicamento relationis, both being in mutual
relation to each other. God will have some who adore
and worship him ; for to have a God and adore him
correspond to each other, sunt relativa, as man and
wife in marriage—neither can be without the other.”
God therefore presupposes men who adore and worship
him; God is a being the idea or conception of whom
does not depend on Nature but on man, and that on
religious man ; an object of adoration is not without
an adoring being, i.e., God is an object whose existence
coincides with the existence of religion, whose essence
coincides with the essence of religion, and which,
therefore, does not exist apart from religion, different
and independent from it, but in whom objectively is
contained no more than what religion contains subjec
tively.5 Sound is the objective essence, the God of
the ear ; light is the objective essence, the God of the
eye ; sound exists only for the ear, light only for the
eye ; in the ear we have what we have in sound:
trembling, waving bodies, extended membranes, gela
tinous substances ; but in the eye we have organs of
light. To make God an object of natural philosophy,
astronomy or zoology, is therefore just the same thing
as making sound an object of the eye. As the tone
exists only in the ear and for it, so God exists only
in religion and for it, only in faith and for it. As
sound or tone as the object of hearing expresses only
the nature of the ear, so God as an object which is
only the object of religion and faith, expresses the
5 A being therefore which is only a philosophical principle, and
consequently only an object of philosophy, but not of religion, of
worship, of prayer, of the heart; a being that does not accomplish
any wishes, nor hear any prayers, is only a nominal God, but not
a God in reality.
�THE ESSENCE OF BELIGION.
75
nature of religion and faith. But what makes
an object a religious one ? As we have seen, onlyman’s imagination and mind. Whether you wor
ship Jehovah or Apis, the thunder or the Christ,
your shadow, like the negro on the coast of Guinea, or
your soul like the Persian of old, the flatus ventris or
your genius—in short, whether you worship a sensual
or spiritual being, it is all the same ; something is an
object of religion only in so far as it is an object of
imagination and feeling, an object of faith ; for just
because the object of religion, such as it is its object,
does not exist in reality, but rather contradicts the
latter, for this very reason it is only an object of faith.
Thus, e.g., the immortality of man, or man as an
immortal being is an object of religion, but for this
very reason only an object of faith, for reality shows
just the contrary, the mortality of man. To believe,
means to imagine that something exists which does not
exist; e.g., to imagine that a certain picture is a living
being, that this bread is flesh, wine blood, i.e., some
thing which it is not. Therefore it betrays the greatest
ignorance of religion if you hope to find God with the
telescope in the sky of astronomy, or with a magnifying
glass in a botanical garden, or with a mineralogic
hammer in the mines of geology, or with the anatomic
knife and microscope in the entrails of animals and
men. You find him only in man’s faith, imagination
and heart; for God himself is nothing but the essence
of man’s imagination and heart.
55. “ As your heart, so is your God.” As the wishes
of men, so are their gods. The Greeks had limited
gods—that means, they had limited wishes. The
Greeks did not wish to live for ever, they only wished
not to grow old and die, and they did not absolutely
wish not to die, they only wished not to die now—
unpleasant things always come too soon for man—only
�76
THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
not in the bloom of their age, only not of a violent,
painful death ;6 they did not wish to be saved in
heaven, only happy, only to live without trouble and
pain ; they did not sigh as the Christians do, because
they were subject to the necessity of Nature, to the
wants of sexual instinct, of sleep, of eating and
drinking ; they still submitted in their wishes to the
limits of human nature ; they were not yet creators
from nothing, they did not yet make wine from water,
they only purified and distilled the waters of Nature
and changed it in an organic way into the blood of the
gods ; they drew the contents of divine and blissful
life not from mere imagination, but from the materials
of the real world; they built the heaven of the gods
upon the, grounds of this earth. The Greeks did not
make the divine, i.e., the possible being, the original
and end of the real one, but they made the real being
the measure of the possible one. Even when they had
refined and spiritualised their gods by means of
philosophy, their wishes were founded upon the
ground of reality and human nature. The gods are
realised wishes ; but the highest wish, the highest
bliss of the philosopher, of the thinker as such, is to
think undisturbed. The gods of the Greek philosopher
at least of the Greek philosopher par excellence, of the
philosophical Jove, of Aristotle—are therefore un
disturbed thinkers; their happiness, their divinity,
• While therefore in the paradise of Christian phantasms man
could not die and would not die if he had not sinned, with the
Greeks man died even in the blissful age of Kronos, but as easily
as if he fell asleep. In this idea t ie natural wish of man is
realised. Man does not wish for imm irtal life : he only wishes
for a long life of physical and mental health and a painless death
agreeable to Nature. To resign the belief in immortality
requires nothing less than an inhuman Stoic re ignation it
requires nothing but to be convinced that the articles of the
Christian creed are founded only upon supernaturalistic, fantastic
wishes, and to return io the simple real nature of man.
�THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
77
consists in the uninterrupted activity of thinking.
But this activity, this happiness is itself a happiness,
real within this world, within human nature—
although here limited by interruptions—a defined,
special, and therefore, in the conception of Christians,
limited and poor happiness which is contradictory
to the essence of true happiness; for Christians
have no limited but an unlimited God, surpassing
all natural necessity, superhuman, extramundane,
transcendental, i.e., they have unlimited, transcendental
wishes which go beyond the world, beyond Nature,
beyond the essence of man—i.e., absolutely fantastic
wishes. Christians wish to be infinitely greater and
happier than the gods of the Olympus ; their wish is
a heaven in which all limits and all necessity of Nature
are destroyed, and all wishes are accomplished ;7 a
heaven in which there exists no wants, no sufferings,
no wounds, no struggles, no passions, no disturbances,
no change of day and night, light and shade, joy and
pain, as in the heaven of the Greeks. In short, the
object of their belief is no longer a limited, defined
god, a god with the determined name of Jove, or Pluto,
or Vulcan, but God without appellation, because the
object of their wishes is not a named, finite, earthly
happiness, a determined enjoyment, such as the enjoy
ment of love, or of beautiful music, or of moral liberty,
or of thinking, but an enjoyment which embraces all
enjoyments, yet which for this very reason is a trans
cendental one, surpassing all ideas and thoughts, the
enjoyment of an infinite, unlimited, unspeakable, in
describable happiness. Happiness and divinity are the
’ Luther e.g. says: “But where God is (i.e. in heaven) there
must also be all good things which even we may possibly wish
for.” Thus in the Koran, according to Savary’s translation it is
said of the inhabitants of Paradise: “ Tous lews desirs seront
comblfs,” (All their wishes will be accomplished.) Only their
wishes are of a different kind.
�78
THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
same thing. Happiness as an object of belief, of
imagination, generally as a theoretical object, is the
Deity, the deity as an object of the heart, of the will,8
of the wish as a practical object generally, is happiness.
Or rather, the deity is an idea, the truth and reality of
which is only happiness. As far as the desire of
happiness goes, so far, and no further, goes the idea of
the deity. He who no longer has any supernatural
wishes, has no longer any supernatural beings either.
8 The will, however, especially in the sense of the moralists,
does not constitute the specific essence of religion; because what
I can attain by my will, for that I need no gods. To make
morals the essential cause of religion is to retain the name of
religion, but to drop its essence. One can be moral without God,
but happy—in the supernaturalistic, Christian sense of the word
—one cannot be without God; for happiness in this sense lies
beyond the limits and the power of Nature and mankind, it
therefore presupposes for its realisation a supernatural being
which is and can do, what is impossible to Nature and mankind.
If Kant therefore made morals the essence of religion, he was in
the same or at least a similar relation to Christian religion as
Aristotle to the Greek religion, when the latter made theory the
essence of the gods. As little as a god who is only a speculative
being, nothing but intellect, still is a God, so little a merely moral
being or a “personified law of morals” is still a God. It is true,
Jove already is also a philosopher, when he looks smilingly down
from Olympus upon the struggles of the gods, but he is still
infinitely more; certainly also the Christian God is a moral
being but still infinitely more ; morals are only the condition of
happiness. The true idea which is at the bottom of Christian
happiness, especially in c ntrast to philosophic heathenism, is
however no other than the one, that true happiness can be found
only in the gratification of man’s whole nature, for which reason
Christianity admits also the body, the flesh, to the participation
in the divinity or what is the same thing, in the enjoyment of
happiness. But the development of this thought does not belong
here, it belongs to the Essence of Christianity.
���
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The essence of religion : God the image of man. Man's dependence upon nature the last and only source of religion
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Feuerbach, Ludwig [1804-1872]
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Place of publication: London
Collation: vi, [7]-78 p. ; 19 cm.
Notes: First published in German in 1845. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection. Printed and published by G.W. Foote.
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1890
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N211
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Loos, Alexander (tr)
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Theology
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Natural Theology
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Religions
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Text
God the Image of Man. Man’s Dependence upon
Nature the last and only Source of Religion.
BY
LUDWIG FEUERBACH,
_A.uth.or of “The Essence of Christianity,” &o., &o.
TRANSLATED BY
ALEXANDER LOOS,
-----
♦
3VE,
------------
New York :
K. BUTTS <& CO.,
No. 36 DEY STREET
�Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by
ASA K. BUTTS,
in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.
�nxao
■;
LUDWIG FEUERBACH,
A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.
In submitting to the American public the subsequent
argument for the natural origin of religion, by a thinker
whose name has, during the last year, received a well-de
served but long withheld prominence on this side of the
Atlantic, by the eloquence of"one of his noblest peers in
the realm of thought, as well as by the lamentable news
of his recent death: we consider it not altogether su
pererogatory to introduce it by a brief sketch of the
author’s life, especially for the sake of assigning to the
following paragraphs their true place in his life work.
Ludwig Feuerbach was the fourth of the five sons of the
celebrated German criminalist Anselm von Feuerbach,
born July 28th 1804, at Landshut in Bavaria. The vi
cissitudes of his simple life do not present any sensation
al features, and neither his position in life, nor his incli
nation tended to bring him prominently before the pub
lic. His life was eminently a life of thought, and his
writings are his real biography.
What Feuerbach was at any time of his fife, he was
with his whole soul. In his youth, as a pupil of the Gym
nasium at Anspach, he was a pious Christian—pious with
all the energy of his character. In the fervor of his piety,
he devoted himself from free choice to the study of the
ology at the University of Heidelberg, but without find
ing there any satisfactory nourishment for the restless
cravings of his aspiring mind. He therefore left Heidel-
�li
LUDWIG FEUERBACH.
berg in 1824 for Berlin, whence he wrote to his father as
follows : “ I have abandoned theology, not however wan
tonly or recklessly or from dislike, but because it does
not satisfy me, because it does not give me what I indis
pensably need. I want to press Nature to my heart, from
whose depth the cowardly theologian shrinks back; I
want to embrace man, but man in his entirety.” Feuer
bach could not resist the power with which Hegel then
attracted the young students ; but he possessed too inde
pendent a mind to swear upon the master’s word, and
gradually not only emancipated himself from Hegel’s
philosophy, but determined to throw off speculative phil
osophy altogether and to exclusively devote himself to the
only true science, that of Nature. But the death of
King Max the First of Bavaria, whose liberal patronage
had enabled Anselm von Feuerbach to give to each of his
five talented sons a liberal education, frustrated this inten
tion, and prevented Ludwig Feuerbach from continuing
his studies. He accordingly settled in 1828 as a private
tutor at the University of Erlangen and lectured on
Logic, and Metaphysics, but he soon realized that the
prevailing scholasticism of a royal university was not a
congenial atmosphere for his independent mind, and
throwing up all official connection with licensed institu
tions and systems, he retired into the rural solitude of
Bruckberg, a small villagenear Anspach,where Nature and
Science absorbed all the fervor of his enthusiasm and in
spired him, during a residence of 25 years, with the most im
portant of his literary creations—a residence that was in
terrupted only by a short visit at Heidelberg in 1848,
whither he had been invited by the student youth to give
a course of lectures before a promiscuous audience on
“ The Essence of Religion.” The feelings with which
he hailed this self-emancipation from the thraldom of of
fice and scholastic influences can best be realized from the
words in which he gave vent to his exultation, when in
1838 he had been united in blissful wedlock to the sisterin-law of the friend who had secured for him the asylum
at Bruckberg: “Now I can do homage to my genius; now
�LUDWIG FEUERBACH.
I can devote myself independently, freely, regardlessly
to the development of my own being !”
Among his writings which have been published in a
uniform edition comprising ten volumes, the following
deserve especially to be mentioned: Thoughts on Death
and Immortality, (1830); History of Modern Philosophy
from Bacon of Verulam to Spinoza, (1833); Representa
tion, Development and Criticism of Leibnitz’s Philosophy,
(1837); Pierre Bayle, (1838); Essence of Christianity,
(1841, second edition 1843, third edition 1848—trans
lated by Marion Evans); Essence of Religion, (1845).
This last named work which is here for the first time
presented to the American public in translation, forms
the principal basis for the thirty lectures on “ The
Essence of Religion,” which Ludwig Feuerbach, as before
stated, held in the winter of 1848-1849 at Heidelberg
before a promiscuous audience, and in which he endeavor
ed to fill a gap left in his “Essence of Christianity,” by
enlarging the argument of the latter, according to which
“all theology is anthropology” by the addition of “and
physiology,” so that his doctrine and conception of religion
is embraced in the two words Nature and Nan. The
last principal work of Ludwig Feuerbach is “Theogony
according to the sources of Classic, Hebrew and Christian
antiquity,” which forms the 9th volume of his works;
the 10th volume (1866) consisting of a promiscuous col
lection of essays on “ Deity, liberty and immortality from
the stand-point of anthropology.”
Afterwards Feuerbach transferred his residence from
Bruckberg to Rechenberg near Nuremberg, where he
lived exclusively to his family and a small circle of inti
mate friends. Solely devoted as he had been to the ser
vice of science, he had not hoarded up any riches and in
consequence suffered toward the evening of his life from
severe and annoying deprivations. A due sense of grat
itude on the part of his contemporaries in Europe and
America, secured the success of a national subscription,
intended to relieve him and his family from want and
cares for the rest of his life. But his health, undermined
�.iv
LUDWIG FEUERBACH.
by severe mental labor and deprivation, failed more and
more rapidly and disabled him even from fully realizing
the enjoyment of a nation’s grateful recognition, when
a repeated stroke of apoplexy overshadowed his existence
with the gloom of partial unconsciousness, until, on the
12th of Sept., 1872, he died at Rechenberg.
In trying to briefly point out, in conclusion, the sub
stance of Ludwig Feuerbach’s writings in general and
of the subsequent argument in particular, we do not
know how to do this better or more strikingly, than in
his own words in which he speaks of his life-work as
follows:
“ My business was, and above everything is, to illu
mine the dark regions of religion with the torch of
reason, that man at last may no longer be a sport to
the hostile powers that hitherto and now avail them
selves of the mystery of religion to oppress man
kind. My aim has been to prove that the powers
before which man crouches are creatures of his own
limited, ignorant, uncultured, and timorous mind, to
prove that in special the being whom man sets
over against himself as a separate supernatural existence
is his own being. The purpose of my writing is to make
men tmzJ/iwpologians instead of /Aeologians ; man-lovers
instead of God-lovers ; students of this world instead of
candidates of the next; self-reliant citizens of the earth
instead of subservient and wily ministers of a celestial
and terrestrial monarchy. My object is therefore any
thing but negative, destructive, it is positive : I deny in
order to affirm. I deny the illusions of theology and re
ligion that I may affirm the substantial being of man.”
�THE
ESSENCE OF RELIGION,
GOD THE IMAGE OF MAN.
MAN’S DEPENDENCE UPON NATURE THE LAST AND ONLY
SOURCE OF RELIGION.
[The following treatise forms the basis and substance
of the author’s larger work, published under the same
title, as a complement to his previous: “Essence of
Christianity” (translated into English by Marion Evans,
the translator of Strauss’ “Life of Jesus.” It will re
commend itself to the unbiased reader as by far the most
striking and powerful argument for the human origin of
religion in general, and Christianity in particular, before
which all claims and pretensions of dogmatism sink into
naught.—Translator.]
§ 1. That being which is different from and inde
pendent of man, or, which is the same thing, of God, as
represented in the “ Essence of Christianity,”—the being
without human nature, without human qualities and
without human individuality is in reality nothing but
Nature.^)
§ 2. The feeling of dependence in man is the source
of religion; but the object of this dependence, viz., that
�2
THE ESSENCE OE RELIGION.
upon which man is and feels himself dependent, is orig
inally nothing but Nature. Nature is the first original
object of'religion, as is sufficiently proved by the history
of all religions and nations.
§ 3. The assertion that religion is innate with and
natural to man, is false, if religion is identified with
Theism ; but it is perfectly true, if religion is considered
to be nothing but that feeling of dependence by which
man is more or less conscious that he does not and can
not exist without another being, different from himself,
and that his existence does not originate in himself.
Religion, thus understood, is as essential to man as light
to the eye, as air to the lungs, as food to the stomach.
Religion is the manifestation of man’s conception of him
self. But above all man is a being who does not exist
without light, without air, without water, without earth,
without food,—he is, in short, a being dependent on Na
ture. This dependence in the animal, and in man as far
as he moves within the sphere^of the brute, is only an un
conscious and unrefiected one; but by its elevation into
consciousness and imagination, by its consideration and
profession, it becomes religion. Thus all life depends
on the change of seasons; but man alone celebrates this
change by dramatic representations and festival acts.
But such festivals, which imply and represent nothing
but the change of the seasons, or of the phases of the
moon, are the oldest, the first, and the real confessions of
human religion.
§ 4. Man, as well as any individual nation or tribe
considered in its particularity, does not depend on nature
or earth in general, but on a particular locality—not on
water generally, but on some particular water, stream or
fountain. Thus the Egyptian is no Egyptian out of
�THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
3
Egypt; the Indian is no Indian out of India. For this
very reason those ancient nations which were so firmly
attached to their native soil, and not yet attained to the
conception of their true nature as members of mankind,
but which clung to their individuality and particularity
as nations and tribes, were fully justified in worshiping
the mountains, trees, animals, rivers and fountains of
their respective, countries as divine beings; for their
whole individuality and existence were exclusively
based upon the particularity of their country and its
nature—just as he who recognizes the universe as his
home, and himself as a part of it, transfers the universal
character of his being into his conception of God.
§ 5. It is a fantastic notion that man should have
been enabled only by “Providence,” through the assist
ance of “superhuman” beings, such as Gods, Spirits,
Genii and Angels, to elevate himself above the state of
the animal. Of course man has become what he is not
through himself alone; he needed for this the assistance
of other beings. But these were no supernatural creat
ures of imagination, but real, natural beings—no beings
standing above but below himself, for in general every
thing that aids man in his conscious and voluntary actions,
commonly and pre-eminently called human, every good
gift and talent, does not come from above, but from
below; not from on high, but from the very depths of
Nature. Such assistant beings, such tutelary genii of
man, are especially the animals. Only through them
man raised himself above them; only by their protection
and assistance, the seed of human perfection could grow.
Thus we read in the book of Zendavesta, and even in
its very oldest and most genuine part, Vendidad:
“ Through the intellect of the dog is the world upheld.
�4
THE ESSENCE OE RELIGION.
If he did not protect the world, thieves and wolves would
rob all property.” This importance of the animals to
man, particularly in times of incipient civilization, fully
justifies the religious adoration with which they are
looked upon. The animals were necessary and indis
pensable to man ; on them his human existence depended
—but on what his life and existence depends, that is his
God. If the Christian no longer adores Nature as God,
it is only because in his belief his existence does not
depend on Nature, but on the will of a being different
from Nature; but still he considers and adores this being
as a divine, i. e. supreme being, only because he deems
it to be the author and preserver of his existence and life.
Thus the worship of God depends only on the self-ad
oration of man, and is nothing but the manifestation of
the latter; for suppose I should despise myself and my
life—and man originally and normally does not make
any distinction between himself and his life—how should
I praise and worship that upon which such pitiful and
contemptible fife depends ? The value which I con
sciously attribute to the source of life reflects therefore
only the value which I unconsciously attribute to life
and myself. The higher therefore the value of life, the
higher also the value and dignity of those who give fife,
viz. of the Gods. How could the Gods possibly be
resplendent in gold and silver, unless man knew the
value and the use of gold and silver ? What a differ
ence between the fullness and love of life among the
Greeks, and the desolation and contempt of life among
the Indians—but at the same time what a difference be
tween the Greek and Indian mythology, between the Olym
pian father of the Gods and of man and the huge Indian
opossum or the rattlesnake—the ancestor of the Indians J
�THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
5
§ 6. The Christian enjoys life just as much as the
Heathen, but he sends his thankofferings for the enjoy
ments of life upward to the father in Heaven: he accuses
the Heathen of idolatry for the very reason that they
confine their adoration to the creature and do not rise to
the first cause as the only true cause of all benefits. But
do I owe my existence to Adam, the first man? Do I
revere him as my parent ? Why shall I not stop at the
creature ? Am I myself not a creature ? Is not the
very nearest cause which is equally defined and individ
ual with myself, the last cause for me, who myself am
not from afar, as I myself am a defined and individual
being ? Does not my individuality, inseparable and
undistinguishable as it is from myself and my existence,
depend on the individuality of my parents ? Do I not,
if I go further back, at last lose all traces of my existence ?
Is there not a necessary limit to my thus going back in
search of the .first cause ? Is not the beginning of my ex
istence absolutely individual ? Am I begotten and con
ceived in the same year, in the same hour, with the same
disposition, in short under the same internal and exter
nal conditions as my brother? Is not therefore my
origin just as individually my own as my life without
contradiction is my own life ? Shall I therefore extend
my filial love and veneration back to Adam ? No, I am
fully entitled to stop with my religious reverence at those
things which are nearest to me, viz., my parents, as the
cause of my existence.
§ 7. The uninterrupted series of the finite causes or
objects, so-called, which was defined by the Atheists of
old as an infinite and by the Theists as a finite one, exists
only in the thoughts and the imagination of man, like
time, in which one moment follows another without
�6
THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
interruption or distinction. In reality the tedious mon
otony of this causal series is interrupted and destroyed
by. the difference and individuality of the objects, which
individuality causes each by itself to appear new, inde
pendent, single, final and absolute. Certainly water,
which in the conception of natural religion is a divine
Oeing, is on the one hand - a compound, depending on
hydrogen and oxygen, but at the same time it is some
thing new, to be compared to itself only, and original,
wherein the qualities of its two constituent elements, as
such, have disappeared and are destroyed. Certainly
the moonlight, which the Heathen, in his religious sim
plicity, adored as an independent light, is derived from
the immediate light of the sun, but at the same time, dif
ferent from the latter, the peculiar light of the moon,
changed and modified by the moon’s resistance, and
therefore a light which could not exist without the moon,
and whose particularity has its source only in her.
Certainly the dog, whom the Persian addresses in his
prayers as a beneficial and therefore divine being on ac
count of his watchfulness, his readiness to oblige and his
faithfulness, is a creature of Nature, which is not what
he is through himself; but still it is only the dog himself,
this particular and no other being, which possesses those
qualities that call for my veneration. Shall I now in
recognition of these qualities look up to the first and
general cause, and turn my back on the dog ? But the
general cause is without distinction just as much the
cause of the friendly dog as of the hostile wolf, whose
existence I am obliged to destroy, in spite of the general
cause, if I will sustain the better right of my own
existence.
§ 8. The Divine Being which is revealed in Nature,
�THE ESSENCE OE RELIGION.
is nothing but Nature herself, revealing and representing
herself with irresistible power as a Divine Being. The
ancient Mexicans adored among their many Gods alfeo a
God ( or rather a Goddess ) of the salt. This God of the
salt may reveal to us in a striking exemplification the
God of Nature in general. The salt ( rock-salt) repre
sents in its economical, medicinal and other effects, the
usefulness and beneficence of Nature, so highly praised
by the Theists ; in its effect on the eye, in its colors, its
brilliancy and transparency, her beauty ; in its crystalline
structure and form, her harmony and regularity ; in its
composition of antagonistic elements, the combination of
the opposite elements of Nature into one whole — a
combination which by the Theists was always considered
as an unobjectionable proof for the existence of a ruler
of Nature, different from her, because in their ignorance
of Nature they did not know that antagonistic elements
and things are most apt to attract one another and com
bine into a new whole. But what now is the God of the
salt ? That God whose domain, existence, manifestation,
effects and qualities are contained in the salt ? Nothing
but the salt itself which appears to man on account of its
qualities and effects as a divine, i. e., as a beneficent,
magnificent, praiseworthy and admirable being. Homer
expressively calls the salt divine. Thus, as the God of
the salt is only the impression and expression of the
deity or divinity of the salt, so also is the God of the
world or of Nature in general, only the impression and
expression of Nature’s divinity.
§ 9. The belief that in Nature another being is mani
fested, distinct from Nature herself, or that Nature is
filled and governed by a being different from, herself, is
in reality identical with the belief that spirits, demons.
�8
THE ESSENCE OE RELIGION.
devils &c. manifested themselves through man, at least
in a certain state, and that they possess him ; it is in
very truth the belief, that Nature is possessed by a
strange, spiritual being. And indeed Nature, viewed in
the light of such a belief, is really possessed by a spirit,
but this spirit is the spirit of man, his imagination, his
soul, which transfers itself involuntarily into Nature and
makes her a symbol and mirror of his being.
§ 10. Nature is not only the first and original object
but also the lasting source, the continuous, although
hidden background of religion. The belief that God,
even when he is imagined as a supernatural being, differ
ent from Nature, is an object existing outside of man,
an objective being, as the philosophers call it; this belief
has its only source in the fact, that the objective being,
which really exists outside of man, viz., the world or Na
ture, is originally God. The existence of nature is not,
as Theism imagines, based upon the existence of God
but vice versa, the existence of God, or rather the belief
in his existence, is only based upon the existence of Na
ture. You are obliged to imagine God as an existing
being, only because you are obliged by Nature herself to
pre-suppose the existence of Nature as the cause and con
dition of your existence and consciousness, and the very
first idea connected with the thought of God is nothing
but the very idea that he is the existence preceding your
own and presupposed to it. Or, the belief that God
exists absolutely outside of man’s soul and reason, no
matter whether man exists or not, whether he contem
plates him or not, whether he desires him or not—this
belief or rather its object, does not reflect anything to
your imagination but Nature, whose existence is not
based upon the existence of man, much less upon the
�ESSENCE OE RELIGION.
9
action of the human intellect and imagination. If, there
fore, the theologians, particularly the Rationalists, find
the honor of God pre-eminently in his having an exist
ence independent of man’s thoughts, they may consider
that the honor of such an existence likewise must be at
tributed to the Gods of blinded Heathenism, to the stars,
stones and animals, and that in this respect the existence
of their God does not differ from the existence of the
Egyptian Apis.
Those qualities which imply and express the difference
between the divine being and the human being or at
least the human individual, are originally and implicitly
only qualities of Nature. God is the most powerful or
rather the almighty being, i. e., he can do what man
is not able to do, what infinitely surpasses his powers,
and what therefore inspires him with the humiliating
feeling of his limitedness, weakness and nullity. “ Canst
thou,” says God to Job, “bind the sweet influences of
Pleiades or loose the bands of Orion ? Canst thou send
lightnings, that they may go unto thee and say, here we
are ? Hast thou given the horse strength ? Does the
hawk fly by thy wisdom; Hast thou an arm like God, or
canst thou thunder with a voice like Him?” No, that
man cannot do, with the thunder the human voice can
not be compared. But what power is manifest in the
power of the thunder, in the horse’s strength, in the
flight of the hawk, in the restless course of the Pleiades ?
The power of Nature.
God is an eternal being. But in the Bible itself we
read: “ One generation passeth away and another gener
ation cometh : but the earth abideth forever.” In the
books of Zendavesta, sun and moon are expressively
called “ immortalf on account of their duration. And
�10
ESSENCE OK RELIGION.
a Peruvian Inca said to a Dominican monk, “ You adore
a God who died on the cross, but I worship the Sun
which never dies.”
God is the all-kind being, “for he maketh the sun to
rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the
just and on the unjust;” but that being which does not
distinguish between good and evil, between just and un
just, which distributes the enjoyments of life not accord
ing to moral merits ; which in general impresses man as
a kind being, because its effects, such as for instance the
refreshing sunlight and rain-water are the sources of the
most beneficial sensations : that being is Nature.
God is an all-embracing, universal and unchangeable
being; but it is also one and the same sun which shines
for all men and beings on the earth; it is one and the
same sky which embraces them all; one and the same
earth which bears them all. “ That there is one God,”
says Ambrosius, “is proved by common Nature: for
there is only one world,” “ just as the sun, the sky, the
moon, the earth and the sea are common to all,” says
Plutarch, “ although they are differently called by each
one, so exists also one spirit, who rules the universe, but
he has different names and is worshipped in different
ways.”
God “ dwelleth not in temples made with hands,” but
Nature neither. Who can enclose the light, the sky, the
sea, within human limits? The ancient Persians and
Germans worshipped only Nature, but they had no tem
ples. The worshipper of Nature finds the artificial, wellmeasured halls of a temple or of a church too narrow,
too sultry; he feels at his ease only under the lofty,
boundless sky which appears to the contemplation of his
senses.
�ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
11
God is that being which cannot be defined with human
measure, a great, immeasurable, infinite being; but he
is such a being only because his work, the universe, is
great, immeasurable and infinite, or at least appears to
be so. The work praises its master: the magnificence of
the creator has its origin only in the magnificence of his
product. “ How great is the sun, but how much greater
is he who made, it ?”
God- is a superterrestrial, superhuman, supreme
being, but even this supreme being is in its origin and
basis nothing but the highest being in space, optically
considered: the sky with its brilliant phenomena. All
religions of some imagination transfer their Gods into
the region of the clouds, into the ether of the sun, moon
and stars: all Gods are lost at last in the blue vapor
of heaven. Even the spiritual God of Christianity has
his seat, his basis above in heaven.
God is a mysterious, inconceivable being, but only
because Nature is to man, especially to religious man, a
mysterious inconceivable being. “ Dost thou know,”
says God to Job, “ the balancings of the clouds ? Hast
thou entered into the springs of the sea ? Hast thou
perceived the breadth of the earth ? Hast thou seen the
treasures of the hail ?”
Finally, God is that being which is independent of the
human will, unmoved by human wants and passions,
always equal to himself, ruling according to unchange
able laws, establishing his institutions unchangeable for
all time. But this being again is nothing but Nature,
which remains the same in all changes, never exhibiting
the vacillations of an arbitrary, willful ruler, but subject
in all her manifestations to unalterable laws: inexorable,
regardless Nature. (3)
�12
ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
§ 12. Although God, as the author of Nature, is
imagined and represented as a being different from
Nature, still what is implied and expressed by this being,
its real contents, is nothing but Nature. “Ye shall
know them by their fruits,” we read in the Bible, and
the apostle Paul points expressively to the world as to
the work wherein God’s existence and being can be un
derstood, for what one produces, that contains his being
and shows what he is able to do. What we have in
Nature, that we have in God, only imagined as the
author or cause of Nature—therefore no moral and
spiritual, but only a natural, physical being. A worship
founded only upon God as the author of Nature, without
attributing to him any other qualities, derived from man,
and without imagining him at the same time as a poli
tical and moral, i. e. human lawgiver—such worship
would be a mere worship of Nature. It is true that the
author of Nature is thought to be endowed with intellect
and will; but what his will desires, what his intellect
thinks, is just that which requires no will nor intellect,
but only mechanical, physical, chemical, vegetable and
animal forces and impulses.
§ 13. As little as the formation of the child in the
womb, the pulsations of the heart, digestion and other
organic functions are effects of the intellect and will, so
little is Nature in general the effect or production of a
spiritual being, i. e. of a being that wills and knows or
thinks. If Nature was originally a product of the mind,
and therefore a manifestation of mind, then also the
natural phenomena of the present time would be spiritual
effects and manifestations. A supernatural commence
ment necessarily requires a supernatural continuation.
For man thinks intellect and will to be the cause of
�THE ESSENCE OK RELIGION.
13
Nature only where the effects defy his own will, and
surpass his intellect, where he explains things only
through human analogies and reasons, where he knows
nothing of the natural causes, and therefore derives also
the special and present phenomena from God, or—as
for instance the movements of the stars which he cannot
understand—from subordinate spirits. But if now-a-days
the fulcrum of the earth and of the stars is no longer the
almighty word of God, and the motive of their move
ment no spiritual or angelic but a mechanical one: then
the first cause of this movement is also necessarily a
mechanical, or, in general, a natural one. To derive
Nature from intellect and will, or in general from the
mind, is to reckon without the host, is to bringforth the
saviour of the world from the virgin without the co
operation of a man, through the Holy Ghost,—-is
to change water into wine,—is to appease storms with
words, to transfer mountains with words, to restore sight
to the blind with words. What weakness and narrow
mindedness does it betray to do away with the secondary
causes of superstition, such as miracles, devils, spirits
etc., in explaining the phenomena of Nature, but to
leave untouched the first cause of superstition !
§ 14. Several of the ancient ecclesiastical writers as
sert, that the Son of God is not a product of God’s will,
but of God’s nature ; that the product of Nature is ear
lier than the product of the will, and that, therefore, the
act of begetting, as an act of Nature, precedes the act of
creation as an act of the will. Thus the acknowledg
ment of Nature and her omnipotent laws prevails even
within the sphere of the belief in the supernatural God,
although in the plainest contradiction of his own will
and being. The act of begetting is presupposed to the
�14
THE ESSENCE OE RELIGION.
act of the will; the activity of Nature is considered as
preceding the activity of thought and will. This is per
fectly true. Nature must necessarily exist before any
thing exists which distinguishes itself from Nature, and
which places Nature, as an object of the act of thinking
and willing, in opposition to itself. The true way of
philosophy leads from the want of intelligence to intel
lect ; but the direct way into the madhouse of theology,
goes from the intellect to the want of intellect. To base
the mind not upon Nature, but, vice versa, Nature upon
the mind, is the same as to place the head, not upon the
abdomen, but the latter upon the former. Every higher
degree of development presupposes the lower one, not
vice versa, (4) for the simple reason, that the higher one
must have something below it, in order to be the higher
one. And the higher a being stands and the greater its
value or dignity is, the more it presupposes. Eor this
very reason not the first being, but the latest, the last,
the most depending, the most needful, the most compli
cated being is the highest one, just as in the history of
the earth’s formation, not the oldest and first works, such
as the slate and granite, but the latest and most recent
products, such as the basalts and the dense lavas, are the
heaviest and weightiest ones. A being which has the
honor of presupposing nothing, has also the honor of
being nothing. But it is true that the Christians under
stand well the a_t of making something out of nothing.
§ 15. “ All things come from and depend upon God.”
—so the Christian says in harmony with his godly faith—
“ but,” he adds immediately with his ungodly intellect,
“only indirectly^ God is only the first cause after
which comes the endless host of subordinate Gods, the
regiment of intermediate causes. But the intermediate
�THE ESSENCE OB RELIGION.;
15
causes, so-called, are the only real and effective ones, the
only objective and sensible causes. A God who no
longer casts down man with the arrows of Apollo, who
no longer arouses the soul with Jove’s thunder and
lightning, who no longer threatens the sinner with
comets and other fiery phenomena, who no longer with
his own high hand attracts the iron to the loadstone, pro
duces ebb and tide, and protects the Continent against
the overbearing power of the waters which always threat
en another deluge—in short, a God driven from the em
pire of the intermediate causes is only a cause by name,
a harmless and very modest creature of imagination—a
mere hypothesis for the purpose of solving a theoretical
problem, for explaining the commencement of Nature or
rather of organic life. For the assumption of a being
different from Nature, with the purpose of explaining
her existence, lias its origin only in the impossibility—
although this is only a relative and subjective one—of
explaining organic and particularly human life from Na
ture, inasmuch as the Theist makes his inability to ex
plain life through Nature, an inability of Nature to
produce life out of herself, and thus extends the limits
of his intellect to limits of Nature.
§ 16. Creation and preservation are inseparable. If,
tnerefore, a being different from Nature—-a God— is
our creator, he is also our preserver, and not the power
of the air, of heat, of the water or of bread, but the power
of God sustains and preserves us. “In him we live and
move and have our being.” “ Not bread ” says Luther,
“ but the word of God nourishes also the body naturally,
as it creates and preserves all things.” “Because it
exists, he ( God ) nourishes by it and under it, so that
we do not see it, and think that the bread does it. But
�16
THE ESSENCE OE RELIGION.
where it does not exist, he nourishes without the bread,
through his word only, as he does it by the bread.” “In
fine, all creatures are God’s masks and mn mm cries
which he permits to assist him in all kind of work that
he otherwise can, and really does perform without their
co-operation.” But if, instead of Nature, God is our
preserver, Nature is a mere disguise of the Deity, and,
therefore, a superfluous and imaginary being, just as vice
versa, God is a superfluous and imaginary being if Nature
preserves us. But now it is manifest and undeniable
that we owe our preservation only to the peculiar effects,
qualities and powers of natural beings, therefore we are
not only entitled, but compelled, to conclude that we
owe also our origin to Nature. We are placed right in
the midst of Nature, and should our beginning, our origin,
lie outside of Nature ? We live within Nature, with Na
ture, by Nature, and should we still not be of her ? What
a contradiction!
§ 17. The earth has not always been in its present
state, on the contrary, it has come to its actual condition
through a series of developments and revolutions, and
geology has discovered that in the different stages of its
development several species of plants and animals existed,
which no longer exist nor even have existed for ages.
Thus, for instance, there exist no longer any Trilobites
nor any Encinites or Ammonites or Pterodactyles or
Ichthyosauri, or Plesiosauri, or Megatheria or Dinotheria, &c. And why not ? Apparently because the
condition of their existence no longer exist. But if the
end of any life coincides with the end of its conditions,
then also the beginning, the origin of such life coincides
with the origin of its conditions. Even now-a-days
where plants, at least those of higher organizations,
�THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
17
come to life only by organic procreation, they can—in a
very remarkable, yet unexplained manner—be seen to
appear in numberless multitudes as soon as the pecu
liar conditions of their life are given. The origin of or
ganic life cannot, therefore, be thought of as an isolated
act, as an act after the origin of the conditions of life, but
rather as the act by which and the moment in which the
temperature, the air, the water, the earth in general, re
ceived such qualities, and oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, nit
rogen entered into such combinations as were necessary
for the existence of organic life — this moment must
also be considered as the moment when these elements
combined for the formation of organic bodies. If, there
fore, the earth, by virtue of its own nature, has in the
course of time developed and cultivated itself to such a
degree that it adopted a character , agreeable to the exist
ence of man and suitable to man’s nature, or so to say,
a human character: then it could produce man also by
its own power.
§ 18. The power of Nature is not unlimited like the
power of God, i. e. the power of human imagination ; "she
cannot do everything at all times and under all circum
stances—her productions and effects on the contrary
are dependent on conditions. If, therefore, Nature now-adays cannot or does not produce any organic bodies by
generatio cequivoca, this is no proof that she could not
do it in former times. The present character of the earth
is that of stability; the time of revolutions is gone by,
the earth has done raging. The volcanoes only are some
single turbulent heads which have no influence on the
masses, and which therefore do not disturb the existing
order of things. Even the grandest volcanic event with
in the memory of man, viz., the rising of Jorullo in
�18
THE ESSENCE OE RELIGION.
Mexico, was nothing but a local rebellion. But as man
manifests only in extraordinary times extraordinary
powers, or as he can do only in times of the highest
exultation and emotion what at other times is impossible
for him, and as the plant only at certain epochs, such as
the period of germinating, blooming and impregnation
produces heat and consumes carbon and hydrogen, thus
exhibiting an animal function, which is directly in con
tradiction to its ordinary vegetable functions; so also
the earth only in the time of its geological revolutions,
when all its powers and elements were in a state of
highest fermentation, ebullition and tension, developed
its power of producing animals. We know Nature only
in its present state; how then could we conclude that
what does not happen now by Nature, might not happen
at all—even at entirely different times, under entirely
different conditions and relations ?5)
§ 19. The Chi’istians have not been able to express with
sufficient strength their astonishment that the heathen
adored created beings as divine ones, but they might
rather have admired them on that account, for such ado
ration was based on a perfectly true contemplation of
Nature. To be produced, to come into life, is nothing
else but to be individualized. All individual beings are
produced, but the general fundamental elements or be
ings of Nature which have no individuality are not
produced. Matter is not produced. But an individual
being is of a higher, more divine quality than that with
out individuality. It is true that birth is disgraceful
and death painful, but he who does not wish to begin and
to end may resign the rank of a living being. Eternity
excludes life, and life excludes eternity. Certainly does
the individual presuppose another being which pro
�the essence
or
religion.
19
duces it; but the latter does not stand above, it
stands below its product. True, the producing being
is the cause of existence and in that respect the first
being; still it is at the same time the mere means
and material; the basis of another being’s existence, and
therefore a subordinate being. The child consumes the
mother, disposes of her strength and of her substance to
his own advantage, paints his cheeks with her blood.
And the child is the mother’s pride; she places it above
herself, subordinating her existence and welfare to that
of the child; even the animal mother sacrifices her own
life for that of her young ones. The deepest disgrace of
any being is death, but the source of death is the act of
begetting. To beget is nothing but to throw one’s self
away, to make one’s self common, to be lost among the
multitude, to sacrifice one’s singleness and exclusiveness
to other beings. Nothing is more full of contradiction,
more perverse and void of sense, than to consider the
natural being as produced by a supreme, perfectly spirit
ual being. According to such a process, and in consis
tency with the creature’s being only an image of the
creator, also the human children ought not to originate
in the disgraceful, lowly placed organ of the womb, but
in the highest organization, the head.
§ 20. The ancient Greeks derived all springs, wells,
streams, lakes and oceans from Oceanos ; and the ancient
Persians made all mountains of the earth originate in the
mountain Albordy. Is the derivation of all beings from
one perfect being any tiling different or better ? No, it is
based upon the same manner of thinking. As Albordy
is a mountain like all those which have their origin in it,
so also the divine being, as the source of those derived
from it, is like them, not different from them as to
�20
THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION
species; but as the Albordy is distinguished from all
other mountains ■ by preserving their qualities preemin
ently, i. e. in a degree exaggerated by imagination to the
utmost, up to heaven, beyond the sun, moon and stars, so
also the divine being is distinguished from all other beings.
Unity is unproductive; only dualism, contrast, difference
is productive. That which produces the mountains is not
only different from them, but something manifold in
itself. And those elements which produce water, are
not only different from the water, but also from them
selves, nay, even antagonistic to one another. Just as
genius, wit, acumen and judgment are produced and de
veloped only by contrasts and conflicts, so also life was
produced only by the conflict of different, nay, of
antagonistic elements, forces and beings.
§ 21. “ How should he who made the ear not hear ?
How should he who made the eye not see ?” This
biblical or theistical derivation of the being endowed
with the senses of hearing and seeing from another being
endowed with the same senses, or to use an expression of
the modern, philosophic language, the derivation of the
spiritual and subjective being from another spiritual and
subjective being, is based upon the same foundation, and
expresses the same as the biblical explanation of the
rain from heavenly masses of water collected beyond or
in the clouds, or the Persian derivation of the mountains
from the original mountain, Albordy, or the Grecian ex
planation of fountains and rivers from Oceanos. Water
from water, but from an immensely great and all-embrac
ing water; mountain from mountain, but from an infinite
all-embracing mountain; so spirit from spirit, life from
life, eye from eye—but from an infinite, all-embracing
eye, life and spirit.
�THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
21
§ 22. When children inquire about the origin of
babes, we give them the explanation that the nurse
takes them from the well where they swim like fishes.
The explanation which theology gives us of the origin of
organic or natural beings in general is not much differ
ent. God is the deep or beautiful well of imagination in
which all realities, all perfections, all forces are contained,
in which all things swim already made like little fishes.
Theology is the nurse who takes them from this well, but
the chief person, Nature, the mother who brings forth
the children with pangs, who bears them during nine
months under her heart, is left entirely out of considera
tion in such an explanation, which originally was only
childlike, but now-a-days is childish. Certainly such an
explanation is more beautiful, more pleasant to the
heart, easier, more intelligible and conceivable to the
children of God than the natural way, which only by
degrees and through numberless obstacles rises from
darkness to fight. But also the explanation which our
pious forefathers gave of hailstorms, epidemics among
cattle, drought and thunderstorms, by tracing them to
the agency of weather-makers, sorcerers, and witches, is
far more practical, easier, and, to uneducated men even
now-a-days much more intelligible than the explanation
of these phenomena from natural causes.
§ 23. “The origin of life is inexplicable and incon
ceivable.” Be it so; but this incomprehensibility does
not justify us in drawing from it the superstitious conse
quences which theology draws from the deficiencies of
human knowledge, nor in going beyond the sphere of
natural causes: for we can only say, “we cannot explain
life from these natural phenomena and causes which are
known to us, or as far as they are known to us”—but
�22
THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
we cannot say, “life cannot be explained at all from
Nature, without pretending to have exhausted al
ready the ocean of Nature even to the last drop.
This incomprehensibility does not justify us in explain
ing the inexplicable by the supposition of imagined be
ings, and in deceiving and deluding ourselves and others
by an explanation which explains nothing. It does not
justify us in changing an ignorance of natural material
causes into a non-existence of such causes, and in deify
ing, personifying, representing our ignorance in a being
which is to destroy such ignorance, and which yet does
not express anything but the nature of such ignorance,
the deficiency of positive, material reasons of explana
tion. For what else is the immaterial, incorporeal, not
natural, extramundane being to whom we thus try to
trace back all lite, but the precise expression of the
intellectual absense of material, corporeal, natural,
cosmical causes? But instead of being so honest and
modest as to say frankly: “We do not know any reason,
we do not know how to explain it, we have no data nor
materials,” you change these deficiencies, these nega
tions, these vacancies of your head by the activity of
your imagination into positive beings, into immaterial
beings, i. .e into beings which are not material nor
natural, because you do not know of any material or
natural causes. While 'ignorance however is contented
with immaterial, incorporeal, unnatural beings, her in
separable companion, wanton imagination, which al
ways and exclusively indulges in the intercourse with
beings of the highest perfection, immediately elevates
these poor creatures of ignorance to the rank of super
material, supernatural beings,
§ 24. The idea that Nature or the universe in general
�THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
23
has a real beginning, and that consequently at sometime
there was no Nature, no universe, is a narrow idea,
which seems acceptable to man only as long as he has
a narrow, limited conception of the world. It is an
magination without sense and foundation—this imagin
ation that at some time nothing real existed, for the
universe is the totality of all reality. All qualities or
definitions of God which make him an objective, real
being are only qualities abstracted from, Nature, which
presuppose and define Nature, and which therefore
would not exist if Nature did not exist. It is true, if
we abstract from Nature : if in our thoughts or our ima
gination we destroy her existence, i. e. if we shut our
eyes and extinguish all images of natural things reflected
by our senses and conceive Nature not with our senses
(not in concreto as the philosophers say) there is left a
being, a totality of qualities such as infinity, power,
unity, necessity, eternity; but this being which is left
after deducting all qualities and phenomena reflected by
our senses is in truth nothing but the abstract essence
of Nature, or Nature ££ in abstract? in thought. And
such derivation of Nature or the universe from God is
therefore in this respect nothing but the derivation ci
the real essence of Nature, as it appears to our senses,
from her abstract, imagined essence, which exists only in
our idea—a derivation which appears to be reason
able because in the act of thinking we are accus
tomed to consider the abstract and general as that which
is nearer to thought, and which therefore must be pre
supposed to the individual, the real, the concrete, as that
which is higher and earlier in thought, although in
reality just the reverse takes place, inasmuch as Nature
exists before God, i. e. the concrete before the abstract
�24
THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
that which we conceive with our senses before that
which is thought. In reality, where everything passes
on naturally, the copy follows the original, the image
the thing which it represents, the thought its object—
but on the supernatural, miraculous ground of theology,
the original follows the copy, the thing its own likeness.
“ It is strange ” says St. Augustine, “ but nevertheless
true, that this world could not exist if it was not known
to God.” That means: the world is known and thought
before it exists; nay, it exists only because it was
thought of—the existence is a consequence of the knowl
edge or of the act of thinking, the original a conse
quence of the copy, the object a consequence of its
likeness.
§ 25. If we reduce the world or Nature to a totality
of abstract qualities, to a metaphysical, i. e. to a merely
imagined object, and consider this abstract world as the
real world, then it is a logical necessity to consider it as
finite. The world is not given to us through the act of
thinking, not at least through the metaphysical and hy
perphysical thinking which abstracts from the real world
and founds its true and highest existence upon such ab
straction—the world is given to us through life, by per
ception, by the senses. For an abstract being which
only thinks there exists no light, because it has no eyes,
no warmth, because it has no feeling, in general no world
because it has no organ for its perception; for such a
being there exists in reality nothing. The world, there
fore, exists for us only because we are no logical or meta
physical beings, because we are other beings, because
we are more than mere logicians and metaphysicians.
But just thisj?Zw<s appears to the metaphysical thinker as
a minus, this negation of the art of thinking as an abso
�THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
25
lute negation. Nature to him is nothing but the oppo
site of mind. This merely negative and abstract definition
he makes her positive definition, her essence. Conse
quently it is a contradiction to consider as a positive
being that being, or rather that nonentity which is only
the negation of the act of thinking, which is an imagined
thing, but according to its nature an object of the senses,
that is antagonistic to the act of thinking and to the
mind. The being which exists in thought is for the
thinker the true essence, therefore it is self-evident to
him that a being which does not exist in thought cannot
be a true, eternal, original essence. It implies already a
contradiction for the mind to think only of its opposite ;
it is only in harmony with itself when it thinks only itself
( on the standpoint of metaphysical speculation,) or at
least (on the standpoint of theism) when it thinks an es
sence which expresses nothing but the nature of the act
of thinking, which is given only by thought, and which
therefore in itself is nothing but an imagined being.
Thus Nature disappears into nothing. But still she exists,
though according to the thinker she neither can nor
should be. How then does the metaphysician explain
her existence ? By a self-privation, a self-negation, a self
denial of the mind which apparently is a voluntary one?
but which in very truth is contradictory to, and only en
forced upon his inner nature. But if Nature on the
standpoint of abstract thinking disappears into nothing,
on the other hand on the standpoint of the real observa
tion and contemplation of the world, that creative mind
disappears into nothing. On this standpoint all deduc
tions of the world from God, of Nature from the mind,
of physics from metaphysics, of the real from the ab
stract, are proved to be nothing but logical plays.
�26
THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
§ 26. Nature is the first and fundamental object of
religion, but she is such an object even where she is the
direct and immediate object of religious adoration, as e.
g. in the natural religions so-called, not as such, as
Nature, i. e., in the manner and in the sense in which
we regard her from the standpoint of theism or of
philosophy and of the natural sciences. Nature is to
man originally, i. e., where he regards her with a relig
ious eye, rather an object of his own qualities, a person
al, living, feeling being. Man originally does not dis
tinguish liimself from Nature, nor consequently Nature
from himself, therefore the sensations which any object
in Nature excites in him appear to him immediately as
qualities of the object. The beneficial, good sensations
and effects are caused by good and benevolent Nature,
the bad, painful sensations, such as heat, cold, hunger,
pain, disease, by an evil being, or at least by Nature in a
state of evil disposition, of malevolence, of wrath. Thus
man involuntarily and unconsciously, I. e., necessarily—
although this necessity is only a relative and historical
one—transforms the essence of Nature into a feeling,
i. e. a subjective, a human being. No wonder that he
then also expressively, knowingly and willingly trans
forms her into an object of religion, of prayer, i. e. an
object which can be influenced by the feelings of man,
his prayers, his services. Really, man has made Nature
already subservient and subdued her to himself by
assimilating her to his feelings and subduing her to his
passions. Besides, uneducated natural man does not
only presuppose human motives, impulses and passions
in Nature, he sees even real men in natural bodies.
Thus the Indians on the Orinoco think the sun, the moon
and the stars, to be men—“ those up there,” they say “are
�THE ESSENCE OE RELIGION.
27
men like unto usThe Patagonians think the stars to
be “ former Indiansthe Greenlanders think the sun,
moon and stars, to be their ancestors, who at a particular
occasion were translated into heaven.” Thus also the an
cient Mexicans believed that the sun and the moon which
they adored as gods had been men in former times.
Behold thus the assertion made in my “ Essence of
Christianity ” that man in religion is in relation to an
intercourse with himself only, and that his God in reality
reflects only his own essence—this assertion is confirmed
even by the most uncultivated, primary manifestations
of religion ; where man adores things the most distant
from and most unlike to himself, such as stars, stones,
trees, nay, even the claws of crabs, and snail shells ; for
he adores them only because he transfers himself into
them, because he believes them to be such beings, or at
least to he inhabited by such beings as himself. Re
ligion therefore exhibits the remarkable contradiction,
which however is easily understood, nay, even necessary,
that, while on one hand (from the standpoint of theism
or anthropologism) she worships the human essence as a
divine one, because it appears to her as different from
man, as an essence not human—on the other hand (from
the materialistic standpoint) she adores vice versa the
essence which is not human as a divine one, because it
appears to her as a human one.
§ 27. The mutability of Nature, especially in those
phenomena which most of all cause man to feel his de
pendence on her, is the principal reason why she appears
to man as a human, arbitrary being, and why she is re
ligiously adored by him. If the sun stood always in the
sky, he would never have kindled the fire of religious
passion in man. Only when he disappeared from man’s
�28
THE ESSENCE OE RELIGION.
eye and inflicted upon him the terrors of night, and when
again he re-appeared, man fell down on his knees before
him, overcome by joy at his unexpected return. Thus
the ancient Apalachites in Florida greeted the sun with
hymns at his rising and setting, and prayed to him at
the same time that he might return and bless them with
his light. If the earth always produced fruits, where
would there be a motive for religious celebrations of the
time of sowing and harvesting? Only in consequence of
her now opening, now closing her womb, her fruits ap
pear to be her voluntary gifts which oblige man to be
grateful. The changes in Nature make man uncertain,
.humble, religious.. It is uncertain, whether the weather
to-morrow will be favorable to my undertakings; is it
uncertain whether I shall harvest what I sow, and there
fore I cannot depend upon the gifts of Nature as upon a
tribute due, or an infallible consequence. But where
mathematical certainty is at an end, there theology
commences, even now-a-days in weak minds. Religion
is the conception of the necessary—or of the accidental
—as of something arbitrary, or voluntary. The opposite
sentiment, that of irreligion and ungodliness, on the
other hand, is represented by the Cyclops of Euripides,
when he says: “Earth must produce grass for feeding
my flock, whether she be willing to do so or not”
§ 28. The feeling of dependence upon Nature in
combination with the imagination of her as of an arbi
trarily acting, personal being, is the motive of the sacri
fice,. the most essential act of natural religion. The de
pendence upon Nature is particularly sensible to me by my
want of her. The want is the feeling and expression of
my nothingness without Nature; but inseparable from
want is enjoyment, the opposite feeling, the feeling of
�THE ESSENCE OE BELTGION.
29
my self-existence, of my independence in distinction from
Nature. Want, therefore, is pious, humble, religious—
but enjoyment is haughty, ungodly, void of respect, fri
volous. And such frivolity, or at least want of respect
in enjoyment, is a practical necessity for man, a necessi
ty upon which his existence is founded—but a necessity
which is in direct contradiction to his theoretical respect
for Nature as for an egotistic, sensible being, which
suffers as little as man that anything be taken from her.
The appropriation or the use of Nature appears therefore
to man, as if it were an encroachment upon her right, as
an appropriation of another one’s property, as an outrage.
In order now to propitiate his conscience as well as the
object of his imaginary offence; in order to show that his
robbery has its origin in want, not in arrogance, he dimin
ishes his enjoyment and returns to the object a part of
its plundered property. Thus the Greeks believed that
if a tree were cut down, its soul, the Dryad, lamented
and cried to Fate for revenge against the trespasser.
Thus no Roman ventured to cut down a tree on his ground
without sacrificing a farrow for • the propitiation of the
god or goddess of this grove. Thus the Ostiaks, after
having slain a bear, suspend its skin on a tree, pay to it
all sorts of reverences, and. apologize as well as they can
to the bear for having killed him. “ They believe in this
manner politely to avert the damage which the spirit of
the animal possibly could inflict upon them.” Thus
North American tribes by similar ceremonies propitiate
the departed souls of slain beasts. Thus the Philippines
asked the plains and mountains for their permission, if
they wished to cross them, and deemed it a crime to cut
down any old tree. And the Bramin hardly dares to
drink water or to tread upon the ground with his feet,
�so
THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
because each step, each draught of water causes pain and
death to sentient beings, plants as well as animals, and
he must therefore do penance “in order to atone for the
death of creatures which he possibly, although unconsci
ously might destroy by day or night.” (6)
§ 29. The sacrifice makes perceptible to the senses
the whole essence of religion. Its source is the feeling
of dependence, fear, doubt, the uncertainty of success, of
future events, the scruples of conscience on account of
a sin committed; but the result, the purpose of the sacri
fice is self-consciousness, courage, enjoyment, the cer
tainty of success, liberty and happiness. As a servant of
Nature I observe tlie sacrifice; as her master I depart
from it. Therefore, although the feeling of dependence
upon Nature is the source and motive of religion: its
very purpose and end is the destruction of such feeling,
the independence from Nature. Or, although the divin
ity of Nature is the basis, the foundation of religion
generally and of Christian religion in particular, still its
end is the divinity of man.
§ 30. Religion has for its presupposition the contra
diction between will and ability, desire and satisfaction,
intention and success, imagination and reality, thought
and existence. In his desire, in his imagination, man is
unlimited, free, almighty—God; but in his ability, in
reality, he is bound, dependent, limited—man] man in
the sense of a finite being, in contradistinction from God.
“Man proposes, God disposes,” as the saying is. “Man
plans and Jove accomplishes it differently.” The
thought, the will is mine; but what I think and will is
not mine, is outside of me, does not depend on me. The
destruction of such a contrast or contradiction is the ten
dency, the purpose of religion; and that being in which
�THE ESSENCE OK RELIGION.
31
it is destroyed, and wherein that which I wish and imag
ine as possible, which however my limited power proves
to be impossible for me, is possible, nay even real—that
being is the divine being.
§ 31. That whieh is independent from the will and
the knowledge of man is the original, proper, character
istic cause of religion—the cause of God. “ I have
planted” says Paul, “Apollos watered, but God gave
the increase. So then neither is he that planteth any
thing, neither he that watereth, but God that giveth the
increase.” And Luther says: “We must praise and
thank God that he suffers grain to grow, and acknowl
edge that it is not our work, but his blessing and his
gift, if grain and wine and all sorts of fruit grow which
we eat and drink to satisfy our wants.” And Hesiod
says, that the industrious husbandman will richly harvest
if Jove grants a good end. The tilling of the soil then,
the sowing and watering of the seed, depends on me, but
not the succes. This is in God’s hand, therefore it is
said: “ God’s blessing is the main thing.” But what is
God? originally nothing but Nature, or the essence of
Nature ; but Nature as an object of prayer, as an exorable and consequently willing being. Jove is the cause
or the essence of meteorological phenomena; but this
does not yet constitute his divine, his religious charac
ter ; also he who is not religious assumes a cause of the
rain, of the thunder storm, of the snow. He is God
only, because and in so far as these phenomena de
pend on his good will. That which is independent
of man’s will is, therefore, by religion, made depen
dent upon God’s will as far as the object itself is con
cerned (objectively); but subjectively (as far as man is
concerned,) it is made dependent on prayer, for what
�32
THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
depends on will is an object of prayer and can be
changed. “Even the Gods are pliable. A mortal can
change their minds by incense and humble vows, by li
bations and perfume.”
§32. The only or at least the principal object of re
ligion is an object of human purposes and wants, at least
where man has once risen beyond the unlimited arbi
trariness, helplessness and accidentalness of Fetishism
proper. For this very reason those natural beings which
are most necessary and indispensable to man enjoyed al
so the most general and the highest religious adoration.
But whatever is an object of human wants and purposes,
is for the same reason an object of human wishes. I
need rain and sunshine for the successful growth of my
seeds. In times of continuous drouth I therefore wish
for rain; in times of continuous rain I wish for sunshine.
This wish is a desire whose gratification is not within my
power ; a will, but without the might to prevail, although
not absolutely so, yet at least at a given time, under cer
tain circumstances and conditions, and such as man
wishes it on the stand point of religion. But just what
my body, my power in general, is unable to do, is within
the power of my wish. What I ask and wish for, that I
enchant and inspire by my wishes. (7) While under the
influence of an affect—and religion roots only in affect,
in feeling—man places his essence without himself; he
treats as living what is without life, as arbitrary what
has no will; he animates the object with his sighs, for he
cannot possibly in a state of affect address himself to an
insensible being. Feeling does not confine itself within
the limits prescribed by intellect; it gushes over man ;
his breast is too narrow for it; it must communicate it
self to the outer world and by so doing make the insensi
�THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
33
ble essence of Nature a sympathetic one. Nature en
chanted by human feeling, Nature agreeing with and as
similated to man’s feeling, i. e., Nature herself endowed
with feeling, is Nature such as she is an object of reli
gion, cl divine being. The wish is the origin, the very
essence of religion—the essence of the G-ods is nothing
but the essence of the wish. (8) The Gods are superhu
man and supernatural beings; but are not wishes also of
a superhuman and supernatural nature ? e. g. am I in
my wish, in my imagination still a man, if I wish to be
an immortal being, free from the fetters of the earthly
body? No ! He who has no wishes has no gods either.
Why did the Greeks lay such a stress upon the immor
tality and happiness of the Gods ? Because they them
selves did not wish to be mortal and unhappy. Where
no lamentations about man’s mortality and misery are
heard, no hymns are heard in honor of the immortal and
happy Gods. Only the water of tears shed within the
human heart evaporates in the sky of imaginatian into
the cloudy image of the diVine being. From the univer
sal stream, Oceanos, Homer derives the Gods ; but this
stream abounding with Gods is in reality only an efflux
of human feelings.
§ 33. The* irreligious manifestations of religion are
best adapted to disclose in a popular manner the origin
and essence of religion. Thus it is an irreligious mani
festation of religion and therefore most severely criticized
already by the pious heathen, that as a general thing
man takes recourse to religion, that he applies to God
and thinks of him, only in times of misfortune ; but this
very fact reveals to us the source of religion. In times
of misfortune or distress, no matter whether it be his
own or another one’s, man realizes the painful experience
�34
THE ESSENCE OK RELIGION.
of his.inability to do what he wishes—he finds his hands
tied. But the palsy of the motory nerves is not at the
same time also the palsy of the sensory nerves; the fetters
of my physical power are not also at the same time the
fetters of my will, of my heart. On the contrary, the
more my hands are tied, the more boundless are my
wishes, the more ardent is my desire for redemption, the
more energetic my strife after freedom, my will not to
be limited. The power of the human heart or will which
by the influence of distress has been exaggerated and
overexcited to a superhuman one, is the power of the
Gods for whom there is no necessity nor limit. The
Gods are able to do what man desires, i. e. they obey
the laws of the human heart. What man is only in re
gard to his soul, the Gods are also physically; what he
can do only within his will, his imagination, his heart, i.
e., mentally, as e. g. to be in the twinkling of an eye at
a distant place, that the Gods are able to do physically.
The Gods are the embodied, realized wishes of man—
the natural limits of man’s heart aud will destroyed—
creatures of the unlimited will, creatures whose physical
powers are equal to those of the will. The irreligious
manifestation of this supernatural power of religion is
the practice of witchcraft among uncivilized nations,
where in & palpable manner the mere will of man ap
pears as God, commanding over Nature. But when the
God of Israel at Joshua’s command bids the sun stand
still or suffers it to rain in compliance with Elijah’s
prayer, and when the God of the Christians for the sake
of proving his divinity, i. e., his power to fulfill all wishes
of man, by his word alone appeases the raging sea, cures
the sick, raises the dead : here as well as in the practice
of witchcraft, the mere will, the mere wish, the mere
�THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
35
word is declared a power that overrules Nature. The
only difference is that the sorcerer realizes the end of re
ligion in an irreligious manner, whilst the Jew and the
Christians do it in a religious manner, inasmuch as the
former places within himself, what the latter transfers
into God, inasmuch as the former makes the object of
an expressive will or command what the latter make the
object of a still submissive will, of a pious wish; in short
inasmuch as the former does by and for himself, what
the latter do by and with God. But the common say
ing : “quod quis per alium fecit ipse fecisse putaturf
i. e. what one does through another one that is imputed to
him as his own deed, finds its application also here:
what one does through God, that he does in reality
himself.
§ 34. Religion has—at least originally and in rela
tion to nature—no other office and tendency than to
change the unpopular and haunted essence of Nature into
a familiar and known one; to melt Nature, who in her
self is impliant and hard as iron, in the glowing fire of
the heart for the sake of human purposes; i. e., it has the
same end as civilization or culture, whose end also is no
other than to make Nature theoretically an intelligible
and practically a pliable being, agreeable to the wants of
man—with this only difference, that what culture tries to
attain by means, and that too by means learned from Na
ture, religion attains without means, or what is the same,
through the supernatural means of prayer, of faith, of
sacraments, of witchcraft. Thus we find that everything
which with the progress of the civilization of mankind
became a cause of activity, of self-activity, of anthropol
ogy, in former times was a cause of religion or theology ;
as, for instance, jurisprudence, politics, medicine, which
�36
THE THENCE OF RELIGION.
latter even now-a-days among uncivilized nations is a
thing of religion. (9) It is true, culture and civilization
always come short of the wishes of religion, for it cannot
destroy those limits of man which have their foundation
in his Nature. Thus culture succeeds for instance in
improving the science of prolongating life (Macrobio
tics) but it never attains to immortality. This as a
boundless wish which cannot be realized is left to re
ligion.
§ 35. In natural religion man addresses himself to an
object directly antagonistic to the original will and sense
of religion; for here he sacrifices his feelings and his
intellect to a being which in itself is without feeling and
intellect; he places above himself what he would like to
have below himself; he serves what he wishes to govern,
adores what in reality he abhors, entreats for assistance
that against which he seeks assistance. Thus the Greeks
at Titane sacrificed to the winds in order to appease
their rage; thus the Romans dedicated a temple to the
Fever in order to render it harmless; thus the Tungusians at the time of an epidemic pray devotionally and
with solemn bows to tke disease that it may pass by
their huts (according to Pallas.) Thus the Widahians
in Guinea sacrifice to the raging sea in order to prevail
upon it that it may be calm and not prevent them from
fishing; thus the Indians at the approach of a storm ad
dress the Manitou (z. e. Spirit, God, Being) of the air,
at the crossing of water the Manitou of the waters, that
he may preserve them from all danger ; thus in general
many nations expressively do not adore the good but the
evil essence (10) of Nature, or at least what appears to
them, as such. Upon the standpoint of natural religion
Iman declares his love to a statue, to a corpse; no wonder
�THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
37
therefore, that in. order to make himself heard he resorts
to the most desperate, most insane means; no wonder
that he divests himself of his humanity in order to ren
der Nature humane, that he even sheds the l>lood of man
in order to inspire her with human feelings. Thus the
northern Germans believed expressly that “ sanguinary
sacrifices were apt to bestow human language and feel
ings to wooden idols and to endow with the gifts of
language and divination the stones which they adored
in the houses devoted to gory sacrifices.” But in vain
are all attempts to imbue her with life ; Nature does not
respond to man’s lamentations and questions ; she throws
him inexorably back upon himself.
§ 36. As the limits which man imagines or at least such
as he imagines them on the standpoint of religion (as e. g.
the limit which is the cause that he does not know the
future, or does not live forever, or does not enjoy happi
ness without interruption and molestation, or has no body
without weight, or cannot fly like the Gods, or cannoi
thunder like Jove, or cannot add anything to his size
nor make himself invisible at will, or cannot, like the
angels, live without sensual wants and impulses, or in
short cannot do what he wills and desires)—as all these
limits are such only in his imagination and mind, while
in reality they are no limits, because they have their
necessary foundation in the essence, in the nature of
things; so also is that being which is free from such
limits, the unlimited divine being, only a creature of
imagination, of reflection, and of a mental disposition
which is governed by imagination. Whatever therefore
may be the object of religion, be it even only a snail
shell or pebble, it is such an object only in.its quality as
a creature of the heart, of reflection, of imagination.
�38
THE ESSENCE OK RELIGION.
This justifies the assertion that men do not adore the
stones, the trees, the animals, the rivers themselves, but
the Gods within them, their manitous, their spirits. But
these spirits of natural objects are nothing but their re
flected images or they as reflected objects, as creates
uf imagination in distinction from them as real, sen
sual objects, just as the spirits of the dead are nothing
but the imagined images of the dead which live in our
remembrance—beings that once really existed, as imag
ined beings, which however by religious man, i. e. by
him who does not discriminate between the object and
its idea, are considered to be real, self-existing beings.
Man’s pious, involuntary self-deception upon the stand
point of religion is therefore within the natural religion
an apparent, self-evident truth ; for here man gives to
his religious object eyes and ears which he knows and
sees to be artificial eyes and ears of s e or wood, and
yet believes to be real eyes and ears. Thus religious
man has his eyes only in order not to see, to be stoneblind, and his reason only in order not to reason, to be
block-headed. Natural religion is the manifest contra
diction between idea and reality, between imagination
and truth. What in reality, is a dead stone or log, is in
the conception of natural religion a living individual;
apparently, no God, but something entirely different,
yet invisibly, according to belief, a God. For this rea
son, natural religion is always in danger of being most
bitterly undeceived, as it requires only a blow with an
axe in order to satisfy her, <?. g. that ,no blood flows from
adored trees, and that therefore no living, divine being
dwells within them. But how does religion escape these
strong contradictions and disappointments to which she
is exposed by adoring Nature? Gnly by making her
�THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
39
object an invisible, not sensual one, by making it a
being that exists only in faith, reflection, imagination—
in short, within the mind, which therefore itself is a
spiritual being.
§ 37. As soon as man from a merely physical being
becomes a political one, or in general a being distinguish
ing himself from Nature, and concentrating himself
within himself, his God is also changed from a merely
physical being into a political one, different from Na
ture. That which leads man to a distinction of his
essence from Nature, and in consequence to a God dis
tinguished from Nature, is therefore only his association
with other men to a commonwealth, wherein the objects
of his consciousness and of his feeling of dependence
are powers distinguished from those of Nature and ex
isting only in thought or imagination; political, moral,
abstract powers, such as the power of law, of public
opinion, (u) of honor, of virtue—while his physical ex
istence is subordinated to his human, political or moral
existence, and where the power of Nature, the power
over death and life, is degraded to an attribute and in
strument of political or moral power. Jove is the God
of lightning and thunder; but he possesses these terrible
weapons only in order to crush those who disobey his
commandments, the perjurer, the perpetrators of vio
lence. Jove is father of the kings—“from Jove are
the kings.”
With lightning and thunder therefore Jove sustains
the power and dignity of the Kings. (12) “The King,”
we read in the law-book of Menu, “ burns eyes and
hearts like the sun, therefore no human creature upon
earth is able even to look upon him. He is fire and air,
he is sun and moon, he is the God of criminal laws.
�40
THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
Fire burns only a single one who by carelessness may
have approached too near to it, but a King’s fire when
he is in wrath, burns a whole family with all their cattle
and property-------------------- In his courage dwelleth con
quest and death in his wrath” In a similar manner
the God of the Israelites commands amid lis-htnine’ and
thunder his people to walk in all ways which he has
commanded them “in order that they may prosper and
live long in the land.” Thus the power of Nature as
such and the feeling of dependence on her disappears
before political or moral power! Whilst the slave of
Nature is so blinded by the brilliancy of the sun, that he
like the Katchinian Tartar daily prays to him: “do
not kill me,” the political slave on the other hand is so
much blinded by the splendor of royal dignity, that he
prostrates himself before it as before a divine power, be
cause it commands over death and life. The titles of the
Soman Emperors, even still among the Christians were:
“Your divinity,” “Your eternity.” Nay, even now-adays among Christians “Holiness” and “Majesty,” the
titles and attributes of the Deity, are titles and attributes
of kings. It is true the Christians try to justify this
political idolatry with the notion that the king is nothing
but God’s representative upon earth, God himself being
the King of kings. But such a justification is only a
self-deception. Not considering that the king’s power is
a very sensible, direct and sensual one which represents
itself, while that of the King of kings is only an indirect
and reflected one—God is defined and regarded as the
world’s ruler, as a royal or political being in general,
only where the royal being occupies, influences and rules
man so as to be considered by him as the supreme being.
“Brahma” says Menu, “formed in the beginning of time
�THE ESSENCE OE RELIGION.
41
for his service the genius ofpunishment with a body of
pure light as his own son, nay even as the author oi
criminal justice, as the protector of all things created.
Fear ofpunishment enables this universe to enjoy its
happiness.” Thus man makes even the punishment of
his criminal code divine, world-governing powers, the
criminal code itself the code of Nature, no wonder that
he makes Nature to sympathize most warmly with his
political sufferings and passions, nay, that he even makes
the preservation of the world dependent on the preserva
tion, of a royal throne or of the Holy See. What is im
portant to him, naturally is also of importance for all
other beings ; what dims his eye, that also dims the bril
liancy of the sun; what agitates his heart, that also
moves heaven and earth—his being to him is the univer
sal being, the world’s being, the being of beings.
§ 38. Why has the East not a living, progressive
history such as the West? Because in the East to man
Nature is not concealed by man, nor the brilliancy of
the stars and precious stones by the brilliancy of the eye,
nor the meteorological lightning and thunder by the
rhetorical “ lightning and thunder,” nor the course of
the sun by the course of daily events, nor the change of
the year’s seasons by the change of fashion. It is true,
the eastern man prostrates himself into the dust before
the magnificence of royal, political power and dignity,
but this magnificence itself is only a reflex of the sun and
the moon; the king is an object of his adoration not as
an earthly and human, but as a heavenly and divine
being. But man disappears by the side of a God; only
where the earth is. depopulated of Gods, where the Gods
ascend into heaven and change from real beings to imagined ones; only there men have space and room for
�42
THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
themselves, only there they can show themselves without
any restraint as men and put themselves forward as such.
The eastern man bears the same relation to the western
man as the husbandman to the inhabitants of the city.
The former depends on Nature, the latter on man; the
former is led by the barometer, the latter by the state
of the stock-market; the, former by the ever equal con
stellations of the zodiac, the latter by the ever fluctuating
signs of honor, fashion and public opinion. Only the
inhabitants of cities, therefore, make up history, only
human “vanity ” is the principle of history, only he who
can sacrifice Nature’s power to that of opinion, his life
to his name, his physical existence to his existence in
the mouth and in the remembrance of generations to
come—he only is capable of historical deeds.
§ 39. According to Athenaeus, the Greek writer of
comic plays, Anaxandrides addresses the Egyptians as
follows: “I am not fit for your society; our manners
and laws do not agree,—you adore the ox which I sacri
fice to the Gods; the eel to you is a great God, but to
me a great dainty; you shun pork, I enjoy it with a
relish; you revere the dog, I beat him if he snaps a
morsel from me; you are startled if something is the
matter with the cat, I am glad of it and strip off her skin;
you give a great deal cf importance to the shrew-mouse,
I none.” This address perfectly characterizes the con
trast between the bound and the unbound, i. e. between
the religious and irreligious, free, human consideration of
Nature. There Nature is an object of adoration, here
of enjoyment; there man exists for Nature’s sake, here
Nature for man’s sake, there she is the end, here the
means; there she stands above, here below man.(13) For
this very reason man is there eccentric, out of himself, out
�THE ESSENCE OE RELIGION.
43
of the sphere of his destination which points mm only to
himself; here, on the other hand, he is considerate, sober,
within himself, self-conscious. There man degrades him
self consistently even to coition with animals (accord
ing to Herodotus), in order to prove his religious humil
ity before Nature; but here he rises in the full conscious
ness of his power and dignity up to amalgamation with the
Gods as a striking proof that even in the heavenly Gods
courses no other than human blood, and that the peculiar
ethereal blood of the Gods is only a poetical imagination
which does not hold good in reality and practice.
§ 40. As the world, as Nature appears to man, so
she isi. e. for him, according to his imagination; his
sensations and imaginations are to him directly and un
consciously the measure of truth and reality; and Nature
appears to him just as he is himself. As soon as man
perceives that in spite of sun and moon, heaven and
earth, fire and water, plants and animals, man’s life re
quires the application and even the just application of his
own powers; as'soon as he perceives that “the mortals
unjustly complain of the Gods, and that they themselves
in spite of fate, through imprudence, produce their
misery,” that the consequences of vice and folly are di
sease, unhappiness and death, but those of virtue and wis
dom, health, life and happiness, and that, therefore, those
powers which influence man’s destiny, are intellect and
will; as soon, therefore, as man no more like the savage,
is a being governed by the habits of momentary impres
sions and effects, but becomes a being which decides him
self by principles, rules of wisdom, laws of reason, i. e. a
thinking, intelligent being—then also Nature, the world
appears and is to him a toeing dependent on, and influ.
enced by, intellect and will.
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THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
§41. When man with his will and intellect rises
above Nature and becomes a supematuralist, then also
God becomes a supernatural being. When man estab
lishes himself as a ruler “ over the fishes in the sea, and
over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all
the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth
over the earth,” then the Government of Nature is to
him the highest idea, the highest being ; the object of his
adoration, of his religion therefore, the creator of Na
ture, for creation is a necessary consequence, or rather
presupposition, of Government. If the Lord of Nature is
not also her author, then she is independent of him as to
her origin and existence, his power is limited and de
ficient ;—-for if he had been able to create her, why
should he not have created her ?—his government is only
an usurped one, no inherent, legal one. Only what I
produce and make is entirely within my power. Only
from authorship the right of property is to be derived.
Mine is the child, because I am his father. Therefore,
only in creation government is acknowledged, realized,
exhausted. The Gods of the heathen were also already
masters of Nature, it is true, but no or :ators of hers,
therefore they were only constitutional, limited, not ab
solute monarchs of Nature, L e. the heathen were not
yet absolute, unconditional, radical sup ernaturalists.
§ 42. The Theists have declared the doctrine of the
unity of God a revealed doctrine of supernatural origin,
without considering that the source of Monotheism is
in man, that the scource of God’s unity is the unity of
the human conscience and mind. The world is spread
before my eyes in endless multitude and diversity, but
still all these numberless and various objects : sun, moon
and stars, heaven and earth, the near and the distant,
�THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
45
the present and the absent, are embraced by my mind,
my head. This being of the human mind or conscience,
so wonderful and supernatural for religious, i. e. unedu
cated man, this being which is not restrained by any
limits of time or space, which is not limited to any par
ticular species of things, and which embraces all things
and beings, without being himself an object or visible
being—this being is, by Monotheism, placed at the head
of the world, and made its cause. God speaks, God
thinks the world and it is, he says that it is not, he
thinks and wills it not, and it does not exist, i. e. I can
in my imagination cause at will all things and conse
quently also the world itself to come and to disappear, to
originate and to pass away. That • God has also created
the world from nothing, and, if he will, thrusts it again
into nothing, is nothing but the personification ofthe human power of abstraction and imagination,
which enables me at will to imagine the world as exist
ing or not existing, and to affirm or deny its existence.
This subjective or imagined non-existence of the world,
is by Monotheism made its objective, real non-existence.
Polytheism and natural religion in general make the
real objects imagined ones. Monotheism, on the other
hand, makes imagined objects and thoughts real objects,
or rather the essence of intellect, will and imagination
die most real, absolute, supreme being. The power of
God, says a theologian, extends as far as the imaginative
power of man, but where is the limit of this power ?
What is impossible to imagination ? I can imagine every
thing that is, as not existing, and everything that does
not exist as real; thus I can imagine “this” world as
not existing, and on the other hand, numberless other
worlds as existing. What is imagined as real is possible.
�46
the essence oe religion.
But God is the being to whom nothing is impossible,
he is the creator of numberless worlds, as far as his
power is concerned, thepossibility of all possibilities, of
everything that can be imagined ; i. e. in reality, he is
nothing but the realization or personification of human
imagination, intellect and reflection, thought or im
agined 4 as real, nay, as the most real, as the absolute
being.
§ 43. Theism, properly so-called, or Monotheism, arises
only where man refers Nature only to himself, because
she suffers herself to be used without will and conscious
ness, not only to his necessary, organic functions, but
also to his arbitrary, conscious purposes and enjoyments,
and where he makes this relation her essence, conse
quently making himself the purpose, the centre and uni
ty of Nature. (14) Where Nature has her end outside of
herself, she necessarily has also her cause and beginning
without herself; where she exists only for anotherbeing, she necessarily exists also by another being, and
that by a being whose intention or end at the time of
her creation was man, as that being who was to enjoy
and to use Nature for his good. The beginning of Na
ture coincides therefore with God only where her end
coincides with man, or in other words, the doctrine that
God is the creator of the world has its source and sense
in the doctrine that man is the end of creation. If you
feel ashamed of the belief that the world is created,
made for man, then you must feel ashamed of the belief
that it is created, made at all. Where it is written:
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the
earth,” there it is also written: “ God made two great
lights. He made the stars also, and set them in the fir
mament of the heaven, to give light upon the earth, and
�THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
47
to rule over the day and the night” If you declare the
belief in man as the end of Nature to be human pride,
then you must also declare the belief in the creator of
Nature to be human pride. That light only which
shines on account of man is the light of theology, that
light only which exists exclusively on account of the
seeing being, presupposes also a seeing being as its cause.
§ 44. The spiritual being which man places above
Nature and presupposes as her founder and creator, is
nothing but the spiritual essence of man himself, which,
however, appears to him as another one, different from
and incomparable to himself, because he makes it the
cause of Nature, the cause of effects which man’s mind,
will and intellect cannot produce, and because he conse
quently combines with that spiritual essence of man, the
essence of Nature which is different. (15) It is the di
vine spirit who makes the grass grow, who forms the
child in the womb, who holds and moves the sun in his
course, who piles up the mountains, commands the winds,
incloses the sea within its limits. What is the human mind
compared with this spirit! How small, how limited, how
vain ! If therefore the rationalist rejects God’s incarna
tion, the union of the divine and human nature, he does
so particularly because the idea of God in his head hides
only the idea of Nature, especially of Nature such as she
was disclosed to the human eye by the telescope of astron
omy. How should—thus he exclaims provoked—how
should that great, infinite, universal being, which has its
adequate representation and effect only in the great, in
finite universe, descend for man’s sake upon the earth,
which certainly disappears into nothing before the im
measurable greatness and fullness of the universe ? What
unworthy, mean, “ human” imagination ! To concentrate
�48
THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
God upon earth, to plunge God into man, is about the
same as to try to condense the ocean into one drop, to
reduce the ring of Saturn into a finger-ring. Truly it is
a rather narrow idea to think the universal being as
limited only to earth or man, and to believe that Nature
exists only on his account, that the sun shines only on
account of the human eye. You do not see, however,
short-sighted rationalist, that it is not the idea of God, but
the idea of Nature, which within yourself objects to a
union of God and man, and shows it to be a nonsensical con
tradiction; you do not see that the centre of union, ter
tium comparationis, between God and man is not that
being to which you directly or indirectly attribute the
power and effects of Nature, but rather that being which
sees and hears, because you see and hear, which possesses
consciousness, intellect and will, because you possess
these faculties, or, in other words, that being which you
distinguish from Nature, because you distinguish your
self from her. What, then, can you really object if this
being finally appears as areal man before your eyes?
How can you reject the consequences if you adhere to
the premises ? How can you deny the son if you ac
knowledge the father ? If the God-man to you is a creat
ure of human imagination and self-deification, then you
must acknowledge, also, the creator of Nature to be a
creature of human imagination and self-exaltation over
Nature. If you wish for a being without any anthro
pomorphism, without any human additions, be they addi
tions of the intellect, or the heart, or of imagination,
then be courageous and consistent enough to give up
God altogether, and to appeal only to pure, naked, god
less nature as to the last basis of your existence. As
long as you admit a difference, so long you incarnate
�THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
49
in God your own difference, so long you incorporate
your own essence and, nature in the universal and
primary being ; for as you do not have nor know in
distinction from human nature any other being than
Nature, so, on the other hand, you neither have nor
know any other being in distinction from Nature than
the human one.
§ 45. The conception of man’s essence as an objective
being different from man, or, in short, the personification
of the human essence, has for its presupposition the in
carnation of the objective being which is different from
man, i. e. the conception of Nature as of a human
being. (16) Will and intellect therefore appear to man as
the primary powers or causes of Nature only because the
unintentional effects of Nature appear to him in the light
of his intellect as intentional ones, as ends and purposes;
Nature herself consequently as an intelligent being (or at
least as a mere thing of intellect). As everything is seen
by the sun—the God of the sun, “ Helios ” hears and sees
everything—because man sees everything in the sunlight,
sc everything in itself has been thought, because man
thinks it; a work of intellect, because for him an object
of his intellect. Because he measures the stars and their
distances, they are measured; because he applies mathe
matics in order to understand Nature and her laws, they
have also been applied to her production; because he
sees the end of a certain motion, the result of a certain
development, the function of a certain organ, this end,
function or result is in itself a foreseen one ; because he
can imagine the opposite of the position or direction of
a heavenly body, nay even numberless other directions,
while at the same time he perceives that if this direction
were changed, also a series of fruitful, benevolent con
�50
THE ESSENCE OE RELIGION.
sequences would be made impossible, so that he com
siders this series of consequences as the motive of that
very direction: therefore such direction has really and
originally been selected with admirable wisdom, and
only with regard to its benevolent consequences, from
the multitude of other directions which also exist only
in man’s head. Thus the principle of thinking is to man
directly and without discrimination the principle of exist
ence ; the thing thought, the thing existing; the idea of
the object, its essence, (the a posteriori the a priori))
Man thinks Nature otherwise than she really is; no won
der that he also presupposes as her cause and the cause of
her existence another being than herself, a being which
exists only in his mind, nay, which is even only the es
sence of his own mind. Man reverses the natural order
of things; he founds the world in the very sense of the
word upon its head, he makes the apex of the pyramid
its basis—the first thing in or for the head, the reason
why something is, the first thing in reality, the cause
through which it exists. The motive of a thing precedes
in the mind the thing itself. This is the reason why to
man the essence of reason or intellect, the essence of
thinking not only logically, but also physically, is the
first, the primary being.
§ 46. The mystery of teleology is based upon the con
tradiction between the necessity of Nature and the ar
bitrary will of man, between Nature such as she really
is and such as man imagines her. If the earth were
placed somewhere else, if e. g. it were placed where Mer
cury now is, everything would perish in consequence of
insupportable heat. How wisely, therefore, is the earth
placed just where it appears best according to its quality.
But in what does this wisdom consist ? Only in the con
�THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
51
tradiction, in the contrast to human folly, which arbi
trarily in thought places the earth somewhere else than
where it is in reality. If you first tear asunder what in
Nature is inseparable, as for instance the astronomical
place of a heavenly body from its physical quality, then
certainly the unity in Nature must afterwards appear
to you as expediency, necessity as plan, the real and
necessary place of a planet which agrees with its nature
in contrast to the unfit one which you have thought of
and chosen, as the reasonable one which has been justly
chosen and wisely selected. “ If the snow had a black
color, or if such color prevailed in the arctic regions, all
the arctic countries of the earth would be a gloomy
desert, unfit for organic life. Thus the arrangement of
the colors of bodies offers one of the most beautiful proofs
for the wise arrangement of the world.” Certainly, if
man did not change white into black, if human folly
had not disposed arbitrarily of Nature, no divine wisdom
would rule over Nature.
§ 47. “Who has told the bird that it has only to
raise its tail if it wants to fly downward, or to depress it,
if it wants to ascend ? He must be perfectly blind, who,
in observing the flight of birds, does not perceive any
higher wisdom
has thought in their stead” Cer
tainly he must be blind, not for Nature, but for man,
who makes his nature the original of Nature, Xkw, power
of intellect the original power, who makes the birds’
flight dependent upon the insight into the mechanical
laws of flying, and who elevates his ideas abstracted from
Nature into laws which the birds apply to .their flight,
just as the rider applies the rules of the art of riding, or
the swimmer the rules of the art of swimming; with the
only difference that to the birds the application of the
�52
THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
art of flying is created with them. But the flight of birds
is founded on no art. Art is only where also the oppo
site of art is to be found, where an organ performs a
function which is not directly and necessarily connected
with it, which does not exhaust its essence, and is only a
particular function by the side of many other real or
possible functions of the same organ. But the bird can
not fly otherwise than it does, nor is it at liberty not to
fly; it must fly. The animal always knows how to do
only that whicli it is able to do, and for this very reason
it can do this one thing so perfectly, so masterly, so unsurpassably, because it does not know anything else, be
cause its power is exhausted in this one function, because
this one function is identical with its nature. If we
therefore are unable to explain the actions and functions
of the animals, especially those of the lower ones, which
are endowed with certain artistic impulses, without pre
supposition of an intellect which has thought in their
stead, this is only because we think that the objects of
their activity are objects to them in the same manner as
they are objects to our consciousness and intellect. As
soon as we consider the works of the animals as work of
arty as arbitrary works, we must necessarily also con
sider the intellect as their cause, for a work of art pre
supposes choice, intention, intellect, and consequently, as
we know by experience that animals do not think them
selves, another being as thinking in their behalf. (17)
“ Do you know how to advise the spider how it is to
carry and to fasten the threads from one tree to another,
from one housetop to another, from a height this side of the
water to another one on the other side ?” Certainly not;
but do you indeed believe that there is any advice needed
in this instance, that the spider is in the same condition
�THE ESSENCE OE RELIGION.
53
in which you would be, if you were to solve this problem
theoretically, that for it, as well as for you, there is any
difference between “ this side ” and “ that side ?” Between
the spider and the object to which it fastens the threads
of its net, there is as necessary a connection as between
your bone and muscle; for the object without it is for
it nothing but the support of its thread of life, as the
support of its fangs. The spider does not see what you
see; all the separations, differences and distances which,
or at least such as your intellectual eye perceives them,
do not at all exist for it. What therefore to you is an
insolvable theoretical problem, that is done by the spider
without any intellect, and consequently without all
those difficulties which exist only for your intellect.
“Who has told the vine-fretters that they find their
food in the fall of the year in greater abundance at the
branch and at the bud than at the leaf? Who has shown
them the way to the bud and to the branch? For the
vine-fretter which was born upon the leaf, the bud is not
only a distant but an entirely unknown province. I
adore the creator of the vine-fretter and of the cochineal
and remain silent.” Certainly you must be silent if you
make the vine-fretters and cochineals preachers of
Theism, if you endow them with your thoughts, for only
to the vine-fretter viewed from the standpoint of man
is the bud a distant and unknown province, but not
to the vine-fretter itself, to which the leaf and the bud
are objects not as such, but only as matter which can be
assimilated and is chemically related to it. It is there
fore only the reflex of your eye which shows you Nature
as the work of an eye, which obliges you to derive the
threads the spider draws from its hind part, from the
head of a thinking being. Nature is for you only a
�54
THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
spectacle, a delight of the eye; therefore you think that
what delights your eye, also rules and moves Nature.
Thus you make the heavenly light in which she appears
to you, the heavenly being which has created her ; the
rays of the eye the lever of Nature ; the optic nerve the
motory nerve of the universe. To derive Nature from a
wise creator is to produce children with a look; to sat
isfy hunger with the perfume of food; to move rocks by
the harmony of sounds. If the Greenlander derives the
shark’s origin from human urine because it smells to
man like it, this zoological genesis has the same founda
tion as as the cosmological genesis of the Theist, when
he derives Nature from intellect, because she makes upon
man the impression of intellect, and intention. Certainly
the manifestation of Nature for us is reason, but the
cause of such manifestation is as little reason as the cause
of light is light.
§ 48. Why does Nature produce monsters? Because
the result of a formation to her is not the object of a pre. existing purpose. Why supernumerary limbs ? Because
she does not number. Why does she place at the left
hand side what generally lies on the right hand side, and
vice versa ? Because she. does not know what is right or
left. Monsters are therefore popular arguments, which
for this very reason have been insisted on already by the
Atheists of old, and even by such Theists as emancipated
Nature from the guardianship of theology, in order to
prove that the productions of Nature are unforeseen,
unintentional,’ involuntary ones; for all reasons which
are adduced for the sake of explaining monsters, even
those of the most modern naturalists, according to which
they are only consequences of diseases of the foetus,
would be done away with, if with the creative or pro
�THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
55
ductive power of Nature at the same time will, intellect,
forethought and consciousness were connected. But
although Nature does not see, she is not therefore blind;
although she does not live (in the sense of human, that
is subjective, sensible life) she is not dead; and although
she does not produce according to purposes, still her
productions are not accidental ones; for where man de
fines Nature as dead and blind, and her productions as
accidental ones, he defines her only so in contrast to him
self, and declares her to be deficient because she does not
possess what he possesses. Nature works and produces
everywhere only in and with connection—a connection
which is reason for man, for wherever he perceives con
nection, he finds sense, material for the thinking, “suf
ficient reason,” system—only from and with necessity.
But also the necessity of Nature is no human, i. e. no
logical, metaphysical or mathematical, in general no ab
stracted one; for natural beings are no creatures of
thought, no logical or mathematical figures, but real,
sensual, individual beings; it is a sensual necessity and
therefore eccentric, exceptional, irregular, which, in con
sequence of these anomalies of human imagination, ap
pears even as freedom, or at least as a product of free will.
Nature generally can be understood only through herself;
she is that being whose idea depends on no other being; she
alone admits of a discrimination between what a thing is
in itself and what it is for our conception; she alone
cannot be measured with any human measure, although
we compare and designate her manifestations with analo
gous human manifestations in order to make them intelligi
ble for us, and although in general we apply, and are obliged
to apply to her, human expressions and ideas, such as
order, purpose, in accordance with the nature of our
�1)6
THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
language, which is founded only upon the subjective ap
pearance of things.
§. 49. The religious admiration of divine wisdom in
Nature is only an incident of enthusiasm ; it refers only
to the means, but is extinguished in reflecting on the
purposes of Nature. How wonderful is the spider’s web,
how wonderful the funnel of the ant-lion in the sand 1
But what is the purpose of these wise arrangements ? No
thing but nourishment—a purpose which man in regard
to himself degrades to a mere means. “ Others,” said
Socrates—but these others are animals and brutish men—
“ others live in order to eat, but I eat in order to live.”
How magnificent is the flower, how admirable its struc
ture I But what is the purpose of this structure, of this
magnificence ? Only to magnify and protect the genitals
which man in himself either hides from shame, or even
mutilates from religious zeal. “ The creator of the
vinefretters and of the cochineals'1'’ whom the naturalist,
the man of theory adores and admires, who has only
natural life for his purpose, is therefore not the God and
creator in the sense of religion. No! only the creator of
man, and that of man such as he distinguishes himself
from Nature, and rises above Nature, the creator in
whom man has the consciousness of himself, in whom
he finds represented the qualities which constitute his
nature in distinction from external Nature, and that in
such a manner as he imagines them in religion, is the
God and creator such as he is an object of religion.
“ The water” says Luther, “ which is used in baptism
and poured over the child is also water not of the crea
tor but of God the SaviourS Natural water I have in
common with animals and plants, but not the water of
baptism ; the former amalgamates me with the other nat-
�THE ESSENCE OE KELIGrlON.
57
ural beings, the latter distinguishes me from them. But
the object of religion is not natural water, but the water
of baptism; consequently not the creator or author of
natural, but of baptismal water is an object of religion.
The creator of natural water is necessarily himself a nat
ural, and therefore no religious, i. e. supernatural being.
Water is a visible being, whose qualities and effects there
fore do not lead us to a supernatural cause ; but the
baptismal water is no object for the corporeal eye,', it is
a spiritual, invisible, supersensuous being, i. e. one that
exists and works only for faith, in thought, in imagina
tion—a being which therefore requires also for its cause
a, spiritual being that exists only in faith and imagination.
Natural water cleanses me only of my physical, but
baptismal water of my moral impurities and diseases;
the former only quenches my thirst for this temporal,
transient life, but the latter satisfies my desire for life
eternal; the former has only limited, defined, finite ef
fects, but the latter infinite, all-powerful effects which
surpass the nature of water, and which therefore repre
sent and show the nature of the divine being, which is
bound by no limit of Nature, the unlimited essence of
man’s power to believe and to imagine, bound to no limit
of experience and reason. But is not also the creator of
baptismal water the creator of natural water ? In what re
lation therefore does the former stand to the latter ? In the
very same as baptismal to natural water; the former can
not exist if the latter does not exist; this one is the con
dition, the means of that one. Thus the creator of Na.
ture is only the condition for the creator of man. How
can he who does not hold the natural water in his hand
combine with it supernatural effects ? How can he who
does not rule over temporal life give life eternal ? How
�58
THE ESSENCE OE RELIGION.
can he whom the elements of Nature do not obey,
restore my body turned to dust ? But who is the master
and ruler of Nature unless it be he who had power and
strength to produce her from naught by his mere will ?
He, therefore, who declares the union of the supernatural
essence of baptism with natural water a contradiction,
without sense, may also declare the union of the super
natural essence of the creator wkh Nature such a con
tradiction ; for between the effects of baptismal and com
mon water is just as much or as little connection as
between the supernatural creator and natural Nature.
The creator comes from the same source from which the
supernatural, wonderful wate® of baptism gushes forth.
In the baptismal wrater we see only the essence of the'
creator, of God, jn a sensible illustration. How there
fore can you reject the miracle of baptism and other
miracles, if you admit the essence of the creator, i. e. the
essence of the miracle ? Or in other words: how can you
reject the small miracle if you admit the great miracle
of creation ? But it is in the world of theology just as in
the political world; the small thieves are hanged, the
great ones are suffered to escape.
§ 50. That providence which is manifested in the
order, conformity to purpose and lawfulness of Na
ture, is not the providence of religion. The latter is
based upon liberty, the former upon necessity; the latter
is unlimited and unconditional, the former limited, de
pending on a thousand different conditions; the latter is
a special and individual one, the former is extended only
over the whole, the species, while the individual is left
to chance. A theistic naturalist says: “ Many (or rather
all those in whose conception God was more than the
mafrhematioal, imagined origin of Nature) have imagined
�THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
59
the preservation of the world and especially of mankind,
as direct and special., as if God ruled the actions of all
creatures, and led them according to his pleasure. But
after the consideration of the natural laws, we are unable
to admit such a special government and superintendence
over the actions of men and other creatures. . . We learn
this from the little care which Nature takes of single
individuals. (1§) Thousands of them are sacrificed with
out hesitation or repentance in the plenty of Nature. . .
Even with regard to man we make the same experience.
Not one half of the human race reach the second year of
their age, but die almost without having known that
they ever lived. We learn this very thing also from the
misfortunes and mishaps of all men, the good as well as
the bad, which cannot well be made to agree with the
special preservation or co-operation of the creator.”
But a government, a providence which is no special
one, does not answer to the purpose, the essence, the idea
of providence; for providence is to destroy accident, but
just that is upheld by a merely general providence which
therefore is no better than no providence at all. Thus,
e. g. it is a “law of divine order in Nature,” i. e. a conse
quence of natural causes, that according to the •number of
years also the death of man occui’s in a definite ratio ; that
' for instance, in the first year one child dies out of from
three to four children, in the fifth year one out of twentyfive, in the seventh one out of fifty, in the tenth one out
of one hundred, but still it is accidental, not regulated by
this law, depending on other accidental causes, that just
this one child dies, while those three or four others sur
vive. Thus marriage is an “institution of God,” a law
of natural providence, in order to multiply the human
race, and consequently a duty for me. But whether I
�60
THE ESSENCE OK RELIGION.
am to marry just this one, whether she is not perhaps in
consequence of an accidental organic deficiency unfit or
unproductive, that I am not told. But just because
natural providence, which in reality is nothing but
Nature herself, does not come to my assistance when I
come to apply the law to the special, single case, but
leaves me to myself just in the critical moment of decis
ion, in the pressure of necessity; I appeal from her to a
higher court, to the supernatural providence of the
Gods whose eye shines upon me just where Nature’s
light is extinguished; whose rule begins just where that
of natural providence is at an end. The Gods know and
tell me, they decide what Nature leaves in the darkness
of ignorance and gives up to accident. The region of
what commonly, as well as philosophically, is called ac
cidental, “positive,” individual, not to be foreseen, not
to be speculated upon, is the region of the Gods, the
region of religious providence. And oracles and prayer
are the religious means by which man makes the acci
dental, obscure, uncertain, an object of certainty, or at
least of hope. (19)
§ 51. The Gods, says Epicurus, exist in the intervals
of the universe. Very well; they exist only in the void
space, in the abyss which is between the world of imagi
nation and the world of reality, between the law and its
application, between the action and its result, between
the present and the future. The Gods are imagined
beings, beings of imagination which therefore owe also
their existence, strictly speaking, not to the present but
only to the future and the past. Those Gods who owe
their existence to the past, are those who no longer exist,
the dead ones, those beings which live only in mind and
imagination? whose worship among some nations consti
�THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
61
tutes the whole religion, and with most of tnem an im
portant essential part of religion. But far more might
ily than by the past, is the mind influenced by the future;
the former leaves behind only the quiet perception of re
membrance, while the latter stands before us with the ter
rors of hell or the happiness of heaven. The Gods which
rise from the tombs are therefore themselves only shades
of Gods; the true living Gods, the rulers over rain and
sunshine, lightning and thunder, life and death, heaven
and hell, owe their existence likewise only to the powers
fear and hope, which rule over life and death, and
which illuminate the dark abyss of the future with beings
of the imagination. The present is exceedingly prosaic,
ready made, determined, never to be changed, final, ex
clusive ; in the present, imagination coincides with real
ity ; in it therefore there is no place for the Gods; the
present is godless. But the future is the empire of
poetry, of unlimited possibility and accident—the future
may be according to my wishes or fears; it is not yet
subject to the stern lot of unchangeableness; it still
hovers between existence and non-existence, high over
“ common ” reality and palpability; it still belongs to
another a invisible ” world which is not put in motion
by the laws of gravitation, but only by the sensory
nerves. This world is the world of the Gods. Mine is
the present, but the future belongs to the Gods. I am
now; this present moment, although it will immediately
be past, cannot be taken any more from me by the
Gods; things that have happened cannot be undone
even by divine power, as the ancients have already said.
But shall I exist the next moment ? Does the next mo
ment of my life depend on my will, or is it in any neces
sary connection with the present one ? No ; a number
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THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
less multitude of accidents; the ground under my feet,
the ceiling over my head, a flash of lightning, a bullet,
a stone, even a grape which glides into my windpipe in
stead of passing into the eesophagus, can at any moment
tear forever the coming moment from the present one.
But the good Gods prevent this violent breach; they
fill with their external, invulnerable bodies, the pores of
the human body which are accessible to all possible de
structive influences; they attach the coming moment
to the one that is past; they unite the future with the
present; they are, and possess in uninterrupted con
tinuity, what men—the porous Gods—are and possess,
only in intervals and with interruptions.
§ 52. Goodness is an essential quality with the Gods ;
but how can they be good if they are not almighty and
free from the laws of natural providence, i. e. from the
fetters of natural necessity, if they do not appear in the
individual instances which decide between life and
death, as masters of nature, but friends and I)enefac
tors of men, and if they consequently do not work any
miracles'? The Gods, or rather Nature, has endowed man
with physical and mental powers in order to be able to
sustain himself. But are these natural means of sustain
ing himself always sufficient ? Do I not frequently come
into situations where I am lost without hope if no super
natural hand stops the inexorable course of natural order?
The natural order is good, but is it always good ? This
continuous rain or drought e. g. is entirely in order; but
must not I or my family, or even a whole nation perish
in consequence of it, unless the Gods give their aid and
stop it ? (20) Miracles therefore are inseparable from
the divine government and providence; nay, they are the
only proofs, manifestations and revelations of the Gods,
�THE ESSENCE OE RELIGION.
63
as of powers and beings distinguished from Nature ; to
deny the 'miracles is to deny the Gods themselves. By
what are Gods distinguished from men ? Only by their
being without limits, what the latter are in a limited
manner, and especially by their being always what the
latter are only for a certain time, for a moment. (21)
Men live—living existence is divinity, essential quality
and primary condition of the Deity—but alas ! not for
ever; they die—but the Gods are the immortal ones
who always live; men are also happy, but not without
interruption as the Gods; men are also good but not
always, and just this constitutes according to Socrates
the difference between Deity and humanity, that the
former is always good; according to Aristotle, men
also enjoy the divine happiness of thinking, but their
mental activity is interrupted by other functions and
actions. Thus the Gods and men have the same quali
ties and rules of life, only that the former possess them
without, the latter with limitations and exceptions. As
the life to come is nothing but the continuation of this
life uninterrupted by death, so the divine being is no
thing but the continuation of the human being uninter
rupted by Nature in general—the uninterrupted, un
limited nature of man. But how are miracles distin
guished from the effects of Nature ? Just as the Gods are
distinguished from men. The miracle makes an effect
or a quality of Nature which in a given case is not good,
a good or at least a harmless one; it causes that I do not
sink and drown in the water, if I have the misfortune of
falling into it; that fire does not burn me; that a stone,
falling upon my head, does not kill me—in short, it
makes that essence which now is beneficent,' then de
structive now philanthropic, then misanthropic, an essence
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THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
always good. The Gods and miracles owe their exist
ence only to the exceptions of the rule. The Deity is
the destruction of the deficiencies and weaknesses in man
which are the very causes of the exceptions; the miracle
is the destruction of the deficiencies and limits in Nature.
The natural beings are defined and consequently limited
beings. This limit of theirs is in some abnormal cases
the cause of their injuriousness to man ; but in the sense
of religion it is not a necessary one, but an arbitrary one,
made by God and therefore to be destroyed if necessity,
i. e. the welfare of man requires it.—To deny the mir
acles under the pretext that they are not becoming to
God’s dignity and wisdom in virtue of which he has fixed
and determined everything from the beginning in the
best manner, is to sacrifice man to Nature, religion to
intellect, is to preach Atheism in the name of God. A
God who fulfills only such prayers and wishes of men as
can be fulfilled also without him, the fulfillment of which
is within the limits and conditions of natural causes,
who therefore helps only as long as art and Nature help,
but who ceases helping as soon as the materia medica is
at an end—such a God is nothing but the personified ne
cessity of Nature hidden behind the name of God.
§ 53. The belief in God is either the belief in Nature
(the objective being) as a human (subjective) being, or
the belief in the human essence as the essence of Nature.
The former is the natural religion, polytheism, (22) this
one spiritual or human religion, monotheism. The poly
theist sacrifices himself to Nature, he gives to the human
eye and heart the power and government over Nature ;
the polytheist makes the human being dependent on
Nature, the monotheist makes Nature dependent on the
human being; the former says: if Nature does not
�THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
65
exist, I do not exist ; but the latter says vice versa: if
I do not exist, the world, Nature does not exist. The
first principle of religion is : Iam nothing compared with
Nature, everything compared with me is God ; every
thing inspires me with the feeling of dependence ; every
thing can bring me, although only accidentally, fortune
and misfortune, welfare and destruction, (but man origi
nally does not distinguish between cause and accidental
motive); therefore everything is a motive of religion.
Religion on the stand-point of such non-critical feeling
of dependence is fetishism so-called, the basis of poly
theism. But the conclusion of religion is : everything is
nothing compared with me—all the magnificence of the
stars, the supreme Gods of polytheism disappear before
the magnificence of the human soul; all the power of
the world before the power of the human heart; all the
necessity of dead unconscious Nature, before the neces
sity of the human, conscious being; for everything is
only a means for me. But Nature would not exist for
me, if she existed by herself, if she were not from God.
If she were by herself and therefore had the cause
of her existence in herself, she would for this very
reason have also an independent essence, an original
existence and essence without any relation to myself,
and independent from me. The signification of Nature
according to which she appears to be nothing for
herself, but only a means for man, is therefore to
be traced back only to creation; but this signification is
manifested above all in those instances where man—as
e.. g. in distress, in danger of death—comes into collision
with Nature, which however is sacrificed to man’s wel
fare— in the miracles. Therefore the premiss of the
miracle is creation ; the miracle is the conclusion, the
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THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
consequence, the truth of creation. Creation is in the
same relation to the miracle, as the species to the single
individual; the miracle is the act of creation in a
special, single case. Or, creation is theory ; its practice
and application is the miracle. God is the cause, man
the end of the world i.e. God is the first being in theory,
but man is the first being in practice. Nature is nothing
for God—nothing but a plaything of his power—but
only in order that in an exigency, or rather generally, she
is and can do nothing against man. In the creator man
drops the limits of his essence, of his “ soul,” in the mira
cle the limits of his existence, of his body; there he makes
his invisible, thinking and reflected essence, here his in
dividual, practical, visible essence, the essence of the
world; then he legitimates the miracle; here he only per
forms it. The miracle accomplishes the end of religion
in a sensual, popular way—the dominion of man over Na
ture, the divinity of man becomes a palpable truth.
God works miracles, but upon man’s prayer and although
not upon an especial prayer, still in man’s sense,in agree
ment with his most secret innermost wishes. Sarah
laughed when in her old age the Lord promised her a
little son, but nevertheless even then descendants were
still her highest thought and wish. The secret worker of
miracles therefore is man, but in the progress of time—
time discloses every secret—he will and must become the
manifest, visible worker of miracles. At first man re
ceives miracles, finally he works miracles himself; at first
he is the object of God, finally God himself', at first God
only in heart, in mind, in thought, finally, God in flesh.
But thought is bashful, sensuality without shame; thought
is silent and reserved, sensuality speaks out openly and
frankly; its utterances therefore are exposed to be ridi
�THE ESSENCE OK RELIGION.
67
culed if they are contradictory to reason, because here
the contradiction is a visible, undeniable one. This is
the reason why the modern rationalists are ashamed to
believe in the God in the flesh i. e. in the sensual, visible
miracle, while they are not ashamed to believe in the
not-sensual God, i. e. in the not sensual, hidden miracle.
Still the time will come when the prophecy of Lichten
berg will be fulfilled, and the belief in God in general,
consequently also the belief in a rational God will be con
sidered as superstition just as well as already the belief
in the miraculous Christian God in flesh is considered as
superstition, and when therefore instead of the church light
of simple belief and instead of the twilight of rational
istic belief, the pure light of Nature and reason will en
lighten and warm mankind.
§ 54. He who for his God has no other material than
that which natural science, philosophy, or natural obser
vation generally furnishes to him, who therefore con
strues the idea of God from natural materials and con
siders him to be nothing but the cause or the principle
of the laws of astronomy, natural philosophy, geol
ogy, mineralogy, physiology, zoology and anthropology,
ought to be honest enough also to abstain from using the
name of God, for a natural principle is always a nat
ural essence and not what constitutes the idea of a G-od.
(23) As little as a church which has been turned into a
museum of natural curiosities, still is and can be called
a house of God, so little is a God really a God, whose
nature and efforts are only manifested in astronomical,
geological, anthropological works; God is a religious word,
a religious object and being, not a p/hysical, astronomi
cal, or in general a cosmical one. “ Deus et cultus” s&ys
Luther in his table-discourses, “ sunt relativaf God
�68
THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
and worship correspond to one another, one cannot be
without the other, for God must ever be the God of a
man or of a nation and is always in prraedicamento
relationis, both being in mutual relation to each other.
God will have some who adore and worship him; for to
have a God and to adore him correspond to each other,
sunt relativa, as man and wife in marriage—neither
can be without the other.” God therefore presupposes
men who adore and worship him; God is a being the
idea or conception of whom does not depend on Nature
but on man, and that on religious man; an object of
adoration is not without an adoring being, i. e. God is
an object whose existence coincides with the existence of
religion, whose essence coincides with the essence of
religion, and which therefore does not exist apart from
religion, different and independent from it, but in whom
objectively is contained no more than what religion con
tains subjectively. Iff) Sound is the objective essence,
the God of the ear; light is the objective essence, the
God of the eye; sound exists only for the ear, light only
for the eye; in the ear we have what we have in sound:
trembling, waving bodies, extended membranes, gelatin
ous substances; but in the eye we have organs of light.
To make God an object of natural philosophy, astronomy
or zoology, is therefore just the same thing as making
sound an object of the eye. As the tone exists only in
the ear and for it, so God exists only in religion and for
it, only in faith and for it. As sound or tone as the
object of hearing expresses oidy the nature of the ear, so
God as an object which is only the object of religion
and faith, expresses the nature of religion and faith. But
what makes an object a religious one? As we have
seen, only man’s imagination and mind, Whether you
�THE ESSENCE CE RELIGION.
69
worship Jehovah or Apis, the thunder or the Christ, your
shadow, like the negro on the coast of Guinea, or your
soul like the Persian of old, the flatus ventris or your
genius—in short, whether you worship a sensual or spirit
ual being, it is all the same; something is an object of
religion only in so far as it is an object of imagination
and feeling, an object of faith ; for just because the object
of religion, such as it is its object, does not exist in real
ity, but rather contradicts the latter, for this very reason
it is only an object of faith. Thus e. g. the immortality
of man, or man as an immortal being is an object of re
ligion, but for this very reason only an object of faith,
for reality shows just the contrary, the mortality of man.
To believe, means to imagine that something exists which
does not exist; e. g. to imagine that a certain picture is
a living being, that this bread is flesh, wine blood, i. e.,
something which it is not.
Therefore it betrays the
greatest ignorance of religion if you hope to find God
with the telescope in the sky of astronomy, or with a
magnifying glass in a botanical garden, or -with a miner
alogic hammer in the mines of geology, or with the ana
tomic knife and microscope in the entrails of animals and
men—you find him only in man’s faith, imagination and
heart; for God himself is nothing but the essence of
man’s imagination and heart.
§ 55. “As your heart, so is your God.” As the
wishes of men, so are their Gods. The Greeks had
limited Gods—that means: they had limited wishes.
The Greeks did not wish to live forever, they only
wished not to grow old and die, and they did not ab
solutely wish not to die, they only wished not to die
now — unpleasant things always come too soon for
man—only not in the bloom of their age, only not of a
�70
THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
violent, painful death ;
they did not wish to be saved
in heaven, only happy, only to live without trouble and
pain; they did not sigh as the Christians do, because
they were subject to the necessity of Nature, to the wants
of sexual instinct, of sleep, of eating and drinking; they
still submitted in their wishes to the limits of human na
ture ; they were not yet creators from nothing, they did
not yet make wine from water, they only purified and
distilled the water of Nature and changed it in an or
ganic way into the blood of the Gods; they drew the
contents of divine and blissful life not from mere imagi
nation, but from the materials of the real world; they
built the heaven of the Gods upon the ground of this
earth. The Greeks did not make the divine, i. e. the
possible being, the original and end of the real one, but
they made the real being the measure of the possible
one. Even when they had refined and spiritualized
their Gods by means of philosophy, their wishes were
founded upon the ground of reality and human nature.
The Gods are realized wishes; but the highest wish, the
highest bliss of the philosopher, of the thinker as such,
is to think undisturbed. The Gods of the Greek philos
opher—at least of the Greek philosopher par excellence,
of the philosophical Jove, of Aristotle—are therefore un
disturbed thinkers; their happiness, their divinity, con
sists in the uninterrupted activity of thinking. But this
activity, this happiness is itself a happiness, real within
this world, within human nature—although here limited
by interruptions—a defined, special, and therefore, in
the conception of Christians, limited and poor happiness
which is contradictory to the essence of true happiness;
for Christians have no limited but an unlimited God, sur
passing all natural necessity, superhuman, extramundane
�THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
71
transcendental, i. e. they have unlimited, transcendental
wishes which go beyond the world, beyond Nature, beyond
the essence of man — i. e. absolutely fantastic wishes.
Christians wish to be infinitely greater and happier
than the G-ods of the Olympus ; their wish is a heaven
in which all limits and all necessity of Nature are de
stroyed and all wishes are accomplished; (26) a heaven
in which there exist no wants, no sufferings, no wounds,
no struggles, no passions, no disturbances, no change
of day and night, light and shade, joy and pain, as
in the heaven of the Greeks. In short the object of their
belief is no longer a limited, defined God, a God with
the determined name of Jove, or Pluto, or Vulcan, but
God without appellation, because the object of their
wishes is not a named, finite, earthly happiness, a deter
mined enjoyment, such as the enjoyment of love, or of
beautiful music, or of moral liberty, or of thinking, but
an enjoyment which embraces all enjoyments, yet which
for this very reason is a transcendental one, surpassing all
ideas and thoughts, the enjoyment of an infinite, unlim
ited, unspeakable, indescribable happiness. IT :ppiness
and divinity are the same thing. Happiness as an object
of belief, of imagination, generally as a theoretical object,
is the Deity, the deity as an object of the heart, of the
will, (27) of the wish as a practical object generally, is
happiness. Or rather, the deity is an idea the truth and
reality of which is only happiness. As far as the desire
of happiness goes, so far, and no further, goes the idea of
the deity. He who no longer has any supernatural
wishes, has no longer any supernatural beings either.
�THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
(1) The theme of this treatise, or at least its starting point, is Religion, Inas
much as its object is Nature, which I was obliged to disregard in my “Essence of
Christianity,” since the centre of Christianity is not God in Nature, but Godin
man.—[Author’s note].
(2) Nature, according to my conception, is nothing but a general word for
denoting those beings, things and objects which man distir guishes from himself
and his productions, and which he embraces under the common name of “Na
ture,” but by no means a general being, abstracted and separated from the real
objects and then personified into a mystical existence.
(3) All those qualities which originally are derived only from the contempla
tion of Nature, become in later times abstract, metaphysical qualities, just as
Nature herself becomes an abstraction or creation of human reason. On this
later standpoint, where man forgets the origin of God in Nature, when God no
longer is an object of the senses, but an imag:nary being, we must sav: God
without human qualities, who is to be distinguished from the properly human
God, is nothing but the essence of reason. So much as regards tbe relation
between this work and my former ones “ Luther” and “The Essence of Christi
anity.”
(4) This may be true in a logical sense, but never as far as the real genesis is
concerned.
(5) It is self-evident that I do not intend to finally dispose in these few words of
the great problem of the origin of organic life; but they are sufficient for my
argument, as I give here only the indirect proof that life cannot have any other
source but Nature. As regards the direct proofs of natural science, we are still
far from the end, but in comparison with former times—especially in consequence
of .the lately proved identity of organic and inorganic phenomena—at least far
enough to be able to be convinced of the natural origin of life, although the man
ner of this origin is yet unknown to us, or even if it never should be revealed
unto us.
(6) Under this head we may also mention the many rules of etiquette which the
ancient religions lay upon man in his intercourse with Nature, in order not to
pollute or to violate her. Thus, e. g. no worshiper of Ormuzd was permitted to
tread barefoot on the ground, because earth was sacred; no Greek was allowed
to ford a river with unwashed hands.
(7) The expression for to wish is in the ancient German language the same as
that for to “enchant."
(8) The Gods are blissful beings. The blessing is the result, the fruit, the end
of an action which is independent from, but desired by me. “To bless” says Lu
ther, “means to wish some thing good." “If we bless, we do nothing else but to
wish something good, but we cannot give what we wish ; but God's blessing sounds
fulfillment and toon proves its effect.” That means : men are desirii.g beings;
the Gods are those beings which fulfill the desire. Thus even in common life the
word God, so frequently used is nothing but the expression of a wish. “ May God
grant you children!” That means : I wish you children, with the only difference
that the latter expression contains the wish as a subjective, not religious one,
while the former implies it as an objective religious one.
(9) Thus in uncultivated times and among uncivilized nations religion may be a
means of civilization, but in times of civilization religion represents the cause of
rudeness, of antiquity, and is hostile to education.
�THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
73
(10) Under this head we may also consider the adoration of pernicious animals.
(11) Hesiod expressly says ; also pheme (i. e., fame, rumor, public opinion) is a
deity.
(12) The original kings, however, are well to be distinguished from the legiti
mate ones, so-called. The la tt<r, except in some extraordinary instances, are
ordinary individuals, insignificant in themselves, while the former were extraor
dinary, distinguished, historical individuals. The deification of distinguished
men, especially after their death, forms therefore the most natural transition
from the properly naturalistic religions to the mythological and anthropological
ones, although it may also take place at the same time with natural adoration.
The worshiping of distinguished men, however, is by no means confined to fab
ulous times. Thus the Swedes deified their king Erich at the time of Christianity
and sacrificed unto him after his death.
(13) I range here the Greeks with the Israelites, while in my “Essence of
Christianity” I contrast them with each other. This is by no means alogical con
tradiction, for things which, when compared with one another are different, coin
cide in comparison with atnird thing. Besides, enjoyment of Nature includes also
her aesthetic, theoretical enjoyment.
(14) An ecclesiastical writer expressively calls man “the tie of all things”
{syndesmon hapanton), because God in him wished to embrace t.l.e universe into a
unity, and because, therefore, in him all things as in their end are combined, and
result in his advantage. And certainly man, as Nature’s individualized essence,
is her conclusion, but not in the anti-natural and supernatural sense of teleology
and theology.
(15) This union, or the amalgamation of the “ moral" and "physical" of the
human and not human being, produces a third, which is neither Nati.re norman,
but which participates of both, like an amphibial, and which, for this very mystery
of its nature, is the idol of mysticism and speculation.
(16) Viewed from this standpoint the creator of Nature is therefore nothing but
the essence of Nature, which, by means of abstracting from Nature, has been dis
tinguished and abstracted from Nature, and such as she is anobject of the senses
and by the power of imagination has been changed into a human or man-like
being, and thus popularized, anthropomorphized, personified.
(17) Thus, generally, in all syllogisms from Nature tb a God, the antecedent,
the presupposition, is a human one; no wonder therefore that their result is a human
being or being similar to man. If the world is a machine there must necessarily be
an architect. If the natural beings are as indifferent toward one another as the
human individuals which can be employed and uni cd only by means of higher
power for any arbitrary purpose of state, as for instance war, there must natu
rally also be a ruler, a governor, a chief general of nature—a captain of the cloud—if she shail not be dissolved into nothing. Thus man first makes Nature un
consciously a human work, i. e. he makes his essence her fundamental essence,
but as he afterwards or at the same time perceives the difference between the
works of Nature and those of human art, his own essence appears to him as an
other, but analogous, similar one. All arguments for God’s existence have there
fore only a logical or rather anthropological signification, since also the logical
forms are forms of human nature.
(18) Nature however “cares’’ just as little for the species or genus. The
latter is preserved because it is nothing but the totality of the individuals which
�Y4
-
THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
by coition propagate and multiply themselves. While single individuals are ex
posed to accidental, destructive influences, others escape them. The plurality is
thus preserved. But still, or rather from the same reasons which cause the single
individual to perish, even species die away. Thus the Dronte has disappeared,
thus the Irish gigantic deer, thus even now-a-days many animal species disappear
in consequence of man’s persecution and of the evermore extencing civilizati n
from regions where they once or even a short time ago still existed in great
numbers, as, e. g. the seal from some inlands ; and in time will disappear entirely
from the earth.
(19) Compare in regard to this matter the expressions of Socrates in Xen
ophon’s writings as to oracles.
(20) The Christians pray likewise to their God for rain as the Greeks did to
Jove, and believe that they are heard with such prayers. ‘‘There was,” says
Luther, in his table-discourses, “ a great drought, as it had notrained fora long
time, and the grain in the field began to dry up when Dr. M. L. prayed continu
ally and said finally with heavy sighs: O, Lord, pray regard our petition in behalf
of thy promise.......... I know that we cry to thee and s'gh desirously; why dost
thou not hear us ? And the very next night came a very fine fruitful rain.”
(21) It is true the omission of the limits has increase and change for its conse
quences ; but it does not destroy the essential identity.
(22) The definition of polytheism generally and without further explanation as
natural religion, holds good only relatively and comparatively.
(23) Arbitrariness in the use of words is unbounded. But still no words are
used so arbitrarily, nor taken in so contradictory significations as the words God
and religion. Whence this arbitrariness and confusion ? Because people from
reverence or from fear to contradict opinions sanctioned by age, retain the old
names (for only the name, the appearance, rules the world, even the world of believers
in God), although they connect entirely different ideas with them which have been
gained only in the course of time. Thus it was in regard to the Grecian Gods
which in the course of time received the most contradictory significations; thus
in regard to the Christian God, Atheism calling itself theism is the religion,
anti-Christianity calling itself Christianity is the true Christianity of the present
day.—Mundus vult decipi.
(24) A being therefore which is only a philosophical principle, and conse
quently only an object of philosophy, but not of religion, of worship, of prayer,
of the heart; a being that does not accomplish any wishes, nor hear a>'y prayers,
is only a nominal God, but not a God in reality.
(25) While therefore in the paradise of Christian phantasms man could not
die and would not die if he had not sinned, with the Greiks man died even in the
blissful age of Kronos, but as easily as if he fell asleep. In this idea the natural
wish of man is realized. Man does not wish for immortal life; he only wishes
for a long life of physical and mental ht alth and a painless death agreeable to Na
ture To resign the belief in immortality requires nothing less than an inhuman
Stoic resignation ; it requires nothing but to be convinced that the articles of
the Christian cr< ed are founded only upon supematuralistic, fantastic wishes,
and to return to the simple real nature of man.
�THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION.
75
(26) Luther e.g. says: ‘‘But where God is (i.e. in heaven) there must also he all
good things which even we may possibly wish for.’’ Thus in the Koran, accord
ing to Savary’s translation it is said of the inhabitants of Paradise : “ Tous leurs
desirs seront combles." (All their wishes will be accomplished.) Only their
wishes are of a different kind.
(27) The will however, especially in the sense of the moralists, does not consti
tute the specific essence of religion ; because what I can attain by my will, for
that I need no Gods. To make morals the essential cause of religion is to retain
the name of religion, but to drop its essence. One can be moral without God, but
happy—in the supernaturalistic, Christian sense of the word—one cannot be
without God ; for happiness in this sense lies beyond the limits and the power
of Nature and mankind, it therefore presupposes for its realizition a supernatural
being which is and can do, what is impossible to Nature and mankind. If Kant
therefore made morals the essence of religion, he was in the same or at least a
similar relation to Christian religion as Aristotle to the Greek religion, when the
latter made theory the essence of the Gods. As little as a God who is only a spec
ulative being, nothing but intellect, still is a God, so little a merely moral being
ora “personified law of morals” is still a Ged. It is true, Jove already is also
a philosopher, when he looks smilingly dowu from Olympus upon the struggles of
the Gods, but he is still infinitely more; certainly also the Christian Gad is a
moral being, but still infinitely more ; morals are onlv the condition of happiness.
The true idea which is at the bottom of Christian happiness, especially in contrast
to philosophic heathenism, is however no other than the one, that true happi
ness can be found only in the gratification of man's whole nature, for which reason
Christianity admits also the body, the flesh, to the participation in the divinity
or what is the same thing, in the enjoyment of happiness. But the development
of this thought does not belong here, it belongs to the “Essence of Christianity.”
�Seleot List of Books published and for sale by Asa K. Butts & Co.
-A. NEW ZKTDITIOUST OF*
BY
O. B. FROTHINGHAM.
‘With Fine Steel Portrait.
One Volume, IQ JVEo. Olotb., $1.50.
“ It is rich, strong, weighty, fresh, original—not merely in the sense of
saying new things, but of stating old tilings in the new light of to-day. *
* * * His book is brave, healthful and heroic from beginning to end.
The two closing chapters are, “The Soul of Good in things Evil/'and
“ The Soul of Truth in Error.” They will help many a sensitive and no
ble nature in its struggle to save itself from a relapse into Romanism or
Calvinism.”—The Index.
“Frotningham has his feet always on the earth; he knows precisely what
he means to say, and says it. When it is said, he finds—so clear is his
brain, and firm and consecutive his thought- -that it is precisely the state
ment for which many are waiting, and in which many can sympathize.
“ The careful student must recognize in Frothingham a more original,
more continuous, and far better trained thinker than Parker. Heis intel
lectually far closer grained; rivets his thoughts together; whereas Parker
was discursive, popular and repeated himself profusely. More than any
man in America, Frothingham occupies the middle ground between Emer
son and Parker,—sharing the high literary standard of the one with the
other’s hearty allegiance to men and to affairs; and uniting a systematic
method which is all his own.”—T. W. Higginson.
The Influence of Christianity upon Civilization.
BY B. F. UNDERWOOD,
12mo. PAPER, 88 PAGES, 25 CKNTTS.
For Distribution, 10 copies Two Dollars.
By the same Author,
Christianity and. Materialism Contrasted.
12mo. PAPER, 4-3 PAGES, 15 CENTS.
For Distribution, 10 copies One Dollar, 50 copies $4.50.
Any of the above sent free bv mail on receipt of price,
�
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The essence of religion : God the image of man. Man's dependence upon nature the last and only source of religion
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Feuerbach, Ludwig [1804-1872]
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Place of publication: New York
Collation: iv, 75 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: "Forms the basis and substance of the author's larger work, published under the same title, as a complement to his previous: 'Essence of Christianity'."--p. [1]. First published in German in 1845. Publisher's advertisements on back cover. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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Loos, Alexander (tr)
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Religion
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Natural Theology
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Religions
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Text
ON
RELIGIOUS PROGRESS
BEYOND THE CHRISTIAN PALE.
DELIVERED AT ST. MARTIN’S HALL, LONDON,
By SIR JOHN BOWRING, Ii.I>.D., F.R.S., &C.,
On SUNDAY, 14th JANUARY, 1866.
I do not propose to explore the darkness or the twilight of
prehistoric time further than to say that the marvellous
revelations of geological science—and the words recall to my
mind, the judicious advice given by Sir Robert Peel to his very
reverend uncle, “ Take care how you enter upon a wrestling
with the geologists, or you may have a fearful fall
the revelations
of geological science are every day affording new evidence of the
existence of our race in very remote ages, and of the progress
of man, and of the mind of man, from a very low to a very high
condition. There can be little doubt that human beings existed
long before the religious instincts could be developed, when the
letters of the alphabet were indistinct and few, and few the words
of the vocabulary; when fire was undiscovered, and the art of
cooking was unknown to man, when no garments clothed his
nakedness, and no roof sheltered his head, when he could not
count ten upon his fingers, made no provision for the morrow, had
no sense of duty, no shrine for worship, no knowledge of God or
thoughts of heaven or hell. Between this state of things, of which
some still existing, but gradually disappearing, races of men afford
living illustrations, and the present days of penetrating enquiry,
of ever-brightening light, ever-extending knowledge—what a
comparison 1 what a contrast 1
�2
Next to this epoch of utter intellectual darkness came a phase,
scarcely to be called religious, in which the frights and fears of
men associated their wants and sufferings with some mysterious
agencies, generally of a malignant character, and to be con
ciliated by offerings and sacrifices. Soon priests and preachers
seized upon this element of human frailty, and made it the
instrument of their own influence, as able to divert the mischief
with which busy demons molested men. And of this, too, we
may find still busy breathing specimens. In the Fetishes of
Africa distributed by wandering impostors, in the Kapus and
Taboos of the islanders of the Pacific, by which the native chiefs
terrorized; in the belief in witchcraft, not wholly eradicated
even among our own people, we may study the weaknesses
which once were common to all, and which still linger amidst
the masses of mankind. At this hour, millions of almanacs are
sold in China, in which many pages are filled with pictures of the
varieties of devils, to be studied by parents for the protection of
their children, lovers for the fascination of those whom they
desire to entangle, merchants for the success of their adventures,
sailors for security against tempests, the afflicted for the cure of
diseases,—in a word, immunity from all the evils of life.
Next dawns another era, described in a book which I should
like to see transferred from the apochrypha to a higher place.
It is the “Wisdom of Solomon.” From this and its neighbour, the
Book of “ Ecclesiasticus,” and, from the pages of Shakespere,
Goethe was wont to say he derived his highest inspirations.
Here is the religion which was that of the greater portion of
the intellectual world, anterior to the days of Confucius—it was
his religion, and that of the sages of his time.
“ 1.—Surely vain are all men by nature, who are ignorant of
God, and could not out of the good things that are seen know
TTim that is: neither by considering the works did they
acknowledge the work-master.
2.—But deemed either fire, or wind, or the swift air, or the
circle of the stars, or the violent waters, or the lights of heaven,
to be the gods which govern the world.
8.—With whose beauty, if they being delighted, took them to
be gods; let them know how much better the Lord of them is-: for
the first author of beauty hath created them.
4. —But if they were astonished at their power and virtue, let
them understand by them how much mightier He is that made
them.
5. —For by the greatness and beauty of the creatures proportionably, the maker of them is seen.
6. —But yet for this, they are the less to be blamed: for they
peradventure err, seeking God, and desirous to find Him.”
Wisdom of Solomon, xiii.—■! to 6.
�3
There is a wonderful resemblance between the religious rites,
creeds and worship of nations passing through the transition state
from the lower to the highei’ conceptions of God—from the
ignorant and unphilosophical views of creation to the re
cognition of the great eternal laws, which are every day more and
more developed by scientific inquiry, and better and better under
stood, as they convey us into wider and wider fields of space
and time. Miraculous agencies form a part of the machinery of all
rude religions. They have been always, in half-infoimed ages,
claimed by those who professed to have messages to deliver from
Heaven. Vambery, lately travelling as a D ervish in E astern Asia,
carried with him a bag of dust, picked up in the streets, which
he was supposed to have brought from the Tomb of the Prophet.
He obtained the credit of having wrought numerous miracles, and
passed in all the odour of sanctity through localities where any
detection of his real character would have imperilled his life. I
once saw, in the neighbourhood of Damascus, a companion smitten
with dumbness, and his speech after some time restored by a green
turbaned-magician, a descendantof Mahomet, andinthe supposed
miracle I am quite sure there was no collusion between the parties.
I collected in the East evidences of the displays of the necromantic
art which would appear incredible to European intelligence; but
let a believing, ignorant and timid man be delivered over to one
whom he fancies to be possessed of supernatural power, and
the prostration will exhibit itself in forms marvellous, and
seemingly miraculous. Miracles even now are not unfrequently
appealed to by the Catholic Church, and there is scarcely a spot
in Southern Europe where some popular patriot saint is not
believed to have the power of influencing supernatural change.
A Mormon missionary came to me in China with a message
from the leaders of this latest exhibition of fanaticism and
folly. He reminded me that tens of thousands of my countrymen
had been converted by the signs and wonders which Mormon
saints had wrought, on which he asked me to become a leader in
the great revolution. I stopped a long outpouring by saying,
“Work a miracle: walk on the ceiling with your head downwards,
or make the inkstand move which is now before me.” He said
“You are one of the faithless and unbelieving generation,” and
left me not a little exasperated at my incredulity.
A narrow selfishness characterised most of the religious
credences of remote time. The gods of ancient nations were
always those who regarded them alone with special favour, and
excluded other people from their paternal regards. The Chinese
call their country—the land o’er-canopied by Heaven—'the
central flowery kingdom—beyond whose circumference nothing
is to be found but barbarism and weeds and darkness. The
�4
ancient Hebrews looked upon heathens with pitiless scorn and
hate. Of the old religion of the Hungarians I find this de
scription in a Magyar book:
“ They believed in one God, whom they called Isten, the
creator of the heavens and the earth, the director of the
elements, and the source of all good. They had their sacrifices
of fire, and addressed the winds and the waters as his manifes
tations. They pictured Isten as an old grey-bearded king—
sovereign of life and death,—having his abode above, whence he
directed all the events below—sometimes he visited earth as a
wandering judge, and distributed justice among good and evil
doers—working miracles—speaking in thunder, and punishing
by the lightning flash. (The Hungarians still call the lightning
“ the arrow of God.”) They imagined he was their especial pro
tector, and called him, as they still call him, the “ God of the
Magyars,” as the Jews called Jehovah the “ God of Israel.” They
believed that he placed a conquering sword in the hands of
Magyar believers, and was engaged in perpetual conflict with
Ordog, the Spirit of Evil. Multitudinous angels were his
ministers and messengers, whose doings form the groundwork
of the traditional mythology of the people.”
The paternal relations of God to his children are seldom
referred to in the Old Testament. Only thrice is he there
called by the designation so frequently applied to him by Jesus
Christ and Paul, that of our t( Our Fatherand when it is used,
it is not in the spirit of a general, filial character and brother
hood, but as “ the Lord God of Israel,” (I. Chron. xxix., 10), the
Redeemer of the Hebrews, and as belonging only to His chosen
people.
The Hebrew cultus was well suited to the civilization of the
days in which it was taught. Mingled with conceptions of the
Deity which have no where else been reached in sublimity and
beauty, are material pictures of Elohim and Jehovah, as King
and Priest, which have left a permanent impress on all the
theological literature and especially on all the devotional
poetry of Christendom. He who, on the one hand, is represented
as the invisible, “ whom no eye hath seen nor can seethe
Unapproachable, the Unchanageable, is also painted as sitting on
a regal throne, arrayed in splendid garments, holding a sword
and sceptre, surrounded by angels and archangels, and
giving audible expression to regrets and to repentance, to
hatred and anger, and all the infirm passions of man; as a
high priest he presides over and enjoys the altar sacrifices and
oblations, listening to harps and psalteries and directing the
minutest details, not only of ceremonial observances, but of
domestic life. In the book of Leviticus many usages are
�5
prescribed and prohibitions inculcated which Buddhism and
Brahminism have preserved. They suited a low civilization.
To this hour, among the Christian Copts of Upper Egypt, the
Hebrew practices of circumcision and polygamy are maintained :
for all religions will represent the civilization of those who pro
fess them. None can endure which are stationary in their con
ditions. Not long ago, an image was picked up near Penang
which the Catholics claimed as being the Virgin Mary, and
insisted that it should have a place in their chapel. The
Chinese demanded it as being the Queen of heaven, and, as they
were the stronger party, they earned it away, and placed it in a
Buddhist temple.
There is no part of the world where the Jews are more
cruelly persecuted and oppressed than in the land of their
fathers. When travelling in Judea, I had a Hebrew attendant, a
young man, whose name was Joseph. He once startled me with
a sudden question—■" Was your prophet one of our nation ?
Did he teach you to hate and wrong us ? If so, what must we
think of him ? if not, what must we think of you ? ” The
answer was obvious as to the instructions of the great Christian
teacher. But what could I say of the practice of Christendom ?
But we are amending our conduct, as are the Jews their creed;
and this metropolis is now giving staking evidence of our
emancipation from the thraldom of religious prejudice. All is
progress. The requirements of Moses are no longer the laws of
the Hebrew people. The Talmud and the Mishna are losing
their authority. The spirit of Mendelshon is spreading among
his race. They, too, are entering upon an inheritance of eman
cipation, and showing how worthily, by their contributions to
every demand of charity, of education and of progress.
It would seem as if in the advance of ages there are grand
epochs in which the world is brightened by unwonted effulgences
of intellectual light. The present century is one of those eras.
That which preceded the advent of Christ, by about five or six
hundred years, is yet more remarkable. It was then the voice
of Confucius was heard, which is now listened to reverentially by
five hundred millions of men—he was one of the wisest and calmest
of moralists, who pretended to no miraculous powers, established
no religious rites, professed no intimacy with the councils of
heaven.
Into his temples up to this hour no idolatry has
penetrated. Buddhists and Taouists speak with equal reverence
of his name. Then lived Zoroaster, the founder of the Parsee
religion. He said that light was the type of good, darkness
of evil; but that in the struggle, which might long continue,
good would finally prevail. He held that behind the light the
source of light was hidden; brightest in the sun, manifest in
�IP
6
s
the flame, reflected on the ocean’s face and in all that is grand
and beautiful. Then, too, Gaudama taught—the last manifes
tation of Buddha—the incarnate perfection wrought out by millions
of ages, the object of worship now of a third of the human race.
There is no reason to believe that while living he ever put forward a
claim to immortality. Pythagoras, the Samian sage, was a
contemporary. He declared that the soul of man was a
portion of the Spirit of God, and that truthfulness and
purity were the best offerings to be rendered to the Deity.
He proclaimed that all the world’s concerns were under the
control of law and harmony and order, and first announced
the sun, and not the earth, to be the centre of our system.
Plato and Socrates belong to nearly the same period ; and
here I cannot but refer to the beautiful and eloquent recogni
tion by Mr. Gladstone of the splendid services—too little
appreciated—which the Greeks have rendered to art, science,
literature—aye, even to religion. This too is about the period
when the great Hebrew prophets poured out their passionate de
nunciations of the wickedness of the people while they presented
to them visions of future hope and joy. What, in those glorious
days, was the condition of these islands and their inhabitants ?
Since then it may well be said “ the course of empire westward
took its way,” and to the new developments of mind we are
bringing noble and becoming contributions.
No religions have ever obtained or maintained a stronghold
among men, unless they have had in them many elements of
truth; and were our missionaries, instead of endeavouring to
depreciate and root up whatever they find in the fields which
they explore, and as if they had the monopoly of all verities,
repudiating alike the gold and the dross—the right and the
wrong—the good and the evil which abound there—were they
honestly to acknowledge that there is some wisdom other than
their own—some authorities beyond themselves to which they
owe respect, if not reverence, they might present pictures of
fewer disappointments and better promises. When the Jesuits
fixed themselves about two centuries ago at Peking, they had
so studied the habits of the Chinese people, and obtained so
much popularity from their sagacity and the aid they gave to
astronomical and geographical sciences, that one of the
Emperors wrote with his own hand the inscription which was
placed over the portal of the Christian Church, in which a
Prime Minister soon became a worshipper; and to this hour
is regarded as a saint, both by Chinese and Catholics. The
intemperate ignorance and fanaticism of the Franciscan and
Dominican friars, led to the expulsion of the whole body
of niissionaries from China. They called the observances
�1
connected with reverence for ancestors, so universal in China,
blasphemous and idolatrous, and the bulls of two foolish
Popes confirmed their decision. Since then the higher regions
of influence have never been approached in China, and until
they are, it will not be easy to move the people. The King
of Siam once said to me, “ Your religion does not suit my
people, nor would my religion suit yours; and you and I may
be equally engaged in the search of truth. Now, if your
religion teach you to love me, and my religion teach me to love
you, that part of both religions is true.” And. at another time,
“If in our sacred books there are teachings inconsistent with
the discoveries of science, such teachings are not sacred for
me.” And he was a Buddhistic priest, who passed eleven years in
the seclusion ofaconvent, where he delivered himself to the study of
the ancient books, and is now at the head of the Buddhist religion.
The three first characters of the “ Trimetrical Classic,” which is
the earliest book used by every child in China, are “Man is
born pure,”—and this is the foundation of Buddhism. The
book goes on to say that the infant is like “an unwrought gem”
committed to the responsibility of parents and teachers for
education and improvement. Our life is one of a succession of
probations, probations of punishments and recompenses, all to
end in the final absorption of the reformed and purified spirit
into the Nirvana, the serene, passionless and reposing God
head, which was the primary creator of all. In the processes of
millions upon millions of ages, manifestations in the shape of a
Buddha, the highest incarnations of knowledge and excellence,
are made to man, and the present Buddha is supposed to have
appeared five or six hundred years before the Christian era.
The leading tenets of Buddhism are: that in a remote eternity
of the past, not calculable by man, a primal, self-existent energy,
called, by slow processes, the whole creation into being, sub
jected it to eternal and irrevocable laws, and satisfied with its
great work, the creating spirit sank into ever during repose,
into which all that is pure and spiritual will be attracted and
finally absorbed, there to dwell in everlasting peace and serene
blessedness. They do not hold that the beginning of the
history of our race was sin, and that its ending will be woe, but
proclaim the innocence of the babe, and the final salvation
of man.
There are seven Buddhist hells, the representation of whose
tortures often cover the walls of the Buddhist temples. The
distribution of penalties is left to seven judges, whose tribunals
receive the dead and fix theii’ doom. The liar is delivered over
to demons who, with fiery pincers, pull out his tongue; the glutton
has his bowels slowly removed from his living body; the drunkard
�8
is chained down to burning sands, close to beverages which he
cannot reach; the incontinent are punished by cruel muti
lations. Horrors, worse than those of Dante’s Inferno, and
which are represented with all the vivid and varied coloring of
Chinese art, constantly meet the eye of the devotee. They are
great advances on the monotonous pictures of purgatory and
hell—the sufferers, flames and devils, which adorn the convents
and the churches of Catholic nations.
Buddhism is an inert, inactive religion. Its highest virtue is the
contemplation of Buddha. Its catalogue of merits and demerits
gives to observances, often frivolous and foolish, a ridiculous
position in the scale of excellence; yet it recommends strict
examination and the knowledge of self as an all-important duty.
I have a collection of pictures, the work of a Chinese artist,
representing the various employments of two young slaves, whom
the Emperor gave to one of his sages. To the youths he
entrusted two phials, one of a bright red, the other of a dark
blue color. They were to accompany him wherever he went.
In the red bottle were to be thrown every sensible word he
uttered, and every kind deed he did; into the blue all his foolish
sayings and unworthy acts; and every evening they were to
be produced, that he might draw the balance between his virtues
and his defects, and take care that every day the amount should
be increased on the side of virtue. Such self-examination may
be not unworthy of our imitation.
The spirit of Buddhism is generally tolerant. The King of
Siam once told the Catholic Bishop of Bangkok, that as he had
not much success among the Siamese he would hand over to
him 180 Annamite prisoners, whom he might try to convert to
the Catholic faith. Toleration has been called indifferentism;
but as the doctrine of fatalism, in some shape or other, pervades
the oriental world, the notion prevails that no man ought to be
punished for that he could not prevent or counteract. The
doctrine of exclusive salvation is superseded by the teaching
that an All-knowing, All-directing Creator could never punish
a half-informed wandering creature for erroneous opinions, such
opinions being beyond his control.
Once conversing with Dr. Falconer on the boundlessness of
geological eras, he pointed to a dial, and said, " Look at these
figures—the sixty minutes that make up the hour—now, our
discoveries have not reached to the first five.” If astronomy have
given us some notions of infinite space—taught us to con
template stars which, with railway speed, we could not reach in
hundreds of years, the contemplations of Buddhism have given
us some notions of infinite time; and when we talk, as we
sometimes lightly do, of eternity and eternal punishments, if we
�9
will listen to some Buddhistic imagery, we shall get some per
ception of what is meant by that terrible word.
“ Take every drop of water,” says one Buddhistic teacher,
“ from ten thousand oceans and multiply them by every atom
in ten thousand worlds, and you may form some idea of the
cycles which belong to eternity.”
“ There is no spot,” says another, “ in heaven, earth or sea,
of the size of a pin’s head, which, in his progress towards per
fection, has not, in some personal shape or other, been
visited by Buddha.”
Again,—“Erect avast encircling wall, let it be miles in circum
ference and hundreds of yards in depth, fill it with grains of
sand, and let an angel once in ten thousand years remove a
single grain, when all are removed, you are but at the beginning
of eternity.”
Of all the religions in the world, Buddhism is by far the most
extensively professed. It is the creed of more than four hundred
millions of the human family, yet of all religions it is perhaps the
least understood. It resembles Brahminism in its leading outlines
and there are ancient temples in Java—where Islamism is now on
the ascendant—where the symptoms of the two faiths are strangely
blended. I am not aware that any representative of the more
intelligent Buddhists has ever made his way to English society.
If he should have something to learn amongst us, he would have
much to teach, and he would help to confirm the conclusion at
which I have arrived, after a long experience, that “ Good men
and true,” the excellent of the earth, are to be found among all
tribes and tongues.
No religion has a stronger hold than Buddhism upon its
followers. In Siam, and some other countries, the priests are
dependent upon the people for their daily bread. Every morn
ing a certain number of them come forth from the convents.
They are allowed to enter no houses, to ask no alms, to return
no thanks, yet, in the morning, before almost every door, an
offering is found, which the priest collects and silently transfers
to his scrip, or to his pot.
The Brahminical faith has been undergoing a great and
a wholesome purgation. Rammohun Roy gave the first impor
tant impulse to Brahminical reform. A Brahmin of high caste,
and rising superior to the prejudices of his race, he determined
to visit Europe, which he did in spite of the vehement opposition
of his order, and especially of the women of his Zenana,
who were powerful enough to prevent his carrying out his
intention of bringing with him his son and heir. In Europe he
died, and was first interred in the park of the beloved friend with
whom he was a guest, at Stapleton Grove, near Bristol; his
�10
coffin was removed to the Cemetery of Amo’s Vale, when, on the
death of the owner, the property passed into other hands. He
spoke and wrote English with purity and power; partook of
English hospitalities, mingled with English society, and won the
affectionate regards of all who were privileged, as I was, to know
him, and assuredly those who knew him best honoured him
most. In his volume, entitled “Precepts of Jesus,” he renders
a touching and emphatic homage to the divine teachings and
divine life of Christ. His object, and that of his followers, has
been to repudiate the authority of the more modem Brahminical
books, to renounce all idolatrous worship, and to restore the faith in
the spirituality of God, as taught in the Vedas. These reformers
will accept no prophets as the expounders of their principles.
They have now a considerable number of temples in India, from
which all images are excluded, and men of considerable influence,
among them the Rajah of Burdwan, have taken an active part in
patronizing and promoting their doctrines. I have been present
at their religious assemblies, and heard no word offensive to the
highest notions of God and duty. They have a priesthood,
whose task it is to expound the test of the Vedas. Music, both
vocal and instrumental accompanies their devotions. The language
of the Vedas is “that Brahma is self-existent, over all exalted—
the Great Father—the Creator and Ruler of worlds—that He has
no beginning, and can have no end—that all is derived from
Him,—and as the spark from the fire, so the human soul proceeds
from Him, and he who seeks and obtains a true knowledge ■will
be purified, and finally merged in the Deity, as rivers are merged
in the sea.”
Such conceptions as these are a notable advance upon the
familiar picturings of the Book of Genesis—suited, no doubt,
to the uncultivated human mind—where God is introduced as
a great workman, creating man out of dust in his own image,
walking with him, talking to him, labouring and resting, planting
gardens, and rearing therein a miraculous tree, driving the
eattle and fowls which he has made out of the ground into
the presence of Adam, taking a rib out of Adam for the formation
of woman, and with his own fingers closing the flesh over the
wound.
Compare this with the grander revelations of the
spiritual God, whom “the heaven of heavens cannot contain”
—“ hidden in the dark waters and the thick clouds,” humbling
Himself even to behold the things of earth, “dwelling in
light which no man can approach,” a “ Spirit only to be worshipped
in spirit and in truth.”
Through the world the great work is going on of separating
the ignorant and the perishable elements, which belong only
to the past, from those divine and immortal principles, which
�11
are the inheritance of the present, and will form an undoubted
portion of the religions of the future; and it is the main object
of this Address to show that we are not the only labourers in
the great field of progress—to carry you with me beyond the
narrow pale within which alone we are sometimes taught divine
knowledge is to be found ; and to interest you in those heavings
of the human intellect which betoken a restlessness to be calmed
only by the final triumphs of truth and freedom.
One of the great instruments of influence wielded by Ma
homet was his teaching the unity and the spirituality of God.
There was at one time a missionary passion among the pro
fessors of Islamism, as energetic and as adventurous as that
which now moves the Christian world. Among the different
sections of teachers who are endeavouring to convert the
Chinese, there is no end of controversy as to the name which
is to be given to God. The Jews introduced one designation,
the Nestorians another, the Jesuits a third, the English mis
sionaries a fourth, the Americans a fifth ; and during the
controversy the name of God was left blank in the translation
of the Scriptures, which was superintended, at Shanghai, by a
committee of missionaries from both sides of the Atlantic.
The truth is, that there are no characters in Chinese by which
the combined personality and the spirituality of the Supreme Being
can be represented. I visited a Mosque in China, founded in the
century immediately after the death of Mahomet, and, enquiring
of the priest by what name they called the God of the Koran,
** Allah,” they said—which is the Hebrew Elohim—for in
Chinese there is no corresponding wordand it may be re
marked that while Christian missionaries have often employed
names associated with idolatry as representatives of the God
head, the Mussulmans have everywhere introduced the name of
Allah, bringing with it new and nobler associations. The work
of civilization and of religious progress in Africa has been
greatly promoted by Moslem priests, and their influence is
widely extended. A friend of long experience, as governor of
one of our African colonies, informed me that he had invariably
found the most intelligent men from the interior, professors of
Islamism, and acquainted with the Arabic tongue, and this is
confirmed by my own experience in Eastern Africa. Though the
Koran has many fierce denunciations against unbelievers, and
there prevails very much fanaticism among the religious teachers,
I was assured lately by Vambery, the great oriental traveller,
that he has found in English society an intolerance and a
bigotry scarcely equalled, and certainly not exceeded, among the
wildest dervishes of Bokhara.
Jn an address lately delivered by the Arab notables of Algiers
�12
to the Emperor Napoleon, I find words which I would recommend as
a study to some of our own prelates and pastors, urging them to
“ look on this picture and on that.”
“ Sire—-We respectfully draw near your Majesty’s throne to
protest against the allegations which represent the natives of
Algeria as a wily and fanatical people, insensible to the benefits
of France.
" These exaggerated assertions, after going the round of
all the most impassioned and least enlightened journals in
Algeria, have even found an echo in the tribune of the Corps
Legislatif. It needs no laborious research in the Koran to find
several verses which seem to command us to hate and war against
all people not professing the Moslem faith. It is known that all
religions believe they alone possess the truth and worship the
true God, and consequently condemn all creeds differing from
their own. It would be more useful to the general interest
to bring to light the words of our Holy Book which preach
concord among all nations, which render homage to all sincere
religious convictions, and which remind men that they are the
children of the same God.
“ Moreover, we cannot refrain from protesting against what
has been said on the subject of the Mussulman religious brother
hoods (Khouans). These pious associations have been made
the subject of every superficial observation, and have been most
unjustly commented upon by those who have written about
them. Taking into account a few isolated facts, and placing
faith in the replies of ignorant informants to captious questions,
particular incidents have been generalised, despite the reflection
that such inconsiderate judgments were raising feelings of
suspicion and aversion against the whole Mussulman population.
“ Upon closer investigation, it will be found that the Khouans
are, for the most part, poor people, bitterly tried by the miseries
of life, who seek in religious practices an assuagement of their
sufierings. Moreover, religious associations are not peculiar to
Algeria and Islamism; they also exist in all Catholic countries
in the south of Europe, and yet none ever dreamt of transform
ing the penitents, congregations, and Catholic confraternities
into political secret societies. If such accusations were true,
if the Zaouias of Algeria were incessantly inciting the people
in the name of the Koran, to a hatred of and holy war against
the Christians—if we were really the fanatics we are said to be,
is it to be supposed that our race—the pride and courage of
which were attested in the Imperial letter addressed on the
6th February, 1863, to the Duke de Malakoff—would not respond
to similar appeals by acts of disorder and violence in every
portion of the territory? Should we have let the European
■
i
i
�colonists peacefully settle in the midst of us, often to the detri
ment of our most cherished interests ?
“ The great heart and elevated mind of the Emperor have not
been deceived by false representations like those who mistook
dignity of character for guile, and attachment to national and
religious traditions for fanaticism.
“ It is, therefore, under the protection of the Emperor that we
place ourselves, trusting that the French people may not be
prevented from esteeming and loving us as we are inclined
to love and respect them. We are, Sire, &c.” (Here follow the
signatures.)
On one occasion, a very zealous missionary sent to Mahomet
Ali, the great Pacha of Egypt, a copy of the New Testament,
with a letter calling upon him to " renounce the false prophet
and to accept the only saving faith.” He read the letter in his
Divan, and there was a great explosion of indignation, and a
demand that summary punishment should be inflicted on the
audacious intruder. “ La! La! No! No!” said the old Viceroy,
“ the man is mad,” and as madness is held in reverence among
the Mahometans, the courtiers were silent, but the Pacha sent a
message, through the English Consul-General, that it would be
safer for the injudicious adviser not to tarry too long in Cairo,
and he took an early departure.
The belief in an inevitable destiny has a wonderful influence
among the Mahometans. A leading official in the East told me
that the great instrument of his government was the judicious
employment of the words Koran, the book, and Kesmet, destiny.
In visiting the hospitals in the Levant, one is struck with the
general resignation of the suffering patients. I once was con
ducted to a cave near Aleppo, in which were three men, one a
powerful chieftain, who were about to be executed. They talked
of death with great complacency. I It was the will of Allah, it
would not be otherwise. Why should they complain ?” A
Mahomedan never mentions a future purpose without adding
“ Inshallah ! if Allah will!”
The Parsees are the most adventurous and the most prosperous
of Oriental merchants. Victims of religious and political
persecutions, they migrated from their Persian fatherland, and
took with them the ancient faith for which they had suffered.
That faith was represented by the undying fire from heaven,
which they profess to have received, and to have preserved, in an
unbroken perpetuity from immemorial time, and which is kept
ever burning in their temples. They are likely to be better
known among us, as more than a hundred Parsee merchants are
established in England, some of whom haJve brought hither the
females of their family. Bombay is the principal seat of their
�14
wealth and influence, many of them having removed there from
the less promising mails of Bagdad and Bussorah. Branches of
the Bombay establishments settled in China, where they occupy
a very high position among the merchant princes of the celestial
empire.
They have not, I believe, up to the present time ever been
accompanied by any of their priesthood, or established in foreign
countries any temples for the celebration of their religious rites,
and especially for the becoming disposal of their dead. Orthodoxy
and heterodoxy are found among the Parsees,the struggle between
what is stationary and what is progressive. They cast horo
scopes at the birth of their children, and consult astrologers to
fix an auspicious day for their weddings. Polygamy is not
permitted. After death the corpse is placed in a round
building, erected on an airy hill, and called “ the Tower of
Silence.” The funeral rites are always accompanied with
charitable donations, and bread, fruits and flowers are brought
as oblations to the dead. But when away from home, the Parsees
bury their people in cemeteries of their own, with their faces
turned towards the rising sun. A common inscription on the
grave stones is taken from the book of Ecclesiastes—•“ Truly the
light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold
the sun. But if a man live many years, and rejoice in them all,
yet let him remember the days of darkness, for they shall be
many. All that cometh is vanity.”
Superstitious beliefs and practices are repudiated by the
rising generation, who contend that they are not warranted by
their sacred books; and what is more important still is, that
female education is making way under the enlightened patronage
and generous contributions of the opulent among them. Parsee
ladieshave been introduced atthe Courtof our Queen Victoria, who
honoured with a baronetcy one of them, Sir Jamsejee Jejhaboy,
whose philanthropic endowments for the advancement of know
ledge and the relief of suffering have been of the most splendid
character.
Of the present state of Parsee opinions in religious matters, I
can hardly do better than cite some passages from the work of
Dadabhay Naoradji, the Professor of Gujarati in the London
University, and an eminent merchant in our city—“ We believe
in only one God, and do not believe in any besides him. The
God who created the heavens, the earth, the angels, the stars,
the sun, the moon, the fire, the water, all the four elements, and
all things of the two worlds. That God we believe in, Him we
worship, Him we invoke. Our God has neither face, nor form,
colour nor shape, nor fixed place. There is no other like Him.
He is Himself such a glory that we cannot praise or describe
�15
a
Him, nor our mind comprehend Him. He is the Creator of ali
things, but cannot create another like Himself. His is the omnipotent, highest of spirits, the distributor of justice, the provider,
the protector.”
“We received our religion from Zoroaster, God’s true prophet,
and should worship with our face towards some of the creatures
of light and glory and brightness, the sun, the stars, the fire,
the water, and such other things of glory; because God has
bestowed on these a small spark of his own pure glory, and being
exalted in creation more worthily represent him, and these are
his principal commands I
“ To know God as one, to know the exalted Zoroaster as his true
prophet, to believe his religion as true beyond all manner of
doubts, to believe in the goodness of God, not to disobey any of
the divine commands, to avoid evil deeds, to be diligent for
good deeds, to pray five times a day, to believe in the reckoning
and justice on the fourth morning after death, to hope for heaven
and to fear hell, to consider doubtless the day of general
destruction and resurrection, to remember always that God has
done what he willed, and shall do what he wills, to face some
luminous object when worshipping God.”
“ Our prophet cannot save us, if we commit sin. He has told
us we shall receive according as we do. None but God can save
us from the consequences of our sins, and if any pretend to save
another, he, the deceiver and the deceived, shall be damned to
the end of the world.”
“Our Saviour is our own good deeds and God. Repent and
reform, and you will be deemed worthy of pardon, and you shall
be benefitted and blest if you do virtuous deeds, give in charity,
are kind, humble, speak sweet words, wish good to others, have a
clean heart, acquire learning, speak the truth, suppress anger,
are patient and contented, friendly, sensitive to shame, paying
due respect to youth and age, are pious and reverent for parents
and teachers; such are the friends of good men, the enemies of
the bad.”
I add an extract or two from the prayers used by the Parsees :
“ I worship Thee from whom flow all virtuous thoughts, all
virtuous words, all virtuous deeds. By my deeds I exalt and
honour Thy name. Under the protection of Thy wisdom I acquire
wisdom.”
“ Great and wise Lord, the reward that is due to the religious
may land mine receive; that reward do Thou give from Thy stores
of bounty, so that here and in the spiritual world I may be
exalted, and live for ever under Thine all holy leadership, Thine all
virtuous protection.”
“ If I by thought, word or deed, intentionally or unintentionally,
�is
have not kept Thy commands and thereby saddened Thee, I
invoke, I pray, I praise Thee and beseech Thee for Thy pardon.”
In these restless days, when inquiry can be no more arrested
than the flow of tbe tide, or the march of the planets, when on
every side we hear multitudinous aspirations after “more faith ’
more light! more knowledge !”•—our duty is clear: courageously
and reverently to follow truth wherever it may lead us, and honestly
and openly to avow our convictions ; to discharge the duty, and
to exercise the right of private judgment for ourselves, and to
claim the same privilege for those who come to different
conclusions from ourselves. The rags and remnants of error
are being scattered to the winds. In the midst of much that
is discordant.
“ Sounds have gone forth, that never, never die.”
Let our voices be all in harmony with that divine calling, whose
utterance is Excelsior! Onwards! Upwards !
LONDON:
TRUBNER & Co., 60, Paternoster Row.
1866.
�
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Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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On religious progress beyond the Christian pale: an address delivered at St. Martin's Hall, London ... on Sunday, 14th January, 1866
Creator
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Bowring, John [Sir]
Description
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Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 16 p. : 19 cm.
Publisher
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[Trubner & Co.]
Date
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[1866]
Identifier
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G3387
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (On religious progress beyond the Christian pale: an address delivered at St. Martin's Hall, London ... on Sunday, 14th January, 1866), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/admin/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
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Text
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English
Subject
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Religion
Buddhism
Buddhism
Religions