BOOK FOUR
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CONCERNING SERVICE AND PSEUDO-SERVICE
UNDER THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE GOOD
PRINCIPLE, OR, CONCERNING RELIGION
AND CLERICALISM
The dominion of the good principle begins, and a sign that "the
kingdom of God is at hand"1 appears, as soon as the basic principles of its
constitution first become public; for (in the realm of the understanding) that
is already here whose causes, which alone can bring it to pass, have
generally taken root, even though the complete development of its
appearance in the sensuous world is still immeasurably distant. We have
seen that it is a duty of a peculiar kind (officium sui generis) to unite oneself
with an ethical commonwealth, and that, if everyone alike heeded his own
private duty, we could indeed infer therefrom an accidental agreement of all
in a common good, even without the necessity of a special organization; yet,
[we must admit] that such a general agreement cannot be hoped for unless a
special business be made of their union with one another for the self-same
end, and of the establishment of a COMMONWEALTH under moral laws,
as a federated and therefore stronger power to withstand the assaults of the
evil principle (for otherwise men are tempted, even by one another, to serve
this principle as its tools). We have also seen that such a commonwealth,
being a KINGDOM OF GOD, can be undertaken by men only through
religion, and, finally, in order that this religion be public (and this is
requisite to a commonwealth), that it must be represented in the visible form
of a church; hence the establishment of a church devolves upon men as a
task which is committed to them and can be required of them.
To found a church as a commonwealth under religious laws seems,
however, to call for more wisdom (both of insight and of good disposition)
than can well be expected of men, especially since it seems necessary to
presuppose the presence in them, for this purpose, of the moral goodness
which the establishment of such a church has in view. Actually it is
nonsensical to say that men ought to found a kingdom of God (one might as
well say
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of them that they could set up the kingdom of a human monarch); God
himself must be the founder of His kingdom. Yet, since we do not know
what God may do directly to translate into actuality the idea of His
kingdom--and we find within ourselves the moral destiny to become citizens
and subjects in this kingdom--and since we do know how we must act to fit
ourselves to become members thereof, this idea, whether it was discovered
and made public to the human race by reason or by Scripture, will yet
obligate us to the establishment of a church of whose constitution, in the last
analysis, God Himself, as Founder of the kingdom, is the Author, while
men, as members and free citizens of this kingdom, are in all cases the
creators of the organization Then those among them who, in accordance
with this organization, manage its public business, compose its
administration, as servants of the church, while the rest constitute a co-
partnership, the congregation, subject to their laws.
Now since a pure religion of reason, as public religious faith,
permits only the bare idea of a church (that is, an invisible church), and
since only the visible church, which is grounded upon dogmas, needs and
is susceptible of organization by men, it follows that service under the
sovereignty of the good principle cannot, in the invisible church, be
regarded as ecclesiastical service, and that this religion has no legal
servants, acting as officials of an ethical commonwealth; every member of
this commonwealth receives his orders directly from the supreme legislator.
But since, with respect to all our duties (which, collectively, we must at the
same time look upon as divine commands); we also stand at all times in the
service of God, the pure religion of reason will have, as its servants (yet
without their being officials) all right-thinking men; except that, so far, they
cannot be called servants of a church (that is, of a visible church, which
alone is here under discussion). Meanwhile, because every church erected
upon statutory laws can be the true church only so far as it contains within
itself a principle of steadily approximating to pure rational faith (which,
when it is practical, really constitutes the religion in every faith) and of
becoming able, in time, to dispense with the churchly faith (that in it which
is historical), we shall be able to regard these laws, and the officials of the
church established upon them, as constituting a [true] service of the church
(cultus) so far as these officials steadily direct their teachings and
regulations toward that final end (a
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public religious faith). On the other hand, the servants of a church who do
not at all have this in view, who rather interpret the maxim of continual
approximation thereto as damnable, and allegiance to the historical and
statutory element of ecclesiastical faith as alone bringing salvation, can
rightly be blamed for the pseudo- service of the church or of what is
represented through this church, namely, the ethical commonwealth under
the dominion of the good principle. By a pseudo-service (cultus spurius) is
meant the persuasion that some one can be served by deeds which in fact
frustrate the very ends of him who is being served. This occurs in a
commonwealth when that which is of value only indirectly, as a means of
complying with the will of a superior, is proclaimed to be, and is substituted
for, what would make us directly well-pleasing to him. Hereby his ends are
frustrated.
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PART ONE
CONCERNING THE SERVICE OF GOD IN RELIGION IN GENERAL
Religion is (subjectively regarded) the recognition of all duties as
divine commands.* That religion in which I must know in advance that
something is a divine command in order to recognize
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it as my duty, is the revealed religion (or the one standing in need of a
revelation); in contrast, that religion in which I must first know that
something is my duty before I can accept it as a divine injunction is the
natural religion. He who interprets the natural religion alone as morally
necessary, i.e., as duty, can be called the rationalist (in matters of belief; if
he denies the reality of all supernatural divine revelation he is called a
naturalist; if he recognizes revelation, but asserts that to know and accept it
as real is not a necessary requisite to religion, he could be named a pure
rationalist; but if he holds that belief in it is necessary to universal religion,
he could be named the pure supernaturalist in matters of faith.
The rationalist, by virtue of his very title, must of his own accord
restrict himself within the limits of human insight. Hence he will never, as a
naturalist, dogmatize, and will never contest either the inner possibility of
revelation in general or the necessity of a revelation as a divine means for
the introduction of true religion; for these matters no man can determine
through reason. Hence the question at issue can concern only the reciprocal
claims of the pure rationalist and the supernaturalist in matters of faith,
namely, what the one or the other holds as necessary and sufficient, or as
merely incidental, to the unique true religion.
When religion is classified not with reference to its first origin and
its inner possibility (here it is divided into natural and revealed religion) but
with respect to its characteristics which make it capable of being shared
widely with others, it can be of two kinds: either the natural religion, of
which (once it has arisen) everyone can be convinced through his own
reason, or a learned religion, of which one can convince others only
through the agency of learning (in and through which they must be guided).
This distinction is very important: for no inference regarding a religion's
qualification or disqualification to be the universal religion of mankind can
be drawn merely from its origin, whereas such an inference is possible from
its capacity or incapacity for general dissemination, and it is this capacity
which constitutes the essential character of that religion which ought to be
binding upon every man.
Such a religion, accordingly, can be natural, and at the same time
revealed, when it is so constituted that men could and ought to have
discovered it of themselves merely through the use of their reason, although
they would not have come upon it so early, or
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over so wide an area, as is required! Hence a revelation thereof at a given
time and in a given place might well be wise and very advantageous to the
human race, in that, when once the religion thus introduced is here, and has
been made known publicly, everyone can henceforth by himself and with
his own reason convince himself of its truth. In this event the religion is
objectively a natural religion, though subjectively one that has been
revealed; hence it is really entitled to the former name. For, indeed, the
occurrence of such a supernatural revelation might subsequently be entirely
forgotten without the slightest loss to that religion either of
comprehensibility, or of certainty, or of power over human hearts. It is
different with that religion which, on account of its inner nature, can be
regarded only as revealed. Were it not preserved in a completely secure
tradition or in holy books, as records, it would disappear from the world,
and there must needs transpire a supernatural revelation, either publicly
repeated from time to time or else enduring continuously within each
individual, for without it the spread and propagation of such a faith would
be impossible.
Yet in part at least every religion, even if revealed, must contain
certain principles of the natural religion. For only through reason can
thought add revelation to the concept of a religion, since this very concept,
as though deduced from an obligation to the will of a moral legislator, is a
pure concept of reason. Therefore we shall be able to look upon even a
revealed religion on the one hand as a natural, on the other as a learned
religion, and thus to test it and decide what and how much has come to it
from one or the other source.
If we intend to talk about a revealed religion (at least one so
regarded) we cannot do so without selecting some specimen or other from
history, for we must devise instances as examples in order to be intelligible,
and unless we take these from history their possibility might be disputed.
We cannot do better than to adopt, as the medium for the elucidation of our
idea of revealed religion in general, some book or other which contains such
examples, especially one which is closely interwoven with doctrines that are
ethical and consequently related to reason. We can then examine it, as one
of a variety of books which deal with religion and virtue on the credit of a
revelation, thus exemplifying the procedure, useful in itself, of searching
out whatever in it may be for us a
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pure and therefore a universal religion of reason. Yet we do not wish
thereby to encroach upon the business of those to whom is entrusted the
exegesis of this book, regarded as the summary of positive doctrines of
revelation, or to contest their interpretation based upon scholarship. Rather
is it advantageous to scholarship, since scholars and philosophers aim at
one and the same goal, to wit, the morally good, to bring scholarship,
through its own rational principles, to the very point which it already
expects to reach by another road. Here the New Testament, considered as
the source of the Christian doctrine, can be the book chosen. In accordance
with our intention we shall now offer our demonstration in two sections,
first, the Christian religion as a natural religion, and, second, as a learned
religion, with reference to its content and to the principles which are found
in it.
SECTION ONE
THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION AS A NATURAL RELIGION
Natural religion, as morality (in its relation to the freedom of the
agent) united with the concept of that which can make actual its final end
(with the concept of God as moral Creator of theca world), and referred to a
continuance of man which is suited to this end in its completeness (to
immortality), is a pure practical idea of reason which, despite its
inexhaustible fruitfulness, presupposes so very little capacity for theoretical
reason that one can convince every man of it sufficiently for practical
purposes and can at least require of all men as a duty that which is its effect.
This religion possesses the prime essential of the true church, namely, the
qualification for universality, so far as one understands by that a validity for
everyone (universitas vel omnitudo distributiva), i.e., universal unanimity.
To spread it, in this sense, as a world religion, and to maintain it, there is
needed, no doubt, a body of servants (ministerium) of the invisible church,
but not officials (officiales), in other words, teachers but not dignitaries,
because in the rational religion of every individual there does not yet exist a
church as a universal union (omnitudo collectiva), nor is this really
contemplated in the above idea.
Yet such unanimity could not be maintained of itself and hence could
not, unless it became a visible church, be propagated in its universality;
rather is this possible only when a collective unanimity, in other words a
union of believers in a (visible) church
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under the principles of a pure religion of reason, is added; though this
church does not automatically arise out of that unanimity nor, indeed, were
it already established, would it be brought by its free adherents (as was
shown above) to a permanent status as a community of the faithful (because
in such a religion none of those who has seen the light believes himself to
require, for his religious sentiments, fellowship with others). Therefore it
follows that unless there are added to the natural laws, apprehensible
through unassisted reason, certain statutory ordinances attended by
legislative prestige (authority), that will still be lacking which constitutes a
special duty of men, and a means to their highest end, namely, their
enduring union into a universal visible church; and the authority mentioned
above, in order to be a founder of such a church, presupposes a realm of
fact1 and not merely the pure concepts of reason.
Let us suppose there was a teacher of whom an historical record (or,
at least, a widespread belief which is not basically disputable) reports that he
was the first to expound publicly a pure and searching religion,
comprehensible to the whole world (and thus natural). His teachings, as
preserved to us, we can in this case test for ourselves. Suppose that all he
did was done even in the face of a dominant ecclesiastical faith which was
onerous and not conducive to moral ends (a faith whose perfunctory
worship can serve as a type of all the other faiths, at bottom merely
statutory, which were current in the world at the time). Suppose, further,
we find that he had made this universal religion of reason the highest and
indispensable condition of every religious faith whatsoever, and then had
added to it certain statutes which provided forms and observances designed
to serve as means of bringing into existence a church founded upon those
principles. Now, in spite of the adventitiousness of his ordinances directed
to this end, and the elements of arbitrariness2 in them, and though we can
deny the name of true universal church to these, we cannot deny to him
himself the prestige due the one who called men to union in this church; and
this without further adding to this faith burdensome new ordinances or
wishing to transform acts which he had initiated into peculiar holy practices,
required in themselves as being constituent elements of religion.
After this description one will not fail to recognize the person
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who can be reverenced, not indeed as the founder of the religion which, free
from every dogma, is engraved in all men's hearts (for it does not have its
origin in an arbitrary will),1 but as the founder of the first true church. For
attestation of his dignity as of divine mission we shall adduce several of his
teachings as indubitable evidence of religion in general, let historical records
be what they may (since in the idea itself is present adequate ground for its
acceptance); these teachings, to be sure, can be no other than those of pure
reason, for such alone carry their own proof, and hence upon them must
chiefly depend the attestation of the others.
First, he claims that not the observance of outer civil or statutory
churchly duties but the pure moral disposition of the heart alone can make
man well-pleasing to God (Matthew V, 20-48); that sins in thought are
regarded, in the eyes of God, as tantamount to action (V, 28) and that, in
general, holiness is the goal toward which man should strive (V, 48); that,
for example, to hate in one's heart is equivalent to killing (V, 22); that injury
done one's neighbor can be repaired only through satisfaction rendered to
the neighbor himself, not through acts of divine worship (V, 24), and that,
on the point of truthfulness, the civil device for extorting it, by oath,* does
violence to respect for truth itself (V, 34-37); that the natural but evil
propensity of the human heart
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is to be completely reversed, that the sweet sense of revenge must be
transformed into tolerance (V, 39, 40) and the hatred of one's enemies into
charity (V, 44). Thus, he says, does he intend to do full justice to the
Jewish law (V, 17); whence it is obvious that not scriptural scholarship but
the pure religion of reason must be the law's interpreter, for taken according
to the letter, it allowed the very opposite of all this. Furthermore, he does
not leave unnoticed, in his designations of the strait gate and the narrow
way, the misconstruction of the law which men allow themselves in order to
evade their truce moral duty and, holding themselves immune through
having fulfilled their churchly duty (VII, 13).* He further requires of these
pure dispositions that they manifest themselves also in works (VII, 16) and,
on the other hand, denies the insidious hope of those who imagine that,
through invocation and praise of the Supreme Lawgiver in the person of His
envoy, they will make up for their lack of good works and ingratiate
themselves into favor (VII, 21). Regarding these works he declares that
they ought to be performed publicly, as an example for imitation (V, 16),
and in a cheerful mood, not as actions extorted from slaves (VI, 16); and
that thus, from a small beginning in the sharing and spreading of such
dispositions, religion, like a grain of seed in good soil, or a ferment of
goodness, would gradually, through its inner power, grow into a kingdom
of God (XIII, 31-33). Finally, he combines all duties (1) in one universal
rule (which includes within itself both the inner and the outer moral relations
of men), namely: Perform your duty for no motive1 other than
unconditioned esteem for duty itself, i.e., love God (the Legislator of all
duties) above all else; and (2) in a particular rule, that, namely, which
concerns man's external relation to other men as universal duty: Love every
one as yourself, i.e., further his welfare from good-will that is immediate
and not derived from motives of self-advantage. These commands are not
mere laws of virtue but precepts of holiness which we ought to pursue, and
the very pursuit of them is called virtue.
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Accordingly he destroys the hope of all who intend to wait upon this
moral goodness quite passively, with their hands in their laps, as though it
were a heavenly gift which descends from on high. He who leaves unused
the natural predisposition to goodness which lies in human nature (like a
talent entrusted to him) in lazy confidence that a higher moral influence will
no doubt supply the moral character and completeness which he lacks, is
confronted with the threat that even the good which, by virtue of his natural
predisposition, he may have done, will not be allowed to stand him in stead
because of this neglect (XXV, 29).
As regards men's very natural expectation of an allotment of
happiness proportional to a man's moral conduct, especially in view of the
many sacrifices of the former which must be undergone for the sake of the
latter, he promises (V,11, 12) a reward for these sacrifices in a future
world, but one in accordance with the differences of disposition in this
conduct between those who did their duty for the sake of the reward (or for
release from deserved punishment) and the better men who performed it
merely for its own sake; the latter will be dealt with in a different manner.
When the man governed by self-interest, the god of this world, does not
renounce it but merely refines it by the use of reason and extends it beyond
the constricting boundary of the present, he is represented (Luke XVI, 3-9)
as one who, in his very person [as servant], defrauds his master [self-
interest] and wins from him sacrifices in behalf of "duty." For when he
comes to realize that sometime, perhaps soon, the world must be forsaken,
and that he can take along into the other world nothing of what he here
possessed, he may well resolve to strike off from the account what he or his
master, self-interest, has a legal right to exact from the indigent, and, as it
were, thereby to acquire for himself bills of exchange, payable in another
world. Herein he acts, no doubt, cleverly rather than morally, as regards the
motives of such charitable actions, and yet in conformity with the moral
law, at least according to the letter of that law; and he can hope that for this
too he may not stand unrequited in the future.* Compare with
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this what is said of charity toward the needy from sheer motives of duty
(Matthew XXV, 35-40), where those, who gave succor to the needy
without the idea even entering their minds that such action was worthy of a
reward or that they thereby obligated heaven, as it were, to recompense
them, are, for this very reason, because they acted thus without attention to
reward, declared by the Judge of the world to be those really chosen for His
kingdom, and it becomes evident that when the Teacher of the Gospel spoke
of rewards in the world to come he wished to make them thereby not an
incentive to action but merely (as a soul-elevating representation of the
consummation of the divine benevolence and wisdom in the guidance of the
human race) an object of the purest respect and of the greatest moral
approval when reason reviews human destiny in its entirety.
Here then is a complete religion, which can be presented to all men
comprehensibly and convincingly through their own reason; while the
possibility and even the necessity of its being an archetype for us to imitate
(so far as men are capable of that imitation) have, be it noted, been made
evident by means of an example without either the truth of those teachings
nor the authority and the worth of the Teacher requiring any external
certification (for which scholarship or miracles, which are not matters for
everyone, would be required). When appeals are here made to older
(Mosaic) legislation and prefiguration, as though these were to serve the
Teacher as means of confirmation, they are presented not in support of the
truth of his teachings but merely for the introduction of these among people
who clung wholly, and blindly, to the old. This introduction, among men
whose heads, filled with statutory dogmas, have been almost entirely
unfitted for the religion of reason, must always be more difficult than when
this religion is to be brought to the reason of people uninstructed but also
unspoiled. For this reason no one should be astonished to find an
exposition, that adapted itself to the prejudices of those times, now puzzling
and in need of pains-taking exegesis; though indeed
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it everywhere permits a religious doctrine to shine forth and, in addition,
frequently points explicitly to that which must be comprehensible and,
without any expenditure of learning, convincing to all men.
SECTION TWO
THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION AS A LEARNED RELIGION
To the extent to which a religion propounds, as necessary, dogmas
which cannot be known to be so through reason, but which are none the
less to be imparted uncorrupted (as regards essential content) to all men in
all future ages, it must be viewed (if we do not wish to assume a continuous
miracle of revelation) as a sacred charge entrusted to the guardianship of the
learned. For even though at first, accompanied by miracles and deeds, this
religion, even in that which finds no confirmation in reason, could obtain
entry everywhere, yet the very report of these miracles, together with the
doctrines which stand in need of confirmation through this report, requires
with the passage of time the written, authoritative, and unchanging
instruction of posterity.
The acceptance of the fundamental principles of a religion is faith par
excellence (fides sacra). We shall therefore have to examine the Christian
faith on the one hand as a pure rational faith, on the other, as a revealed faith
(fides statutaria). The first may be regarded as a faith freely assented to by
everyone (fides elicita), the second, as a faith which is commanded (fides
imperata). Everyone can convince himself, through his own reason, of the
evil which lies in human hearts and from which no one is free; of the
impossibility of ever holding himself to be justified before God through his
own life-conduct, and, at the same time, of the necessity for such a
justification valid in His eyes; of the futility of substituting churchly
observances and pious compulsory services for the righteousness which is
lacking, and, over and against this, of the inescapable obligation to become
a new man: and to become convinced of all this is part of religion.
But from the point where the Christian teaching is built not upon
bare concepts of reason but upon facts, it is no longer called merely the
Christian religion, but the Christian faith, which has been made the basis of
a church. The service of a church consecrated to such a faith is therefore
twofold: what, on the one hand, must be rendered the church according to
the historical faith, and,
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on the other, what is due it in accordance with the practical and moral faith
of reason. In the Christian church neither of these can be separated from the
other as adequate in itself; the second is indispensable to the first because
the Christian faith is a religious faith, and the first is indispensable to the
second because it is a learned faith.
The Christian faith, as a learned faith, relies upon history and, so far
as erudition (objectively) constitutes its foundation, it is not in itself a free
faith (fides elicita) or one which is deduced from insight into adequate
theoretical proofs. Were it a pure rational faith it would have to be thought
of as a free faith even though the moral laws upon which it, as a belief in a
divine Legislator, is based, command unconditionally--and it was thus
presented in Section One. Indeed, if only this believing were not made a
duty, it could be a free theoretical faith even when taken as an historical
faith, provided all men were learned. But if it is to be a valid for all men,
including the unlearned, it is not only a faith which is commanded but also
one which obeys the command blindly (fides servilis), i.e., without
investigation as to whether it really is a divine command.
In the revealed doctrines of Christianity, however, one cannot by
any means start with unconditional belief in revealed propositions (in
themselves hidden from reason) and then let the knowledge of erudition
follow after, merely as a defense, as it were, against an enemy attacking it
from the rear; for if this were done the Christian faith would be not merely a
fides imperata, but actually servilis. It must therefore always be taught as at
least a fides historice elicita; that is learning should certainly constitute in it,
regarded as a revealed credal doctrine, not the rearguard but the vanguard,
and then the small body of textual scholars (the clerics), who, incidentally,
could not at all dispense with secular learning, would drag along behind
itself the long train of the unlearned (the laity) who, of themselves, are
ignorant of the Scripture (and to whose number belong even the rulers of
world-states). But if this, in turn, is to be prevented from happening,
recognition and respect must be accorded, in Christian dogmatic, to
universal human reason as the supremely commanding principle in a natural
religion, and the revealed doctrine, upon which a church is founded and
which stands in need of the learned as interpreters and conservers, must be
cherished and cultivated as merely a means, but a most
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precious means, of making this doctrine comprehensible, even to the
ignorant, as well as widely diffused and permanent.
This is the true service of the church under the dominion of the good
principle; whereas that in which revealed faith is to precede religion is
pseudo-service. In it the moral order is wholly reversed and what is merely
means is commanded unconditionally (as an end).! Belief in propositions of
which the unlearned can assure themselves neither through reason nor
through Scripture (inasmuch as the latter would first have to be
authenticated) would here be made an absolute duty (fides imperata) and,
along with other related observances, it would be elevated, as a compulsory
service, to the rank of a saving faith even though this faith lacked moral
determining grounds of action. A church founded upon this latter principle
does not really have servants (ministri), like those of the other organization,
but commanding high officials (officiales). Even when (as in a Protestant
church) these officials do not appear in hierarchical splendor as spiritual
officers clothed with external power--even when, indeed, they protest
verbally against all this--they yet actually wish to feel themselves regarded
as the only chosen interpreters of a Holy Scripture, having robbed pure
rational religion of its merited office (that of being at all times Scripture's
highest interpreter) and having commanded that Scriptural learning be used
solely in the interest of the churchly faith. They transform, in this way, the
service of the church (ministerium) into a domination of its members
(imperium) although, in order to conceal this usurpation, they make use of
the modest title of the former. But this domination, which would have been
easy for reason, costs the church dearly, namely, in the expenditure of great
learning. For, "blind with respect to nature, it brings down upon its head
the whole of antiquity and buries itself beneath it."1
The course of affairs, once brought to this pass, is as follows. First,
that procedure, wisely adopted by the first propagators of the teaching of
Christ in order to achieve its introduction among the people, is taken as a
part of religion itself, valid for all times and peoples, with the result that one
is obliged to believe that every Christian must be a Jew whose Messiah has
come. Yet this does not harmonize with the fact that a Christian is really
bound by no law of Judaism (as statutory), though the entire Holy Book of
this people is none the less supposed to be accepted faithfully
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as a divine revelation given to all men. Yet the authenticity of this Book
involves great difficulty (an authenticity which is certainly not proved
merely by the fact that passages in it, and indeed the entire sacred history
appearing in the books of the Christians, are used for the sake of this
proof). Prior to the beginning of Christianity, and even prior to its
considerable progress, Judaism had not gained a foothold among the
learned public, that is, was not yet known to its learned contemporaries
among other peoples; its historical recording was therefore not yet subjected
to control and so its sacred Book had not, on account of its antiquity, been
brought into historical credibility. Meanwhile, apart from this, it is not
enough to know it in translations and to pass it on to posterity in this form;
rather, the certainty of churchly faith based thereon requires that in all future
times and among all peoples
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there be scholars who are familiar--with the Hebrew language (so far as
knowledge is possible of a language in which we have only a single book).
And it must be regarded as not merely a concern of historical scholarship in
general but one upon which hangs the salvation of mankind, that there
should be men sufficiently familiar with Hebrew to assure the true religion
for the world.
The Christian religion has had a similar fate, in that, even though its
sacred events occurred openly under the very eyes of a learned people, its
historical recording was delayed for more than a generation before this
religion gained a foothold among this people's learned public; hence the
authentication of the record must dispense with the corroboration of
contemporaries. Yet Christianity possesses the great advantage over
Judaism of being represented as coming from the mouth of the first Teacher
not as a statutory but as a moral religion, and as thus entering into the
closest relation with reason so that, through reason, it was able of itself,
without historical learning, to be spread at all times and among all peoples
with the greatest trustworthiness. But the first founders of the Christian
communities1 did find it necessary to entwine the history of Judaism with it;
this was managed wisely in view of the situation at the time, and perhaps
with reference to that situation alone; thus this history too has come down to
us in the sacred legacy of Christianity. But the founders of the church
incorporated these episodical means of recommendation among the essential
articles of faith and multiplied them either with tradition, or with
interpretations, which acquired legal force from the Councils or were
authenticated by means of scholarship. As for this scholarship, or its
extreme opposite, the inner light to which every layman can pretend, it is
impossible to know how many changes the faith will still have to undergo
through these agencies; but this cannot be avoided so long as we seek
religion without and not within us.
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PART TWO
CONCERNING THE PSEUDO-SERVICE OF GOD IN A STATUTORY
RELIGION
The one true religion comprises nothing but laws, that is, those
practical principles of whose unconditioned necessity we can become
aware, and which we therefore recognize as revealed through pure reason
(not empirically). Only for the sake of a church, of which there can be
different forms, all equally good, can there be statutes, i.e., ordinances held
to be divine, which are arbitrary and contingent as viewed by our pure
moral judgment. To deem this statutory faith (which in any case is restricted
to one people and cannot comprise the universal world-religion) as essential
to the service of God generally, and to make it the highest condition of the
divine approval of man, is religious illusion* whose consequence is
pseudo-service, that is, pretended honoring of God through which we work
directly counter to the service demanded by God Himself.
1. Concerning the Universal Subjective Ground of the Religious
Illusion
Anthropomorphism, scarcely to be avoided by men in the theoretical
representation of God and His being, but yet harmless enough (so long as it
does not influence concepts of duty), is highly dangerous in connection
with our practical relation to His will, and
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even for our morality; for here we create a God for ourselves, and we
create Him in the form in which we believe we shall be able most easily to
win Him over to our advantage and ourselves escape from the wearisome
uninterrupted effort of working upon the innermost part of our moral
disposition. The basic principle which man usually formulates for himself in
this connection is that everything which we do solely in order to be well-
pleasing to the Godhead (provided it does not actually run counter to
morality, though it may not contribute to it in the very least) manifests to
God our willingness to serve Him as obedient servants, well-pleasing to
Him through this very obedience; and that thus we also serve God (in
potentia). Not only through sacrifices, man believes, can he render this
service to God; festivals and even public games, as among the Greeks and
Romans, have often had to perform this function, and still suffice,
according to men's illusion, to make the Godhead propitious to a people or
even to a single individual. Yet the former (penances, castigations,
pilgrimages, and the like) were always held to be more powerful, more
efficacious upon the the favor of heaven, and more apt to purify of sin,
because they serve to testify more forcefully to unbounded (though not
moral subjection to His will. The more useless such self-castigations are
and the less they are designed for the general moral improvement of the
man, the holier they seem to be; just because they are of no use whatsoever
in the world and yet cost painful effort they seem to be directly solely to the
attestation of devotion to God. Even though God has not in any respect
been served by by the act, men say, He yet sees herein the good will, the
heart, which is indeed too weak to obey His moral commands but which,
through its attested willingness on this score, makes good that deficiency.
Now here is apparent the propensity to a procedure
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which has no moral value in itself, except perhaps as a means of elevating
the powers of sense-imagery to comport with intellectual ideas of the end,
or of suppressing them* when they might work counter to these ideas. For
in our thinking we attribute to this procedure the worth of the end itself, or
what amounts to the same thing, we ascribe to the frame of mind (called
devotion) attuned to acquiring dispositions dedicated to God the worth
belonging to those dispositions themselves. Such a procedure, therefore, is
merely a religious illusion which can assume various forms, in some of
which it appears more moral than in others; but in all forms it is not merely
an inadvertent deception but is rather a maxim of attributing to a means an
intrinsic value instead of the value deriving from the end. Hence the
illusion, because of this maxim, is equally absurd in all these forms and, as
a hidden bias toward deception, it is reprehensible.
2. The Moral Principle of Religion Opposed to the Religious Illusion
To begin with, I take the following proposition to be a principle
requiring no proof :Whatever, over and above good life-conduct, man
fancies that he can do to become well-pleasing to God is mere religious
illusion and pseudo-service of God. I say, what man believes that he can
do; for here it is not denied that beyond all that we can do there may be
something in the mysteries of the highest wisdom that God alone can do to
transform us into men well-pleasing to
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Him. Yet even should the church proclaim such a mystery as revealed, the
notion that belief in such a revelation, as the sacred history recounts it to us,
and acknowledgment of it (whether inwardly or outwardly) are in
themselves means whereby we render ourselves well-pleasing to God,
would be a dangerous religious illusion. For this belief, as an inner
confession of his steadfast conviction, is so genuinely an action which is
compelled by fear that an upright man might agree to any other condition
sooner than to this; for in the case of all other compulsory services he would
at most be doing something merely superfluous, whereas here, in a
declaration, of whose truth he is not convinced, he would be doing violence
to his conscience. The confession, then, regarding which man persuades
himself that in and of itself (as acceptance of a good proffered him) it can
make him well-pleasing to God, is something which he fancies he can
render over and above good life-conduct in obedience to moral laws which
are to be put into practice on earth, on the ground that in this service [of
confession] he turns directly to God.
In the first place, reason does not leave us wholly without
consolation with respect to our lack of righteousness valid before God. It
says that whoever, with a disposition genuinely devoted to duty, does as
much as lies in his power to satisfy his obligation (at least in a continual
approximation to complete harmony with the law), may hope that what is
not in his power will be supplied by the supreme Wisdom in some way or
other (which can make permanent the disposition to this unceasing
approximation). Reason says this, however, without presuming to
determine the manner in which this aid will be given or to know wherein it
will consist; it may be so mysterious that God can reveal it to us at best in a
symbolic representation in which only what is practical is comprehensible to
us, and that we, meanwhile, can not at all grasp theoretically what this
relation of God to man might be, or apply concepts to it, even did He desire
to reveal such a mystery to us. Suppose, now, that a particular church were
to assert that it knows with certainty the manner in which God supplies that
moral lack in the human race, and were also to consign to eternal damnation
all men who are not acquainted with that means of justification which is
unknown to reason in a natural way, and who, on this account, do not
accept and confess it as a religious principle: who, indeed, is now the
unbeliever? Is it he who trusts,
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without knowing how that for which he hopes will come to pass; or he who
absolutely insists on knowing the way in which man is released from evil
and, if he cannot know this, gives up all hope of this release?
Fundamentally the latter is not really so much concerned to know this
mystery (for his own reason already teaches him that it is of no use to him
to know that regarding which he can do nothing); he merely wishes to know
it so that he can make for himself (even if it be but inwardly) a divine
service out of the belief, acceptance, confession, and cherishing of all that
has been revealed--a service which could earn him the favor of heaven prior
to all expenditure of his own powers toward a good life conduct, in a word,
quite gratuitously; a service which could produce such conduct, mayhap, in
supernatural fashion, or, where he may have acted in opposition, could at
least make amends for his transgression.
Second: if man departs in the very least from the above maxim, the
pseudo-service of God (superstition) has no other limits, for once beyond
this maxim everything (except what directly contradicts morality) is
arbitrary. He proffers everything to God, from lip-offerings? which cost
him the least, to the donation of earthly goods, which might better be used
for the advantage of mankind, yea, even to the immolation of his own
person, becoming lost to the world (as a hermit, fakir, or monk)--
everything except his moral disposition; and when he says that he also gives
his heart to God he means by this not the disposition to a course of life well-
pleasing to Him but the heart-felt wish that those sacrifices may be accepted
in lieu of that disposition. (Natio gratis adhelans, multa agendo nihil agens.
Phaedrus.1)
Finally, when once a man has gone over to the maxim of a service
presumed to be in itself well-pleasing to God, and even, if need be,
propitiating Him, yet not purely moral, there is no essential difference
among the ways of serving Him, as it were, mechanically, which would
give one way a priority over another. They are all alike in worth (or rather
worthlessness), and it is mere affectation to regard oneself as more
excellent, because of a subtler
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deviation from the one and only intellectual principle of genuine respect for
God, than those who allow themselves to become guilty of an assumedly
coarser degradation to sensuality. Whether the devotee betakes himself to
church according to rule or whether he undertakes a pilgrimage to the
sanctuaries in Loretto or in Palestine; whether he brings his formulas of
prayer to the court of heaven with his lips, or by means of a prayer-wheel,
like the Tibetan (who believes that his wishes will reach their goal just as
well if they are set down in writing, provided only they be moved by
something or other, by the wind, for example, if they are written on flags,
or by the hand, if they are enclosed in a sort of revolving cylinder)--
whatever be substituted for the moral service of God, it is all one and all
equal in value. What matters here is not a difference in the external form;
everything depends upon the adoption or rejection of the unique principle of
becoming well-pleasing to God--upon whether we rely on the moral
disposition alone, so far as this disposition exhibits its vitality in actions
which are its appearances, or on pious playthings and on inaction.* But is
there not also perhaps a dizzying illusion of virtue, soaring above the
bounds of human capacity, which might be reckoned, along with the
cringing religious illusion, in the general class of self-deceptions? No! The
disposition of virtue occupies itself with something real which of itself is
well-pleasing to God and which harmonizes with the world's highest
good.1 True, an illusion of self-sufficiency may attach itself thereto, an
illusion of regarding oneself as measuring up to the idea of one's holy duty;
but this is merely contingent. To ascribe the highest worth to that
disposition is not an illusion, like faith in the devotional exercises of the
church, but is a direct contribution which promotes the highest good of the
world.
Furthermore, it is customary (at least in the church) to give
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the name of nature to that which men can do by dint of the principle of
virtue, and the name of grace to that which alone serves to supplement the
deficiency of all our moral powers and yet, because sufficiency of these
powers is also our duty, can only be wished for, or hoped for, and
solicited; to regard both together as active causes of a disposition adequate
for a course of life well-pleasing to God; and not only to distinguish them
from one another but even to set them over against one another.
The persuasion that we can distinguish the effects of grace from
those of nature (virtue) or can actually produce the former within ourselves,
is fanaticism; for we cannot, by any token, recognize a supersensible object
in experience, still less can we exert an influence upon it to draw it down to
us; though, to be sure, at times there do arise stirrings of the heart making
for morality, movements which we cannot explain and regarding which we
must confess our ignorance: "The wind bloweth where it listeth ... but thou
canst not tell whence it cometh, etc."1 To wish to observe such heavenly
influences in ourselves is a kind of madness, in which, no doubt, there can
be method (since those supposed inner revelations must always be attached
to moral, and hence to rational, ideas), but which none the less remains a
self-deception prejudicial to religion. To believe that there may be works of
grace and that perhaps these may even be necessary to supplement the
incompleteness of our struggle toward virtue--that is all we can say on this
subject; beyond this we are incapable of determining anything concerning
their distinctive marks and still less are we able to do anything to produce
them.
The illusion of being able to accomplish anything in the way of
justifying ourselves before God through religious acts of worship is
religious superstition, just as the illusion of wishing to accomplish this by
striving for what is supposed to be communion with God is religious
fanaticism. It is a superstitious illusion to wish to become well-pleasing to
God through actions which anyone can perform without even needing to be
a good man (for example, through profession of statutory articles of faith,
through conformity to churchly observance and discipline, etc.). And it is
called superstitious because it selects merely natural (not moral) means
which in themselves can have absolutely no effect upon what is not nature
(i.e., on the morally good). But an illusion is called
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fanatical when the very means it contemplates, as supersensible, are not
within man's power, leaving out of account the inaccessibility of the
supersensible end aimed at by these means; for this feeling of the immediate
presence of the Supreme Being and the distinguishing of this from every
other, even from the moral feeling, would constitute a receptivity for an
intuition for which there is no sensory provision in man's nature. Because
the superstitious illusion contains the means, available to many an
individual, enabling him at least to work against the obstacles in the way of
a disposition well-pleasing to God, it is indeed thus far allied to reason, and
is only contingently objectionable in transforming what is no more than a
means into an object immediately well-pleasing to God. The fanatical
religious illusion, in contrast, is the moral death of reason; for without
reason, after all, no religion is possible, since, like all morality in general, it
must be established upon basic principles.
So the basic principle of an ecclesiastical faith, a principle that
remedies or prevents all religious illusion, is this, that such a faith must
contain within itself, along with the statutory articles with which it cannot as
yet wholly dispense, still another principle, of setting up the religion of
good life-conduct as the real end, in order, at some future time, to be able
entirely to dispense with the statutory articles.
3. Concerning Clericalism as a Government in the Pseudo-Service
of the Good Principle
The veneration of mighty invisible beings, which was extorted from
helpless man through natural fear rooted in the sense of his
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impotence, did not begin with a religion but rather with a slavish worship of
a god (or of idols). When this worship had achieved a certain publicly
legalized form it was a temple service,1 and it became a church worship1
only after the moral culture of men was gradually united with its laws. An
historical faith constituted the basis of both of these, until man finally came
to regard such a faith as merely provisional, and to see in it the symbolic
presentation, and the means of promotion, of a pure religious faith.
We can indeed recognize a tremendous difference in manner, but not
in principle, between a shaman of the Tunguses and a European prelate
ruling over church and state alike, or (if we wish to consider not the heads
and leaders but merely the adherents of the faith, according to their own
mode of representation) between the wholly sensuous Wogulite who in the
morning places the paw of a bearskin upon his head with the short prayer,
"Strike me not dead!" and the sublimated Puritan and Independent in
Connecticut: for, as regards principle, they both belong to one and the same
class, namely, the class of those who let their worship of God consist in
what in itself can never make man better (in faith in certain statutory dogmas
or celebration of certain arbitrary observances). Only those who mean to
find the service of God solely in the disposition to good life-conduct
distinguish themselves from those others, by virtue of having passed over
to a wholly different principle and one which is far nobler than the other, the
principle, namely, whereby they confess themselves members of an
(invisible) church which includes within itself all right-thinking people and,
by its essential nature, can alone be the true church universal.
The intention of all of them is to manage to their own advantage the
invisible Power which presides over the destiny of men; they differ merely
in their conceptions of how to undertake this feat. If they hold that Power to
be an intelligent Being and thus ascribe to Him a will from which they await
their lot, their efforts can consist only in choosing the manner in which, as
creatures subjected to His will, they can become pleasing to Him through
what they do or refrain from doing. If they think of Him as a moral Being
they easily convince themselves through their own reason that the condition
of earning His favor must be their morally good life-conduct, and especially
the pure disposition as the
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subjective principle of such conduct. But perhaps the Supreme Being may
wish, in addition, to be served in a manner which cannot become known to
us through unassisted reason, namely, by actions wherein, in themselves,
we can indeed discover nothing moral, but which we freely1 undertake,
either because He commanded them or else in order to convince Him of our
submissiveness to Him. Under either mode of procedure, if it provides for
us a unified whole of systematically ordered activities, our acts constitute in
general a service of God. Now if the two are to be united, then each of them
must be regarded as a way in which one may be well-pleasing to God
directly, or else one of them must be regarded as but a means to the other,
the real service of God. It is self-evident that the moral service of God
(officium liberum) is directly well-pleasing to Him. But this service cannot
be recognized as the highest condition of divine approval of man (this
approval is already contained in the concept of morality) if it be possible for
hired service officium mercenarium) to be regarded as, alone and of itself,
well-pleasing to God; for then no one could know which service was
worthier in a given situation, in order to decide thereby regarding his duty,
or how they supplemented each other. Hence actions which have no moral
value in themselves will have to be accepted as well-pleasing to Him only so
far as they serve as means to the furtherance of what, in the way of conduct,
is immediately good (i.e., so far as they promote morality), or in other
words, so far as they are performed for the sake of the moral service of
God.
Now the man who does make use of actions, as means, which in
themselves contain nothing pleasing to God (i.e., nothing moral), in order
to earn thereby immediate divine approval of himself and therewith the
attainment of his desires, labors under the illusion that he possesses an art
of bringing about a supernatural effect through wholly natural means. Such
attempts we are wont to entitle sorcery. But (since this term carries with it
the attendant concept of commerce with the evil principle, whereas the
above-mentioned attempt can be conceived to be undertaken, through
misunderstanding, with good moral intent) we desire to use in place of it the
word fetishism, familiar in other connections. A supernatural effect induced
by a man would be one whose possibility would rest, as he conceives the
matter, upon a supposition that he works on God and uses Him as a means
to bring about a
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result in the world for which his own powers, yea, even his insight into
whether this result may be well-pleasing to God, would, of themselves, not
avail. But this involves an absurdity even in his own conception of it.
But if a man, not only by means which render him immediately an
object of divine favor (by the active disposition to good life conduct) but
also through certain formalities, seeks to make himself worthy of the
supplementation of his impotence through supernatural assistance, and if he
thinks that he is merely making himself capable of receiving the object of his
good moral desires by conforming, with this intent, to observances which
indeed have no immediate value but yet serve as means to the furthering of
the moral disposition--then, to be sure, he is counting on something
supernatural to supplement his natural impotence, yet not on what is
effected by man (through influence upon the divine will) but on what is
received, on what he can hope for but can not bring to pass. But if it is his
idea that actions, which in themselves, so far as we can see, contain nothing
moral or well-pleasing to God, are to serve as a means, nay as a condition,
whereby he can expect the satisfaction of his wishes directly from God,
then he is a victim of illusion; viz., the illusion that, though he possesses
neither physical control over, nor yet moral receptivity for, this supernatural
assistance, he can yet produce it through natural acts, which in themselves
are in no way related to morality (and the performance of which calls for no
disposition well-pleasing to God, and which can be put into practice by the
most wicked man quite as well as by the best)--through formulas of
invocation, through profession of a mercenary faith, through churchly
observances, and so on--and that he can thus, as it were, conjure up divine
assistance by magic. For between solely physical means and a morally
efficacious cause there is no connection whatsoever according to any law of
which reason can conceive, in terms of which the moral cause could be
represented as determinable to specific activities through the physical.
Hence whoever assigns priority to obedience to statutory laws,
requiring a revelation, as being necessary to religion, and regards this
obedience not merely as a means to the moral disposition but as the
objective condition of becoming immediately well-pleasing to God, and
whoever thus places endeavor toward a good course of life below this
historical faith (instead of requiring the latter,
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which can be well-pleasing to God only conditionally, to adapt itself to the
former, which alone is intrinsically well-pleasing to Him)--whoever does
this transforms the service of God into a mere fetishism and practises a
pseudo-service which is subversive to all endeavors toward true religion.
So much depends, when we wish to unite two good things, upon the order
in which they are united ! True enlightenment lies in this very distinction;
therein the service of God becomes first and foremost a free and hence a
moral service. If man departs from it there is laid upon him, in place of the
freedom of the children of God,1 the yoke of a law (the statutory law), and
this yoke, as an unconditional requirement of belief in what can only be
known historically and therefore cannot be an object of conviction for
everyone, is for a conscientious man a far heavier yoke* than all the lumber
of piously ordained observances could ever be. For the solemnization of
these suffices to secure a man's conformity with an established churchly
commonwealth, and he need not either inwardly or outwardly profess the
belief that he regards them as institutions founded by God; and it is by
confession of the latter sort that conscience is really burdened.
Clericalism, therefore, is the constitution of a church to the extent to
which a fetish-worship dominates it; and this condition is always found
wherever, instead of principles of morality, statutory
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commands, rules of faith, and observances constitute the basis and the
essence of the church. Now there are, indeed, various types of church in
which the fetishism is so manifold and so mechanical that it appears to
crowd out nearly all of morality, and therefore religion as well, and to seek
to occupy their place; such fetishism borders very closely on paganism. But
it is not a question of more or less here, where worth or worthlessness rests
on the nature of the principle which is supremely binding. When this
principle imposes not free homage, as that which first and foremost must be
paid to the moral law, but submission to precepts as a compulsory service;
then, however few the imposed observances, so long as these are laid down
as unconditionally necessary the faith remains a fetish-faith through which
the masses are ruled and robbed of their moral freedom by subservience to a
church (not to religion). The structure of this hierarchy can be monarchical
or aristocratic or democratic; this is merely a matter of organization; its
constitution is and ever remains despotic in all these forms. Wherever credal
statutes find a place among the laws of the constitution, a clergy rules which
believes that it can actually dispense with reason and even, finally, with
Scriptural learning, because it has authority, as the uniquely authorized
guardian and interpreter of the will of the invisible Legislator, exclusively to
administer the prescriptions of belief and so, furnished with this power,
needs not convince but merely command. But since aside from the clergy all
that remains is the laity (the head of the political commonwealth not
excepted), the church in the end rules the state not exactly with force but
through its influence upon men's hearts, and in addition through a dazzling
promise of the advantage which the state is supposed to be able to draw
from an unconditioned obedience to which a spiritual discipline has inured
the very thought of the people. Thus, however, the habit of hypocrisy
undermines, unnoticed, the integrity and loyalty of the subjects, renders
them cunning in the simulation of service even in civil duties and, like all
erroneously accepted principles, brings about the very opposite of what was
intended.
* * * * * * * * * * *
Now all this is the inevitable consequence of what at first sight
appears to be a harmless transposition of the principles of the uniquely
saving religious faith, since it was a question of which
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one should be assigned first place as the highest condition (to which the
other is subordinated). It is fair, it is reasonable, to assume that not only
"wise men after the flesh,"1 the learned or sophisticated, will be called to
this enlightenment touching their true welfare--for the entire human race is
to be susceptible of this faith; "the foolish things of the world"2 as well,
even those who are most ignorant and most circumscribed conceptually,
must be able to lay claim to such instruction and inner conviction. It does
indeed seem as though an historical faith, especially if the concepts which it
requires for the understanding of its documents are wholly anthropological
and markedly suited to sense-perception, satisfies this description perfectly.
For what is easier than to take in so sensuously depicted and simple a
narrative and to share it with others, or to repeat the words of mysteries
when there is no necessity whatsoever to attach a meaning to them! How
easily does such a faith gain universal entrance, especially in connection
with great promised advantage, and how deeply rooted does belief in the
truth of such a narrative become, when it bases itself, moreover, upon a
report accepted as authentic for a long time past! Such a faith, therefore, is
indeed suited even to the commonest human capacities. Now even though
the announcement of such an historical event, as well as the faith in rules of
conduct based upon it, cannot be said to have been vouchsafed solely or
primarily to the learned or the wise of the world, these latter are yet not
excluded from it; consequently there arise so many doubts, in part touching
its truth, and in part touching the sense in which its exposition is to be
taken, that to adopt such a belief as this, subjected as it is to so many
controversies (however sincerely intentioned), as the supreme condition of a
universal faith alone leading to salvation, is the most absurd course of action
that can be conceived of.
There exists meanwhile a practical knowledge which, while resting
solely upon reason and requiring no historical doctrine, lies as close to
every man, even the most simple, as though it were engraved upon his
heart--a law, which we need but name to find ourselves at once in
agreement with everyone else regarding its authority, and which carries with
it in everyone's consciousness unconditioned binding force, to wit, the law
of morality. What is
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more, this knowledge either leads, alone and of itself, to belief in God, or at
least determines the concept of Him as that of a moral Legislator; hence it
guides us to a pure religious faith which not only can be comprehended by
every man but also is in the highest degree worthy of respect. Yea, it leads
thither so naturally that, if we care to try the experiment we shall find that it
can be elicited in its completeness from anyone without his ever having been
instructed in it. Hence to start off with this knowledge, and to let the
historical faith which harmonizes with it follow, is not only an act of
prudence; it is also our duty to make such knowledge the supreme condition
under which alone we can hope to become participants in whatever salvation
a religious faith may promise. So true is this that only as warranted by the
interpretation which pure religious faith gives to the historical can we hold
the latter to be universally binding or are we entitled to allow its validity (for
it does contain universally valid teaching); meanwhile the moral believer is
ever open to historical faith so far as he finds it furthering the vitality of his
pure religious disposition. Only thus does historical faith possess a pure
moral worth, because here it is free and not coerced through any threat (for
then it can never be honest).
Now even when the service of God in a church is directed
preeminently to the pure moral veneration of God in accordance with the
laws prescribed to humanity in general, we can still ask whether, in such a
service, the doctrine of godliness alone or that of virtue as well, or
peculiarly the one or the other, should constitute the content of religious
teaching. The first of these appellations, that is, the doctrine of godliness,
perhaps best expresses the meaning of the word religio (as it is understood
today) in an objective sense.
Godliness comprises two determinations of the moral disposition in
relation to God: fear of God is this disposition in obedience to His
commands from bounden duty (the duty of a subject), i.e., from respect for
the law; love of God, on the other hand, is the disposition to obedience
from one's own free choice and from approval of the law (the duty of a
son). Both involve, therefore, over and above morality, the concept of a
supersensible Being provided with the attributes which are requisite to the
carrying out of that highest good which is aimed at by morality but which
transcends our powers. Now if we go beyond the moral relation of the idea
of this Being to us, to a concept of His nature, there is
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always a danger that we shall think of it anthropomorphically and hence in a
manner directly hurtful to our basic moral principles. Thus the idea of such
a Being cannot subsist of itself in speculative; reason; even its origin, and
still more its power, are wholly grounded in its relation to our self-
subsistent determination to duty. Which, now, is the more natural in the
first instruction of youth and even in discourses from the pulpit: to expound
the doctrine of virtue before the doctrine of godliness, or that of godliness
before that of virtue (without perhaps even mentioning the doctrine of virtue
at all)? Both obviously stand in necessary connection with one another. But,
since they are not of a kind, this is possible only if one of them is conceived
of and explained as end, the other merely as means. The doctrine of virtue,
however, subsists of itself (even without the concept of God), whereas the
doctrine of godliness involves the concept of an object which we represent
to ourselves, in relation to our morality, as the cause supplementing our
incapacity with respect to the final moral end. Hence the doctrine of
godliness cannot of itself constitute the final goal of moral endeavor but can
merely serve as a means of strengthening that which in itself goes to make a
better man, to wit, the virtuous disposition, since it reassures and
guarantees this endeavor (as a striving for goodness, and even for holiness)
in its expectation of the final goal with respect to which it is impotent. The
doctrine of virtue, in contrast, derives from the soul of man. He is already
in full possession of it, undeveloped, no doubt, but not needing, like the
religious concept, to be rationalized into being by means of logistics. In the
purity of this concept of virtue, in the awakening of consciousness to a
capacity which otherwise we would never surmise (a capacity of becoming
able to master the greatest obstacles within ourselves), in the dignity of
humanity which man must respect in his own person and human destiny,
toward which he strives, if he is to attain it--in all this there is something
which so exalts the soul, and so leads it to the very Deity, who is worthy of
adoration only because of His holiness and as Legislator for virtue, that
man, even when he is still far from allowing to this concept the power of
influencing his maxims, is yet not unwillingly sustained by it because he
feels himself to a certain extent ennobled by this idea already, even while the
concept of a World-Ruler who transforms this duty into a command to us,
still lies far from him. But to commence with this latter
[172]
concept would incur the danger of dashing man's courage (which goes to
constitute the essence of virtue) and transforming godliness into a fawning
slavish subjection to a despotically commanding might. The courage to
stand on one's own feet is itself strengthened by the doctrine of atonement,
when it follows the ethical doctrine, in that this doctrine portrays as wiped
out what cannot be altered, and opens up to man the path to a new mode of
life; whereas, when this doctrine is made to come first, the futile endeavor
to render undone what has been done (expiation), the fear regarding
appropriation of this atonement, the idea of his complete incapacity for
goodness, and the anxiety lest he slip back into evil must rob* a man of his
courage and reduce him to a state of sighing moral passivity in which
nothing great or good is undertaken
[173]
and everything is expected from the mere wishing for it. In that which
concerns the moral disposition everything depends upon the highest concept
under which one subsumes one's duties. When reverence for God is put
first, with virtue therefore subordinated to it, this object [of reverence]
becomes an idol, that is, He is thought of as a Being whom we may hope to
please not through morally upright conduct on earth but through adoration
and ingratiation; and religion is then idolatry. But godliness is not a
surrogate for virtue, whereby we may dispense with the latter; rather is it
virtue's consummation, enabling us to be crowned with the hope of the
ultimate achievement of all our good ends.
4. Concerning the Guide of Conscience in Matters of Faith
The question here is not, how conscience ought to be guided (for
conscience needs no guide; to have a conscience suffices), but how it itself
can serve as a guide in the most perplexing moral decisions.
Conscience is a state of consciousness which in itself is duty. But
how is it possible to conceive of such a state of consciousness, since the
consciousness of all our representations seems to be necessary only for
logical purposes and therefore only in a conditioned manner (when we want
to clarify our representations), and so cannot be unconditioned duty?
It is a basic moral principle, which requires no proof, that one ought
to hazard nothing that may be Wrong (quod dubitas, ne feceris! Pliny1).
Hence the consciousness that an action which I intend to
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perform is right, is unconditioned duty. The understanding, not conscience,
judges whether an action is really right or wrong. Nor is it absolutely
necessary to know, concerning all possible actions, whether they are right
or wrong. But concerning the act which I propose to perform I must not
only judge and form an opinion, but I must be sure that it is not wrong; and
this requirement is a postulate of conscience, to which is opposed
probabilism,1 i.e., the principle that the mere opinion that an action may
well be right warrants its being performed. Hence conscience might also be
defined as follows: it is the moral faculty of judgment, passing judgment
upon itself; only this definition would stand in great need of a prior
elucidation of the concepts contained in it. Conscience does not pass
judgment upon actions as cases which fall under the law; for this is what
reason does so far as it is subjectively practical (hence the casus conscientiae
and casuistry, as a kind of dialectic of conscience). Rather, reason here
judges itself, as to whether it has really undertaken that appraisal of actions
(as to whether they are right or wrong) with all diligence, and it calls the
man himself to witness for or against himself whether this diligent appraisal
did or did not take place.
Take, for instance, an inquisitor, who clings fast to the uniqueness
of his statutory faith even to the point of [imposing] martyrdom, and who
has to pass judgment upon a so-called heretic (otherwise a good citizen)
charged with unbelief. Now I ask whether, if he condemns him to death,
one might say that he has judged according to his conscience (erroneous
though it be), or whether one might not rather accuse him of absolute lack
of conscience, be it that he merely erred, or consciously did wrong; for we
can tell him to his face that in such a case he could never be quite certain that
by so acting he was not possibly doing wrong. Presumably he was firm in
the belief that a supernaturally revealed Divine Will (perhaps in accord with
the saying, compellite intrare1) permitted him, if it did not actually impose it
as a duty, to extirpate
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presumptive disbelief together with the disbelievers. But was he really
strongly enough assured of such a revealed doctrine, and of this
interpretation of it, to venture, on this basis, to destroy a human being? That
it is wrong to deprive a man of his life because of his religious faith is
certain, unless (to allow for the most remote possibility) a Divine Will,
made known in extraordinary fashion, has ordered it otherwise. But that
God has ever uttered this terrible injunction can be asserted only on the
basis of historical documents and is never apodictically certain. After all, the
revelation has reached the inquisitor only through men and has been
interpreted by men, and even did it appear to have come to him from God
Himself (like the command delivered to Abraham to slaughter his own son
like a sheep) it is at least possible that in this instance a mistake has
prevailed. But if this is so, the inquisitor would risk the danger of doing
what would be wrong in the highest degree; and in this very act he is
behaving unconscientiously. This is the case with respect to all historical
and visionary faith; that is, the possibility ever remains that an error may be
discovered in it. Hence it is unconscientious to follow such a faith with the
possibility that perhaps what it commands or permits may be wrong, i.e.,
with the danger of disobedience to a human duty which is certain in and of
itself.
And further: even were an act commanded by (what is held to be)
such a positive revealed law allowable in itself, the question arises whether
spiritual rulers or teachers, after presumably becoming convinced of it
themselves, should impose it upon the people as an article of faith for their
acceptance (on penalty of forfeiting their status). Since assurance on this
score rests on no grounds of proof other than the historical, and since there
ever will remain in the judgment of the people (if it subjects itself to the
slightest test) the absolute possibility of an error which has crept in through
their interpretation or through previous classical exegesis, the clergyman
would be requiring the people at least inwardly to confess something to be
as true as is their belief in God, i.e., to confess, as though in the presence
of God, something which they do not know with certainty. Such, for
instance, would be the acknowledgment, as a part of religion directly
commanded by God, of the setting aside of a certain day for the periodic
public cultivation of godliness; or, again, the confession of firm belief in a
mystery which the layman does not even understand. Here the
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layman's spiritual superior would himself go counter to conscience in
forcing others to believe that of which he himself can never be wholly
convinced; he should therefore in justice consider well what he does, for he
must answer for all abuse arising out of such a compulsory faith. Thus there
may, perhaps, be truth in what is believed but at the same time
untruthfulness1 in the belief (or even in the mere inner confession thereof),
and this is in itself damnable.
Although, as was noted above,2 men who have made but the merest
beginning in the freedom of thought,* because previously they were under a
slavish yoke of belief (e.g., the Protestants), forthwith hold themselves to
be, as it were, the more ennobled the less they need to believe (of what is
positive and what belongs to clerical precepts); the exact contrary holds
concerning those who have so far not been able, or have not wished, to
make an attempt of this kind, for their principle is: It is expedient to believe
too much rather than too little, on the ground that what we do over and
above what we owe will at least do no harm and might even help. Upon this
illusion, which makes dishonesty in religious confessions a basic principle
(to which one subscribes the more easily since religion makes good every
mistake, and hence that of dishonesty along with the rest), is based the so-
called maxim of certainty in matters of faith (argumentum a tuto): If that
which I profess regarding God is true, I have hit the mark; if it is untrue,
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and in addition not something in itself forbidden, I have merely believed it
superfluously and have burdened myself with what was indeed not
necessary but was after all only an inconvenience, not a transgression. The
hypocrite regards as a mere nothing the danger arising from the dishonesty
of his profession, the violation of conscience, involved in proclaiming even
before God that something is certain, when he is aware that, its nature being
what it is, it cannot be asserted with unconditional assurance. The genuine
maxim of certainty, which alone is compatible with religion, is just the
reverse of the former: Whatever, as the means or the condition of salvation,
I can know not through my own reason but only through revelation, and
can incorporate into my confession only through the agency of an historical
faith, and which, in addition, does not contradict pure moral principles--this
I cannot, indeed, believe and profess as certain, but I can as little reject it as
being surely false; nevertheless, without determining anything on this score,
I may expect that whatever therein is salutary will stand me in good stead so
far as I do not render myself unworthy of it through defect of the moral
disposition in good life-conduct. In this maxim there is genuine moral
certainty, namely, certainty in the eye of conscience (and more than this
cannot be required of a man); on the other hand, the greatest danger and
uncertainty attend the supposedly prudential device of craftily evading the
harmful consequences which might accrue to me from non-profession, in
that, through seeking the favor of both parties, I am liable to incur the
disfavor of both.
Let the author of a creed, or the teacher of a church, yea, let every
man, so far as he is inwardly to acknowledge a conviction regarding
dogmas as divine revelations, ask himself: Do you really trust yourself to
assert the truth of these dogmas in the sight of Him who knows the heart
and at the risk of losing all that is valuable and holy to you? I must needs
have a very disparaging conception of human nature (which is, after all, not
wholly unsusceptible of goodness) not to anticipate that even the boldest
teacher
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of faith would have to tremble at such a question. But if this is so, how is
it consistent with conscientiousness to insist, none the less, upon such a
declaration of faith as admits of no reservation, and even to proclaim that the
very audacity of such an asseveration is in itself a duty and a service to
God, when thereby human freedom, which is absolutely required in all
moral matters (such as the adoption of a religion) is wholly crushed under
foot and no place is even left for the good will, which says: "Lord, I
believe; help thou my unbelief!"1
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GENERAL OBSERVATION
Whatever good man is able to do through his own efforts, under
laws of freedom, in contrast to what he can do only with supernatural
assistance, can be called nature, as distinguished from grace. Not that we
understand by the former expression a physical property distinguished from
freedom; we use it merely because we are at least acquainted with the laws
of this capacity (laws of virtue), and because reason thus possesses a visible
and comprehensible clue to it, considered as analogous to [physical] nature;
on the other hand, we remain wholly in the dark as to when, what, or how
much, grace will accomplish in us, and reason is left, on this score, as with
the supernatural in general (to which morality, if regarded as holiness,
belongs), without any knowledge of the laws according to which it might
occur.
The concept of a supernatural accession to our moral, though
deficient, capacity and even to our not wholly purified and certainly weak
disposition to perform our entire duty, is a transcendent concept, and is a
bare idea, of whose reality no experience can assure us. Even when
accepted as an idea in nothing but a practical context it is very hazardous,
and hard to reconcile with reason, since that which is to be accredited to us
as morally good conduct must take place not through foreign influence but
solely through the best possible use of our own powers. And yet the
impossibility thereof (i.e., of both these things occurring side by side)
cannot really be proved, because freedom itself, though containing nothing
supernatural in its conception, remains, as regards its possibility, just as
incomprehensible to us as is the supernatural factor which we would like to
regard as a supplement to the spontaneous but deficient determination of
freedom.
Now we at least know the laws of freedom (the moral laws),
according to which it is to be determined. But we cannot know anything at
all about supernatural aid--whether a certain moral power, perceptible to us,
really comes from above or, indeed, on what occasions and under what
conditions it may be expected. Hence, apart from the general assumption
that grace will effect in us what nature cannot, provided only we have made
the maximum use of our own powers, we will not be able to make any
further use of this idea, either as to how (beyond a constant striving after a
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good life) we might draw down to us its cooperation, or how we might
determine on what occasions to expect it. This idea is wholly transcendent;
and it is even salutary to hold it, as a sacred thing, at a respectful distance,
lest, under the illusion of performing miracles ourselves or observing
miracles within us, we render ourselves unfit for all use of reason or allow
ourselves to fall into the indolence of awaiting from above, in passive
leisure, what we should seek within.
Now means are all the intermediate causes, which man has in his
power, whereby a certain purpose may be achieved. There is no other
means (and there can be no other) of becoming worthy of heavenly
assistance than earnest endeavor to better in every possible way our moral
nature and thus render ourselves susceptible of having the fitness of this
nature perfected for divine approval, so far as this perfecting is not in our
power; for that divine aid, which we await, itself really aims at nothing but
our morality. It was already to be expected a priori that the impure man
would not seek this aid here but rather in certain sensuous contrivances
(which he does, indeed, have in his power but which, in themselves, cannot
make a man better, and yet herein are supposed to achieve this very result in
supernatural fashion); and this is what actually happens. The concept of a
so-called means of grace, although it is internally self-contradictory (in
accordance with what has just been said), serves here none the less as a
means of self-deception which is as common as it is detrimental to true
religion.
The true (moral) service of God, which the faithful must render as
subjects belonging to His kingdom but no less as citizens thereof (under
laws of freedom), is itself, indeed, like the kingdom, invisible, i.e., a
service of the heart (in spirit and in truth). It can consist solely in the
disposition of obedience to all true duties as divine commands, not in
actions directed exclusively to God. Yet for man the invisible needs to be
represented through the visible (the sensuous); yea, what is more, it needs
to be accompanied by the visible in the interest of practicability and, though
it is intellectual, must be made, as it were (according to a certain analogy),
perceptual. This is a means of simply picturing to ourselves our duty in the
service of God, a means which, although really indispensable, is extremely
liable to the danger of misconstruction; for, through an illusion that steals
over us, it is easily held to be the service of God itself, and is, indeed,
commonly thus spoken of.
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This alleged service of God, when brought back to its spirit and its
true meaning, namely, to a disposition dedicating itself to the kingdom of
God within us and without us, can be divided, even by reason, into four
observances of duty; and certain corresponding rites, which do not stand in
a necessary relation to these observances, have yet been associated with
them, because the rites are deemed to serve as schemata1 for the duties and
thus, for ages past, have been regarded as useful means for sensuously
awakening and sustaining our attention to the true service of God. They
base themselves, one and all, upon the intention to further the morally good
and are: (l) (private prayer)--firmly to establish this goodness in ourselves,
and repeatedly to awaken the disposition of goodness in the heart; (2)
(church-going)--the spreading abroad of goodness through public assembly
on days legally dedicated thereto, in order that religious doctrines and
wishes (together with corresponding dispositions) may be expressed there
and thus be generally shared; (3) (in the Christian religion, baptism)--the
propagation of goodness in posterity through the reception of newly
entering members into the fellowship of faith, as a duty; also their
instruction in such goodness; (4) (communion)--the maintenance of this
fellowship through a repeated public formality which makes enduring the
union of these members into an ethical body and this, indeed, according to
the principle of the mutual equality of their rights and joint participation in
all the fruits of moral goodness.
Every initiatory step in the realm of religion, which we do not take in
a purely moral manner but rather have recourse to as in itself a means of
making us well-pleasing to God and thus, through Him, of satisfying all
our wishes, is fetish-faith. This is the persuasion that what can produce no
effect at all according either to natural laws or to moral laws of reason, will
yet, of itself, bring about what is wished for, if only we firmly believe that
it will do so, and if we accompany this belief with certain formalities. Even
where the conviction has taken hold that everything in religion depends
upon moral goodness, which can arise only from action, the sensuous man
still searches for a secret path by which to evade that arduous condition,
with the notion, namely, that if
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only he honors the custom (the formality), God will surely accept it in lieu
of the act itself. This would certainly have to be called an instance of
transcendent grace on God's part, were it not rather a grace dreamed of in
slothful trust, or even in a trust which is itself feigned. Thus in every type
of public belief man has devised for himself certain practices, as means of
grace, though, to be sure, in all these types the practices are not, as they are
in the Christian, related to practical concepts of reason and to dispositions
conformable to them. (There are, for instance, the five great commands in
the Mohammedan type of belief: washing, praying, fasting, almsgiving, and
pilgrimage to Mecca. Of these, almsgiving alone would deserve to be
excepted were it to take place from a truly virtuous and at the same time
religious disposition, as a human duty, and would thus really merit regard
as a genuine means of grace; but the fact is, on the contrary, that it does not
deserve to be thus distinguished from the rest because, under this faith,
almsgiving can well go hand in hand with the extortion from others of what,
as a sacrifice, is offered to God in the person of the poor.)
There can, indeed, be three kinds of illusory faith that involve the
possibility of our overstepping the bounds of our reason in the direction of
the supernatural (which is not, according to the laws of reason, an object
either of theoretical or practical use). First, the belief in knowing through
experience something whose occurrence, as under objective laws of
experience, we ourselves can recognize to be impossible (the faith in
miracles). Second, the illusion of having to include among our rational
concepts, as necessary to our best moral interests, that of which we
ourselves can form, through reason, no concept (the faith in mysteries).
Third, the illusion of being able to bring about, through the use of merely
natural means, an effect which is, for us, a mystery, namely, the influence
of God upon our morality (the faith in means of grace). We have dealt with
the first two of these artificial modes of belief in the General Observations
following the two immediately preceding Books of this work. It still
remains, therefore, for us to treat of the means of grace (which are further
distinguished from works of grace, i.e., supernatural moral influences in
relation to which we are merely passive; but the imagined experience of
these is a fanatical illusion pertaining entirely to the emotions).
1. Praying, thought of as an inner formal service of God and
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hence as a means of grace, is a superstitious illusion (a fetish-making); for it
is no more than a stated wish directed to a Being who needs no such
information regarding the inner disposition of the wisher; therefore nothing
is accomplished by it, and it discharges none of the duties to which, as
commands of God, we are obligated; hence God is not really served. A
heart-felt wish to be well-pleasing to God in our every act and abstention, or
in other words, the disposition, accompanying all our actions, to perform
these as though they were being executed in the service of God, is the spirit
of prayer which can, and should, be present in us "without ceasing."1 But
to clothe* this wish (even though it be but inwardly) in words
[184]
and formulas can, at best, possess only the value of a means where-
[185]
by that disposition within us may be repeatedly quickened, and can have no
direct bearing upon the divine approval; and for this very reason it cannot be
a duty for everyone. For a means can be prescribed only to him who needs
it for certain ends; but certainly not all men stand in need of this means (of
conversing within and really with oneself, but ostensibly of speaking the
more intelligibly with God). Rather must one labor to this end through
continued clarification and elevation of the moral disposition, in order that
this spirit of prayer alone be sufficiently quickened within us and that the
letter of it (at least as directed to our own advantage) finally fall away. For
the letter, like everything which is aimed at a given end indirectly, rather
weakens the effect of the moral idea (which, taken subjectively, is called
devotion). Thus the contemplation of the profound wisdom of the divine
creation in the smallest things, and of its majesty in the great--which may
indeed have already been recognized by men in the past, but in more recent
times has grown into the highest wonder--this contemplation is a power
which cannot only transport the mind into that sinking mood, called
adoration, annihilating men, as it were, in their own eyes; it is also, in
respect of its own moral determination, so soul-elevating a power that
words, in comparison, even were they those of the royal suppliant David
(who knew little of all those marvels),
[186]
must needs pass away as empty sound because the emotion arising from
such a vision of the hand of God is inexpressible. Men, are prone,
moreover, when their hearts are disposed to religion, to transform what
really has reference solely to their own moral improvement into a courtly
service, wherein the humiliations and glorifications usually are the less felt
in a moral way the more volubly they are expressed. It is therefore the more
necessary carefully to inculcate set forms of prayer in children (who still
stand in need of the letter), even in their earliest years, so that the language
(even language spoken inwardly, yea, even the attempts to attune the mind
to the comprehension of the idea of God, which is to be brought nearer to
intuition) may possess here no value in itself but may be used merely to
quicken the disposition to a course of life well-pleasing to God, those
words being but an aid to the imagination. Otherwise all these devout
attestations of awe involve the danger of producing nothing but hypocritical
veneration of God instead of a practical service of Him--a service which
never consists in mere feelings.
2. Church-going, thought of as the ceremonial public service of God
in a church, in general, is, considered as a sensuous representation of the
community of believers, not only a means to be valued by each individual
for his own edification* but also a duty
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directly obligating them as a group, as citizens of a divine state which is to
appear here on earth; provided, that this church contains no formalities
which might lead to idolatry and so burden the conscience, e.g., certain
prayers to God, with His infinite mercy personified under the name of a
man--for such sensuous representation of God is contrary to the command
of reason: "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, etc."1 But to
wish to use it as, in itself, a means of grace, as though thereby God were
directly served and as though He had attached special favors to the
celebration of this solemnity (which is merely a sensuous representation of
the universality of religion), is an illusion which does, indeed, well comport
with the cast of mind of a good citizen in a political commonwealth, and
with external propriety, yet which not only contributes nothing to the
character of such a man, as a citizen in the kingdom of God, but rather
debases it, and serves, by means of a deceptive veneer, to conceal the bad
moral content of his disposition from the eyes of others, and even from his
own eyes.
3. The ceremonial initiation, taking place but once, into the church-
community, that is, one's first acceptance as a member of a church (in the
Christian church through baptism) is a highly significant ceremony which
lays a grave obligation either upon the initiate, if he is in a position himself
to confess his faith, or upon the witnesses who pledge themselves to take
care of his education in this faith. This aims at something holy (the
development of a man into a citizen in a divine state) but this act performed
by others is not in itself holy or productive of holiness and receptivity for
the divine grace in this individual; hence it is no means of grace, however
exaggerated the esteem in which it was held in the early Greek church,
where it was believed capable, in an instant, of washing away all sins--and
here this illusion publicly revealed its affinity to an almost more than
heathenish superstition.
4. The oft-repeated ceremony (communion of a renewal,
continuation, and propagation of this churchly community under laws of
equality, a ceremony which indeed can be performed, after the example of
the Founder of such a church (and, at the same time, in memory of him),
through the formality of a common partaking at the same table, contains
within itself something great, expanding the narrow, selfish, and unsociable
cast of mind among men,
[188]
especially in matters of religion, toward the idea of a cosmopolitan moral
community; and it is a good means of enlivening a community to the moral
disposition of brotherly love which it represents. But to assert that God has
attached special favors to the celebration of this solemnity, and to
incorporate among the articles of faith the proposition that this ceremony,
which is after all but a churchly act, is, in addition, a means of grace--this is
a religious illusion which can do naught but work counter to the spirit of
religion. Clericalism in general would therefore be the dominion of the
clergy over men's hearts, usurped by dint of arrogating to themselves the
prestige attached to) exclusive possession of means of grace.
* * * * * * * * * * *
All such artificial self-deceptions in religious matters have a common
basis. Among the three divine moral attributes, holiness, mercy, and justice,
man habitually turns directly to the second in order thus to avoid the
forbidding condition of conforming to the requirements of the first. It is
tedious to be a good servant (here one is forever hearing only about one's
duties); man would therefore rather be a favorite, where much is overlooked
or else, when duty has been too grossly violated, everything is atoned for
through the agency of some one or other favored in the highest degree--
man, meanwhile, remaining the servile knave he ever was. But in order to
satisfy himself, with some color of truth, concerning the feasibility of this
intention of his, he has the habit of transferring his concept of a man
(including his faults) to the Godhead; and just as, even in the best ruler of
our race, legislative rigor, beneficent grace, and scrupulous justice do not
(as they should) operate separately, each by itself, to produce a moral effect
upon the actions of the subject, but mingle with one another in the thinking
of the human ruler when he is making his decisions, so that one need only
seek to circumvent one of these attributes, the fallible wisdom of the human
will, in order to determine the other two to compliance; even so does man
hope to accomplish the same thing with God by applying himself solely to
His grace. (For this reason it was important for religion that the attributes,
or rather the relations of God to man, which were conceived of, should be
separated through the idea of a triune personality, wherein God is to be
thought of analogously to this idea in order that each attribute or relation be
[189]
made specifically cognizable.) To this end man busies himself with every
conceivable formality, designed to indicate how greatly he respects the
divine commands, in order that it may not be necessary for him to obey
them; and, that his idle wishes may serve also to make good the
disobedience of these commands, he cries: "Lord, Lord," so as not to have
to "do the will of his heavenly Father."1 Thus he comes to conceive of the
ceremonies, wherein certain means are used to quicken truly practical
dispositions, as in themselves means of grace; he even proclaims the belief,
that they are such, to be itself an essential part of religion (the common man
actually regards it as the whole of religion); and he leaves it to all-gracious
Providence to make a better man of him, while he busies himself with piety
(a passive respect for the law of God) rather than with virtue (the application
of one's own powers in discharging the duty which one respects)--and,
after all, it is only the latter, combined with the former, that can give us the
idea which one intends by the word godliness (true religious disposition).
When the illusion of this supposed favorite of heaven mounts to the
point where he fanatically imagines that he feels special works of grace
within himself (or even where he actually presumes to be confident of a
fancied occult intercourse with God), virtue comes at last actually to arouse
his loathing, and becomes for him an object of contempt. Hence it is no
wonder that the complaint is made publicly, that religion still contributes so
little to men's improvement, and that the inner light ("under a bushel"2) of
these favored ones does not shine forth outwardly in good works also, yea,
(as, in view of their pretensions, one could rightly demand) preeminently,
above other men of native honesty who, in brief, take religion unto
themselves not as a substitute for, but as a furtherance of, the virtuous
disposition which shows itself through actions, in a good course of life. Yet
the Teacher of the Gospel has himself put into our hands these external
evidences of outer experience as a touchstone, [by telling us that] we can
know men by their fruits and that every man can know himself. But thus far
we do not see that those who, in their own opinion, are extraordinarily
favored (the chosen ones) surpass in the very least the naturally
[190]
honest man, who can be relied upon in social intercourse, in business, or in
trouble; on the contrary, taken as a whole, the chosen ones can scarcely
abide comparison with him, which proves that the right course is not to go
from grace to virtue but rather progress from virtue to pardoning grace.
NOTES:
1 [139] [Cf. Matthew VI, 20; Luke XI, 2]
* [142] By means of this definition many an erroneous interpretation
of the concept of a religion in general is obviated. First, in religion, as
regards the theoretical apprehension and avowal of belief, no assertorial
knowledge is required (even of God's existence), since, with our lack of
insight into supersensible objects, such avowal might well be dissembled;
rather is it merely a problematical assumption (hypothesis) regarding the
highest cause of things that is presupposed speculatively, yet with an eye to
the object toward which our morally legislative reason bids us strive--an
assertorial faith, practical and therefore free, and giving promise of the
realization of this its ultimate aim. This faith needs merely the idea of God,
to which all morally earnest (and therefore confident) endeavor for the good
must inevitably lead; it need not presume that it can certify the objective
reality of this idea through theoretical apprehension. Indeed, the minimum
of knowledge (it is possible that there may be a God) must suffice,
subjectively, for whatever can be made the duty of every man. Second, this
definition of a religion in general obviates the erroneous representation of
religion as an aggregate of special duties having reference directly to God;
thus it prevents our taking on (as men are otherwise very much inclined to
do) courtly obligations over and above the ethico-civil duties of humanity
(of man to man) and our seeking, perchance, even to make good the
deficiency of the latter by means of the former. There are no special duties
to God in a universal religion, for God can receive nothing from us; we
cannot act for Him, nor yet upon Him. To wish to transform a guilty awe of
Him into a duty of the sort described is to forget that awe is not a special act
of religion but rather the religious temper in all our actions done in
conformity with duty. And when it is said: "We ought to obey God rather
than men,"1 this means only that when statutory commands, regarding
which men can be legislators and judges, come into conflict with duties
which reason prescribes unconditionally, concerning whose observance or
transgression God alone can be the judge, the former must yield precedence
to the latter. But were we willing to regard the statutory commands, which
are given out by a church as coming from God, as constituting that wherein
God must be obeyed more than man, such a principle might easily become
the war-cry, often heard, of hypocritical and ambitious clerics in revolt
against their civil superiors. For that which is permissible, i.e., which the
civil authorities command, is certainly duty; but whether something which is
indeed permissible in itself, but cognizable by us only through divine
revelation, is really commanded by God--that is (at least for the most part)
highly uncertain.
1 [Cf. Acts V, 29]
1 [146] [ein Factum]
2 [146] [WillkŸrlichen]
1 [147] [Our phrase "arbitrary will" translates "willkŸrlichen
Ursprunge"]
* [147] It is hard to understand why this clear prohibition against
this method of forcing confession before a civil tribunal of religious
teachers--a method based upon mere superstition, not upon
conscientiousness--is held as so unimportant. For that it is superstition
whose efficacy is here most relied on is evident from the fact that the man
whom one does not trust to tell the truth in a solemn statement, on the
truthfulness of which depends a decision concerning the rights of a human
being (the holiest of beings in this world) is yet expected to be persuaded to
speak truly, by the use of a formula through which, over and above that
statement, he simply calls down upon himself divine punishments (which in
any event, with such a lie, he cannot escape) just as though it rested with
him whether or not to render account to this supreme tribunal. In the
passage of Scripture cited above, the mode of confirmation by oath is
represented as an absurd presumption, the attempt to make actual, as though
with magical words, what is really not in our power. But it is clearly evident
that the wise Teacher who here says that whatever goes beyond Yea, Yea,
and Nay, Nay, in the asseveration of truth comes of evil, had in view the
bad effect which oaths bring in their train--namely, that the greater
importance attached to them almost sanctions the common lie.
* [148] The strait gate and the narrow way, which leads to life, is
that of good life-conduct; the wide gale and the broad way, found by many,
is the church. Not that the church and its doctrines are responsible for men
being lost, but that the entrance into it and the knowledge of its statutes or
celebration of its rites are regarded as the manner in which God really
wishes to be served.
1 [148] [Triebfeder]
* [149] We know nothing of the future, and we ought not to seek to
know more than what is rationally bound up with the incentives of morality
and their end. Here belongs the belief that there are no good actions which
will not, in the next world, have their good consequences for him who
performs them; that, therefore, however reprehensible a man may find
himself at the end of
[150]
his life, he must not on that account refrain from doing at least one more
good deed which is in his power, and that, in so doing, he has reason to
hope that, in proportion as he possesses in this action a purely good intent,
the act will be of greater worth than those actionless absolutions which are
supposed to compensate for the deficiency of good deeds without providing
anything for the lessening of the guilt.
1 [153] [The source of this quotation has not been found.]
[154] Mendelssohn1 very ingeniously makes use of this weak spot
in the customary presentation of Christianity wholly to reject every demand
upon a son of Israel that he change his religion. For, he says, since the
Jewish faith itself is, according to the avowal of Christians, the substructure
upon which the superstructure of Christianity rests, the demand that it be
abandoned is equivalent to expecting someone to demolish the ground floor
of a house in order to take up his abode in the second story. His real
intention is fairly clear. He means to say: First wholly remove Judaism itself
out of your religion (it can always remain, as an antiquity, in the historical
account of the faith); we can then take your proposal under advisement.
(Actually nothing would then be left but pure moral religion unencumbered
by statutes.) Our burden will not be lightened in the least by throwing off
the yoke of outer observances if, in its place, another yoke, namely
confession of faith in sacred history--a yoke which rests far more heavily
upon the conscientious--is substituted in its place.
In any case, the sacred books of this people will doubtless always be
preserved and will continue to possess value for scholarship even if not for
the benefit of religion: since the history of no other people dates back, with
some color of credibility, so far as does this, into epochs of antiquity (even
to the beginning of the world) in which all secular history known to us can
be arranged; and thus the great hiatus, which must be left by the latter, is
filled by the former.
1 [154] [Moses Mendelssohn, 1729-1786, (father of Felix
Mendelssohn, the composer) was a prominent Jewish philosopher and
theologian. Kant and Mendelssohn were familiar, over a long period of
years, with each other's writings, and in 1763 both submitted essays for a
prize offered by the Royal Academy in Berlin; Mendelssohn won the prize,
Kant having been given second place, and their two essays were published
together in 1764
Kant here refers to Mendelssohn's Jerusalem, oder Ÿber religišse
Macht und Judenthum, ("Jerusalem, or concerning Religious Power and
Judaism"). Cf. Kant's Streit der FacultŠten, Berlin Edition, 1907, p. 52 n.]
1 [155] [Gemeinde, congregations]
* [156] Illusion [Wahn] is the deception of regarding the mere
representation of a thing as equivalent to the thing itself. Thus a rich miser is
subject to the covetous illusion of holding the idea of being able sometime
or other to make use of his riches, when he may wish to do so, as an
adequate substitute for never using them. The illusion of honor ascribes to
praise by others, which is at bottom merely the outward expression of their
regard (perhaps inwardly not entertained by them at all) the worth which
ought to be attached solely to the regard itself. Here too belongs the passion
for titles and orders, since these are but outward representations of a
superiority over others. Even madness is so named [Wahnsinn] because it
commonly takes a mere representation (of the imagination) for the presence
of the thing itself and values it accordingly. Now the consciousness of
possessing a means to some end or other (before one has availed oneself of
this means) is the possession of the end in representation only; hence to
content oneself with the former, just as though it could take the place of the
latter, is a practical illusion, which is all we are speaking of here.
[157] Though it does indeed sound dangerous, it is in no way
reprehensible to say that every man creates a God for himself, nay, must
make himself such a God according to moral concepts (and must add those
infinitely great attributes which characterize a Being capable of exhibiting, in
the world, an object commensurate with Himself), in order to honor in Him
the 0ne who created him. For in whatever manner a being has been made
known to him by another and described as God, yea, even if such a being
had appeared to him (if this is possible), he must first of all compare this
representation with his ideal in order to judge whether he is entitled to
regard it and to honor it as a divinity. Hence there can be no religion
springing from revelation alone, i.e., without first positing that concept, in
its purity, as a touchstone. Without this all reverence for God would be
idolatry.
* [158] For those who believe that the critique of pure reason
contradicts itself whenever my distinctions between the sensuous and the
intellectual are not wholly congenial to them, I here remark that, when
mention is made of sensuous means furthering what is intellectual (of the
pure moral disposition), or of the former opposing the latter, the influence
of two such heterogeneous principles must not be thought of as direct. That
is, as sensuous beings we can work against the law, or for its behoof, only
in the appearances of the intellectual principle, i.e., in the determination of
our physical powers through free choicew which expresses itself in actions;
so that cause and effect may be represented as actually homogeneous. But in
what concerns the supersensible (the subjective principle of morality in us,
that which lies hidden in the incomprehensible attribute of freedom), for
example, the pure religious disposition, we have insight only into its law
(though this, indeed. suffices) touching the relation of cause and effect in
man; that is, we cannot explain to ourselves the possibility of actions, as
events in the sensuous world, in terms of the moral constitution of man, as
imputable to him, just because these are free acts and because the grounds
of explanation of all events must be derived from the sensuous world.
1 [160] [Fables II, 5. Kant draws upon this passage (lines 1-3):
Est ardelionum quaedam Romae natio
Trepide concursans, occupata in otio
Gratis anhelans, multa agendo nil agens.
"There is a certain set of busybodies at Rome, hurriedly running to and fro,
busily engaged in idleness, out of breath for no reason, doing much but
achieving naught."]
* [161] It is a psychological phenomenon that the adherents of a
denomination wherein somewhat less of the statutory is offered for belief,
feel themselves, by virtue of this fact, somewhat ennobled and more
enlightened, even though they have still retained so much of this statutory
belief that they are not entitled to look down with contempt (as they actually
do), from their fancied heights of purity, upon their brothers in churchly
illusion. The reason for this is that, because of this difference of belief,
however slight it be, they find themselves a little nearer to pure moral
religion, even though they remain attached to the illusion of wishing to
supplement it by means of pious observances in which reason is only less
passive.
1 [161] [Weltbesten]
1 [162] [Cf. John III, 8]
[163] This name (Pfaffentum), signifying merely the authority of a
spiritual father1 (pappa), possesses a censorious meaning as well, only
because of the attendant concept of a spiritual despotism, to be found in all
forms of ecclesiasticism, however unpretentious and popular they may
declare themselves. I do not by any means want to be understood as
desiring, in my comparison of the sects, to treat with contempt one of them,
with its practices and ordinances, as contrasted with another. All deserve the
same respect so far as their forms are the attempts of poor mortals to render
perceptible to the senses the kingdom of God on earth, but also the same
blame when they take the form of the representation of this idea (in a visible
church) to be the thing itself.
1 [163] [Papacy would, in this context, best translate Pfaffentum,
but we have used clericalism here and elsewhere since Kant is referring to
the Protestant as well as to the Roman Catholic clergy.]
1 [164] [Tempeldienst, Kirchendienst]
1 [165] [willkŸrlich]
1 [167] [Cf. Romans VIII, 21]
* [167] "That yoke is easy, and the burden is light"2 where the duty,
which binds every man, can be regarded as imposed on him by himself and
through his own reason; and that yoke he therefore so far takes upon
himself freely as his own. Only the moral laws, however, taken as divine
commands, are of this sort; of these alone the Founder of the true church
could say, "My commandments are not grievous."3 This expression merely
means that these commands are not burdensome because everyone of
himself perceives the necessity of their obedience and so nothing is here
forced upon him; whereas despotically imperative ordinances, in which we
can see no use, though they are imposed upon us for our best interests (yet
not through our own reason), are a kind of vexation (drudgery) to which we
subject ourselves only under compulsion. In themselves, however, the
actions, regarded in the purity of their source, which are commanded by
those moral laws, are precisely those which man finds the hardest, and in
place of which he would gladly undertake the most burdensome pious
drudgery were it possible to offer this in payment for the other.
2 [167] [Cf. Matthew XI, 30]
3 [167] [Cf. I John V, 3]
1 [169] [Cf. I Corinthians I, 26]
2 [169] [Cf. I Corinthians I, 27]
* [172] The various kinds of belief among peoples seem to give
them, after a time, a character, revealing itself outwardly in civil relations,
which is later attributed to them as though it were universally a
temperamental trait. Thus Judaism in its original economy, under which a
people was to separate itself from all other peoples by means of every
conceivable, and some arduous, observances and was to refrain from all
intermingling with them, drew down upon itself the charge of misanthropy.
Mohammedanism is characterized by arrogant pride because it finds
confirmation of its faith not in miracles but in victories and the subjugation
of many peoples, and because its devotional practices are all of the spirited
sort. The Hindu faith gives its adherents the character of pusillanimity for
reasons which are directly
[173]
opposed to those productive of the temper just mentioned [the
Mohammedan].
Now surely it is not because of the inner nature of the Christian faith
but because of the manner in which it is presented to the heart and mind,
that a similar charge can be brought against it with respect to those who
have the most heartfelt intentions toward it but who, starting with human
corruption, and despairing of all virtue, place their religious principle solely
in piety (whereby is meant the principle of a passive attitude toward a
godliness which is to be awaited from a power above). Such men never
place any reliance in themselves, but look about them, in perpetual anxiety,
for a supernatural assistance, and in this very self-abnegation (which is not
humility) fancy themselves to possess a means of obtaining favor. The
outward expression of this (in pietism or in spurious devotion) signalizes a
slavish cast of mind.
[172] This remarkable phenomenon (of the pride of an ignorant
though intelligent people in its faith) may also originate from the fancy of its
founder that he alone had once again renewed on earth the concept of God's
unity and of His supersensible nature. He would indeed have ennobled his
people by release from image-worship and the anarchy of polytheism could
he with justice have credited himself with this achievement. As regards the
characteristic of the third type of religious fellowship [the Christian], which
is based upon a misconceived humility, the depreciation of self-conceit in
the evaluation of one's own moral worth, through consideration of the
holiness of the law, should bring about not contempt for oneself but rather
the resolution, conformable to this noble predisposition in us, to approach
ever nearer to agreement with this law. Instead of this, however, virtue,
which really consists in the courage for this improvement, has, as a name
already suspected of self-conceit, been exiled into paganism, and
sycophantic courting of favor is extolled in its place.
Devotional hypocrisy (bigotry, devotia spuria) consists in the habit
of identifying the practice of piety not with well-pleasing actions (in the
performance of all human duties) but with direct commerce with God
through manifestations of awe. This practice must then be classed as
compulsory service (opus operatum), except that it adds to this superstition
the fanatical illusion of imagined supersensible (heavenly) feelings.
1 [173] [Epistles, I, 18: Si tutius putas illud cautissimi cuiusque
pr¾ceptum: quod dubites, ne feceris. "... if you consider more safe that rule
of a certain extremely cautious man: 'What you have doubts about, do not
do.' "]
1 [174] ["As it was methodically developed by the Jesuits and the
Redemptorists (Alphons Liguori). The classical formula of probabilism--
laid down as early as 1577 by the Dominican Bartholomew Medina--runs as
follows: si est opinio probabilis, licitum est eam sequi, licet opposita est
probabilior." (Note in Berlin Edition.) The Latin may be translated: "If an
opinion is probable, to follow it is allowable, even granted that the opposite
opinion is more probable."]
1 [174] ["Compel them to come in." Cf. Luke XIV, 23: "Go out into
the highways and hedges and compel them to come in." "This phrase (coge
intrare) Augustine early used (Epistles 93 and 185) as evidencing the duty
of states to support the church in coercive measures against idolaters,
heretics, and schismatics." (Note in Berlin Edition.)]
1 [176] [Unwahrhaftigkeit, i.e., insincerity.]
2 [176] [See p. 161 n.]
* [176] I grant that I cannot really reconcile myself to the following
expressions made use of even by clever men: "A certain people (engaged in
a struggle for civil freedom) is not yet ripe for freedom"; "The bondmen of a
landed proprietor are not yet ready for freedom"; and hence, likewise;
"Mankind in general is not yet ripe for freedom of belief." For according to
such a presupposition, freedom will never arrive, since we cannot ripen to
this freedom if we are not first of all placed therein (we must be free in order
to be able to make purposive use of our powers in freedom). The first
attempts will indeed be crude and usually will be attended by a more painful
and more dangerous state than that in which we are still under the orders
and also the care of others; yet we never ripen with respect to reason except
through our own efforts (which we can make only when we are free). I
raise no protest when those who hold power in their hands, being
constrained by the circumstances of the times, postpone far, very far, into
the future the sundering of these three3 bonds. But to proceed on the
principle that those who are once
[177]
subjected to these bonds are essentially unfit for freedom and that one is
justified in continually removing them farther from it is to usurp the
prerogatives of Divinity itself, which created men for freedom. It is certainly
more convenient to rule in state, household, and church if one is able to
carry out such a principle. But is it also more just?
3 [176] [Civil, economic or domestic, and religious, corresponding
to the quoted expressions at the opening of the note.]
[178] The very man who has the temerity to say: He who does not
believe in this or that historical doctrine as a sacred truth, that man is
damned, ought to be able to say also: If what I am now telling you is not
true, let me be damned! Were there anyone who could make such a dreadful
declaration, I should advise the conduct toward him suggested by the
Persian proverb concerning a hadji: If a man has been in Mecca once (as a
pilgrim), move out of the house in which he is living; if he has been there
twice, leave the street on which he is to be found; but if he has been there
three times, forsake the city, or even the land, which he inhabits!
1 [178] [Cf. Mark IX, 24]
[178] O sincerity! Thou Astraea, that hast fled from earth to
heaven, how mayst thou (the basis of conscience, and hence of all inner
religion) be drawn down thence to us again? I can admit, though it is much
to be deplored, that candor (in speaking the whole truth which one knows)
is not to be found in human nature. But we must be able to demand sincerity
(that all that one says be said with truthfulness), and indeed if there were in
our nature no predisposition to sincerity, whose cultivation merely is
neglected, the human race must needs be, in its own eyes, an object of the
deepest contempt. Yet this sought for quality of mind is such that it is
exposed to many temptations and entails many a sacrifice, and hence calls
for moral strength, or virtue (which must be won); moreover it must be
guarded and cultivated earlier than any other, because the opposed
propensity is the hardest to extirpate if it has been allowed firmly to root
itself. And if now we compare with the kind of instruction here
recommended our usual mode of upbringing, especially in the matter of
religion, or better, in doctrines of faith, where fidelity of memory in
answering questions relating to these doctrines, without regard to the
fidelity of the confession itself (which is never put to the test) is accepted as
sufficient to make a believer of him who does not even understand what he
declares to be holy, no longer shall we wonder at the lack of sincerity which
produces nothing but inward hypocrites.
1 [181] [A schema is a spatio-temporal or sensuous form of what, in
its essence, does not possess this character. The "certain analogy,"
parenthetically referred to above, is presumably the doctrine of the schema
in the Critique of Pure Reason (Transcendental Analytic, Book II, Chap.
I).]
[182] See the General Observation at the end of Book One.
1 [183] [Cf. I Thessalonians V, 17]
* [183] In the heart-felt wish which is the spirit of prayer, man seeks
but to work upon himself (for the quickening of his disposition by means of
the idea of God); whereas, in the other, where he declares himself in words,
and so outwardly, he tries to work upon God. In the first sense, a prayer
can be offered with perfect sincerity even though the man praying does not
presume to be able to affirm that the existence of God is wholly certain; in
its second form, as an address, he supposes this Supreme Being to be
present in person, or at least he adopts an attitude (even inwardly) as though
he were convinced of His presence, with the idea that, even if this be not
so, his acting thus can at least do him no harm and is more likely to get him
favor. Hence such complete sincerity cannot be found in the latter (verbal)
prayer as it can in the former (the pure spirit of prayer).
Anyone will find the truth of this last remark confirmed if he
conceives of a pious and well-meaning man, but one who is circumscribed
in respect of these purified religious concepts, whom some one else takes
unawares, I will not say in praying aloud, but merely in behavior indicative
of prayer. Everyone will of himself, of course, without my saying so,
expect a man thus surprised to fall into confusion or embarrassment, as
though in a situation whereof he should of ashamed. But why? It is because
a man caught talking aloud to himself is suspected for the moment of having
a slight attack of madness; and thus do we also judge a man (and not
altogether unjustly) when we find him, all alone, in an occupation or attitude
which can properly belong only to one who sees some one else before him--
and in the example we have given this is not the case.
Now the Teacher of the Gospel has expressed the spirit of prayer
most admirably in a formula which has at once rendered dispensable not
only all this, but also the prayer itself (as a verbal utterance). One finds in it
nothing but the resolution to good life-conduct which, taken with the
consciousness of our frailty, carries with it the persistent desire to be a
worthy member in the kingdom of God. Hence it contains no actual request
for something which God in His wisdom might well refuse us, but simply a
wish which, if it is genuine (active), of itself achieves its object (to become
a man well-pleasing to God). Even the wish for the means of sustaining our
existence (for bread) for one
[184]
day, since this wish is expressly not directed to its continuance but is the
effect of a felt need which is merely animal, is more a confession of what
nature in us demands than a special deliberate request for what the man [in
us] wills. The latter's request would be for bread for another day; but this is
here clearly enough ruled out.
A prayer of the kind described above arises in the moral disposition
(animated solely by the idea of God), and, as the moral spirit of prayer,
brings about its object (being well-pleasing to God) of itself. Only such a
prayer can be prayed with faith, and by this faith we mean the assurance that
the prayer will be heard. But only morality in us gives rise to this assurance,
for even were the petition to be for this day's bread alone, no one can be
assured that it will be heard, i.e., that its granting stands in necessary
conjunction with God's wisdom; it may perhaps comport better with this
wisdom to let the suppliant die today for lack of bread. It is, further, not
only a preposterous but also a presumptuous illusion to try to divine
whether, through the persistent importunity of one's request, God cannot be
diverted (to our present advantage) from the plan of His wisdom. Hence we
cannot hold that any prayer which is for a non-moral object is sure to be
heard, that is, we cannot pray for such an object in faith. Nay, more: even
were the object indeed moral, but yet possible only through supernatural
influence (or at least awaited by us from this source alone because we do
not wish to trouble ourselves to bring it about--as, for example, the change
of heart, the putting on of the new man, called rebirth) it is at least so very
uncertain that God will find it conformable to His wisdom to supplement in
supernatural fashion our (self-incurred) deficiency that we have reason,
rather, to expect the opposite. Man cannot therefore pray even for this in
faith.
In the light of the foregoing we can explain what might be the status
of a miracle-working faith (which would at the same time always be united
with an inner prayer). Since God can lend man no power to bring about
effects supernaturally (for that is a contradiction), and since man, on his
part, cannot determine, according to the concepts which he forms for
himself of good ends possible on earth, what the divine Wisdom judges in
these matters, and so cannot, by means of the wish he himself nurtures
within him, make use of the divine Power for his purposes, it follows that a
gift of miracles, I mean, a gift wherein it rests with man himself whether he
has it or not ("If ye had faith as a grain of mustard-seed, etc."1), is, taken
literally, not to be thought of. Such a faith, therefore, if it is to mean
anything at all, is simply an idea of the overwhelming importance of man's
moral nature, were he to possess it in its entire God-pleasing completeness
(which, indeed, he never does), greater than all other moving causes which
God in His supreme wisdom may have [at His disposal]; it is therefore a
basis upon which we can be confident that, were we now, or eventually, to
become wholly what we ought to be and (in continued approximation) could
be, nature would have to heed our wishes, which, under these
circumstances, however, would by the same token never be unwise.
[185]
As regards the edification sought in attendance at church, here too
public prayer is indeed no means of grace, yet it is a moral ceremony,
whether it consists in united singing of the hymn of faith, or in the address
formally directed to God, through the mouth of the clergyman and in the
name of the whole congregation, and embracing all the moral concerns of
men. Such an address, since it presents these last as a public concern,
wherein the wish of each individual ought to be represented as united with
the wishes of all toward the same ends (the ushering in of the kingdom of
God), cannot only raise the feelings to the point of moral exaltation
(whereas private prayers, because they are uttered without this sublime idea,
lose little by little, through habituation, their influence upon the heart); it
also possesses in itself a more rational basis than does private prayer for
clothing the moral wish, which constitutes the spirit of prayer, in a formal
mode of address--and it does this without picturing the Supreme Being as
present, or thinking of the special power of this rhetorical device as a means
of grace. For here there is a special purpose, namely, to set in more active
motion the moral motivating forces of each individual through a public
ceremony, representing the union of all men in a common desire for the
kingdom of God; and this cannot be accomplished more appropriately than
by speaking to the Head of this kingdom just as though He were specially
present in that very place.
1 [184] [Cf. Matthew XVII, 20; Luke XVII, 6]
* [186] If we seek for a meaning proper to this term, probably none
can be ascribed to it other than that it is to be understood as the moral result
produced upon the subject by devotion. Now this result does not consist in
feelings (this is already comprised in the very concept of devotion), even
though most men, presumed to be devout (and therefore called devotees),
identify it entirely with such feelings; hence the word edification [Erbauung]
must signify the result of devotion in the actual improvement of the man.
But this improvement becomes actual only if man systematically sets to
work, lays deep in his heart firm basic principles squaring with well-
understood concepts, erects thereupon dispositions measurable to the
differing weight of the duties connected with these principles, strengthens
and secures them against the onslaughts of the desires, and thus, as it were,
builds up a new man as a temple of God.1 One can easily see that this
building can progress but slowly; yet it must at least be possible to see that
something has been accomplished. But men believe themselves to be
mightily edified [erbaut] (through listening or reading and singing) while
absolutely nothing has been built up [gebauet], yea, where no hand has
been put to the work. They believe this, presumably, because they hope that
this moral edifice will rise up of itself, like the walls of Thebes, to the music
of sighs and yearning wishes.
1 [186] [Cf. Ephesians II, 21-22]
1 [187] [Cf. Exodus XX, 4]
1 [189] [Cf. Matthew VII, 21. "Not every one that saith unto me,
Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the
will of my Father which is in heaven."]
2 [189] [Cf. Matthew V, 15]