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and intellectual part, in the principle by which strictly scientific knowledge attains to moral influence. But this principle is the unity of the true, the good, and the beautiful. With the attainment of truth, it results from this principle that a fuller and higher humanity is also attained, and conversely, and both united lead to the utmost beauty, to the purest joy and blessedness. Here, then, we have, in the full sense of the word, a dogma which not only is not proved, but which, in fact, when logically tested, is not true, but which, if held as an idea, may, indeed, like any other religious idea, edify mankind and raise him above the limits of sense. Truth, in the sense of reality, not only does not coincide with Beauty, but stands, in fact, in distinct opposition to it. beauty is poesy, even that which is the immediate object of the senses; for even the most primitive sense-activity, as we have shown in the previous Section, includes a contribution from our mind. The artist sees his subject even in immediate observation as more beautiful than the less susceptible layman, and the realists in painting are only distinguished from the idealists by this, that they take up more of the qualities of reality into their work, and allow the pure ground-idea of the object to appear crossed by the ideas of its circumstances; but if they did not idealise at all, they would be no longer artists. The eye of love. poetises, the longing of the heart poetises; melancholy remembrance and joyful meeting, all passions and activities of the senses poetise; and if we could entirely abolish this poesy, it is a question whether anything would be left to make life worth living. So, then, Uhlich's whole view of nature also-an indispensable part of his religion-is nothing more than a poem. is my true and real feeling," says Uhlich, "when I bow down and gaze at a flower, that the Deity looks at me from it, and sends towards me a sweet perfume." Very well; but then, too, it is the true and real feeling of the believer when, in prayer, he feels and knows the presence

of his God, that he is heard. We may contest the external source of the feeling, but never the feeling itself. But if, in nature, I linger over the contemplation of the beautiful and comparatively perfect in order to edify myself, then I make nature itself my idea of the good and beautiful. I overlook the withered spot in the calix of the flower and the ravages of the caterpillar on the leaves, and if a flower grows in my garden that smells unpleasantly, I do not use it in order to pray a little to the Devil also, but I tear it up and fling it to another part of nature, which can still less serve me for edifying contemplation.

It depends upon me, whether perfection or imperfection seems to preponderate in nature, whether I carry into it my idea of beauty and then receive it back a thousandfold, or whether I am met everywhere by the traces of corruption, of spoliation, and of the struggle of extermination. And if then I conceive the succession of life and death, of swelling abundance and sudden decline, I find myself at the point of origin of Dionysos-worship, and with a glance at the contrast between the highest ideal and all living things, I feel at once the need for a redeemer.

This suggestion is not, of course, meant to show that edification, in the sense of the Free Congregations, is to be absolutely rejected, but only that, as compared with other forms of edification, it cannot lay claim to the privilege of unconditional truth. It is a question of more or less of truth and poesy, and the fact that this is not recognised by the founders of the Free Congregations places their religious conception intellectually behind Kant and Fichte, while, however, it lends it a character of naïveté which is otherwise only to be found in orthodoxy.

It has indeed been observed from the philosophical side, that in the advance of knowledge we must take as a basis for the religion of the future such a point as would admit of our still really and unaffectedly believing as the Free

Congregations do, and in which the difference between the result of critical thought and religious feeling would completely disappear for us, even though it should arise again for later times. But what else is this than to support religious belief upon a metaphysical belief? If now the latter cannot exist unless through poesy, why should not religion itself exist through poesy without any need for metaphysical mediation? But if speculation can help to bring about that the religious ideas of the future shall not be too much determined by the subjective leanings of a few too powerful characters-which was certainly the case at the period of the Reformation -if it can help to bring it about that these ideas shall be taken right from the centre of all our culture, and not merely be gathered from the surface of ecclesiastical polemics, then their labour will be welcome; only that it will be quite impossible for us to exercise a child-like faith with regard to them.

A champion of the advanced Reform theology, the spiritual and eloquent Pastor Lang, in his 'Versuch einer christlichen Dogmatik,' 12 has combated our stand

12 Comp. Lang, Versuch einer christlichen Dogmatik, allen denkenden Christen dargeboten, 2te Aufl. Berl. 1868, S. 3-6. The objection there raised, that from my standpoint it is "quite indifferent" whether the philosopher "as a religious man" kneels before Mary or the personal God, is disposed of by pointing out that we assume a necessary course of development in the ideas of humanity. Not any given poetical idea can serve our purpose, but only that which is adapted to our time and to the character of our cul

arrive at the proposition: "If there is in the world so absurd a dualism between knowing and believing, then there is no scientific knowledge of the world." Why not, if science keeps exclusively to knowledge? It is only the incarnate theologian who persists in thinking that the articles of his creed must also be taken into account. "A dualistic world is not an object of knowledge; only a world of a single principle can be known." But science knows nothing of a dualistic world, for to it all life in its idea rests only upon psychological processes, which, though they may be infinitely subtle and deeply hidden, yet follow in fine the same natural laws as all other psychical facts. So far the demand for monism is entirely justified. But if it is also proposed to remove the dualism of

point with the assertion that religions always fall, “if they are no longer believed," while works of poesy, if they are æsthetically satisfying, retain their value. Nearly the same thing might be said of metaphysical speculation, which has also, till now, maintained pretensions to unconditional truth, and whose disciples have formed a circle of believers. And yet even the most important systems have scarcely ever found an unconditional follower; and where this has been the case, as with Herbart's school, it testifies to a certain poverty and hardness in the whole circle of ideas. How many strictly orthodox Kantians have there been? Amongst the great minds that have mainly gained the system its renown, and that have been the most important bearers of its influence, scarcely a single one. Has not Hegel's system exercised an influence far beyond the circle of believers, and only borne its best fruits where it was handled with perfect freedom? What shall we say, moreover, of Plato, whose speculative imaginings still, after thousands of years, to-day exercise their mighty influence, while, even from his first successors onwards, no one has ever believed that his deductions are so strictly valid as they claim to be?

And then as to religions! Did not even in ancient days the Stoics for hundreds of years treat the popular superstition as the imaginative clothing of ethical ideas, and thus did more for the propagation of religious life. than all the priesthoods? Jupiter, according to Lang, had to give place to Jehovah, Olympus to the Christian heaven, because the sensuous theology of polytheism ceased to meet the requirements of advancing knowledge, because a higher truth was recognised in the perfected

thought and poesy, feeling and willing, perception and creation, this is just as foolish as if for the sake of the unity of knowledge we should propose to abolish the antithesis of day and night. Thus, then, the antithesis of

ideal and reality must remain; but scientific knowledge has only to do with the latter. It establishes unity by recognising that the ideal world is at the same time a psychological fact.

monotheism of Christianity. But had knowledge in the imperial age of Rome so much increased since the age of Sokrates and Protagoras? Were the masses ever more superstitious, the great ever more eager for miracles, the philosophers ever more mystical, than in the age of the spread of Christianity? And when, then, did that religion of Jupiter and the combined Olympus, that was then doomed to fall, ever exist? It struggled simultaneously and hand in hand with the commencing enlightenment painfully through against the old comminution of the national faith into thousands of local cults. The right of speculation to develop and shape religion might not indeed be announced in the market-place, but it existed, and the whole flowering time of Hellenic culture shows us poets and philosophers occupied in the development of religious doctrines and conceptions. In the local cult, indeed, absolute faith was demanded; but what else was this faith than the pious submission of the soul to the sacred story of one's own native city; what else could it be in an age when faith changed from town to town, from village to village, and when every educated man made it a strict rule to tolerate and to respect each faith in its own home? And was it, then, in the age of the spread of Christianity really the most enlightened minds, the philosophic thinkers, who first yielded to the new faith? Or do knowledge and reflexion play the chief part in the history of the conversion of eminent personages? Had the mass of the people really lost faith in the old gods, when they saw themselves compelled to adopt the new religion? History exhibits to us quite another process than that of a growing enlightenment: universal social decomposition, conflict and distress in all strata of society, world-weariness and unspeakable longing for a salvation which should not be of this world, are the true sources of the great revolution. Mere enlightenment might very well have attached itself to Jupiter and Olympus; they would have found it much.

VOL. III.

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