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PARERGA AND PARALIPOMENA: SHORT PHILOSOPHICAL ESSAYS |
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[b]CHAPTER 15: On Religion[/b]
§ 174
[b]A Dialogue[/b]
DEMOPHELES: Between ourselves, my dear fellow, I do not like the way in which you occasionally show your philosophical ability by being sarcastic and even openly derisive about religion. Everyone's faith is to him sacred and so should be to you.
PHILALETHES: Nego consequentiam! [1] I do not see why, because of the stupidity of others, I should have respect for falsehood and imposture. I respect truth everywhere, but not that which is opposed thereto. Never on this earth will truth shine so long as you shackle men's minds in such a way. My motto is: vigeat: veritas, et pereat mundus, [2] like that of the lawyers: fiat justitia, et pereat mundus. [3] Every faculty should have for its device an analogous motto.
DEMOPHELES: Then I suppose that the device of the doctors would be: fiant pilulae, et pereat mundus, [4] which could be most easily brought about.
PHILALETHES: Heaven forbid! Everything must be taken cum grano salis. [5]
DEMOPHELES: Good; but that is just why I wanted you to understand and see religion also cum grano salis. I wanted you to see that the needs of the people must be met in accordance with their powers of comprehension. Religion is the only way to proclaim and make plain the high significance of life to the crude intellect and clumsy understanding of the masses who are immersed in sordid pursuits and material labour. For, as a rule, a man originally has no interest for anything except the satisfaction of his physical needs and desires, and thus for some amusement and pastime. Founders of religions and philosophers come into the world to shake man out of his lethargy and to point out to him the lofty meaning of existence; philosophers for the few who are exempt, founders of religions for the majority, for humanity at large. For [x], [6] as even Plato said, and you should not forget this. Religion is the metaphysics of the people, which we must certainly let them have and, therefore, must externally respect; for to discredit it is equivalent to taking it away from them. Just as there is a popular poetry and in proverbs a popular wisdom, so must there be also a popular metaphysics. For people positively need an interpretation of life, which must be appropriate to their powers of comprehension. It is, therefore, always an allegorical way of expressing the truth; and in practical affairs and as regards feelings, that is, as a guide to conduct and a comfort and consolation in suffering and death, it probably achieves just as much as could truth itself if we were to possess it. Do not take offence at its preposterous, burlesque, and apparently absurd form; for in your culture and learning you have no idea what roundabout ways are needed to bring home profound truths to people in their crude ignorance. The different religions are simply different systems wherein the people grasp and picture to themselves the truth which in itself is incomprehensible to them; yet for them the truth becomes inseparable from such systems. Therefore, my dear fellow, do not take it amiss when I say that to ridicule religion is both narrow-minded and unfair.
PHILALETHES: But is it not just as narrow-minded and unfair to demand that there shall be no other system of metaphysics than just this one that is cut to suit the people's needs and powers of comprehension? Why should its teachings be the landmark of human investigation and the guide to all thinking so that the metaphysics of the few, of the exempt as you call them, must result in confirming, establishing, and explaining the metaphysics of the masses? And so why should the highest powers of the human mind remain unused and undeveloped, and in fact be nipped in the bud, so that their activity may not thwart the metaphysics of the people? And fundamentally is it any different as regards the pretensions of religion? Is it right and proper for one to preach tolerance and even tender forbearance, who is the very embodiment of intolerance and ruthlessness? I call to witness courts for heretics, inquisitions, religious wars, crusades, Socrates' cup of poison, the deaths of Bruno and Vanini at the stake. And is all this today a thing of the past? What can be more opposed to genuine philosophical effort, to the sincere investigation of the truth, to this noblest calling of the noblest men, than this conventional metaphysics which is invested with a monopoly by the State? Its precepts and dogmas are inculcated so earnestly, deeply, and firmly at the earliest age into every mind that, unless that mind is miraculously elastic, they remain indelibly impressed. In this way, its faculty of reason is once for all confused and deranged, in other words, its capacity for original thought and unbiased judgement, weak enough as it is, is for ever paralysed and ruined as regards everything connected therewith.
DEMOPHELES: This really means, I suppose, that people have then gained a conviction which they will not give up in order to accept yours instead.
PHILALETHES: Ah! if only it were a conviction based on insight. We could then bring arguments to bear, and the field of battle would be open to us with equal weapons. But religions admittedly appeal not to conviction with arguments, but to faith with revelations. Now the capacity for faith is strongest in childhood; and so men are primarily concerned with taking possession of this tender age. In this way, much more than by threats and the accounts of miracles, do the doctrines of faith strike root. Thus if in early childhood a boy is repeatedly told certain fundamental views and doctrines with unusual solemnity and an air of the loftiest earnestness never before seen by him; and if, at the same time, the possibility of doubting them is entirely passed over or else touched on merely to point to it as the first step to eternal perdition, then the impression will prove to be so deep that, as a rule, in other words in almost all cases, he will be wellnigh as incapable of doubting those doctrines as he is of doubting his own existence. And so of many thousands, hardly one will possess the strength of mind seriously and honestly to ask himself whether this or that is true. Those who were nevertheless capable of so doing were, therefore, called strong minds, esprits forts, more appropriately than was supposed. But for the remainder there is nothing so absurd or revolting that the firmest belief in it will not strike root in them if it is implanted in that way. If, for example, the killing of a heretic or an unbeliever were an essential thing to the future salvation of his soul, almost everyone would make this the principal affair of his life, and, in dying, would draw consolation and strength from remembering that he had succeeded; just as formerly almost every Spaniard regarded an auto-da-fe as a work most pious and pleasing to God. We have in India a counterpart to this in the religious fraternity of the Thugs which was only recently suppressed by the English, who carried out a number of executions. Its members practised their sense of religion and veneration for the goddess Kali by assassinating on every occasion their own friends and travelling companions in order to take possession of their property. They were quite seriously under the impression that in this they were doing something praiseworthy and conducive to their eternal salvation. [7] Accordingly, the power of early inculcated religious dogmas is so strong that it can stifle conscience and ultimately all compassion and every humane feeling. But if you want to see with your own eyes and at close quarters what early inculcation of faith does, consider the English. Look at this nation, more highly favoured by nature than all the others and better endowed with intelligence, understanding, power of judgement, and strength of character; see how debased they are beyond all others, in fact, how positively contemptible they become, through the stupid superstition of their Church which appears among their other abilities positively like a fixed idea or monomania. For this they have to thank simply the fact that education is in the hands of the clergy who take good care to inculcate on their minds at the earliest age all the articles of faith in a way that amounts to a kind of partial paralysis of the brain. This, then, expresses itself throughout their lives in that idiotic bigotry whereby even otherwise highly intelligent and sensible men among them degrade themselves, and we know not what to think or make of them. If we now consider how essential it is to such masterpieces that the inculcation of faith is done at the tender age of childhood, the missionary business will no longer appear merely as the height of human importunity, arrogance, and impertinence, but also as an absurdity in so far as it does not confine itself to races who are still in a state of childhood, like the Hottentots, Kaffirs, South Sea Islanders, and others, and among whom it has accordingly met with real success. In India, on the other hand, the Brahmans treat the discourses of the missionaries with condescending smiles of approbation or with a shrug of the shoulders; and, generally speaking, the efforts of the missionaries to convert these men have ended in failure, notwithstanding the most suitable opportunities. An authentic report in the Asiatic Journal, volume xxi of 1826, states that, after so many years of missionary activity, not more than three hundred living converts were to be found in the whole of India (where the British possessions alone have a population of one hundred and fifty millions, according to The Times, April 1852). At the same time, it is admitted that the Christian converts are marked by their extreme immorality. Just three hundred bribed mercenary souls out of so many millions! Nowhere in India do I see that things have since gone any better for Christianity, [8] although in schools devoted exclusively to secular English instruction, and yet contrary to stipulation, the missionaries now try to work on children's minds as they think best in order to smuggle in Christianity; against this, however, the Hindus are most jealously on their guard. For, as I have said, childhood is the only time for sowing the seeds of faith, not manhood, especially where an earlier faith has already taken root. But the acquired conviction which grown-up converts pretend to have, is, as a rule, only the mask of some personal interest. And just because one feels that this could hardly ever be otherwise, a man who changes his religion at a mature age is everywhere despised by most people, although in this way they show that they regard religion not as a matter of rational conviction, but merely of faith early implanted before any test could be applied. But that they are right in this matter follows also from the fact that not merely the blindly believing masses, but also the priests of every religion, who, as such, have studied its sources, foundations, dogmas, and controversies, all stick faithfully and zealously as a body to the religion of their particular country; and so it is the rarest thing in the world for a priest of one religion or confession to go over to another. For example, we see the Catholic clergy perfectly convinced of the truth of all the tenets of their Church and the Protestant clergy just as convinced of the truth of theirs, and both defend the dogmas and precepts of their confession with equal zeal. Nevertheless, this conviction is regulated by the country in which each is born; thus to the South German priest the truth of the Catholic dogma is perfectly obvious, but to the North German that of the Protestant. And so if such convictions are based on objective grounds, these must be climatic and like plants, some of which thrive only in one place, others only in another. But now the people everywhere accept on faith and trust the convictions of those who are locally convinced.
DEMOPHELES: No harm is done and it makes no essential difference; for example, Protestantism is actually more suited to the North, Catholicism to the South.
PHILALETHES: So it seems; but I have taken a higher point of view and keep in mind a more important object, namely progress of the knowledge of truth in the human race. For this it is a terrible thing that, wherever anyone is born, certain statements are inculcated in him in his earliest youth on the assurance that he may never have any doubts about them without running the risk of forfeiting his eternal salvation. Thus I refer to statements that affect the foundation of all our other knowledge and accordingly for this fix for all time the point of view. In the event of such statements themselves being false, the point of view is for ever distorted. Moreover, as their corollaries everywhere affect the whole system of our knowledge, this is then thoroughly falsified and adulterated by them. Every literature proves this, most strikingly that of the Middle Ages, but also that of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to an excessive degree. Look at even the greatest minds of all those periods and see how paralysed they were by such false fundamental notions, but especially how all insight into the true constitution and working of nature was, so to speak, boarded up for them. For during the whole Christian period, theism lies like a nightmare on all intellectual, and especially philosophical, efforts and impedes or cripples all progress. God, devil, angels, and demons conceal the whole of nature from the scholars of those times; no investigation is carried out to the end, no matter is thoroughly examined, but everything that transcends the most evident and obvious causal nexus is at once set at rest by those personalities, for it is precisely as Pomponatius expresses himself on such an occasion: certe philosophi nihil verisimile habent ad haec, quare necesse est, ad Deum, ad angelos et daemones recurrere [9] (De incantationibus, chap. 7). Here, of course, we may suspect this man of irony, for his perfidy is known to us in other ways, yet in this connection he has expressed only the general mode of thought of his age. If, on the other hand, a man had a rare elasticity of mind which alone is capable of bursting the fetters, he and his writings were burnt, as happened to Bruno and Vanini. But how completely paralysed the ordinary mind is by that early preparation in metaphysics can be most strikingly seen and on its ludicrous side when such a mind undertakes to criticize the teaching of a strange and unfamiliar creed. We then find that such a man is, as a rule, merely concerned to point out carefully that its dogmas do not agree with those of his own creed. For he is at great pains to explain that they not only do not say, but also certainly do not mean, the same thing as is expressed in the dogmas of his own creed. Here in all his simplicity he imagines that he has demonstrated the false nature of the alien creed. It never really occurs to him to put the question which of the two may be right; on the contrary, his own articles of faith are for him sure and certain principles a priori. An amusing example of this kind was furnished by the Reverend Morrison in the Asiatic Journal, volume xx, where he criticizes the religion and philosophy of the Chinese; it is delightful.
DEMOPHELES: So that is your higher point of view; but I can assure you that there is an even higher. Primum vivere, deinde philosophari [10] has a more comprehensive meaning than at first sight appears. The first thing is to restrain the rough and evil dispositions of the masses in order to prevent them from committing acts of extreme injustice, cruelty, violence, and disgrace. Now if we wished to wait until they had recognized and grasped the truth, we should undoubtedly come too late. For even supposing that the truth had already been discovered, it would be beyond their powers of comprehension. In any case, an allegorical clothing of it, a parable, a myth, serves their purpose. As Kant has said, there must be a public standard of right and virtue; and in fact this must at all times flutter high overhead. After all, it is immaterial what heraldic figures are put on it, if only it signifies what is meant. Such an allegory of the truth is always and everywhere to mankind as a whole a suitable substitute of the truth itself which is for ever inaccessible to them and generally of philosophy which they can never grasp; not to mention the fact that this daily changes its frame and has not yet in any form met with general recognition. And so, my dear Philalethes, practical aims in every respect take precedence of theoretical.
PHILALETHES: This agrees closely enough with the ancient advice of Timaeus of Locri, the Pythagorean: [x] [11] (De anima mundi, p. 104, Stephanus), and I almost suspect that you want to impress on me, as is the vogue just now,
[quote]But still the time may reach us, good my friend, When peace we crave and more luxurious diet, [12][/quote]
and your recommendation is really that we should take timely precautions so that the surging masses of the turbulent and discontented may not disturb us at table. But this entire point of view is as false as it is popular and extolled at the present time, and so I hasten to enter a protest against it. It is false that the State,justice, and the law cannot be upheld without the assistance of religion and its articles of faith, and that justice and the police need religion as their necessary complement for the purpose of carrying out law and order. False it is, even if it is repeated a hundred times. For an effective and striking instantia in contrarium [13] is afforded by the ancients, especially the Greeks. Thus they had nothing at all of what we understand by religion. They had no sacred records and no dogma which was taught, whose acceptance was demanded of everyone, and which was inculcated in early youth. Just as little was morality preached by the ministers of religion, and the priests did not bother about morals or generally what people did or omitted to do. Not at all! On the contrary, the duty of the priests extended only to temple ceremonies, prayers, hymns, sacrifices, processions, lustrations, and the like, and the object of all these was anything but the moral improvement of the individual. The whole of religion so called consisted rather in the fact that some of the di majorum gentium, [14] especially in the cities, had temples here and there in which they were worshipped in the aforesaid manner for the sake of the State, such a cult being at bottom an affair of the police. Except the functionaries taking part, no one was in any way compelled to attend or even to believe in it. In the whole of antiquity there is no trace of an obligation to believe in any dogma. Only the man who publicly denied the existence of the gods, or otherwise reviled them, was liable to be punished; for he gave offence to the State that served them; but apart from this, it was left to everyone to think of them what he liked. If anyone felt disposed to win the favour of those gods, privately through prayers or sacrifices, he was free so to do at his own expense and risk. If he did not do so, no one raised any objection, least of all the State. With the Romans, everyone had at home his own Lares and Penates which in reality were merely the venerated busts of his ancestors. (Apuleius, De deo Socratis, chap. 15, vol. ii, p. 237, ed. Bip.) Of the immortality of the soul and a life after death, the ancients had no firm and clear ideas, least of all those fixed by dogma, but quite loose, fluctuating, indefinite, and problematical notions, each in his own way; and just as varied, individual, and vague were the ideas about the gods. Thus the ancients did not really have religion in our sense of the word. But did anarchy and lawlessness for that reason prevail among them? Are not law and civil order so much their work that they still constitute the basis of our own? Was not property completely safeguarded, although it consisted for the most part of slaves? Did not this state of affairs last for over a thousand years?
I cannot, therefore, acknowledge and must object to the practical aims and necessity of religion in the sense indicated by you and universally popular al the present time, namely that it is an indispensable foundation to all law and order. For such a point of view, the pure and sacred striving for light and truth would appear quixotic, to say the least, and even criminal, if in its feelings of justice it should venture to denounce the faith of authority as the usurper that has taken possession of the throne of truth and maintains it by keeping up the deception.
DEMOPHELES: But religion is not opposed to truth; for it itself teaches this. Since the sphere of its action is not a small lecturer-oom but the world and mankind at large, religion must conform to the needs and powers of comprehension of so large and mixed a public. It cannot allow truth to appear naked or, to use a medical simile, it may not administer it pure and unalloyed, but must make use of a mythical vehicle as a solvent or menstruum. In this respect, you can also compare truth to certain chemical substances which in themselves are gaseous, but which for medicinal uses as well as for preservation or dispatch must be bound to a firm solid base, since they would otherwise volatilize. For example, chlorine gas is applied to all such purposes only in the form of chlorides. But in case truth, pure, abstract, and free from everything mythical, should remain for ever unattainable to us all, even to the philosophers, it could be compared to fluorine which cannot even be exhibited by itself alone, but can appear only in combination with other substances. Or, to speak less scientifically, truth that generally cannot be expressed except mythically and allegorically, is like water that cannot be carried about without a vessel; but philosophers who insist on possessing it, pure and unalloyed, are like the man who breaks the vessel in order to have the water simply by itself. Perhaps this is actually the case. At any rate, religion is truth allegorically and mythically expressed and thus rendered accessible and digestible for mankind at large. For people could never bear the truth pure and unmixed, just as we cannot live in pure oxygen, but require an addition of four times the amount of nitrogen. Thus to speak without figurative expression, the profound meaning and lofty aim of life can be revealed and presented only symbolically because men are incapable of grasping these in their proper significance. Philosophy, on the other hand, should be, like the mysteries of the Eleusinia, for the few and the elect.
PHILALETHES: I understand; the whole thing amounts to truth appearing in the guise of falsehood; but in so doing it enters into an alliance that is injurious to it. What a dangerous weapon is put into the hands of those who are given authority to employ falsehood as the vehicle of truth! If this is the case, I am afraid that the damage done by falsehood will be greater than any advantage ever produced by the truth. If, of course, the allegory could be given admittedly as such, that would be all right; but this would deprive it of all respect and thus of all effectiveness. It must, therefore, assert and maintain that it is true sensu proprio, whereas at best it is true sensu allegorico. Here are to be found the irreparable harm and the permanent drawback; and this is why religion has always come into conflict with the noble and dispassionate aspiration to pure truth, and will do so again and again.
DEMOPHELES: Oh no! for this too has been thought of. If religion may not exactly acknowledge its allegorical nature, it gives sufficient indication thereof.
PHILALETHES: And how does it do that?
DEMOPHELES: In its mysteries. At bottom, even' mystery' is only the theological terminus technicus for religious allegory and all religions have their mysteries. Properly speaking, a mystery is an obviously absurd dogma which nevertheless conceals within itself a sublime truth. In itself, this truth is wholly unintelligible to the ordinary understanding of the crude and uncultured masses, who now accept it in this disguise on faith and trust, without allowing themselves to be led astray by the absurdity that is obvious even to them. In this way, they now participate in the kernel of the matter in so far as it is possible for them to do so. I may add by way of explanation that even in philosophy the attempt has been made to use a mystery, for example when Pascal, who was at the same time pietiest, mathematician, and philosopher, says in this threefold capacity that God is everywhere centre and nowhere periphery. Even Malebranche has quite rightly observed that la liberti est un mystere. [15] One could go farther and assert that really everything in religions is mystery. For to inculcate into the minds of the people in their crude state truth sensu proprio is absolutely impossible; only a mythical and allegorical reflection thereof can fall to their lot and enlighten them. Naked truth is out of place in the presence of the profane mob; she can appear before them only in a thick veil. For this reason, it is quite unreasonable to expect a religion to be true sensu proprio; and incidentally in our day, the rationalists as well as the supernaturalists are absurd, since both start from the assumption that religion must be true sensu proprio. The former then prove that it is not so, and the latter obstinately assert that it is; or rather the former cut out and arrange the allegorical so that it could be true sensu proprio but would then be a platitude; whereas the latter, without any further preparation, wish to assert that it is true sensu proprio, a point which cannot possibly be enforced, as they should know, without the Inquisition and the stake. On the other hand, myth and allegory are the real elements of religion; but under this condition, which is absolutely necessary on account of the intellectual limitation of the masses, religion adequately satisfies man's ineradicable metaphysical need, and takes the place of pure philosophical truth which is infinitely difficult, and perhaps for ever impossible, to reach.
PHILALETHES: Ah yes, somewhat in the same way that a wooden leg takes the place of a natural; it supplies what is missing, hardly does duty for this, claims to be regarded as a natural one, is more or less ingeniously put together, and so on. A difference, on the other hand, is that a natural leg, as a rule, preceded a wooden, whereas religion has everywhere had the start of philosophy.
DEMOPHELES: All this may be true, but for the man who has no natural leg, a wooden one is of great value. You must bear in mind that man's metaphysical needs positively demand satisfaction because the horizon of his thoughts must come to an end and cannot remain unbounded. As a rule, man has no power of judgement for weighing up arguments and then deciding what is false and what true. Moreover, the labour imposed on him by nature and her urgency leaves him no time for investigations of this sort, or for the cultivation of the mind which they presuppose. And so with him it is not a case of conviction from reasons and arguments; on the contrary, he is referred to belief and authority. Even if a really true philosophy had taken the place of religion, it would still be accepted merely on authority by at least nine-tenths of mankind and so would again be a matter of faith; for Plato's [x] 16 will always be true. Now authority is established by time and circumstances alone; and so we cannot bestow it on that which has in its favour nothing but reasons and arguments. Consequently, we must grant it to that which has obtained it in the course of history, although this may be only truth that is presented in an allegorical form. Now supported by authority, this form of truth appeals first to the really metaphysical tendency in man and thus to the theoretical need that arises from the pressing enigma of our existence and from the consciousness that, behind the physical aspect of the world, there must somehow be something metaphysical, something unchangeable, which serves as the basis of constant change. Then again this kind of truth appeals to the will, to the fear and hope of mortals who live in constant sorrow and affliction. It accordingly creates for them gods and demons whom they can invoke and appease and whose favour they can win. Finally, it appeals to that moral consciousness undeniably existing in man and gives confirmation and support to this from without. In the absence of such support, that moral consciousness could not easily maintain itself in the struggle with so many temptations. It is precisely from this side that religion affords an inexhaustible source of consolation and comfort in the innumerable sorrows and afflictions of life, which does not forsake man even in death, but rather reveals at precisely this time its full effectiveness. Accordingly, religion resembles one who takes by the hand a blind man and leads him; for he himself cannot see and the main thing is that he should reach his destination, not that he should see everything.
PHILALETHES: This side is certainly the brilliant point of religion. If it is a fraus, [17] then it is really a pia fraus; [18] that is undeniable. Accordingly, for us, priests become something between impostors and teachers of morals. For, as you yourself have quite rightly explained, they dare not teach the real truth even if it were known to them, which is not the case. Thus at all events there may be a true philosophy, but certainly not a true religion; I mean true in the proper sense of the word and not merely so through the flower or allegory, as you have described it; on the contrary, in this sense, every religion will be true, only in different degrees. But it is certainly quite in keeping with the inextricable mixture of prosperity and misfortune, honesty and deceit, good and evil, magnanimity and meanness, which the world generally offers us, that the most important, sublime, and sacred truth cannot appear except in combination with a lie, indeed can even borrow strength therefrom as from that which has a more powerful effect on men and, as revelation, must be introduced by a lie. One might even consider this fact as the monogram of the moral world. However, we will not abandon hope that one day mankind will reach the point of maturity and culture where it is able to produce the true philosophy on the one hand, and to assimilate it on the other. Yet if simplex sigillum veri,I9 the naked truth must be so simple and intelligible that one must be able to impart it in its true form to all without amalgamating it with myths and fables (a pack of lies), in other words, without disguising it in the form of religion.
DEMOPHELES: You have no adequate conception of the pitiable incapacity of the masses.
PHILALETHES: I am expressing it only as a hope, but I cannot give it up. Then truth in a simple and intelligible form would naturally drive religion from the place which the latter had so long occupied as deputy but had in precisely this way kept open for the former. Religion will then have fulfilled its mission and completed its course; it can then dismiss the race that it has brought to years of discretion and itself expire in peace; such will be the euthanasia of religion. But as long as religion lives, it has two faces, one of truth and one of deception. According as we look at the one or the other, we shall be friendly or hostile to it. We must, therefore, regard religion as a necessary evil, the necessity of which rests on the deplorable feeble-mindedness of the great majority who are incapable of grasping the truth and so, in an urgent case, need a substitute for it.
DEMOPHELES: Really, one would imagine that you philosophers already had truth cut and dried and that the only thing to do was to grasp it.
PHILALETHES: If we have not got the truth, this is to be attributed mainly to the pressure under which, at all times and in all countries, philosophy has been kept by religion. Men have tried to render impossible not only the expression and communication of truth, but even the contemplation and discovery thereof by putting children in their earliest years into the hands of the priests to have their minds manipulated by them. The track, whereon the fundamental ideas are to run in future, is laid down by the priests with such firmness that, in the main, such ideas are fixed and definite for the whole of life. When I take up the works of even the most eminent minds of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, I must confess to being sometimes shocked, especially when I come from my oriental studies, to see how they are everywhere paralysed and hemmed in on all sides by the fundamental Jewish conception. I ask myself how anyone with such a preparation can think out the true philosophy.
DEMOPHELES: And even if this true philosophy were discovered, religion would not then disappear from the world, as you imagine. For there cannot be one system of metaphysics for all; the natural difference in intellectual powers and the additional difference in their development will never admit of this. The great majority must necessarily attend to the heavy physical labour that is inevitably required for procuring the infinite number of things that are needed by the whole race. Not only does this leave them no time for education, learning, or contemplation, but, in virtue of the decided antagonism between irritability and sensibility, much intense physical exertion blunts the mind, makes it heavy, dull, clumsy, awkward, and thus incapable of grasping any other than quite simple and palpable relations and situations. At least nine-tenths of the human race fall under this category. But men nevertheless need a system of metaphysics, i.e. an account of the world and our existence, because such is one of their most natural needs. Indeed they require a popular metaphysics and, to be capable of this, it must combine many rare qualities. Thus it must be easily intelligible and at the same time possess in the right places a certain obscurity and even impenetrability. Then a correct and adequate morality must be associated with its dogmas; above all, however, it must afford inexhaustible consolation in suffering and death. It follows from all this that it will not be possible for religion to be true sensu proprio, but only sensu allegorico. Further, it must still have the support of an authority that is impressive on account of its great age, its universal acceptance, its records and documents together with their tone and enunciation. These are qualities that can be united only with such infinite difficulty that many a man would not be so ready and willing, if he considered the matter, to help to undermine a religion, but would bear in mind that it is the people's most sacred treasure. Whoever wishes to form an opinion on religion, should always keep an eye on the nature of the masses for whom it is intended and thus picture to himself the extent of their moral and intellectual depravity and inferiority. It is incredible how far this goes and how persistently a tiny spark of truth will continue to glow faintly even under the crudest covering of monstrous fables and grotesque ceremonies. It clings as ineradicably as does the odour of musk to everything that has once been in contact therewith. As an illustration of this, consider, on the one hand, the profound Indian wisdom that is recorded in the Upanishads, and then look at the strange and extravagant idolatry in the India of today, as seen in its pilgrimages, processions, and festivals, and at the mad and grotesque antics of the Sannyasis. Yet it is undeniable that, in all these ravings and strange gestures, there still lies deeply concealed something that accords with, or is a reflection of, that profound wisdom just mentioned. But it had to be dressed up in this form for the brutal masses. In this contrast, we have before us the two poles of mankind, the wisdom of individuals and the bestiality of the many, both of which, however, find their agreement in what is moral. Ah, who is not reminded here of the saying of the Kural: 'The common people look like human beings; but I have never seen anything like them.' (I. 1071)? The more highly cultured man may still interpret religion for himself cum grana salis; [20] the scholar, the thinker may secretly exchange it for a philosophy. Yet even here, one philosophy will not suit everybody, but, by the laws of elective affinity, each will attract that public to whose culture and mental capacity it is suited. Thus there is at all times an inferior school-metaphysics for the educated multitude and a higher for the elite. For example, even Kant's lofty teaching had to be degraded and made worse for the schools by men like Fries, Krug, Salat, and others. In short, here if anywhere, Goethe's maxim is true 'one thing will not suit everyone.' Pure faith in revelation and pure metaphysics are for the two extremes; for the intermediate stages there are also mutual modifications of the two in innumerable combinations and gradations. This is rendered necessary by the immense difference placed by nature and education between one man and another. Religions fill and rule the world and the great masses of mankind obey them. At the same time, there slowly proceeds the silent succession of philosophers who are at work on the unravelling of the great mystery for the few who, by aptitude and education, are qualified to understand them. On an average, one is produced every century; as soon as he has been genuinely discovered, he is always welcomed with exultation and listened to with attention.
PHILALETHES: This point of view seriously reminds me of the mysteries of the ancients which you have already mentioned. The intention underlying these seems to be to remedy that evil which springs from the difference in intellectual capacity and education. Their plan here was to pick out from the masses, to whom the unveiled truth was absolutely inaccessible, a few to whom such truth might be disclosed up to a certain point; from these again others were selected to whom still more could be revealed because they were capable of understanding more, and so on up to the epopts. Thus there were [x]. [21] The whole thing was based on a correct recognition of the intellectual inequality of men.
DEMOPHELES: To a certain extent, the education in our lower, middle, and high schools corresponds to the different degrees of initiation into the mysteries.
PHILALETHES: Yes, but only very approximately, and even so only as long as Latin was used exclusively for writing about the subjects of higher knowledge. But since this has ceased to be the case, all the mysteries are profaned.
DEMOPHELES: However that may be, I wanted to remind you as regards religion that you should look at it more from the practical side than from the theoretical. At all events, personified metaphysics may be the enemy of religion, yet personified morality will be its friend. Possibly the metaphysical element in all religions is false, but in all the moral element is true. This can be surmised already from the fact that in the former they clash with one another, whereas in the latter they agree.
PHILALETHES: Which furnishes an illustration of the logical rule that a true conclusion can follow from false premisses.
DEMOPHELES: Now stick to the conclusion and always bear in mind that religion has two sides. If, when looked at merely from the theoretical and thus intellectual side, it could not be valid, nevertheless from the moral it shows itself to be the means of guiding, restraining, and appeasing that race of animals who are gifted with the faculty of reason and whose kinship with the ape does not rule out that with the tiger. As a rule, religion is at the same time a sufficient satisfaction for their dull metaphysical needs. You do not seem to me to have an adequate idea of the immense difference, the wide gulf, between your man who is learned, versed in the art of thinking, and enlightened, and the dull, clumsy, sluggish, and indolent consciousness of humanity's beasts of burden. Their thoughts have once for all taken the direction of concern and interest for their own livelihood and cannot be moved in any other direction. Their muscular strength is taxed so exclusively that the nervous force which constitutes intelligence sinks to a very low ebb. Such men must have something firm to hold on to on the slippery and thorny path of life, some beautiful fable whereby things are imparted to them which their crude understanding cannot possibly imbibe except in picture and parable.
PHILALETHES: Do you believe that justice and virtue are lies and frauds and that we must, therefore, embellish them with a tissue of fables?
DEMOPHELES: Far from it! But men must have something to which they attach their moral feelings and actions. Profound explanations and subtle distinctions are beyond them. Instead of expressing the truth of religions sensu allegorico, we might call it, like Kant's moral theology, hypotheses for a practical purpose, or introductory schemes, regulative principles, after the manner of the physical hypotheses of currents of electricity for explaining magnetism, or of atoms for explaining the proportions of chemical combinations,* and so on. We guard against establishing these as objectively true, yet we make use of them in order to establish a connection between phenomena; for, as regards the experiments and the results, they achieve approximately the same thing as does truth itself. They are the guiding stars for conduct and subjective composure during meditation. If you regard religion in this way and bear in mind that its aims are predominantly practical, and only to a limited extent theoretical, it will appear to you as worthy of the highest respect.
PHILALETHES: Such respect would, of course, ultimately rest on the principle that the end justifies the means. Yet I do not feel inclined to make a compromise on this basis. At all events, religion may be an excellent means for taming and training that perverse, obtuse, and malicious race of bipeds; but in the eyes of the friend of truth, every fraud, even though it be pious, is objectionable. Lies and falsehood would appear to be a strange means of inculcating virtue. Truth is the flag to which I have taken my oath; I shall remain faithful to it everywhere and whether or not I succeed, I shall fight for light and truth. If I see religion in the ranks of the enemy, I shall--
DEMOPHELES: But you do not find it there! Religion is no deception; it is true and the most important of all truths. But because, as I have said, its doctrines are of such a lofty nature that the masses could never grasp them directly; because, I say, its light would dazzle the ordinary eye, it appears wrapped in the veil of allegory and teaches what is not exactly true in itself but is, of course, true as regards the lofty meaning contained in it. Understood in this way, religion is the truth.
PHILALETHES: That would be all right if only religion were allowed to declare itself to be true merely allegorically. But it appears with the claim to be positively and absolutely true in the literal sense of the word. Herein lies the deception and it is here that the friend of truth must adopt a hostile attitude.
DEMOPHELES: But this is indeed a conditio sine qua non. [22] If religion were to admit that only the allegorical meaning of its teachings were in it the element of truth, it would be deprived of all effectiveness and its inestimable and beneficial influence on the hearts and morals of mankind would be lost by such rigorous treatment. And so instead of insisting on this with pedantic obstinacy, look at its great achievements in the practical sphere, in morality and kindly feeling as the guide to conduct and the support and consolation to suffering humanity in life and death. How much you will then guard against casting suspicion on something through theoretical fault-finding and thus finally wresting from the people something which for them is an inexhaustible source of consolation and relief and which they need so much in fact, with their harder lot, even more than we. For this reason it should be positively sacred and inviolable.
PHILALETHES: With that argument we could have defeated and routed Luther when he attacked the sale of indulgences. For think of how many who obtained irreplaceable consolation and complete tranquillity through tickets of indulgence so that they cheerfully and confidently died, fully trusting in a whole pack of them which they firmly held in their hands, convinced as they were that here they had so many cards of admission to all the nine heavens. What is the use of grounds of consolation and tranquillity which are constantly overshadowed by the Damocles sword of disillusion? Truth, my friend, is the only sound thing; it alone remains steadfast and staunch; its consolation alone is solid; it is the indestructible diamond.
DEMOPHELES: Yes, if you had truth in your pocket, ready to bless us with it on demand. But what you have are only metaphysical systems where nothing is certain except the headaches they cost. Before we take something away from a man, we must have something better to put in its place.
PHILALETHES: If only I did not have to hear the same thing over and over again! To free a man from an error is not to take something away from him, but to give him something; for the knowledge that something is false is just a truth. But no error is harmless; on the contrary, sooner or later, every error will land in trouble the man who harbours it. Therefore do not deceive anyone, but rather confess that you do not know what no one knows and leave everyone to form for himself his own creeds. Perhaps they will not turn out so bad, especially as they will rub off one another's corners and rectify one another. In any case, a variety of many different views lay the foundation for tolerance. But those who are endowed with knowledge and ability may take up the study of philosophers, or even themselves carry the history of philosophy a stage further.
DEMOPHELES: That, indeed, would be a fine business! A whole race of metaphysicians explaining things by the light of nature, quarrelling with one another, and eventually coming to blows!
PHILALETHES: Good gracious, a few blows here and there are the spice oflife, or at any rate a very small evil when compared with such things as priestly domination, plundering of the laity, persecutions of heretics, courts of inquisition, crusades, religious wars, massacres of St. Bartholomew, and so on. These have been the results of privileged popular metaphysics, and so I stick to the fact that we cannot expect grapes from a bramble-bush, or salvation from frauds and lies.
DEMOPHELES: How often am I to repeat that religion is anything but frauds and lies, but rather truth itself, only in the garment of myth and allegory? But as regards your plan that everyone should be his own religious founder, I still had to tell you that such a particularism was totally opposed to human nature and would, therefore, abolish all social order. Man is an animal metaphysicum; in other words, he has a predominantly strong metaphysical need. Accordingly, he sees life primarily in its metaphysical significance and wants to feel that everything is deduced therefrom. Therefore, strange as it may sound in view of the uncertainty of all dogmas, agreement in the fundamental views of metaphysics is for him the main point to the extent that a genuine and lasting community is possible only among those who in these matters are of the same opinion. As a result of this, nations are identified and differentiated much more by religions than by governments or even by languages. Accordingly, the fabric of society, the State, stands perfectly firm only when a universally acknowledged system of metaphysics serves as its foundation. Naturally, such a system can be only popular metaphysics, i.e. religion. It then becomes part and parcel of the constitution of the State, of all the communal expressions in the life of the people, and also of all the solemn acts in private life. This was the case in ancient India, among the Persians, Egyptians, and Jews, and also the Greeks and Romans; it is still the case with the Brahmans, the Buddhists, and the Mohammedans. It is true that in China there are three faiths, of which the most widespread, Buddhism, is the least cultivated by the State. In China, however, there is a saying of universal application and daily use that 'the three doctrines are only one', in other words, that in the main point they agree. The Emperor also follows all three simultaneously and in union. Finally, Europe is the confederation of Christian states; Christianity is the basis of each of its members and the common bond of all. Therefore, although Turkey is situated in Europe, she is not really reckoned as part thereof. Accordingly, the European princes are so 'by the grace of God', and the Pope is the vice-regent of God; and as his position and authority were the highest, he considered all thrones as held in fee only from him. In the same way, archbishops and bishops, as such, had temporal power, and even today have a seat and vote in the Upper House. Protestant rulers are, as such, the heads of their Churches; in England a few years ago, this was an eighteen-year-old girl. Through defection from the Pope, the Reformation upset the political structure of Europe, but in particular dissolved the real unity of Germany by abolishing the community of faith. And so after that unity had actually crumbled, it had later to be restored by artificial and purely political bonds. Thus you see how closely connected are faith and its unity with the social order of every state. Faith is everywhere the support of the laws and constitution and therefore the foundation of the social structure that could hardly continue to exist at all if religion did not lend weight to the authority of the government and to the dignity and reputation of the ruler.
PHILALETHES: Oh yes, for princes the good Lord is the Santa Claus with whom they send big children to bed when all else is of no avail; and so they think a great deal of him. Very well; meanwhile I would like to advise every ruling prince seriously and attentively to read through the fifteenth chapter of the first book of Samuel twice a year on a definite day, so that he will always have in mind what it means to establish the throne on the altar. Moreover, since the ultima ratio theologorum, [23] the stake, has gone out of use, that means of government has lost much of its effectiveness. For, as you know, religions are like glow-worms in that they need darkness in order to shine. A certain degree of general ignorance is the condition of all religions, is the only element in which they can live. On the other hand, as soon as astronomy, natural science, geology, history, knowledge of countries and peoples, spread their light everywhere and finally even philosophy is allowed to have a word, every faith founded on miracles and revelation is bound to disappear, whereupon philosophy takes its place. In Europe the day of knowledge and science dawned towards the end of the fifteenth century with the arrival of Romaic scholars; its sun rose ever higher in the very fruitful sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and dispersed the mist of the Middle Ages. To the same extent, Church and faith were bound gradually to collapse; and so in the eighteenth century English and French philosophers could stand up directly against them until finally, under Frederick the Great, Kant arrived. He deprived religious faith of the support of philosophy it had had hitherto, and emancipated this ancilla theologiae [24] in that, with German thoroughness and imperturbability, he attacked the matter, whereby it assumed a less frivolous air, yet one that was the more serious. As a result, we see Christianity in the nineteenth century greatly weakened almost completely without serious faith, and even fighting for its very existence; whereas anxious princes try to help it by means of artificial stimulants as does a doctor a dying patient by means of musk. But listen to a passage from Condorcet's Esquisse d'un tableau des progres de l'esprit humain, which seems to be written as a warning to our times: Le zele religieux des philosophes et des grands n' etait qu'une devotion politique: et toute religion qu' on se permet de defendre comme une croyance qu'il est utile de laisser au peuple, ne peut plus esperer qu'une agonie plus ou moins prolongee [25] (5th epoch). In the whole course of the events I have described, you can always observe that faith and knowledge are related as are the two scales of a balance, so that when the one goes up the other goes down. In fact, the balance is so sensitive that it indicates even momentary influences. For example, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the predatory incursions of French hordes under the leadership of Bonaparte and the great efforts that were subsequently necessary to expel and punish that gang of robbers, had brought about a temporary neglect of the sciences and thus a certain decline in the general spreading of knowledge. When this happened, the Church at once began again to raise its head and faith immediately showed fresh signs of life which were, of course, in part only of a poetical nature, in keeping with the times. On the other hand, in the peace of more than thirty years that followed, leisure and prosperity encouraged to a rare degree the cultivation of the sciences and the spread of knowledge, the result of which, as I said, is the threatened decline and disintegration of religion. Perhaps even the time, so often prophesied, will soon come when in Europe mankind bids farewell to religion, like a child who has outgrown his nurse and whose further instruction now devolves on a private tutor. For there is no doubt that religious doctrines based merely on authority, miracles, and revelation, are an expedient that is appropriate only to the childhood of mankind. But everyone will admit that a race whose entire duration does not amount to more than about a hundred times the life of a man of sixty, according to the consistent statement of all the data of physics and history, is still in its first childhood.
DEMOPHELES: Oh if, instead of taking an undisguised pleasure at prophesying the downfall of Christianity, you would consider how infinitely grateful humanity in Europe should be to this religion which, after a long interval, followed it from its true and ancient home in the East. Through Christianity Europe acquired a tendency which had hitherto been foreign to her, by virtue of a knowledge of the fundamental truth that life cannot be an end in itself, but that the true purpose of our existence lies beyond it. Thus the Greeks and Romans had placed this purpose positively in life itself and so in this sense can certainly be called blind heathens. Accordingly, all their virtues are reducible to what is serviceable to the common welfare, to what is useful. Aristotle says quite naively: ' Those virtues must necessarily be the greatest which are the most useful to others.' ([x]. Rhetoric, lib. I, c. 9.) Thus with the ancients a love of one's country was the highest virtue, although it is really very doubtful, since narrow-mindedness, prejudice, vanity, and an understandable self-interest have a large share in it. Just before the above-mentioned passage, Aristotle enumerates all the virtues in order to explain them individually. They are justice, courage, moderation, magnificence ([x]), magnanimity, liberality, gentleness, reasonableness, and wisdom. How different from the Christian virtues! Even Plato, incomparably the most transcendent philosopher of pre-Christian antiquity, knows of no higher virtue than justice and he alone recommends it absolutely and for its own sake; whereas with all the other philosophers, the aim of all virtue is a happy life, vita beata, and morality the way to attain this. Christianity in Europe rescued humanity from this crude and shallow identification of itself with an ephemeral, uncertain, and hollow existence,
[quote] coelumque tueri Jussit, et erectos ad sidera toltere vultus. [26][/quote]
Accordingly, Christianity preached not merely justice, but loving kindness, sympathy, compassion, benevolence, forgiveness, love of one's enemy, patience, humility, renunciation, faith, and hope. In fact it went further; it taught that the world is evil and that we need salvation. Accordingly, it preached a contempt for the world, self-denial, chastity, giving up of one's own will, that is, turning away from life and its delusive pleasures. Indeed, it taught one to recognize the sanctifying force of suffering; an instrument of torture is the symbol of Christianity. I am quite ready to admit that this serious and only correct view of life was spread in other forms all over Asia thousands of years earlier, just as it is even now independently of Christianity ; but for humanity in Europe it was a new and great revelation. For it is well known that the population of Europe consists of Asiatic races who as wanderers were driven from their homes and gradually settled in Europe. In their distant wanderings, they lost the original religion of their homeland and thus the correct view of life; and so in a new climate they then formed their own somewhat crude religions, principally the druidic, odinic, and Greek religions whose metaphysical content was insignificant and very shallow. Meanwhile, there developed among the Greeks a quite special, one might say instinctive, sense of beauty which was peculiar to them alone of all the nations that have ever existed on earth; a sense that was fine and correct. Thus in the mouths of their poets and the hands of their sculptors, their mythology assumed an exceedingly beautiful and delightful form. On the other hand, the serious, true, and deep significance of life was lost to the Greeks and Romans; they went on living like big children until Christianity came and recalled them to the serious side of life.
PHILALETHES: And to judge the result, we need only compare antiquity with the Middle Ages that followed it, say the age of Pericles with the fourteenth century. We can hardly believe that in the two instances we have before us beings of the same species. In the one case, we have the finest development of humanity, admirable state institutions, wise laws, shrewdly allotted offices, rationally regulated freedom, all the arts at their best including poetry and philosophy, the creation of works which, even after thousands of years, stand as matchless examples, almost as works of a higher order of beings whom we can never approach, and, with all this, a life embellished by the noblest fellowship as portrayed in Xenophon's Banquet. Now look at the other case, if you can. You see a time when the Church had shackled the minds, and force and violence the bodies, of men so that knights and priests could lay the entire burden of life on the third estate, their common beast of burden. There you find the right of might, feudalism and fanaticism in close alliance, and in their train shocking ignorance and mental obscurity, a corresponding intolerance, dissension in matters of faith, religious wars, crusades, persecution of heretics, and inquisitions. As the form offellowship, however, you see chivalry, a hotchpotch of roughness, coarseness, silliness, apishness with its humbug and foolery, pedantically cultivated and worked up into a system, namely its degrading superstition and apish veneration of women. Gallantry, a survival of this veneration, is paid for by well-merited feminine arrogance and provides all Asiatics with lasting material for laughter, in which the Greeks would have joined. In the golden Middle Ages, of course, the whole thing was carried to a formal and methodical service of women; it imposed deeds of heroism, cours d' amour, [27] bombastic troubadour songs, and so on, although it should be observed that these last farces, having an intellectual side, were chiefly at home in France, whereas with the dull and worldly Germans the knights distinguished themselves more by drinking and stealing. Goblets and castles were the business of these robber-barons, although at the courts there was no lack of insipid love-songs. How had the scene changed in this way? Through migration and Christianity.
DEMOPHELES: I am glad you reminded me of this. Migration was the source of the evil, and Christianity the dam on which it broke. Christianity first became the means of taming and controlling the crude and savage hordes that swarmed in through the flood of migration. The raw human being must first kneel and learn veneration and obedience; only thereafter can he be civilized. This was done in Ireland by St. Patrick and in Germany by Winfried the Saxon who became a true Boniface. It was migration, this last advance of Asiatic tribes into Europe, followed only by the fruitless attempts of those under Attila, Genghis Khan, and Timur, and, as a comic epilogue, by the gipsies, it was migration that had swept away the humanity of antiquity. But Christianity was the very principle that worked against roughness and coarseness; just as even later, throughout the Middle Ages, the Church with its hierarchy was highly necessary for setting a limit to the coarseness and barbarism of those endowed with physical force, namely the princes and knights. It became the ice-breaker of these mighty floes. Yet the aim generally of Christianity is not so much to make this life pleasant as to render us worthy of a better. It looks away over this span of time, over this fleeting dream, in order to lead us to eternal salvation. Its tendency is ethical in the highest sense of the word, a sense till then unknown in Europe, as I have shown by comparing the morality and religion of the ancients with those of the Christians.
PHILALETHES: And for a good reason, so far as theory is concerned; but look at practice! In comparison with the Christian centuries that followed, the ancients were unquestionably less cruel than the Middle Ages with their exquisite tortures and numberless burnings at the stake. Moreover, the ancients were very tolerant, had a particularly high regard for justice, frequently sacrificed themselves for their country, showed every kind of magnanimity and generosity, and such a genuine humanity that even to this day an acquaintance with their thoughts and actions is called the study of the humanities. The fruits of Christianity were religious wars, religious massacres, crusades, inquisitions, together with other courts for heretics, extermination of the original natives of America, and the introduction of African slaves in their place. Among the ancients nothing analogous to, or in any way like, them is to be found; for the slaves of the ancients, the familia, the vernae, [28] were a contented race, faithfully devoted to their master, and as different from the unfortunate Negro slaves of the sugar plantations, who are an indictment against mankind, as are their two colours. The tolerance of pederasty which was certainly reprehensible and with which we mainly reproach the morals of the ancients, is a trifle when compared with the Christian atrocities I have just named. Even among the moderns, this vice has not become anything like so rare as would appear on the surface. All things considered, can you maintain that mankind has actually become morally better through Christianity?
DEMOPHELES: If the result has not been everywhere in keeping with the purity and truth of the teaching, this may be due to the fact that such has been too noble and sublime for mankind and consequently the aim was too high. Naturally it was easier to comply with heathen and also with Mohammedan morality. But then it is precisely what is sublimest that is everywhere most open to fraud and abuse: abusus optimi pessimus. [29] And so even those lofty teachings have at times served as a pretext for the most infamous deeds and really atrocious crimes. The decline of the old state institutions as also of the arts and sciences of the Old World, is, as I have said, attributable to the invasion of foreign barbarians. Accordingly, it was inevitable that ignorance and coarseness would gain the upper hand and that, as a result, violence and fraud would seize power so that knights and priests became a burden to mankind. It is, however, explained partly from the fact that the new religion taught one to seek eternal instead of temporal salvation, preferred simplicity of heart to knowledge, and was not in favour of any worldly pleasures, even those that are contributed to by the arts and sciences. Yet in so far as the latter were of service to religion, they were encouraged and to a certain extent flourished.
PHILALETHES: In a very narrow sphere. But the sciences were untrustworthy companions and as such were kept in check. On the other hand, dearly beloved ignorance, that element so necessary to religious doctrines, was carefully cultivated.
DEMOPHELES: And yet what mankind had till then acquired in the way of knowledge and had recorded in the writings of the ancients, was rescued from destruction by the clergy alone, especially in the monasteries. What would have happened if Christianity had not appeared shortly before the migration of peoples?
PHILALETHES: It would really be an exceedingly useful inquiry to attempt to balance accurately, impartially, frankly, and dispassionately the advantages and disadvantages accruing from religions. For this, of course, a much greater mass of historical and psychological data is necessary than is available to either of us. Academies might make it the subject of a prize-essay.
DEMOPHELES: They will take good care not to do that.
PHILALETHES: I am surprised that you say that, for it is a bad sign for religions. Besides, there are also academies whose questions carry the implied condition that the prize goes to the man who best knows how to voice their views. If only a statistician could in the first place tell us how many crimes are prevented annually by religious motives, and how many by others; of the former there would be very few. For if a man feels tempted to commit a crime, it is certain that the first thing to enter his head is the punishment fixed for it and the probability of his being caught. The second point he considers is the risk to his reputation. If I am not mistaken, he will ruminate for hours on those two obstacles before any religious considerations ever occur to him. But if he gets over those first two hurdles, I think that religion alone will very rarely deter him from the crime.
DEMOPHELES: But I think that it will do so very often, especially if its influence already works through the medium of custom, so that a man at once recoils from grave misdeeds. The early impression sticks. For instance, think of the number, especially those of noble birth, who often make heavy sacrifices to fulfil a given promise, determined solely by the fact that, in their childhood, their fathers often seriously impressed on them that 'a man of honour, or a gentleman, or a cavalier, keeps his word always and inviolably.'
PHILALETHES: Without a certain innate probitas, [30] this too has no effect. Speaking generally, you should not attribute to religion what results from innate goodness of character by virtue whereof one man's sympathy for another, who would be affected by the crime, prevents him from committing it. This is the genuine moral motive and as such is independent of all religions.
DEMOPHELES: But even this seldom has any effect with the masses unless it is clothed in religious motives, whereby it is undoubtedly strengthened. Yet even without such a natural foundation, religious motives by themselves alone often prevent crime. This too need not surprise us in the case of the crowd when we see that even those of superior education are sometimes under the influence not so much of religious motives which are based, at any rate allegorically, on truth, as of the absurdest superstition and allow themselves to be guided by it throughout their lives; for instance, not undertaking anything on a Friday, not sitting down thirteen at table, obeying chance omens, and so on. If this is the case with educated men, how much more is it so with the masses? You simply cannot form an adequate conception of the extreme limitation of uncultured minds in which things look very dark especially when, as occurs only too often, a bad, unjust, and malicious heart forms the foundation. Such men who constitute the great mass of the human race, must somehow be guided and controlled for the time being, even if only by actually superstitious motives, until they become susceptible to those that are better and more correct. The direct effect of religion is testified, for example, by the fact that very often, especially in Italy, a thief arranges for stolen property to be restored through his father confessor, for the priest makes this the condition of absolution. Again, think of the oath where religion shows the most definite influence. Now it may be that a man expressly takes up the position of a merely moral being and sees himself solemnly appealed to as such; the oath seems to be taken in this way in France where the formula is merely je le jure, and also with the Quakers whose solemn yes or no is accepted instead of the oath. Or it may be that a man actually believes in the forfeiture of his eternal happiness which he expresses in this case, a belief that is then only a way of clothing the former feeling. At all events, religious conceptions are a means of rousing and drawing out his moral nature. How often it happens that false oaths are taken in the first instance, but, when it comes to the point, are suddenly rejected whereby truth and right then gain the day.
PHILALETHES: And even more often have false oaths actually been taken, whereby truth and right were trampled under foot with the clear knowledge of all the witnesses to the act. The oath is the metaphysical asses' bridge of the lawyers which they should cross as rarely as possible. But if this is unavoidable, it should be done with the greatest solemnity, never without the presence of a priest and in fact in a church or chapel adjoining the court of law. In extremely doubtful or suspicious cases, it is expedient to allow even school-children to be present. For this reason, the French abstract form of oath is of no use at all. Abstraction from what is positively given should be left to everyone's own train of thought according to the degree of his culture and education. However, you are right when you mention the oath as an undeniable example of the practical efficacy of religion. Yet in spite of all you have said, I cannot help doubting whether such efficacy goes much beyond this. Just imagine if all the criminal laws were suddenly declared by public proclamation to be abolished; I do not think that either you or I would have the courage to go home alone, even only from here, under the protection of religious motives. On the other hand, if, in the same manner, all religions were declared to be untrue, we should go on living as before under the protection of the laws alone without any special increase in our fears and our precautionary measures. But I will also tell you that religions very often have a decidedly demoralizing influence. In general, it could be said that what is added to the duties to God is withdrawn from those to humanity; for it is very easy and convenient to make amends for a want of good behaviour towards humanity by adulation for God. Accordingly, we see in all ages and countries that the majority find it much easier to obtain heaven by begging and praying than to merit it by doing good deeds. In every religion it soon comes about that the primary objects of the divine will are declared to be not so much moral actions as faith, temple ceremonies and the many different kinds of divine worship; indeed these are gradually regarded even as substitutes for moral actions, especially when they are associated with the emoluments of the priests. Animal sacrifices in the temple, having masses read, erecting chapels or roadside shrines, soon become the most meritorious works so that through them even serious crimes are expiated, as also through penance, subjection to priestly authority, confessions, pilgrimages, donations to temples and their priests, the building of monasteries, and so on. In the end, the priests thus seem to be almost the middlemen in the business with venal gods. And even if matters do not go quite so far, where is the religion whose followers do not regard at least prayers, hymns of praise, and the many different devotional exercises as at any rate a partial substitute for moral conduct? Look at England, for example, where the Christian Sunday, established by Constantine the Great in opposition to the Jewish Sabbath, is nevertheless mendaciously identified therewith by impudent priestcraft even as regards the name. This is done so that Jehovah's commands for the Sabbath, that is, the day on which the worn-out Almighty had to rest from his six days' labour (and so it is essentially the last day of the week), may be applied to the Sunday of the Christians, the dies solis, this first day that gloriously opens the week, this day of devotion and joy. In consequence of this fraud, 'Sabbath-breaking' or 'the desecration of the Sabbath', that is to say, the slightest occupation, whether for business or pleasure, all games, music, sewing, darning, and all secular works, are in England reckoned as grave sins. Surely the ordinary man must believe that, if only, as his spiritual guides impress on him, he follows 'a strict observance of the holy Sabbath and a regular attendance on divine service', in other words, if only on Sundays he idles away his time inviolably and thoroughly and does not fail to sit in church for two hours to hear the same litany for the thousandth time and to rattle it off a tempo -- that if only he does all this, he can reckon on some indulgence with regard to one thing or another which he occasionally permits himself to do. Those devils in human form, the slave-owners and slave traders in the Free States of North America (they should be called the Slave States), are, as a rule, orthodox and pious Anglicans who would regard it as a grave sin to work on Sundays and who, confident of this and of their regular attendance at church, hope for eternal happiness. The demoralizing influence of religions is, therefore, less problematical than is the moralizing. On the other hand, how great and certain would that moralizing influence have to be, to make amends for the cruelties to which religions, especially the Christian and Mohammedan, have given rise and for the misery they have brought on the world! Think of the fanaticism, the endless persecutions, then the religious wars, that bloody madness of which the ancients had no conception. Think of the crusades which were a quite inexcusable butchery and lasted for two hundred years, their battle cry being: 'It is the will of God.' Their object was to capture the grave of him who preached love, tolerance, and indulgence. Think of the cruel expulsion and extermination of the Moors and Jews from Spain; of the blood baths, inquisitions, and other courts for heretics; and also of the bloody and terrible conquests of the Mohammedans in three continents. Then think of the Christians in America whose inhabitants were for the most part, and in Cuba, entirely exterminated. According to Las Casas, twelve million people were murdered in forty years, all in majorem Dei gloriam [31] of course and for the purpose of spreading the Gospel because what was not Christian was not even regarded as human. It is true that I have previously touched on these things, but when even in our day the Neueste Nachrichten aus dem Reiche Gottes are printed, [32] we will not weary of recalling these older items of news. In particular, let us not forget India, that sacred soil, that cradle of the human race, or at any rate that part thereof to which we belong, where first Mohammedans and then Christians furiously and most cruelly attacked the followers of mankind's sacred and original faith. The ever-deplorable, wanton, and ruthless destruction and disfigurement of ancient temples and images reveal to us even to this day traces of the monotheistic fury of the Mohammedans which was pursued from Mahmud of Ghazni of accursed memory down to Aurangzeb the fratricide. These were afterwards most faithfully imitated by the Portuguese Christians through the destruction of temples as well as by the autos-da-fe of the Inquisition at Goa. Also we should not forget God's chosen people who, after they had stolen by Jehovah's express command the gold and silver vessels lent to them by their old and trusty friends in Egypt, now made their murderous and predatory attack on the 'Promised Land', with the murderer Moses at their head,* in order to tear it away from the rightful owners, by the same Jehovah's express and constantly repeated command, showing no mercy and ruthlessly murdering and exterminating all the inhabitants, even the women and children (Joshua, chaps. 10 and 11). And all this simply because they were not circumcised and did not know Jehovah. This was sufficient ground for justifying every atrocity and cruelty to them; just as for the same reason in earlier times, the infamous blackguardism of the patriarch Jacob and his chosen people towards Hamor, King of Shalem, and his people is gloriously narrated for us (Genesis 34), just because the people were unbelievers. ** This is really the worst side of religions, namely that the believers of every religion regard themselves as justified in committing every crime against those of all the others and have, therefore, treated them with the greatest wickedness and cruelty; thus the Mohammedans against the Christians and Hindus, the Christians against the Hindus, Mohammedans, American natives, Negroes, Jews, heretics, and others. Perhaps I go too far when I say all religions, for in the interest of truth I must add that the fanatical cruelties arising from this principle are really known to us only from the followers of the monotheistic religions, thus Judaism and its two branches, Christianity and Islam. We hear nothing of the kind about Hindus and Buddhists. Although we know that in about the fifth century of our era Buddhism was driven by the Brahmans from its original home in the Indian peninsula and then spread over the whole of Asia, yet we have no definite information, as far as I know, of any crimes of violence, wars, and atrocities whereby this was carried out. This may, of course, be attributable to the obscurity in which the history of those countries is veiled; yet the extremely mild character of those religions which constantly inculcate forbearance to all living things and also the circumstance that, on account of its caste system, Brahmanism does not really allow proselytes, entitle us to hope that their followers refrained from shedding blood on a large scale and from every kind of cruelty. Spence Hardy in his admirable book, Eastern Monachism, p. 412, praises the extraordinary tolerance of the Buddhists and adds the assurance that the annals of Buddhism afford fewer instances of religious persecution than do those of any other religion. Indeed, intolerance is essential only to monotheism; an only God is by nature a jealous God who will not allow another to live. On the other hand, polytheistic gods are naturally tolerant; they live and let live. In the first place, they gladly tolerate their colleagues, the gods of the same religion, and this tolerance is afterwards extended even to foreign gods who are, accordingly, hospitably received and later admitted, in some cases, even to an equality of rights. An instance of this is seen in the Romans who willingly admitted and respected Phrygian, Egyptian, and other foreign gods. Thus it is only the monotheistic religions that furnish us with the spectacle of religious wars, religious persecutions, courts for trying heretics, and also with that of iconoclasm, the destruction of the images of foreign gods, the demolition of Indian temples and Egyptian colossi that had looked at the sun for three thousand years; all this just because their jealous God had said: 'Thou shalt make no graven image', and so on. But to return to the main point, you are certainly right in insisting on man's strong metaphysical need. Religions, however, seem to me to be not so much a satisfaction' as an abuse thereof. At any rate, we have seen that, as regards the encouragement of morality, their use is to a great extent problematical, whereas their disadvantages, and especially the atrocities that have followed in their train, are as clear as the light of day. Of course, it is quite a different matter if we take into consideration the use of religions as supports to thrones; for in so far as these are granted by the grace of God, throne and altar are intimately associated. Accordingly, every wise prince who loves his throne and family, will always appear at the head of his people as a paragon of true religious feeling, just as even Machiavelli in the eighteenth chapter of his work urgently recommends princes to cultivate religious feeling. Moreover, it might be mentioned that revealed religions are related to philosophy precisely as are sovereigns by the grace of God to the sovereignty of the people, so that the two first terms of this comparison stand in natural alliance.
DEMOPHELES: Ah, do not adopt that tone, but remember that you would thus be playing the tune of ochlocracy and anarchy, the arch-enemy of all law and order, of all civilization and humanity.
PHILALETHES: You are right; they were just sophisms, or what the fencing masters call irregular cuts; and so I retract what I said. But see how arguments can sometimes make even an honest man unjust and malicious. Therefore let us stop.
DEMOPHELES: I cannot help regretting that, after all my efforts, I have not changed your attitude with regard to religions. On the other hand, I can also assure you that all you have stated has not in the least shaken my conviction of the great value and necessity of religions.
PHILALETHES: I believe you, for as it says in Hudibras:
[quote]He that complies against his will, Is of his own opinion still.[/quote]
But I console myself with the thought that in controversies and mineral baths the after-effect is the only real one.
DEMOPHELES: Well, I wish you a blessed after-effect.
PHILALETHES: Perhaps it might be, if only I could swallow a Spanish proverb.
DEMOPHELES: What does that say?
PHILALETHES: Detras de la cruz esta el Diablo.
DEMOPHELES: What is that in plain language, you old Spaniard?
PHILALETHES: 'Behind the cross stands the devil.'
DEMOPHELES: Come, we do not want to part from each other with sarcasms. Let us rather see that religion, like Janus, or better still like Yama the Brahman god of death, has two faces and, like him, one very friendly and one very stern. Each of us has kept his eye only on one of them.
PHILALETHES: You are quite right, old chap!
§ 175
[b]Faith and Knowledge[/b]
As a branch of knowledge, philosophy is not in the least concerned with what should or may be believed, but merely with what can be known. Now if this should be something quite different from what we have to believe, then this would be no disadvantage even to faith; for it is faith because it teaches what we cannot know. If we could know it, then faith would appear as something useless and ridiculous, rather like advancing a doctrine of faith in connection with mathematics.
On the other hand, it might be urged that faith can still teach more, much more, than can philosophy, yet nothing that is inconsistent with the results thereof, since knowledge is of sterner stuff than faith, so that if the two come into collision, the latter breaks.
In any case, the two are fundamentally different and, for their mutual advantage, must remain strictly separate so that each may go its own way without taking any notice of the other.
§ 176
[b]Revelation[/b]
The ephemeral generations of human beings arise and pass away in quick succession, whilst the individuals, beset with anxiety, want, and pain, dance into the arms of death. They never weary of asking what is the matter with them and what is the meaning of the whole tragi-comic farce. They cry to heaven for an answer, but it remains silent. On the other hand, priests and parsons come along with their revelations.
Of the many hard and deplorable things in the fate of man, not the least is that we exist without knowing whence, whither, and to what purpose. Whoever has grasped and seen through the sense of this evil and is thoroughly imbued with it, will hardly be able to resist a feeling of irritation towards those who pretend to have special information about this matter, which they wish to convey to us under the name of revelations. I would like to advise these revelation-gentlemen not to talk so much at the present time about revelation, otherwise one of these days it might easily be revealed to them what revelation really is.
But whoever can seriously think that beings who were not human had ever given information concerning the existence and purpose of our race and the world, is still only a big child. There is no revelation other than the thoughts of sages, although these are subject to error, as is the lot of everything human. These are often clothed in strange allegories and myths that are then called religions. To this extent, therefore, it is immaterial whether a man lives and dies relying on his own ideas or on those of others; for they are always only human ideas and opinions in which he puts his trust. As a rule, however, men are weak and prefer to trust others who allege supernatural sources rather than rely on their own minds. Now if we keep in view the exceedingly great intellectual difference between one man and another, then to some extent the thoughts of one might well be regarded by another as revelations.
On the other hand, the fundamental secret and cunning of all priests, at all times and throughout the world, whether they be Brahmans or Mohammedans, Buddhists or Christians, are that they have rightly recognized and understood the great strength and ineradicability of man's metaphysical need. They now pretend to possess the means to satisfy this by saying that the word of the great riddle has in some extraordinary way reached them direct. Once men have been talked into this idea, the priests can guide and control them at will. And so the more prudent rulers enter into an alliance with them; the others are themselves ruled by them. But if, as the rarest of all exceptions, a philosopher ascends the throne, there arises the most embarrassing disturbance in the whole comedy.
§ 177
[b]On Christianity[/b]
To judge this religion fairly, we must also consider what existed before it and was set aside by it. First there was Graeco- Roman paganism. Considered as popular metaphysics, it was an extremely insignificant phenomenon without any real, definite dogmatic system or any decidedly expressed ethics, in fact without any true moral tendency and sacred writings, so that it hardly merited the name of religion, but was rather a mere play of the imagination, a product of the poets from popular fairy-tales, and for the most part an obvious personification of the powers of nature. We can hardly believe that grown men ever took this childish religion seriously, yet evidence of their so doing is furnished by many passages from the ancients, especially by the first book of Valerius Maximus, but also by very many from Herodotus. Of these I will mention only those in the last book, chapter 65, where he expresses his own opinion and talks like an old woman. As time went on and philosophy progressed, this seriousness had naturally disappeared and thus it was possible for Christianity to supplant that State religion, in spite of its external supports. Yet even in the best Greek period, this State religion was certainly not taken as seriously as was the Christian in more modern times, or as are Buddhism, Brahmanism, or even Islam in Asia. Consequently, the polytheism of the ancients was something quite different from the mere plural of monotheism. This is evident from the Frogs of Aristophanes, where Dionysus appears as the most pitiable poltroon and coxcomb imaginable and is made an object of ridicule; and this play was publicly performed at his own festival, the Dionysia. The second thing that Christianity had to supplant was Judaism whose crude dogma was sublimated and tacitly allegorized by the Christian. Christianity generally is of an entirely allegorical nature; for that which in things profane is called allegory is in religions styled 'mystery'. It must be admitted that Christianity is far superior to those two earlier religions not only in morals, but even in dogmatics. In morals the teachings of caritas, gentleness, love of one's enemy, resignation, and denial of one's own will, are exclusively its own, in the West of course. What better thing can be offered to the masses who, of course, are incapable of directly grasping the truth, than a fine allegory which is perfectly adequate as a guide for practical life and as an anchor of hope and consolation? A small admixture of absurdity, however, is a necessary ingredient for such an allegory, in that it helps to indicate its allegorical nature. If the Christian dogmas are understood sensu proprio, then Voltaire is right; if, on the other hand, they are taken allegorically, they are a sacred myth, a vehicle for conveying to the people truths that would otherwise be quite beyond their reach. We might compare them to the arabesques of Raphael as well as to those of Runge, which represent the palpably unnatural and impossible, but from which a deep meaning is nevertheless expressed. Even the assertion of the Church that, in the dogmas of religion, the faculty of reason is wholly incompetent, blind, and unsound, means at bottom that these dogmas are of an allegorical nature; and so they are not to be judged by the standard that only the faculty of reason, taking everything sensu proprio, can apply. The absurdities in dogma are just the distinctive mark and sign of the allegorical and mythical; although, as in the present instance, they spring from the fact that two such heterogeneous doctrines as those of the Old and New Testaments had to be tied together. That great allegory came about only gradually on the occasion of external and chance circumstances. It was expounded under the quiet influence of a deep-lying truth whereof men were not clearly conscious, until it was perfected by Augustine. He penetrated its meaning most deeply and was then able to grasp it as a systematic whole and to make good what was missing. Accordingly, only the Augustinian doctrine, confirmed also by Luther, is perfect Christianity, not the primitive Christianity, as present-day Protestants imagine who take 'revelation' sensu proprio and, therefore, restrict it to one individual; just as it is not the seed but the fruit that is good to eat. However, the bad point of all religions is always that they dare not be openly and avowedly allegorical, but only covertly so; accordingly, they have to state their teachings in all seriousness as being true sensu proprio. Now with the essentially necessary absurdities in them, this introduces a constant deception and is a great drawback. What is even worse is that in time there comes a day when they are no longer true sensu proprio, and then they are overthrown. To this extent, it would be better for them to admit forthwith their allegorical nature; but how is one to bring home to the people that something can be simultaneously true and not true? Now as we find that all religions are more or less of such a nature, we have to acknowledge that the absurd is to a certain degree suited to the human race, is in fact an element of life, and that deception and mystification are indispensable to man, as is also confirmed by other phenomena.
An example and proof of the above-mentioned source of the absurd, springing from the combination of the Old and New Testaments, are afforded, among other things, by the Christian doctrine of predestination and grace, as elaborated by Augustine, that guiding star of Luther. In consequence of that doctrine, one man has an advantage over another in respect of grace, which then amounts to a privilege received at birth and brought ready-made into the world, and this indeed in the most important of all matters. But the offensive and absurd nature of this teaching springs merely from the Old Testament assumption that man is the work of another's will and is thereby created out of nothing. On the other hand, with regard to the fact that genuine moral qualities are actually inborn, the matter assumes quite a different and more rational significance under the Brahmanic and Buddhist assumption of metempsychosis. According to this, the advantage one man has at birth over another and thus what he brings with him from another world and a previous life, is not another's gift of grace, but the fruit of his own deeds that were performed in that other world. Connected with that dogma of Augustine's is yet another, that out of the mass of the human race, which is corrupt and depraved and is, therefore, destined to eternal damnation, only very few indeed, and these in consequence of election by grace and of predestination, are deemed righteous and therefore blessed; the rest, however, go to well-merited perdition, to the eternal torments of hell. [33] Taken sensu proprio, the dogma here is revolting; for not only does it cause a young man scarcely twenty years old to suffer endless torture, by virtue of its punishments of eternal hell, for his lapses or even his unbelief, but there is also the fact that this almost universal damnation is really the effect of original sin and thus the necessary consequence of the Fall. But in any case, this must have been foreseen by him who in the first instance had not created human beings better than they are and had then laid a trap for them into which he must have known they would fall, since all things without exception are his work and from him nothing remains hidden. Accordingly, out of nothing he had summoned into existence a feeble race subject to sin in order then to hand it over to endless torture. Finally, there is also the fact that the God who prescribes forbearance and forgiveness of every trespass and offence, even to the extent ofloving one's enemy, himself practises none of these, but rather does the very opposite. For a punishment that occurs at the end of things, when all is over and done with for all time, cannot aim either at improvement or determent and is, therefore, revenge pure and simple. But considered from this point of view, the whole race even appears to be expressly created and positively destined for eternal torment and damnation, with the exception of the few who, through election by grace, are saved, no one knows why. But apart from these, it looks as if the Almighty had created the world so that the devil should get it, in which case he would have done far better to leave things alone. So much for dogmas when they are taken sensu proprio; whereas understood sensu allegorico, all this is yet capable of an adequate explanation. In the first place, as I have said, the absurd and even revolting aspect of this teaching is merely a consequence of Jewish theism with its creation out of nothing and its really paradoxical and shocking denial, connected therewith, of the doctrine of metempsychosis, a doctrine that is natural, is to a certain extent self-evident, and so is accepted at all times by almost the entire human race with the exception of the Jews. Just to remove the colossal drawback arising from this and to tone down the revolting aspect of the dogma, Pope Gregory I in the sixth century very wisely formed the doctrine of purgatory, which is in essence already found in Origen (cf. Bayle in the article Origene, Note B), and formally incorporated it in the articles of the Church. In this way, the thing was greatly moderated and to some extent took the place of metempsychosis; for the one like the other furnishes a process of purification. With the same object, there was introduced also the doctrine of the restitution or restoration of all things ([x]) whereby in the final act of the world-comedy even the sinners, all and sundry, are restored in integrum. [34] It is only the Protestants with their stern belief in the Bible who will not be dissuaded from their eternal punishments in hell. 'Much good may it do them!' might be said by anyone in a spiteful mood. The only consolation is that they just do not believe in it, but let the matter rest for the time being, thinking in their hearts that things will not be quite so bad as that.
In consequence of his rigid systematic mind, through his strict dogmatizing of Christianity and his fixed definition of doctrines that in the Bible are only hinted at and always float on an obscure foundation, Augustine gave them such hard contours and Christianity so harsh a construction that at the present time these views cause offence and are, therefore, now opposed by rationalism in our day as they were by Pelagianism in his. For example, De civitate dei, lib. XII, c. 21, the argument taken in abstracto runs really as follows: A God creates a being out of nothing, gives him inhibitory commands, and, because these are not obeyed, tortures him throughout eternity with every imaginable agony and affliction, for which purpose he then inseparably binds body and soul (De civitate dei, lib. XIII, c. 2; c. 11 in fine and 24 in fine), in order that the torture may never through disintegration destroy this being and thus let him escape. On the contrary, he must live for ever to endure eternal torment, this poor fellow who was created out of nothing, and at any rate has a claim to his original nothing, which last retreat that in any event cannot be very bad should remain assured to him by rights as his inherited property. At any rate, I cannot help sympathizing with him. Now if in addition we take the rest of Augustine's doctrines, namely that all this does not really depend on what a man does or omits to do, but was previously settled by election through grace, then we do not know what more is to be said. Naturally our highly educated rationalists then say: 'But all this is not true and is a mere bugbear; on the contrary, we shall always make progress and rise stage by stage to ever greater perfection.' It is a pity that we did not begin earlier, for then we should already be there. But our bewilderment at such statements is still further increased when we listen meanwhile to the voice of Vanini, a wicked heretic who was burnt at the stake: Si nollet Deus pessimas ac nefarias in orbe vigere actiones, procul dubio uno nutu extra mundi limites omnia flagitia exterminaret profligaretque: quis enim nostrum divinae potest resistere voluntati? quomodo invito Deo patrantur scelera, si in actu quoque peccandi scelestis vires subministrat? Ad haec, si contra Dei voluntatem homo labitur, Deus erit inferior homine, qui ei adversatur, et praevalet. Hinc deducunt, Deus ita desiderat hunc mundum qualis est, si meliorem vellet, meliorem haberet. [35] (Amphitheatrum mundi, exercit. 16, p. 104) He had previously said on page 103: Si Deus vult peccata, igitur facti: si non vult, tamen committuntur, erit ergo dicendus improvidus, vel impotens, vel crudelis, cum voti sui compos fieri aut nesciat, aut nequeat, aut negligat. [36] At the same time, it is clear why, even at the present day, the dogma of free will is clung to mordicus, [37] although all serious and honest thinkers from Hobbes to me have rejected it as absurd, as is seen in my essay 'On the Freedom of the Will' which was awarded a prize. It was certainly easier to burn than to refute Vanini. The former was preferred after his tongue had been previously cut out; the latter is still open to anyone who may care to make the attempt, yet it must be done seriously with thoughts and ideas, not with hollow verbiage.
Augustine's conception of the exceedingly large number of sinners and of the extremely small number of those meriting eternal bliss is in itself correct. It is again found in Brahmanism and Buddhism where, however, in consequence of metempsychosis, it causes no offence. For in Brahmanism only very few indeed attain final emancipation, in Buddhism Nirvana (both are equivalent to our eternal bliss). Yet these few are not privileged, but have already come into the world with the accumulated merit of former lives, and now continue along the same path. All the rest, however, are not hurled into the eternally burning lake of fire and brimstone, but are moved only into worlds that are appropriate to their conduct. Accordingly, anyone who asked the teachers of these religions where and what all those others now are who have not attained salvation, would receive the following answer: 'Look about you and you will see them here; this is their scene of action, this is Samsara, that is, the world of craving, birth, pain, old age, sickness and death.' If, on the other hand, we understand merely sensu allegorico the Augustinian dogma in question, namely that of the very small number of the elect and the very large one of the eternally damned, in order to interpret it in the sense of our philosophy, then it agrees with the truth that certainly only a few reach the denial of the will and thus emancipation from this world (just as only a few Buddhists attain Nirvana). On the other hand, what the dogma hypostasizes as eternal damnation, is just this world of ours; this is the place to which all those others are relegated. It is bad enough; it is purgatory; it is hell and in it there is no lack of devils. Just consider what men sometimes inflict on men, with what excruciating agonies one will slowly torture another to death, and then ask yourselves whether devils could do more. Those who are not converted and persist in the affirmation of the will-to-live, will likewise stay in the world for ever.
But really, if an Asiatic were to ask me what Europe is, I should have to reply that it is that part of the world which is completely ruled by the unheard-of and incredible notion that the birth of a human being is his absolute beginning and that he has come from nothing.
Fundamentally and apart from the mythologies of the two religions, Buddha's Samsara and Nirvana are identical with Augustine's two civitates into which the world is divided, namely the civitas terrena and the civitas coelestis, as described by him in the books De civitate dei, especially lib. XIV, c. 4 et ultim.; lib. XV, c. I and 21; lib. XVIII in fine; lib. XXI, c. 1.
In Christianity the devil is an extremely necessary person as a counterpoise to Almighty God who is all-good and all-wise; for with such a God it is impossible to see how the predominant, countless, and measureless evils of the world could come about unless there were a devil to be responsible for them. Therefore since the rationalists have abolished him, the resultant drawback on the other side has made itself more and more felt, as was to be foreseen and was foreseen by the orthodox. For we cannot take away a pillar without endangering the rest of the structure. This also confirms what is ascertained in other ways, namely that Jehovah is another term for Ormuzd and Satan for Ahriman who is inseparable from him; but the name Ormuzd is itself another term for Indra.
Christianity has the peculiar disadvantage of not being, like other religions, a pure doctrine, but is essentially and mainly a narrative or history, a series of events, a complex of the facts, actions, and sufferings of individuals; and this very history constitutes the dogma, belief in which leads to salvation. Other religions, Buddhism in particular, have, of course, a historical supplement in the lives of their founders; this, however, is not part of the dogma itself, but merely accompanies it. For example, we can compare the Lalitavistara with the Gospel in so far as it contains the life of Sakya Muni, the Buddha of the present world-period. But this remains something quite separate and distinct from the dogma and so from Buddhism itself, just because the lives of previous Buddhas were also quite different and those of future Buddhas will again be quite different. Here the dogma has not by any means grown up with the life of the founder and is not based on individual persons and facts, but is universal and applies equally to all times. Therefore the Lalitavistara is not a gospel in the Christian sense, no glad tidings of a fact of salvation, but the life of him who gave instructions as to how everyone could redeem himself. It is the historical nature of Christianity that makes the Chinese scoff at the missionaries as so many story-tellers.
Another fundamental defect of Christianity to be mentioned in this connection and not to be explained away which daily manifests its deplorable consequences, is that it has most unnaturally separated man from the animal world, to which in essence he nevertheless belongs. It now tries to accept man entirely by himself and regards animals positively as things; whereas Brahmanism and Buddhism, faithful to truth, definitely recognize the evident kinship of man with the whole of nature in general and the animals in particular and represent him, by metempsychosis and otherwise, as being closely connected with the animal world. The important part played generally by animals in Brahmanism and Buddhism, compared with their total nullity in Jewish Christianity, pronounces sentence on the latter in respect of perfection, much as we in Europe may be accustomed to such an absurdity. To palliate that fundamental defect, but actually aggravating it, we find a trick which is as despicable as it is shameless and has already been censured in my Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics, 'Basis of Ethics', § 19 (7). I refer to the trick of describing in terms quite different from those used in the case of man all the natural functions which animals have in common with us and which, more than anything else, testify to the identity between their nature and ours, such as eating, drinking, pregnancy, birth, death, dead body, and so on. It is positively a vile and mean trick. Now the fundamental defect just mentioned is a consequence of creation out of nothing, according to which the Creator (Genesis 1 and 9) hands over to man all the animals, just as if they were mere things and without any recommendation to their being properly treated, such as even the seller of a dog often adds when parting with the animal he has reared. The Creator hands them over so that man may rule over them and thus may do what he likes with them; whereupon in the second chapter he appoints man as the first professor of zoology by commissioning him to give animals the names they are to bear in future. Again this is merely a symbol of their entire dependence on him, that is, of their being without any rights. Holy Ganga! mother of our race! Such stories have on me the same effect as do Jew's pitch and foetor Judaicus! The fault lies with the Jewish view that regards the animal as something manufactured for man's use. But unfortunately the consequences of this are felt even to this day because they have passed over into Christianity. For this very reason, we should give up crediting this religion with the most perfect morality. It really has a serious and fundamental imperfection in that it restricts its precepts to man and leaves the whole of the animal world without any rights. And so in protecting them from the rough and callous masses who are frequently more bestial than the beasts, the police have to take the place of religion; and since this is not enough, societies for the protection of animals are today being formed all over Europe and America. On the other hand, such would be the most superfluous thing in the world in the whole of uncircumcised Asia, where religion affords sufficient protection to animals and even makes them the subject of positive beneficence. For example, the fruits of this are seen in the large hospital for animals in Surat to which even Christians, Mohammedans, and Jews can send their sick animals. After a successful cure, however, such people are very rightly not allowed to take them away again. In the same way, whenever a Brahman or Buddhist has a piece of personal good fortune, he does not proceed to rattle off a Te Deum, but goes to the market-place to buy birds in order to open their cages at the city-gates. There are frequent opportunities for observing this in Astrakhan where the followers of all religions meet; and they do a hundred similar things. On the other hand, look at the revolting and outrageous wickedness with which our Christian mob treat animals, laughing as they kill them without aim or object, maiming and torturing them, and even working the very marrow out of the poor bones of their old horses who are their direct bread-winners, until they sink and succumb under the lashes. It might truly be said that men are the devils of this earth and animals the tortured souls. These are the consequences of that installation scene in the Garden of Paradise. For the mob can be got at only by force or religion; but here Christianity leaves us shamefully in the lurch. I heard from a reliable source that, when asked by a society for the protection of animals to preach a sermon against cruelty to them, a Protestant clergyman replied that, with the best will in the world, he could not do so because in this matter religion gave him no support. The man was honest and right. In a circular dated 27 November 1852, the very laudable Munich society for the protection of animals endeavours, with the best intentions, to quote from the Bible 'precepts preaching consideration for animals', and mentions Proverbs 12:10; Ecclesiasticus 7:24; Psalms 147:9; 104:14; Job 38:41; Matthew 10:29. But this is only a pious fraud that reckons on our not turning up the passages; only the first well-known passage says something relevant, although it is weak. The others, it is true, speak of animals, but not of consideration for them. What does the first passage say? 'A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast.' 'Regardeth the life'! What an expression! One is merciful to a sinner or an evil-doer, but not to an innocent faithful animal who is often his master's bread-winner and gets nothing but his bare fodder. Merciful indeed! We owe to the animal not mercy but justice, and the debt often remains unpaid in Europe, the continent that is so permeated with the foetor Judaicus that the obvious and simple truth 'the animal is essentially the same as man' is an offensive paradox.* The protection of animals is, therefore, left to the police and to societies formed for the purpose, but these can do very little against that widespread ruffianism of the mob, where it is a question of poor things who cannot complain and in a hundred cases of cruelty hardly one comes to light, especially as the punishments are too lenient. Flogging was recently suggested in England and this seems to me to be a thoroughly suitable punishment. Yet what can we expect from the masses when there are scholars and even zoologists who, instead of acknowledging the identity (intimately known to them) of the essential natures of man and animal, are bigoted and narrow-minded enough to carryon a heated controversy with honest and reasonable colleagues who put man in the proper animal class or demonstrate the great similarity between him and the chimpanzee and orang-utan? But it is really revolting when in his Scenen aus dem Geisterreich, vol. ii, Sc. I, p. 15, the pious Jung- Stilling with his exceedingly Christian turn of mind adduces the following comparison: 'Suddenly the skeleton shrivelled up into the indescribably hideous form of a dwarf, just as does a large garden spider when we bring it into the focus of a burning-glass and its pus-like blood now hisses and boils in the glowing heat.' And so this man of God perpetrated such an infamous deed or calmly watched it, which in this case amounts to the same thing; in fact he sees so little wrong in it that he tells us about it quite casually and calmly! These are the effects of the first chapter of Genesis and generally of the whole Jewish way of looking at nature. With the Hindus and Buddhists, on the other hand, the Mahavakya (the great word) 'tat tvam asi' (this art thou) applies and is always to be expressed over every animal in order that we may have before us, as a guide to our conduct, the identity of his inner nature and ours. Go away from me with your most perfect of all moral systems!
When I was a student at Gottingen, Blumenbach in his lectures on physiology spoke very seriously to us about the horrors of vivisection and pointed out to us what a cruel and shocking thing it was. He therefore said that it should very rarely be resorted to and only in the case of very important investigations that are of direct use. But it must then be done with the greatest publicity in the large lecture-hall after an invitation has been sent to all the medical students, so that the cruel sacrifice on the altar of science may be of the greatest possible use. Every quack, however, now considers himself entitled to carry out in his torture-chamber the cruellest tortures on animals in order to decide problems whose solution has long since appeared in books, but which he is too lazy and ignorant to look up. Our doctors no longer receive, as they did formerly, a classical education which endowed them with a certain humanity and a touch of nobility. Nowadays, they go off as soon as possible to the university, where they want to learn to be medicine-men, and then have a good time in the world.
Here the French biologists appear to have set the example and the Germans vie with them in inflicting on innocent animals, often in large numbers, the cruellest tortures in order to settle purely theoretical and often very futile questions. I will now illustrate this with a few examples which have particularly disgusted me, although they are by no means isolated cases; on the contrary, a hundred similar instances could be enumerated. In his book Uber die Ursachen der Knochenformen (1857), Professor Ludwig Fick of Marburg reports that he removed the eye-balls of young animals to obtain a confirmation for his hypothesis through the fact that the bones now grow into the cavities! (See Central Blatt of 24 October 1857.)
Deserving of special mention is the atrocity, perpetrated in Nuremberg by Baron von Bibra and reported by him tanquam re bene gesta [38] to the public with inconceivable naivete in his Vergleichende Untersuchungen uber das Gehirn des Menschen und der Wirbelthiere (Mannheim, 1854, pp. 131 ff.). He deliberately arranged for the death by starvation of two rabbits in order to carry out a useless and superfluous research as to whether the chemical constituents of the brain underwent a change in their proportions through death by starvation! For the benefit of science, n' est-ce-pas? Does it never occur to these gentlemen of the scalpel and crucible that they are human beings first and chemists afterwards? How can we sleep in peace while harmless animals from the mother's breast are kept under lock and key to suffer a slow and agonizing death by starvation? Do we not have a nightmare in our sleep? And is this not happening in Bavaria where, under the auspices of Prince Adalbert, the admirable and highly eminent councillor Perner is setting the whole of Germany a brilliant example in his defence of animals against cruelty and brutality? Is there no society in Nuremberg affiliated with the highly beneficial one that is active in Munich? If Bibra's cruel act could not be prevented, was it left unpunished? At any rate, anyone who has still as much to learn from books as has that von Bibra, should remember that to extort the final answers on the path of cruelty* is to put nature on the rack in order to enrich his knowledge, to extort her secrets which have probably long been known. For such knowledge there are still many other innocent sources without his having to torture to death poor helpless animals. What in all the world has the poor harmless rabbit done that it should be seized and sacrificed to the torture of a slow death by starvation? No one is justified in practising vivisection who does not already know and understand all that is to be found in books on the question under investigation.
It is obviously high time that in Europe Jewish views on nature were brought to an end, at any rate as regards animals, and that the eternal essence, living in all animals as well as in us, be recognized as such and treated with consideration and respect. Bear this in mind and remember that it is seriously meant and that not one word will be withdrawn, even if you were to cover with synagogues the whole of Europe! A man must be bereft of all his senses or completely chloroformed by the foetor Judaicus, not to see that, in all essential respects, the animal is absolutely identical with us and that the difference lies merely in the accident, the intellect, not in the substance which is the will. The world is not a piece of machinery and animals are not articles manufactured for our use. Such views should be left to synagogues and philosophical lecture-rooms which in essence are not so very different. On the other hand, the above knowledge furnishes us with the rule for the correct treatment of animals. I advise the zealots and parsons not to say much against it here, for this time on our side we have not only truth, but also morality.*
The greatest benefit of railways is that millions of draught-horses are spared a miserable existence.
It is unfortunately true that the human being who has been driven northwards and whose skin has thus become white requires animal food, although there are vegetarians in England. But the death of the animals we eat should be rendered quite painless by the administration of chloroform and of a swift blow on the lethal spot. We should do this not out of' the righteous man's regard for the life of his beast' as the Old Testament expresses it, but from our bounden duty to the eternal essence that lives in all animals as it lives in us. All animals to be slaughtered should be chloroformed beforehand; this would be a noble course to follow and an honour to mankind. Here the higher scientific knowledge of the West would go hand in hand with the higher morality of the East, since Brahmanism and Buddhism do not limit their precepts to 'one's neighbour', but take under their protection 'all living beings'.
In spite of all Jewish mythology and the intimidation of priests, the immediate and certain truth that is self-evident to everyone whose mind is not crazy and fuddled through foetor Judaicus, must ultimately gain acceptance and can no longer be suppressed, even in Europe. I refer to the truth that animals are in all essential respects identical with us and that the difference lies merely in the degree of intelligence, i.e. cerebral activity, the latter also admitting of great differences between the various species of animals. In this way, we shall see a more humane treatment of animals. For only when that simple and undoubtedly sublime truth has reached the masses will animals cease to appear as creatures without rights, and thus be exposed to the malicious whim and cruelty of every coarse ruffian; and only then will it not be open to any medical quack to put to the test every odd and eccentric caprice of his ignorance by the most horrible tortures on numberless animals, as happens at the present time. It must be acknowledged, of course, that animals are now in most cases chloroformed and are thus spared pain during the operation, after which they can be dispatched by a quick death. This method, however, is necessarily excluded in the case of operations which are performed on the activity of the nervous system and its sensitiveness and which are now so frequent, for the very thing to be observed would thus be stopped. Alas the animal most frequently taken for vivisection is morally the noblest of all, the dog, who is, moreover, rendered more susceptible to pain by his highly developed nervous system.*
The unconscionable treatment of animals must be stopped in Europe. The Jewish view of the animal world must, on account of its immorality, be expelled from Europe. What is more obvious than that we and the animals are to all intents and purposes absolutely the same? To fail to recognize this, a man must be bereft of all his senses, or rather he will not see, since to him a gratuity is more acceptable than truth.
§ 178
[b]On Theism[/b]
Just as polytheism is the personification of the individual parts and forces of nature, so is monotheism that of the whole of nature, at one stroke.
When I try to imagine that I am standing before an individual being to whom I say: 'My Creator, at one time I was nothing, but you have brought me forth so that I am now something and indeed I am I'; and I add: 'I thank you for this benefit'; and finally say: 'If I have been worthless and good-for-nothing, it is my fault'-then I must confess that, in consequence of philosophical and Indian studies, my mind has become incapable of sustaining such an idea. Moreover, this is the counterpart to what Kant presents to us in the Critique of Pure Reason (in the section 'Of the Impossibility of a Cosmological Proof'): 'We cannot suppress or support the idea that a being whom we picture as the highest among all possible beings, should say to himself: "I am from eternity to eternity, there is nothing beside me except that which is something merely through my will; but whence am I?'" Incidentally, this last question, just like the whole of the above-mentioned section, has not prevented professors of philosophy since Kant's time from making the Absolute, or in plain language, that which has no cause, the constant and main theme of all their philosophizing. This is for them a really good idea. Speaking generally, these men are incurable and I cannot too often advise the reader to waste no time on their writings and lectures.
It is all the same whether we make an idol out of wood, stone, or metal, or make it up from abstract concepts. It remains idolatry, the moment we have before us a personal being to whom we make sacrifices and whom we invoke and thank. At bottom it is not so different whether we sacrifice our sheep or our inclinations. Every form of worship or prayer is incontestable evidence of idolatory. And so the mystical sects from all religions agree in abolishing for their adepts all forms of worship.
§ 179
[b]The Old and New Testaments[/b]
Judaism has as its fundamental characteristics realism and optimism which are closely related and are the conditions of theism proper. For this regards the material world as absolutely real and life as a pleasant gift bestowed on us. Brahmanism and Buddhism, on the other hand, have as their fundamental characteristics idealism and pessimism, for they assign to the world only a dreamlike existence and regard life as the consequence of our guilt. In the doctrine of the Zendavesta whence, as we know, Judaism has sprung, the pessimistic element is represented by Ahriman. But in Judaism he has only a subordinate position as Satan who is nevertheless, like Ahriman, the author and originator of snakes, scorpions, and vermin. Judaism at once makes use of him to correct its fundamental error of optimism, namely for the Fall, which now introduces into that religion the pessimistic element that is required in the interests of the most obvious and palpable truth and is its most correct fundamental idea; although it transfers into the course of existence what must be represented as underlying and preceding it.
A striking confirmation that Jehovah is Ormuzd is furnished by the first book of Ezra in the Septuagint, thus [x] (6: 24), omitted by Luther: 'Cyrus the king had a house of the Lord built at Jerusalem, where sacrifices are made to him through the perpetual fire.' Also the second book of the Maccabees, chapters 1 and 2 and 13:8, shows that the religion of the Jews was that of the Persians, for it is narrated that the Jews who were led away into Babylonian captivity had, under the guidance of Nehemiah, previously concealed the consecrated fire in a dried-out cistern, where it went under water and was later rekindled through a miracle, to the great edification of the Persian king. Like the Jews, the Persians also abhorred the worship of images and, therefore, never presented the gods in that form. (Spiegel, Uber die Zendreligion, also tells us of the close relationship between the Zend religion and Judaism, but thinks that the former comes from the latter.) Just as Jehovah is a transformation of Ormuzd, so is Satan the corresponding transformation of Ahriman, that is, the adversary or opponent, namely ofOrmuzd. (Luther has' opponent' where the Septuagint has' Satan', e.g. I Kings II: 23.) It appears that the service of Jehovah originated under Josiah with the assistance of Hilkiah, in other words, it was acquired from the Parsecs and completed by Ezra on the return from the Babylonian exile. For up till the time of Josiah and Hilkiah and also under Solomon, there obviously prevailed in Judaea natural religion, Sabianism, the worship of Belus, of Astarte, and others. (See the books of the Kings on Josiah and Hilkiah.) *
Incidentally, as confirmation of the origin of Judaism from the Zend religion, it may be mentioned that, according to the Old Testament and other Jewish authorities, the cherubim are creatures with the head of a bull on which Jehovah is mounted. (Psalms 99: I. In the Septuagint, 2 Kings 6:2 and 22:11; bk. 4, 19:15: [x].) 39 Such animals, half-bull, half-man, also half-lion, are very similar to the description of Ezekiel (chapters 1 and 10), and are found on pieces of sculpture in Persepolis, but especially among the Assyrian statues found in Mosul and Nimrod. Even in Vienna, there is a carved stone representing Ormuzd riding such a bull-cherub. Particulars of this are to be found in the Wiener Jahrbucher der Litteratur, September 1833, Records of Travels in Persia. Moreover, the detailed explanation of that origin has been furnished by J. G. Rhode in his book, Die heilige Sage des Zendvolks. All this sheds light on the genealogical tree of Jehovah.
The New Testament, on the other hand, must somehow be of Indian origin, as is testified by its thoroughly Indian ethics which carries morality to the point of asceticism, by its pessimism and its avatar. It is precisely through these that it is definitely and diametrically opposed to the Old Testament, so that there was only the story of the Fall to provide a link which could connect the two. For when that Indian teaching found its way into the Promised Land, there arose the problem of uniting Jewish monotheism and its [x] [40] with the knowledge of the corruption and desolation of the world, of its need for deliverance and redemption through an avatar, together with a morality of self-denial and repentance. And a solution to the problem was as far as possible successful, namely to the extent that two such different and even antagonistic doctrines could be united.
As ivy needs support and something to hold on to, it twines round a rough-hewn post, everywhere adapting itself to the irregular shape and reproducing this, yet clothing the post with life and grace, so that we are presented with a pleasant sight instead of the bare post. In the same way, Christ's teaching that has sprung from Indian wisdom has covered the old and quite different trunk of crude Judaism and what had to be retained of the original form is changed by that teaching into something quite different, true and alive. It appears to be the same, but is something really different.
Thus the Creator, who creates out of nothing and is separate from the world, is identified with the Saviour and through him with mankind. He stands as their representative, for in him they are redeemed, just as they had fallen in Adam and had since been entangled in the bonds of sin, corruption, suffering, and death. For here, as well as in Buddhism, the world manifests itself as all this, no longer in the light of Jewish optimism that had found 'all things very good' ([x]). On the contrary, the devil himself is now called the 'prince of this world', [x] (John 12:31 ), ruler of the world. The world is no longer an end, but a means; the kingdom of eternal joys lies beyond it and beyond death. Renunciation in this world and the direction of our hopes to a better are the spirit of Christianity. But the way to such a world is opened by reconciliation i.e. by salvation from our world and its ways. In morality the command to love one's enemy takes the place of the right to retaliate, the promise of eternal life replaces the promise of innumerable progeny, and instead of a visitation of the sins of the father on the children unto the third and fourth generations, we have the Holy Spirit that overshadows and shelters all.
Thus we see the doctrines of the Old Testament rectified and given a fresh interpretation by those of the New, whereby an essential and fundamental agreement with the ancient religions oflndia is brought about. Everything that is true in Christianity is found also in Brahmanism and Buddhism. But in these two religions we shall search in vain for the Jewish view of a being who has sprung from nothing and is endowed with life, of a thing produced in time which cannot be humble enough in its thanks and praises to Jehovah for an ephemeral existence full of misery, worry, and want. For in the New Testament the spirit of Indian wisdom can be scented like the fragrance of a bloom which has been wafted over hills and streams from distant tropical fields. On the other hand, from the Old Testament there is nothing corresponding to this except the Fall which had to be added at once as a corrective to optimistic theism and to which the New Testament was attached. For the Fall is the only point which offers itself to the New Testament and on to which it can hold.
Now just as for a thorough knowledge of a species that of its genus is required, the latter itself, however, being again known only in its species, so for a thorough understanding of Christianity, a knowledge is required of the other two world-denying religions, Brahmanism and Buddhism; moreover, as sound and accurate a knowledge as possible. For just as in the first place Sanskrit gives us a really thorough understanding of Greek and Latin, so do Brahmanism and Buddhism enable us to understand Christianity.
I even cherish the hope that biblical scholars familiar with Indian religions will one day come forward and be able to demonstrate through very special features the relationship of these to Christianity. Meanwhile, I draw attention merely tentatively to the following. In the Epistle of James (James 3: 6), is the expression 'the course of nature', [x] (literally' the wheel of generation and birth') which has always been a crux interpretum. [41] But in Buddhism the wheel of metempsychosis is a very familiar conception. In Abel Remusat's translation of the Foe Kue Ki, it says on p. 28: la roue est l'embteme de la transmigration des ames, qui est comme un cercle sans commencement ni fin; p. 179: la roue est un embleme familier aux Bouddhistes, il exprime le passage successif de l' ame dans le cercle des divers modes d'existence. On page 282 the Buddha himselfsays: qui ne connait pas la raison, tombera par le tour de la roue dans la vie et la mort. [42] In Burnouf's Introduction a l'histoire du Bouddhisme, vol. i, p. 434, we find the significant passage: Il reconnut ce que c'est que la roue de la transmigration qui porte cinq marques, qui est a la fois mobile et immobile; et ayant triomphe de toutes les voies par lesqeulles on entre dans le monde, en les detruisant, etc. [43] In Spence Hardy's Eastern Monachism (London, 1850), we read on page 6: 'Like the revolutions of a wheel, there is a regular succession of death and birth, the moral cause of which is the cleaving to existing objects, whilst the instrumental cause is karma (action).' See also pages 193 and 223, 224, of the same work. Also in Prabodha Chandrodaya (Act IV, Sc. 3) it says: 'Ignorance is the source of Passion who turns the wheel of this mortal existence.' In the description of Buddhism by Buchanan according to the Burmese texts (in the Asiatic Researches, vol. vi, p. 181), it says of the constant arising and passing away of successive worlds that' the successive destructions and reproductions of the world resemble a great wheel, in which we can point out neither beginning nor end.' (The same passage, only longer, appears in Sangermano's Description of the Burmese Empire, Rome, 1833, p. 7.)*
According to Graul's glossary, Hansa is a synonym for Sannyasi. Possibly the name Johannes (from which we get Hans) might be connected with it (and with his sannyasi-life in the wilderness).
A wholly external and accidental resemblance of Buddhism to Christianity is that it no longer prevails in the land of its origin; and so both are bound to say: [x] (vates in propria patria honore caret). [44]
If, to explain that agreement with Indian doctrines, we wished to indulge in conjectures of all kinds, we could assume that the gospel note on the flight to Egypt was based on something historical; that Jesus was educated by Egyptian priests whose religion was of Indian origin and from whom he had accepted Indian ethics and the notion of an avatar; and that he subsequently had endeavoured to adapt these to the Jewish dogmas in his own native land and to graft them on to the ancient stem. It might be supposed that a feeling of his own moral and intellectual superiority had finally induced him to regard himself as an avatar and accordingly to call himself the Son of Man in order to indicate that he was more than a mere human being. It is even conceivable that, with the intensity and purity of his will and in virtue of the omnipotence generally associated with the will as thing-in-itself and known to us from animal magnetism and the magic effects connected therewith, he had been able to perform miracles so called, in other words, to act by means of the metaphysical influence of the will. In this case, the instruction given by the Egyptian priests would have stood him in good stead. Legend would then have amplified and exaggerated these miracles. For a miracle proper would be everywhere a dementi [45] that nature gave herself.** Meanwhile, only on such assumptions can we to some extent explain how Paul, whose chief epistles must indeed be genuine, can in all seriousness represent as God incarnate and as identical with the world-creator one who at the time was so recently deceased that many of his contemporaries were still alive. For apotheoses of this nature and magnitude, which are otherwise seriously meant, require many centuries for their gradual maturity. On the other hand, we could advance an argument against the genuineness of the Pauline Epistles as a whole.
I might conclude that in general our gospels are based on something original or at any rate on a fragment from the time and associations of Jesus himself precisely from the objectionable prophecy of the end of the world and of the glorious return of the Lord in the clouds, which were to take place even in the lifetime of some who were present when the promise was made. That this promise remained unfulfilled is an exceedingly annoying circumstance which not only gave offence in later times, but already caused embarrassment to Paul and Peter. This is discussed in detail in the eminently readable book by Reimarus entitled Vom Zwecke Jesu und seiner Junger, §§ 42-4. Now if the gospels had been written some hundred years later without existing contemporary documents, one would have taken good care not to introduce prophecies whose objectionable non-fulfilment was at that time already quite evident. Just as little would one have introduced into the gospels all those passages whence Reimarus very shrewdly construes what he calls the first system of disciples and according to which Jesus was for them only a temporal deliverer of the Jews, unless the authors of the gospels had worked on the basis of contemporary documents that contained such passages. For even a merely oral tradition among the faithful would have shed some things which would land the faith in difficulties. Incidentally, Reimarus has inexplicably overlooked the passage John 11:48 (to be compared with 1:50 and 6:15) which is above all favourable to his hypothesis, likewise Matthew 27: 28-30, Luke 23: 1-4, 37, 38, and John 19: 19-22. But if we wished seriously to assert this hypothesis and follow it up, we should have to assume that the religious and moral elements in Christianity were put together by Alexandrian Jews acquainted with Indian and Buddhist doctrines, and that a political hero with his melancholy fate was then made the point of contact with those doctrines, in that the originally earthly Messiah was transformed into a heavenly. But there is certainly very much to be said against this. Nevertheless, the mythical principle, advanced by Strauss for the explanation of the gospel story, certainly remains the correct one, at any rate for the details thereof; and it will be difficult to make out how far the principle extends. Generally with regard to what is mythical, we must explain it from examples that lie nearer at hand and are less doubtful. Thus, for instance, in the whole of the Middle Ages, in France as well as in England, King Arthur is a remarkable figure, firm, assertive, and very active, who appears always with the same character and the same retinue. With his Round Table, his knights, his unprecedented deeds of heroism, his eccentric seneschal, his faithless spouse and her Lancelot of the Lake, and so on, he has for centuries formed the constant theme of poets and writers of fiction. All these authors present us with the same persons having the same characters, and even in the events they agree fairly well; only in the costumes and manners do they differ markedly from one another, namely in accordance with the age in which each of them lived. Some years ago, the French Ministry sent M. de la Villemarque to England to inquire into the origin of the myths of this King Arthur. As regards the fundamental facts, the result was that, at the beginning of the sixth century, there lived in Wales a petty chieftain named Arthur who persistently fought the Saxon invaders but whose trivial deeds are, however, forgotten. From this there emerged, heaven knows why, a splendid figure, celebrated throughout many centuries in innumerable songs, romances, and novels. See Contes populaires des anciens Bretons, avec un essay sur l' origine des epopees sur la table ronde, by Th. de la Villemarque, two volumes, 1842; also The Life of King Arthur from Ancient Historians and Authentic Documents by Ritson, 1825, in which he appears as a remote, indistinct, and nebulous figure, yet not without a real core. It is almost exactly the same with Roland, who is the hero of the entire Middle Ages and is celebrated in innumerable songs, epic stories, and works of fiction, and even by the Pillars of Roland, until finally he furnishes Ariosto with his material and thence rises transfigured. Now this is mentioned by history only on one solitary occasion and in three words, namely that Einhard reckons him to be one of the notabilities who remained at Roncevaux as Hroudlandus, Britannici limitis praefectus; [46] and this is all we know of him. In the same way, all that we really know of Jesus Christ is the passage in Tacitus (Annals, lib. xv, c. 44). Yet another example is afforded by the Cid, the world-famous Spaniard, who is glorified by legends and chronicles, but above all by folk-songs in the famous and very beautiful Romancero, and finally also by Corneille's best tragedy. Here, too, in the main events, they agree fairly well, especially as regards Chimene. On the other hand, the meagre historical data tell us nothing about him except to say that he was a bold and gallant knight and distinguished leader, but of a very cruel, treacherous, and even mercenary character, serving one side and then the other, and more often the Saracens than the Christians, almost like a condottiere, yet wedded to a Chimene. Details can be seen in Recherches sur l'histoire de l'Espagne, by Dozy, 1849, vol. i, who appears to be the first to arrive at the correct source. What indeed may be the historical foundation of the Iliad? In fact, to go fully into the matter, let us recall the anecdote about Newton and his apple the groundlessness of which I discussed in § 86; yet is has been repeated in a thousand books. Even Euler, in the first volume of his Letters to a German Princess, did not fail to paint the story con amore. If generally it should be a matter of great importance with regard to all history, then our race must not be given, as it unfortunately is, to such infernal lying.
§ 180
[b]Sects[/b]
Augustinism with its dogma of original sin and everything connected therewith is, as I have said, the real Christianity easily understood. Pelagianism, on the other hand, is the attempt to reduce Christianity to crude and shallow Judaism with its optimism.
The contrast between Augustinism and Pelagianism which permanently divides the Church, could be traced to its ultimate ground, namely to the fact that the former speaks of the essence-in- itself of things, whereas the latter speaks of the phenomenon, taking this, however, to be the essence. For example, the Pelagian denies original sin, for he argues that the child who has not yet done anything at all must be innocent. Thus he does not see that, as a phenomenon, the child certainly does begin to exist, but not as a thing-in-itself. It is the same as regards the freedom of the will, the expiatory death of the Saviour, grace, in short, everything. In consequence of its obvious and shallow nature, Pelagianism always predominates, now more than ever as rationalism. The Greek Church is moderated in a Pelagian sense and likewise, since the Concilium Tridentinum, [47] the Catholic, which thereby endeavoured to set itself up in opposition to the Augustinian, and thus mystically minded, Luther, and also to Calvin. To the same extent, the Jesuits are semi-Pelagian. On the other hand, the Jansenists are Augustinian and their point of view might well be the most genuine form of Christianity. For since Protestantism has rejected celibacy and generally asceticism proper as well as the representatives thereof, namely the saints, it has become a blunted, or rather disjointed, Christianity with its point broken off; it ends in nothing.*
§ 181
[b]Rationalism[/b]
The centre and heart of Christianity consist of the doctrine of the Fall, original sin, the depravity of our natural state, and the corruption of man according to nature. Connected with this are intercession and atonement through the Redeemer, in which we share through faith in him. But Christianity thus shows itself to be pessimism and is, therefore, diametrically opposed to the optimism of Judaism as also of Islam, the genuine offspring thereof; on the other hand, it is related to Brahmanism and Buddhism. In Adam all have sinned and are damned; whereas in the Saviour all are redeemed. This also expresses that the real essence and true root of man reside not in the individual, but in the species which is the (Platonic) Idea of man, the individuals being merely the phenomenal appearance of that Idea spread out in time.
The fundamental difference in religions is to be found in the question whether they are optimism or pessimism, certainly not whether they are monotheism, polytheism, Trimurti, Trinity, pantheism, or atheism (like Buddhism). For this reason, the Old and New Testaments are diametrically opposed and their amalgamation forms a queer centaur. The Old Testament is optimism, the New pessimism. As previously shown, the former comes from the doctrine of Ormuzd, the latter, according to its inner spirit, is related to Brahmanism and Buddhism and so, in all probability, can somehow be historically derived therefrom. The former is in the major key, the latter in the minor. The only exception in the Old Testament is the Fall, but there it remains unused like an hors d'oeuvre until Christianity again takes it up as its only suitable point of contact.
But our present-day rationalists, following in the footsteps of Pelagius, use all their efforts to obliterate the above-mentioned fundamental characteristic of Christianity which Augustine, Luther, and Melanchthon had very accurately interpreted and systematized as far as they could. They endeavour to do away with exegesis in order to reduce Christianity to an insipid, egoistical, optimistic Judaism with the addition of a better morality and future life, as is required by an optimism that is consistently maintained. This is done so that the splendour and delight may not too quickly come to an end, and death may be put off which cries out all too loudly at the optimistic view of things and, like the marble statue, comes ultimately to the happy and cheerful Don Juan. These rationalists are honest men, yet they are trite and shallow fellows who have not an inkling of the profound meaning of the New Testament myth and cannot go beyond Jewish optimism. They understand this, and it is to their liking. They want the naked dry-as-dust truth both in the historical and the dogmatic. We can compare them to the euhemerism of antiquity. What the supernaturalists offer us is, of course, fundamentally a mythology; but this is the vehicle of profound and important truths which could not in any other way be brought within the reach of the understanding of the masses. On the other hand, how remote these rationalists are from all knowledge, indeed from every inkling, of the meaning and spirit of Christianity, is shown, for example, by their great apostle Wegscheider in his naive Institutiones theologiae christianae dogmaticae where (§ 115 with notes and remarks) he does not scruple to set up Cicero's dull and shallow twaddle in the books De officiis in opposition to the profound utterances of Augustine and the reformers concerning original sin and the essential depravity of man as met with in nature; for such twaddle is much more to his taste. One must really marvel at the naivete and simplicity with which this man displays his dryness, shallowness, and even total lack of insight into the spirit of Christianity. But he is only unus e multis. [48] Bretschneider has removed original sin from his exegesis of the Bible, whereas original sin and salvation constitute the essence of Christianity. On the other hand, it is undeniable that the supernaturalists are occasionally something much worse, namely priests in the worst sense of the word. May Christianity then see how it is to steer between Scylla and Charybdis. The common error of the two sides is that in religion they look for the plain, dry, literal, and unvarnished truth. But only philosophy aspires to this, Religion has only a truth that is suited to the people, one that is indirect, symbolical, and allegorical. Christianity is an allegory that reflects a true idea, but in itself the allegory is not what is true. To assume this, however, is the error into which both supernaturalists and rationalists fall. The former try to maintain that the allegory in itself is true; the latter model it and give it a fresh interpretation until it can be true in itself according to their standard. Each side accordingly disputes with the other and uses pertinent and powerful arguments. The rationalists say to the supernaturalists: 'Your doctrine is not true.' The supernaturalists retort: ' Your doctrine is not Christianity', and both are right. The rationalists imagine that they take reason [Vernunft] as their standard, but in point of fact they take for this purpose only reason that is restricted and confined to the assumptions of theism and optimism, something like Rousseau's Profession de foi du vicaire Savoyard, this prototype of all rationalism. Thus of the Christian dogma they will admit nothing except what they regard as true sensu proprio, namely theism and the immortal soul. But if, with the effrontery of ignorance, they appeal here to pure reason, we must serve them up with the Critique of Pure Reason in order to force them to the view that these dogmas of theirs, which have been selected for retention as rational, are based merely on a transcendent application of immanent principles and accordingly constitute only an uncritical, and hence untenable, philosophical dogmatism. On every page the Critique of Pure Reason opposes this, and shows it to be quite futile; and so its very title proclaims its antagonism to rationalism. Accordingly, whereas supernaturalism has allegorical truth, no truth at all can be attributed to rationalism. The rationalists are quite wrong. Whoever wishes to be a rationalist must be a philosopher and, as such, emancipate himself from all authority; he must go forward and shrink from nothing. But if he wants to be a theologian, then he must be consistent and not abandon the foundation of authority, even when this calls on him to believe the incomprehensible and inexplicable. One cannot serve two masters; and so it must be either reason or holy scripture. Juste milieu [49] here means falling between two stools. Either believe or philosophize! Whatever is chosen must be entirely accepted. To believe up to a certain point and no further and likewise to philosophize up to a certain point and no further-these are half-measures that constitute the fundamental characteristics of rationalism. On the other hand, the rationalists are morally justified in so far as they go to work quite honestly and deceive only themselves; whereas the supernaturalists, with their claim of truth sensu proprio for a mere allegory, often try to mislead others intentionally. Yet by their efforts, the truth contained in the allegory is saved, whereas in their northern humdrum dullness the rationalists throw this out of the window and with it the whole essence of Christianity. In fact, they ultimately arrive step by step at the stage to which Voltaire had soared eighty years ago. It is often amusing to see how, when fixing the attributes of God (his quidditas or essence), where the mere word and shibboleth' God' no longer suffice, those rationalists carefully aim at hitting the juste milieu between a human being and a force of nature; which is, of course, very difficult. Moreover, in this struggle between rationalists and supernaturalists, the two parties obliterate each other, as did the armed men from the dragon's teeth sown by Cadmus. Here from a certain direction active hypocrisy deals the matter its death-blow. Thus just as in the carnivals of Italian cities crazy masks are seen running about among matter-of-fact people who are seriously going about their business, so too in Germany we now see Tartuffes or religious hypocrites flocking among the philosophers, physicists, historians, critics, and rationalists, in the garb of a period that is already centuries in the past; and the effect is burlesque, especially when they harangue.
Those who imagine that the sciences can go on progressing and become ever more widespread, without this preventing religion from lasting and flourishing eternally, labour under a grave error. Physics and metaphysics are the natural foes of religion which is, therefore, their enemy and strives at all times to suppress them, just as they endeavour to undermine it. It is positively ridiculous to attempt to speak of peace and harmony between the two; it is a bellum ad internecionem. [50] Religions are the offspring of ignorance who do not long survive their mother. Omar indeed understood this when he burnt the Alexandrian library, his reason being that the contents of the books were either contained in the Koran or were superfluous. This excuse is regarded as silly, but it is very shrewd if only it is understood cum grana salis, [51] where he then states that if the sciences go beyond the Koran, they are the enemies of religions and so are not to be tolerated. It would be much better for Christianity if the Christian rulers had been as cunning as Omar. However, it is now a little too late to burn all books, to abolish academies, and to chill to the marrow universities with a pro ratione voluntas, [52] in order to bring mankind back to where it stood in the Middle Ages. For with a handful of obscurantists nothing can be done; today we see them like men who want to put out the light in order to steal. For it is obvious that nations are gradually thinking of shaking off the yoke of faith; the symptoms of this are seen everywhere, although in each country they are differently modified. The cause is too much knowledge that has spread among them. Knowledge of every kind which daily increases and in all directions becomes ever more widely diffused, broadens to such an extent everyone's horizon, according to his range, that it is bound in the end to reach a size at which the myths that constitute the skeleton of Christianity shrink so that faith can no longer cling to them. Mankind outgrows religion just as it does the clothes of childhood; there is no stopping it; the garment is splitting and bursting. Faith and knowledge in the same mind do not go well together; they are like a wolf and a sheep in one fold, and of course knowledge is the wolf that threatens to devour its neighbour. We see religion in its death-agony cling to morality for which it would like to pass itself off as the mother; but this will not do at all! Genuine morals and morality are not dependent on any religion, although every religion sanctions them and thereby affords them support. Driven in the first instance from the middle classes, Christianity takes refuge in the lowest where it appears as a conventicle institution, and in the upper, where it is a matter of politics; but we should bear in mind that here Goethe's words apply:
[quote]We feel intention and are put out of tune.
-- Tasso, II. 1.[/quote]
Here Condorcet's passage mentioned in § 174 will again suggest itself to the reader.
Faith is like love; it cannot be forced. It is, therefore, a hazardous undertaking to try to introduce or establish it by measures of state. For just as the effort to force love engenders hatred, so does the attempt to force belief result in a positive unbelief.* Only quite indirectly and thus by preparations carried out well in advance can faith be developed and encouraged, that is, by our preparing for it a good soil in which it will thrive; such a soil is ignorance. Therefore in England, from very early times down to our own, care has been taken that two-thirds of the nation are unable to read; and so to this day there prevails in that country a blind and implicit faith such as we should look for in vain elsewhere. But if even in England the government takes public instruction out of the hands of the clergy, it will soon be all over with the faith. And so generally through being constantly undermined by the sciences, Christianity is gradually approaching its end. Meanwhile, there might be some hope for it from the reflection that only those religions perish which have no scriptures. The religion of the Greeks and Romans, those world-powers, has perished. The religion of the contemptible little Jewish race, on the other hand, has been preserved; and in the same way that of the Zend people is preserved among the Guebres. The religions of the Gauls, Scandinavians, and ancient Germans, on the contrary, have disappeared. Brahmanism and Buddhism, however, continue to exist and flourish; they are the oldest of all the religions and have full and detailed scriptures.
§ 182
A religion which has as its foundation a single event, and in fact tries to make the turning-point of the world and of all existence out of that event that occurred at a definite time and place, has so feeble a foundation that it cannot possibly survive, the moment men come to reflect on the matter. How wise in Buddhism, on the other hand, is the assumption of the thousand Buddhas, lest it appear as in Christianity, where Jesus Christ has redeemed the world and no salvation is possible without him; but four thousand years, whose monuments exist in Egypt, Asia, and Europe in all their greatness and glory, could not know anything of him, and those ages with all their glories went to the devil without ever seeing him! The many Buddhas are necessary because at the end of each kalpa the world perishes and with it the teaching, so that a new world requires a new Buddha. Salvation always exists.
That civilization is at its highest level among Christian nations is due not to Christianity's being favourable to it, but to the fact that that religion has declined and now has little influence. So long as it had influence, civilization was very backward, as for instance in the Middle Ages. On the other hand, Islam, Brahmanism, and Buddhism still have a decisive influence on life; in China the influence is still at a minimum and so the civilization there is somewhat like that in Europe. All religion is antagonistic to culture.
In previous centuries religion was a forest behind which armies could halt and take cover. The attempt to repeat this in our day has met with a sharp rebuff. For after so many fellings, it is now only scrub and brushwood, behind which rogues and swindlers occasionally hide themselves. We should, therefore, beware of those who would like to drag it into everything and should meet them with the proverb previously quoted: detras de la cruz esla el diablo. [53]
______________
[b]Notes:[/b]
1 ['I dispute the conclusion (of the syllogism).']
2 ['May truth endure and the world perish over it.']
3 ['May justice come to pass and the world perish over it.']
4 ['May pills be made and the world perish over them.']
5 ['With a grain of salt'.]
6 ['It is impossible for the crowd to be philosophically enlightened.'] 7 Illustrations of the History and Practice of the Thugs, London, 1837; also Edinburgh Review, Oct.-Jan. 1836-7.
8 Cf. § 115.
9 ['Assuredly the philosophers have nothing plausible to offer on this matter; it is, therefore, necessary to go back to God, angels, and demons.']
10 ['First live, then philosophize.']
11 [' We curb and restrain souls with deceptive and misleading words when true ones are of no avail.']
12 [Goethe's Faust, Pt. I, Bayard Taylor's translation.]
13 ['Instance to the contrary'.]
14 ['Gods of the larger families or tribes'.] 15 [' Freedom is a mystery.']
16 ['It is impossible for the crowd to be philosophically enlightened.']
17 ['Fraud'.]
18 ['Pious fraud'.]
19 ['Simplicity is the seal of truth.'] 20 ['With a grain of salt'.] 21 ['The small, greater, and greatest mysteries'.] * Even the poles, equator, and parallels in the firmament are of this nature; in the heavens there is nothing like these, for the heavens do not revolve. 22 ['Absolutely necessary condition'.] 23 ['The ultimate argument of theologians'.] 24 ['Handmaid of theology'.]
25 ['The religious zeal of philosophers and great men was only a political devoutness; and every religion we venture to defend, as a faith which it is useful to let the people have, can no longer hope for anything but a more or less prolonged death-struggle.']
26 ['And caused it to look to heaven and to raise its eyes to the stars. (Ovid, Metamorphoses, I. 85-6.)]
27 [By this phrase Schopenhauer may have meant 'love-making'. However, he may have had in mind a meaning mentioned in Robert, Dictionnaire alphabetique et analogique de la langue francaise: a provencal society dealing with and judging on questions of courtly love.)
28 ['Dependants'; 'slaves born in the house'.]
29 ['The worst is the abuse of the best.']
30 ['Probity, integrity'.] 31 ['For the greater glory of God'.]
32 A periodical reporting on the achievements of the missionaries. Its fortieth annual number appeared in 1856.
* Tacitus (Historiae, lib. v, c. 2) and Justinus (lib. XXXVI, c. 2) have handed down to us the historical basis of the Exodus, the reading of which is as instructive as it is entertaining and from which we may infer how matters are with regard to the historical basis of the other books of the Old Testament. In the passage quoted, we see that Pharoah would no longer tolerate in Egypt proper the Jewish people, a sneaking dirty race afflicted with filthy diseases (scabies) that threatened to prove infectious. He therefore had them put on board ship and dumped on the Arabian coast. It is true that a detachment of Egyptians was sent after them, not to bring back the precious fellows who had been deported, but to recover from them what they had stolen; thus they had stolen from the temples the golden vessels. Who would lend anything to such a rabble? It is also true that the above-mentioned detachment was annihilated by a natural event. On the coast of Arabia there was great scarcity, principally of water. Then a bold and venturesome fellow appeared, and offered to procure everything if they would follow and obey him. He said he had seen wild asses, and so on. I regard this as the historical basis, since it is obviously the prose on which the poetry of the Exodus was built. Although Justinus (i.e. Trogus Pompeius) here commits a monstrous anachronism (that is, according to our assumptions that are based on the Exodus), this does not disturb me, for to me a hundred anachronisms are still not so questionable as a single miracle. We see also from the two Roman authors how much the Jews were at all times and by all nations loathed and despised. This may be due partly to the fact that they were the only people on earth who did not credit man with any existence beyond this life and were, therefore, regarded as cattle, as the dregs of humanity, but as past masters at telling lies.
** Whoever wants to know, without understanding Hebrew, what the Old Testament is, must read it in the Septuagint which is the most accurate, most genuine, and at the same time finest of all translations; for it has an entirely different tone and colour. The style of the LXX is for the most part noble and naive; nor has it anything ecclesiastical and there is no trace of anything Christian. Compared with it, the Lutheran translation appears to be both vulgar and bigoted; it is often inaccurate, sometimes intentionally, and maintains throughout a canonical and devotional tone. In the above-mentioned passages, Luther has ventured to make qualifications that could be called falsifications; thus where he puts' verbannen' (exile), the Greek word is [x] [murdered, killed], and so on.
Moreover, the impression left on me after studying the LXX is one of cordial affection and deep veneration for the [x] [the great King Nebuchadnezzar], although he was somewhat too lenient with a people whose God gave or promised them their neighbours' lands. They then obtained possession of these by murder and rapine, and there erected a temple to God. May every people, whose God makes neighbouring countries' lands of promise', find their Nebuchadnezzar in good time and their Antiochus Epiphanes as well, and may they be treated without any more ceremony!
33 See Wiggers's Augustinismus und Pelagianismus, p. 335. 34 [' To their original state of perfection '.] 35 ['If God did not want the worst and meanest actions to haunt the world, he would undoubtedly with a wave of the hand drive away and banish all deeds of infamy from the limits of the world; for who of us can resist the divine will? How can we assume that crimes would be committed against the will of God if, when a sin is committed, he endows criminals with the strength to commit it? If, however, man commits an offence without God's willing it, then God is weaker than man who opposes him and has the power to do so. From this it follows that God wants to have the world as it is, for if he wanted a better world, he would have a better.'
36 ['If God wills sins, it is he who commits them; if he does not will them, they are nevertheless committed. Consequently, it must be said of him that he is either improvident, or impotent, or cruel. For he neither knows how, nor is able, nor cares, to carry out his decree.']
37 ['Frantically', 'with might and main'.]
* In their exhortations the societies for the protection of animals are for ever using the bad argument that cruelty to animals leads to cruelty to human beings, as though man were a direct object of moral duty, the animal being merely indirect, in itself a mere thing.' For shame! (See The Two Fundamental Problems of Ethics, 'Basis of Ethics', §§ 8 and 19 (7).) * For instance, he carries out detailed investigations on the ratio of the weight of the brain to that of the rest of the body; whereas since Sommering with clear insight discovered it, it is generally known and not in dispute that we have to estimate the weight of the brain not in relation to that of the whole body but to that of the rest of the nervous system. (Cf. Blumenbach, Institutiones physiologicae, edit. quart., 1821, p. 173. First learn something and then join in the discussion. This is meant incidentally for all those fellows who write books that prove nothing but their ignorance.) Obviously this requires preliminary knowledge which we should have before we undertake experimental investigations on the brains of human beings and animals. But, of course, it is easier to torture poor animals slowly to death than to learn something.
38 ['As though he had made out a very good case'.]
* They send missionaries to the Brahmans and Buddhists to inspire them with the 'true faith'; but when these men hear how animals are treated in Europe, they have the deepest loathing for Europeans and their religious doctrines. * A word on cruelty to the chained-up dog, man's only true companion and most faithful friend, the most splendid conquest he ever made, as Fr. Cuvier says. This highly intelligent creature with fine feelings is, like a criminal, tied up on a chain where from morning till night he experiences the constantly renewed and never satisfied longing for freedom and movement and his life is a slow torment! Through such cruelty he ultimately ceases to be a dog and is changed into a loveless, savage, faithless animal, a cringing creature trembling at the sight of the devil man. I would sooner have the dog stolen from me than always be confronted with such suffering whereof I was the cause. (See my remarks on Lord - and his chained-up dog, § 153.) All caged birds are also a scandalous and stupid cruelty. It should be forbidden and here too the police should take the place of humanity.
* Could the otherwise inexplicable favour, which was shown (according to Ezra) by Cyrus and Darius to the Jews whose temple they allowed to be restored, be due possibly to the fact that the Jews, who in Babylon had hitherto worshipped Baal, Astarte, Moloch, and others, adopted Zoroastrianism after the victory of the Persians and now served Ormuzd under the name of Jehovah? In support of this is the fact that Cyrus prays to the God of Israel, which would otherwise be absurd (I Ezra 2:3 in the Septuagint). All the preceding books of the Old Testament are composed later and thus after the Babylonian captivity, or at any rate the Jehovah doctrine is inserted at a later date. Moreover, from I Ezra 8 and 9, we become acquainted with the most infamous side of Judaism. Here the conduct of the chosen people is in keeping with the revolting and iniquitous example of Abraham their ancestor. Just as he expelled Hagar with Ishmael, so were the women, whom the Jews had married during the Babylonian captivity, turned adrift with their children, because they were not of Moses' stock. Anything more infamous can hardly be imagined, unless perhaps that villainy of Abraham is invented to cover up the greater infamy of the whole race.
39 ['(Lord God of Israel) which dwellest between the cherubims.' (2 Kings 19: 15).]
40 ['(And God saw) every thing (that he had made, and, behold, it) was very good.' (Genesis 1:31.)]
41 ['A difficulty for commentators'.]
42 ['The wheel is the emblem of the transmigration of souls which is like a circle without beginning and end ... The wheel is an emblem familiar to Buddhists; it expresses the soul's successive passage in the circle of different forms of existence ... He who is unacquainted with the truth will lapse through the turning of the wheel into life and death.']
43 ['He recognized what is the wheel of transmigration which has five marks and is at the same time mobile and immobile; and after he had triumphed over all the paths by which one enters the world in that he destroyed them .... ']
* Manu, XII. 124. Sancara, p. 103. Obry, Nirvana; pp. 30 and 31 he says: 'La transmigration porte en Sanscrit le nom vague de Samsara, cercle ou mouvement circulaire des naissances.' ['Transmigration has in Sanskrit the vague name of Samsara, circle or circular movement of births.']
** For the masses miracles are the only arguments they understand; and so all founders of religions perform them.
Scriptures contain miracles for the purpose of authenticating their contents; but there comes a time when they produce the opposite effect.
The gospels tried to support their credibility through the account of miracles, but in this way they undermined their authenticity.
The miracles in the Bible should demonstrate its truth, but they have the opposite effect.
Theologians try either to allegorize the miracles of the Bible or to put them on a natural footing in order somehow to be rid of them. For they fed that miraculum sigillum mendacii. ['A miracle is a sign of falsehood. ']
44 ['A prophet hath no honour in his own country.' (John 4:44.)]
45 ['Denial', 'contradiction'.]
46 ['Hrouland, commander of the British border district'.]
* In Protestant churches the most conspicuous object is the pulpit, in Catholic, the altar. This symbolizes that Protestantism appeals in the first instance to the understanding, whereas Catholicism appeals to faith.
47 ['Council of Trent' (1545-63).]
48 ['One of many'.]
49 ['The happy mean'.]
50 ['War of life and death'.]
51 ['With a grain of salt'.]
52 [' My will (to do something) is my reason (for doing it).']
* What a bad conscience religion must have can be judged from the fact that it is forbidden under pain of heavy penalties to deride and make fun of it.
European governments forbid every attack on the established religion. They themselves, however, send to the countries of Brahmanism and Buddhism missionaries who zealously attack those religions root and branch, to make room for their own imported religion. And then they yell and raise an outcry when a Chinese emperor or a mandarin of Tunkin chops off the heads of such people.
53 ['Behind the cross stands the devil.'] |