This explains the anti-rational character which religious phenomena assume, especially those of the most exalted kind. The wish is the fundamental principle of theogony.
At the beginning man has no grounds upon which to impose limits on his wishes and the ideas conditioned by such wishes; he therefore ascribes unqualified validity to them. It is in the very nature of the affections to eternalize its object and at the same time always regard it as real. Doubt arises only after man has come to discover his limitations. He then begins to distinguish between the subjective and the objective.
Religious predicates represent the contents of human wishes. Heaven and the attributes of the gods are evidences of the things which have occupied the human heart: God is personal, i. e. the personal life is valuable, "divine." God is love, i. e. love is valuable, "divine". God suffers, i. e. suffering is valuable, "divine." Hence, in order to understand religion we must transform its predicates into subjects and its subjects into predicates. This is most clearly apparent in Christianity. Here affection attains an inwardness and an intensity, and at the same time moreover a boundlessness, wholly unknown to paganism. Both suffering and love are felt more profoundly, and they are therefore also projected with greater fervency and greater confidence as divine things.
But no sooner has man transferred everything valuable to heaven than he begins to feel the more his own emptiness and insignificance. This accounts for the sense of finitude and sinfulness. As long as we hold fast to its original forms we find that religion lives and moves in these sharp contrasts. The theogonic wish is at its best only in these forms; later on it becomes exhausted. Hence we must make a distinction especially between
