from the heathens in this, that they immediately identify the individual with the species—that with them the individual has the significance of the species, the individual by himself is held to be the perfect representative of the species—that they deify the human individual, make him the absolute being.
Especially characteristic is the difference between Christianity and Heathenism concerning the relation of the individual to the intelligence, to the understanding, to the νους. The Christians individualized the understanding, the heathens made it a universal essence. To the heathens, the understanding, the intelligence, was the essence of man; to the Christians, it was only a part of themselves. To the heathens therefore only the intelligence, the species, to the Christians the individual, was immortal, i.e. divine. Hence follows the further difference between heathen and Christian philosophy.
The most unequivocal expression, the characteristic symbol of this immediate identity of the species and individuality in Christianity, is Christ, the real God of the Christians. Christ is the ideal of humanity become existent, the compendium of all moral and divine perfections to the exclusion of all that is negative; pure, heavenly, sinless man, the typical man, the Adam Kadmon; not regarded as the totality of the species, of mankind, but immediately as one individual, one person. Christ, i.e., the Christian, religious Christ, is therefore not the central, but the terminal point of history. The Christians expected the end of the world, the close of history. In the Bible, Christ himself, in spite of all the falsities and sophisms of our exegetists, clearly prophesies the speedy end of the world. History rests only on the distinction of the individual from the race. Where this distinction ceases, history ceases; the very soul of history is extinct. Nothing remains to man but the contemplation and appropriation of this realized Ideal, and the spirit of proselytism, which seeks to extend the prevalence of a fixed belief,—the preaching that God has appeared, and that the end of the world is at hand.
Since the immediate identity of the species and the individual oversteps the limits of reason and Nature, it followed of course that this universal, ideal individual was declared to be a transcendent, supernatural, heavenly being. It is therefore a perversity to attempt to deduce from reason the immediate identity of the species and individual, for it is only the imagination which effects this identity, the imagination to which
