are at the service of necessitous man. It is clear from this, that the conception of the world which is essential to religion is that of the practical or subjective stand-point, that God—for the miracle-working power is identical with God—is a purely practical or subjective being, serving however as a substitute for a theoretic view, and is thus no object of thought, of the knowing faculty, any more than miracle, which owes its origin to the negation of thought. If I place myself in the point of view of thought, of investigation, of theory, in which I consider things in themselves, in their mutual relations, the miracle-working being vanishes into nothing, miracle disappears; i.e., the religious miracle, which is absolutely different from the natural miracle, though they are continually interchanged, in order to stultify reason, and, under the appearance of natural science, to introduce religious miracle into the sphere of rationality and reality.
But for this very reason—namely, that religion is removed from the stand-point, from the nature of theory—the true, universal essence of Nature and humanity, which as such is hidden from religion and is only visible to the theoretic eye, is conceived as another, a miraculous and supernatural essence; the idea of the species becomes the idea of God, who again is himself an individual being, but is distinguished from human individuals in this, that he possesses their qualities according to the measure of the species. Hence, in religion man necessarily places his nature out of himself, regards his nature as a separate nature; necessarily, because the nature which is the object of theory lies outside of him, because all his conscious existence spends itself in his practical subjectivity. God is his alter ego, his other lost half; God is the complement of himself; in God he is first a perfect man. God is a need to him; something is wanting to him without his knowing what it is—God is this something wanting, indispensable to him; God belongs to his nature. The world is nothing to religion,[1]—the world, which is in truth the sum of all reality, is revealed in its glory only by theory. The joys of theory are the sweetest
- ↑ “Natura enim remota providentia et potestate divina prorsus nihil est.”—Lactantius (Div. Inst. lib. 3, c. 28). “Omnia quae creata sunt, quamvis ea Deus fecerit valde bona, Creatori tamen comparata, nec bona sunt, cui comparata nec sunt; altissime quippe et proprio modo quodam de se ipso dixit: Ego sum, qui sum.”—Augustinus (de Perfectione just. Hom. c. 14).
