592 THE HEGELIAN LEFT. Postscript as Preface "),* in which he continues the conflict against religious dualism. The question '* Are we " — the cultured men of the day — " still Christians ? " is answered in the negative. Christianity is a cult of poverty, despising the world, and antagonistic to labor and culture ; but we have learned to esteem science and art, riches and acquisition, as the chief levers of culture and of human progress. Christianity dualistically tears apart body and soul, time and eternity, the world and God ; we need no Creator, for the life-process has neither beginning nor end. The world is framed for the highest reason, it is true, but it has not been framed by a highest reason. Our highest Idea is the All, which is conformed to law, and instinct with life and reason, and our feeling toward the universe — the con- sciousness of dependence on its laws — exercises no less of ethical influence, is no less full of reverence, and no less exposed to injury from an irreverent pessimism, than the feeling of the devout of the old type toward their God. Hence the answer to the second question " Have we still a religion?" maybe couched in the affirmative. The new faith does not need a cultus and a Church. Since the dry services of the free congregations offer nothing for the fancy and the spirit, the edification of the heart must be accomplished in other ways — by participation in the in- terests of humanity, in the national life, and, not last, by aesthetic enjoyment. Thus in his last work, which in two appendices reaches a discussion of the great German poets and musicians, the old man returns to a thought to which he had given earlier expression, that the religious ailtus should be replaced by the ailtus of genius. As Strauss went over from Hegelianism to pantheism, so Ludwig Feuerbachf (1804-72), a son of the great jur- ist, Anselm Feuerbach, after he had for a short time moved in the same direction, took the opposite, the indi- vidualistic course, only, like Strauss, to end at last in •English translation by Mathilde Blind, 1873.
Feuerbach was born at Landshut, studied at Heidelberg and Berlin,
habilitated, 1828, at Erlangen, and lived, 1836-60, in the village of Bruck- berg, not far from Bayreuth, and from i860 until his death in Rechenberg, a suburb of Nuremberg. Collected Works, in lo vols., 1846-66. The chief
