BAUER. 595 tain from it the satisfaction of his needs, which the course of the world leaves unmet. Thus religion grows out of egoism : its basis is the difference between our will and our power ; its aim, to set us free from the dependence which we feel be- fore nature. (Like culture, religion seeks to make nature an intelligible and compliant being, only that in this it makes use of the supernatural instruments faith, prayer, and magic ; it is only gradually that men learn to attack the evils by natural means.) That which man himself is not, but wishes to be, that he represents to himself in his gods as existing; they are the wishes of man's heart transformed into real beings, his longing after happiness satisfied by the fancy. The same holds true of all dogmas : as God is the affirmation of our wishes, so the world beyond is the pres- ent embellished and idealized by the fancy. Instead of •' God is merciful, is love, is omnipotent, he performs miracles and hears prayers," the statement must be reversed: mercy, love, omnipotence, to perform miracles, and to hear prayers, is divine. In the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's supper Feuerbach sees the truth that water and food are indispensable and divine. As Feuerbach, following out this naturalistic tendency, reached the extreme of material- ism, the influence of his philosophy — whose different phases there is no occasion to trace out in detail — had already passed its culmination. From his later writings little more has found its way into public notice than the pun, that man is {isf) what he eats {jsst). The remaining members of the Hegelian left may be treated more briefly. Bruno Bauer* (died in 1882; his principal work is the Critique of the Synoptics, in three vol- umes, 1841--42, which had been preceded, in 1840, by a Critique of tJie Evangelical History of fohn) at first belonged on the right of the school, but soon went over to the ex- treme left. He explains the Gospel narratives as creations with a purpose {Tendenzdichtungen), as intentional, but not deceitful, inventions, from which, despite their unreality, history may well be learned, inasmuch as they reflect the
- Not to be confused with the head of the Tubingen School, Ferdinand
Christian Baur (died i860).
