★ 127 ★
A person absolutely cannot stand in a direct relation to it. In the choice of this intermediary the person must be perfectly free. The slightest compulsion in this harms his religion. The choice is characteristic, and therefore educated people choose more or less the same intermediary, on the other hand the uneducated person's choice will be determined by chance. But because so few people are capable of a free choice at all, some intermediaries will become more common; be it by chance, by association, or by their particular sense of decency. In this way, national religions arise. The more independent the person becomes, the more the quantity of the intermediary decreases, the quality improves, and its relation to oneself become more diverse and more sophisticated: fetishes, stars, animals, heroes, idols, gods, a god-man. One soon sees how relative these choices are, and is driven unaware to the idea that the essence of religion does not depend on the characteristics of the mediator, but merely consists in the idea of the mediator, in its relationship to oneself.
It is idolatry in the broader sense when I actually regard this mediator as God himself. It is irreligion if I do not accept a mediator at all; in this respect superstition and idolatry- unbelief or theism, which one may also label ancient Judaism- are both irreligion. On the other hand, atheism is only a negation of all religion in general, and therefore has nothing to do with religion. True religion is that which embraces that mediator as the mediator, beholds it as the agent of the divine so to speak, as its sensual manifestation. In this respect the Jews at the time of the Babylonian captivity acquired a genuinely religious
