mental efforts of philosophy or of science, to discover the direction in which this effort should be made, but every mental effort is inevitably accomplished in some direction which has been given it already. And this direction for all mental effort is always indicated by religion. All philosophies known to us, from Plato to Schopenhauer, have followed inevitably the direction given by religion.
The philosophy of Plato and of his followers was a pagan system to procure the maximum of happiness, as well for the individual as for the association of individuals in the form of a State. The Church-Christian philosophy of the Middle Ages, based on the same pagan conception of existence, investigated means of salvation for the individual—that is, the means for procuring his best advantage in a future life—and only in its theocratic endeavours did it touch on the welfare of societies. The modern philosophy of Hegel, as well as that of Comte, is founded on the State-social-religious conception of existence. The pessimistic philosophy of Schopenhauer and Hartmann, which desired to free itself from the Jewish religious conception, became unwittingly subject to the basis of Buddhism. Philosophy always has been and always will be merely the investigation of the results of the relation of man to the universe inculcated by religion, for until this conception is acquired there is no material for philosophical investigation.
