Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1854 edition. Excerpt: ...the essence of all religion, distinguishes itself from every other physical feeling of a relative dependence on those external objects which determine us; for, with reference to them, we still retain, at the same time, always a feeling of relative freedom, inasmuch as we are conscious of being able either to affect objects, and to allow them to affect us. or not. But we can claim nothing of this kind in our relation to the absolute; with reference to the latter we arc not capable of willing, i. e. of being self-active: it is both impossible and self-contradictory in any way to determine absolute existence, inasmuch as in itself it is pure existence, and entirely excludes determination; it is no more possible to will the absolute than to cognise it. On this subject we can only speak of entire dependence both with regard to ourselves and to all other objects, and that one applying to all in the same way and sense. The feeling of this dependence constitutes religion, with reference to the fundamental essence of which all men are equal to one another, differing only according to the degree in which the consciousness of God is alive in them. Hence there may be many systems of religion, and many theologies, according to the representations which men self-actively form to themselves, both of the absolute and of their relationship thereto; but that feeling constitutes in all these forms the proper religious element, being a reality essentially and vastly differing from every kind of theory, which can never constitute the essence of religion, as religion is not made up of mere thought or knowledge. If, from the consideration of the above subject, we turn next to that of human knowledge and of science in the proper sense of the term, we meet, on...