The Riddle of Philosophy Part 12

Thrahndorff also takes living will as his point of departure.

The world cannot be explained from the shadowy realm of ideas, but a vigorous will must seize these ideas in order to create real being. The world's deepest content does not unfold itself to man in thoughtful comprehension, but in an emotional reaction, in love through which the individual surrenders to the world, to the will that rules in the universe.

It is quite apparent that all these thinkers endeavor to overcome thinking and its object, the pure idea. They are unwilling to acknowledge thinking as the highest manifestation of the spirit of man. In order to comprehend the ultimate substance of the world, Thrahndorff wants to approach it, not with the power of knowledge, but of love. It is to become an object of emotion, not of reason. It is the belief of these philosophers that through clear, pure thinking the ardent, religious devotion to the primordial forces of existence are destroyed.

This opinion has its root in a misconception of Hegel's thought world. Its misunderstanding becomes especially apparent in the views concerning Hegel's att.i.tude toward religion that spread after his death. The lack of clarity that began to prevail regarding this att.i.tude resulted in a split among Hegel's followers into one party that considered his

world conception to be a firm pillar of revealed Christianity, and another that used his doctrine to dissolve the Christian conceptions and to replace them by a radically liberal view.

Neither party could have based its opinion on Hegel if they had understood him correctly, for Hegel's world conception contains nothing that can be used for support of a religion or for its destruction. He had meant to do this with respect to any religion as little as he had intended to create any natural phenomena through his pure thought. As he had set out to extract the pure thought from the processes of nature in order to comprehend them in that way, so he had also, in the case of religion, merely the intention to bring its thought content to the surface. As he considered everything that is real in the world as reasonable just because it is real, so he held this view also in regard to religion. It must come into existence by soul forces quite beyond those that are at the disposal of the thinker when he approaches them in order to comprehend them.

It was also an error of such thinkers as Fichte, Weisse, Deutinger and others that they fought against Hegel because he had not proceeded from the realm of pure thought to the religious experience of the personal deity. Hegel had never set himself a task of this kind. He considered that to be the task of the religious consciousness. The younger Fichte, Weisse, Krause, Deutinger and the rest wanted to create a new religion through their world conception. Hegel would have considered such a task to be as absurd as the wish to illuminate the world through the idea of light, or to create a magnet out of the thought of magnetism. To be sure, in Hegel's opinion, religion has its root in the idea, just as the whole world of nature and the spirit. For this reason, it is possible that the human spirit can rediscover this idea in religion, but as the magnet was created out of the thought of magnetism before the human mind came into being, and as

the latter only afterwards has to comprehend the magnet's creation, so also religion has become what it is before its thought emerged in the human soul as an illuminating part of world conception. If Hegel had lived to experience the religious criticism of his pupils, he would have felt compelled to say, "Take your hands off all foundation of religion, off all creation of religious conceptions, as long as you want to remain thinkers and do not intend to become messiahs." The world conception of Hegel, if it is correctly understood, cannot have a retroactive effect on the religious consciousness. The philosopher who reflects on the realm of art has the same relation to his object as the thinker who wants to fathom the nature of religion.

The Halle Yearbooks, published from 1838 to 1843 by Arnold Ruge and Theodor Echtermeyer, served as a forum for the philosophical controversies of the time. Starting with a defense and explanation of Hegel, they soon proceeded to develop his ideas independently, and thus made the transition to the views that are called "radical world conceptions" in the next chapter. After 1841, the editors called their journal, The German Yearbook, and, as one of their aims, they considered "the fight against political illiberality, against theories of feudalism and landed property." In the historical development of the time they became active as radical politicians, demanding a state in which perfect freedom prevails. Thus, they abandoned the spirit of Hegel, who wanted to understand history, not to make it.

Chapter IX.

The Radical World Conceptions

At the beginning of the forties of the last century a man who had previously thoroughly and intimately penetrated the world conceptions of Hegel, now forcefully attacked them.

This man was Ludwig Feuerbach (1804 1872). The declaration of war against the philosophy in which he had grown up is given in a radical form in his essay, Preliminary Theses for the Reformation of Philosophy (1842), and Principle of the Philosophy of the Future (1843). The further development of his thoughts can be followed in his other writings, The Essence of Christianity (1841), The Nature of Religion (1845), and Theogony (1857).

In the activity of Ludwig Feuerbach a process is repeated in the field of the science of the spirit that had happened almost a century earlier (1759) in the realm of natural science through the activity of Caspar Friedrich Wolff. Wolff's work had meant a reform of the idea of evolution in the field of biology. How the idea of evolution was understood before Wolff can be most distinctly learned from the views of Albrecht von Haller, a man who opposed the reform of this conception most vehemently. Hailer, who is quite rightly respected by physiologists as one of the most significant spirits of this science, could not conceive the development of a living being in any other form than that in which the germ already contains all parts that appear in the course of life, but on a small scale and perfectly pre-formed. Evolution, then, is supposed to be an unfolding of something that was there in the first place but was hidden from perception because of its smallness, or for other reasons. If this view is consistently upheld, there is no development of anything new. What

happens is merely that something that is concealed, encased, is continuously brought to the light of day. Hailer stood quite rigorously for this view. In the first mother, Eve, the whole human race was contained, concealed on a small scale. The human germs have only been unfolded in the course of world history. The same conception is also expressed by the philosopher Leibniz (1646 1716): So I should think that the souls, which some day will be human souls, have been in the seed stage, as it is also with those of other species; that they have existed in the form of organized things in our forefathers as far back as Adam, that is to say, since the beginning of things.

Wolff opposed this idea of evolution with one of his own in Theoria Generationis, which appeared in 1759. He proceeded from the supposition that the members of an organism that appear in the course of life have not existed previously but come into being at the moment they become perceptible as real new formations. Wolff showed that the egg contains nothing of the form of the developed organism but that its development const.i.tutes a series of new formations. This view made the conception of a real becoming possible, for it showed how something comes into being that had not previously existed and that therefore "comes to be" in the true sense of the word.

Hailer's view really denies becoming as it admits only a continuous process of becoming visible of something that had previously existed. This scientist had opposed the idea of Wolff with the peremptory decree, "There is no becoming"

(Nulla est epigenesis). He had, thereby, actually brought about a situation in which Wolff s view remained unconsidered for decades. Goethe blames this encas.e.m.e.nt theory for the resistance with which his endeavors to explain living beings was met. He had attempted to comprehend the

formations in organic nature through the study of the process of their development, which he understood entirely in the sense of a true evolution, according to which the newly appearing parts of an organism have not already had a previously concealed existence, but do indeed come into being when they appear. He writes in 1817 that this attempt, which was a fundamental presupposition of his essay on the metamorphosis of plants written in 1790, "was received in a cold, almost hostile manner, but such reluctance was quite natural. The encas.e.m.e.nt theory, the concept of pre- formation, of a successive development of what had existed since Adam's times, had in general taken possession even of the best minds."

One could see a remnant of the old encas.e.m.e.nt theory even in Hegel's world conception. The pure thought that appears in the human mind was to have been encased in all phenomena before it came to its perceptible form of existence in man.

Before nature and the individual spirit, Hegel places his pure thought that should be, as it were, "the representation of G.o.d as he was according to his eternal essence before the creation"

of the world. The development of the world is, therefore, presented as an unwrapping of pure thought. The protest of Ludwig Feuerbach against Hegel's world conception was caused by the fact that Feuerbach was unable to acknowledge the existence of the spirit before its real appearance in man, just as Caspar Friedrich Wolff had been unable to admit that the parts of the living organism should have been pre-formed in the egg. Just as Wolff saw spontaneous formations in the organs of the developed organism, so did Feuerbach with respect to the individual spirit of man. This spirit is in no way there before its perceptible existence; it comes into being only in the moment it appears. According to Feuerbach, it is unjustified to speak of an all-embracing spirit, of a being in which the individual spirit has its roots. No reason-endowed

being exists prior to its appearance in the world that would shape matter and the perceptible world, and in this way cause the appearance of man as its visible afterimage. What exists before the development of the human spirit consists of mere matter and blind forces that form a nervous system out of themselves concentrated in the brain. In the brain something comes into existence that is a completely new formation, something that has never been before: the human soul, endowed with reason. For such a world conception there is no possibility to derive the processes and things from a spiritual originator because, according to this view, a spiritual being is a new formation through the organization of the brain. If man projects a spiritual element into the external world, then he imagines arbitrarily that a being like the one that is the cause of his own actions exists outside of himself and rules the world. Any spiritual primal being must first be created by man through his fantasy; the things and processes of the world give us no reason to a.s.sume its original existence. It is not the original spirit being that has created man after his image, but man has formed a fantasy of such a primal ent.i.ty after his own image. This is Feuerbach's conviction. "Man's knowledge of G.o.d is man's knowledge of himself, of his own nature. Only the unity of being and consciousness is truth. Where G.o.d's consciousness is, there is also G.o.d's being: it is, therefore, in man" (The Essence of Christianity, 1841). Man does not feel strong enough to rest within himself; he therefore created an infinite being after his own image to revere and to worship.

Hegel's world conception had eliminated all other qualities from the supreme being, but it had retained the element of reason. Feuerbach removes this element also and with this step he removes the supreme being itself. He replaces the wisdom of G.o.d completely by the wisdom of the world. As a necessary turning point in the development of world conception, Feuerbach declares the "open confession and admission that the consciousness of G.o.d is nothing but the

consciousness of humanity," and that man is "incapable of thinking, divining, imagining, feeling, believing, willing, loving and worshipping as an absolute divine being any other being than the human being." There is an observation of nature and an observation of the spirit, but there is no observation of the nature of G.o.d. Nothing is real but the factual.

The real in its reality, or as real, is the real as the object of the senses, the sensual. Truth, reality and sensuality are identical.

Only a sensual being is a true, a real being. Only through the senses is an object given in the true sense of the word, not through thinking by itself. The object that is given in thinking, or identical with it, is only thought.

Indeed, this can be summed up as follows. The phenomenon of thinking appears in the human organism as a new formation, but we are not justified to imagine that this thought had existed before its appearance in any form invisibly encased in the world. One should not attempt to explain the condition of something actually given by deriving it from something that is a.s.sumed as previously existing. Only the factual is true and divine, "what is immediately sure of itself, that-which directly speaks for and convinces of itself, that which immediately effects the a.s.sertion of its existence, what is absolutely decided, incapable of doubt, clear as sunlight. But only the sensual is of such a clarity. Only where the sensual begins does all doubt and quarrel cease. The secret of immediate knowledge is sensuality." Feuerbach's credo has its climax in the words, "To make philosophy the concern of humanity was my first endeavor, but whoever decides upon a path in this direction will finally be led with necessity to make man the concern of philosophy." "The new philosophy makes man, and with him nature as the basis of man, the only universal and ultimate object of philosophy; it makes an anthropology that includes physiology in it - the universal

science."

Feuerbach demands that reason is not made the basis of departure at the beginning of a world conception but that it should be considered the product of evolution, as a new formation in the human organism in which it makes its actual appearance. He has an aversion to any separation of the spiritual from the physical because it can be understood in no other way than as a result of the development of the physical.

When the psychologist says, "I distinguish myself from my body," he says as much as when the philosopher in logic or metaphysics says, "I leave human nature unconsidered." Is it possible to leave your own nature out of consideration? Are you not doing so as a human being? Do you think without a head? Thoughts are departed souls. All right, but is not even a departed soul still a faithful picture of a human being who was once in the flesh? Do not even the most general metaphysical concepts of being and essence change as the real being and essence of man changes? What does "I leave human nature out of consideration," then mean? Nothing more than this: I leave man unconsidered so far as he is the object of my consciousness and of my thinking, but not the man who lies behind my consciousness; that is to say, not my own nature to which my process of abstraction also is bound whether I like it or not. So, as a psychologist, you may disregard your body, but in your nature you are intimately linked to it, that is, you think yourself as distinguishable from your body but you are not at all really different from it because of this thought. . . . Was Lichtenberg not right when he maintained that one really should not say, "I think," but, "It thinks"? If, indeed, the "I think" now distinguishes itself from the body, does that force us to conclude that the process that is expressed in the words, "It thinks," the involuntary element of our thinking, the root and the basis of the "I think," is also distinct from the body?

How is it, then, that we cannot think at all times, that the

thoughts are not at our disposal whenever we choose? Why do we often fail to make headway with some intellectual work in spite of the greatest exertion of our will until some external occasion, often no more than a change in the weather, sets our thoughts afloat again? This is caused by the fact that our thought process is also an organic activity. Why must we often carry some thoughts with us for years before they become clear and distinct to us? For the reason that our thoughts also are subject to an organic development, that our thoughts also must have their time to mature as well as the fruits in the field or the child in the mother's womb.

Feuerbach drew attention to Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, a thinker who died in 1799 and who must be considered a precursor of a world conception that found expression in thinkers like Feuerbach. Lichtenberg's stimulating and thought-provoking conceptions were less fruitful for the nineteenth century probably because the powerful thought structures of Fichte, Sch.e.l.ling and Hegel overshadowed everything. They overshadowed the spiritual development to such a degree that ideas that were expressed aphoristically as strokes of lightning, even if they were as brilliant as Lichtenberg's, could be overlooked. We only have to be reminded of a few statements of this important person to see that in the thought movement introduced by Feuerbach the spirit of Lichtenberg experiences a revival.

G.o.d created man after his image, which probably means that man created G.o.d after his own image.

Our world is going to be so sophisticated one day that it will be as ridiculous to believe in G.o.d as it is nowadays to believe in ghosts.

Is our concept of G.o.d really anything but a personified mystery?

The conception that we form of a soul is very much like that of a magnet in the earth. It is merely a picture. It is an innate trick in man to think everything in this form.

Rather than to claim that the world is reflected in us, we should say that our reason is reflected in the world. We just cannot help discovering order and wisdom in the world; it follows from the nature of our thought faculty. But it does not necessarily follow that what we must think should really be so.

. . . In this way, then, no G.o.d can be proven.

We become aware of certain conceptions that do not depend on us; then there are others of which we at least think that they depend on us. Where is the boundary line between them?

We only know that our perceptions, conceptions and thoughts are there. It thinks, one should say, just as one says, It rains, or, Thought strikes as one says, Lightning strikes.

If Lichtenberg had combined such original flashes of thought with the ability to develop a harmoniously rounded world conception, he could not have remained unnoticed to the degree that he did. In order to form a world conception, it is not only necessary to show superiority of mind, as Lichtenberg did, but also the ability to form ideas in their interconnection in all directions and to round them plastically. This faculty he lacked. His superiority is expressed in an excellent judgment concerning the relation of Kant to his contemporaries: I believe that just as the followers of Mr. Kant always charge their opponents with not understanding him, there are also some among them who believe that Mr. Kant must be right because they understand him. His mode of conception is new and different from the usual one, and, if one now suddenly has begun to understand it, one is inclined

to accept it as truth, especially since he has so many ardent followers. But one should always consider that this understanding is not as yet a reason to believe it to be true. I believe that most of Kant's followers, overwhelmed by the joy of having understood an abstract and obscurely presented system, were also convinced that this system had been proven.

How akin in spirit Feuerbach could feel to Lichtenberg becomes especially clear if one compares the views of both thinkers with respect to the relation of their world conceptions to practical life. The lectures Feuerbach gave to a number of students during the winter of 1848 on The Nature of Religion closed with these words: I only wish that I have not failed in the task that I set for myself as I expressed it in the first hours, namely, to convert you from friends of G.o.d to friends of men, from believers into thinkers, from praying men to working men, from adherents to a supersensible realm to students of this world, from being Christians, who according to their own confession and admission are half animal and half angel, into human beings, into entirely human beings.

Whoever, like Feuerbach, bases all world conception on the knowledge of nature and man, must also reject all direction and duties in the field of morality that are derived from a realm other than man's natural inclinations and abilities, or that set aims that do not entirely refer to the sensually perceptible world. "My right is my lawfully recognized desire for happiness; my duty is the desire for happiness of others that I am compelled to recognize." Not in looking with expectation toward a world beyond do I learn what I am to do, but through the contemplation of this one. Whatever energy I spend to fulfill any task that refers to the next world, I have robbed from this world for which I am exclusively meant.

"Concentration on this world" is, therefore, what Feuerbach

demands. We can read similar expressions in Lichtenberg's writings. But just such pa.s.sages in Lichtenberg are always mixed with elements that show how rarely a thinker who lacks the ability to develop his ideas in himself harmoniously succeeds in following an idea into its last consequences.

Lichtenberg does, indeed, demand concentration on this world, but he mixes conceptions that refer to the next even into the formulation of this demand.

I believe that many people, in their eagerness for an education for heaven, forget the one that is necessary for the earth. I should think that man would act wisest if he left the former entirely to itself. For if we have been placed into this position by a wise being, which cannot be doubted, then we should do the best we can and not allow ourselves to be dazzled by revelations. What man needs to know for his happiness he certainly does know without any more revelations than he possesses according to his own nature.

Comparisons like this one between Lichtenberg and Feuerbach are significantly instructive for the historical evolution of man's world conception. They show most distinctly the direction in which these personalities advance because one can learn from them the change that has been wrought by the time interval that lies between them.

Feuerbach went through Hegel's philosophy. He derived the strength from this experience to develop his own opposing view. He no longer felt disturbed by Kant's question of whether we are in fact ent.i.tled to attribute reality to the world that we perceive, or whether this world merely existed in our minds. Whoever upholds the second possibility can project into the true world behind the perceptual representations all sorts of motivating forces for man's actions. He can admit a supernatural world order as Kant had done. But whoever, like Feuerbach, declares that the sensually perceptible alone is real must reject every supernatural world order. For him there is

no categorical imperative that could somehow have its origin in a transcendent world; for him there are only duties that result from the natural drives and aims of man.

To develop a world conception that was as much the opposite of Hegel's as that of Feuerbach, a personality was necessary that was as different from Hegel as was Feuerbach. Hegel felt at home in the midst of the full activity of his contemporary life. To influence the actual life of the world with his philosophical spirit appeared to him a most attractive task.

When he asked for his release from his professorship at Heidelberg in order to accept another chair in Prussia, he confessed that he was attracted by the expectation of finding a sphere of activity where he was not entirely limited to mere teaching, but where it would also be possible for him to affect the practical life. "It would be important for him to have the expectation of moving, with advancing age, from the precarious function of teaching philosophy at a university to another activity and to become useful in such a capacity."

A man who has the inclinations and convictions of a thinker must live in peace with the shape that the practical life of his time has taken on. He must find the ideas reasonable by which this life is permeated. Only from such a conviction can he derive the enthusiasm that makes him want to contribute to the consolidation of its structure. Feuerbach was not kindly inclined toward the life of his time. He preferred the restfulness of a secluded place to the bustle of what was for him "modern life." He expresses himself distinctly on this point: I shall never, at any rate, be reconciled with the life in the city.

To go from time to time into the city to teach there, that I consider, after the impressions I have already stated here, to be good and indeed my duty, but then I must go back again into the solitude of the country to study and rest there in the

arms of nature. My next task is to prepare my lectures as my audience wants them, or to prepare my father's papers for print.

From his seclusion Feuerbach believed himself to be best able to judge what was not natural with regard to the shape that the actual human life a.s.sumed. To cleanse life from these illusions, and what was carried into it by human illusions, was what Feuerbach considered to be his task. To do this he had to keep his distance from life as much as possible. He searched for the true life but he could not find it in the form that life had taken through the civilization of the time. How sincere he was with his "concentration on this world" is shown by a statement he made concerning the March revolution. This revolution seemed to him a fruitless enterprise because the conceptions that were behind it still contained the old belief in a world beyond.

The March revolution was a child of the Christian belief, even if it was an illegitimate one. The const.i.tutionalists believed that the Lord only had to say, "Let there be freedom! Let there be right!" and right and freedom would be there. The republicans believed that all they had to do was to will a republic to call it to life. They believed, therefore, in the creation of a republic out of nothing. The const.i.tutionalists transplanted the idea of the Christian world-miracles to the field of politics; the republicans, that of the Christian miracle of action.

Only a personality who is convinced that he carries within him the harmony of life that man needs can, in the face of the deep hostility that existed between him and the real world, utter the hymns in praise of reality that Feuerbach expressed. Such a conviction rings out of words like these:

Lacking any expectation for the next world, I can hold myself in this one in the vale of tears of German politics and European political life in general, alive and in mental sanity, only by making the present age into an object of Aristophanic laughter.

Only a personality like this could search for all those forces in man himself that the others wanted to derive from external powers.

The birth of thought in the Greek world conception had had the effect that man could no longer feel himself as deeply rooted in the world as had been possible with the old consciousness in the form of picture conceptions. This was the first step in the process that led to the formation of an abyss between man and the world. A further stage in this process consisted in the development of the mode of thinking of modern natural science. This development tore nature and the human soul completely apart. On the one side, a nature picture had to arise in which man in his spiritual-psychical essence was not to be found, and on the other, an idea of the human soul from which no bridge led into nature. In nature one found law-ordered necessity. Within its realm there was no place for the elements that the human soul finds within: The impulse for freedom, the sense for a life that is rooted in a spiritual world and is not exhausted within the realm of sensual existence. Philosophers like Kant escaped the dilemma only by separating both worlds completely, finding a knowledge in the one, and in the other, belief. Goethe, Schiller, Fichte, Sch.e.l.ling and Hegel conceived the idea of the self-conscious soul to be so comprehensive that it seemed to have its root in a higher spirit nature. In Feuerbach, a thinker arises who, through the world picture that can be derived from the modern mode of conception of natural science, feels compelled to deprive the human soul of every trait contradictory to the nature picture. He views the human soul

as a part of nature. He can only do so because, in his thoughts, he has first removed everything in the soul that disturbed him in his attempt to acknowledge it as a part of nature. Fichte, Sch.e.l.ling and Hegel took the self-conscious soul for what it was; Feuerbach changes it into something he needs for his world picture. In him, a mode of conception makes its appearance that is overpowered by the nature picture. This mode of thinking cannot master both parts of the modern world picture, the picture of nature and that of the soul. For this reason, it leaves one of them, the soul picture, completely unconsidered. Wolff's idea of "new formation" introduces fruitful thought impulses to the nature picture. Feuerbach utilizes these impulses for the spirit-science that can only exist, however, by not admitting the spirit at all. Feuerbach initiates a trend of modern philosophy that is helpless in regard to the most powerful impulse of the modern soul life, namely, man's active self-consciousness. In this current of thought, that impulse is dealt with, not merely as an incomprehensible element, but in a way that avoids the necessity of facing it in its true form, changing it into a factor of nature, which, to an unbiased observation, it really is not.

"G.o.d was my first thought, reason my second and man my third and last one." With these words Feuerbach describes the path along which he had gone, from a religious believer to a follower of Hegel's philosophy, and then to his own world conception. Another thinker, who, in 1834, published one of the most influential books of the century, The Life of Jesus, could have said the same thing of himself. This thinker was David Friedrich Strauss (1808 1874). Feuerbach started with an investigation of the human soul and found that the soul had the tendency to project its own nature into the world and to worship it as a divine primordial being. He attempted a psychological explanation for the genesis of the concept of

G.o.d. The views of Strauss were caused by a similar aim.

Unlike Feuerbach, however, he did not follow the path of the psychologist but that of the historian. He did not, like Feuerbach, choose the concept of G.o.d in general in its all- embracing sense for the center of his contemplation, but the Christian concept of the "G.o.d incarnate," Jesus. Strauss wanted to show how humanity arrived at this conception in the course of history. That the supreme divine being reveals itself to the human spirit was the conviction of Hegel's world conception. Strauss had accepted this, too. But, in his opinion, the divine idea, in all its perfection, cannot realize itself in an individual human being. The individual person is always merely an imperfect imprint of the divine spirit. What one human being lacks in perfection is presented by another. In examining the whole human race one will find in it, distributed over innumerable individuals, all perfection's belonging to the deity. The human race as a whole, then, is G.o.d made flesh, G.o.d incarnate. This is, according to Strauss, the true thinker's concept of Jesus. With this viewpoint Strauss sets out to criticize the Christian concept of the G.o.d incarnate. What, according to this idea, is distributed over the whole human race, Christianity attributes to one personality who is supposed to have existed once in the course of history.

The quality and function, which the doctrine of the Church attributes to Christ, are contradictory to each other if applied to one individual, one G.o.d incarnate; in the idea of the human race, they harmonize with one another.

Supported by careful investigations concerning the historical foundation of the Gospels, Strauss attempts to prove that the conceptions of Christianity are a result of religious fantasy.

Through this faculty the religious truth that the human race is G.o.d incarnate was dimly felt, but it was not comprehended in clear concepts but merely expressed in poetic form, in a myth.

For Strauss, the story of the Son of G.o.d thus becomes a myth

in which the idea of humanity was poetically treated long before it was recognized by thinkers in the form of pure thought. Seen from this viewpoint, all miraculous elements of the history of Christianity become explainable without forcing the historian to take refuge in the trivial interpretation that had previously often been accepted. Earlier interpretations had often seen in those miracles intentional deceptions and fraudulent tricks to which either the founder of the religion himself had allegedly resorted in order to achieve the greatest possible effect of his doctrine, or which the apostles were supposed to have invented for this purpose. Another view, which wanted to see all sorts of natural events in the miracles, was also thereby eliminated. The miracles are now seen as the poetic dress for real truths. The story of humanity rising above its finite interests and everyday life to the knowledge of divine truth and reason is represented in the picture of the dying and resurrected saviour. The finite dies to be resurrected as the infinite.

We have to see in the myths of ancient peoples a manifestation of the picture consciousness of primeval times out of which the consciousness of thought experience developed. A feeling for this fact arises in the nineteenth century in a personality like Strauss. He wants to gain an orientation concerning the development and significance of the life of thought by concentrating on the connection of world conception with the mythical thinking of historical times. He wants to know in what way the myth-making imagination still affects modern world conception. At the same time, he aspires to see the human self-consciousness rooted in an ent.i.ty that lies beyond the individual personality by thinking of all humanity as a manifestation of the deity. In this manner, he gains a support for the individual human soul in the general soul of humanity that unfolds in the course of historical evolution.