No More Learning

It was not so with Jesus. In the first place, he did not
set out from any speculative question, which could be solved
only by a Religious Knowledge attained at a later period
and only in the course of the investigation of that question;
for he explained absolutely nothing by his Religious Prin-
ciple, and deduced nothing from it; but he presented it,
alone and by itself, as the only thing worthy of know-
ledge, passing by everything else as undeserving of no-
tice. His Faith, and his conviction, never allowed the
question to arise as to the existence of finite things. In
short, they had no existence for him;--only in union with
God was there Reality. How this Non-Entity could assume
the semblance of Being, from which doubt all profane spec-
ulation proceeds, he cared not to inquire.
As little had he his knowledge by outward teaching and
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? APPENDIX TO LECTURE VI. 485
tradition; for with that truly sublime sincerity and open-
ness which are evident in all his expressions,--and here I
venture to assume on the part of my reader that he has
created for himself an intuitive perception of this sincerity
by means of his own personal relation to this virtue and by
a profound study of the life of Jesus,--he would in that
case have said so, and directed his disciples to the sources
of his own knowledge. It does not follow, because he him-
self indicated the existence of a true religious knowledge
before Abraham, and one of his apostles distinctly refers
to Melchisedek, that Jesus had any connection with that
system by direct tradition; but it might readily happen
that he should re-discover, in his study of Moses, that which
was already present in his own mind; since it is evident
from numerous other instances that he had an infinitely
more profound comprehension of the writings of the Old
Testament than the Scriptural students of his day and the
majority of those of our own; while he likewise proceed-
ed, as it appears, upon the sound hermeneutical principle,
that Moses and the Prophets really desired to say something
and not nothing.
To say that Jesus did not receive his knowledge either
by means of his own speculation, or by communication
from without, is equivalent to saying that he had it through
his mere being and life, -- that it was to him primary
and absolute, without any other element whatever with
which it was connected,--purely through Inspiration, as we
coming after him, and in contrast with our own knowledge,
may express it, but as he himself never could express it.
And what knowledge had he in this way? That all Being
is founded in God alone; and consequently, what immedi-
ately follows from this, that his own Being, with this know-
ledge and in this knowledge, had its foundation in God and
proceeded directly from him. What immediately follows, I
say:--for to us certainly the latter is an inference from the
universal to the particular, since we must first of all re-
nounce our existing personal Ego, as the particular in quest-
ion, and merge it in the universal: but it was by no means
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? 486
THE DOCTRINE OF RELIGION.
the same,--and this I entreat you to remark as the chief
point,--it was by no means the same with Jesus. In him
there was no intellectual, questioning, or learning Self to
be renounced, for in this knowledge his whole spiritual self
was already swallowed up. His Self-consciousness was at
once the pure and absolute Truth of Reason itself; self-ex-
istent and independent,--the simple fact of consciousness:
--by no means, as with us, genetic, arising from another
preceding state, and hence no simple fact of consciousness,
but an inference. In that which I have thus endeavoured
to express with the utmost precision and distinctness must
have consisted the peculiar personal character of Jesus
Christ, who, like every other true Individuality, can have
appeared but once in Time, and can never be repeated
therein. He was the Absolute Reason clothed in immediate
Self-consciousness; or, what is the same thing,--Religion.
(3. ) In this absolute Fact, Jesus reposed with his whole
being, and was entirely lost therein; he could never think,
know, or say anything else but that he knew it was so in
very deed; that he knew it immediately in God, and that
he also knew this in very deed--that he knew it immedi-
ately in God. As little could he point out to his disciples
any other way to Blessedness than that they should become
like as he was; for that his way of being and life was the
source of Blessedness he knew in himself; but he knew not
this Blessed Life in any other shape than in himself and as
his own way of life, and therefore he could not otherwise
describe it. He knew it not in the abstract and universal
conception in which the speculative philosopher knows it
and can describe it; for he did not proceed upon such con-
ceptions, but only on his own Self-consciousness. He re-
ceived it only historically; and he who receives it as we
have explained ourselves above, receives it in like manner,
and, as it seems to us, after his example, only historically.
There was such a man, at such and such a time, in the land
of Judea;--and so far well. But he who desires to know
further, through what arbitrary arrangement of God, or in-
ward necessity in God, such an individual was possible and
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? APPENDIX TO LECTURE VI. 487
actual, steps beyond the fact, and desires to metaphysisize
that which is merely historical.
For Jesus such a transcendentalism was simply impos-
sible; for to this end it would have been requisite for him
to distinguish himself, in his own personality, from God, re-
present himself as thus separate, wonder over himself as a
remarkable phenomenon, and propose to himself the task of
solving the problem of the possibility of such an individual.
But it is precisely the most prominent and striking trait in
the character of the Johannean Jesus, ever recurring in the
same shape, that he will know nothing of such a separation
of his personality from his Father, and that he earnestly
rebukes others who attempt to make such a distinction;
while he constantly assumes that he who sees him sees
the Father, that he who hears him hears the Father, and
that he and the Father are wholly one; and he uncondi-
tionally denies and rejects the notion of an independent
being in himself, when such an unbecoming elevation of
himself is made an objection against him. To him Jesus
was not God, for to him there was no independent Jesus
whatever; but God was Jesus and manifested himself as
Jesus. Such self-contemplation, and admiration of one's
self, were very far removed,--I will not say from a man like
Jesus, with reference to whom the very acquittal from such
a charge would be something like blasphemy,--but from
the whole Realism of the ancient world; and the faculty of
constantly looking back upon ourselves to see how it stands
with us and our feelings, and thus again to feel the feeling
of our feelings, and so to explain ourselves and our remark-
able personality psychologically, even to tediousness, was re-
served for the Moderns;--with whom, on that very account,
it can never be well until they are satisfied to live simply
and plainly, without desiring to live their life over again in
its various possible forms; leaving it to others, who have
nothing better to do, if they find it worth their while, to
marvel over this life of theirs, and to render it intelligible.
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? 488
LECTURE VII.
FIVE MODES OF MAN'S ENJOYMENT OF THE WORLD
AND HIMSELF:--SENSUOUS ENJOYMENT,
LEGALITY, STOICISM.
Ouh theory of Being and Life is now completely laid before
you. It has been shown, not by any means as a proof of
this theory, but merely as a collateral illustration, that the
doctrine of Christianity on these subjects is the same as our
own. With reference to this latter view, I have here only
to ask permission to make such further use of the evidence
that has been brought forward, as sometimes to employ an
expression or an image from the Christian Scriptures, in
which are to be found most admirable and significant ima-
ges. I shall not abuse this liberty. I am not ignorant that
in this age we can enter no circle at all numerous among
the cultivated classes, in which there shall not be found
some one in whom the mention of the name of Jesus, or
the use of Scriptural expressions, excites unpleasant feelings,
and the suspicion that the speaker must be either a hypo-
crite or a fool, or both. It is wholly opposed to my princi-
ples to find fault with any one on this account:--who can
know how much he may have been tormented with these
matters by meddling zealots, and what irrational things may
have been forced upon him as Scripture doctrine? But on
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? THE DOCTRINE OF RELIGION. 489
the other hand, I know that in every cultivated society, and
consequently in that which assembles here, there are to be
found other individuals, who love to fall back upon these
associations, and, with them, upon the feelings of early
youth. Let both these classes here reciprocally accommo-
date themselves to each other. I shall say all that I have
to say, in the first place in ordinary language:--let those
to whom Scriptural images are offensive, content themselves
with the first expression, passing over the second altogether.
The living possession of the theory we have now set forth,
--not the dry, dead, and merely historical knowledge of it,
--is, according to our doctrine, the highest, and indeed the
only possible, Blessedness. To demonstrate this is our busi-
ness henceforward; and this marks out the second leading
division of these lectures, which has also been separated
from the first by the episodical inquiry to which the im-
mediately preceding lecture was devoted.
Clearness is always increased by contrast. Since we are
minded to comprehend thoroughly the True and Bliss-giving
mode of Thought, and to depict it to the life, it will be well
to characterize, more profoundly and distinctly than in our
first lecture, that superficial and unblessed mode of Exis-
tence which is directly opposed to the former, and which
we, in common with Christianity, name a Non-Existence,
Death, or living Burial. We have formerly characterized
this false mode of Thought, in opposition to the true, as
vagrancy in the Manifold, contrasted with retirement and
concentration in the One; and this is, and remains, its es-
sential characteristic. But instead of directing our atten-
tion, as we did formerly, more to the manifold outward ob-
jects among which it is dissipated, let us now consider, with-
out any reference whatever to the object, how this mode of
Thought is in itself an open, shallow, superficiality,--a bro-
ken fountain whose waters run waste on all sides.
All inward spiritual energy appears, in immediate Con-
sciousness, as a concentration, comprehension, and contrac-
tion of the otherwise distracted spirit into one point, and as
a persistence in this one point, in opposition to the con-
Rb
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? 490
THE DOCTRINE OF RELIGION.
stant natural effort to throw off this concentration, and to
become once more diffused abroad. Thus, I say, does all
inward energy appear; and it is only in this concentration
that man is independent, and feels himself to be indepen-
dent. Beyond this condition of self-contraction, he is dis-
persed and melted away as before; and that not according
to his own will and purpose, for any such effort is the op-
posite of dispersion--concentration, but just as he is mould-
ed and formed by lawless and incomprehensible chance.
In this latter condition, therefore, he has no independence
whatever; he exists, not as a substantial reality, but as a
fugitive phenomenon of Nature. In short, the original im-
age of spiritual independence, in Consciousness, is an ever
self-forming and vitally persistent geometric point; just as
the original image of dependence and of spiritual nonentity
is an indefinitely outspreading surface. Independence draws
the world into an apex; dependence spreads it out into a
flat extended plain.
In the former condition only is there power, and the con-
sciousness of power; and hence in it only is a powerful and
energetic comprehension and penetration of the World
possible. In the second condition there is no power: the
Spirit of Man is not even present and at home in the com-
prehension of the World, but, like Baal in the ancient nar-
rative, he has gone upon a journey, or is asleep: how can he
recognise himself in the object, and distinguish himself from
it? He fades away, even from himself, in the current of
phenomena; and thus his world pales before him, and instead
of the living Nature by which he must guage his own life,
and to which he must oppose it, he beholds but a gray spec-
tre, a misty and uncertain shape. To such may be applied
what an ancient Prophet said of the idols of the heathen:--
"They have eyes, and see not; and have ears, and they hear
not. " They, in fact, see not with seeing eyes; for it is a
wholly different thing to comprehend, in the eye and in the
mind, the visible object in its definite limitations, so that
from henceforward we may be able at any moment volun-
tarily to recall it before the spiritual eye precisely as it had
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? J. I-XTURK VII.
491
been seen at first,--under which condition alone any one
can truly say he has seen it,--and to have a shadowy and
formless appearance floating before us in vague uncertainty,
until it disappears altogether, leaving behind it no trace of
its existence. He who has not yet attained to this vivid
comprehension of the objects of Outward Sense, may rest
assured that he is yet a far way off from the infinitely high-
er Spiritual Life.
In this weary, superficial, and incoherent condition, a
multitude of oppositions and contradictions lie quietly and
tolerantly beside each other. In it there is nothing discri-
minated and separated, but all things stand upon an equali-
ty, and have grown up along with each other. They who
live in it hold nothing to be true, and nothing false; they
love nothing, and hate nothing. For, in the first place, to
such recognition as they might hold by for ever, to love, to
hate, or to any other affection, there belongs that very ener-
getic self-concentration of which they are incapable; and,
secondly, it is likewise requisite to such recognition or af-
fection, that they should separate and discriminate the Ma-
nifold, in order to choose therefrom the particular object of
their recognition and affection. But how can they accept
anything whatever as established truth, since they would
thereby be constrained to cast aside and reject, as false, all
other possible things that are opposed to it;--to which their
tender attachment, even to its opposite, will by no means
consent? How can they love anything whatever with their
whole soul, since they would then be under the necessity of
hating its opposite, which their universal love and toleration
will not permit? They love nothing, I said; and interest
themselves for nothing,--not even for themselves. If they
ever propose the questions to themselves:--" Have I then
right on my side, or have I not? --am I right, or am I wrong?
what is to become of me, and am I on the way to happiness
or to misery ? "--they must answer: "What matters it to
me; I shall see what becomes of me, and must accommodate
myself to whatever happens,--time will show the result. "
Thus are they despised, cast aside, and rejected of them-
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? 492
THE DOCTRINE OF RELIGION.
selves; and thus even their most immediate possessors, they
themselves, need not trouble themselves about them. Who
else shall ascribe to them a higher value than they claim
for themselves? They have resigned themselves to blind
and lawless chance, to make of them whatever chance may
bring forth.
As the right mode of thought is in itself right and good,
and needs no good works to exalt its value,--although such
good works will never indeed be awanting,--so is the mode
of thought, which we have now described, in itself worthless
and despicable, and there is no need of any particular ma-
lignancy being superadded to it, to make it worthless and
despicable; and thus no one need here console himself with
the idea that he nevertheless does nothing evil, but perhaps,
according to his notions, even does what he calls good. This is indeed the very sinful pride of this mode of thought, that
these men think they could sin if they would; and that we
must accord them great thanks if they refrain from doing so.
They mistake:--they can do nothing whatever, for they do
not even exist, and there are no such realities as they ima-
gine themselves to be; but, in their stead, there lives and
works mere blind and lawless chance; and this manifests
itself, just as it happens, here as an evil, and there as an
outwardly blameless phenomenon,--without the phenome-
non, the mere impress and shadow of a blindly operative
power, being, on that account, deserving, in the first case of
blame, or in the second case of praise. Whether they shall
prove to be noxious or beneficent phenomena, we can know
only from the result, and it is of no importance. We know
assuredly that, in any case, they shall be without inward
Spiritual Life, in a state of vague incoherence and uncer-
tainty; for that which rules within them, the blind power
of Nature, can express itself in no other way, and this tree
can bear no other fruit.
That which renders this state of mind incurable, which deprives it of all incitement towards a better, and closes it
against instruction from without, is the almost total incapa-
city which is associated with it, to apprehend in its true
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? LECTURE VII.
4. f)3
sense, even historically, anything that lies beyond its own
mode of thought. They would think that they had cast off all love of humanity, and had done the most grievous injus-
tice to an honourable man, were they to admit that, however
singularly he might express himself, he could mean, or wish
to mean, anything else than that which they mean and say;
or were they to ascribe to any communication from other
men any other purpose than to repeat before them some old
and well-known lesson, so that they might be satisfied that
the speaker had thoroughly learned it by rote. Let a man
guard himself as he may by means of the most distinctly
marked antagonisms,--let him exhaust all the resources of
language to choose the strongest, most striking, and most
convincing expression,--as soon as it reaches their ear, it
loses its nature, and becomes changed into the old triviality;
and their art of dragging down everything to their own
level is triumphant over all other art. Therefore are they
in the highest degree averse to all powerful and energetic
expressions, and particularly to such as strive to enforce
comprehension by means of images; and, according to their
law, those expressions must everywhere be selected that are
most vague, indefinite, and far-fetched, and on that very
account most powerless and inexpressive, under pain of ap-
pearing to be unpolished and obtrusive. Thus, when Jesus
spoke of eating his flesh and drinking his blood, his disci-
ples found it a hard saying; and when he mentioned the
possibility of a union with God, the Jews took up stones
and cast at'him. They are always in the right; and since
there can nothing whatever be said at any time but that
which they already express in their language in this way or
that, whence then the surprising effort to express this same
thing in another fashion, whereby there is only imposed up-
on them the superfluous labour of translating it back again
into their own speech?
This delineation of spiritual Non-Existence, or, to use the
image of Christianity, of the Death and Burial of a living
body, has been here introduced, partly in order to set forth
the Spiritual Life more clearly by contrast, and partly be-
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? 4. 94
THE DOCTRINE OF RELIGION.
cause it is itself a necessary element in that description of
man, in his relation to Well-Being, which it is our next duty
to undertake. As a guide to this description, we possess,
and shall employ, those five standpoints in man's view of the
World which we set forth in our fifth lecture;--or, since the
standpoint of Science is excluded from popular discourses,
the other four,--as so many standpoints in man's enjoyment
of the World and of himself. To them the state of spiritual
Non-Existence which we have just described does not at all
belong;--it is no possible or positive something, but a pure
nothing; and so it is likewise altogether negative in relation
to enjoyment and Well-Being. In it there is no such thing
as Love;--whilst all enjoyment is founded on Love. Hence,
to this condition enjoyment is altogether impossible; and
therefore a description of it was requisite at the outset, as
the description of absolute joylessness or unblessedness, in
opposition to the several modes, now to be set forth, in
which man may actually enjoy the World, or himself.
All enjoyment, I have said, is founded on Love. What
then is Love? I say; Love is the affection (Affekt) of Be-
ing (Seyri). Argue it thus with me:--Being (Seyn) is self-
reliant, self-sufficient, self-complete; and needs no Being
beyond itself. Now let this be felt in absolute Self-con-
sciousness; and what arises? Obviously a feeling of this
independence and self-sufficiency;--hence, a Love of this
self;--or, as I said, an affection or attachment of Being, by
means of itself alone; that is, the feeling of Being as Being.
Add further, that in the Finite Being, such as we have de-
scribed above, who always conceives of himself as in a state
of change and transition, there likewise dwells an original
image of his True and Proper Being,--then does he love this
original image; and when his actual and sensible being is
in harmony with this primitive image, then is his Love sat-
isfied, and it is well with him;--but when, on the contrary,
his actual being is not in harmony with this primitive im-
age, which nevertheless continues living, inextinguishable,
and eternally beloved within him, then it is not well with
him, for then he wants that which nevertheless he cannot
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? LECTURE VII.
495
hinder himself from loving before all things, longing and
sorrowing after it continually. Well-being is union with the
object of our Love; sorrow is separation from it. Only
through Love does man subject himself to the influence of
well-being or of sorrow; he who does not love is secure
from both of these. But let no one believe that the wan
and death-like condition that we have described above,
which as it is without love is also assuredly without sorrow,
is on that account to be perferred to the life in Love, that
is accessible to sorrow, and may be wounded by it. For, in
the first place, we at least feel, recognise, and possess our-
selves, even in the feeling of sorrow, and this of itself is un-
speakably more blessed than that absolute want of any self-
consciousness; and, in the second place, this sorrow is the
wholesome spur that should impel us, and that sooner or
later will impel us, to union with the object of our Love,
and to Blessedness therein. Happy, therefore, is the man
who is able to sorrow and to aspire.
To the first standpoint from which man may view the
World, in which reality is attributed only to the objects of
Outward Sense, sensual pleasure is of course the predomi-
nant motive in his enjoyment of himself and of the World.
Even this,--as we have already said with a more scientific
purpose, and in illustration of the first principle we laid
down of this whole matter,--even this is founded on an af-
fection of Being,--in this case, as an organized sensuous life;
on the love for this Being, and for the conditions of this Be-
ing, immediately felt, demanded, and developed,--not, as
some have supposed, perceived only by an unconscious in-
ference of the understanding.
An article of food has a
pleasant taste to us, and a flower a pleasant smell, because
they exalt and enliven our organic existence; and the pleas-
ant taste, as well as the pleasant smell, is nothing else than
the immediate feeling of this exaltation and enlivenment.
But let us not longer pause at this mode of enjoyment,
which, although it certainly is a constituent element in the
system of Universal Life, and on that account is perhaps not
properly to be despised, is nevertheless undeserving of de-
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? 49G
THE DOCTRINE OF RELIGION.
liberate thought or earnest attention! --although I must can-
didly confess that, in a comparative point of view, he who
can throw himself wholly and with undivided feeling into a
sensual enjoyment, is, in my opinion, of far greater worth,
in the eyes of the consequential philosopher, than he who,
from mere superficiality, vagrancy, and vague diffusiveness,
is incapable of rightly enjoying even taste or smell, where
only taste or smell can be enjoyed.
In the social state there intervenes between this merely
sensual appetite and the higher forms of enjoyment, another
class of affections, interposed by means of fancy, which how-
ever always relate at last to a sensual enjoyment, and pro-
ceed from such. Thus, for example, the miser indeed volun-
tarily subjects himself to present want for which he has
no immediate desire, but only from fear of future want for
which he has still less desire; and because he has so strange-
ly trained his fancy, that he suffers more from this imagined
future hunger than from the real hunger that he actually
feels at the present moment. Neither let us pause any long-
er at these unsubstantial, shallow, and capricious affections,
even although they are opposed to immediate sensual en-
joyment :--all that belongs to this region is alike shallow
and capricious.
The second standpoint from which the World may be
viewed is that of Legality, in which reality is attributed
only to a Spiritual Law ordering all actual Existence.
What is the affection of this standpoint, and what is its
consequent relation to Well-Being? For those among you
who possess philosophical knowledge, I shall here, in pass-
ing, in a few short remarks and with strict consequentiality,
throw a new light on this matter which has already been
so well treated of by Kant.
From this standpoint, Man, in the deepest root of his be-
ing, is himself the Law. This Law is the self-reliant, self-
supporting Being of such a man, which neither needs nor
can admit of any other Being whatever besides itself:--a
Law absolutely for the sake of Law, and wholly disdaining
any purpose beyond itself.
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? LECTURE VII.
497
In the first place:--thus rooted in Law, man can still be,
think, and act. The philosopher who is not wholly super-
ficial proves this a priori; the man who is not wholly rude
or senseless feels it constantly in himself, and proves it by
his whole life and thought. The celebrated axiom which,
since this principle has been reproduced in our own time
by Kant and others, has been brought forward and repeated
usque ad nauseam by a decisive majority of the theologians,
philosophers, and beaux-esprits of the age,--the axiom that
it is absolutely impossible for a man to will without having
an externa] object of his volition, or to act without having
an external object of his action--this axiom we need not
meddle with, but have only to meet it with cold and con-
temptuous rejection. Whence do they know what they so
categorically maintain, and how do they propose to prove
their axiom? They know it only from their knowledge of
themselves; and hence they ask nothing from an opponent
but that he should look into his own bosom and find him-
self such as they are. They cannot do it, and therefore they
maintain that no man can do it. But again:--what is it
they cannot do? Will and act without an object beyond
the action. And what is there that lies beyond will and
action, and mental independence? Nothing whatever but
sensual well-being; for this is the only opposite of these :--
sensual well-being, I say, however strangely it may be de-
scribed, and even although the time and place of its fruition
should be placed on the other side the grave. And thus,
what is it which they have discovered in this knowledge of
themselves? Answer:--that they cannot even think, move,
nor in any way bestir themselves, unless with a view to some
outward well-being which is thereby to be attained; that
they cannot regard themselves as anything but the means
and instruments of some sensual enjoyment, and that, ac-
cording to their firm conviction, the Spiritual in them only
exists for the purpose of nursing and tending on the Ani-
mal . Who shall dispute their self-knowledge, or attempt to
gainsay them in that which they must know best of all,
and which, in truth, only they themselves can know?
sb
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? 498
THE DOCTRINE OF RELIGION.
Man, on the second standpoint from which the World
may be viewed, is himself the Law, we said;--a living, self-
conscious, self-attached Law,--or an affection of Law. But
the affection of Law, as Law, and in this form, is, as I call
upon you to perceive, an absolute command, an uncondition-
al obligation, a Categorical Imperative; which, on account
of this very categorical nature of its form, wholly rejects all
love or even inclination towards the thing commanded. It
shall be, that is all:--simply it shall. If thou wouldst do it,
there would be no need of the shall; it would come too late,
and would be rejected; while, on the contrary, as surely as
thou, on thy part, obeyest the shall, and canst so obey, so
surely dost thou not will; volition is beyond thy reach,
inclination and love are expressly laid aside.
Now, could man wholly resign himself with his entire Life
to this affection of Law, then would he abide solely by this
cold and rigid commandment; and, with regard to his view
of himself and of the World, by the absolutely uninterested
judgment whether a thing be in accordance with the Law
or not;--wholly excluding all personal inclination, and every
thought of it being agreeable or disagreeable; as indeed is
actually the case where men give themselves up to this
affection. Such an one, through his strict acceptance of
the Law, might yet declare that he did not, and would
not, act in accordance with it, without anything like re-
morse or displeasure with himself; and indeed with the
same coolness with which he might acknowledge that some
thousand years before his birth, and in a remote quarter of
the world, some other person had not performed the obliga-
tion imposed upon him. But, in actual life, this affection
is usually conjoined with an interest for ourselves, and our
own personality; which latter interest then assumes the na-
ture of the first affection, and becomes modified thereby .
so that the view we take of ourselves, while it remains in-
deed a mere judgment, which it must be in virtue of the
first affection, is yet not wholly an uninterested judgment;
--we are constrained to despise ourselves if we do not walk
according to the Law, and we are free from this self-contempt
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? LECTURE VII.
499
if we act in harmony with it; and we would consequently
rather find ourselves in the latter position than in the for-
mer.
The interest which man feels in himself, we said, is
swallowed up in this affection of Law. He desires only not
to be constrained to despise himself before the tribunal of
the Law. Not to despise himself, I say,--negatively; by
no means to be able to respect himself,--positively. Where-
ever positive self-respect is spoken of, it is only, and can
only be, the absence of self-contempt that is meant. For
the judgment of which we here speak is founded solely on
the Law, which is completely determined, and assumes
jurisdiction over the whole of humanity. There is no third
course:--either man is not in harmony with the Law, and
then he must despise himself; or he is in harmony with it,
and then he has nothing to allege against himself;--but, in
his fulfilment of the Law, he can by no means transcend its
requirements in aught, and do something beyond what he is
bound to do, which would thus be done without command-
ment, and hence be a free and voluntary act;--and there-
fore he can never positively respect himself, nor honour
himself as something excellent.
The interest which man feels in himself is swallowed up
in the affection of Law; this affection destroys all inclina-
tion, all love, and all desire. Man has but one thing need-
ful to him--not to despise himself; beyond this he wills
nothing, needs nothing, and can use nothing. In that one
want of his nature, however, he is dependent on himself
alone; for an Absolute Law, by which man is wholly
encompassed, must necessarily represent him as entirely
free . By means of this conception he is now elevated above
all love, desire, and want, and thus above all that is external
to him and that does not depend on himself; needing
nothing but himself; and thus, by the extinction of every-
thing in him that was dependent, himself truly independent,
exalted above all things, and like the blessed Gods. It is
only unsatisfied wants that produce unhappiness: require
then nothing but that which thou thyself canst secure,--
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? 500
THE DOCTRINE OF RELIGION.
thou canst, however, only make sure that thou shalt have
no fault to find with thyself,--and thou art for ever inacces-
sible to unhappiness. Thou hast no need of anything
beyond thyself;--not even of a God,--for thou art thine own
God, thine own salvation, and thine own Redeemer.
No one who can justly lay claim to the amount of his-
torical knowledge which every educated man is presumed
to possess, can have failed to perceive that I have now set
forth the mode of thought peculiar to that celebrated system
of antiquity--Stoicism. A venerable picture of this mode
of thought is the representation, made by an ancient poet,
of the mythical Prometheus; who, in the consciousness of
his own just and good deed, laughs at the Thunderer seated
above the clouds, and at all the torments heaped upon his
head by the relentless God; and who, with undaunted
courage, sees a world crashing around him into ruins, and,
in the language of one of our own poets, thus addresses
Zeus:--
"Here I sit,--forming men
After my image;
A race that, like me,
Shall suffer, weep,
Enjoy and rejoice,--
And despise thee, Zeus!
As I do. "*
You have sufficiently understood that to us this mode of
thought stands only upon the second grade in the possible
views of the World, and is only the first and lowest form of
the higher Spiritual Life. You have already, in our former
lecture, received indications of a far more earnest and perfect
Life, which shall be further developed in the succeeding
lectures. Yet it is not our intention to surrender this mode
of thought, which is indeed worthy of all honour, to the con-
tempt of spiritual perversion, nor even to leave a single
lurking-place open to such perversion. With this view, I
add the following.
It is unquestionably true that this mode of thought can
* Goethe's "Prometheus. "
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? LECTURE VII.
501
arrive at the admission of a God only through inconsequen-
tially; and that, wherever it is consistent, although it may
at times make use of the conception of a God,--perhaps for
the theoretical explanation of Nature, but assuredly never
for its own practical need of such a conception,--yet it needs
no God for its own heart, reverences none, and is indeed its
own God. But what sort of God is that which it rejects?
It is no other, and can be no other--because on this stand-
point no other is possible--than the arbitrary distributor
of sensual well-being whom we have already described,
whose favour must be acquired by means of some expedient,
even if that expedient be a behaviour in accordance with
the Law. This God, so constituted, is rightly rejected; he
ought to be rejected, for he is not God; and the higher view
of the World never again accepts God in this shape, as we,
in the proper place, shall clearly see. Stoicism does not
reject the truth, but only the lie; it does not attain to the
truth, but remains, with relation to it, only in a negative
position;--this is its defect.
Thus also, the delusion of a certain system that calls itself
Christian,--that sensual desire is sanctified by means of
Christianity and its satisfaction entrusted to a God, and
that it has discovered the secret whereby it may serve God
even by means of its servitude to this desire;--this delusion
too, I say, remains an error. The happiness which the
sensuous man seeks is irrevocably separated from the Bles-
sedness which Religion--does not indeed promise, but--
immediately presents, by the gulf of subjection to a Sacred
Law before which all desire grows dumb;--separated, not in
degree, but in its very nature. And thus do those who, as
philosophers, teach this same doctrine, and who in the most
animated appeals seek to convince us that, by our demands,
we would destroy the essential character of human nature,
and tear its very heart from its body, besides their fitting
despicableness, make themselves also ridiculous. So also
those beaux-esprits, who raise a cry about the extirpation of
love by means of Stoicism--meaning by this love, not the
flame of Divine Love, of which we shall afterwards speak,
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? 502
THE DOCTRINE OF RELIGION.
but only mere earthly love and desire--and who believe
that, as a child who innocently extends its little hands
towards an offered dainty is a touching and therefore a
pleasing spectacle, so may the grown man, who behaves in
like manner, demand the moral approval of the earnest
censor; and that whatever is capable of affording the
beholder a pleasing aesthetical spectacle is, on that account,
in itself noble and good, these, I say, are lost in the
most singular confusion of ideas.
Thus much had I to say, with reference to Well-Being,
regarding the second standpoint from which the World may
be viewed by man; which, in this respect, is only negative,
--mere Apathy: and I desired to set forth this strictly and
clearly, in order, by means of this Apathy, as the middle
state, to distinguish the Vulgar from the Holy, and to set
up an insurmountable wall of separation between them.
Wherein this Apathy is limited, and how it thereby becomes
an impulse towards the development of a Higher Life in
the Divine Love;--of this we shall speak in our next
lecture.
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? 503
LECTURE VIII.
EXPOSITION OF FORM AS THE UNIVERSAL CONDITION
OF EXISTENCE;--FREEDOM AND INDEPENDENCE
OF THE EGO;--CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE;--
PASSAGE TO THE HIGHER MORALITY.
The entire purpose and import of these Lectures may be
thus briefly stated:--to give a description of the One, True,
and therefore Blessed Life. Every good description, how-
ever, ought to be genetic, and gradually unfold the matter
described before the eyes of the beholders. The true
Spiritual Life is peculiarly susceptible of such a genetic
description; for it developes itself, as we said before,--
figuratively, as it then seemed, but, as it now appears, with
very literal earnestness,--this Life developes itself gradually,
and step by step, having its several determinate stations.
As these stations of the Spiritual Life, we have recognized
five chief standpoints in man's possible view of the World;
and through these we have ascended throughout the scale of
Life, at first in a mere cold and uninterested survey;--but
in the previous lecture we have, in place of this merely
intellectual view, taken cognizance of its affections, its love,
and its self-enjoyment; and thereby we have, for the first
time, completed the form of Life. This Life, thus defined,
we have followed, in our last lecture, through the conditions
of Nullity, of mere Sensual Enjoyment, and of strict Legality
or harmony with an assumed Law.
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? 504
THE DOCTRINE OF RELIGION.
How such a description of the Spiritual Life is now to
ascend to its higher forms, is, for obvious reasons, more
obscure and unintelligible to a majority of a degenerate
age, because it now enters upon regions which are foreign
to such an age,--not known to it, either by its own spiritual
experience, or even by hearsay. Thus it becomes the duty
of those who undertake to speak of such subjects, if they
must resign the hope of being positively understood by all
men, at least to guard carefully against themselves giving
occasion for any misconception; and, if they cannot bring
home the truth to all, yet to take care that no one, through
their fault, is led to receive anything false; and at least so
to equip and prepare those who possess the power of fully
comprehending their instructions, that these shall be able,
each in his own circle, to give an account of the truth, and
to correct the misapprehensions of others. This considera-
tion has determined me to devote a portion of this lecture
to a profound and exhaustive exposition of the matter which,
in our last lecture, we brought to its culminating point, and
have still to treat of in this.
Those among you who are already initiated into specula-
tive science shall, on this occasion, be introduced into the
organic central-point of all speculation, in such a manner
as, to my knowledge, has never and nowhere been attempted
before. The others, who either are unable, or do not desire,
to philosophize with us, may at least avail themselves of the
opportunity thus presented to them of personally listening
to a strictly philosophical demonstration, in order to acquire
a general conception of the matter, and to be convinced that,
when rightly treated, it is by no means so strange and arti-
ficial a thing as is commonly supposed, but proceeds in a
quite simple and natural manner, and requires in the stu-
dent nothing more than the power of sustained attention.
Nevertheless it will be necessary that even they who belong
to this latter class should apprehend what is now to be said,
historically at least, because before the conclusion of the
lecture we shall come to something which all will wish to
understand, but which can not be understood unless the
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? LECTURE VIII.
505
first part has been at least historically apprehended, and as-
sumed as a possible hypothesis.
We have seen and understood:-- that Being (Seyn) is--
absolutely;--that it has never arisen nor become, nor has
anything in it ever arisen or become. But further, this
Being is also outwardly present, ex-'mts,--as may be dis-
covered and perceived, but not genetically understood; and
after it has been thus discovered and perceived as ex-isting
there present, then it may also be understood that this Ex-
istence (Daseyn) has likewise not arisen nor become, but is
founded in the inward necessity of Being (Seyn) itself, and
is, through it, absolutely determined. By means of its thus
ex-isting, and in this Ex-istence, Being now becomes Con-
sciousness; and that a Consciousness separated and broken
up into a manifold variety of Forms:--and this may, in
like manner, be seen and understood as the necessary result
of Ex-istence.
In order that we may not have constantly to repeat the
same series of words, we shall now comprehend under the
term Form, everything that attaches to Being in conse-
quence of Ex-istence;--which word, Form, shall hencefor-
ward signify all that we have already seen to be the neces-
sary result of Ex-istence. (I may here mention, for the
benefit of those who do not enter with us into the strictly
philosophical view of our subject, that this is the case with
all philosophical terminology;--its expressions are only
abbreviations of speech, employed to recall to mind briefly
something which has been previously apprehended in im-
mediate contemplation; and to him who has not been a
partaker in this immediate contemplation, but to him alone,
they are empty, unmeaning, formulas. )
Thus we have these two elements:--Being, as it is essen-
tially and in itself;--and Form, which is assumed by the for-
mer in consequence of its Ex-istence. But how have we
expressed ourselves? What is it that assumes a Form?
Answer:--Being, as it is in itself, without any change
whatever of its inward Essential Nature. But what then is
there in Ex-istence? Answer:--Nothing else than the One,
Tb
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? 506
THE DOCTRINE OF RELIGION.
Eternal and Unchangeable Being, besides which there can
be nothing. Again:--May this Eternal Being ex-ist other-
wise than in this precise Form? How were that possible,
since this Form is nothing else than Ex-istence itself; and
consequently the assertion, that Being could also ex-ist in
another Form, would be equivalent to saying, that Being
could ex-ist, and yet not ex-ist? Let us call Being A, and
Form,--I mean universal Form, apprehended in its unity,--
B;--then Actual Ex-istence is A x B and B x A,-- or A as
determined by B, and the reverse. Determined, I say,
emphatically, so that your thoughts may now proceed, not
from one of the extremes, but from the central-point; and
you may thus understand, that both these elements have
mutually entered together into Reality, and are reciprocally
interpenetrated by each other, so that in Reality, and
indeed without the annihilation of Reality, they can never
again be separated. This is the point upon which every-
thing depends; this is the organic central-point of all
Speculation; and he who thoroughly penetrates to this, has
reached the ultimate perfection of light.
To make this yet stronger;--God himself, that is, the
Essential Nature of the Absolute, which is separated from
his outward Ex-istence only by means of our limited com-
prehension, cannot throw off this absolute blending of
Essence with Form; for even his Ex-istence, which only to
the first merely phenomenal glance seems contingent and
phenomenal, is yet to true Thought, which is the only de-
cisive criterion, not contingent,--but, since it is and could
not be otherwise, it must be a necessary result of his inward
Essential Nature. By reason therefore of God's Essential
Nature itself, this Essential Nature is inseparably bound up
with Form, and has itself entered into Form; which to
those who are able to comprehend it, thoroughly solves the
highest difficulty of Speculation which has existed from the
beginning of the world down to the present day, and con-
firms our previous commentary on the words of John :--" In
the beginning,--absolutely independent of all possibility of
opposition, of all caprice, of all contingency, and therefore of
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? LECTURE VIII.
507
all Time,--founded on the inward necessity of the Divine
Nature itself,--was Form;--and Form was with God,--con-
tained in, established on, and its very Ex-istence proceed-
ing from, the inward determinate character of the Divine
Nature;--and Form was itself God; God manifested him-
self in it even as he is in himself.