As an individual, I have said;--for how
Humanity as a whole has come forth from the Divine Na-
ture may be comprehended, and must have been made in-
telligible by our preceding lectures; and is, according to us,
the theme of the introduction to the Johannean Gospel.
Humanity as a whole has come forth from the Divine Na-
ture may be comprehended, and must have been made in-
telligible by our preceding lectures; and is, according to us,
the theme of the introduction to the Johannean Gospel.
Fichte - Nature of the Scholar
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org/access_use#pd-google
? 474
THE DOCTRINE OF RELIGION.
who, even if he have investigated that side of it, has been
unable to discover there what we think we have found.
Therefore, by what we have now said, we by no means wish
to be understood as joining ourselves to the party of those
Christians to whom things have a value only on account of
the name they bear. The Metaphysical only, and not the
Historical, can give us Blessedness; the latter can only give
us understanding. If any man be truly united with God,
and dwell in him, it is altogether an indifferent thing how
he may have reached this state; and it would be a most
useless and perverse employment, instead of living in the
thing, to be continually repeating over our recollections of
the way toward it. Could Jesus return into the world, we
might expect him to be thoroughly satisfied if he found
Christianity actually reigning in the minds of men, whether
his merit in the work were recognised or overlooked; and
this is, in fact, the very least that might be expected from a
man who, while he lived on earth, sought not his own glory
but the glory of him who sent him.
Now that, by means of distinguishing these two stand-
points, we possess the key to all the expressions of the Jo-
hannean Jesus, and the certain means of referring back
whatever is clothed in a merely temporary form to its origi-
nal source in pure and absolute Truth, let us comprise the
substance of these expressions in the answer to these two
questions:--(1. ) What does Jesus say of himself, regarding
his relation to the Godhead ? --and (2. ) What does he say of
his disciples and followers, regarding their relation, in the
first place to himself, and then, through him, to the God-
head?
Chap. 1. verse 18--" No man hath seen God at any
time; the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of
the Father, he hath declared him :"--or, as we have
said: The essential Divine Nature, in itself, is hid-
den from us; only in the form of Knowledge does it
come forth into manifestation, and that altogether as
it is in itself.
Chap. V. verse 19--" The Son can do nothing of him-
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? LECTURE VI.
-475
self, but what he seeth the Father do; for what
things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son
likewise :"--or, as we have expressed it, his separate
independent life is swallowed up in the life of God.
Chap. X. verses 27, 28--" My sheep hear my voice, and
I know them, and they follow me: and I give unto
them eternal life; and they shall never perish, nei-
ther shall any pluck them out of my hand. "--Ver.
29. "My Father who gave them me, is greater than
all; and none is able to pluck them out of my Fa-
ther's hand. " Who is it then, it may be asked, who
holds and keeps them,--Jesus or the Father? --The
answer is given in verse 30: " I and my Father are
one :" that is to say, the same;--identical principles
in both. His life is my life, and mine is his; my
work is his work, and his is mine;--precisely as we
have expressed ourselves in our preceding lecture.
So much for the clearest and most convincing passages.
The whole Gospel speaks in the same terms on this point,
uniformly and with one voice. Jesus speaks of himself in
no other way than this.
But further, how does Jesus speak of his followers, and of
their relation to him? He constantly assumes that, in
their actual condition, they have not the true life in them,
but, as he expresses it in Chap. III. with reference to Nico-
demus, must receive a wholly different life, as much op-
posed to their present life as if an entirely new man should be
born in their stead :--or,--where he expresses himself with
the strictest precision,--that they have not, properly speak-
ing, either existence or life, but are sunk in death and the
grave, and that it is he who must first give them life.
On this point, consider the following decisive passages:--
Chap. VI. verse 53--" Except ye eat my flesh and drink
my blood," (this expression will be afterwards ex-
plained), "ye have no life in you:"--Only by means
of thus eating my flesh and drinking my blood is
there aught in you;--without this there is nothing.
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? 47(5
THE DOCTRINE OF RELIGION.
Chap . V. verse 24--"He that heareth my word," &c.
"hath everlasting life, and is passed from death unto
life. "--Verse 25--"The hour is coming, and now is,
when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of
God; and they that hear shall live. " The dead! Who
are these dead 1 Those who are to lie in their graves
till the last day? A coarse, crude interpretation;--
in Scriptural language, an interpretation according to
the flesh, and not according to the spirit. The hour
was even then: they themselves were the dead who
had not yet heard his voice, and even on that ac-
count were dead.
And what is this life, that Jesus promises to give his fol-
lowers?
Chap. VIII. verse 51--" Verily, verily, I say unto you,
If a man keep my word, he shall never see death,"--
not as dull expositors take it; -- "he shall indeed
once die, only not for ever, but he shall again be a-
wakened at the last day,"--but" he shall never die:"
as the Jews actually understood it, and attempted to
refute Jesus by an appeal to the death of Abraham,
while he justified their interpretation by declaring
that Abraham, who had seen his day,--who had,
doubtless through Melchisedek, been initiated into
his doctrine,--was actually not dead.
Or yet more distinctly,--
Chapter XI. verse 23--" Thy brother shall rise again.
Martha" (whose head was filled with Jewish notions)
"saith unto him, I know that he shall rise again in
the resurrection at the last day. " No, said Jesus--
"I am the Resurrection and the Life:--he that be-
lieveth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live;
and whosoever liveth, and believeth in me, shall
never die. " Union with me is union with the Eter-
nal God and his Life, and the certain assurance
thereof; so that in every moment of time, he who is
so united with me, is in complete possession of Eter-
nity, and places no faith whatever in the fleeting and
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? LECTURE VI.
477
illusive phenomena of a birth and a death in Time,
and therefore needs no re-awakening as a deliverance
from a death in which he does not believe.
And whence has Jesus this power of giving Eternal Life
to his followers? From his absolute identity with God.
Chap. V. verse 26--" As the Father hath life in himself, so
hath he given to the Son to have life in himself. "
Further,--in what way do the followers of Jesus become
partakers of this identity of his Life with the Divine Life?
Jesus declares this in the most manifold and varied ways,
of which I shall here adduce only the most clear and for-
cible,--those which, precisely on account of their absolute
clearness, have been the most completely unintelligible and
offensive, both to his contemporaries and to their descen-
dants even to the present day. Chap. VI. verses 53-55--
"Except ye eat the flesh of the the Son of Man, and drink
his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh,
and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life. For my flesh is
meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. " What does
this mean? He explains himself at v. 56--" He that eateth
my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in
him," or, reversing the expression, He that dwelleth in me
and I in him, he hath eaten my flesh, &c. To eat his flesh,
and drink his blood, means--to become wholly and entirely
he himself;--to become altogether changed into his person
without reserve or limitation ;--to be a faithful repetition
of him in another personality;--to be transubstantiated
with him,--i. e. as he is the Eternal Word made flesh and
blood, to become his flesh and blood, and--what follows from
that, and indeed is the same thing--to become the very
Eternal Word made flesh and blood itself;--to think wholly
and entirely like him, and so as if he himself thought, and
not we;--to live wholly and entirely like him, and so as if
he himself lived in our life. As surely as you do not now
attempt to drag down my own words, and reduce them to
the narrow meaning that Jesus is only to be imitated, as an
unattainable pattern, partially and at a distance, as far as
human weakness will allow, but accept them in the sense in
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? 478
THE DOCTRINE OF RELIGION.
which I have spoken them,--that we must be transformed
into Christ himself,--so surely will it become evident to you
that Jesus could not well have expressed himself otherwise,
and that he actually did express himself excellently welL
Jesus was very far from representing himself as that unat-
tainable ideal into which he was first transformed by the
spiritual poverty of after-ages; nor did his Apostles so re-
gard him :--among the rest Paul, who says:--" I live not,
but Christ liveth in me. " Jesus desired that he should be
repeated in the persons of his followers, in his complete and
undivided character, as he was in himself; and indeed he
demanded this absolutely, as an indispensable condition of
discipleship:--Except ye eat my flesh, &c. , ye have no life
whatever in you, but ye abide in the graves wherein I found
you.
Only this one thing he demanded: not more, and not
less. He did not, by any means, propose to rest satisfied
with the mere historical belief that he was the Eternal
Word made flesh,--the Christ,--for which he gave himself
out. He certainly did demand, even according to John, as
a preliminary condition,--only to secure attention and con-
sideration to his teachings--he did demand Faith, that is,
the previous admission of the possibility that he might be
indeed this Christ; and he even did not disdain to facilitate
and strengthen this admission by means of striking and
wonderful works which he performed. But the final and
decisive proof, which was first to be made possible through
the preliminary admission or Faith, was this :--that a man
should actually do the will of him who had sent Jesus,--
that is, in the sense we have explained, should eat his flesh
and drink his blood, whereby he should then know of the
doctrine, that it was from God, and that he spake not of
himself. As little is his discourse of faith in his expiatory
merits. According to John, Jesus is indeed a Lamb of God
that taketh away the sins of the world; but by no means
one who with his blood appeases an angry God. He takes
them away:--According to his doctrine, man does not exist
at all out of God and him, but is dead and buried; he does
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? LECTURE VI.
479
not even enter into the Spiritual Kingdom of God:--how
then can this poor, non-existent shadow introduce dissen-
sion into this Kingdom, and disturb the Divine Plan? But
he who is transformed into the likeness of Jesus, and there-
by into that of God,--he no longer lives himself, but God
lives in him;--but how can God sin against himself? Thus
has he borne away and destroyed the whole delusion of sin,
and the dread of a Godhead that could feel itself offended
by men. Finally, if any man in this way should repeat the
character of Jesus in his own person, what then, according
to the doctrine of Jesus, is the result? Thus does Jesus, in
the presence of his disciples, call upon his Father :--Chap.
XVII. verse 20--" Neither pray I for these alone, but for
them also which shall believe on me through their word;
that they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I
in thee, that they also may be one in us. "--One--in us.
Now, according to this consummation, all distinctions are
laid aside; the whole community--the first-born of all, with
his more immediate followers, and with all those who are
born in later days--here merge together into one common
source of all life -- the Godhead. And thus, as we have
maintained above, does Christianity, assuming its purpose
to be attained, again fall into harmony with the Absolute
Truth, and itself maintain that every man may and ought
to come into unity with God,--and himself, in his own per-
son, become the Divine Ex-istence, or the Eternal Word.
And thus it is proved that the doctrine of Christianity,
even in the system of images under which it represents Life
and Death, and all that flows therefrom, is in strict harmo-
ny with that doctrine which we have set forth to you in our
previous lectures, and have combined into one single view
at the beginning of to-day's discourse.
In conclusion, listen once more to that with which I
closed my last lecture, but now in the words of the same
Apostle John.
Thus he combines, doubtless with reference to his Gos-
pel, the practical results of the whole: Epistle I. Chap. I. --
"That which was from the beginning, which we have heard
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? 480
THE DOCTRINE OF RELIGION.
which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked
upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of Life. "
Do you observe how anxious he is to appear, not as having
given forth his own thoughts in his Gospel, but as the mere
witness of what he had seen ? " That which we have seen
and heard declare we unto you, that ye also "--in spirit and
on the foundation of the last words we have quoted from
Jesus--" may have fellowship with us; and truly our fel-
lowship"--ours, the Apostles, as well as yours, the newly
converted--" is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus
Christ. . . If we say that we have fellowship with him,
and walk in darkness"--if we think that we are united
with God while yet the Divine Energy does not burst forth
in our lives--" we lie, and do not the truth "--we are but
fanatics and visionaries. --" But if we walk in the Light, as
he is in the Light, we have fellowship one with another, and
the blood of Jesus Christ the Son of God"--not, in the theo-
ological sense, his blood shed for the remission of our sins,
but his blood and mind entered into us,--his Life in us--
"cleanseth us from all sin," and raiseth us far above the
possibility of sin.
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? *
481
APPENDIX TO LECTURE VI.
THE HISTORICAL AND THE METAPHYSICAL IN
CHRISTIANITY.
That the fundamental doctrine of Christianity, as a special
institution for the development of Religion in the Human
Race:--i. e. that in Jesus Christ, for the first time, and in a
way predicable of no other man, the Eternal Ex-istence
(Daseyn) of God has assumed a human personality; and
that all other men can attain to union with God only
through him, and by means of the repetition of his whole
character in themselves:--that this is a merely historical,
and not in any way a metaphysical proposition, we have already said in the text--(page 471. ) It is perhaps not su-
perfluous to~point out here, still more clearly, the distinc-
tion upon which this declaration is founded; since I am
not entitled, in the case of the general public to whom it is
now presented, to make the same assumption as in the case
of the majority of my immediate hearers,--that they are fa-
miliar with this distinction through my other teachings. \y
If we take these expressions in their strict signification,
the Historical and the Metaphysical are directly opposed to
each other; and that which is really historical is, on that
very account, not metaphysical--and the reverse. The His-
torical, and what is purely historical in every possible phe-
nomenon, is that which may be apprehended as simple and
absolute Fact, existing for itself alone and isolated from
everything else, not as receiving its explanation and deriva-
Qb
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? iS-2
THE DOCTRINE OF RELIGION.
tion from a higher source:--the Metaphysical, on the con-
trary, and the metaphysical element in every particular
phenomenon, is that which necessarily proceeds from a
higher and more comprehensive law, and which may be
again referred to that law, and therefore cannot be compre-
hended as simple fact; and, strictly speaking, can only by
means of a delusion be regarded as fact at all, since in truth
it is not apprehended as fact but only in consequence of
the Law of Reason that rules within us. The latter ele-
ment of the phenomenon never extends to its actuality, and
the actual phenomenon never altogether disappears in it;
and therefore in all actual phenomena these two elements
are inseparably combined.
It is the fundamental error of all pretended science that
does not recognise its own boundaries,--in other words, of
the transcendental use of the understanding,--that it is not
satisfied to accept the fact, simply as a fact, but must in-
dulge in metaphysical speculation concerning it. Since, on
the supposition that what such a Metaphysic labours to re-
fer to a higher law is in truth simply actual and historic,
there can be no such law, at least none accessible to us in
the present life, it follows, that the Metaphysic we have de-
scribed, arbitrarily assuming that such an explanation is to
be found here,--which is its first error,--must then have
recourse to its own invention for such an explanation, and
fill up the chasm by an arbitrary hypothesis,--which is its
second error.
With regard to the case now before us,--the primitive
fact of Christianity is accepted as historical, and simply as
fact, when we say, what is evident to every man, that Jesus
knew what he did know before any one else knew it, and
taught and lived as he did teach and live;--without de-
siring to know further how all this was possible, which, ac-
cording to well established principles, not however to be
communicated here, can never be ascertained in this life.
But the same fact is metaphysisized by the transcendental
use of the understanding, soaring beyond the fact itself,
when we attempt to comprehend it in its primitive source,
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? APPENDIX TO LECTURE VI.
483
and to this end set up an hypothesis as to how the individu-
al Jesus, as an individual, has emanated from the essential
Divine Nature.
As an individual, I have said;--for how
Humanity as a whole has come forth from the Divine Na-
ture may be comprehended, and must have been made in-
telligible by our preceding lectures; and is, according to us,
the theme of the introduction to the Johannean Gospel.
Now to us, who regard the matter only historically, it is
of no importance in which of these two ways the above-
mentioned principle is received by any one else, but only
in what way it was accepted by Jesus himself, and his
Apostle John, and how they authorized others to accept it;
and it is certainly the most important element in our view
of the matter, that Christianity itself, as represented by Je-
sus, has by no means accepted that principle metaphysically.
We retrace our argument to the following proposi-
tions :--
(1. ) Jesus of Nazareth undoubtedly possessed the highest
perception, containing the foundation of all other Truth, of
the absolute identity of Humanity with the Godhead, as re-
gards what is essentially real in the former. Upon this
merely historical proposition, every one to whom the follow-
ing evidence is to prove anything whatever, must first of all
come to an understanding with me; and I entreat my read-
ers not to hurry over this point. In my opinion, no one
who has not previously attained, by another way, to the
knowledge of the One Reality, and who does not possess
this knowledge in living activity within him, will easily dis-
cover it where I, being first penetrated by this condition,
have found it. But if any one have already fulfilled this
condition, and thereby created for himself the organ by
which alone Christianity may be comprehended, then he will
not only clearly re-discover this fundamental truth in Chris-
tianity, but he will also discern a higher and holier signifi-
cance spread over the other, often apparently extraordinary,
expressions of these writings.
(2. ) The mode and manner of this knowledge in Jesus
Christ, which is the second point of importance, may be best
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? 484
THE DOCTRINE OF RELIGION.
characterized by contrast with the mode and manner in
which the speculative philosopher arrives at the same know-
ledge. The latter proceeds upon the problem, which in it-
self is foreign to Religion, and even profane in its sight, and
which is imposed upon him merely by his desire of know-
ledge,--to explain Existence. Wherever there is a learned
public, he finds this problem already proposed by others be-
fore him, and he finds fellow-labourers in its solution both
among his predecessors and his contemporaries. It can
never occur to him to regard himself as in any respect
singular or distinguished on account of the problem becom-
ing clear to him. Further, the problem, as a problem, ap-
peals to his own industry, and to the personal freedom of
which he is clearly conscious; and being thus clearly con-
scious of his own personal activity in its solution, he cannot,
on that very account, regard himself as inspired.
Suppose, finally, that he succeed in the solution, and that
in the only true way,--by means of the Religious Principle;
his discovery still proceeds upon a series of preparatory in-
vestigations, and in this way it is to him a natural result
.
Religion is but a secondary matter to him, and is not there
purely and solely as Religion, but only as the solution of the
problem to which he had devoted his life.
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.
? 474
THE DOCTRINE OF RELIGION.
who, even if he have investigated that side of it, has been
unable to discover there what we think we have found.
Therefore, by what we have now said, we by no means wish
to be understood as joining ourselves to the party of those
Christians to whom things have a value only on account of
the name they bear. The Metaphysical only, and not the
Historical, can give us Blessedness; the latter can only give
us understanding. If any man be truly united with God,
and dwell in him, it is altogether an indifferent thing how
he may have reached this state; and it would be a most
useless and perverse employment, instead of living in the
thing, to be continually repeating over our recollections of
the way toward it. Could Jesus return into the world, we
might expect him to be thoroughly satisfied if he found
Christianity actually reigning in the minds of men, whether
his merit in the work were recognised or overlooked; and
this is, in fact, the very least that might be expected from a
man who, while he lived on earth, sought not his own glory
but the glory of him who sent him.
Now that, by means of distinguishing these two stand-
points, we possess the key to all the expressions of the Jo-
hannean Jesus, and the certain means of referring back
whatever is clothed in a merely temporary form to its origi-
nal source in pure and absolute Truth, let us comprise the
substance of these expressions in the answer to these two
questions:--(1. ) What does Jesus say of himself, regarding
his relation to the Godhead ? --and (2. ) What does he say of
his disciples and followers, regarding their relation, in the
first place to himself, and then, through him, to the God-
head?
Chap. 1. verse 18--" No man hath seen God at any
time; the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of
the Father, he hath declared him :"--or, as we have
said: The essential Divine Nature, in itself, is hid-
den from us; only in the form of Knowledge does it
come forth into manifestation, and that altogether as
it is in itself.
Chap. V. verse 19--" The Son can do nothing of him-
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? LECTURE VI.
-475
self, but what he seeth the Father do; for what
things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son
likewise :"--or, as we have expressed it, his separate
independent life is swallowed up in the life of God.
Chap. X. verses 27, 28--" My sheep hear my voice, and
I know them, and they follow me: and I give unto
them eternal life; and they shall never perish, nei-
ther shall any pluck them out of my hand. "--Ver.
29. "My Father who gave them me, is greater than
all; and none is able to pluck them out of my Fa-
ther's hand. " Who is it then, it may be asked, who
holds and keeps them,--Jesus or the Father? --The
answer is given in verse 30: " I and my Father are
one :" that is to say, the same;--identical principles
in both. His life is my life, and mine is his; my
work is his work, and his is mine;--precisely as we
have expressed ourselves in our preceding lecture.
So much for the clearest and most convincing passages.
The whole Gospel speaks in the same terms on this point,
uniformly and with one voice. Jesus speaks of himself in
no other way than this.
But further, how does Jesus speak of his followers, and of
their relation to him? He constantly assumes that, in
their actual condition, they have not the true life in them,
but, as he expresses it in Chap. III. with reference to Nico-
demus, must receive a wholly different life, as much op-
posed to their present life as if an entirely new man should be
born in their stead :--or,--where he expresses himself with
the strictest precision,--that they have not, properly speak-
ing, either existence or life, but are sunk in death and the
grave, and that it is he who must first give them life.
On this point, consider the following decisive passages:--
Chap. VI. verse 53--" Except ye eat my flesh and drink
my blood," (this expression will be afterwards ex-
plained), "ye have no life in you:"--Only by means
of thus eating my flesh and drinking my blood is
there aught in you;--without this there is nothing.
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? 47(5
THE DOCTRINE OF RELIGION.
Chap . V. verse 24--"He that heareth my word," &c.
"hath everlasting life, and is passed from death unto
life. "--Verse 25--"The hour is coming, and now is,
when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of
God; and they that hear shall live. " The dead! Who
are these dead 1 Those who are to lie in their graves
till the last day? A coarse, crude interpretation;--
in Scriptural language, an interpretation according to
the flesh, and not according to the spirit. The hour
was even then: they themselves were the dead who
had not yet heard his voice, and even on that ac-
count were dead.
And what is this life, that Jesus promises to give his fol-
lowers?
Chap. VIII. verse 51--" Verily, verily, I say unto you,
If a man keep my word, he shall never see death,"--
not as dull expositors take it; -- "he shall indeed
once die, only not for ever, but he shall again be a-
wakened at the last day,"--but" he shall never die:"
as the Jews actually understood it, and attempted to
refute Jesus by an appeal to the death of Abraham,
while he justified their interpretation by declaring
that Abraham, who had seen his day,--who had,
doubtless through Melchisedek, been initiated into
his doctrine,--was actually not dead.
Or yet more distinctly,--
Chapter XI. verse 23--" Thy brother shall rise again.
Martha" (whose head was filled with Jewish notions)
"saith unto him, I know that he shall rise again in
the resurrection at the last day. " No, said Jesus--
"I am the Resurrection and the Life:--he that be-
lieveth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live;
and whosoever liveth, and believeth in me, shall
never die. " Union with me is union with the Eter-
nal God and his Life, and the certain assurance
thereof; so that in every moment of time, he who is
so united with me, is in complete possession of Eter-
nity, and places no faith whatever in the fleeting and
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? LECTURE VI.
477
illusive phenomena of a birth and a death in Time,
and therefore needs no re-awakening as a deliverance
from a death in which he does not believe.
And whence has Jesus this power of giving Eternal Life
to his followers? From his absolute identity with God.
Chap. V. verse 26--" As the Father hath life in himself, so
hath he given to the Son to have life in himself. "
Further,--in what way do the followers of Jesus become
partakers of this identity of his Life with the Divine Life?
Jesus declares this in the most manifold and varied ways,
of which I shall here adduce only the most clear and for-
cible,--those which, precisely on account of their absolute
clearness, have been the most completely unintelligible and
offensive, both to his contemporaries and to their descen-
dants even to the present day. Chap. VI. verses 53-55--
"Except ye eat the flesh of the the Son of Man, and drink
his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh,
and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life. For my flesh is
meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. " What does
this mean? He explains himself at v. 56--" He that eateth
my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in
him," or, reversing the expression, He that dwelleth in me
and I in him, he hath eaten my flesh, &c. To eat his flesh,
and drink his blood, means--to become wholly and entirely
he himself;--to become altogether changed into his person
without reserve or limitation ;--to be a faithful repetition
of him in another personality;--to be transubstantiated
with him,--i. e. as he is the Eternal Word made flesh and
blood, to become his flesh and blood, and--what follows from
that, and indeed is the same thing--to become the very
Eternal Word made flesh and blood itself;--to think wholly
and entirely like him, and so as if he himself thought, and
not we;--to live wholly and entirely like him, and so as if
he himself lived in our life. As surely as you do not now
attempt to drag down my own words, and reduce them to
the narrow meaning that Jesus is only to be imitated, as an
unattainable pattern, partially and at a distance, as far as
human weakness will allow, but accept them in the sense in
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? 478
THE DOCTRINE OF RELIGION.
which I have spoken them,--that we must be transformed
into Christ himself,--so surely will it become evident to you
that Jesus could not well have expressed himself otherwise,
and that he actually did express himself excellently welL
Jesus was very far from representing himself as that unat-
tainable ideal into which he was first transformed by the
spiritual poverty of after-ages; nor did his Apostles so re-
gard him :--among the rest Paul, who says:--" I live not,
but Christ liveth in me. " Jesus desired that he should be
repeated in the persons of his followers, in his complete and
undivided character, as he was in himself; and indeed he
demanded this absolutely, as an indispensable condition of
discipleship:--Except ye eat my flesh, &c. , ye have no life
whatever in you, but ye abide in the graves wherein I found
you.
Only this one thing he demanded: not more, and not
less. He did not, by any means, propose to rest satisfied
with the mere historical belief that he was the Eternal
Word made flesh,--the Christ,--for which he gave himself
out. He certainly did demand, even according to John, as
a preliminary condition,--only to secure attention and con-
sideration to his teachings--he did demand Faith, that is,
the previous admission of the possibility that he might be
indeed this Christ; and he even did not disdain to facilitate
and strengthen this admission by means of striking and
wonderful works which he performed. But the final and
decisive proof, which was first to be made possible through
the preliminary admission or Faith, was this :--that a man
should actually do the will of him who had sent Jesus,--
that is, in the sense we have explained, should eat his flesh
and drink his blood, whereby he should then know of the
doctrine, that it was from God, and that he spake not of
himself. As little is his discourse of faith in his expiatory
merits. According to John, Jesus is indeed a Lamb of God
that taketh away the sins of the world; but by no means
one who with his blood appeases an angry God. He takes
them away:--According to his doctrine, man does not exist
at all out of God and him, but is dead and buried; he does
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? LECTURE VI.
479
not even enter into the Spiritual Kingdom of God:--how
then can this poor, non-existent shadow introduce dissen-
sion into this Kingdom, and disturb the Divine Plan? But
he who is transformed into the likeness of Jesus, and there-
by into that of God,--he no longer lives himself, but God
lives in him;--but how can God sin against himself? Thus
has he borne away and destroyed the whole delusion of sin,
and the dread of a Godhead that could feel itself offended
by men. Finally, if any man in this way should repeat the
character of Jesus in his own person, what then, according
to the doctrine of Jesus, is the result? Thus does Jesus, in
the presence of his disciples, call upon his Father :--Chap.
XVII. verse 20--" Neither pray I for these alone, but for
them also which shall believe on me through their word;
that they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I
in thee, that they also may be one in us. "--One--in us.
Now, according to this consummation, all distinctions are
laid aside; the whole community--the first-born of all, with
his more immediate followers, and with all those who are
born in later days--here merge together into one common
source of all life -- the Godhead. And thus, as we have
maintained above, does Christianity, assuming its purpose
to be attained, again fall into harmony with the Absolute
Truth, and itself maintain that every man may and ought
to come into unity with God,--and himself, in his own per-
son, become the Divine Ex-istence, or the Eternal Word.
And thus it is proved that the doctrine of Christianity,
even in the system of images under which it represents Life
and Death, and all that flows therefrom, is in strict harmo-
ny with that doctrine which we have set forth to you in our
previous lectures, and have combined into one single view
at the beginning of to-day's discourse.
In conclusion, listen once more to that with which I
closed my last lecture, but now in the words of the same
Apostle John.
Thus he combines, doubtless with reference to his Gos-
pel, the practical results of the whole: Epistle I. Chap. I. --
"That which was from the beginning, which we have heard
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? 480
THE DOCTRINE OF RELIGION.
which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked
upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of Life. "
Do you observe how anxious he is to appear, not as having
given forth his own thoughts in his Gospel, but as the mere
witness of what he had seen ? " That which we have seen
and heard declare we unto you, that ye also "--in spirit and
on the foundation of the last words we have quoted from
Jesus--" may have fellowship with us; and truly our fel-
lowship"--ours, the Apostles, as well as yours, the newly
converted--" is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus
Christ. . . If we say that we have fellowship with him,
and walk in darkness"--if we think that we are united
with God while yet the Divine Energy does not burst forth
in our lives--" we lie, and do not the truth "--we are but
fanatics and visionaries. --" But if we walk in the Light, as
he is in the Light, we have fellowship one with another, and
the blood of Jesus Christ the Son of God"--not, in the theo-
ological sense, his blood shed for the remission of our sins,
but his blood and mind entered into us,--his Life in us--
"cleanseth us from all sin," and raiseth us far above the
possibility of sin.
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? *
481
APPENDIX TO LECTURE VI.
THE HISTORICAL AND THE METAPHYSICAL IN
CHRISTIANITY.
That the fundamental doctrine of Christianity, as a special
institution for the development of Religion in the Human
Race:--i. e. that in Jesus Christ, for the first time, and in a
way predicable of no other man, the Eternal Ex-istence
(Daseyn) of God has assumed a human personality; and
that all other men can attain to union with God only
through him, and by means of the repetition of his whole
character in themselves:--that this is a merely historical,
and not in any way a metaphysical proposition, we have already said in the text--(page 471. ) It is perhaps not su-
perfluous to~point out here, still more clearly, the distinc-
tion upon which this declaration is founded; since I am
not entitled, in the case of the general public to whom it is
now presented, to make the same assumption as in the case
of the majority of my immediate hearers,--that they are fa-
miliar with this distinction through my other teachings. \y
If we take these expressions in their strict signification,
the Historical and the Metaphysical are directly opposed to
each other; and that which is really historical is, on that
very account, not metaphysical--and the reverse. The His-
torical, and what is purely historical in every possible phe-
nomenon, is that which may be apprehended as simple and
absolute Fact, existing for itself alone and isolated from
everything else, not as receiving its explanation and deriva-
Qb
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? iS-2
THE DOCTRINE OF RELIGION.
tion from a higher source:--the Metaphysical, on the con-
trary, and the metaphysical element in every particular
phenomenon, is that which necessarily proceeds from a
higher and more comprehensive law, and which may be
again referred to that law, and therefore cannot be compre-
hended as simple fact; and, strictly speaking, can only by
means of a delusion be regarded as fact at all, since in truth
it is not apprehended as fact but only in consequence of
the Law of Reason that rules within us. The latter ele-
ment of the phenomenon never extends to its actuality, and
the actual phenomenon never altogether disappears in it;
and therefore in all actual phenomena these two elements
are inseparably combined.
It is the fundamental error of all pretended science that
does not recognise its own boundaries,--in other words, of
the transcendental use of the understanding,--that it is not
satisfied to accept the fact, simply as a fact, but must in-
dulge in metaphysical speculation concerning it. Since, on
the supposition that what such a Metaphysic labours to re-
fer to a higher law is in truth simply actual and historic,
there can be no such law, at least none accessible to us in
the present life, it follows, that the Metaphysic we have de-
scribed, arbitrarily assuming that such an explanation is to
be found here,--which is its first error,--must then have
recourse to its own invention for such an explanation, and
fill up the chasm by an arbitrary hypothesis,--which is its
second error.
With regard to the case now before us,--the primitive
fact of Christianity is accepted as historical, and simply as
fact, when we say, what is evident to every man, that Jesus
knew what he did know before any one else knew it, and
taught and lived as he did teach and live;--without de-
siring to know further how all this was possible, which, ac-
cording to well established principles, not however to be
communicated here, can never be ascertained in this life.
But the same fact is metaphysisized by the transcendental
use of the understanding, soaring beyond the fact itself,
when we attempt to comprehend it in its primitive source,
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? APPENDIX TO LECTURE VI.
483
and to this end set up an hypothesis as to how the individu-
al Jesus, as an individual, has emanated from the essential
Divine Nature.
As an individual, I have said;--for how
Humanity as a whole has come forth from the Divine Na-
ture may be comprehended, and must have been made in-
telligible by our preceding lectures; and is, according to us,
the theme of the introduction to the Johannean Gospel.
Now to us, who regard the matter only historically, it is
of no importance in which of these two ways the above-
mentioned principle is received by any one else, but only
in what way it was accepted by Jesus himself, and his
Apostle John, and how they authorized others to accept it;
and it is certainly the most important element in our view
of the matter, that Christianity itself, as represented by Je-
sus, has by no means accepted that principle metaphysically.
We retrace our argument to the following proposi-
tions :--
(1. ) Jesus of Nazareth undoubtedly possessed the highest
perception, containing the foundation of all other Truth, of
the absolute identity of Humanity with the Godhead, as re-
gards what is essentially real in the former. Upon this
merely historical proposition, every one to whom the follow-
ing evidence is to prove anything whatever, must first of all
come to an understanding with me; and I entreat my read-
ers not to hurry over this point. In my opinion, no one
who has not previously attained, by another way, to the
knowledge of the One Reality, and who does not possess
this knowledge in living activity within him, will easily dis-
cover it where I, being first penetrated by this condition,
have found it. But if any one have already fulfilled this
condition, and thereby created for himself the organ by
which alone Christianity may be comprehended, then he will
not only clearly re-discover this fundamental truth in Chris-
tianity, but he will also discern a higher and holier signifi-
cance spread over the other, often apparently extraordinary,
expressions of these writings.
(2. ) The mode and manner of this knowledge in Jesus
Christ, which is the second point of importance, may be best
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? 484
THE DOCTRINE OF RELIGION.
characterized by contrast with the mode and manner in
which the speculative philosopher arrives at the same know-
ledge. The latter proceeds upon the problem, which in it-
self is foreign to Religion, and even profane in its sight, and
which is imposed upon him merely by his desire of know-
ledge,--to explain Existence. Wherever there is a learned
public, he finds this problem already proposed by others be-
fore him, and he finds fellow-labourers in its solution both
among his predecessors and his contemporaries. It can
never occur to him to regard himself as in any respect
singular or distinguished on account of the problem becom-
ing clear to him. Further, the problem, as a problem, ap-
peals to his own industry, and to the personal freedom of
which he is clearly conscious; and being thus clearly con-
scious of his own personal activity in its solution, he cannot,
on that very account, regard himself as inspired.
Suppose, finally, that he succeed in the solution, and that
in the only true way,--by means of the Religious Principle;
his discovery still proceeds upon a series of preparatory in-
vestigations, and in this way it is to him a natural result
.
Religion is but a secondary matter to him, and is not there
purely and solely as Religion, but only as the solution of the
problem to which he had devoted his life.
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-
? ? Generated for (University of Chicago) on 2014-11-27 00:12 GMT / http://hdl. handle. net/2027/wu. 89090378035 Public Domain, Google-digitized / http://www. hathitrust. org/access_use#pd-google
? 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.
