Seine Freunde wohlgesinnet,
Wenn nur heute noch das Schlechte
Vollen Platz und Gunst gewinnet.
Göthe, West-Oestlicher Divan.
But do these gentlemen know what time of day it is? A long predicted epoch has set in; the church is beginning to totter, nay it totters already to such a degree, that it is doubtful whether it will ever be able to recover its centre of gravity; for faith is lost. The light of revelation, like other lights, requires a certain amount of darkness as an indispensable condition. The number of those who have been unfitted for belief by a certain degree and extent of knowledge, is already very large. Of this we have evident signs in the general diffusion of that shallow Rationalism which is showing its bulldog face daily more and more overtly. It quietly sets to work to measure those profound mysteries of Christianity over which centuries have brooded and disputed with its draper's ell, and thinks itself wondrous wise withal. It is, however, the very quintessence of Christianity, the dogma of Original Sin, which these shallow-brained Rationalists have especially singled out for a laughing-stock; precisely because nothing seems clearer or more certain to them, than that existence should begin for each of us with our birth: nothing therefore so impossible as that we can have come into the world already burdened with guilt. How acute! And just as in times of prevailing poverty and neglect, wolves begin to make their appearance in villages; so does Materialism, ever lying in wait, under these circumstances lift up its head and come to the front hand in hand with Bestialism, its companion, which some call Humanism. Our thirst after knowledge augments with our incapacity for belief. There comes a boiling-point in the scale of all intellectual development, at which all faith, all revelation, and all authority evaporate, and Man claims the right to judge for himself; the right, not only to be taught, but to be convinced. The leading-strings of his infancy have fallen off, and henceforth he demands leave to walk alone. Yet his craving for Metaphysics can no more be extinguished than any physical want. Then it is, that the desire for philosophy becomes serious and that mankind invokes the spirits of all the genuine thinkers who have issued from its ranks. Then, too, empty verbiage and the impotent endeavours of emasculated intellects no longer suffice; the want of a serious philosophy is felt, having other aims in view than fees and salaries, and caring little therefore whether it meets the approbation of cabinet-ministers, or councillors, whether it serves the purposes of this or that religious faction, or not; a philosophy which, on the contrary, clearly shows that it has a very different mission in view from that of procuring a livelihood for the poor in spirit.
But I return to my argument. By means of an amplification which only needed a little audacity, a theoretical oracle had been added to the practical oracle with which Kant had wrongly endowed Reason. The credit of this invention is no doubt due to F. H. Jacobi, from whom the professional philosophers joyfully and thankfully received the precious gift, as a means to help them out of the straits to which Kant had reduced them. That cool, calm, deliberate Reason, which Kant had criticized so mercilessly, was henceforth degraded to Understanding and known by this name; while Reason was supposed to denote an entirely imaginary, fictitious faculty, admitting us, as it were, to a little window overlooking the superlunar, nay, the supernatural world, through which all those truths are handed to us ready cut and dried, concerning which old-fashioned, honest, reflective Reason had for ages vainly argued and contended. And it is on such a mere product of the imagination, such a completely fictitious Reason as this, that German sham philosophy has been based for the last fifty years; first, as the free construction and projection of the absolute Ego and the emanation from it of the non-Ego; then, as the intellectual intuition of absolute identity or indifference, and its evolutions to Nature; or again, as the arising of God out of his dark depths or bottomless pit[140] à la Jakob Böhme; lastly, as the pure, self-thinking, absolute Idea, the scene of the ballet-dance of the self-moving conceptions—still, at the same time, always as immediate apprehension (Vernehmen) of the Divine, the supersensuous, the Deity, verity, beauty and as many other "-ties" as may be desired, or even as a mere vague presentiment[141] of all these wonders.—So this is Reason, is it? Oh no, it is simply a farce, of which our professors of philosophy, who are sorely perplexed by Kant's serious critiques, avail themselves in order to pass off the subjects of the established religion of their country somehow or other, per fas aut nefas, for the results of philosophy.
For it behoves all professorial philosophy, before all things, to establish beyond doubt, and to give a philosophical basis to, the doctrine, that there is a God, Creator, and Ruler of the Universe, a personal, consequently individual, Being, endowed with Understanding and Will, who has created the world out of nothing, and who rules it with sublime wisdom, power and goodness. This obligation, however, places our professors of philosophy in an awkward position with respect to serious philosophy. For Kant had appeared and the Critique of Pure Reason, was written more than sixty years ago, the result being, that of all the proofs of the existence of God which had been brought forward during the Christian ages, and which may be reduced to three which alone are possible, none are able to accomplish the desired end. Nay, the impossibility of any such proof, and with it the impossibility of all speculative theology, is shown at length à priori and not in the empty verbiage or Hegelian jargon now in fashion, which may be made to mean anything one likes, but quite seriously and honestly, in the good old-fashioned way; wherefore, however little it may have been to the taste of many people, nothing cogent could be brought forward in reply to it for the last sixty years, and the proofs of the existence of God have in consequence lost all credit, and are no longer in use. Our professors of philosophy have even begun to look down upon them and treat them with decided contempt, as ridiculous and superfluous attempts to demonstrate what was self-evident. Ho! ho! what a pity this was not found out sooner! How much trouble might have been spared in searching whole centuries for these proofs, and how needless it would have been for Kant to bring the whole weight of his Critique of Reason to bear upon and crush them! Some folks, will no doubt be reminded by this contempt of the fox with the sour grapes. But those who wish to see a slight specimen of it will find a particularly characteristic one in Schelling's "Philosophische Schriften," vol. i., 1809, p. 152. Now, whilst others were consoling themselves with Kant's assertion, that it is just as impossible to prove the non-existence, as the existence, of God—as if, forsooth, the old wag did not know that affirmanti incumbit probatio—Jacobi's admirable invention came to the rescue of our perplexed professors, and granted German savants of this century a peculiar sort of Reason that had never been known or heard of before.
Yet all these artifices were quite unnecessary. For the impossibility of proving the existence of God by no means interferes with that existence, since it rests in unshakeable security on a much firmer basis. It is indeed a matter of revelation, and this is besides all the more certain, because that revelation was exclusively vouchsafed to a single people, called, on this account, the chosen people of God. This is made evident by the fact, that the notion of God, as personal Ruler and Creator of the world, ordaining everything for the best, is to be found in no other religion but the Jewish, and the two faiths derived from it, which might consequently in a wider sense be called Jewish sects. We find no trace of such a notion in any other religion, ancient or modern. For surely no one would dream of confounding this Creator God Almighty with the Hindoo Brahm, which is living in me, in you, in my horse, in your dog—or even with Brahma, who is born and dies to make way for other Brahmas, and to whom moreover the production of the world is imputed as sin and guilt[142]—least of all with beguiled Saturn's voluptuous son, to whom Prometheus, defiant, prophesies his downfall. But if we finally direct our attention towards the religion which numbers most followers, and in this respect may therefore be said to rank foremost: that is, Buddhism, we can no longer shut our eyes to the fact that it is as decidedly and explicitly atheistic, as it is idealistic and ascetic; and this moreover to such a degree, that its priests express the greatest abhorrence of the doctrine of pure Theism whenever it is brought to their notice. Therefore, in a treatise handed to a Catholic bishop by the High Priest of the Buddhists at Ava,[143] the doctrine "that there is a Being who has created the world and all things, and who alone is worthy of worship," is counted among the six damnable heresies.[144] This is entirely corroborated by I. J. Schmidt, a most excellent and learned authority, whom I consider as having undoubtedly the deepest knowledge of Buddhism of any European savant, and who, in his work "Upon the connection between Gnostic doctrines and Buddhism," p. 9, says:—
"In the writings of the Buddhists not a trace is to be found of any positive indication of a Supreme Being as the principle of Creation. Whenever this subject presents itself consistently in the course of argument, it seems, indeed, to be intentionally evaded." And again: "The system of Buddhism knows of no eternal, uncreated, one and only Being, having existed before Time and created all that is visible and invisible. This idea is quite foreign to Buddhism, and not a trace of it is to be found in Buddhist works. And just as little mention do we find of Creation. True, the visible Universe is not without a beginning, but it arose out of empty Space, according to consistent, immutable, natural laws. We should however err, were we to assume that anything—call it Fate or Nature—is regarded or revered by the Buddhists as a divine principle; on the contrary, it is just this very development of empty Space, this precipitate from it or this division into countless parts, this Matter thus arising, which constitutes the Evil of Jirtintschi, or of the Universe in its inner and outer relations, out of which sprang Ortschilang, or continuous change according to immutable laws, which the same Evil had established." Then again:[145] "The expression Creation is foreign to Buddhism, which only knows Cosmogony;" and, "We must comprehend that no idea of a creation of divine origin is compatible with their system." I could bring forward a hundred corroborative passages like these; but will limit myself to one more, which I quote on account of its popular and official character. The third volume of a very instructive Buddhist work, "Mahavansi, Raja-ratnacari, and Raja-Vali,"[146] contains a translation of the interrogatories to which the High Priests of the five chief Pagodas were separately and successively subjected by the Dutch Governor of Ceylon about the year 1766. It is exceedingly amusing to see the contrast between the interlocutors, who have the greatest difficulty in understanding one another's meaning. In conformity with the doctrines of their faith, these priests, who are penetrated with love and compassion for all living beings, not excepting even Dutch Governors, spare no pains to satisfy him by their answers. But the artless, naïve Atheism of these priests, whose piety extends even to practising continence, soon comes into conflict with the deep convictions founded on Judaism, imbibed by the Governor in his infancy. This faith has become a second nature for him; he cannot in the least understand that these priests are not Theists, therefore he constantly returns to his inquiries after a Supreme Being, asking them who created the world, and so forth. Whereupon they answer that there can be no higher being than Buddha Shakia-Muni, the Victorious and the Perfect, who, though a king's son by birth, voluntarily lived the life of a beggar, and preached to the end his sublime doctrine, for the Redemption of mankind, and for our salvation from the misery of constant renascence. They hold that the world has not been made by anyone,[147] that it is self-created, that Nature spreads it out, and draws it in again; but that it is that, which existing, does not exist: that it is the necessary accompaniment of renascence, and that renascence is the result of our sinful conduct, &c. &c. &c. I mention such facts as these chiefly on account of the really scandalous way in which German savants still universally persist, even to the present day, in looking upon Religion and Theism as identical and synonymous; whereas Religion is, in fact, to Theism as the genus to the single species, and Judaism and Theism are alone identical. For this reason we stigmatize as heathen all nations who are neither Jews, Christians, nor Mahometans. Christians are even taxed by Mahometans and Jews with the impurity of their Theism, because of the dogma of the Trinity. For, whatever may be said to the contrary, Christianity has Indian blood in its veins, therefore it constantly tends to free itself from Judaism. The Critique of Pure Reason is the most serious attack that has ever been made upon Theism—and this is why our professors of philosophy have been in such a hurry to set Kant aside; but had that work appeared in any country where Buddhism prevailed, it would simply have been regarded as an edifying treatise intended to refute heresy more thoroughly by a salutary confirmation of the orthodox doctrine of Idealism—that is, the doctrine of the merely apparent existence of the world, as it presents itself to our senses. Even the two other religions which coexist with Buddhism in China—those of Taotsee and of Confucius—are just as Atheistic as Buddhism itself; wherefore the missionaries have never been able to translate the first verse of the Pentateuch into Chinese, because there is no word in the language for God and Creation. Even the missionary Gützlaff, in his "History of the Chinese Empire," p. 18, has the honesty to say: "It is extraordinary that none of the (Chinese) philosophers ever soared high enough to reach the knowledge of a Creator and Lord of the Universe, although they possessed the Light of Nature in full measure." J. F. Davis likewise quotes a passage, which is quite in accordance with this, from Milne's Preface to his translation of the Shing-yu, where in speaking of that work, he says that we may see from it "that the bare Light of Nature, as it is called, even when aided by all the light of Pagan philosophy, is totally incapable of leading men to the knowledge and worship of the true God." All this confirms the fact that revelation is the sole foundation on which Theism rests; indeed, it must be so, unless revelation is to be superfluous. This is a good opportunity for observing that the word Atheism itself implies a surreptitious assumption, since it takes Theism for granted as a matter of course. It would be more honest to say Non-Judaism instead of Atheism, and Non-Jew instead of Atheist.
Now as, according to the above, the existence of God belongs to revelation, by which it is firmly established, it has no need whatever of human authentication. Philosophy, however, is properly speaking only an idle, superfluous attempt to let Reason—that is, the human power of thinking, reflecting, deliberating—once in a while, try its own powers unassisted, as a child is now and then allowed to run alone on a lawn and try its strength without leading-strings, just to see what will come of it. Tests and experiments of this kind we call speculation; and it lies in the nature of the matter that it should, for once, leave all authority, human or divine, out of consideration, ignore it, and go its own way in search of the most sublime, most important truths. Now, if on this basis it should arrive at the very same results as those mentioned above, to which Kant had come, speculation has no right on that account to cast all honesty and conscience forthwith aside, and take to by-ways, in order somehow or other to get back to the domain of Judaism, as its conditio sine qua non; it ought rather henceforth to seek truth quite honestly and simply by any road that may happen to lie open before it, but never to allow any other light than that of Reason to guide it: thus advancing calmly and confidently, like one at work in his vocation, without concern as to where that road may lead.