Because Christianity thus, from exaggerated subjectivity, knows nothing of the species, in which alone lies the redemption, the justification, the reconciliation and cure of the sins and deficiencies of the individual, it needed a supernatural and peculiar, nay, a personal, subjective aid in order to overcome sin. If I alone am the species, if no other, that is, no qualitatively different men exist, or, which is the same thing, if there is no distinction between me and others, if we are all perfectly alike, if my sins are not neutralised by the opposite qualities of other men: then assuredly my sin is a blot of shame which cries up to heaven; a revolting horror which can be exterminated only by extraordinary, superhuman, miraculous means. Happily, however, there is a natural reconciliation. My fellow-man is per se the mediator between me and the sacred idea of the species. Homo homini Deus est. My sin is made to shrink within its limits, is thrust back into its nothingness, by the fact that it is only mine, and not that of my fellows.
[1] “How much better is it that I should lose the whole world than that I should lose God, who created the world, and can create innumerable worlds, who is better than a hundred thousand, than innumerable worlds? For what sort of a comparison is that of the temporal with the eternal?... One soul is better than the whole world.”—Luther (Th. xix. p. 21). [↑]
[2] It is true that the heathen philosophers also, as Plato, Socrates, the Stoics (see e.g. J. Lipsius, Physiol. Stoic. l. i. diss. xi.), believed that the divine providence extended not merely to the general, but also to the particular, the individual; but they identified providence with Nature, law, necessity. The Stoics, who were the orthodox speculatists of heathenism, did indeed believe in miracles wrought by providence (Cic. de Nat. Deor. l. ii. and De Divinat. l. i.); but their miracles had no such supranaturalistic significance as those of Christianity, though they also appealed to the supranaturalistic axiom: “Nihil est quod Deus efficere non possit.” [↑]
[3] “Dicimur amare et Deus; dicimur nosse et Deus. Et multa in hunc modum. Sed Deus amat ut charitas, novit ut veritas, etc.”—Bernard, (de Consider. l. v.). [↑]
[4] It is true that in one sense the individual is the absolute—in the phraseology of Leibnitz, the mirror of the universe, of the infinite. But in so far as there are many individuals, each is only a single, and, as such, a finite mirror of the infinite. It is true also, in opposition to the abstraction of a sinless man, that each individual regarded in himself is perfect, and only by comparison imperfect, for each is what alone he can be. [↑]
[5] With the Hindoos (Inst. of Menu) he alone is “a perfect man who consists of three united persons, his wife, himself, and his son. For man and wife, and father and son, are one.” The Adam of the Old Testament also is incomplete without woman; he feels his need of her. But the Adam of the New Testament, the Christian, heavenly Adam, the Adam who is constituted with a view to the destruction of this world, has no longer any sexual impulses or functions. [↑]
[6] “Hæ sane vires amicitiæ mortis contemptum ingenerare ... potuerunt: quibus pene tantum venerationis, quantum Deorum immortalium ceremoniis debetur. Illis enim publica salus, his privata continetur.”—Valerius Max. l. iv. c. 7. [↑]