The Essence of Christianity. Feuerbach Ludwig

them in accordance with its own special character. Wit, acumen, imagination, feeling as distinguished from sensation, reason as a subjective faculty, – all these so-called powers of the soul are powers of humanity, not of man as an individual; they are products of culture, products of human society. Only where man has contact and friction with his fellow-man are wit and sagacity kindled; hence there is more wit in the town than in the country, more in great towns than in small ones. Only where man suns and warms himself in the proximity of man arise feeling and imagination. Love, which requires mutuality, is the spring of poetry; and only where man communicates with man, only in speech, a social act, awakes reason. To ask a question and to answer are the first acts of thought. Thought originally demands two. It is not until man has reached an advanced stage of culture that he can double himself, so as to play the part of another within himself. To think and to speak are therefore, with all ancient and sensuous nations, identical; they think only in speaking; their thought is only conversation. The common people, i. e., people in whom the power of abstraction has not been developed, are still incapable of understanding what is written if they do not read it audibly, if they do not pronounce what they read. In this point of view Hobbes correctly enough derives the understanding of man from his ears!

      Reduced to abstract logical categories, the creative principle in God expresses nothing further than the tautological proposition: the different can only proceed from a principle of difference, not from a simple being. However the Christian philosophers and theologians insisted on the creation of the world out of nothing, they were unable altogether to evade the old axiom – “Nothing comes from nothing,” because it expresses a law of thought. It is true that they supposed no real matter as the principle of the diversity of material things, but they made the divine understanding (and the Son is the wisdom, the science, the understanding of the Father) – as that which comprehends within itself all things as spiritual matter– the principle of real matter. The distinction between the heathen eternity of matter and the Christian creation in this respect is only that the heathens ascribed to the world a real, objective eternity, whereas the Christians gave it an invisible, immaterial eternity. Things were before they existed positively, – not, indeed, as an object of sense, but of the subjective understanding. The Christians, whose principle is that of absolute subjectivity, conceive all things as effected only through this principle. The matter posited by their subjective thought, conceptional, subjective matter, is therefore to them the first matter, – far more excellent than real, objective matter. Nevertheless, this distinction is only a distinction in the mode of existence. The world is eternal in God. Or did it spring up in him as a sudden idea, a caprice? Certainly man can conceive this too; but, in doing so, he deifies nothing but his own irrationality. If, on the contrary, I abide by reason, I can only derive the world from its essence, its idea, i. e., one mode of its existence from another mode; in other words, I can derive the world only from itself. The world has its basis in itself, as has everything in the world which has a claim to the name of species. The differentia specifica, the peculiar character, that by which a given being is what it is, is always in the ordinary sense inexplicable, undeducible, is through itself, has its cause in itself.

      1

      The opening paragraphs of this Preface are omitted, as having too specific a reference to transient German polemics to interest the English reader.

      2

      For example, in considering the sacraments, I limit myself to two; for in the strictest sense (see Luther, T. xvii. p. 558), there are no more.

      3

      “Objectum intellectus esse illimitatum sive omne verum ac, ut loquuntur, omne ens ut ens, ex eo constat, quod ad nullum non genus rerum extenditur, nullumque est, cujus cognoscendi capax non sit, licet ob varia obstacula multa sint, quæ re ipsa non norit.” – Gassendi (Opp. Omn. Phys.).

      4

      The obtuse Materialist says: “Man is distinguished from the brute only by consciousness – he is an animal with consciousness superadded;” not reflecting, that in a being which awakes to consciousness, there takes place a qualitative change, a differentiation of the entire nature. For the rest, our words are by no means intended to depreciate the nature of the lower animals. This is not the place to enter further into that question.

      5

      “Toute opinion est assez forte pour se

1

The opening paragraphs of this Preface are omitted, as having too specific a reference to transient German polemics to interest the English reader.

2

For example, in considering the sacraments, I limit myself to two; for in the strictest sense (see Luther, T. xvii. p. 558), there are no more.

3

“Objectum intellectus esse illimitatum sive omne verum ac, ut loquuntur, omne ens ut ens, ex eo constat, quod ad nullum non genus rerum extenditur, nullumque est, cujus cognoscendi capax non sit, licet ob varia obstacula multa sint, quæ re ipsa non norit.” – Gassendi (Opp. Omn. Phys.).

4

The obtuse Materialist says: “Man is distinguished from the brute only by consciousness – he is an animal with consciousness superadded;” not reflecting, that in a being which awakes to consciousness, there takes place a qualitative change, a differentiation of the entire nature. For the rest, our words are by no means intended to depreciate the nature of the lower animals. This is not the place to enter further into that question.

5

“Toute opinion est assez forte pour se faire exposer au prix de la vie.” – Montaigne.

6

Homini homine nihil pulchrius. (Cic. de Nat. D. l. i.) And this is no sign of limitation, for he regards other beings as beautiful besides himself; he delights in the beautiful forms of animals, in the beautiful forms of plants, in the beauty of nature in general. But only the absolute, the perfect form, can delight without envy in the forms of other beings.

7

“The understanding is percipient only of understanding, and what proceeds thence.” – Reimarus (Wahrh. der Natürl. Religion, iv. Abth. § 8).

8

“Verisimile est, non minus quam geometriæ, etiam musicæ oblectationem ad plures quam ad nos pertinere. Positis enim aliis terris atque animalibus ratione et auditu pollentibus, cur tantum his nostris contigisset ea voluptas, quæ sola ex sono percipi potest?” – Christ. Hugenius (Cosmotheor., l. i.).

9

De Genesi ad litteram, l. v. c. 16.

10

“Unusquisque vestrum non cogitat, prius se debere Deum nosse, quam colere.” – M. Minucii Felicis Octavianus, c. 24.

11

The meaning of this parenthetic limitation will be clear in the sequel.

12

“Les perfections de Dieu sont celles de nos âmes, mais il les possede