THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
philosophy of religion has on the whole lost its subject. But if upon the assumed science of religion be imposed the recognition of all these in any other sense than psychological fact, namely, in the sense of thoughts arising from inner conviction, and if religion is treated in accordance with what it claims to be, the result is no longer science, whose deductions are universally accepted, where the powers of intellectual culture have developed, but theology, which, by means of scientific logic, seeks to describe and clarify the religious content prevalent within a particular life-circle. The philosophy of religion that would be adequate to religion is from the outset theology; for no one released from his own individual position can have a conception of the reality of religion.
A correct sense of the essence of religion contracts considerably the significance of comparative religious history. If religion appears to us only by what it self-evidently is in us, no solution can be expected by a retrospect of historical examples 3. Com- of religions so-called. So much is adparative mitted. But not so much the religious Method, processes as the primitive forms of religion are to be determined, and types abstracted from these are to afford the understanding of the higher religions. That little was to be accomplished over against the higher religions with the categories of the history of religion as hitherto wrought out from the materials of primitive forms is not surprising, seeing that whoever would understand and estimate religion must first know its natural and intact reality. But it is likewise admitted that such research is unconcerned about what religion is in itself, what phenomena are primary, what secondary, or what have nothing to do with religion. A science that contents itself thus can only incidentally contribute anything to throw light on religion of the higher order, and the acknowledgment that it has accomplished little to this effect is not unexpected. It is also difficult to perceive how a collection of ethnological material, the original significance of which is unknown, can ever provide safe contributions to the understanding of religion. The history of religion can not establish the understanding of religion, for this it presupposes. If it thus fails, it reduces itself to a mere collection of ethnological curios. He who by virtue of his own religious life can view that of others may become aware of the limitations of his own; but the analysis of a religious manifestation in another can not furnish him with the understanding of religion on the whole, much less can the pursuit of highly improbable generalities among the remnants of primitive development. Whoever attempts to make religion an object of scientific knowledge or to include it in the demonstrable reality of things, has either no clear idea of religion or does not know what science is. All that science touches is dead. * Religion is life. It is absurd that one
* Is not botany a science, and do not flowers live ? Similarly it may be remarked that anthropology is a science, and so of other branches of knowledge. Modern opinion is decidedly trending against the assumption that the application of scientific study to religion is either barred or impossible. Indeed, theologians are growing more favorable to science as furnishing aid in establishing a firmer basis for theology.
should experience the reality of the living spirit and then surrender this to science, which it transcends, as if it did not deserve real worth until science had passed it through its process. In biology just as soon as life is treated within the scope of conceivable reality it has ceased to be life and has become mechanism; so with religion. Personal piety does not originate from an heirloom, but is vital in its origin. To aim to apprehend it in a categorical correlation with another is to annul it for oneself.
The first thing encountered in an examination of subjective experience is its state of concealment. The field of inquiry is, for the pious, his inner life, and the community where individuals of similar inner experience approach each other in confidence. Religion is actual only in the exami- 4. Intro- nation of inner states in which the subspection. ject distinguishes himself from the world of experience, which is correlated by law and admissible to all. This takes place by attention to the inner processes which afford a sense of the self-existence and exclusiveness of the subjective life. The intuition of the inner life is made possible by the desire for self-expression. In the exercise of will the conscious living being distinguishes between that which it includes with its self-existence and that which it deducts from self, so as to be aware of that activity and of that which it puts in relation with itself; therefore in its fear and hope, in its hate and love, the human subject obtains a perception of its inner life. In this inner private order, in distinction from the universal outer order, the fact of religion is to be sought. This does not mean that religion is the product of the desire of self-assertion; no man is pious who includes selfseeking in what he regards as religion. Genuine piety involves voluntary passiveness to truth and reality. Religion can not arise from desire but from the recognition of the actual, or knowledge. Here begins also science; but no scientific knowledge however sublimated can belong to the forces of the religious life; for that lies in the open light, this wells up in the undisclosed. But the knowledge in which only religion can subsist is of a peculiar kind. It is not the apprehension of the objectively actual but reflection upon subjective experience. The disadvantage appears here over against objective knowledge, in that conformity with law in relation to the latter facilitates the discrimination of truth from appearance. As to the former, on the contrary, there is no method of discrimination that may illustrate itself by comparison with others, for there is no formal unity of the representations according to law, such as obtains for the universal. Only this remains to consider, how the clear certainty of genuine experiences springs up, which is capable of guarding against evanishment in the further development of life. To promote this, it is not necessary as in objective cognition to set bounds to the will of self-expression so that cognition be not interfered with, for the activity of this volition alone creates scope for subjective experience; but security against deception is to be gained here in that the will of self-expression becomes really true in itself.