THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
First, the desire seeks earthly goods, then the higher, for this life and the next. Beside and above physical necessity appear mental anxiety, earnest concern for the safety of the soul, and the desire for individual immortality. Necessity begets prayer. Sacrifices for the most part represent the effort to avert .necessit\\ Specially active appear the religious phenomena when the moral precepts are taken as the commands of God, and their violation obscures the relation with the divine, or threatens with estrangement from God. Painful remorse results; in the lower stages with fear of punishment here or hereafter, in the upper in view of the inner longing for the highest. The ethical life may lose its self-dependence and be absorbed in the religious or at least be intimately complicated with it. At all events, in the case of a man who is inwardly religious, morality can not subsist without religion, but he must also be moral in practise. The religious state of life will then include all of man's activity, all of life; so that it may be observed as a continuous service to God. A conclusion of religiousness can not be made from acts which outwardly seem moral, not even those known as the forms of worship, often divided into prayer and sacrifice. To these performances belong the most manifold ceremonies, which are characteristic of all religions, and are, in part, symbolic in significance. For the greater multitude, the essential in religion manifests itself in these forms of worship; and, though they can not originate, they may reinforce the content, specially in communal fellowship. As the incorporation of the religious spirit of the community, they are symbols of unity as well as the medium of consensus on articles of belief. Through both, objective religion is constituted. It is striking how those who have rejected the previous metaphysics and all objective religion, like A. Comte, nevertheless revert to the construction of a ritual to the minutest detail, embracing both prayer and sacrament. Outward worship, though indispensable to objective religion, is not absolutely such to subjective religion. Those who realize supreme satisfaction in inner communion with the highest superhuman and feel themselves freed from all bodily and spiritual necessities may be said to possess religion, although they do not bring their inner states to outward representative acts of manifestation. For many the external must be regarded as a great aid in mediating the subjective with its supreme infinite object, though it be not regarded as essential. Self-expression is only natural, and the continued association of form with spirit clothes it with a validity that seems indispensable to the inner life.
To generalize from the foregoing, it may be said that religion pertains to the entire soul-life. It is
practical not theoretical; though the
5. General- latter is warranted in the sphere of
ization. representation. The religious process
opening with a feeling of necessity proceeds to desire of relief and happiness, and culminates in the reconciliation of the aim with the transcendent or immanent infinite. Optimism and pessimism are thus interrelated. Redemption (or salvation) is the most adequate term in the relig-
ious vocabulary. It implies first something to be released from, then, in succession, the inclination, the inmost yearning, and the final attainment. Law and Gospel, sin and grace, are the antitheses in Christianity, to be reconciled in salvation; the latter appearing also in Buddhism, although, as also in the Kantian ethics, here man must save himself. Although the common principle of all religions, from the lowest fetishism, is the aspiration for redemption, yet the representation of the higher powers as the objective of the desire is very much diversified; variously, according to geographical situation, customs, stages of civilization, as also the creative imagination, and, specially, according to the tremendous influence of divinely gifted personalities as mediators of a revelation, who deepen, illumine, and inspire, not only the representations but also the entire religious life. In Christianity thus is presented the God-man as Redeemer. Though representations are indispensable to religion, subjective and objective, yet they can not claim to belong to the concept or essence of religion. Monotheism may or must be assumed to satisfy religious requirement; yet it is not exclusively the only religious form. In the sphere of representation evolution takes place, while the essential remains constant. On the whole, it is to be assumed that evolution was ascending toward the purer and more spiritual; but it is uncertain whether the original form was not monotheistic, and there was a downward process. Ethnic religions would not then be primitive, but degenerate growths. To regard henotheism as primitive is impossible because it can occur only with polytheism. Proper is it, indeed, not to assume only one primitive form but various forms that have developed gradually in different zones.
To estimate the relative truth-value of religion, it is necessary to distinguish between the religions that turn toward a higher universal for redemption and those that seek it by themselves. The latter
are represented by Buddhism, al- 6. Relative though this soon, for the greater Estimation, masses, reverted to the other form.
The question of truth depends on whether its aim is actualized, and there is no doubt that this comes to reality in experience. The same standard must hold true for the other religions as well. However, there is involved also in this estimation of the true reality of a religion its relation to the representations of its highest being or beings. The question would then be whether the representations correspond to the reality which philosophical thought professes to attain. In monotheistic faiths and Christianity, which are regarded as the highest forms, a foremost subject of consideration is the existence of God with reference to which the community is to be established, and its closer determination. Briefly, scientific thought arrives at the certain assumption of a being, which is absolute, infinite, and as such is unity, and is all-inclusive, even of man. If man finds himself constrained to regard the ultimate elements of being, as analogous to his subjective self, to be apprehended as spiritual, inasmuch as this is immediately given in consciousness and matter dissolves in the effort to con-