Religion is more than morality. In the religious consciousness we find the belief, however vague and indistinct, in an object, a not-myself; an object, further, which is real. An ideal which is not real, which is only in our heads, can not be the object of religion: and in particular the ideal self, as the ‘is to be’ which is real only so far as we put it forth by our wills, and which, as an ideal, we can not put forth, is not a real object, and so not the object for religion. Hence, because it is unreal, the ideal of personal morality is not enough for religion. And we have seen before that the ideal is not realized in the objective world of the state; so that, apart from other objections, here again we can not find the religious object. For the religious consciousness that object is real; and it is not to be found in the mere moral sphere.
But here once more ‘culture’ has come to our aid, and has shown us how here, as everywhere, the study of polite literature, which makes for meekness, makes needless also all further education; and we felt already as if the clouds that metaphysic had wrapped about the matter were dissolving in the light of a fresh and sweet intelligence. And, as we turned towards the dawn, we sighed over poor Hegel, who had read neither Goethe nor Homer, nor the Old and New Testaments, nor any of the literature which has gone to form ‘culture,’ but, knowing no facts, and reading no books, nor ever asking himself ‘such a tyro’s question as what being really was,’[1] sat spinning out of his head those foolish logomachies, which impose on no person of refinement.
Well, culture has told us what God was for the Jews; and we learn that ‘I am that I am’ means much the same as ‘ I blow and grow, that I do,’ or ‘I shall breathe, that I shall;’ and this, if surprising, was at all events definite, not to say tangible. However to those of us who do not think that Christianity is called upon to wrap itself any longer in ‘Hebrew old clothes,’ all this is entirely a matter for the historian. But when ‘culture’ went on to tell us what God is for science, we heard words we did not understand about ‘streams,’ and ‘tendencies,’ and ‘the Eternal:’ and, had it been any one else that we were reading, we should have said that, in some literary excursion, they had picked up a
- ↑ Cont. Review, xxiv. 988.
