The Philosophical Review/Volume 1/Summary: Monrad - Ueber das Gebet
I presuppose only religion, i.e. practical belief in God, without which there can scarcely be any question of prayer. I set out, also, from the fact that at least naive praying is always originally combined with belief in a possible answer; the one who prays hopes — whether with or without reason is to be investigated hereafter — that his prayer will bring him a longed-for good.
How, then, in this sense is answer to prayer at all possible under the reign of universal law?
In so far as the prayer is a real religious prayer, a real elevation of the self to God, in so far will the subject be purified by the very act of prayer from egoistic desires, in so far his wishes and views will coincide with the universal objective ends, and he may expect an answer. He who prays aright raises himself above his abstract finite subjectivity into unity with the universal, objective, divine order.
The objective course of things, as merely objective, is an abstraction; in its real significance it is that for which the subject takes it. As the subject submits himself to the laws of the objective, and makes them his own, the freedom and power of the subject over the objective increase. When we pray for earthly goods, or to be freed from earthly evils, it is not these external things themselves that we want, but an expected enjoyment from their use, or a freedom from fear or pain. By the direct effect of the prayer on the subject, that which was looked upon as an evil may be converted into a good. In that the prayer elevates the subject above its limited individuality, and harmonizes it with the objective and necessary, it frees it from the painful impressions of their external necessity. But further, it can scarcely be denied that prayer, by means of the change which it effects first and immediately in the subject, can thereby produce changes in the external relations. Spirit is ultimately lord of nature. The spirit of man exercises a control over the external objective world in so far as he apparently submits himself to the laws of nature, or, to speak more properly, falls in with the universal divine reason permeating the objective, and makes its laws his own. Every human subject is a co-determining factor in that which we call the objective world-relation, and every change that occurs in each human consciousness produces a change in the world at large, in the constellation of spirits on which at last even the external events depend. This influence of individual subjects will be all the greater, of course, the nearer and more intimately they are united with the true centre of the universal spiritual life, the spirit of spirits, about which the universe gravitates, whether with or without the conscious will of the individual.