Consciousness in the strictest sense is present only in a being to whom his species—his essential nature—is an object of thought.

    Science is the cognizance of species.  In practical life we have to do with individuals; in science, with species.

    The inner life of man is the life that has relation to his species—to his general, as distinguished from his individual, nature.

    Man is himself at once "I" and "thou".  He can put himself in the place of another for this reason: that to him his species, and not merely his individuality, is an object of thought.

    Religion, expressed generally, is consciousness of the infinite; thus it is, and can be nothing else than, the consciousness which man has of his own infinite nature.

    Man cannot get beyond his true nature.  He may indeed by means of the imagination conceive individuals of another so-called higher kind, but he can never get loose from his species, his nature. The conditions of being, the positive final predicates which he gives to these other individuals, are always qualities drawn from his own nature—qualities in which he in truth only projects himself.

    Consciousness of God is self-consciousness, knowledge of God is self-knowledge.  By his God knowest the man, and by the man his God, the two are identical.

    When religion—consciousness of God—is designated as the self-consciousness of man, this is not to be understood as affirming that the religious man is directly aware of this identity; for on the contrary, ignorance of it is fundamental to the peculiar nature of religion.

    It is our task to show that the antithesis of divine and human is altogether illusory, that it is nothing  else than the antithesis between the human nature in general and the human individual.

    The divine being is nothing else than the human being, or, rather, the human nature purified, freed from the limits of the individual man and made objective—i.e., contemplated and revered as another, a distinct being.

    To know God and not oneself to be God, to know blessedness and not oneself to enjoy it, is a state of disunity, of unhappiness.

    Where man inhabits houses, he also encloses his gods in temples.  The temple is only a manifestation of the value which man attaches to beautiful buildings.  Temples in honour of religion are in truth temples in honour of architecture.

    The Homeric gods eat and drink;—that implies eating and drinking is a divine pleasure.  Not the attribute of the divinity, but the divineness or deity of the attribute, is the first true Divine Being.

    It does not follow that goodness, justice and wisdom are chimeras because the existence of God is a chimera.  The fact is not that a quality is divine because God has it, but that God has it because it is in itself divine.

    Not until several, and these contradictory, attributes are united in one being, and this being is conceived as personal—the personality being thus brought into especial prominence—not until then is the origin of religion lost sight of.

    Religion embraces all the objects of the world: everything existing has been an object of religious reverence.   In the nature and consciousness of religion there is nothing else than what lies in the nature of man and in his consciousness of himself and of the world.  Religion has no material exclusively its own.

    The mystery of the inexhaustible fulness of the divine predicates is nothing else than the mystery of human nature considered as an infinitely varied, infinitely modifiable, but, consequently, phenomenal being.

    The more by reflection on religion, by theology, is the identity of the divine and human denied, and the human, considered as such, is depreciated.  To enrich God, man must become poor; that God may be all, man must be nothing.

    The monks made a vow of chastity to God. They mortified the sexual passion in themselves, but therefore they had in heaven, in the Virgin Mary, the image of woman—an image of love.  They could more easily dispense with real woman in proportion as an ideal woman was an object of love to them.

    The more the sensual tendencies are renounced, the more sensual is the God to whom they are sacrificed.  For whatever is made an offering to God has a special value attached to it; in it God is supposed to have special pleasure.

    The nun weds herself to God; she has a heavenly bridegroom, the monk a heavenly bride.  Whatever religion consciously denies, it unconsciously restores in God.

    Man in relation to God denies his own knowledge, his own thoughts, that he may place them in God; man gives up his personality, but in return, God, the Almighty, infinite unlimited being, is a person; he denies human dignity, the human ego, but in return God is to him a selfish, egoistical being who in all things seeks only Himself, His own honor, His own ends; his God is the very luxury of egoism.

    That which is given to man’s God is in truth given to man himself; what a man declares concerning God, he in truth declares concerning himself.  So long as man adores a good being as his God, so long does he contemplate in God the goodness of his own nature.

    How could the divine activity work on me as its object, nay, work in me, if it were essentially different from me; how could it have a human aim, the aim of ameliorating and blessing man, if it were not itself human?

    The Israelite trusted himself to do nothing except what was commanded by God; he was without will even in external things; the authority of religion extended itself even to his food.  In relation to the Israelite, the Christian is an esprit fort, a free-thinker.  Thus do things change.

    What yesterday was still religion is no longer such today; and what today is atheism, tomorrow will be religion.

    Religion is the disuniting of man from himself; he sets God before him as the antithesis of himself.  But in religion man contemplates—in God—his own latent nature.

    "The understanding" is that part of our nature which is neutral, impassible, not to be bribed, not subject to illusions — the pure, passionless light of the intelligence.

     We do not like to give reason the upper hand: we are too tender to ourselves to carry out the true, but hard, relentless verdict of "the understanding."

    "The understanding" is the power which has relation to species.  The heart represents particular circumstances, individuals; "the understanding," general circumstances, universals.  "The understanding" is the superhuman, i.e., the impersonal power in man.

    The idea of spirit is simply the idea of thought, of intelligence, of understanding.  Every other spirit is a spectre of the imagination.

    God is incomprehensible; but knowest thou the nature of the intelligence? Hast thou searched out the mysterious operation of thought, the hidden nature of self-consciousness? Is not self-consciousness the enigma of enigmas?

    It is asked what is "the understanding" or "the reason"? The answer is found in the idea of God.

     God is "the reason" expressing, affirming itself as the highest existence.

    That which contradicts reason contradicts God.

    "The reason" is not dependent on God, but God on "the reason."

    "The understanding" is interested not only in man, but in the things outside of man, in universal nature.

    The Christians scorned the pagan philosophers because, instead of thinking, of themselves, of their own salvation, they had thought only of things outside of themselves. The Christian thinks only of himself.

     It is not Christianity, not religious enthusiasm, but the enthusiasm of "the understanding" that we have to thank for botany, mineralogy, zoology, physics, and astronomy.

     "The understanding" is universal, pantheistic: the love of the universe; but the grand characteristic of religion—and of the Christian religion especially—is that it is thoroughly anthropotheistic, the exclusive love of man for himself.

    Of all the attributes which "the understanding" assigns to God, the one which in religion—and especially in the Christian religion—has pre-eminence, is moral perfection. But God as a morally perfect being is nothing else than the moral nature of man posited as the absolute being.

    The Incarnation is nothing else than the practical, material manifestation of the human nature of God.  Man was already in God, was already God himself, before God became man, i.e., showed himself as man.

     The essential idea of the Incarnation, though enveloped in the night of the religious consciousness, is love.  Love is a higher power and truth than deity. Love conquers God.

     As God has renounced himself out of love, so we, out of love, should renounce God.  For if we do not sacrifice God to love, we sacrifice love to God, and, in spite of the predicate of love, we have the God — the evil being — of religious fanaticism.

    Divine love is only human love made objective, affirming itself.

    In the Incarnation religion only confesses what in reflection on itself, as theology, it will not admit; namely, that God is an altogether human being.

    Is not the love of God to man — the basis and central point of religion — the love of man to himself made an object, contemplated as the highest objective truth, as the highest being to man?

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