It presents itself as an endlessly vast sum of processes. Where there is a process there is happening. Where something happens, there adequate causes are demanded.
Every attempt to comprehend adequate causes leads backwards in endless series, since each cause comprehended is something which itself in turn demands an adequate cause, and so on backwards without ever a conclusion.
Faith is that particular form of mental life which from this fact draws the inference that for the human mind a real comprehension is impossible, since behind the physical there stands a something transcendent, a force, with reference to which all life – phenomena become that which their name expresses: phenomena of a “life” which faith for the most part designates by the word “god.”
This force stationed behind the physical, to which faith traces back all that happens, must be an “adequate cause in itself,” hence something contrary to sense in the fullest meaning of the words. For all that is, without exception, requires an adequate cause. An “adequate cause in itself”
would thus be that something which by its simple existence would give the lie to this thought-necessity, inasmuch as itself would be that which would have no adequate cause. When the thought-necessity of an adequate cause is thus satisfied with an “adequate cause in itself,” this just means: it is satisfied in a fashion contrary to sense.
The essence of all that is contrary to sense consists in this, that when followed out in thought, it deprives itself of the possibility of existence. A mistake in an arithmetical sum is the most familiar form of what is contrary to sense. It is something that in correct thinking is by itself deprived of all possibility of existence; it is something that makes its appearance only that it may appear no more.
In like case stands faith. Does it essay to think that in which it believes, then must that present itself to it in one or other relation or form-that is, conceptually. A transcendent, however, that pre-sents itself conceptually is transcendent no longer, but, on the contrary, the one completely conceptu-alized thing there is in the world, inasmuch as its whole existence just consists of the concept of it. Accordingly, when faith ventures to think, it deprives itself of the possibility of existence; when it does not think, it has no existence as faith, and therefore no existence at all,
When, as in these days frequently happens, people complain of the ever-increasing decay of faith, the reason mostly given is, that faith does not contain a sufficiency of what is of value to the understanding. The believer must know what, how, and why he believes, and not have his faith based simply upon feeling. But this is somewhat the same as if one Is should reproach darkness with not containing a sufficiency of light among its ingredients. light present, then there can be no darkness; is understanding present, then there can be no faith. Credo ut intelligam is the most vain of all wishes.
Pantheism in its noblest form, that of the Indian Vedanta, endeavours to avoid this dilemma by con-ceiving of its divine in purely negativę terms. But the famous “neti, neti”-” not this, not this”-of the Upanishads, is a definition too, and so a limitation.
Through this its essential characteristic, of itself in being thought out, depriving itself of the possi-bility of existence, faith takes its place as third in the trio-along with illusion and error.
Illusion is what I call a mistaken view; error, what I call a mistaken experience. When I mistake a rope for a snake, a train of ants for a crack in the ground, these are illusions. When I hold infusoria to have their origin in the infusion of hay, or look upon the evening and the morning star as two different orbs, these are errors.
Upon this, its community of nature with illusion and error, is based another essential characteristic of faith-namely, the impossibility, when once it has vanished, of its ever again coming to life. Once the rope on my path which I formerly mistook for a snake has been recognized by me for a rope, never again can I voluntarily return to my illusion. I can, indeed, by force of imagination, represent it to myself as a snake, but this representation no longer “works”; it no longer excites fear. And in just the same way I can quite successfully recall the conditions under which certain optical and acoustic delusions made their appearance, but they are illusions that are dead. The like holds good of error and, for a third, of faith.
People who call for a resuscitation of vanished faith, and by some means or other hope to see it effected, know not what it is that they hope and call for. They are calling for the restoration of a vanished ignorance-an utter inconceivability.
Now there exists one great distinction between faith, on the one hand, and illusion and error on the other; in this respect, namely, that the two latter have the physical, the material for their object, hence can be checked and set right by this that is, by reality. Faith, however, that has for its object the non-physical, the non-material, which is just what-ever the believer chooses to conceive it to be, cannot be checked and set right by reality. On the contrary, the believer interprets the entire world in accordance with his concept, devours, so to speak, the world’s entire content of reality, and sets up a view of the world that is unreal, seeing that he interprets the physical from the transcen-dental standpoint-that is, abnormally; and there-fore he is never in the position to be set right by reality, since he never can knock up against con-tradictions. One must know that one does not
know before one can let oneself be taught. In perfect accordance with this essential feature of faith (so far as the theory of knowledge is con-cerned) is its morality and religion: both are contrary to sense.
The essence of all morality is to be found in selflessness. Every act of selflessness requires a motive. To possess a motive one must exercise cognition, comprehension.
As a matter of fact the essential nature of every faith-morality is selfish, despite all its acts of re-nunciation. Here one practises renunciation like a man who stints himself of a certain amount of money and invests it in a lottery. As he parts with his money that he may win back more in its place, so here the believer gives up money, goods, life-yea, honour and truth, everything, if so be he may draw the first prize above.
The essence of all religion consist.
e for the aim and goal of life. This search fan.. satisfies by referring life as a whole to a something transcendent. But the existence of the transcendent is nothing else but the concept of it. To refer life as a whole to a transcendent thus means nothing but to refer itself to itself, which-so to speak-is the analytical expression for ignorance.
Further development of these ideas is not essential to our task. Here we have only to bear well in mind that, as the world-theory from the standpoint of faith is one contrary to sense, so also is its morality and its religion. All three are functions of a nescience, and therefore void of actuality.
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