three motives and reasons the faith.-english-gustav theodor fechner

7/27/2019 Three Motives and Reasons the Faith.-english-Gustav Theodor Fechner.

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The

Three motives and reasonsthe

Faith.From

Gustav Theodor Fechner.

Leipzig,

Printed and published by Breitkopf and Hartel.

, 1863.

Preface.

Each person has his faith area, partly to cover the different areas, some of them

move apart. True knowledge is but only one, is not the only one true faith? Some say

rather that it is right and proper that each had its particular faith.

The question is first of all: What is faith against the knowledge? Because a part of

the essence of both is still in their relationships with each other. Is it a fraternal,friendly, hostile? Has the knowledge to be the servant of the faith or the faith to hide

themselves from the light of knowledge as the owl? They are stapled as the two heads

of Janus at each other, so that each looks in a different direction, each only sees what

the other does not? Or can only see different than each other did the same to his other

nature?

These are old questions, is an old dispute, which today is still waiting for the

discharge. Rather than take it but here again, this pamphlet goes away from the

hassles a way in which there is no occasion for the dispute, because the answer will

almost before the question. What is its purpose other?

So great is the faith area and the area of the believer, it is so dark and so many ways

to run it together sometimes, sometimes apart. Few ever think about it, why they

believe what they believe, what little they entitled to believe what they believe, few

make it right is right and many lose over the thought even the faith, because they

have not taken the rights . This little book has grown out of thinking about what is the

right and the guarantee of rights in matters of faith, and his intention again to lead

thinking the way that has appeared to us than the right, a path on which to faith rather

gained than is lost. I describe briefly the task of this book go to show how faith grows out of his

motives, to let the motives of faith to grow reasons, and thus to leave the faith grow


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themselves.

The main objects of faith are three, and so we are also three main motives and find

as a result, three main reasons for the faith, but do not separate the objects, but to the

band, what they have in the nature of things, a band add in man.

The Common of the motives and reasons I unite under the name ofprinciples offaith, and so I can also say it should be here around the principles of faith.

We have many textbooks of faith, they are taught only to the most. We have been in

evidence for the existence of God, the Hereafter and angels, but they are only

applicable for the scholars there, and faith is all there.Did not even make the reasons

of faith accessible to everyone and catchy? But many would like to believe and can

not believe only, and she will learn the faith from his textbooks, or books for

edification, requiring him ready to build the missing? But in this little book is trying

to teach the faith to build the faith without the scholarship of the textbooks or the

condition of devotional books need to. It is all so simple, clear, understandable and obvious antecedents to almost self-

evident in the fact that I get, however, you find it is rather too much than too little,

when one is accustomed to find it otherwise so different in these things. And is also

the word believer be satisfied that I take the most important words, he believes, really

just the words of reason believers so that I take them all the way to the reason, and

the unbelieving so that I his grounds of unbelief raise themselves to religious reasons,

since the opposition between the three, in which the life of faith ring moves, almost

more than it depends on other things that they will not do justice to the self, in which

they seek their justice against each other. Finally the progress of the Faith dares here about his previous position also will be

forgiven even after the most faithful expect the fixed retirement of faith to its

essence?

So Getrste you book a small congregation, and the tree, which sleeps in the

acorn. Do you have a small piece of the germs of this tree.

ContentI. Faith and knowledge in general.

II The area faith in the strict sense.

III. motives and reasons (principles) of faith in general.

IV Historical, practical and theoretical principle of faith in general.

V. The historical principle.

VI. The practical principle.

VII The theoretical principle.Argument of the spirit.

's argument from the body.
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VIII position of an exact science of body and soul (with regard to the question of

nerves) to the faith.

IX. questions of how faith first came to humanity, and how the motives and reasons

of belief in the existence of God rooted in the existence of God.

X. The Orthodox and the free position.XI. retrospect, overview, foresight.

XII. conclusion.

I.

Faith and knowledge in general.

Like all general concepts can also take faith in different size and style. Rather than

argue, however, as he was to take, we simply explain what we here understand and

want to look under that name. Enough so that if we remain within the limits of

language use, and those stuck fixed only for the purposes of the following analysis, as

they are in the fluctuations of use.

Perhaps we would do well to proceed as often as it happens commonly.

In the broadest sense, and now you understand what I mean by faith an assent to

what is not through experience or logical conclusion, what is the mathematical

certainty.

Should I hereafter also explain what I mean by holding for true experience, logical

conclusion mathematics? But you can see well that I will not be ready or would not

come to the beginning, what is it supposed to do here.The language used and thecontext of the consideration must be sufficient to allow the Neuter understand what

should be understood below, and only Neuter it should be here.

I wanted to write a metaphysics of faith, however, I would have to go deeper into

all sides term relationships, go back to the most abstract, emanating from the last, as

if it were the first. But what it could lead? Once seemed to me that all metaphysics,

dogma, mysticism and mythological figures of faith from the darkness rather than

leads into the darkness, I am not permitted to enter into their depth. What we seek is

above this depth.

In that broad sense in which we first conceived the belief that his term is indifferent

to its content. You can believe that there is a God and that there is a hell, war or peace

will, of thirteen sitting at the table, this year one will die, so what you can not believe

everything. It is incredible what is believed everything in the world, and of all that is

believed is believed the opposite. The most blatant superstition is faith even in this

broad sense of the faith.

But in a narrow sense, when Faith, Love, Hope puts together, for example, on the

faith as man's last refuge has, from the Blessed Are by faith, of matters of faith, belief

sources, religious people talking, one understands and I understand under believeonly faith in the highest and last things, ie God, the afterlife, higher spiritual

existence. Hand over most everything that is certainly in those ways, and that's why
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we speak of faith, preferably. So faith is in the narrower sense only the highest area of

faith in a broader sense.

From time immemorial, people have medical conditions linked to it even in the

existence of the objects of this faith and the faith and sought the highest and most

general band in that faith. In this respect it is also calledreligious faith as

distinguished from vulgar faith.

To this belief in the strict sense, it is preferably act here, but since he broadly shares

the common characteristics and relationships of faith, which are independent of the

nature of what is believed, it will apply to take this time being considered.

According to some, it would certainly seem that the belief in the highest and last

things in general quite different in nature, quite different sources and consequences

have, but the belief in some what different things to what here and there, what

tomorrow or the next of Use will be or not to be the year that he was something

absolutely Furthermore offender or even something specific in every aspect. Andshould it really can somehow hold with superstition into one? - But first and

foremost, faith is the highest and last things a assent to the existence and nature of the

things to which it refers, as any other faith, without having to be done by logic and

experience certainly can, so something has but conceptually it common, and it is

itself part of the role of the following to show that the specific belief in the highest

and last things is just only the fact that these things are the highest and last, the

highest and last of the are but where we all live and move, and the motives and

reasons for any belief that is located on the highest summits in relation to it, is the

most complete and finish together. So firm can be no faith when faith in these things,

so resounding no motives, no binding reasons so far and no profound

consequences. Why? Because the motives, reasons, consequences of the belief in

common, highest and last things bear the nature of its objects, the highest and last to

be most common of which being but where acts of our lives, and endeavors and

moves.

Faith is like a high pyramid. The motives and reasons of all faith walk of a broad

base of the religious faith as a final ruling upper together, and the same is very much

mistaken, he who seeks the top of the pyramid as something Secreted above the

pyramid, and who makes no view of the base , half wrong, who only half does it. One can believe that something is, and believe that is something to be trusted, then

faith is trust. This sense is often the belief in the Bible. But it is rooted in the one of

another faith, how could anyone believe that is something to be trusted, not even

from the thought that it is. As the Bible says, "Without faith it is impossible to please

God, because anyone who comes to God must believe that he is, and those who seek

him, will be a rewarder" While (Ebr. XI 6th) requires the belief in the first sense yet

of an increase of determinants to be the last, but they grow out of the right belief in

the rights also of yourself. So it is therefore not necessary to separate the

consideration regarding it. What knowledge is against the faith now?


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Again, it is important again to distinguish a closer and more important. What is

known in the narrowest and strictest sense, hereby absolutely and

objectively Certain towards us one believes only what is impossible to imagine

according to the principle of identity differently or to think about, that's all

through directexperience, valid logical inference or the latter on Due to the former

Detected. I know in that sense of knowing that a sensation of red, green, yellow in the world

is when I have them myself, because nothing can complain about, what is there that is

there. I know that every triangle includes two right angles in sum, because I can not

think otherwise, without coming into conflict with the preconceived conditions of the

triangle, I know on the same grounds in a sphere whose diameter I know from

experience that their volume and content. Others, however, whether the orange in

front of me, just as yellow as I see, I can not strictly know, I firmly believe it only

almost as if I knew it, and as long as I have the cogency of logical inference is not

itself seen, recognized the impossibility of dissenters resending after the claims ofconceptual match it myself, I can well believe, but do not know that he is so cogent

and Urban is correct.

Of what we know for certain, however, is in addition to the very extensive rich

mathematical truths basically very little, and to draw on the mathematical truths out

anyway, partly that they only just a matter of knowing less strict, more or less for

others matter of faith are, in part, that they say nothing about the existence itself, but

only say that if this is so, then this is so. Mathematics can not prove that there is a

space of three dimensions, in the draw to lines that can be put boundaries by the that

it circles are triangles, but only that, if there is a space, triangles, circles within themeaning the definition is from the given this and that follows. Everything that

happened before us, will be done by us, far done by us and there is the certainty of

knowledge for us going into that strictest sense of knowledge, she did not have

enough on their established concepts in the areas of Perceptible over the immediately

Experienced and analyzable its logical, and combined developable content addition.

Meanwhile, there are principles of generalization of experienced, laws that are won

only through self-moderating generalization of the experience, and the more so again

confirmed in the experience, the longer and the more and the more thoroughly we

pursue them. These principles and laws, and what follows from it, you wont beexpected in a wider sense to the field of knowledge and we may hereafter expect

it. The whole science is to generate such knowledge, although the knowledge thus

generated in the last instance always hangs on the belief that the generalization on

which we are based and the conclusions drawn will also find their confirmation, as

those previously in the circle of experience moderating have been found. For neither

by logic nor experience can be proved that such would occur.

Who can say that it was proven by experience or mathematics, or both together or

be proved that the law of gravity applies through all the rooms, will apply throughout

all time. But it has been found valid, as far and as long as we could trace it by the sky

and the times. The evidences a faith that does the strictest knowledge of almost equal


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strength, that it would also further apply, and therefore we expect it self as a matter of

our knowledge, yes as a matter of strict, the exact knowledge.

In most of what is called knowledge, but faith is a conditionally, provided that this

knowledge is based on the assumption of some Felt. So does everything in our

historical knowledge of the faith in the credibility of sources, all of our experience

science the belief that seen other right, and only what they have rather seen told ourentire psychology, as far as they do not merely that of a single individual is the belief

in other people's souls advance. And what would all of our science, when all this faith

would fall.

So the man of knowledge does not like too much despise the faith. Of all

knowledge has its share of some faith; deprive him of the same and forfeit the

knowledge itself. Not banish faith, but to replace as much as possible through

knowledge, may be his task as a man of knowledge. As far as possible. And not

enough knowledge to replace a faith, may be the question of whether faith is ever

ersetzlich or not, and thereafter the task set out to topple him from the knowledge

side, or, if not to justify, but to based.

Is after all the faith nothing more than an imperfect knowledge?

But that would be to recognize the essence of bad faith. Rather like what we think

of one thing always about what we know of it, extends, and the determinants of

beliefs about rich generally speaking, the knowledge and can the inadequacy of the

latter, which takes place every faith, by other Determinants are added. So much so

that an assent to the thing comes to pass that. Resistance to that which rests on

knowledge reasons, often not inferior and one of the objective certainty ofknowledge, not identical, but the holding scales subjective certainty can arise That is

a certainty that the feeling that it could be otherwise, is just so far as the clear

consciousness that it could not be otherwise attending. As for the really religious

man, despite that the existence of those objects of faith exceeds in the existence of

God, as hard as the naturalist believes Mussulman to the sky with the Houri's to the

generality of the laws of nature all experience and all mathematics. But can

Determinants of faith with such knowledge outright come into conflict and often they

offer. Or why many a word of the Bible is worth more than all the science

experiments and all speculative philosophy. Luther himself one has the expression:"the Sorbonne has established the highly reprehensible doctrine that what was

established truth in philosophy, must also apply in theology as truth," and the church

father Tertullian even said frankly: "credo , quia absurdum est. "He wanted to say:

My reasons for belief are not only from the knowledge of reasons, they even

contradict them.

No less than the reasons rich and the consequences of faith far beyond the

knowledge.

Faith is not merely produced, he also testifies again, two male children, deeds and

conclusions, two female, hope and fear. The power of his producers and his sons arein relationship and in the past to prove his own strength. Let us now see, the whole

action, thought, feeling human is much more determined by the faith of these scions


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of faith than from knowledge of, since there are so little of what we really know. And

we look closer, so just created the belief in the highest and last things that exceed our

knowledge the most, the strongest of all effects. And we see very well, so one of the

main effects just this, all knowledge about growing, faith itself to promote the

knowledge, because what did the Christians wiser than the Turks!

It is true, railways and machinery can not build faith, he must leave the knowledge,although the belief in benefits that are not there yet, and often do not come to build it

stimulates the knowledge executes only. But there are larger effects of faith, the very

knowledge resigns or more enters the easement of faith.

The belief is that has led to the Crusades hundred upon hundreds of thousands from

west to east and in the trains of the crescent from east to west, which put the Pope on

the throne and the prince has placed under his feet was that the cities their Dome, the

villages of their churches, the hills, paths and walkways their chapels and crosses

were, Greece has peopled with statues and monasteries with monks.

Think of the tortures imposed for the sake of faith multitudes endured by countless

martyrs of countless penitents themselves are imposed, how much do people have

been killed and burnt for the faith, have slaughtered and burned, can be themselves

have voluntarily plunged to his death.

"And what more shall I say - includes Paul 1) , having been much counted in the

same sense - the time would be too short for me, if I tell of Gideon, and of Barak, and

of Samson, and Jephthah, and David, and Samuel, and the prophets.

1) Ebr. XI. 32 ff

Who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises,

stopped the mouths of lions;

Quenched the power of fire, the sword, entronnnen, are made strong out of

weakness, became mighty in war, the foreign army have laid prostrate;

Many have suffered mocking and scourging, moreover of bonds and imprisonment;

They were stoned, hacked, stabbed, killed by the sword: they went about in furs

and goat skins, with destitute, afflicted, tormented;

And gone in misery in the deserts, in the mountains and in dens and caves of the

earth;

These all, having had witness through faith. "

There is no knowledge in the world that can produce such effects, so to speak,

overcome death, that is, the fear of death and the fear of killing the defenseless,

because there is no knowledge that overcomes death itself, ie the can punish fear of

death lies and ensure the safety of a better life beyond. That must take faith

andersher, draw its power from another source. The fear of death is innate, how

powerful is all Congenital, the belief has grown, but it can grow over the fear of

death.


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What can the mighty, away from the underlying knowledge, and often surpassed all

of the same determinants, Determinants for his faith, capable of producing the effects

of such expansion and power? There are quite mystical, can be nothing of them

show? On the contrary, quite obvious to point to's lightest, except that the eight lots

of what he sees every day, easy does not see, and thought-provoking rather after what

just behind the neighbor, as seen by the neighbor, and the single standing there looksfrom one side.

But before we attempt before the remoter the next, but to show this on all sides, we

meet a second error after the first, as momentous as it may be the first, which is of

itself a the three sites shows that there below is considered accurate to consider.

So erroneous it would be to try to make faith merely of knowledge reasons

dependent, and to see in faith nothing but an imperfect knowledge so erroneous it

would be to exclude the knowledge reasons of the determinants of the faith whole

and even in a merely something extrinsic to the Other to see. In our Meistes

knowledge we found something of faith in detail and conversely, what we know of

one thing to have a very significant proportion of our faith, has often admittedly only

hidden content anywhere and is in conflict with other determinants of the faith itself

as a with such a weight which can be weighed by weigh or circumstances.

What gives the faith of even the raw savages who knows nothing of astronomy, the

sun will rise tomorrow, as it is understood today? Only he knows she is today,

yesterday, day before yesterday, worked out every day since time immemorial. Such

induction can never be complete, but that in itself incomplete knowledge of what it

rests, complemented by itself after a psychological laws so as to insurers and firmer

faith, a lower per supplement is needed.

What makes us to his own soul, the only one of which we really know, believe in a

soul of all the other people? That we see their bodies and bodily expressions of the

same our, what we know bound mind and mental activity. This analogy may

constitute as little as an inductive inference that knowledge in the strictest sense, but

what it lacks, just as supplemented again by itself to faith.

The belief in the highest and last things is certainly not of such a nature that it

would require only those weak subjective complement the knowledge reasons, we

expect that neglecting what is believed to knowledge itself.The reasons range ofknowledge here, much less far, the other religious reasons gain the upper hand by far,

but it would be without the service of knowledge are not sufficient reasons in turn

and they never come without advantage.

So the man of faith does not like too much despise the knowledge. His faith would

be without an empty phrase or bladder.

After all, is not the lack of knowledge of reasons, but the inadequacy of the same

perfect a knowledge or an objective certainty in the above sense and complement this

defect by psychological or other wide reasons characterizes the faith, and only

relative we like from lack of knowledge of reasons for belief speak when, how often,

against the other religious reasons can not arise.


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By enter the determinants of knowledge in the faith with the faith but still

Determinants, has also the whole area of faith is much larger than that of knowledge,

presents its influence on life, feeling, thought the knowledge, only faith not enough

knowledge at all to the highest and last things one might find reason enough to see an

imperfect faith than vice versa rather in knowledge, and rather to have the faith to the

knowledge the higher position, if not all, the dispute over the priority of what is onlywith and through each other, at all pointless and would be a misunderstanding of the

right relationship. So much belief overlooks the knowledge, take him all the

knowledge, and you have only pure superstition, not even the substance to

superstition; take the knowledge of all faith, and you have the mathematical void only

the materialistic wealth, so stand alone with your soul in the world without a soul

beside, above, before and after you. It's called faith blind to the knowledge, he is

really against the knowledge about how the blind man's eyes to, that is, apart from his

eyes, the right knowledge but are of the right eyes of faith. So would find faith but

only by knowing his way? But can reverse the eyes without all the people find away? But I do not want to accumulate images for which it can ask whether and to

what extent they meet, for what. Himself to clear to anyone who attaches a clear view

of the relationship between knowledge and faith

Also, you will readily admit everything, and Some only provide the exempt them

what it considered the most and here is to be asserted, the belief in the highest and

last things. What can because knowledge? Says the same thing: nothing, so we have

nothing here expect from him; - the Other: There can be nothing here know, the way

it is just superstition. And so can the knowledge of A, the other falling faith in all

those same things, in which only the best combination of all forces can lead to bothtruest, best, highest.

II

The area faith in the strict sense.

If even the belief takes the highest and last things with each other faith under the

same general concept, it remains factually Ungemeines something about each other

and faith in himself many things in common but with no other.

First place, he has this in common, that it is a belief in ghosts, for even in the

afterlife, it is after all spirits, and certifies that he, at least on this side, always faith isdetermined to stay because everyone has the hand always only of his own worldly

soul you know, while there are other faith, yet faith is this morning knowledge, or the

desire to raise him to knowledge, but promises one term success. Such a success here

is the thing to be impossible.

Meanwhile, he is not the only belief in spirits and hereby not the only one that this

is true. The same is true of faith in other human souls, animal souls, any neighbor

souls at all, their existence can be as little as that of God, otherworldly and higher

spirits are made through direct experience and logical conclusion certainly, and so

could conversely, the existence of this just as surely be , and it will show that we infact have quite adequate reason to do so.


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But remains of a faith other than the always somewhat of a higher level, the reasons

for a need to expand, enhance, to be the other reasons, and the interests of one of the

project over the other.

The belief in other people souls for us the next spezialste on animal souls and any

plant souls have also lying to souls on other celestial bodies, the farthest only casual

interest, the belief in the last and highest intellectual powers, but about all of theseand any belief at all-powerful, comprehensive, meisterndes all hanging thereon

interests, most general, highest and ultimate, theoretical and practical interest to the

people because the believed objects have such, but the farthest only insofar as it is the

farthest to understand in its generality .

In God closes after believing the existence of the entire spirit world, indeed the

world in general, from, takes her band, their head, their first cause, its principle is,

what names you might need for him to look for the one that the highest for around the

mean. In Beyond the completion of goals, adjustment of the shortcomings of all this

life is expected. For the gap between us and God mediations be sought in higher

spirits. The entirety of this faith but has proven to thinking, feeling, acting mankind

the most common and most important influence and proved it today.

This he has himself reduced to the life of the day, however, thus gaining from also

influence our next and spezialsten interests, but only by general, highest and last

points of view, as, conversely, the belief in the souls of our neighbors in the state,

morality and custom rises to higher and more general interests, so that highest and

most general interests opposed grows and grows through with it, but only in the

outputs of the spezialsten relationships of the family and the congregation. The

difference is only relative, but relatively it is, and where there is no point of absolute

divorce, which is not available here, fortunately, also the relative nor his right and his

duty.

In the common height above all other things, the objects of faith hang in the narrow

sense closely together and faith hangs together by itself.

According to the Christian faith God with the angels and souls beyond its common

residence in heaven, carried the painters paint him even of angels above the clouds

and carried up the souls after death to him. The saints who rose from the here and in

the hereafter, and the angels who lived with God from the beginning is to convey anon special occasions, the other steadily between us and God, so many fall souls

beyond partially together with angels themselves. The resurrected from the dead to

heaven but Christ driven, Judge of the living and the dead, is also a mediator between

us and God and himself one with God. So firmly adherent in itself is all in the

kingdom of heaven who can finally unravel the inextricably Fused yet. And there are

some Christians who believe in nothing he can not unravel, he believes but if he still

believes something that the actions of the people, which is most in accordance with

the will of God, and that is what it the most favorable conditions in the afterlife

backs, and expects a perfect knowledge of things divine and greater union with Godin the afterlife.

The pagans have taken a few one supreme God, angels take lesser gods, instead of


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physical countless souls shadows. Down to those Seitab to the islands of the blessed,

even some who drive more than shadows to topThe whole world is to them a world

of gods, Pluto sits under the earth, then go the saddest shade; Zeus on Olympus, then

the happiest of heroes and thus even to the company of gods. So here play world of

the gods and other world through each other and fall in part looking at each

other. Where Ibis, cow be worshiped as divine, you can also take the souls after deathin animals. And many nations mixed linked at all of the dead service confused with

the gods service in a way that we of course have long since my addition.

In short, the religious beliefs of the highest and last things is a connected world in

itself, as the real world of the lower common things, which we know only one higher

than this lower world.

, Weis, here and there, one or drop the other of the three moments of faith from the

band can; - on time and in complete faith of humanity it can not happen - but then

only by falling right across from the faith or as a residue the whole faith itself

receives only a scanty because each can its power only through the relationship with

the other kept as each member expires, which are separated from the whole. And any

atrophy or lack of development of one or another moment is always regarded as a

defect which expels about yourself, faith can not stop there, must develop soft or

another.

The Jews have long believed in God before they clearly believed in a life after

death, although it was a vestigial idea of Sheol. Today they believe in heaven and

hell, and hope to come once in Abraham's bosom. The Jewish faith is so tough, he

could not stand on that stunting.

The Buddhists believe in an otherworldly life without some believe in a personal

God, and yet have their idols, temples and prayers. The deposited Buddha himself as

one idol; - where God is absent, idols can not easily be missing, - but that they have

no God above their idols, will be one of the reasons that the end of days will have no

Buddhism, and all other reasons are more or less dependent on this. Some among us

believe in God without believing in an afterlife and personal ghosts between us and

God, but as dead, cold, abstract, empty, helpless is this belief, so to say they believe

in God, only God's sake, and would lose the poor God not much.

Power, life, wealth, beauty, sublimity of religious belief depends on the coherentdevelopment of his three-contained living moments. Probably has a religion or

denomination already reached the ideal in this regard? Yes, some do not see the ideal

rather than in the greatest possible atrophy most possible development of a moment?

III.

motives and reasons (principles) of faith in general.

The Determinants of faith, as we said, hand over the knowledge, and after the great

inadequacy of the determinants of knowledge in relation to the last and highest things

and yet so widely used and powerful belief we had extremely powerful determinantsto faith in these things require. What can they be?


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The revelation believer is easily done with the answer. The belief in these things is

itself revealed by God to man. Well, in the last analysis all and certainly preferably

faith in God from God will even depend. Yes every true belief depends in a sense on

the part of a revelation of existence of what is believed. Or could be cogently believe

in the existence of even a tree No one ever saw or heard of the noise a leaf. Which

indeed the revelation of believers only that it is not the existence of the whole of Godcan enter contact seen at once in the existence of the small people, not, not cogent but

the belief in the existence of God could be, of not having his existence somehow in

our visible inside entered says. So is there really the God in whom we believe, we

must also believe that he had somehow once as revealed to us, so that we can believe

in him, and the belief in one true God is of itself a belief in a true revelation. The only

question is in what way geschahe revelation. God spoke to the people as a man? Why

not you? Initially, yes, it is as the Bible says he who believes in's word the Bible, and

further he did it through his with his only son and also by supernatural inspiration of

prophets, evangelists, apostles, popes, saints, councils Reformers. But since all thisyourself just only a matter of faith, for others also rather is a matter of unbelief, then

the motives and reasons for such a belief, where they exist, are also among the

general motives and reasons of faith, which we consider below must find, and we can

not start with the premise of it.

Let's be open: The Revelation believer who collapsed on the word of the Bible,

perhaps even of Luther or of the Pope, as such relies upon a rock, from which no

chunks may fall, for fear of the whole faith is, is this have to face the task of entering

all position forward. He can not tolerate what he now holds even for the fixed output

of all judgment and the highest over all evil, will still undergo an assessment and anyquestion, there is for him no authority to do so. And verily, he is right to demand

anything of the sort from religion itself we will eventually make this demand, but if it

is already there for him, asks someone else is whether and where it is there; There is

much to do made for revelation. Reject the question is no answer, but we can only

wish the answer, which asks, want to help the search, which searches.

On closer inspection one can determine the reasons for faith motives , which the

faith drive , and reasons which to entitle differ. The statement of a reason we call an

argument. Motives and reasons together or the Common of the motives and reasons,

as I said, principles of faith. Has now probably so you can ask at the very beginning, the faith anything other

than motives or reasons more than knowledge of what goes into it, and what but

never enough to certainty?

In truth, he has no reasons that are not related to the completion of the motifs, and

thus none of the evidence, only those which are sufficient for conviction, otherwise

he would not knowledge and belief. What so ever the belief may be justified and

supported by knowledge side doubts remain possible, however, doubt may be foolish,

but he always remains possible, without coming into conflict with logic and

experience, which is on the point.From all that for the existence of God, after all,

which speaks for the generality of the laws of nature, doubtful but the materialist


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naturalist on the existence of God, the Orthodox theologian to the generality of the

laws of nature, so he doubts not merely that he denies. The one doubt may be so

foolish as the others, but remains equally possible, and the error of a can be proven

any more than that of the other. Only the same folly can thereby prove that he belongs

in the highest degree, what else allwrts considered folly.

A goal of the off-examined by the human society on ways in which he can hope tomeet only the same ausnahmsweiser foolishness to Run the gates. A goal of which

prefers the useful and the harmful even declared it more useful than the most useful,

one regrets the gates. A goal of the foundation of the certainty in the most unlikely

looking, one doubts his intellect.

Only just lay in matters of faith, of course, some to another, even opposite,

scale. Keeps all the people who have believed before him and believe him what he

himself does not believe, for fools, of those who do not prefer the harmful disbelief

the most useful faith with him, and says: Credo quia absurdum est.

For all this there's no argument. For all the arguments for faith is only able to rely

on what is in the smallest and meanest things as folly and wisdom than to assert itself

in the highest and last things, and in this sense the motives of faith themselves to raise

reasons.

In fact, however, a primary object of the following will be to show how the reasons

which justify the belief that only the highest generalization, summary, culmination,

clarification, correction position of the motives that drive them to believe, in short,

what I call the completion Designs call them, are, so that man to just whose sake,

indeed to believe everything and to whose account the sake of which he reallybelieves, - and how beautiful and good is it that it is so. But also to show that an

authoritative restriction, correction, cleaning thereof is herein incorporated by each of

themselves at the same time. What half and individually inadequate and even

untriftig, and most subjects are there, and can be quite full and combined in the

largest public grant full cogency, and take the half of what the people driving here

and there for faith to its Untriftigkeit discard sake, you have it to the full cogency

rather only to supplement and meet. What a moment aside as part of the stage as a

whole or a whole has its truth and justification, can to the whole, where the summit

will be wrong and untriftig; take it to discard its Untriftigkelt sake, one has to thegrade on which it is cogent, only minimize and limit. This limitation and hereby

correction, but the various motifs make itself

The Negro believes that a rock, a tree, a snake or something else like a

god. Why? The priests and the elders said's so, he needs to believe in something

which has powers over the human out to where people forces are no longer sufficient,

nor expect help if by magic, sacrifice or prayer from him, and as he did the forces

Nature does not know, but so much of it knows that it the hand over his, why should

the snake, the rock, the tree is not as good as any other object of them to be the

essence to which he needs the faith after any perhaps quite random, association tiedthe idea of the greatness of it. Depending on the raw man, so easily and so raw he

generalized. Since we have motives of faith that change here and there, so and so can


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make. But that by all peoples who have risen above the level of animality, the belief

in a divine being above the people goes that this faith is everywhere in all the last and

highest matters needed and without it expires human society, that the last insight can

only find their completion in such a faith in the whole nature of mental and physical

things, reasons of faith, not just as changing, not the thing itself are also able to make

different, and preferably folgends we mean by reasons such reasons . The rock is no god, the tree is no god, the snake is no God, the sea is no god, the air

with thunder and lightning is no God, the earth, the sun and the moon are not God,

what the Negro, the Egyptians, the Greeks, who believes heath at all. But is all this a

pure faith mistake? Take all together, you have the world. Is it God? But because of

the heath says that of all 'that the matter is God? He said only that she was carrying a

hidden spiritual power behind it, similar to his, only his reaching out. And is it a

mistake that the whole world is the bearer of a divine spiritual power hidden behind

it?

The mistake that all individual faith is thus only that looked in detail at individual's

is laid, which sense only in the whole rests. Add the faith of all the nations by

themselves and linking it in that you, knpfest the divine spiritual power, which he

linked to the individual to the whole, so you have the right faith. Set the other hand,

the power of the individual, it expands to that of the whole,'s right measure to reduce,

you have the right faith.Every natural object but has a portion of the force with which

Wielding in all things God transcends all that is human, but he has not the whole, last,

highest.

Also, the dismembering faith of the Gentiles is not the only faith, from the other

side there is a belief in God as a unified spirit, which is raised high above the world

of matter, they, his waste has on his stool, his offspring. If the heath faith lacks the

proper unity of the divine essence, so lacking in this, the living relationship to nature,

but one may be supplemented by the other and correct in what is missing everyone

and where everyone is missing, and so the belief is to a in the ubiquitous nature and

all-ruling God arise as a right faith that all Christians confess the words to without

making course right earnest with the words.

If we have the last ground of faith formation, provided there is a real, can be

attributed to the existence of what is believed, still divides this single reason in itseffects immediately in several determinants or motives. You can try to follow the

dependence of these motives of faith in the highest and last things of the existence of

these things, but then must the existence and mode of existence of these things

presuppose already as a given that condition but to be only through the collection of

motifs has to justify the true reasons. So instead of starting as a given the existence of

the highest and last things, and to derive the motives and reasons of the faith of it, we

have rather only to do with the motives of faith as given, thereafter the reasons of

faith to give us what we still free is when good reasons for believing in the existence

and a certain mode of existence of the highest and last things can be found, to think

backwards, as from this could well go the motives and reasons in us.

Generally speaking, and as I said, the motives and reasons to believe in these


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things, that is, the last and highest spiritual existences, none other, than to any mental

existences, so things in general are; increased just about any other, culminated. And

why should we eventually higher and a supreme mind for less keep the existence of

certain as the existence of our neighboring spirits if we just increased corresponding

motives and reasons culminated find it. If they are, they can not be on hand and

surface, as for those of course, but it will apply to direct the look up and keep more inheight than when it is the belief in the neighboring ghost, without but, somehow to

leave the territory of the motives and reasons which have this belief. Also, there are

no obstacles that more objects the belief in higher spirits and the highest spirit in the

way, as the belief in the neighboring ghost, if it is not just those greater height of the

motives and reasons.

God sees no one, so why believe in it? But you see the soul of your brother? but

you believe it, so can any case the fact that you do not see a God to the world, are no

reason, less to believe in him, as in your brother's soul. From this it not even you ask

to see them, from God seem to require it some to believe in him, and because hemocks the desire, they mock God. A worm is quite different and moves quite

differently than you, but do you believe in a soul to the worm. So can the fact that the

world looks very different to you and your little lives do not nachtut the Great, no

reason lie less in a God to the world as a soul to the worm to believe. The worm but

has a erbrmlicheren body as you move and pathetic than you, so also do you think a

worm erbrmlichere soul than you. The world is an unspeakably larger and more

powerful than your body. Includes your body, your life, and even the history and

destiny of all peoples to self, and you're just a pathetic particles thereof. Could not

you then just as well believe in a higher spirit to the world sublime, as aerbrmlichere soul to the worm?

Now I would believe neither in the soul nor my fellow-men of the worm, if I had

not also positive reasons for that determination. Now we see purely for the

experience, what can ever believe in souls us to look further, how far back we find

the corresponding higher and higher in the faith.

We believe: 1) because our faith is planted it from childhood. Hindus and other raw

vegetable people also believe in souls because their faith is planted them from

childhood, we do not because we, the opposite is planted.

2) Because we need faith to other human souls find satisfaction in it, so could not

get along without virtually the same. In animal and plant souls souls this motif as the

other less claims and therefore also the belief is less common. Even animal souls are

denied or here and there.

3) Because the analogy conclusions experience ever reason based on the experience

corresponding ghost leaves us to take our minds in other bodies. We also require no

full similarity of other body with our body to accept soul in it, we require a good

feeling on points, of which we assume that they are characteristic of the soul

existence, with of course can still ask and argue and really fights what they are. Other motives to faith in the neighboring souls can not be found, just this, and no

other determining factors, which soon lead us to believe in our neighboring souls


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more of this, now of that side, but it is also that we are entitled to it unless it fairly be

taken, only that it can be argued that had completed their version and the wrong

decisions taken by the decision taken and can legally come into conflict with each

other and really come. The right version will finally be the one that removes the

conflict. Purely a priori grounds for that belief, not in the least support were based on

the above, and reasons at all, heraustrten from the above, there is not. But what is true in this respect for the faith of our neighbor souls, now we hereafter

the matter is quite as for the belief in the last and highest spirits and even the belief in

things of any kind Grasp general.

IV

Historical, practical and theoretical principle

of faith in general.

What name also like to wear the motives of faith and what it may apply also to

believe they carry themselves last on three back, I half distinction of brevity as ahistorical, practical and theoretical, and being only superficially, in order afterwards

to make the detailed, shortly be formulated.

Historical motif. One believes what is told us what was believed before us and is

believed to us.

Practical design . It is believed that pleases us to believe is, avails.

Theoretical design . One believes what one finds Determinants in experience and

reason.

None of these motives is informal reducible to the other. Although the historical

appears from some aspects, not an original, because that someone else may impart

my faith, he has itself been determining factors have to faith and the message of faith,

will be to ask for what, and when they again received in one of andersher can be

communication, it only moves the question further back, and then it seems only the

theoretical and practical design as the last events of the faith and the message of faith

to remain. But in terms of a specific belief in revelation, the first message from God

himself happened to mankind directly or by supernatural inspiration, after which the

historical subject would be the allerursprnglichste rather, and we let the whole dark

question of thefirstorigin of faith in humanity at page and ask how today the beliefcomes first to every person, it is nevertheless certain and will continue to find its

execution, that the child, which the faith of parents and teachers is informed not

accept him because of the theoretical and practical motif but simply assumes, because

it is given to him, so that in any case in particular, the historical subject is nowadays

for every person the most original.

Instead of a one-sided dependence of the other motifs is rather up to certain limits

change depending recognize all of each other. The whole design of the faith that has,

with output possibly developed by a long-lasting effect of the theoretical and

practical subject of a direct revelation, wears historically at once to the new entrants

into humanity. If the belief in each generated afresh by mere mediation of theoretical


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and practical subject, how weak, poor, and he would be ambiguous, even in a few as

he would ever come to pass. The whole religious capital of humanity as a whole and

to inherit large parts held together in human history continues. From other side, but if

not the theoretical and practical design to hold the faith to propagate and develop

themselves compelled, as its effect would deny the historical, the capital, where it

always initially descended to consume, disappear. It's like with the blood, and thebusy life of what is already there, gives strength and life and strength, not the food,

but can not draw power and strength of his life and of rotational himself from the

blood, and the food it needs.

So the historical subject would be able to little without the theoretical and practical

how to make and no one has actually reversed the development and design of faith

alone undertaken. But this co-and mess-operation of motives does not prevent but to

follow the mode of action of each independently and up to certain limits, so in order

to know what they work with and through each other, one must know what each

looks to his side.Especially since the match, which prove the three motifs generallyspeaking, cause faith at all and get in detail and with reference to the particular faith

does not exist. Rather, we see this in detail here, there, that motif vorwaltend or even

exclusively, even hostile to the other, escape, and the conflict of motives as likely as

their subsequent handling. When orthodox Catholicism and Protestantism is the

historical principle, the vast, the theoretical and the Neukatholizismus the

philosophical teachings of religion, the teachings of Confucius and the state religions,

such as practical. What the historical subject would have us believe, will often not

meet the practical and theoretical, by reason neither conducive to our salvation, nor in

the nature of things appears to us. From other side, nothing more common than thecovenant of the historical and practical motif against the theoretical subject and

therefore nothing more common than the dispute between faith and the knowledge,

and then nothing more common than that one of the triangles, the other two will bend

under his yoke. Thus, the historical in unilateral arrogance calls the once solid Gone

and it would be the Heilloseste as necessary to salvation, and want the whole science

lead on the ropes, the practical determined and monitored according to his purposes,

the teachers and the teaching, sets the direction of the historical reproduction of faith

and the influence of science on it, and suggested the theoretical and historical

quibbles sources faith in his sense of the goodness and sacrifice of truth.

Not only with each other to fight the three motifs, each also with themselves, and

how the dispute is often harder than the sects of the religions to which they subject

themselves, it is with the hassles of motives.

So argues the historical motif in the belief in the Koran and the Bible, there again

the faith of the Shi'ites and Sunnis, here the faith of the pope, to Luther and Calvin,

the practical in the design of faith the part of the priests and rulers to own benefit and

salvation of all the favor here and there that this side of the benefit, the theoretical in

the philosophical doctrines, there is so much of her.

The overall result of human faith is the result of the interaction with and against

each of the three motifs with each other and in themselves. It remains on the whole a


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positive result huge, so the mutually opposing action of the motifs themselves

contributes to make it huge. It is the case of the ever changing and fluctuating, to be

filled again through evaporation itself, all the more powerful by the fight of his

waves, sea. Whatever goes into it in detail and staggers, it stays on the whole an

eternal sea, from which all the rivers draw secretly to pour the scooped the goals of

the barrel back into it. And even what is running one against another, but hangstogether and basically the whole.

Here and there occurs a materialist and says: There is no God. That is, it shall be

additional to the small bucket of his conclusion to exploit the sea and pour away. It

has existed from the beginning and will exist forever, like the small bucket to scoop

tired, and what they pay out, running through the air back to sea.

Matter of history and ethnography of religious belief, it must be to follow the rule

of three motifs that faith through the centuries and nations, and the reasons for its

special design in the influence of the historical precedents, reciprocal linkages,

relationships with nature, plants and needs consult the people on these motifs and to

consider a wider perspective, a matter of great interest, but which is not the task

here. Before you can trace the causes which have driven forth faith in humanity, in

broad terms, it is important to determine their own nature and their relationship to

each other with clarity, and this is the first task. For this purpose, but they are, above

all, to take as the eye, where they present the observation immediately clear and

beyond doubt, that is how they act in the consciousness of men that do not like it

about in a consciousness of God, or general world order or the idea of history and

things roots, which we like but last search their roots or the reason of their general

train.

For it is thus that we are up to the individual effect of the same in the people

coming down with the consideration of the motives of faith, not to say that the belief

in humanity was created by an atomistic summation of subjects in each man: but only

say that the generally higher, reaching up, reasons driven forth the faith in humanity

that they may be, have been made in each under the influence of the same people

standing as these motifs claims, but only that communicate directly with the

experience; only of these, we can even draw conclusions on the nature of the general

reasons and that thus characterize as otherwise dark lasting, through their effects. So

on this is first addressing the eye, not to start with mystical and idle speculation,which only to inferential presuppose that of the motives and reasons, which it is not

only free, but it turns out of course the need of the work of the ascend into the

motives for people in general caster of humanity, which we will eventually find only

believed in the existence of a supreme and last things themselves.

So is not excluded with our experiential observation of nature and work of the

motifs in their detail, their combinations and conflicts, a coherent story, and higher

conception of their work in humanity, nor replaced, but prepared and underpinned,

and the conclusion in a higher believes will be entirely devoted to the progress of the

following considerations by themselves.

Each of the three motifs can be uplifting to a real, pronounceable in an argument,


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collect reason, and thus the fluctuation, the division, the conflict, the straying and

confusion, though it remains nothing more than what we said, the highest

generalization, summary, top, clarification, correction position, completion of a short

side and relevant restriction of the other side of a corresponding motif. Each of the

three arguments is sufficient for himself, to justify the faith and keep, but only insofar

as each is collected to the main aspects and make the other subservient may, insofaras it but the other needs, and likewise returned to service the other can occur, the faith

eventually receives the full support only by the unanimous vote of the three, so one

should keep only be fully justified him.

It can be shown that one has the right to be based on what breaks down in history,

and even hint of what is punctured in the future, to look into the recent swing to, but

just by showing that just merely that which corresponds to the reason and nature of

things and the needs of the people, may eventually penetrate and gain support, and

even there is a continuing tendency. It can be shown that it is right to keep the best for

the most true, but to come to the knowledge of what is best for all and for all time, theFuens is needed on the historically developed knowledge thereof and the departing

reasonable insight into the nature of people and things. It can be shown that it is right,

not only as good, but above all and above all to demand in consideration of the

highest and last things the sensible and Fairest for the experiential nature of things as

in the smallest and vulgar, but how limited is the individual reason and experiential

knowledge of the nature of things, so it will apply again to rely on the historically

Applicable, and on which to base with that, as the most correct knowledge of what is

to us the best used in our relations to reverse what serves us best, which is most

correct. Any dispute between the historical, practical and theoretical motives and raises and

resolves itself finally into the historical, practical and theoretical reason, within each

of them, and the battle carries in itself the conditions of the solution.

In vain we tried to support the faith to the point of one of the three reasons

alone. The revelation believer who wishes to rely solely on direct revelation from

God, but must justify the validity of revelation for themselves and others through the

practical point of view that such a belief especially the otherwise disclose or properly

called, is the best. He who seeks the best religion for all, he says, that he the religion

of love, All the best wishes to all, had invented himself, if he had not found them byChrist? So he needs but the historical support. Or he sees around at the thousands of

BC and the nations round about, if it was so easy to invent this religion. Rather, only

that he himself was brought up in it, was the highest practical point find it and let

them make. And who wants to build solely on reason and experience, he looked

around at the free communities and materialists who just have this principle, but this

principle, how much he still finds faith in God and eternal life there.

Rather than discard one of the three building stone, we have to put it to the vault,

but we need to lift the stones individually.

V.

The historical principle.


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A man says to the other. This is the short term of the historical principle. Oral,

written, it is the same. In this way, the faith of the people propagates to the

people. But how he first came to mankind?

From the first you can only go anywhere if you know it, but must begin with the

later times, when you do not know it, and see if you can find it on the first circuit

means. The closing agent to the first emergence of faith but will always remain souncertain as to the first generation, the first state, the first development of man

himself, and the decision between the very opposite hypotheses are the about only

thing is always want to be a belief, but we do not believe the reasons in general here,

but know. So we move at least that question to come back later with some out, and

instead of asking first how faith first came to mankind, we must first ask just how he

first comes to every person nowadays.

It is with the emergence of faith as with all things. In all things, the first emergence

of the way and is a distinction to be significantly different, such as the emergence of

the thing repeats itself. The Incurred once saves so to say the means and costs of its

first emergence in the new creation, where not all but the largest and most important

part, it contains by the repetition of the conditions of existence to say in his life with

so canceled.

What was not among them, a statue, a painting, a poem to create a erstesmal. If the

work once there, it is easy to cast a thousand times, copied, printed, and recite.

Only after thousands, probably millions, billions of years that the earth is, could

result in a human couple. Was only one there, so it was easy to populate the earth, and

soon it will be hard to defend their overpopulation. Like the languages originated, nobody knows, and nobody would be able to invent

it's new, and now they are invented every child learns to play.

What it costs many times for emergency, to light the fire in the stove. If it burns

once you take in care that does not burn the house.

To produce a disease, generally exceeds the human art to dampen a disease no less.

In the all you can by reason of being the first to ask, and you will not find it often,

the reason of existence is easy to find later, he is simply in what is already there.

It is so with all things, there is also the belief that.

As the faith is first created, nobody knows, can you think about this and that

already. One can also ask whether it would be possible to find it's on New or

invent. Now he is once formed, true or false, he propagates that man is propagated as

the language propagates how the fire propagates, as the infection propagates. And the

man asks why he believes it is one that may not be the last, and whole, but the next

one and an important part of the whole apt, the answer: Because was believed before

me and is believed to me.

In fact, you would be mistaken strong when it was thought that the man believed tomerely conclusions or need. Rather, each person already starts to believe until only

place you can make reason and need contends, and the belief is probably the majority


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of people, regardless of continued only through persistence. Again, this is not the

belief in the highest and last things peculiar, he is just not the exception from what is

generally.

No one is born with belief in God, but anyone with such a general and

unconditional conditioning to believe everything you tell him, born, it is quite natural

that he believes in God, when he says of such and therefore for every people, becausemore or less unanimous education influences of lying, also has a more or less

matching, behaved differently from that of other peoples different beliefs.

In fact, you can the child, and that every child, almost do everything Any

white. Say to the child: The moon is the same fall from heaven, and it will look to the

sky and expect that it falls. Tell him: This dog will begin to speak the same, it will

last manned, and only wonder that he does not start.

Is not So perhaps humanity in their childhood faith in God knows been made, and

shall be continued only because it is made know to Use New every child, and the mannot just as has the opportunity from the non-existence of God on the to convince

clouds as the moon does not fall and the dog does not talk. Especially if you make

him to know the thunder is God's voice from the clouds, and this and to support the

faith through faith?The child is thus rather believe, the more one expects of him to

believe.

To all belief, which is implanted in the child, the child does not require reasons, so

it would not understand reasons. Also, it is not the beauty, the grandeur, the

wholesomeness, the Trstlichkeit of faith, whereby it is determined to believe. It feels

even more firmly in ghosts, the more it makes you afraid. The matter may simply bepsychological: it learns the word, understand the speech only by attachment to facts;

now it ties conversely, the fact of the word, speech. Or: The child makes all the adults

so long after, until it has acquired through imitating the skills and abilities to go

beyond that, and does so much to say of myself in him by. So also faith by the adults

in the child makes. I like to leave it but that someone summarize the psychological

basis of the fact even deeper. Here it is only the fact as a reason which is also the

reason of the fact.

Instead of having to learn the faith until the child must unlearn the faith, and that

happens gradually when the man repeatedly hears the word may lie. Then the self-evidence of the association of the real triggers of the word on, gradually weakens the

faith, and can last even into Fold the opposite. But the more a person remains on the

child's level, and part of the people remains always close it, the more it continues the

uncritical belief. The women especially in matters of faith always remain children,

and the faith of the masses can be of any prophet with a sufficiently strong voice,

gesture and lead lively power of speech as a water stream through a trough.

Especially in the field of things, where no experience, no detection of an error by

the facts is possible. Then, save the faith of the people if it is pushed out to all areas

of experience. And the less ignorant of the reasons for his faith and has the less heunderstood the reasons for it, the sooner he can kill it and he beats other for dead,

because then you can also make the less counter-arguments against claims.


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But he whose mind is matured by experience and thought, who has learned to

doubt the influence of the historical subject is not revoked, the opinion to him, and

the authority over him involuntary exerts a power over him, and not easily go back to

the lost all faith that was implanted in him as a child, but determines itself

involuntarily much of the training of his mind and his conclusions.

Especially if it is things that exceed the scope of each circuit, with all hisexperience, and we even see many of the sharpest thinkers after vain struggle to

determine the true and the best in the field of the highest and last things by his own

reason, and finally it Despairing, submit to Use New with conscious will of the power

of the historical principle, which promises to give them back the peace and

confidence of the child. So, the end returns to the output.

Here we see how the practical design shall be added to revitalize and strengthen the

historical. Also look for the self, the plant the faith to someone else to make it

plausible by concurrence of the other motives, but if this is supported by the historical

motif of the other motifs, the reverse is equally true. The people, the child will be

offered reasons of faith, tied his salvation to faith, and the reasons it believes,

believes the promise, the threat without their own examination believes all historical.

I will bring an example of how I read it:

"The Old Man of the Mountain was (in the times of the Crusades), the head of a

degenerate sect of Muslims who lived in the mountains between Damascus and

Antioch, and whose name Heissassin (Assassin) has become the general term for

assassins in many European languages. The followers of the Old Man of the

Mountains revered him as a living God or as a God-man, in which the deity wasembodied. they fulfilled children of the tenderest age with such a strong and lively

faith in the divinity of the Old Man of the Mountains and the merit of blind obedience

to his commands, that many would rather die than wanted to live, and no scruple to

throw down at his behest of rock or towers or to plunge into another inevitable

dangers of life. If you won the Old Man of the Mountains with money, so he sent

assassins before their daggers certainly was not a king in the depths of his palace, not

a military leader at the center of his warriors. Heissassins murdered the King Conrad

of Jerusalem, and many others both Christian and Moslem princes and lords., the

fanatical murderer feared the unermeidlichsten and cruel death, not because they hadthe firm hope that they immediately awaken to the bliss of paradise again, or as a

beautiful, strong, happy people would be born again. " (Meinert's History of Relig IS

338,. Arnold III to VII c 149 p 148 p 204 10 Even Marin I. 297 ff.....)

Here you can see how the blindest submission could be generated in the will of a

superior, the boldest energy and the staunchest toleration by the moored hope for an

afterlife, this was but even creates all the way to the historic Prinzipe by the mere

early implantation, and how here with the poorest faith it is different with the ward,

which we consider to be the best.

In such a way we see the faith of the elders pass to the children in the schools,spread from the pulpit, by missionaries, by true and false prophets, and apostles,

continue on and on. And the more he has already spread, so he finds it easier to


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further spread, like fire, grab the infection easier to get, the further they have to be

used. Who can still do last stop?

To influence the propagation of the faith enters the equally powerful duration. To

what parents, ancestors, the first parents believed, dare not easily doubt. Gradually

grow together as the faith with their whole being and life of the people, that it would

have to give up themselves to abandon him, and really almost always gives him onlywith his subjugation and destruction. The best reasons to fail the solidified faith,

safer, depending untriftiger the faith, because faith is itself a major source close to the

reasons and manner, especially in his own stuff. And so the faith of the individual is

held by the connection at the same time with the whole faith to him and before him.

"The more we - as I read in a mission reports from Amoy in China 1) - are known to

the people, the more apparent to us is the powerful influence that the prevailing

superstition and fear to call by opposition to same as a nerd put on them.'s the simple

fact that idolatry has been common for centuries among them, a very sufficient proof

that they completely over raises the need to test for the vast majority of the lower

classes. "

1) Calw Missionsbl. 1847 1 July. No. 13th

And elsewhere 2) : "I made a Brahmans on the upside of idolatry attention,

whereupon he replied. So did our forefathers, and we must do it well, no real

Bramahne can leave the religion of his fathers Each tribe has its own religion, Padre

(missionaries) theirs and ours that we. "

2) In a letter Dr. Haug's. from Pune in western East Indies. 7 Sept., 1861. Abroad in 1862. No. 5

But what has he, now the unbeliever asks for a reason, a faith for value and claims

to validity, which takes place in this manner all the way to the same principle as fire

and plague its spread through humanity, a belief that its main root in the credulity has

adopted the Child and the people without understanding, spread by those who do not

have it often himself, and remains so confident as childish and effeminate, the foolish

man remains who cherishes him, and capture of the rational only is by sacrificing

reason. Do not have thousands and thousands of errors and tales spread in the sameway, and yet we see the faith of the peoples, he is not fully manifest error and fairy

tales? And a belief does not contradict the other? The poets, priests and rulers have

invented it, and now he goes around the world.

These objections are on the surface, but let's go a little deeper.

It is true that faith is accepted by everyone without first reasons: it does not require

the theoretical and practical subject, but will not be detained without reason in

general. Of the Child, in lower elementary and peoples layers yes, but that's not what

keeps him in the long run. The child is not child forever, the nations grow, and in

every nation grow some over the others, and some of the people on the other up, andthe adults have dominion over the children and the faith of the children and of the

part of the people which remains on the child's level. In adults, but the faith has to


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pass his samples. You know he is not often in detail, but it is and it is always a

whole. He has survived a French revolution, he has a year were 1848, he survived the

attack of the materialists of all time, and he will be all over. And if some sacrifice

after a long test of reason even reason to believe, it must still be the reason apart from

the most important reasons for faith itself. If above all priests and rulers strive to

plant it, if even those striving to plant it, do not do it themselves, so there must bevery broad and compelling reasons for binding to plant him. So let's historic

reproduction in itself a reason more adequately to hold the fort planted to be true, but

it may have returned to the community and the necessity of reproduction in general

and compelling reasons.

And again, if the historically propagated belief in general is full of errors and fairy

tales, and faith against the other runs, the specific provisions and arrangements of the

faith of the general and essential points are to be distinguished thereof. The relative

agreement about the fact that it is a divine overand otherworldly to give the human

this world, and that man's highest and ultimate salvation was put into the relationshipto develop, through all the ages and nations is quite wonderful. So also must therefor,

not for the Changing and Competing in the belief that a general validity and force of

reasons is required. And as much as we like to give special form of the price of faith,

we have therefore not abandon all faith. One should not pour baby with the

bathwater; God will pour you out with the bathwater?

The great achievement of the contradictions that appear in knowledge, is not to lift

the knowledge, but to promote it, because every solution of a contradiction

knowledge walks up the steps. Should it be different in faith?

To say that the story of God and the afterlife has spread like any other mythical and

bears the stamp of any other fable, as the very fact of the distribution itself is thus in

contradiction and even how much else Where is the fable, the tale otherwise obtained

such distribution, such duration so firm belief would have produced. While there are

probably some children's fairy tales and fables that one since ages in India told as

with us, but these are also very special rarities, their distribution is only very poorly

against the Faith of God, and what is the main thing that everyone keeps them. fables

in India and here Rather, the historical subject would be able, not to spread the great

fable of God and the afterlife so far so long to get into power, if it would really be a

fable. For here the following observation occurs, appropriate to finally lead us to theargument from design.

Error and truth have in common that they can reproduce historical, and that the

spread is all the easier, the farther it has taken root, the belief holds the easier the

longer it has been held, but it is the difference that goes with the truth indefinitely,

with the error of only up to certain limits, by the true faith, how it spreads, somewhat

resistant helpful and conducive to something resistant to going against the wrong

thing, and with the proliferation Duration of faith also grows and finally needed

outweighs the benefit of the true faith. And it's not hard to find.

Why do we call a belief true and good? Because it is the nature of things and the

needs of the people. Why wrong and bad? Because he that is in conflict. What


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follows already a priori ? The more the faith spread and the longer it lasts, the more

opportunity it will offer and find to develop his correspondence or his conflict with

the nature of things and of men, and to prove, to the same main effects and

consequences arise only develop in accordance with its scope and duration. From the

correspondence is an advantageforfrom the conflict a counteraction againstmust

emerge his distant dissemination and longer preservation, which grows with thespread and duration. In a word, it is the ratio of the theoretical and practical principle,

which determines the final success. The historical principle is in itself the good and

bad, true and false beliefs equal stead, but it is related to it in an opposite situation to

the theoretical and practical Prinzipe. The ultimate goal is to match all in all

relationships, and they can be found only in a true and good faith rather than

definitive.

It is also here with faith as with fire. Caught fire so much easier to get, the more it

has already resorted to, but also consumed the easier his substance, and would long

be considered on the earth, if not always nachwchse new substance. Thus, a beliefthat the substance does not always re-grows from the nature of things and a true and

general needs of the people who do not persist in the length. The longer it endures,

the more he has resorted to himself, the more his conflicts with the nature of people

and things develop its adverse effects accumulate and spread, the closer he moves his

turning points, and so we see any error, fall fable after another, but the truth is

consolidating more and strengthen, gain greater and firmer ground.

Each and every evil bad faith in faith once reached to any time those turning point

beyond which his distant spread and its duration increases the farther its decline over

the conditions of its growth. Then begins when it is the belief of employees by verygeneral terms, to the whole belief au sick. The initially powerless against the power

of the historical principle persons struggling theoretical and practical principles are

gaining ground, the more, the more they themselves with new weapons of the

historical principle of the quantity torrent cutting or compelling power of speech and

deeds can waffnen. Unbelief, in those times, where the historic principle loses its old

power back time looking here and there, outstrip the faith, while a flock of old

creditors opposed to the tighter and tighter together chart him under the flag of the

historical principle, until finally the decided defeat of disbelief and the overgrowth of

the old faith by the new yourself. And it's no different with the temporary weakeningof faith in the periods of transition to such as the streams flow for a time more

economical to swell after the stronger.

So many foolish and harmful belief would not even last as long and spread so far if

it does not collapse executed with mostly good and true, and both could be so easy

and simple divorced, has struck again in connection to the people root. Only one in

the whole and true faith can improve the existing ones are overthrown, and that is the

need to overcome all the power of persistence, which gives the historical principle of

the once existing beliefs. Only closer not watched in themselves, but in virtue of his

connection with some predominantly truths and goods, and not on, so the paradoxthat the foolish and harmful in one faith through the theoretical and practical

principle, while it is running, but can be kept arises forever, but until the master in the


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whole and finds bessseren truer faith.

From other side, the historical principle also comes into conflict with itself by is the

nature of the wrong and bad faith itself to rest on unilateral determination and reasons

therefore generally not be able to. So faith starts against the faith to

three motives and reasons the faith.-english-gustav theodor fechner

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