OF THE GOOD. 



199 



of Christianity, but in general to a discussion of the 

 religious problem, was Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872), 

 who, in a series of writings, but notably in his 'Essence 

 of Christianity' (1840), took up and established the 

 anthropological view of the movement of thought in 

 opposition to the theological. According to this view 

 all development centres and is intelligible to us only 

 within the limits of human experience, 1 be it physi- 

 cal or spiritual. This limit or circle we cannot 

 transcend. All philosophy and all science is therefore 

 doomed to be immanent and not transcendent ; the 

 centre is man and not God. The great influence of 

 Feuerbach's earlier writings is not least to be attri- 

 buted to the fact that he was the first 2 among German 

 philosophers in recent times who expounded his ideas 



1 Anticipating what I have 

 termed the "synoptic" view, he 

 maintained that the object of 

 thought must at the same titue 

 be an object of " sight." He does 

 not use this term, but the word 

 ^Esthetic, taking it no doubt in the 

 sense in which it was used by Kant 

 in his First Critique. He main- 

 tained that you can convince man 

 of a truth only if you change it 

 from " a thing of reason, an Ens 

 rationis, to a thing of sense." (Pref. 

 to vol. i. of ' Collected Works,' 1846, 

 p. viii.) 



2 This remark is hardly correct 

 if we consider that Schopenhauer's 

 great work, written in a splendid 

 style, was published twenty years 

 earlier. Remaining, however, quite 

 unknown, it had no influence on 

 German philosophical thought till 

 much later. Feuerbach's earlier 

 writings are mostly historical, on 

 Bacon, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, 

 and Bayle. They were published 

 between the years 1833 and 1838. 

 They show, as he himself, in the 



Preface to the first volume of his 

 'Collected Works' (1846), points 

 out, the gradual development of 

 his own views from a pantheistic, 

 through an individualistic, to a 

 purely anthropological or naturalis- 

 tic creed. He himself admits that 

 in these works he developed, "under 

 other names, his own ideas." He 

 also confesses that the political 

 state of Germany had "a great 

 but by no means commendable 

 influence " on his writing. This 

 latter influence became still more 

 striking when, at the request of 

 his friend Arnold Ruge (1802-1880), 

 he joined the staff of the ' Hallesche 

 Jahrbiicher,' the journal which had 

 been started in opposition to the 

 ' Berliner Jahrbiicher, ' and became 

 the leading contributor. His 

 earliest contributions, reprinted in 

 the first volume of his ' Collected 

 Works,' refer mostly to religious 

 subjects and the Hegelian philo- 

 sophy, and show how he adopted 

 and perfected the pamphleteering 

 style referred to in the text. 



