270 PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION 



lore; seeking to gather the still existing characteristic customs and 

 forms, legends, stories, and sayings, in order to compose these and to 

 discover the survivals of earliest religion, poetry, and civilization of 

 humanity. The gain of this study pursued with so great diligence is 

 not to be underrated. These studies show that all that, which at one 

 time existed as faith in the spirit of humanity, possessed within its 

 very nature the strongest power of continuance, so that in new and 

 strange conditions and in other forms it continued to remain. Under 

 all changes and progress of history there is still found an unbroken 

 connection of constant development. 



As important, however, as the possession of a general knowledge 

 of historical forms of development is to the philosophy of religion, 

 nevertheless the possession of this knowledge is not wholly a fulfill- 

 ment of the purpose of the philosophy of religion. To understand a 

 development means not merely to know how one thing follows as the 

 result of the other, but also to understand the law which lies at the 

 foundation of all empirical changes and at the same time controls 

 the end of the development. If this principle holds good in the 

 understanding of the development in the processes of nature, much 

 more does the principle hold good in understanding the proce'sses of 

 intellectual development of humanity, which have for us not only 

 a theoretical, but at the same time an eminently practical interest. 

 The philosopher of religion sees in religious history not merely the 

 coming together of similar forms, but an advance from the lowest 

 stage of childlike ignorance to an ever purer and richer realization 

 of the idea of religion, a divinely ordained progress for the education 

 of humanity from the slavery of nature to the freedom of the spirit. 

 The question now arises: where do we find the principle and law of 

 this ever-rising development? Where do we find the measure of 

 judgment for the relative value of religious appearances? It is clear 

 that the general principle of the complete development cannot be 

 found in a single fact which is only one of the many manifestations 

 of the general principle, and it is just as clear that the absolute 

 norm of judgment is not found in a single fact always relative, 

 presenting to us the object of judgment and therefore being impos- 

 sible to stand as the norm of judgment. Therefore the principle of 

 religious development and the norm of its judgment can only be 

 found in the inner being of the spirit of humanity, namely, in the 

 necessary striving of the mind into an harmonious arrangement of 

 all our conceptions, or the idea of the truth, and into the complete 

 order of all our purposes, or the idea of the good. These ideas unite 

 in the highest unity, in the Idea of God. Therefore the consciousness 

 of God is the revelation of the original innate longing of reason after 

 complete unity as a principle of universal harmony and consistence in 

 all our thinking and willing. Hence, in the first place, arises the result 



