172 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



be denied that in his case also a certain dualism 

 becomes evident, a general aspect being frequently only 

 a ready-made logical category, in which the single facts 

 are caught as in a loop, being like a label externally 

 attached to them." ^ 



Strauss was well aware that historical criticism forms 

 only one side of the critical process, that it must be 

 supplemented by philosophical criticism. Ever since 

 Jacobi and Schleiermacher raised the question as to the 

 psychological origin and essence of faith and religion, 

 it has become indispensable for every philosopher to 

 answer the question regarding the nature of re- 

 ligion and its relation to other mental processes. The 

 conception which Schleiermacher insisted on, that faith 

 has an independent origin in the human soul alongside 

 of the intellectual and active powers, that, in conse- 

 quence, religion occupies a region for itself among human 

 interests, was for a long time lost sight of, owing to 

 the absence of a truer and fuller psychology. Notably 

 in the philosophy of Hegel, religion was looked upon as 

 a purely intellectual process, which process found its 

 consummation in philosophy. Belief was an inferior 

 stage in the development of thought, which must be 

 superseded by knowledge. This process of the self- 

 destruction of faith in its progress towards knowledge 

 was worked out by Strauss in detail in his second great 

 work, on ' Christian Dogmatics in their Historical 

 Development and in their Battle with Modern Science.' 

 In this work he tries to show how the general process 



^ Carl Schwarz, ' Zur Geschichte der Neuesten Tlieologie ' (3rd ed., p. 

 149, &c.) 



