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THE EGO AND HIS OWN

longer called a " holy " one, but a " human " one. If
morality has conquered, then a complete--change of
masters has taken place.

After the annihilation of faith Feuerbach thinks to

put in to the supposedly safe harbor of love. " The
first and highest law must be the love of man to man.
Homo homini Deus est--this is the supreme practical
maxim, this the turning point of the world's history."*
But, properly speaking, only the god is changed,--
the deus ; love has remained : there love to the super-
human God, here love to the human God, to homo as
Deus. Therefore man is to me--sacred. And every-
thing " truly human " is to me--sacred! " Marriage
is sacred of itself. And so it is with all moral rela-
tions. Friendship is and must be sacred for you, and
property, and marriage, and the good of every man,
but sacred in and of itself." Haven't we the priest
again there ? Who is his God ? Man with a great
M ! What is the divine ? The human ! Then the
predicate has indeed only been changed into the sub-
ject, and, instead of the sentence " God is love," they
say " love is divine "; instead of " God has become
man," " Man has become God," etc. It is nothing
more or less than a new--religion. " All moral rela-
tions are ethical, are cultivated with a moral mind,
only where of themselves (without religious consecra-
tion by the priest's blessing) they are counted reli-
gious." Feuerbach's proposition, "Theology is an-
thropology," means only " religion must be ethics,
ethics alone is religion."

*"Essence of Christianity," second edition, p 402

403.

MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 75

Altogether Feuerbach accomplishes only a trans-

position of subject and predicate, a giving of prefer-
ence to the latter. But, since he himself says, " Love
is not (and has never been considered by men) sacred
through being a predicate of God, but it is a predicate
of God because it is divine in and of itself," he might
judge that the fight against the predicates themselves,
against love and all sanctities, must be commenced.
How could he hope to turn men away from God when
he left them the divine ? And if, as Feuerbach says,
God himself has never been the main thing to them,
but only his predicates, then he might have gone on
leaving them the tinsel longer yet, since the doll, the
real kernel, was left at any rate. He recognizes, too,
that with him it is " only a matter of annihilating an
illusion " ; * he thinks, however, that the effect of the
illusion on men is " downright ruinous, since even
love, in itself the truest, most inward sentiment, be-
comes an obscure, illusory one through religiousness,
since religious love loves man only for God's sake,
therefore loves man only apparently, but in truth God
only." Is this different with moral love ? Does it
love the man, this man for this man's sake, or for mo-
rality's sake, for Man's sake, and so--for homo homini
Deus--for God's sake ?

The wheels in the head have a number of other

formal aspects, some of which it may be useful to in-
dicate here.

Thus self-renunciation is common to the holy with

* P. 408

[Literally " the man "]