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108
THE EGO AND HIS OWN
pertaining to things, figures to himself in truth only
what pertains to things. But truth is spirit, stuff al-
together inappreciable by the senses, and therefore
only for the "higher consciousness," not for that which
is " earthly-minded."
With Luther, accordingly, dawns the perception
that truth, because it is a thought, is only for the
thinking man. And this is to say that man must
henceforth take an utterly different standpoint,
viz., the heavenly, believing, scientific standpoint,
or that of thought in relation to its object, the--
thought,--that of mind in relation to mind. Con-
sequently: only the like apprehend the like. " You
are like the spirit that you understand."*
Because Protestantism broke the mediaeval hier-
archy, the opinion could take root that hierarchy in
general had been shattered by it, and it could be
wholly overlooked that it was precisely a " reforma-
tion," and so a reinvigoration of the antiquated hier-
archy. That mediaeval hierarchy had been only a
weakly one, as it had to let all possible barbarism of
unsanctified things run on uncoerced beside it, and it
was the Reformation that first steeled the power of
hierarchy. If Bruno Bauer thinks: " As the Re-
formation was mainly the abstract rending of the re-
ligious principle from art, State, and science, and so
its liberation from those powers with which it had
joined itself in the antiquity of the church and in the
hierarchy of the Middle Ages, so too the theological
and ecclesiastical movements which proceeded from the
* [Goethe, " Faust "]
" Anekdota," II, 152.
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 109
Reformation are only the consistent carrying out of
this abstraction of the religious principle from the
other powers of humanity," I regard precisely the op-
posite as correct, and think that the dominion of
spirits, or freedom of mind (which comes to the same
thing), was never before so all-embracing and all-
powerful, because the present one, instead of rending
the religious principle from art, State, and science,
lifted the latter altogether out of secularity into the
" realm of spirit " and made them religious.
Luther and Descartes have been appropriately put
side by side in their " He who believes is a God " and
" I think, therefore I am " (cogito, ergo sum). Man's
heaven is thought,--mind. Everything can be
wrested from him, except thought, except faith.
particular faith, like faith in Zeus, Astarte, Jehovah,
Allah, etc., may be destroyed, but faith itself is in-
destructible. In thought is freedom. What I need
and what I hunger for is no longer granted to me by
any grace, by the Virgin Mary, by intercession of the
saints, or by the binding and loosing church, but I
procure it for myself. In short, my being (the sum)
is a living in the heaven of thought, of mind, a
cogitare. But I myself am nothing else than mind,
thinking mind (according to Descartes), believing
mind (according to Luther). My body I am not;
my flesh may suffer from appetites or pains. I am
not my flesh, but I am mind, only mind.
This thought runs through the history of the Re-
formation till to-day.
Only by the more modern philosophy since
Descartes has a serious effort been made to bring