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110
THE EGO AND HIS OWN
Christianity to complete efficacy, by exalting the
" scientific consciousness " to be the only true and
valid one. Hence it begins with absolute doubt, du-
bitare, with grinding common consciousness to atoms,
with turning away from everything that "mind,"
" thought," does not legitimate. To it Nature counts
for nothing; the opinion of men, their " human pre-
cepts," for nothing: and it does not rest till it has
brought reason into everything, and can say " The
real is the rational, and only the rational is the real."
Thus it has at last brought mind, reason, to victory;
and everything is mind, because everything is rational,
because all nature, as well as even the perversest opin-
ions of men, contains reason ; for " all must serve for
the best," i. e. lead to the victory of reason.
Descartes's dubitare contains the decided statement
that only cogitare, thought, mind,--is. A complete
break with " common " consciousness, which ascribes
reality to irrational things ! Only the rational is,
only mind is ! This is the principle of modern phil-
osophy, the genuine Christian principle. Descartes in
his own time discriminated the body sharply from the
mind, and " the spirit 'tis that builds itself the body,"
says Goethe.
But this philosophy itself, Christian philosophy, still
does not get rid of the rational, and therefore inveighs
against the "merely subjective," against " fancies,
fortuities, arbitrariness," etc. What it wants is that
the divine should become visible in everything, and all
consciousness become a knowing of the divine, and
man behold God everywhere; but God never is, with-
out the devil.
MEN OF THE OLD TIME AND THE NEW 111
For this very reason the name of philosopher is not
to be given to him who has indeed open eyes for the
things of the world, a clear and undazzled gaze, a cor-
rect judgment about the world, but who sees in the
world just the world, in objects only objects, and, in
short, everything prosaically as it is; but he alone is a
philosopher who sees, and points out or demonstrates,
heaven in the world, the supernal in the earthly, the--
divine in the mundane. The former may be ever so
wise, there is no getting away from this:
What wise men see not by their wisdom's art
Is practised simply by a childlike heart.*
It takes this childlike heart, this eye for the divine, to
make a philosopher. The first-named man has only a
" common " consciousness, but he who knows the
divine, and knows how to tell it, has a " scientific "
one. On this ground Bacon was turned out of the
realm of philosophers. And certainly what is called
English philosophy seems to have got no further than
to the discoveries of so-called " clear heads," such as
Bacon and Hume. The English did not know how to
exalt the simplicity of the childlike heart to philo-
sophic significance, did not know how to make--phil-
osophers out of childlike hearts. This is as much as
to say, their philosophy was not able to become theo-
logical or theology, and yet it is only as theology that
it can really live itself out, complete itself. The field
of its battle to the death is in theology. Bacon did
not trouble himself about theological questions and
cardinal points.
· [Schiller, " Die Worte des Glaubens "]