From his replies to questions put by the German Ethical Society.

NEITHER philosophy nor science can institute the relation of man to the universe, because such reciprocity must have existence before any kind of science or philosophy can begin; since each investigates phenomena by means of the intellect, and independent of the position or sensations of the investigator; whereas the relation of man to the universe is defined, not by the intellect alone, but by his sensitive perception aided by all his spiritual powers. However much one may assure and instruct a man that all real existence is an idea; that matter is made up of atoms; that the essence of life is corporality or will; that heat, light, movement, electricity are different manifestations of one and the same energy, one cannot thereby explain to a being with pains, pleasures, fears, and hopes, his position in the universe. That position and his consequent relation to the universe is explained only by religion, which says, “The universe exists for thee, and therefore take from life all that thou canst obtain”; or else, “Thou art one of the chosen people of God; serve that people, and accomplish the instructions of that God, and thou and thy people shall be partakers of the highest bliss”; or else, “Thou art the instrument of a supreme will, which has sent thee into the universe to accomplish a work predestined for thee; learn that will, and do it, for that is the sole perfection thou canst achieve.”

  To understand philosophy and science one needs study and preparation, but neither is required for the understanding of religion: that is at once comprehensible to every man, whatever his ignorance and limitations. A man need acquire neither philosophy nor science to understand his relation to the universe, or to its source; a superfluity of knowledge, encumbering his consciousness, is rather an impediment; but he must renounce, if only for the time, the vanity of the world, and acquire a sense of his material frailty and of truth, which are, as the Gospels tell us, to be found most often in children and in the simplest, most unlearned, of men. For this reason we see the most simple, ignorant, and untaught men accept clearly, consciously, and easily the highest Christian conception of life, whereas the most learned and cultured linger in crude heathenism. As, for example, we observe men of refinement and education whose conception of existence is the acquirement of personal pleasure or security from pain, as with the shrewd and cultured Schopenhauer, or in the salvation of the soul by sacraments and means of grace, as with learned bishops of the Church; whereas an almost illiterate sectarian peasant in Russia, without the slightest mental effort, achieves the same conception of life as was accomplished by the greatest sages of the world—Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca—namely, the consciousness of one’s being as the instrument of the will of God—the son of God.

  But you may ask me: In what, then, does the essence of this unscientific and unphilosophical knowledge consist? If it be neither scientific nor philosophical, of what sort is it? How is it to be defined? To these questions I can only reply that as religious knowledge is that which precedes, and upon which is founded, every other knowledge, it cannot be defined; there being no essential term of definition in existence. In theological language this knowledge is called revelation. And this word, if we do not give it any mystic meaning, is quite accurate; because this knowledge is not acquired by study, nor by the efforts of individuals, but through the reception by them of the manifestation of the Infinite Mind, which, little by little, discloses itself to men. Why is it that ten thousand years ago men were unable to understand that their sentient existence was not exhausted by the welfare of the individual, and that later came a time when the higher family-social-state-national conception of life was disclosed to mankind? Why is it that, within the limits of historical memory, the Christian conception of life has been disclosed to men? And why has it been disclosed to such a man or men, and precisely at such a time, at such and no other place, in such and no other form? To try to answer these questions by searching for their reasons in the historical circumstances of the time, life, and character and special qualities of those men who first accepted and expressed this conception of life, is as though one were to try to prove why the rising sun first casts his rays on certain objects. The sun of truth, rising higher and higher upon the world, enlightens it ever further, and is reflected by those forms on which first fall the illumination of its rays and which are most capable of reflecting them. The qualities which give to some the power of receiving the rising truth are no special activities of the mind, but rather passive qualities of the heart, seldom corresponding to a great and inquisitive intellect. Rejection of the vanities of the world, a sense of one’s material frailty, truthfulness, are what we observe in every founder of a religion, none of whom have been distinguished by philosophical or scientific acquirement.

  In my opinion the chief error, which, more than all else, impedes the true progress of Christian humanity is precisely the fact that the scientific men of our time, who are now in the seat of the teachers, being guided by the heathen conception of life revived at the Renaissance, and having accepted as the essence of Christianity its crudest distortions, and having decided that it is a condition already outworn by mankind (while they consider, on the contrary, that the ancient-social-state conception of heathendom, which is indeed outworn, is the loftiest conception and one that should steadfastly be held by humanity), these men, not only do not understand true Christianity, which comprises that most perfect conception of life toward which all humanity is advancing, but they do not even try to understand it. The chief source of this misunderstanding arises from the fact that men of science, having diverged from Christianity, and seen that their science cannot conform to it, have agreed that Christianity and not science must be at fault: that is, they have assumed, not the fact that science is eighteen hundred years behind Christianity, which embraced the greater part of contemporary society, but that it is Christianity which is eighteen hundred years in arrear. From this distortion of facts arises the curious circumstance that no people have more entangled ideas as to the essence of true knowledge, religion, morality, and existence than men of science, and the yet more curious fact that the science of our time, despite all its successes in examining the phenomena of the material world, appears to be, as to human existence, either unnecessary or productive of merely pernicious results. And hence I hold that it is neither philosophy nor science which can explain the relation of man to the universe, but religion.