claims as belonging exclusively to its object, are simply the same dispositions and emotions that man experiences either in relation to himself (as, for example, to his conscience), or to his fellow-man, or to Nature.” [144F-EOC: p. 282]
[145F-EOC: p. 283]
“ … only where … the distinction between the divine and human being is abolished, … is religion made a mere matter of feeling, or conversely, feeling the chief point in religion. The last refuge of theology therefore is feeling. God is renounced by the understanding; he has no longer the dignity of a real object, of a reality which imposes itself on the understanding; hence he is transferred to feeling; in feeling his existence is thought to be secure. And doubtless this is the safest refuge; for to make feeling the essence of religion is nothing else than to make feeling the essence of God. And as certainly as I exist, so certainly does my feeling exist; and as certainly as my feeling exists, so certainly does my God exist.” [145F-EOC: p. 283]
[146F-EOC: p. 285]
“The distinction between the “heathen,” or philosophic, and the Christian God – the non-human, or pantheistic, and the human, personal God – reduces itself only to the distinction between the understanding or reason and the heart or feelings. Reason is the self-consciousness of the species, as such; feeling is the self-consciousness of individuality; the reason has relation to existences, as things; the heart to existences, as persons. (…) Feeling only is my existence; thinking is my non-existence, the negation of my individuality, the positing of the species; reason is the annihilation of personality. (…) Reason is cold, because … it does not interest itself in man alone; but the heart is a partisan of man.” [146F-EOC: p. 285]
[147F-EOC: p. 285]
“Feeling, the heart, is the domestic life … .” [147F-EOC: p. 285]
[148F-EOC: p. 285]
“Reason is the truth of Nature, the heart is the truth of man. To speak popularly, reason is the God of Nature, the heart the God of man … .” [148F-EOC: p. 285]
[149F-EOC: p. 285]
“Everything which man wishes, but which reason, which Nature denies, the heart bestows. God, immortality, freedom, in the supranaturalistic sense, exist only in the heart. The heart is itself the existence of God, the existence of immortality. Satisfy yourselves with this existence!” [149F-EOC: p. 285]
[150F-EOC: p. 286]
“Only what is naturally true is logically true; what has no basis in Nature has no basis at
