existence, in God; love, friendship, perception, the world in general, give me what thought does not, cannot give me, nor ought to give me. Therefore I dismiss the needs of the heart from the sphere of thought, that reason may not be clouded by desires … . (…) My heart is satisfied before I enter into intellectual activity; hence my thought is cold, indifferent, abstract, i.e., free, in relation to the heart, which oversteps its limits, and improperly mixes itself with the affairs of the reason. … reason … is not satisfied by the heart; I think only in the interest of reason, from pure desire of knowledge.” [156F-EOC: p. 296]
[157F-EOC: p. 296]
“In general, the proposition that an idea springs from revelation means no more than that it has come to us by the way of tradition. The dogmas of religion have arisen at certain times out of definite wants, under definite relations and conceptions; for this reason, to the men of a later time, in which these relations, wants, conceptions have disappeared, they are something unintelligible, incomprehensible, only traditional, i.e., revealed.” [157F-EOC: p. 296]
[158F-EOC: p. 298]
“The Israelitish religion is the religion of the most narrow-hearted egoism. Even the later Israelites, scattered throughout the world, persecuted and oppressed, adhered with immovable firmness to the egoistic faith of their forefathers.” [158F-EOC: p. 298]
[159F-EOC: p. 299]
“The Christians blamed the Jews for this arrogance [the notion that God exists to serve man’s, or exclusively the Jews’, needs], but only because the kingdom of God was taken from them and transferred to the Christians. Accordingly, we find the same thoughts and sentiments in the Christians as in the Israelites.” [159F-EOC: p. 299]
[160F-EOC: p. 307]
[quotation from Martin Luther:] “ ‘… we must in this life live like strangers until we reach the true fatherland, and receive a better life which is eternal.’ “ [160F-EOC: p. 307]
[161F-EOC: p. 309]
“The Christian destruction of the world is only a crisis of faith, - the separation of the Christian from all that is anti-Christian, the triumph of faith over the world … . (…) The heathen destruction of the world is a crisis of the cosmos itself, a process that takes place according to law, which is founded on the constitution of Nature. (…) It is the principle of life immanent in the world, the essence of the world itself, which evolves this crisis out of itself. (…) The Christians excluded themselves from the destruction of the world. (…) The heathens, on the contrary, identified their fate with the fate of the world.” [161F-EOC: p. 309]
