This is the only rational meaning underlying the belief that man owes what he is not to his own merit or efforts alone, but to God. But this goes for the bad as well as the good; it is not my fault, or at least not mine alone, but also the fault of conditions, of the people with whom I have come into contact, of the times in which I was born and raised, that I have certain faults, certain weaknesses. (…)
This does not negate human freedom, or at least not the rational freedom grounded in nature, that freedom which manifests and maintains itself as independent activity, diligence, education, self-mastery, and effort; for the century, the circumstances and conditions amid which I have developed, are not all-powerful gods. Nature throws man upon his own resources; it does not help him unless he helps himself; it lets him sink if he cannot swim, whereas a God prevents me from sinking even if I am unable to stay above water by my own strength and ability.” [251F-LER: p. 164]
[252F-LER: p. 166]
“ … God’s freedom, which would have enabled him to make the world entirely different from what it is, is limited by the idea of necessity, which springs solely from nature and applies only to nature.” [252F-LER: p. 166]
[253F-LER: p. 167]
“Let us not … find fault with Western man for not drawing the practical consequences of his religious faith, for highhandedly ignoring the implications of his faith and in reality, in practice, abjuring it; for it is solely to this inconsistency, this practical unbelief, this instinctive atheism and egoism that we owe all progress, all the inventions which distinguish Christians from Mohammedans, and Occidentals in general from Orientals. Those who rely on God’s omnipotence, who believe that whatever happens and is, happens and is by the will of God, will never cast about for means to remedy the evils of the world, either those natural evils which can be remedied – for there is no cure for death – or the evils of human society.” [253F-LER: p. 167]
[254F-LER: p. 168]
“ … fortunately for them and for us, the Christians, in conformity with the spirit and character of the Western and especially the Germanic peoples, have asserted autonomous human activity in opposition to the consequences of the religious dogmas and doctrines derived from the Orient.” [254F-LER: p. 168]
[255F-LER: p. 171]
“Nature is … blind and without understanding; it is what it is and does what it does, not intentionally, not with knowledge and will, but of necessity; or if, as we should, we include man in nature – for he too is a natural being or creature – its only reason is human reason.” [255F-LER: p. 171]
