[307F-LER: p. 272]
“ … man traces his existence back to a God in order to assure himself of his divine origin and thereby of his divinity or immortality. Anyone who wishes to surmount death, the consequence of natural necessity, must also surpass its cause, nature itself. (…) … I derive myself from such a being because in the depths of my heart I already regard myself as such and therefore cannot conceive of myself as originating in nature, in the world.” [307F-LER: p. 272]
[308F-LER: p. 274]
“ … in the divine omniscience man merely fulfills his own desire to know everything, or objectifies the faculty of the human mind not to be limited in its knowledge to this or that object, but to encompass all things. In divine ubiquity, he fulfills his desire not to be tied to any place, or objectifies the faculty of the human mind to be everywhere at once. In divine eternity, he merely fulfills the desire not to be restricted to any time, not to have an end, or merely objectifies the endlessness … and beginninglessness of the human essence, the human soul; for if man’s soul cannot die, cannot end, it also … cannot begin, or come into being. In divine omnipotence, man merely fulfills his desire to be able to do everything, a desire that is related to, or a consequence of, the desire to know everything; for, as Bacon said, knowledge is power … .” [308F-LER: p. 274]
[309F-LER: p. 274]
“ … the divine being is man, but not man in his prosaic reality; he is man according to man’s poetic claims, desires, and thoughts, or rather man as he should be and some day will be. But man’s most ardent, most sacred desire and thought is, or was, the thought of eternal life, the desire to be immortal.” [309F-LER: p. 274]
[310F-LER: p. 275]
“Just as nature – but nature as an object and product of human desire and imagination – is the core of nature religion, so man – but man as an object and product of man’s desires, imagination, and faculty of abstraction – is the core of spiritual religion, the Christian religion.” [310F-LER: p. 275]
[311F-LER: p. 277]
“God … is the fulfiller … of the human desires for happiness, perfection, and immortality. From this it may be inferred that to deprive man of God is to tear the heart out of his breast. (…) I maintain that desires which are fulfilled only in the imagination, or from which the existence of an imaginary being is deduced, are imaginary desires, and not the real desires of the human heart; I maintain that the limitations which the religious imagination annuls in the idea of God or immortality, are necessary determinations of the human essence, which cannot be dissociated from it, and therefore no limitations at all, except precisely in man’s imagination. (…) What am I if I cut my bond with the earth? A phantom; for I am essentially a creature of the earth. (…) Man has many wishes that he does not really wish to fulfill, and it would be a misunderstanding to suppose the contrary. He wants them to remain wishes, they have value only in his imagination; their fulfillment would be a bitter disappointment to him. Such a desire is the
