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the content whose form of transmission is under

examination is itself spiritual. Within this anthro

pocentric, exclusively earthly horizon two funda

mentally distinct series of observation have found

room: one, the historical empiricism from Bengel

to Hegel, to the modern science of religion; the

other, the psychological, proceeding from " the

inner testimony of the Holy Spirit," through

Schleiermacher, to the agnostic mysticism of the

religion of the indeterminate or blank religiousness.

According to Aristotle (see RELIGION, PHILOSOPHY

OF), the practical activity of reason consists in the

judgments of formal thought, from which results

the overestimation of coordinating abstractions and

of empty universal formal concepts.

g. Sub- Such a fate also befalls the considera

jectivism. tion of the religious life from which

depends the understanding of revela

tion. Employed by the universal concept of r6lig

ion, revelation is either not universal and then not

essential to religion, or else remains as an insepsr

rable accompaniment. Theology presumes to find

in revelation the cause of religion, and the term

offers itself conveniently to denote that unknown

quantity through the effective entrance of which

into the soul-processes the appearance of religion

in the inner household may be explained. The

points of connection with the ideas of natural re

ligion and revelation lie already at hand for the

correlation of these ideas. The axiom is assumed:

no revelation, no religion, whether in history or in

personal life. What, however, is thus thought of as

revelation is compared throughout with the preva

lent idea of religion according to psychological de

termination. In this collation immediacy of the

religious relation or the original capacity for relig

ious experience in every human being coalesces with

revelation. R. A. Lipsius emphatically pronounces

mystical experience to be the vital center in relig

ion and the essential in revelation. This experience,

however, is not a disclosure, since it gives rise to a

feeling never fully tangible to apprehension. Turn

ing the thought around, it appears evident that re

ligion, so far as its content is concerned, would never

get beyond the speaking of tongues. But the fun

damental perception is everywhere at hand, wher

ever the fact of religion is found in universal relig

iousness fundamentally independent of history. In

case this religiousness is found in connection with

an atheistic philosophy, it affords revelation even

without deity. The transfer of the ecclesiastical

technical expression to formal analogies observed

in other departments of life affords means for closer

comparison. Discoveries have been made, whether

by search or fortuitously, which have been desig

nated revelations. The ingenious conception of the

thinker (especially of the artist), or vision, offers

itself as analogous to the flash of the religious spark.

If thought be not reinforced by conviction, with

reference to the content of religion, from elsewhere,

namely, from the more securely grounded ethical

consciousness, or if the pious only experiences him

self and the self-assigned relation to the non-ego,

then the fear arises that such revelation may be no

more than self-deception of the imagination, or pos

sibly a universal strained representation, without

foundation in fact (Feuerbach). Against such a subjectivistic dissection of the generalized concept of revelation recourse from the abstract theory of religion to comparative religion affords no relief. There is, indeed, no little mention, in such presentations, of revelation underlying all religions, without going into the concept of it. Nevertheless it is admitted (Thiele) that a class of religions of revelation is to be abstracted; namely, those conscious of the possession of revelations. Meanwhile there remains for this consciousness, so long as religion is assumed to be nothing else than becoming inwardly aware of an inevitable superior power, nothing but the verdict that it is an imagery of the fancy pertaining to psych6logical movements otherwise explainable. If it is only a matter of influences and their psychological exercise, then the specially religious lies either in the content, or perhaps on the side of the elaborating soul and its mode of apprehension. In either case the special mediation of religious operations drops out and with this also the occasion for applying the notion of revelation. If not set aside, its universalized use serves 0 generalize the Biblical religions with the others, by presenting them merely as particularly shaded modes of the universal concept of religion.

This entire point of view is guilty of a depreciation of the historical. Schleiermacher was aware of this when he declared ethics to be the book of forms for history, and history to be the book of illustra-

tions for ethics; only it is to be borne 6. Depre- in mind that by ethics he meant the

ical and are essential; the variations of phePersonal. nomena are secondary. So also as re-

gards the religious; they are varieties similar in kind to the species of a genus. So far, however, the introduction of the historical treatment of religion does not alter the case. For if the steps of religious movement are deduced not from what is characteristic in religion, but from the progress of mental culture, the illumination of ethical views, or the repletion of philosophical thought-in short, from influences whose representations are independent of religion-then religion and its line of development remain the same, namely, the ever fundamentally invariable religiousness. Only its reflex imagery in consciousness and its spiritual elaboration vary. Consequently the standard for judging these influences lies outside of the religious, according to this position. In this connection also appears, with some logical consequence, a departure in the use of the concept of revelation. Originally denoting an impulse giving rise to the fact of religion, its given historical connection leads to the observation that religiousness in the strongly exercised becomes itself revealing upon the passively susceptible. As these transmissions must fulfil themselves in the active appropriation of impulses, and their use is determined by influences from without, these mediations must ultimately be of indifferent importance or must act as inhibitions, just as soon as religiousness becomes first-hand or original. Inasmuch as this form of revelation again removes itself from the field, 0 thought of a relig-