ilosophy," in Herzog's _Real-Encyc._,
from whence our materials are chiefly drawn.]

[Footnote 50: Morell, "Hist. of Philos.," p. 473.]

This whole conception of religion, however, is false, and conflicts with
the actual facts of man's religious nature and religious history. If the
word "religion" has any meaning at all, it is "a mode of life determined
by the consciousness of dependence upon, and obligation to God." It is
reverence for, gratitude to, and worship of God as a being distinct from
humanity. But in the philosophy of Hegel religion is a part of God--a
stage in the development or self-actualization of God. Viewed under one
aspect, religion is the self-adoration of God--the worship of God by
God; under another aspect it is the worship of humanity, since God only
becomes conscious of himself in humanity. The fundamental fallacy is
that upon which his entire method proceeds, viz., "the identity of
subject and object, being and thought." Against this false position the
consciousness of each individual man, and the universal consciousness of
our race, as revealed in history, alike protest. If thought and being
are identical, then whatever is true of ideas is also true of objects,
and then, as Kant had before remarked, there is no difference between
_thinking_ we possess a hundred dollars, and actually _possessing_ them.
Such absurdities may be rendered plausible by a logic which asserts the
"identity of contradictions," but against such logic common sense
rebels. "The law of non-contradiction" has been accepted by all
logicians, from the days of Aristotle, as a fundamental law of thought.
"Whatever is contradictory is unthinkable. A=not A=O, or A--A=O."[51]
Non-existence can not exist. Being can not be nothing.

[Footnote 51: Hamilton's Logic, p. 58.]

III. The third hypothesis affirms _that the phenomenon of religion has
its foundation in_ FEELING--_the feeling of dependence and of
obligation_; and that to which the mind, by spontaneous intuition of
instinctive faith, traces that dependence and obligation we call God.

This, with some slight modification in each case, consequent upon the
differences in their philosophic systems, is the theory of Jacobi,
Schleiermacher, Nitzsch, Mansel, and probably Hamilton. Its fundamental
position is, that we can not gain truth with absolute certainty either
from sense or reason, and, consequently, the only valid source of real
knowledge is _feeling--faith, intuition_, or,