ity typifies the participated, social life of the species;
it shows the father, mother and son as the symbols of the race. The _logos_
or son is the nature of the imagination made objective, the satisfaction of
the need for mental images, the reflected splendor of the imagination.
Faith in providence is faith in one's own worth; it indicates the divine
reality and significance of our own being. Prayer is an expression of the
power of feeling, a dialogue of man with his own heart. Faith is confidence
in the reality of the subjective in opposition to the limitations or laws
of nature and reason. Its specific object is miracle; faith and miracle are
absolutely inseparable. That which is objectively miracle is subjectively
faith. Faith is the miracle of feeling; it is nothing else than belief in
the absolute reality of subjectivity. The power of miracle is the power of
the imagination, for imagination corresponds to personal feeling; it sets
aside all limits, all laws painful to the feelings, and thus makes
objective to man the immediate, absolutely unlimited satisfaction of his
subjective wishes. The belief in miracle accepts wishes as realities. In
fact, the fundamental dogmas of Christianity are simply realized wishes of
the heart. This is true, because the highest law of feeling is the
immediate unity of will and deed, of wishing and reality. To religion, what
is felt or wished is regarded as real. In the Redeemer this is realized,
wish becomes fact. All things are to be wrought, according to religion, by
belief. Thus the future life is a life where feeling realizes every desire.
Its whole import is that of the abolition of the discordance which exists
between wish and reality. It is the realization of a state which
corresponds to the feelings, in which man is in unison with himself. The
other world is nothing more than the reality of a known idea, the
satisfaction of a conscious desire, the fulfilment of a wish. "The sum of
the future life is happiness, the everlasting bliss of personality, which
is here limited and circumscribed by nature. Faith in the future life is
therefore faith in the freedom of subjectivity from the limits of nature;
it is faith in the eternity and infinitude of personality, and not of
personality viewed in relation to the idea of the species, in which it
forever unfolds itself in new individuals, but of personality as belonging
to already existing individuals; consequently, it is the faith of man i