the freedom of
investigation. But if it finds anywhere a possible result which is in
conflict with its theistic view of the world, it is obliged to examine the
mutual grounds of dissent, as to the degree of their truth and their power
of demonstration; and in case its own position is the stronger, better
founded, and more convincing, to prove this fact. If it does this, it again
acts according to the principle of free investigation--with the single
difference that in such a case it not only makes this allowance to the
opponent, but also uses this principle for itself in its own realm and
especially in the border land between itself and its opponent; but at the
same time it shows in this case (what, indeed, so many are inclined to
deny), that religion also has its science, and that theology itself is this
science, and has the same rights as the sciences which are built up in the
realm of material things or of abstract reasoning.

We therefore assume hypothetically, that the origin {276} of
self-consciousness and of moral self-determination is fully explained by
consciousness; the origin of consciousness and sensation by that which has
no sensation; the origin of the living and organic by the lifeless and
inorganic; and that atomism also is scientifically established and proven:
how, then, would such a theory of the world and theism stand in respect to
each other? By this assumption, we think we should simply stand again at
the point, the basis of which we had to discuss in Part I, Book II, Chap.
II, Sec. 1, when treating of teleology. We should always see something new,
something harmoniously arranged: a process of objects of value, continually
rising higher and higher, coming forth out of one another in direct causal
connection; and should have a choice of one of two ways of explaining this
process. We should either have to be satisfied with this final causal
connection, and perceive in this process itself its highest and last cause,
in doing which we should be obliged again to deny order and plan in this
process, to reject the category of lower and higher and the acknowledgment
of a striving towards an end in these developments, and after having
climbed to that Faust-height of investigation and knowledge, to throw
ourselves in spiritual suicide back into the night and barbarism of chaos,
or of a rigid mechanism to which all development, all life, all spiritual
and ethical tasks, are but appearance; or we should have to t