t value for the knowledge of the _real_,
nor even for the knowledge of the _really possible_. For in the world of
being and becoming, everything in its last elements, forces, qualities, and
laws, as well as in the last causes of its development, is something so
absolutely _given_, that only afterward are we able to analyze that which
is present, from our observations, or to follow from the given factors that
which can be, or which under other conditions would have become different,
and that we are not able to synthetically construct the one or the other in
advance, independently from the factors of reality. If, therefore, that
concession shall attain a scientific value, and if the conditional
sentence: Man would not have been subject to death if he had not sinned, is
to become an admitted and unassailable part of Christian theology, we have
to look in the realm of phenomena, and in the course of that which took
place, for _facts_ which _prove_ that man, if he had not committed sin,
would not have died, and which thus change that merely abstract,
possibility into a real one.

Now we have such a fact in the _resurrection of the Lord_. If it really
took place, then it is the last earthly stage in the course of the Lord's
work of Redemption, and then it permits us to draw conclusions backwards as
to what would have become of man, if he had not been in need of this
redemption, if he had had a sinless development instead of one with sin.
{330}

We know very well that in mentioning this fact we meet not only the
opposition of those who contest a teleological, theistic, and especially a
Christian view of the world, but also the natural doubts of those who
defend with warm interest teleology and the ethical fundamentals and
productive forces of Christianity, but who think it more advisable to pass
over the whole question of the resurrection in cautious silence. The main
consideration which hinders them from believing in the reality of the
resurrection of Jesus Christ, is not the want of historical attestation,
but rather the absolute want of any attested analogy in the other events
which have taken place on the earth. What we commonly see and witness in
the dead, is without exception precisely the opposite of that which is
related about the further fate of Jesus crucified. Now we have repeatedly
had occasion to point out that the want of analogy cannot at all be a proof
of a fact's not having taken place, supposing it otherwise