Ludwig Feuerbach

“ Baptism should represent to us the wonderful but natural effect of water on man. Water has in fact not merely physical effects, but also, and as a result of these, moral and intellectual effects on man. Water not only cleanses man from bodily impurities, but in water the scales fall from his eyes: he sees, he thinks, more clearly; he feels himself freer; water extinguishes the fire of appetite. How many saints have had recourse to the natural qualities of water, in order to overcome the assaults of the devil! What was denied by Grace has been granted by Nature. ”

“ Where man is in earnest about ethics, they have in themselves the validity of a divine power. If morality has no foundation in itself, there is no inherent necessity for morality; morality is then surrendered to the groundless arbitrariness of religion.
Thus the work of the self-conscious reason in relation to religion is simply to destroy an illusion:—an illusion, however, which is by no means indifferent, but which, on the contrary, is profoundly injurious in its effect on mankind; which deprives man as well of the power of real life, as of the genuine sense of truth and virtue ”

“ Let friendship be sacred to thee, property sacred, marriage sacred,—sacred the well-being of every man; but let them be sacred in and by themselves.
In Christianity the moral laws are regarded as the commandments of God; morality is even made the criterion of piety; but ethics have nevertheless a subordinate rank, they have not in themselves a religious significance. This belongs only to faith. Above morality hovers God, as a being distinct from man, a being to whom the best is due, while the remnants only fall to the share of man. ”

“ In the contradiction between Faith and Love which has just been exhibited, we see the practical, palpable ground of necessity that we should raise ourselves above Christianity, above the peculiar stand-point of all religion. We have shown that the substance and object of religion is altogether human; we have shown that divine wisdom is human wisdom; that the secret of theology is anthropology; that the absolute mind is the so-called finite subjective mind. But religion is not conscious that its elements are human ”

“ Thus is the moral sentiment subverted in religion! Thus does man sacrifice man to God! The bloody human sacrifice is in fact only a rude, material expression of the inmost secret of religion. Where bloody human sacrifices are offered to God, such sacrifices are regarded as the highest thing, physical existence as the chief good. ”

“ Our relation to religion is therefore not a merely negative, but a critical one; we only separate the true from the false;—though we grant that the truth thus separated from falsehood is a new truth, essentially different from the old. Religion is the first form of self-consciousness. Religions are sacred because they are the traditions of the primitive self-consciousness. But that which in religion holds the first place,—namely, God,—is, as we have shown, in itself and according to truth, the second, for it is only the nature of man regarded objectively ”

“ If in water we declare: man can do nothing without Nature; by bread and wine we declare: Nature needs man, as man needs Nature. In water, human, mental activity is nullified; in bread and wine it attains self-satisfaction. Bread and wine are supernatural products,—in the only valid and true sense, the sense which is not in contradiction with reason and Nature. If in water we adore the pure force of Nature, in bread and wine we adore the supernatural power of mind, of consciousness, of man. Hence this sacrament is only for man matured into consciousness; while baptism is imparted to infants. ”

“ The man rising from the water is a new, a regenerate man. The doctrine that morality can do nothing without means of grace, has a valid meaning if, in place of imaginary, supernatural means of grace, we substitute natural means. Moral feeling can effect nothing without Nature; it must ally itself with the simplest natural means. The profoundest secrets lie in common every-day things, such as supranaturalistic religion and speculation ignore, thus sacrificing real mysteries to imaginary, illusory ones ”

“ He to whom the Right is not holy for its own sake, will never be made to feel it sacred by religion. Property did not become sacred because it was regarded as a divine institution; but it was regarded as a divine institution because it was felt to be in itself sacred. Love is not holy, because it is a predicate of God, but it is a predicate of God because it is in itself divine. The heathens do not worship the light or the fountain, because it is a gift of God, but because it has of itself a beneficial influence on man, because it refreshes the sufferer ”

“ And if thou art inclined to smile that I call eating and drinking religious acts, because they are common every-day acts, and are therefore performed by multitudes without thought, without emotion; reflect, that the Lord’s Supper is to multitudes a thoughtless, emotionless act, because it takes place often; and, for the sake of comprehending the religious significance of bread and wine, place thyself in a position where the daily act is unnaturally, violently interrupted. Hunger and thirst destroy not only the physical but also the mental and moral powers of man ”

“ But the common case is, that in religion man sacrifices some duty towards man—such as that of respecting the life of his fellow, of being grateful to him—to a religious obligation,—sacrifices his relation to man to his relation to God. The Christians, by the idea that God is without wants, and that he is only an object of pure adoration, have certainly done away with many pernicious conceptions. But this freedom from wants is only a metaphysical idea, which is by no means part of the peculiar nature of religion. ”

“ If human nature is the highest nature to man, then practically also the highest and first law must be the love of man to man. Homo homini Deus est:—this is the great practical principle:—this is the axis on which revolves the history of the world. The relations of child and parent, of husband and wife, of brother and friend,—in general, of man to man,—in short, all the moral relations are per se religious. Life as a whole is, in its essential, substantial relations, throughout of a divine nature. ”

“ Nature gives the material, mind gives the form. The sacrament of Baptism inspires us with thankfulness towards Nature, the sacrament of bread and wine with thankfulness towards man. Bread and wine typify to us the truth that Man is the true God and Saviour of man. ”

“ God is jealous of man; religion is jealous of morality; [5] it sucks away the best forces of morality; it renders to man only the things that are man’s, but to God the things that are God’s; and to Him is rendered true, living emotion,—the heart.
When in times in which peculiar sanctity was attached to religion, we find marriage, property, and civil law respected, this has not its foundation in religion, but in the original, natural sense of morality and right, to which the true social relations are sacred as such. ”

“ All those dispositions which ought to be devoted to life, to man,—all the best powers of humanity, are lavished on the being who wants nothing. The real cause is converted into an impersonal means, a merely conceptional, imaginary cause usurps the place of the true one. Man thanks God for those benefits which have been rendered to him even at the cost of sacrifice by his fellow-man. ”

“ If I exist not for God, God exists not for me; if I do not love, I am not loved. The passive is the active certain of itself, the object is the subject certain of itself. To love is to be man, to be loved is to be God. ”

“ Where we are in earnest about the right we need no incitement or support from above. We need no Christian rule of political right; we need only one which is rational, just, human. The right, the true, the good, has always its ground of sacredness in itself, in its quality. ”

“ Oh! if thou shouldst ever experience such want, how wouldst thou bless and praise the natural qualities of bread and wine, which restore to thee thy humanity, thy intellect! It needs only that the ordinary course of things be interrupted in order to vindicate to common things an uncommon significance, to life, as such, a religious import. ”

“ If Christianity no longer, at least in our day, offers bloody sacrifices to its God, this arises, to say nothing of other reasons, from the fact that physical existence is no longer regarded as the highest good. ”

“ In the stream of water the fever of selfishness is allayed. Water is the readiest means of making friends with Nature. The bath is a sort of chemical process, in which our individuality is resolved into the objective life of Nature. ”

“ Wherever morality is based on theology, wherever the right is made dependent on divine authority, the most immoral, unjust, infamous things can be justified and established. I can found morality on theology only when I myself have already defined the divine being by means of morality. ”

“ When the need for worship is supposed to exist only on one side, the subjective side, this has the invariable effect of one-sidedness, and leaves the religious emotions cold; hence, if not in express words, yet in fact, there must be attributed to God a condition corresponding to the subjective need, the need of the worshipper, in order to establish reciprocity. [4] All the positive definitions of religion are based on reciprocity. The religious man thinks of God, because God thinks of him; he loves God, because God has first loved him. ”

“ True friendship exists only when the boundaries of friendship are preserved with religious conscientiousness, with the same conscientiousness with which the believer watches over the dignity of his God. ”

“ Eating and drinking is the easiest of all work, for men like nothing better: yea, the most joyful work in the whole world is eating and drinking, as it is commonly said: Before eating no dancing, and, On a full stomach stands a merry head. ”

“ Therefore let bread be sacred for us, let wine be sacred, and also let water be sacred! Amen.
↑ Including external Nature; for as man belongs to the essence of Nature,—in opposition to common materialism; so Nature belongs to the essence of man,—in opposition to subjective idealism; which is also the secret of our “absolute” philosophy, at least in relation to Nature. Only by uniting man with Nature can we conquer the supranaturalistic egoism of Christianity. ”

“ Because God does good through government, great men and creatures in general, people rush into error, lean on creatures and not on the Creator;—they do not look from the creature to the Creator. Hence it came that the heathens made gods of kings. ”