Moses Hess

“ I agree with you in your view of human life and believe, also, that moral freedom is the destiny of man as well as of humanity. But to me this goal of humanity is identical with the recognition of God, which Judaism proclaimed at the very beginning of its history, and to the spread and development of which it has always contributed, and which, since Spinoza, it has made accessible to all historical nations. ”

“ The belief in a rational, and therefore cognizable, divine Law, as revealed to humanity in the teaching and life of Judaism, this belief in a divine Providence, in a place of creation, is not a blind, fatalistic belief in destiny, although it excludes arbitrary and lawless freedom. I do not assert, with the materialists, that the organic and spiritual world is subjected, like the inorganic world, to the same laws as an external mechanism. ”

“ You see, however, that this apparent difference between the laws of Nature and those of history, is only the result of a subjective conception which cannot rise to an understanding of the great universal, divine laws. We can as little think of the freedom of the created being of History as mere lawless arbitrariness, as we can speak of the historical progress as infinite. ”

“ As long as human society is still occupied in the production of its own organism, man, in his creative capacity, considers himself as an irresponsible and unfettered being, although he, like Nature, is subordinated, in his very creation, to the eternal divine laws. ”

“ In order to forestall your criticism of my Jewish view of the world through arguments based upon speculative philosophy, I have no other choice but to prove to you that philosophic speculation is not the last word in mental development, as little as is industrial speculation and dominance of Capital the goal of material development. ”

“ Nature and humanity are subordinated to the same divine law. The difference is, that Nature follows this law blindly, while man, when perfectly developed, obeys it consciously and voluntarily. Another important difference, the non-observance of which gives rise to a misunderstanding of the concepts of "freedom'; and "Progress," lies in this, that while the natural sphere of life of the organic and cosmic world, which is the basis of our social, human sphere of life, has already accomplished its own development, humanity is still in the midst of its life-creating process. ”

“ We call every being free, in the natural sense, which can develop its own destiny, its inner calling, according to its natural inclinations, without any external restraint. That being is free, in the moral sense, which follows its calling with consciousness and will, whose will coincides with the divine law will. Every other form of will is only arbitrariness, which does not partake of the divine essence of willing, but owes its existence to passions and natural instincts. ”

“ I will show you, that although exact science which recognizes only eternal natural laws, seems to be in apparent contradiction to philosophy, which raises spirit above nature, and to religion, which sanctifies both spirit and nature insofar as it subordinates them both to a single being, yet it finally changes into that perfect knowledge., which conceives the laws of nature and history as one and the same, and where all contradiction disappears. ”

“ Just as beings vary, just as the difference between the single atom and the entire world-sphere, between the lowest organic infusorium and the highest earthly being Man-is wide and great, so various and wide is the difference between their ages of life maturity and consequently between their goals and destinations. ”

“ On the contrary, to-day, when we are on the eve of a new historical era, just as in the corresponding critical transition period from antiquity to the Middle Ages, the seemingly irreconcilable antagonism between religion, philosophy and experimental science, is more marked than it was in the heyday of the ancient or medieval world, which hardly knew such an antagonism. ”

“ But I must first make you understand that even this apparent contradiction between science and philosophy and religion had its justification, and was a necessary stage in the history of human development.
Even to-day, science, philosophy and religion are not reconciled to one another. ”

“ Judaism, which from the beginning of its history revealed the unity and sacredness of the divine law in Nature and history, has, therefore, from the beginning, put forth the demand that holiness should become an ideal of life, and its prophets have always heralded the coming of the epoch when men will arrive at the full knowledge of God. ”

“ The basis of this theoretical contradiction, just as the practical antagonism in social life, lies in the unequal development of the various classes of humanity, in the relations between the dominant and subservient races and classes, in the division of material and intellectual labor, and in the acquisitions resulting from this division. This inequality of development, advancing with the progress of civilization, was the rock upon which ancient society foundered. ”

“ You think it pure fatalism to consider humanity as a higher organism, and to observe in the history of nations the operation of the same eternal laws which govern the history of the earth and Nature. You think that in cosmic and organic life, moral laws do not obtain ”

“ But nothing living remains unchanged in time and space, nothing is eternal, everything comes into existence, and ultimately disappears after it has carried out its mission in order to arise again to a new form of like the great planetary bodies originated and developed in a space and time of such magnitude that we have no standard of comparison wherewith to measure it. Organic life, which began to develop on these bodies after they had already cooled off and their surface had become rigid, consumed the entire paleontological age in its development and perfection. ”

“ Even this life is regulated by natural conditions, but it is the goal of man, who is a free being, to overcome the fatalism of Nature with his free-will actions, which are the basis of morality and progress in the higher sense. ”

“ This age of maturity began, in the cosmic sphere, with the satellites or double stars and ended with the perfection of the solar systems; in the organic sphere, it began with the prehistoric period, and finally came to completion in the historic races of mankind. ”

“ Exact science, which recognizes only observation, experience, work and research, as the only legitimate means of acquiring mental and material wealth, and considers speculation to be only a combination of mental trickery and unfounded hypothesis must, in my case, become the supreme authority to which I appeal. ”

“ This ability to follow the desires and passions which lead astray from the path of reason and morality, man possesses only when his inner essence is not sufficiently developed. Man can certainly not be proud of this negative ability, which is no more than a disease, a disease indicating a lack of development. ”

“ This belief is symbolically expressed, in. our historical religion, by the Sabbath festival. The celebration of the Sabbath is the embodiment of the great idea which has always animated us, namely, that the future will bring about the realization of the historical Sabbath, just as the past gave us the natural Sabbath. In other words, that History, like Nature, will finally have her epoch of harmonious perfection. The Biblical story of the Creation is told only for the sake of the Sabbath ideal. ”

“ This knowledge of God, which in its first manifestations as the spirit of historical humanity, had not been fully conceived, but only perceived through unanalyzed sense impressions and intuitive experience, and which heretofore had appeared only as wisdom and light, must henceforth, on the basis of the already acquired wisdom and light, progress and become an exact science, which draws its knowledge not only from internal and external experience, but also examines it critically. ”

“ The Messianic era is the present age, which began to germinate with the teachings of Spinoza, and finally came into historical existence with the great French Revolution. With the French Revolution, there began the regeneration of those nations which had acquired their national historical religion only through the influence of Judaism. ”

“ In the material and mental spheres, and especially in the latter, these contrasts, which ruined the ancient world, are more sharply defined to-day than they were at the close of the age of antiquity, when the division of labor was not as minutely developed as it is in our present transition period. ”