Part 1 — CHAPTER X. THE MYSTERY OF PROVIDENCE, AND CREATION OUT OF NOTHING.

Providence is a privilege of man. It expresses the value of man, in distinction from other natural beings and things; it exempts him from the connection of the universe. Providence is the conviction of man of the infinite value of his existence,—a conviction in which he renounces faith in the reality of external things; it is the idealism of religion. Faith in Providence is therefore identical with faith in personal immortality; save only, that in the latter the infinite value of existence is expressed in relation to time, as infinite duration. He who prefers no special claims, who is indifferent about himself, who identifies himself with the world, who sees himself as a part merged in the whole,—such a one believes in no Providence, i.e., in no special Providence; but only special Providence is Providence in the sense of religion. Faith in Providence is faith in one’s own worth, the faith of man in himself; hence the beneficent consequences of this faith, but hence also false humility, religious arrogance, which, it is true, does not rely on itself, but only because it commits the care of itself to the blessed God. God concerns himself about me; he has in view my happiness, my salvation; he wills that I shall be blest; but that is my will also: thus, my interest is God’s interest, my own will is God’s will, my own aim is God’s aim,—God’s love for me nothing else than my self-love deified. Thus when I believe in Providence, in what do I believe but in the divine reality and significance of my own being?

Man distinguishes himself from Nature. This distinction of his is his God: the distinguishing of God from Nature is nothing else than the distinguishing of man from Nature. The antithesis of pantheism and personalism resolves itself into the question: Is the nature of man transcendental or immanent, supranaturalistic or naturalistic? The speculations and controversies concerning the personality or impersonality of God are therefore fruitless, idle, uncritical, and odious; for the speculatists, especially those who maintain the personality, do not call the thing by the right name; they put the light under a bushel. While they in truth speculate only concerning themselves, only in the interest of their own instinct of self-preservation; they yet will not allow that they are splitting their brains only about themselves; they speculate under the delusion that they are searching out the mysteries of another being. Pantheism identifies man with Nature, whether with its visible appearance, or its abstract essence. Personalism isolates, separates, him from Nature; converts him from a part into the whole, into an absolute essence by himself. This is the distinction. If, therefore, you would be clear on these subjects, exchange your mystical, perverted anthropology, which you call theology, for real anthropology, and speculate in the light of consciousness and Nature concerning the difference or identity of the human essence with the essence of Nature. You yourselves admit that the essence of the pantheistical God is nothing but the essence of Nature. Why, then, will you only see the mote in the eyes of your opponents, and not observe the very obvious beam in your own eyes? why make yourselves an exception to a universally valid law? Admit that your personal God is nothing else than your own personal nature, that while you believe in and construct your supra- and extra-natural God, you believe in and construct nothing else than the supra- and extra-naturalism of your own self.

Thus the creation of the world expresses nothing else than subjectivity, assuring itself of its own reality and infinity through the consciousness that the world is created, is a product of will, i.e., a dependent, powerless, unsubstantial existence. The “nothing” out of which the world was produced, is a still inherent nothingness. When thou sayest the world was made out of nothing, thou conceivest the world itself as nothing, thou clearest away from thy head all the limits to thy imagination, to thy feelings, to thy will, for the world is the limitation of thy will, of thy desire; the world alone obstructs thy soul; it alone is the wall of separation between thee and God,—thy beatified, perfected nature. Thus, subjectively, thou annihilatest the world; thou thinkest God by himself, i.e., absolutely unlimited subjectivity, the subjectivity or soul which enjoys itself alone, which needs not the world, which knows nothing of the painful bonds of matter. In the inmost depths of thy soul thou wouldest rather there were no world, for where the world is, there is matter, and where there is matter there is weight and resistance, space and time, limitation and necessity. Nevertheless, there is a world, there is matter. How dost thou escape from the dilemma of this contradiction? How dost thou expel the world from thy consciousness, that it may not disturb thee in the beatitude of the unlimited soul? Only by making the world itself a product of will, by giving it an arbitrary existence always hovering between existence and non-existence, always awaiting its annihilation. Certainly the act of creation does not suffice to explain the existence of the world or matter (the two are not separable), but it is a total misconception to demand this of it, for the fundamental idea of the creation is this: there is to be no world, no matter; and hence its end is daily looked forward to with longing. The world in its truth does not here exist at all, it is regarded only as the obstruction, the limitation of subjectivity; how could the world in its truth and reality be deduced from a principle which denies the world?