sence, but also “poisons, nay destroys, the divinest feeling in man, the sense of truth,” and the belief in sacraments such as the Lord’s Supper, a piece of religious materialism of which “the necessary consequences are superstition and immorality.” In spite of many admirable qualities both of style and matter the Essence of Christianity has never made much impression upon British thought. To treat the actual forms of religion as expressions of our various human needs is a fruitful idea which deserves fuller development than it has yet received; but Feuerbach’s treatment of it is fatally vitiated by his subjectivism. Feuerbach denied that he was rightly called an atheist, but the denial is merely verbal: what he calls “theism” is atheism in the ordinary sense. Feuerbach labours under the same difficulty as Fichte; both thinkers strive in vain to reconcile the religious consciousness with subjectivism.
During the troubles of 1848–1849 Feuerbach’s attack upon orthodoxy made him something of a hero with the revolutionary party; but he never threw himself into the political movement, and indeed had not the qualities of a popular leader. During the period of the diet of Frankfort he had given public lectures on religion at Heidelberg. When the diet closed he withdrew to Bruckberg and occupied himself partly with scientific study, partly with the composition of his Theogonie (1857). In 1860 he was compelled by the failure of the porcelain factory to leave Bruckberg, and he would have suffered the extremity of want but for the assistance of friends supplemented by a public subscription. His last book, Gottheit, Freiheit und Unsterblichkeit, appeared in 1866 (2nd ed., 1890). After a long period of decay he died on the 13th of September 1872.
Feuerbach’s influence has been greatest upon the anti-Christian theologians such as D. F. Strauss, the author of the Leben Jesu, and Bruno Bauer, who like Feuerbach himself had passed over from Hegelianism to a form of naturalism. But many of his ideas were taken up by those who, like Arnold Ruge, had entered into the struggle between church and state in Germany, and those who, like F. Engels and Karl Marx, were leaders in the revolt of labour against the power of capital. His work was too deliberately unsystematic (“keine Philosophie ist meine Philosophie”) ever to make him a power in philosophy. He expressed in an eager, disjointed, but condensed and laboured fashion, certain deep-lying convictions—that philosophy must come back from unsubstantial metaphysics to the solid facts of human nature and natural science, that the human body was no less important than the human spirit (“Der Mensch ist was er isst”) and that Christianity was utterly out of harmony with the age. His convictions gained weight from the simplicity, uprightness and diligence of his character; but they need a more effective justification than he was able to give them.
His works appeared in 10 vols. (Leipzig, 1846–1866); his correspondence has been edited with an indifferent biography by Karl Grün (1874). See A. Lévy, La Philosophie de Feuerbach (1904); M. Meyer, L. Feuerbach’s Moralphilosophie (Berlin, 1899); E. v. Hartmann, Geschichte d. Metaphysik (Leipzig, 1899–1900), ii. 437-444: F. Engels, L. Feuerbach und d. Ausgang d. class. deutsch. Philos. (2nd ed., 1895). (H. St.)
FEUERBACH, PAUL JOHANN ANSELM, Ritter von (1775–1833),
German jurist and writer on criminal law, was born at
Hainichen near Jena on the 14th of November 1775. He received
his early education at Frankfort on Main, whither his family had
removed soon after his birth. At the age of sixteen, however,
he ran away from home, and, going to Jena, was helped by
relations there to study at the university. In spite of poor health
and the most desperate poverty, he made rapid progress. He
attended the lectures of Karl Leonhard Reinhold and Gottlieb
Hufeland, and soon published some literary essays of more than
ordinary merit. In 1795 he took the degree of doctor in philosophy,
and in the same year, though he only possessed 150
thalers (£22 : 10s.), he married. It was this step which led him
to success and fame, by forcing him to turn from his favourite
studies of philosophy and history to that of law, which was
repugnant to him, but which offered a prospect of more rapid
advancement. His success in this new and uncongenial sphere
was soon assured. In 1796 he published Kritik des natürlichen
Rechts als Propädeutik zu einer Wissenschaft der natürlichen
Rechte, which was followed, in 1798, by Anti-Hobbes, oder über die
Grenzen der bürgerlichen Gewalt, a dissertation on the limits of the
civil power and the right of resistance on the part of subjects
against their rulers, and by Philosophische, juristische Untersuchungen
über das Verbrechen des Hochverraths. In 1799 he
obtained the degree of doctor of laws. Feuerbach, as the founder
of a new theory of penal law, the so-called “psychological-coercive
or intimidation theory,” occupied a prominent place in
the history of criminal science. His views, which he first made
known in his Revision der Grundsätze und Grundbegriffe des
positiven peinlichen Rechts (1799), were further elucidated and
expounded in the Bibliothek für die peinliche Rechtswissenschaft
(1800–1801), an encyclopaedic work produced in conjunction with
Karl L. W. G. Grolmann and Ludwig Harscher von Almendingen,
and in his famous Lehrbuch des gemeinen in Deutschland geltenden
peinlichen Rechts (1801). These works were a powerful protest
against vindictive punishment, and did much towards the
reformation of the German criminal law. The Carolina (the
penal code of the emperor Charles V.) had long since ceased to be
respected. What in 1532 was an inestimable blessing, as a check
upon the arbitrariness and violence of the effete German procedure,
had in the course of time outlived its usefulness and
become a source of evils similar to those it was enacted to
combat. It availed nothing that, at the commencement of the
18th century, a freer and more scientific spirit had been breathed
into Roman law; it failed to reach the criminal law. The
administration of justice was, before Feuerbach’s time, especially
distinguished by two characteristics: the superiority of the
judge to all law, and the blending of the judicial and executive
offices, with the result that the individual was practically at the
mercy of his prosecutors. This state of things Feuerbach set
himself to reform, and using as his chief weapon the Revision der
Grundbegriffe above referred to, was successful in his task. His
achievement in the struggle may be summed up as: nullum
crimen, nulla poena sine lege (no wrong and no punishment
without a remedy). In 1801 Feuerbach was appointed extraordinary
professor of law without salary, at the university of
Jena, and in the following year accepted a chair at Kiel, where he
remained two years. In 1804 he removed to the university of
Landshut; but on being commanded by King Maximilian
Joseph to draft a penal code for Bavaria (Strafgesetzbuch für
das Königreich Bayern), he removed in 1805 to Munich, where he
was given a high appointment in the ministry of justice and was
ennobled in 1808. Meanwhile the practical reform of penal
legislation in Bavaria was begun under his influence in 1806 by
the abolition of torture. In 1808 appeared the first volume of his
Merkwürdige Criminalfälle, completed in 1811—a work of deep
interest for its application of psychological considerations to cases
Of crime, and intended to illustrate the inevitable imperfection of
human laws in their application to individuals. In his Betrachtungen
über das Geschworenengericht (1811) Feuerbach declared
against trial by jury, maintaining that the verdict of a jury was
not adequate legal proof of a crime. Much controversy was
aroused on the subject, and the author’s view was subsequently
to some extent modified. The result of his labours was promulgated
in 1813 as the Bavarian penal code. The influence of this
code, the embodiment of Feuerbach’s enlightened views, was
immense. It was at once made the basis for new codes in
Württemberg and Saxe-Weimar; it was adopted in its entirety
in the grand-duchy of Oldenburg; and it was translated into
Swedish by order of the king. Several of the Swiss cantons
reformed their codes in conformity with it. Feuerbach had also
undertaken to prepare a civil code for Bavaria, to be founded on
the Code Napoléon. This was afterwards set aside, and the
Codex Maximilianus adopted as a basis. But the project did not
become law. During the war of liberation (1813–1814) Feuerbach
showed himself an ardent patriot, and published several political
brochures which, from the writer’s position, had almost the
weight of state manifestoes. One of these is entitled Über
deutsche Freiheit und Vertretung deutsche Volker durch Landstände
(1514). In 1814 Feuerbach was appointed second presi-
