portance: contemplation is respect. Whatever is looked at fetters by secret forces of attraction, overpowers, by the spell which it exercises upon the eye, the criminal arrogance of that Will which seeks only to subject all things to itself. Whatever makes an impression on the theoretic sense, on the reason, withdraws itself from the dominion of the egoistic Will: it reacts, it presents resistance. That which devastating egoism devotes to death, benignant theory restores to life.
The much-belied doctrine of the heathen philosophers concerning the eternity of matter, or the world, thus implies nothing more than that Nature was to them a theoretic reality.[1] The heathens were idolaters, that is, they contemplated Nature; they did nothing else than what the profoundly Christian nations do at this day, when they make nature an object of their admiration, of their indefatigable investigation. “But the heathens actually worshipped natural objects.” Certainly; for worship is only the childish, the religious form of contemplation. Contemplation and worship are not essentially distinguished. That which I contemplate I humble myself before, I consecrate to it my noblest possession, my heart, my intelligence, as an offering. The natural philosopher also falls on his knees before Nature when, at the risk of his life, he snatches from some precipice a lichen, an insect, or a stone, to glorify it in the light of contemplation, and give it an eternal existence in the memory of scientific humanity. The study of Nature is the worship of Nature—idolatry in the sense of the Israelitish and Christian God; and idolatry is simply man’s primitive contemplation of nature; for religion is nothing else than man’s primitive and therefore childish, popular, but prejudiced, unemancipated consciousness of himself and of Nature. The Hebrews, on the other hand, raised themselves from the worship of idols to the worship of God, from the creature to the Creator; i.e., they raised themselves from the theoretic view of Nature, which fascinated the idolaters, to the purely practical view which subjects Nature only to the ends of egoism. “And lest thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven, and when thou seest the sun, the moon, and the stars, even all the host of heaven,
- ↑ It is well known, however, that their opinions on this point were various. (See e.g. Aristoteles de Coelo, 1. i. c. 10.) But their difference is a subordinate one, since the creative agency itself is with them a more or less cosmical being.
