Page:Essence of Christianity (1854).djvu/151

 essential impression is the agreeable one. At the moment in which the beloved Lazarus is raised up, the surrounding relatives and friends are awe-struck at the extraordinary, almighty power which transforms the dead into the living; but soon the relatives fall into the arms of the risen one, and lead him with tears of joy to his home, there to celebrate a festival of rejoicing. Miracle springs out of feeling, and has its end in feeling. Even in the traditional representation it does not deny its origin; the representation which gratifies the feelings is alone the adequate one. Who can fail to recognise in the narrative of the resurrection of Lazarus, the tender, pleasing, legendary tone? Miracle is agreeable, because, as has been said, it satisfies the wishes of man without labour, without effort. Labour is unimpassioned, unbelieving, rationalistic; for man here makes his existence dependent on activity directed to an end, which activity again is itself determined solely by the idea of the objective world. But feeling does not at all trouble itself about the objective world; it does not go out of or beyond itself; it is happy in itself. The element of culture, the northern principle of self-renunciation, is wanting to the emotional nature. The Apostles and Evangelists were no scientifically cultivated men. Culture, in general, is nothing else than the exaltation of the individual above his subjectivity to objective universal ideas, to the contemplation of the world. The Apostles were men of the people; the people live only in themselves, in their feelings: therefore Christianity took possession of the people. Vox populi vox Dei. Did Christianity conquer a single philosopher, historian, or poet, of the classical period? The philosophers who went over to Christianity were feeble, contemptible philosophers. All who had yet the classic spirit in them were hostile, or at least indifferent to Christianity. The decline of culture was identical with the victory of Christianity. The classic spirit, the spirit of culture, limits itself by laws,—not indeed by arbitrary, finite laws, but by inherently true and valid ones; it is determined by the necessity, the truth of the nature of things; in a word, it is the objective spirit. In place of this,