Page:History of Modern Philosophy (Falckenberg).djvu/615

 FEUERBACH. 593 matenalism. " My first thought," as he himself describes the course of his development, " was God ; my second, reason ; my third and last, man." As theology has been overcome by Hegel's philosophy of reason, so this in turn must give place to the philosophy of man. •* The new philosophy makes man, including nature as his basis, the highest and sole subject of philosophy, and, conse- Iquently, anthropology the universal science." Only that which is immediately self-evident is true and divine. But only that which is sensible is evident {sofinenklar) ; it is only where sensibility begins that all doubt and conflict I cease. Sensible beings alone are true, real beings ; exist- ' ence in space and time is alone existence ; truth, reality, and sensibility are identical. While the old philosophy took for its starting point the principle, " I am an ab- stract, a merely thinking being; the body does not be- long to my essence," the new philosophy, on the other hand, begins with the principle, " I am a real, a sensible being; the body in its totality is my ego, my essence itself." Feuerbach, however, uses the concept of sensibility in so wide and vague a sense that, supported — or deceived — by the ambiguity of the word sensation, he includes under it even the most elevated and sacred feelings. Even the objects of art are seen, heard, and felt ; even the souls of other men are sensed. In the sensations the deepest and highest truths are concealed. Not only the external, but the internal also, not only flesh, but spirit, not only the thing, but the ego, not only the finite, the phenomenal, but also the true divine essence is an object of the senses. Sensa- tion proves the existence of objects outside our head — there is no other proof of being than love, than sensation in general. Everything is perceivable by the senses, if not directly, yet indirectly, if not with the vulgar, untrained senses, yet with the " cultivated senses," if not with the works are entitled : P. Bayle, 1838, ad ed., 1844 ; Philosophy and Christianity^ 1839; The Essence of Christianity, 1841, 4th ed., 1883 [English translation by George Eliot, 1854] ; Principles of the Philosophy of the Future, 1843 ; The Essence of Religion, 1845 ; Theogony, 1857 ; God, Freedom, and Immortality, 1866. Karl Grun, 1874, C. N. Starckc, 1885, and W. Bolin. 1891, treat of Feuerbach.