Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 1.djvu/252

 of devotion, is what we call Ceremonial. It consists in this, that everyday common actions (as we regard them) are at the same time necessary actions, and are prescribed by rule. We have the right to act here in accordance with our fancies, or to follow habit in an unconscious way; in like manner we do not hold a purification to be necessary in the same degree in which such actions as the gathering of the harvest and the slaughtering of an animal, are necessary. And since, further, in the case of these offerings and purifications there is an actual reference to the religious aspect of life, no distinction presents itself here to which an importance would not be attributed. Thus the different means of sustaining life are not looked upon in relation to taste and to health merely. We have accordingly here the combination of different elements in connection with sacrifice and purification. That action by means of which purification from another action is got, can have no necessary relation to the latter, and for this reason the combination can only be an accidental and external one. Hence arises the painful element in this form of worship. If a meaning lies or has lain in these ceremonies and combinations, yet it is a trivial and a superficial one, and in becoming a matter of habit, such actions lose even the little meaning which may once have lain in them.

At this point, accordingly, definite punishment comes in, in so far as a deed which is opposed to some prescribed rule has to be annulled, and in so far as it is a question of a transgression. The punishment of such a transgression is in turn an injury, and something is relinquished—life, property, and so forth. But the meaning attached to this punishment here is that of a purely barren, formal punishment, like civil punishment. This latter, however, does not necessarily concern itself with the improvement of the delinquent, while ecclesiastical repentance or penance is in our view a punishment of which the essential