Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/155

 inasmuch as in it no kind of particularity is retained. The man who fears God is acceptable to Him, and Man has value only in so far as he finds his truth in the knowledge that this God is the One, the Essence. There is no recognition of the existence of any wall of partition between believers themselves or between them and God. Before God all specific distinction of the subject according to his standing or rank is done away with; rank may exist, there may be slaves, but this is to be regarded as merely accidental.

The contrast between the Christian and Mohammedan religions consists in the fact that in Christ the spiritual element is developed in a concrete way, and is known as Trinity, i.e., as Spirit, and that the history of Man, the relation in which he stands to the One, is a concrete history. It takes its start from the natural will, which is not as it ought to be, and the yielding up of this will is the act whereby it reaches this its essence by means of this negation of itself. The Mohammedan hates and proscribes everything concrete, God is the absolute One, and as against Him Man retains for himself no end, no particularity, no interests of his own. Man as actually existing does undoubtedly particularise himself in his natural inclinations and interests, and these are here all the more savage and unrestrained that reflection is wanting in connection with them; but this again involves something which is the complete opposite, namely, the tendency to let everything take its course, an indifference in respect of every kind of end, absolute fatalism, indifference in respect of life, while no practical end is regarded as having any essential worth. Since, however, Man is as a matter of fact practical and active, the end to be pursued can only be to bring about the worship of the One amongst all men, and accordingly the Mohammedan religion is essentially fanatical.

Reflection, as we have seen, occupies the same standpoint as Mohammedanism in so far as it maintains that