Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/193

 alongside of it. But the heart signifies the all-embracing unity of the feelings, both in their quantity and also as regards their duration in time. The heart is the ground or basis which contains in itself and preserves the essential nature of feelings, independent of the fleeting nature of their succession in consciousness. In this their unbroken unity—for the heart expresses the simple pulse of the living spirit—religion is able to penetrate the different kinds of feeling, and to become for them the substance which holds, masters, and rules them.

But this brings us at once to the reflection that feeling and heart as such are only the one side, definite forms of feeling and heart being the other. And, accordingly, we must at once go further and say, that just as little is religion true, because it exists in our feelings or hearts, as because it is believed and known immediately and for certain. All religions, even the most false and unworthy, exist in our feelings and hearts just as much as those that are true. There are feelings which are immoral, unjust, and godless, just as much as there are feelings which are moral, just, and pious. Out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murder, adultery, backbiting, and so forth; that is to say, the fact that thoughts are not bad, but good, does not depend on their being in the heart and proceeding out of it. We have to do with the definite form which is assumed by the feeling which is in the heart. This is a truism so trivial that one hesitates to give it expression, but it is part of philosophical culture to carry the analysis of ideas even to the length of questioning and denying what is most simple and most commonly received. To that shallow type of thought or Enlightenment which is vain of its boldness, it appears unmeaning and unseemly to recall trivial truths, such, for instance, as that which may be here once more brought to mind, the truth that Man is distinguished from the brute by the faculty of thought, but