method, arbitrary even for him, appealed neither to the orthodox nor,
with a few exceptions, [1944] to his own disciples, some of whom,
as Ruge, at length definitely renounced Christianity. [1945] In 1854
Heine told his French readers that there were in Germany "fanatical
monks of atheism" who would willingly burn Voltaire as a besotted
deist; [1946] and Heine himself, in his last years of suffering
and of revived poetic religiosity, could see in Hegel's system only
atheism. Bruno Bauer at first opposed Strauss, and afterwards went
even further than he, professing Hegelianism all the while. [1947]
Schopenhauer and Hartmann in turn being even less sustaining to
orthodoxy, and later orthodox systems failing to impress, there came
in due course the cry of "Back to Kant," where at least orthodoxy
had some formal semblance of sanction.
Hartmann's work on The Self-Decomposition of Christianity [1948]
is a stringent exposure of the unreality of what passed for
"liberal Christianity" in Germany a generation ago, and an appeal
for a "new concrete religion" of monism or pantheism as a bulwark
against Ultramontanism. On this monism, however, Hartmann insisted
on grounding his pessimism; and with this pessimistic pantheism he
hoped to outbid Catholicism against the "irreligious" Strauss and the
liberal Christians--in his view no less irreligious. It does not seem
to have had much acceptance. On the whole, the effect of all German
philosophy has probably been to make for the general discredit of
theistic thinking, the surviving forms of Hegelianism being little
propitious to current religion. And though Schopenhauer and Nietzsche
can hardly be said to carry on the task of philosophy either in spirit
or in effect, yet the rapid intensification of hostility to current
religion which their writings in particular manifest [1949] must be
admitted to stand for a deep revolt against the Kantian compromise. And
this revolt was bound to come about. The truth-shunning tactic of Kant,
Fichte, and Hegel--aiming at the final discrediting of the Aufklärung
as a force that had done its work, and could find no more to do,
however it be explained and excused--was a mere expression of their
own final lack of scientific instinct. It is hard to believe that
thinkers who had perceived and asserted the fact of progression in
religion could suppose that true philosophy consisted in putting a
stop on à priori grounds to the historical analysis, and setting up an
"ultimate" of philosophic theory. The straightforward investigators,
seeking simply for truth, have passed on to posterity a spirit
which, correcting their inevitable errors, reaches a far deeper
and wider comprehension of religious evolution and psychosis than
could be reached by the verbalizing methods of the self-satisfied
and self-sufficing metaphysicians. These, so far as they prevailed,
did but delay the advance of real knowledge. Their work, in fact,
was fatally shaped by the general reaction against the Revolution,
which in their case took a quasi-philosophic form, while in France
and England it worked out as a crude return to clerical and political
authoritarianism. [1950]