The World as Will and Idea, Vol. II — Arthur Schopenhauer, trans. Haldane & Kemp

To the distinction established above between metaphysics of the first and of the second kind, we have yet to add the following : — A system of the first kind, thus a philosophy, makes the claim, and has therefore the obligation, in everything that it says, sensu stricto et proprio, to be true, for it appeals to thought and conviction. A religion, on the other hand, being intended for the innumerable multitude who, since they are incapable of examination and thought, would never comprehend the profoundest and most difficult truths sensu proprio, has only the obligation to be true sensu allegorico. Truth cannot appear naked before the people. A symptom of this allegorical nature of religions is the mysteries which are to be found perhaps in them all, certain dogmas which cannot even be distinctly thought, not to speak of being literally true. Indeed, perhaps it might be asserted that some absolute contradictions, some actual absurdities, are an essential ingredient in a complete religion, for these are just the

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stamp of its allegorical nature, and the only adequate means of making the ordinary mind and the uncultured understanding/^ what would be incomprehensible to it, that religion has ultimately to do with quite a different order of things, with an order of things in themselves, in the presence of which the laws of this phenomenal world, in conformity with which it must speak, vanish ; and that therefore not only the contradictory but also the comprehensible dogmas are really only allegories and accommodations to the human power of comprehension.

It seems to me that it was in this spirit that Augustine and even Luther adhered to the mysteries of Christianity in opposisition to Pelagianism, which sought to reduce everything to the dull level of comprehensibility. From this point of view it is also conceivable how Tertullian could say in all seriousness : "Prorsus credibile est, quia ineptum est: . . . certum est, quia impossibUe " (De Came Christi, c. 5).

This allegorical nature of religions makes them independent of the proofs which are incumbent on philosophy, and in general withdraws them from investigation. Instead of this they require faith, that is, a voluntary admission that such is the state of the case.

Since, then, faith guides action, and the allegory is always so framed that, as regards the practical, it leads precisely to that which the truth sensu proprio would also lead to, religion is justified in promising to those who believe eternal salvation.

Thus we see that in the main, and for the great majority, who cannot apply themselves to thought, religions very well supply the place of metaphysics in general, the need of which man feels to be imperative.

They do this partly in a practical interest, as the guiding star of their action, the unfurled standard of integrity and virtue, as Kant admirably expresses it ; partly as the indispensable comfort in the heavy sorrows of life, in which capacity they fully supply the place of an objectively true metaphysic. because they lift man above himself and his existence in time, as well perhaps as such a metaphysic ever

Dould. In this their great value and indeed necessity 3hows itself very clearly. For Plato says, and says rightly, I <f>i\6cro<f>ov TrXfjdos dSvparov elvai " (vulgus philosophum esse impossible est. Be Rep., vi. p. 89, Bip.) On the other hand, the only stumbling-stone is this, that religions never dare to confess their allegorical nature, but have to assert that they are true sensu proprio.

They thereby encroach on the province of metaphysics proper, and call forth the antagonism of the latter, which has therefore expressed itself at all times when it was not chained up. The controversy which is so perseveringly carried on in our own day between supernaturalists and rationalists also rests on the failure to recognise the allegorical nature of all religion.

Both wish to have Christianity true sensu proprio ; in this sense the former wish to maintain it without deduction, as it were with skin and hair ; and thus they have a hard stand to make against the knowledge and general culture of the age.

The latter wish to explain away all that is properly Christian ; whereupon they retain something which is neither sensu proprio nor sensu allegorico true, but rather a mere platitude, little better than Judaism, or at the most a shallow Pelagianism, and, what is worst, an abject optimism, absolutely foreign to Christianity proper.

Moreover, the attempt to found a religion upon reason removes it into the other class of metaphysics, that which has its authentication in itself, thus to the foreign ground of the philosophical systems, and into the conflict which these wage against each other in their own arena, and consequently exposes it to the light fire of scepticism and the heavy artillery of the " Critique of Pure Eeason ; " but for it to venture there would be clear presumption.