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The
Three motives and reasonsthe
Faith.From
Gustav Theodor Fechner.
Leipzig,
Printed and published by Breitkopf and Hartel.
, 1863.
Preface.
Each person has his faith area, partly to cover the different areas, some of them
move apart. True knowledge is but only one, is not the only one true faith? Some say
rather that it is right and proper that each had its particular faith.
The question is first of all: What is faith against the knowledge? Because a part of
the essence of both is still in their relationships with each other. Is it a fraternal,friendly, hostile? Has the knowledge to be the servant of the faith or the faith to hide
themselves from the light of knowledge as the owl? They are stapled as the two heads
of Janus at each other, so that each looks in a different direction, each only sees what
the other does not? Or can only see different than each other did the same to his other
nature?
These are old questions, is an old dispute, which today is still waiting for the
discharge. Rather than take it but here again, this pamphlet goes away from the
hassles a way in which there is no occasion for the dispute, because the answer will
almost before the question. What is its purpose other?
So great is the faith area and the area of the believer, it is so dark and so many ways
to run it together sometimes, sometimes apart. Few ever think about it, why they
believe what they believe, what little they entitled to believe what they believe, few
make it right is right and many lose over the thought even the faith, because they
have not taken the rights . This little book has grown out of thinking about what is the
right and the guarantee of rights in matters of faith, and his intention again to lead
thinking the way that has appeared to us than the right, a path on which to faith rather
gained than is lost. I describe briefly the task of this book go to show how faith grows out of his
motives, to let the motives of faith to grow reasons, and thus to leave the faith grow
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themselves.
The main objects of faith are three, and so we are also three main motives and find
as a result, three main reasons for the faith, but do not separate the objects, but to the
band, what they have in the nature of things, a band add in man.
The Common of the motives and reasons I unite under the name ofprinciples offaith, and so I can also say it should be here around the principles of faith.
We have many textbooks of faith, they are taught only to the most. We have been in
evidence for the existence of God, the Hereafter and angels, but they are only
applicable for the scholars there, and faith is all there.Did not even make the reasons
of faith accessible to everyone and catchy? But many would like to believe and can
not believe only, and she will learn the faith from his textbooks, or books for
edification, requiring him ready to build the missing? But in this little book is trying
to teach the faith to build the faith without the scholarship of the textbooks or the
condition of devotional books need to. It is all so simple, clear, understandable and obvious antecedents to almost self-
evident in the fact that I get, however, you find it is rather too much than too little,
when one is accustomed to find it otherwise so different in these things. And is also
the word believer be satisfied that I take the most important words, he believes, really
just the words of reason believers so that I take them all the way to the reason, and
the unbelieving so that I his grounds of unbelief raise themselves to religious reasons,
since the opposition between the three, in which the life of faith ring moves, almost
more than it depends on other things that they will not do justice to the self, in which
they seek their justice against each other. Finally the progress of the Faith dares here about his previous position also will be
forgiven even after the most faithful expect the fixed retirement of faith to its
essence?
So Getrste you book a small congregation, and the tree, which sleeps in the
acorn. Do you have a small piece of the germs of this tree.
ContentI. Faith and knowledge in general.
II The area faith in the strict sense.
III. motives and reasons (principles) of faith in general.
IV Historical, practical and theoretical principle of faith in general.
V. The historical principle.
VI. The practical principle.
VII The theoretical principle.Argument of the spirit.
's argument from the body.
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VIII position of an exact science of body and soul (with regard to the question of
nerves) to the faith.
IX. questions of how faith first came to humanity, and how the motives and reasons
of belief in the existence of God rooted in the existence of God.
X. The Orthodox and the free position.XI. retrospect, overview, foresight.
XII. conclusion.
I.
Faith and knowledge in general.
Like all general concepts can also take faith in different size and style. Rather than
argue, however, as he was to take, we simply explain what we here understand and
want to look under that name. Enough so that if we remain within the limits of
language use, and those stuck fixed only for the purposes of the following analysis, as
they are in the fluctuations of use.
Perhaps we would do well to proceed as often as it happens commonly.
In the broadest sense, and now you understand what I mean by faith an assent to
what is not through experience or logical conclusion, what is the mathematical
certainty.
Should I hereafter also explain what I mean by holding for true experience, logical
conclusion mathematics? But you can see well that I will not be ready or would not
come to the beginning, what is it supposed to do here.The language used and thecontext of the consideration must be sufficient to allow the Neuter understand what
should be understood below, and only Neuter it should be here.
I wanted to write a metaphysics of faith, however, I would have to go deeper into
all sides term relationships, go back to the most abstract, emanating from the last, as
if it were the first. But what it could lead? Once seemed to me that all metaphysics,
dogma, mysticism and mythological figures of faith from the darkness rather than
leads into the darkness, I am not permitted to enter into their depth. What we seek is
above this depth.
In that broad sense in which we first conceived the belief that his term is indifferent
to its content. You can believe that there is a God and that there is a hell, war or peace
will, of thirteen sitting at the table, this year one will die, so what you can not believe
everything. It is incredible what is believed everything in the world, and of all that is
believed is believed the opposite. The most blatant superstition is faith even in this
broad sense of the faith.
But in a narrow sense, when Faith, Love, Hope puts together, for example, on the
faith as man's last refuge has, from the Blessed Are by faith, of matters of faith, belief
sources, religious people talking, one understands and I understand under believeonly faith in the highest and last things, ie God, the afterlife, higher spiritual
existence. Hand over most everything that is certainly in those ways, and that's why
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we speak of faith, preferably. So faith is in the narrower sense only the highest area of
faith in a broader sense.
From time immemorial, people have medical conditions linked to it even in the
existence of the objects of this faith and the faith and sought the highest and most
general band in that faith. In this respect it is also calledreligious faith as
distinguished from vulgar faith.
To this belief in the strict sense, it is preferably act here, but since he broadly shares
the common characteristics and relationships of faith, which are independent of the
nature of what is believed, it will apply to take this time being considered.
According to some, it would certainly seem that the belief in the highest and last
things in general quite different in nature, quite different sources and consequences
have, but the belief in some what different things to what here and there, what
tomorrow or the next of Use will be or not to be the year that he was something
absolutely Furthermore offender or even something specific in every aspect. Andshould it really can somehow hold with superstition into one? - But first and
foremost, faith is the highest and last things a assent to the existence and nature of the
things to which it refers, as any other faith, without having to be done by logic and
experience certainly can, so something has but conceptually it common, and it is
itself part of the role of the following to show that the specific belief in the highest
and last things is just only the fact that these things are the highest and last, the
highest and last of the are but where we all live and move, and the motives and
reasons for any belief that is located on the highest summits in relation to it, is the
most complete and finish together. So firm can be no faith when faith in these things,
so resounding no motives, no binding reasons so far and no profound
consequences. Why? Because the motives, reasons, consequences of the belief in
common, highest and last things bear the nature of its objects, the highest and last to
be most common of which being but where acts of our lives, and endeavors and
moves.
Faith is like a high pyramid. The motives and reasons of all faith walk of a broad
base of the religious faith as a final ruling upper together, and the same is very much
mistaken, he who seeks the top of the pyramid as something Secreted above the
pyramid, and who makes no view of the base , half wrong, who only half does it. One can believe that something is, and believe that is something to be trusted, then
faith is trust. This sense is often the belief in the Bible. But it is rooted in the one of
another faith, how could anyone believe that is something to be trusted, not even
from the thought that it is. As the Bible says, "Without faith it is impossible to please
God, because anyone who comes to God must believe that he is, and those who seek
him, will be a rewarder" While (Ebr. XI 6th) requires the belief in the first sense yet
of an increase of determinants to be the last, but they grow out of the right belief in
the rights also of yourself. So it is therefore not necessary to separate the
consideration regarding it. What knowledge is against the faith now?
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Again, it is important again to distinguish a closer and more important. What is
known in the narrowest and strictest sense, hereby absolutely and
objectively Certain towards us one believes only what is impossible to imagine
according to the principle of identity differently or to think about, that's all
through directexperience, valid logical inference or the latter on Due to the former
Detected. I know in that sense of knowing that a sensation of red, green, yellow in the world
is when I have them myself, because nothing can complain about, what is there that is
there. I know that every triangle includes two right angles in sum, because I can not
think otherwise, without coming into conflict with the preconceived conditions of the
triangle, I know on the same grounds in a sphere whose diameter I know from
experience that their volume and content. Others, however, whether the orange in
front of me, just as yellow as I see, I can not strictly know, I firmly believe it only
almost as if I knew it, and as long as I have the cogency of logical inference is not
itself seen, recognized the impossibility of dissenters resending after the claims ofconceptual match it myself, I can well believe, but do not know that he is so cogent
and Urban is correct.
Of what we know for certain, however, is in addition to the very extensive rich
mathematical truths basically very little, and to draw on the mathematical truths out
anyway, partly that they only just a matter of knowing less strict, more or less for
others matter of faith are, in part, that they say nothing about the existence itself, but
only say that if this is so, then this is so. Mathematics can not prove that there is a
space of three dimensions, in the draw to lines that can be put boundaries by the that
it circles are triangles, but only that, if there is a space, triangles, circles within themeaning the definition is from the given this and that follows. Everything that
happened before us, will be done by us, far done by us and there is the certainty of
knowledge for us going into that strictest sense of knowledge, she did not have
enough on their established concepts in the areas of Perceptible over the immediately
Experienced and analyzable its logical, and combined developable content addition.
Meanwhile, there are principles of generalization of experienced, laws that are won
only through self-moderating generalization of the experience, and the more so again
confirmed in the experience, the longer and the more and the more thoroughly we
pursue them. These principles and laws, and what follows from it, you wont beexpected in a wider sense to the field of knowledge and we may hereafter expect
it. The whole science is to generate such knowledge, although the knowledge thus
generated in the last instance always hangs on the belief that the generalization on
which we are based and the conclusions drawn will also find their confirmation, as
those previously in the circle of experience moderating have been found. For neither
by logic nor experience can be proved that such would occur.
Who can say that it was proven by experience or mathematics, or both together or
be proved that the law of gravity applies through all the rooms, will apply throughout
all time. But it has been found valid, as far and as long as we could trace it by the sky
and the times. The evidences a faith that does the strictest knowledge of almost equal
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strength, that it would also further apply, and therefore we expect it self as a matter of
our knowledge, yes as a matter of strict, the exact knowledge.
In most of what is called knowledge, but faith is a conditionally, provided that this
knowledge is based on the assumption of some Felt. So does everything in our
historical knowledge of the faith in the credibility of sources, all of our experience
science the belief that seen other right, and only what they have rather seen told ourentire psychology, as far as they do not merely that of a single individual is the belief
in other people's souls advance. And what would all of our science, when all this faith
would fall.
So the man of knowledge does not like too much despise the faith. Of all
knowledge has its share of some faith; deprive him of the same and forfeit the
knowledge itself. Not banish faith, but to replace as much as possible through
knowledge, may be his task as a man of knowledge. As far as possible. And not
enough knowledge to replace a faith, may be the question of whether faith is ever
ersetzlich or not, and thereafter the task set out to topple him from the knowledge
side, or, if not to justify, but to based.
Is after all the faith nothing more than an imperfect knowledge?
But that would be to recognize the essence of bad faith. Rather like what we think
of one thing always about what we know of it, extends, and the determinants of
beliefs about rich generally speaking, the knowledge and can the inadequacy of the
latter, which takes place every faith, by other Determinants are added. So much so
that an assent to the thing comes to pass that. Resistance to that which rests on
knowledge reasons, often not inferior and one of the objective certainty ofknowledge, not identical, but the holding scales subjective certainty can arise That is
a certainty that the feeling that it could be otherwise, is just so far as the clear
consciousness that it could not be otherwise attending. As for the really religious
man, despite that the existence of those objects of faith exceeds in the existence of
God, as hard as the naturalist believes Mussulman to the sky with the Houri's to the
generality of the laws of nature all experience and all mathematics. But can
Determinants of faith with such knowledge outright come into conflict and often they
offer. Or why many a word of the Bible is worth more than all the science
experiments and all speculative philosophy. Luther himself one has the expression:"the Sorbonne has established the highly reprehensible doctrine that what was
established truth in philosophy, must also apply in theology as truth," and the church
father Tertullian even said frankly: "credo , quia absurdum est. "He wanted to say:
My reasons for belief are not only from the knowledge of reasons, they even
contradict them.
No less than the reasons rich and the consequences of faith far beyond the
knowledge.
Faith is not merely produced, he also testifies again, two male children, deeds and
conclusions, two female, hope and fear. The power of his producers and his sons arein relationship and in the past to prove his own strength. Let us now see, the whole
action, thought, feeling human is much more determined by the faith of these scions
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of faith than from knowledge of, since there are so little of what we really know. And
we look closer, so just created the belief in the highest and last things that exceed our
knowledge the most, the strongest of all effects. And we see very well, so one of the
main effects just this, all knowledge about growing, faith itself to promote the
knowledge, because what did the Christians wiser than the Turks!
It is true, railways and machinery can not build faith, he must leave the knowledge,although the belief in benefits that are not there yet, and often do not come to build it
stimulates the knowledge executes only. But there are larger effects of faith, the very
knowledge resigns or more enters the easement of faith.
The belief is that has led to the Crusades hundred upon hundreds of thousands from
west to east and in the trains of the crescent from east to west, which put the Pope on
the throne and the prince has placed under his feet was that the cities their Dome, the
villages of their churches, the hills, paths and walkways their chapels and crosses
were, Greece has peopled with statues and monasteries with monks.
Think of the tortures imposed for the sake of faith multitudes endured by countless
martyrs of countless penitents themselves are imposed, how much do people have
been killed and burnt for the faith, have slaughtered and burned, can be themselves
have voluntarily plunged to his death.
"And what more shall I say - includes Paul 1) , having been much counted in the
same sense - the time would be too short for me, if I tell of Gideon, and of Barak, and
of Samson, and Jephthah, and David, and Samuel, and the prophets.
1) Ebr. XI. 32 ff
Who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises,
stopped the mouths of lions;
Quenched the power of fire, the sword, entronnnen, are made strong out of
weakness, became mighty in war, the foreign army have laid prostrate;
Many have suffered mocking and scourging, moreover of bonds and imprisonment;
They were stoned, hacked, stabbed, killed by the sword: they went about in furs
and goat skins, with destitute, afflicted, tormented;
And gone in misery in the deserts, in the mountains and in dens and caves of the
earth;
These all, having had witness through faith. "
There is no knowledge in the world that can produce such effects, so to speak,
overcome death, that is, the fear of death and the fear of killing the defenseless,
because there is no knowledge that overcomes death itself, ie the can punish fear of
death lies and ensure the safety of a better life beyond. That must take faith
andersher, draw its power from another source. The fear of death is innate, how
powerful is all Congenital, the belief has grown, but it can grow over the fear of
death.
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What can the mighty, away from the underlying knowledge, and often surpassed all
of the same determinants, Determinants for his faith, capable of producing the effects
of such expansion and power? There are quite mystical, can be nothing of them
show? On the contrary, quite obvious to point to's lightest, except that the eight lots
of what he sees every day, easy does not see, and thought-provoking rather after what
just behind the neighbor, as seen by the neighbor, and the single standing there looksfrom one side.
But before we attempt before the remoter the next, but to show this on all sides, we
meet a second error after the first, as momentous as it may be the first, which is of
itself a the three sites shows that there below is considered accurate to consider.
So erroneous it would be to try to make faith merely of knowledge reasons
dependent, and to see in faith nothing but an imperfect knowledge so erroneous it
would be to exclude the knowledge reasons of the determinants of the faith whole
and even in a merely something extrinsic to the Other to see. In our Meistes
knowledge we found something of faith in detail and conversely, what we know of
one thing to have a very significant proportion of our faith, has often admittedly only
hidden content anywhere and is in conflict with other determinants of the faith itself
as a with such a weight which can be weighed by weigh or circumstances.
What gives the faith of even the raw savages who knows nothing of astronomy, the
sun will rise tomorrow, as it is understood today? Only he knows she is today,
yesterday, day before yesterday, worked out every day since time immemorial. Such
induction can never be complete, but that in itself incomplete knowledge of what it
rests, complemented by itself after a psychological laws so as to insurers and firmer
faith, a lower per supplement is needed.
What makes us to his own soul, the only one of which we really know, believe in a
soul of all the other people? That we see their bodies and bodily expressions of the
same our, what we know bound mind and mental activity. This analogy may
constitute as little as an inductive inference that knowledge in the strictest sense, but
what it lacks, just as supplemented again by itself to faith.
The belief in the highest and last things is certainly not of such a nature that it
would require only those weak subjective complement the knowledge reasons, we
expect that neglecting what is believed to knowledge itself.The reasons range ofknowledge here, much less far, the other religious reasons gain the upper hand by far,
but it would be without the service of knowledge are not sufficient reasons in turn
and they never come without advantage.
So the man of faith does not like too much despise the knowledge. His faith would
be without an empty phrase or bladder.
After all, is not the lack of knowledge of reasons, but the inadequacy of the same
perfect a knowledge or an objective certainty in the above sense and complement this
defect by psychological or other wide reasons characterizes the faith, and only
relative we like from lack of knowledge of reasons for belief speak when, how often,
against the other religious reasons can not arise.
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By enter the determinants of knowledge in the faith with the faith but still
Determinants, has also the whole area of faith is much larger than that of knowledge,
presents its influence on life, feeling, thought the knowledge, only faith not enough
knowledge at all to the highest and last things one might find reason enough to see an
imperfect faith than vice versa rather in knowledge, and rather to have the faith to the
knowledge the higher position, if not all, the dispute over the priority of what is onlywith and through each other, at all pointless and would be a misunderstanding of the
right relationship. So much belief overlooks the knowledge, take him all the
knowledge, and you have only pure superstition, not even the substance to
superstition; take the knowledge of all faith, and you have the mathematical void only
the materialistic wealth, so stand alone with your soul in the world without a soul
beside, above, before and after you. It's called faith blind to the knowledge, he is
really against the knowledge about how the blind man's eyes to, that is, apart from his
eyes, the right knowledge but are of the right eyes of faith. So would find faith but
only by knowing his way? But can reverse the eyes without all the people find away? But I do not want to accumulate images for which it can ask whether and to
what extent they meet, for what. Himself to clear to anyone who attaches a clear view
of the relationship between knowledge and faith
Also, you will readily admit everything, and Some only provide the exempt them
what it considered the most and here is to be asserted, the belief in the highest and
last things. What can because knowledge? Says the same thing: nothing, so we have
nothing here expect from him; - the Other: There can be nothing here know, the way
it is just superstition. And so can the knowledge of A, the other falling faith in all
those same things, in which only the best combination of all forces can lead to bothtruest, best, highest.
II
The area faith in the strict sense.
If even the belief takes the highest and last things with each other faith under the
same general concept, it remains factually Ungemeines something about each other
and faith in himself many things in common but with no other.
First place, he has this in common, that it is a belief in ghosts, for even in the
afterlife, it is after all spirits, and certifies that he, at least on this side, always faith isdetermined to stay because everyone has the hand always only of his own worldly
soul you know, while there are other faith, yet faith is this morning knowledge, or the
desire to raise him to knowledge, but promises one term success. Such a success here
is the thing to be impossible.
Meanwhile, he is not the only belief in spirits and hereby not the only one that this
is true. The same is true of faith in other human souls, animal souls, any neighbor
souls at all, their existence can be as little as that of God, otherworldly and higher
spirits are made through direct experience and logical conclusion certainly, and so
could conversely, the existence of this just as surely be , and it will show that we infact have quite adequate reason to do so.
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But remains of a faith other than the always somewhat of a higher level, the reasons
for a need to expand, enhance, to be the other reasons, and the interests of one of the
project over the other.
The belief in other people souls for us the next spezialste on animal souls and any
plant souls have also lying to souls on other celestial bodies, the farthest only casual
interest, the belief in the last and highest intellectual powers, but about all of theseand any belief at all-powerful, comprehensive, meisterndes all hanging thereon
interests, most general, highest and ultimate, theoretical and practical interest to the
people because the believed objects have such, but the farthest only insofar as it is the
farthest to understand in its generality .
In God closes after believing the existence of the entire spirit world, indeed the
world in general, from, takes her band, their head, their first cause, its principle is,
what names you might need for him to look for the one that the highest for around the
mean. In Beyond the completion of goals, adjustment of the shortcomings of all this
life is expected. For the gap between us and God mediations be sought in higher
spirits. The entirety of this faith but has proven to thinking, feeling, acting mankind
the most common and most important influence and proved it today.
This he has himself reduced to the life of the day, however, thus gaining from also
influence our next and spezialsten interests, but only by general, highest and last
points of view, as, conversely, the belief in the souls of our neighbors in the state,
morality and custom rises to higher and more general interests, so that highest and
most general interests opposed grows and grows through with it, but only in the
outputs of the spezialsten relationships of the family and the congregation. The
difference is only relative, but relatively it is, and where there is no point of absolute
divorce, which is not available here, fortunately, also the relative nor his right and his
duty.
In the common height above all other things, the objects of faith hang in the narrow
sense closely together and faith hangs together by itself.
According to the Christian faith God with the angels and souls beyond its common
residence in heaven, carried the painters paint him even of angels above the clouds
and carried up the souls after death to him. The saints who rose from the here and in
the hereafter, and the angels who lived with God from the beginning is to convey anon special occasions, the other steadily between us and God, so many fall souls
beyond partially together with angels themselves. The resurrected from the dead to
heaven but Christ driven, Judge of the living and the dead, is also a mediator between
us and God and himself one with God. So firmly adherent in itself is all in the
kingdom of heaven who can finally unravel the inextricably Fused yet. And there are
some Christians who believe in nothing he can not unravel, he believes but if he still
believes something that the actions of the people, which is most in accordance with
the will of God, and that is what it the most favorable conditions in the afterlife
backs, and expects a perfect knowledge of things divine and greater union with Godin the afterlife.
The pagans have taken a few one supreme God, angels take lesser gods, instead of
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physical countless souls shadows. Down to those Seitab to the islands of the blessed,
even some who drive more than shadows to topThe whole world is to them a world
of gods, Pluto sits under the earth, then go the saddest shade; Zeus on Olympus, then
the happiest of heroes and thus even to the company of gods. So here play world of
the gods and other world through each other and fall in part looking at each
other. Where Ibis, cow be worshiped as divine, you can also take the souls after deathin animals. And many nations mixed linked at all of the dead service confused with
the gods service in a way that we of course have long since my addition.
In short, the religious beliefs of the highest and last things is a connected world in
itself, as the real world of the lower common things, which we know only one higher
than this lower world.
, Weis, here and there, one or drop the other of the three moments of faith from the
band can; - on time and in complete faith of humanity it can not happen - but then
only by falling right across from the faith or as a residue the whole faith itself
receives only a scanty because each can its power only through the relationship with
the other kept as each member expires, which are separated from the whole. And any
atrophy or lack of development of one or another moment is always regarded as a
defect which expels about yourself, faith can not stop there, must develop soft or
another.
The Jews have long believed in God before they clearly believed in a life after
death, although it was a vestigial idea of Sheol. Today they believe in heaven and
hell, and hope to come once in Abraham's bosom. The Jewish faith is so tough, he
could not stand on that stunting.
The Buddhists believe in an otherworldly life without some believe in a personal
God, and yet have their idols, temples and prayers. The deposited Buddha himself as
one idol; - where God is absent, idols can not easily be missing, - but that they have
no God above their idols, will be one of the reasons that the end of days will have no
Buddhism, and all other reasons are more or less dependent on this. Some among us
believe in God without believing in an afterlife and personal ghosts between us and
God, but as dead, cold, abstract, empty, helpless is this belief, so to say they believe
in God, only God's sake, and would lose the poor God not much.
Power, life, wealth, beauty, sublimity of religious belief depends on the coherentdevelopment of his three-contained living moments. Probably has a religion or
denomination already reached the ideal in this regard? Yes, some do not see the ideal
rather than in the greatest possible atrophy most possible development of a moment?
III.
motives and reasons (principles) of faith in general.
The Determinants of faith, as we said, hand over the knowledge, and after the great
inadequacy of the determinants of knowledge in relation to the last and highest things
and yet so widely used and powerful belief we had extremely powerful determinantsto faith in these things require. What can they be?
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The revelation believer is easily done with the answer. The belief in these things is
itself revealed by God to man. Well, in the last analysis all and certainly preferably
faith in God from God will even depend. Yes every true belief depends in a sense on
the part of a revelation of existence of what is believed. Or could be cogently believe
in the existence of even a tree No one ever saw or heard of the noise a leaf. Which
indeed the revelation of believers only that it is not the existence of the whole of Godcan enter contact seen at once in the existence of the small people, not, not cogent but
the belief in the existence of God could be, of not having his existence somehow in
our visible inside entered says. So is there really the God in whom we believe, we
must also believe that he had somehow once as revealed to us, so that we can believe
in him, and the belief in one true God is of itself a belief in a true revelation. The only
question is in what way geschahe revelation. God spoke to the people as a man? Why
not you? Initially, yes, it is as the Bible says he who believes in's word the Bible, and
further he did it through his with his only son and also by supernatural inspiration of
prophets, evangelists, apostles, popes, saints, councils Reformers. But since all thisyourself just only a matter of faith, for others also rather is a matter of unbelief, then
the motives and reasons for such a belief, where they exist, are also among the
general motives and reasons of faith, which we consider below must find, and we can
not start with the premise of it.
Let's be open: The Revelation believer who collapsed on the word of the Bible,
perhaps even of Luther or of the Pope, as such relies upon a rock, from which no
chunks may fall, for fear of the whole faith is, is this have to face the task of entering
all position forward. He can not tolerate what he now holds even for the fixed output
of all judgment and the highest over all evil, will still undergo an assessment and anyquestion, there is for him no authority to do so. And verily, he is right to demand
anything of the sort from religion itself we will eventually make this demand, but if it
is already there for him, asks someone else is whether and where it is there; There is
much to do made for revelation. Reject the question is no answer, but we can only
wish the answer, which asks, want to help the search, which searches.
On closer inspection one can determine the reasons for faith motives , which the
faith drive , and reasons which to entitle differ. The statement of a reason we call an
argument. Motives and reasons together or the Common of the motives and reasons,
as I said, principles of faith. Has now probably so you can ask at the very beginning, the faith anything other
than motives or reasons more than knowledge of what goes into it, and what but
never enough to certainty?
In truth, he has no reasons that are not related to the completion of the motifs, and
thus none of the evidence, only those which are sufficient for conviction, otherwise
he would not knowledge and belief. What so ever the belief may be justified and
supported by knowledge side doubts remain possible, however, doubt may be foolish,
but he always remains possible, without coming into conflict with logic and
experience, which is on the point.From all that for the existence of God, after all,
which speaks for the generality of the laws of nature, doubtful but the materialist
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naturalist on the existence of God, the Orthodox theologian to the generality of the
laws of nature, so he doubts not merely that he denies. The one doubt may be so
foolish as the others, but remains equally possible, and the error of a can be proven
any more than that of the other. Only the same folly can thereby prove that he belongs
in the highest degree, what else allwrts considered folly.
A goal of the off-examined by the human society on ways in which he can hope tomeet only the same ausnahmsweiser foolishness to Run the gates. A goal of which
prefers the useful and the harmful even declared it more useful than the most useful,
one regrets the gates. A goal of the foundation of the certainty in the most unlikely
looking, one doubts his intellect.
Only just lay in matters of faith, of course, some to another, even opposite,
scale. Keeps all the people who have believed before him and believe him what he
himself does not believe, for fools, of those who do not prefer the harmful disbelief
the most useful faith with him, and says: Credo quia absurdum est.
For all this there's no argument. For all the arguments for faith is only able to rely
on what is in the smallest and meanest things as folly and wisdom than to assert itself
in the highest and last things, and in this sense the motives of faith themselves to raise
reasons.
In fact, however, a primary object of the following will be to show how the reasons
which justify the belief that only the highest generalization, summary, culmination,
clarification, correction position of the motives that drive them to believe, in short,
what I call the completion Designs call them, are, so that man to just whose sake,
indeed to believe everything and to whose account the sake of which he reallybelieves, - and how beautiful and good is it that it is so. But also to show that an
authoritative restriction, correction, cleaning thereof is herein incorporated by each of
themselves at the same time. What half and individually inadequate and even
untriftig, and most subjects are there, and can be quite full and combined in the
largest public grant full cogency, and take the half of what the people driving here
and there for faith to its Untriftigkeit discard sake, you have it to the full cogency
rather only to supplement and meet. What a moment aside as part of the stage as a
whole or a whole has its truth and justification, can to the whole, where the summit
will be wrong and untriftig; take it to discard its Untriftigkelt sake, one has to thegrade on which it is cogent, only minimize and limit. This limitation and hereby
correction, but the various motifs make itself
The Negro believes that a rock, a tree, a snake or something else like a
god. Why? The priests and the elders said's so, he needs to believe in something
which has powers over the human out to where people forces are no longer sufficient,
nor expect help if by magic, sacrifice or prayer from him, and as he did the forces
Nature does not know, but so much of it knows that it the hand over his, why should
the snake, the rock, the tree is not as good as any other object of them to be the
essence to which he needs the faith after any perhaps quite random, association tiedthe idea of the greatness of it. Depending on the raw man, so easily and so raw he
generalized. Since we have motives of faith that change here and there, so and so can
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make. But that by all peoples who have risen above the level of animality, the belief
in a divine being above the people goes that this faith is everywhere in all the last and
highest matters needed and without it expires human society, that the last insight can
only find their completion in such a faith in the whole nature of mental and physical
things, reasons of faith, not just as changing, not the thing itself are also able to make
different, and preferably folgends we mean by reasons such reasons . The rock is no god, the tree is no god, the snake is no God, the sea is no god, the air
with thunder and lightning is no God, the earth, the sun and the moon are not God,
what the Negro, the Egyptians, the Greeks, who believes heath at all. But is all this a
pure faith mistake? Take all together, you have the world. Is it God? But because of
the heath says that of all 'that the matter is God? He said only that she was carrying a
hidden spiritual power behind it, similar to his, only his reaching out. And is it a
mistake that the whole world is the bearer of a divine spiritual power hidden behind
it?
The mistake that all individual faith is thus only that looked in detail at individual's
is laid, which sense only in the whole rests. Add the faith of all the nations by
themselves and linking it in that you, knpfest the divine spiritual power, which he
linked to the individual to the whole, so you have the right faith. Set the other hand,
the power of the individual, it expands to that of the whole,'s right measure to reduce,
you have the right faith.Every natural object but has a portion of the force with which
Wielding in all things God transcends all that is human, but he has not the whole, last,
highest.
Also, the dismembering faith of the Gentiles is not the only faith, from the other
side there is a belief in God as a unified spirit, which is raised high above the world
of matter, they, his waste has on his stool, his offspring. If the heath faith lacks the
proper unity of the divine essence, so lacking in this, the living relationship to nature,
but one may be supplemented by the other and correct in what is missing everyone
and where everyone is missing, and so the belief is to a in the ubiquitous nature and
all-ruling God arise as a right faith that all Christians confess the words to without
making course right earnest with the words.
If we have the last ground of faith formation, provided there is a real, can be
attributed to the existence of what is believed, still divides this single reason in itseffects immediately in several determinants or motives. You can try to follow the
dependence of these motives of faith in the highest and last things of the existence of
these things, but then must the existence and mode of existence of these things
presuppose already as a given that condition but to be only through the collection of
motifs has to justify the true reasons. So instead of starting as a given the existence of
the highest and last things, and to derive the motives and reasons of the faith of it, we
have rather only to do with the motives of faith as given, thereafter the reasons of
faith to give us what we still free is when good reasons for believing in the existence
and a certain mode of existence of the highest and last things can be found, to think
backwards, as from this could well go the motives and reasons in us.
Generally speaking, and as I said, the motives and reasons to believe in these
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things, that is, the last and highest spiritual existences, none other, than to any mental
existences, so things in general are; increased just about any other, culminated. And
why should we eventually higher and a supreme mind for less keep the existence of
certain as the existence of our neighboring spirits if we just increased corresponding
motives and reasons culminated find it. If they are, they can not be on hand and
surface, as for those of course, but it will apply to direct the look up and keep more inheight than when it is the belief in the neighboring ghost, without but, somehow to
leave the territory of the motives and reasons which have this belief. Also, there are
no obstacles that more objects the belief in higher spirits and the highest spirit in the
way, as the belief in the neighboring ghost, if it is not just those greater height of the
motives and reasons.
God sees no one, so why believe in it? But you see the soul of your brother? but
you believe it, so can any case the fact that you do not see a God to the world, are no
reason, less to believe in him, as in your brother's soul. From this it not even you ask
to see them, from God seem to require it some to believe in him, and because hemocks the desire, they mock God. A worm is quite different and moves quite
differently than you, but do you believe in a soul to the worm. So can the fact that the
world looks very different to you and your little lives do not nachtut the Great, no
reason lie less in a God to the world as a soul to the worm to believe. The worm but
has a erbrmlicheren body as you move and pathetic than you, so also do you think a
worm erbrmlichere soul than you. The world is an unspeakably larger and more
powerful than your body. Includes your body, your life, and even the history and
destiny of all peoples to self, and you're just a pathetic particles thereof. Could not
you then just as well believe in a higher spirit to the world sublime, as aerbrmlichere soul to the worm?
Now I would believe neither in the soul nor my fellow-men of the worm, if I had
not also positive reasons for that determination. Now we see purely for the
experience, what can ever believe in souls us to look further, how far back we find
the corresponding higher and higher in the faith.
We believe: 1) because our faith is planted it from childhood. Hindus and other raw
vegetable people also believe in souls because their faith is planted them from
childhood, we do not because we, the opposite is planted.
2) Because we need faith to other human souls find satisfaction in it, so could not
get along without virtually the same. In animal and plant souls souls this motif as the
other less claims and therefore also the belief is less common. Even animal souls are
denied or here and there.
3) Because the analogy conclusions experience ever reason based on the experience
corresponding ghost leaves us to take our minds in other bodies. We also require no
full similarity of other body with our body to accept soul in it, we require a good
feeling on points, of which we assume that they are characteristic of the soul
existence, with of course can still ask and argue and really fights what they are. Other motives to faith in the neighboring souls can not be found, just this, and no
other determining factors, which soon lead us to believe in our neighboring souls
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more of this, now of that side, but it is also that we are entitled to it unless it fairly be
taken, only that it can be argued that had completed their version and the wrong
decisions taken by the decision taken and can legally come into conflict with each
other and really come. The right version will finally be the one that removes the
conflict. Purely a priori grounds for that belief, not in the least support were based on
the above, and reasons at all, heraustrten from the above, there is not. But what is true in this respect for the faith of our neighbor souls, now we hereafter
the matter is quite as for the belief in the last and highest spirits and even the belief in
things of any kind Grasp general.
IV
Historical, practical and theoretical principle
of faith in general.
What name also like to wear the motives of faith and what it may apply also to
believe they carry themselves last on three back, I half distinction of brevity as ahistorical, practical and theoretical, and being only superficially, in order afterwards
to make the detailed, shortly be formulated.
Historical motif. One believes what is told us what was believed before us and is
believed to us.
Practical design . It is believed that pleases us to believe is, avails.
Theoretical design . One believes what one finds Determinants in experience and
reason.
None of these motives is informal reducible to the other. Although the historical
appears from some aspects, not an original, because that someone else may impart
my faith, he has itself been determining factors have to faith and the message of faith,
will be to ask for what, and when they again received in one of andersher can be
communication, it only moves the question further back, and then it seems only the
theoretical and practical design as the last events of the faith and the message of faith
to remain. But in terms of a specific belief in revelation, the first message from God
himself happened to mankind directly or by supernatural inspiration, after which the
historical subject would be the allerursprnglichste rather, and we let the whole dark
question of thefirstorigin of faith in humanity at page and ask how today the beliefcomes first to every person, it is nevertheless certain and will continue to find its
execution, that the child, which the faith of parents and teachers is informed not
accept him because of the theoretical and practical motif but simply assumes, because
it is given to him, so that in any case in particular, the historical subject is nowadays
for every person the most original.
Instead of a one-sided dependence of the other motifs is rather up to certain limits
change depending recognize all of each other. The whole design of the faith that has,
with output possibly developed by a long-lasting effect of the theoretical and
practical subject of a direct revelation, wears historically at once to the new entrants
into humanity. If the belief in each generated afresh by mere mediation of theoretical
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and practical subject, how weak, poor, and he would be ambiguous, even in a few as
he would ever come to pass. The whole religious capital of humanity as a whole and
to inherit large parts held together in human history continues. From other side, but if
not the theoretical and practical design to hold the faith to propagate and develop
themselves compelled, as its effect would deny the historical, the capital, where it
always initially descended to consume, disappear. It's like with the blood, and thebusy life of what is already there, gives strength and life and strength, not the food,
but can not draw power and strength of his life and of rotational himself from the
blood, and the food it needs.
So the historical subject would be able to little without the theoretical and practical
how to make and no one has actually reversed the development and design of faith
alone undertaken. But this co-and mess-operation of motives does not prevent but to
follow the mode of action of each independently and up to certain limits, so in order
to know what they work with and through each other, one must know what each
looks to his side.Especially since the match, which prove the three motifs generallyspeaking, cause faith at all and get in detail and with reference to the particular faith
does not exist. Rather, we see this in detail here, there, that motif vorwaltend or even
exclusively, even hostile to the other, escape, and the conflict of motives as likely as
their subsequent handling. When orthodox Catholicism and Protestantism is the
historical principle, the vast, the theoretical and the Neukatholizismus the
philosophical teachings of religion, the teachings of Confucius and the state religions,
such as practical. What the historical subject would have us believe, will often not
meet the practical and theoretical, by reason neither conducive to our salvation, nor in
the nature of things appears to us. From other side, nothing more common than thecovenant of the historical and practical motif against the theoretical subject and
therefore nothing more common than the dispute between faith and the knowledge,
and then nothing more common than that one of the triangles, the other two will bend
under his yoke. Thus, the historical in unilateral arrogance calls the once solid Gone
and it would be the Heilloseste as necessary to salvation, and want the whole science
lead on the ropes, the practical determined and monitored according to his purposes,
the teachers and the teaching, sets the direction of the historical reproduction of faith
and the influence of science on it, and suggested the theoretical and historical
quibbles sources faith in his sense of the goodness and sacrifice of truth.
Not only with each other to fight the three motifs, each also with themselves, and
how the dispute is often harder than the sects of the religions to which they subject
themselves, it is with the hassles of motives.
So argues the historical motif in the belief in the Koran and the Bible, there again
the faith of the Shi'ites and Sunnis, here the faith of the pope, to Luther and Calvin,
the practical in the design of faith the part of the priests and rulers to own benefit and
salvation of all the favor here and there that this side of the benefit, the theoretical in
the philosophical doctrines, there is so much of her.
The overall result of human faith is the result of the interaction with and against
each of the three motifs with each other and in themselves. It remains on the whole a
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positive result huge, so the mutually opposing action of the motifs themselves
contributes to make it huge. It is the case of the ever changing and fluctuating, to be
filled again through evaporation itself, all the more powerful by the fight of his
waves, sea. Whatever goes into it in detail and staggers, it stays on the whole an
eternal sea, from which all the rivers draw secretly to pour the scooped the goals of
the barrel back into it. And even what is running one against another, but hangstogether and basically the whole.
Here and there occurs a materialist and says: There is no God. That is, it shall be
additional to the small bucket of his conclusion to exploit the sea and pour away. It
has existed from the beginning and will exist forever, like the small bucket to scoop
tired, and what they pay out, running through the air back to sea.
Matter of history and ethnography of religious belief, it must be to follow the rule
of three motifs that faith through the centuries and nations, and the reasons for its
special design in the influence of the historical precedents, reciprocal linkages,
relationships with nature, plants and needs consult the people on these motifs and to
consider a wider perspective, a matter of great interest, but which is not the task
here. Before you can trace the causes which have driven forth faith in humanity, in
broad terms, it is important to determine their own nature and their relationship to
each other with clarity, and this is the first task. For this purpose, but they are, above
all, to take as the eye, where they present the observation immediately clear and
beyond doubt, that is how they act in the consciousness of men that do not like it
about in a consciousness of God, or general world order or the idea of history and
things roots, which we like but last search their roots or the reason of their general
train.
For it is thus that we are up to the individual effect of the same in the people
coming down with the consideration of the motives of faith, not to say that the belief
in humanity was created by an atomistic summation of subjects in each man: but only
say that the generally higher, reaching up, reasons driven forth the faith in humanity
that they may be, have been made in each under the influence of the same people
standing as these motifs claims, but only that communicate directly with the
experience; only of these, we can even draw conclusions on the nature of the general
reasons and that thus characterize as otherwise dark lasting, through their effects. So
on this is first addressing the eye, not to start with mystical and idle speculation,which only to inferential presuppose that of the motives and reasons, which it is not
only free, but it turns out of course the need of the work of the ascend into the
motives for people in general caster of humanity, which we will eventually find only
believed in the existence of a supreme and last things themselves.
So is not excluded with our experiential observation of nature and work of the
motifs in their detail, their combinations and conflicts, a coherent story, and higher
conception of their work in humanity, nor replaced, but prepared and underpinned,
and the conclusion in a higher believes will be entirely devoted to the progress of the
following considerations by themselves.
Each of the three motifs can be uplifting to a real, pronounceable in an argument,
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collect reason, and thus the fluctuation, the division, the conflict, the straying and
confusion, though it remains nothing more than what we said, the highest
generalization, summary, top, clarification, correction position, completion of a short
side and relevant restriction of the other side of a corresponding motif. Each of the
three arguments is sufficient for himself, to justify the faith and keep, but only insofar
as each is collected to the main aspects and make the other subservient may, insofaras it but the other needs, and likewise returned to service the other can occur, the faith
eventually receives the full support only by the unanimous vote of the three, so one
should keep only be fully justified him.
It can be shown that one has the right to be based on what breaks down in history,
and even hint of what is punctured in the future, to look into the recent swing to, but
just by showing that just merely that which corresponds to the reason and nature of
things and the needs of the people, may eventually penetrate and gain support, and
even there is a continuing tendency. It can be shown that it is right to keep the best for
the most true, but to come to the knowledge of what is best for all and for all time, theFuens is needed on the historically developed knowledge thereof and the departing
reasonable insight into the nature of people and things. It can be shown that it is right,
not only as good, but above all and above all to demand in consideration of the
highest and last things the sensible and Fairest for the experiential nature of things as
in the smallest and vulgar, but how limited is the individual reason and experiential
knowledge of the nature of things, so it will apply again to rely on the historically
Applicable, and on which to base with that, as the most correct knowledge of what is
to us the best used in our relations to reverse what serves us best, which is most
correct. Any dispute between the historical, practical and theoretical motives and raises and
resolves itself finally into the historical, practical and theoretical reason, within each
of them, and the battle carries in itself the conditions of the solution.
In vain we tried to support the faith to the point of one of the three reasons
alone. The revelation believer who wishes to rely solely on direct revelation from
God, but must justify the validity of revelation for themselves and others through the
practical point of view that such a belief especially the otherwise disclose or properly
called, is the best. He who seeks the best religion for all, he says, that he the religion
of love, All the best wishes to all, had invented himself, if he had not found them byChrist? So he needs but the historical support. Or he sees around at the thousands of
BC and the nations round about, if it was so easy to invent this religion. Rather, only
that he himself was brought up in it, was the highest practical point find it and let
them make. And who wants to build solely on reason and experience, he looked
around at the free communities and materialists who just have this principle, but this
principle, how much he still finds faith in God and eternal life there.
Rather than discard one of the three building stone, we have to put it to the vault,
but we need to lift the stones individually.
V.
The historical principle.
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A man says to the other. This is the short term of the historical principle. Oral,
written, it is the same. In this way, the faith of the people propagates to the
people. But how he first came to mankind?
From the first you can only go anywhere if you know it, but must begin with the
later times, when you do not know it, and see if you can find it on the first circuit
means. The closing agent to the first emergence of faith but will always remain souncertain as to the first generation, the first state, the first development of man
himself, and the decision between the very opposite hypotheses are the about only
thing is always want to be a belief, but we do not believe the reasons in general here,
but know. So we move at least that question to come back later with some out, and
instead of asking first how faith first came to mankind, we must first ask just how he
first comes to every person nowadays.
It is with the emergence of faith as with all things. In all things, the first emergence
of the way and is a distinction to be significantly different, such as the emergence of
the thing repeats itself. The Incurred once saves so to say the means and costs of its
first emergence in the new creation, where not all but the largest and most important
part, it contains by the repetition of the conditions of existence to say in his life with
so canceled.
What was not among them, a statue, a painting, a poem to create a erstesmal. If the
work once there, it is easy to cast a thousand times, copied, printed, and recite.
Only after thousands, probably millions, billions of years that the earth is, could
result in a human couple. Was only one there, so it was easy to populate the earth, and
soon it will be hard to defend their overpopulation. Like the languages originated, nobody knows, and nobody would be able to invent
it's new, and now they are invented every child learns to play.
What it costs many times for emergency, to light the fire in the stove. If it burns
once you take in care that does not burn the house.
To produce a disease, generally exceeds the human art to dampen a disease no less.
In the all you can by reason of being the first to ask, and you will not find it often,
the reason of existence is easy to find later, he is simply in what is already there.
It is so with all things, there is also the belief that.
As the faith is first created, nobody knows, can you think about this and that
already. One can also ask whether it would be possible to find it's on New or
invent. Now he is once formed, true or false, he propagates that man is propagated as
the language propagates how the fire propagates, as the infection propagates. And the
man asks why he believes it is one that may not be the last, and whole, but the next
one and an important part of the whole apt, the answer: Because was believed before
me and is believed to me.
In fact, you would be mistaken strong when it was thought that the man believed tomerely conclusions or need. Rather, each person already starts to believe until only
place you can make reason and need contends, and the belief is probably the majority
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of people, regardless of continued only through persistence. Again, this is not the
belief in the highest and last things peculiar, he is just not the exception from what is
generally.
No one is born with belief in God, but anyone with such a general and
unconditional conditioning to believe everything you tell him, born, it is quite natural
that he believes in God, when he says of such and therefore for every people, becausemore or less unanimous education influences of lying, also has a more or less
matching, behaved differently from that of other peoples different beliefs.
In fact, you can the child, and that every child, almost do everything Any
white. Say to the child: The moon is the same fall from heaven, and it will look to the
sky and expect that it falls. Tell him: This dog will begin to speak the same, it will
last manned, and only wonder that he does not start.
Is not So perhaps humanity in their childhood faith in God knows been made, and
shall be continued only because it is made know to Use New every child, and the mannot just as has the opportunity from the non-existence of God on the to convince
clouds as the moon does not fall and the dog does not talk. Especially if you make
him to know the thunder is God's voice from the clouds, and this and to support the
faith through faith?The child is thus rather believe, the more one expects of him to
believe.
To all belief, which is implanted in the child, the child does not require reasons, so
it would not understand reasons. Also, it is not the beauty, the grandeur, the
wholesomeness, the Trstlichkeit of faith, whereby it is determined to believe. It feels
even more firmly in ghosts, the more it makes you afraid. The matter may simply bepsychological: it learns the word, understand the speech only by attachment to facts;
now it ties conversely, the fact of the word, speech. Or: The child makes all the adults
so long after, until it has acquired through imitating the skills and abilities to go
beyond that, and does so much to say of myself in him by. So also faith by the adults
in the child makes. I like to leave it but that someone summarize the psychological
basis of the fact even deeper. Here it is only the fact as a reason which is also the
reason of the fact.
Instead of having to learn the faith until the child must unlearn the faith, and that
happens gradually when the man repeatedly hears the word may lie. Then the self-evidence of the association of the real triggers of the word on, gradually weakens the
faith, and can last even into Fold the opposite. But the more a person remains on the
child's level, and part of the people remains always close it, the more it continues the
uncritical belief. The women especially in matters of faith always remain children,
and the faith of the masses can be of any prophet with a sufficiently strong voice,
gesture and lead lively power of speech as a water stream through a trough.
Especially in the field of things, where no experience, no detection of an error by
the facts is possible. Then, save the faith of the people if it is pushed out to all areas
of experience. And the less ignorant of the reasons for his faith and has the less heunderstood the reasons for it, the sooner he can kill it and he beats other for dead,
because then you can also make the less counter-arguments against claims.
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But he whose mind is matured by experience and thought, who has learned to
doubt the influence of the historical subject is not revoked, the opinion to him, and
the authority over him involuntary exerts a power over him, and not easily go back to
the lost all faith that was implanted in him as a child, but determines itself
involuntarily much of the training of his mind and his conclusions.
Especially if it is things that exceed the scope of each circuit, with all hisexperience, and we even see many of the sharpest thinkers after vain struggle to
determine the true and the best in the field of the highest and last things by his own
reason, and finally it Despairing, submit to Use New with conscious will of the power
of the historical principle, which promises to give them back the peace and
confidence of the child. So, the end returns to the output.
Here we see how the practical design shall be added to revitalize and strengthen the
historical. Also look for the self, the plant the faith to someone else to make it
plausible by concurrence of the other motives, but if this is supported by the historical
motif of the other motifs, the reverse is equally true. The people, the child will be
offered reasons of faith, tied his salvation to faith, and the reasons it believes,
believes the promise, the threat without their own examination believes all historical.
I will bring an example of how I read it:
"The Old Man of the Mountain was (in the times of the Crusades), the head of a
degenerate sect of Muslims who lived in the mountains between Damascus and
Antioch, and whose name Heissassin (Assassin) has become the general term for
assassins in many European languages. The followers of the Old Man of the
Mountains revered him as a living God or as a God-man, in which the deity wasembodied. they fulfilled children of the tenderest age with such a strong and lively
faith in the divinity of the Old Man of the Mountains and the merit of blind obedience
to his commands, that many would rather die than wanted to live, and no scruple to
throw down at his behest of rock or towers or to plunge into another inevitable
dangers of life. If you won the Old Man of the Mountains with money, so he sent
assassins before their daggers certainly was not a king in the depths of his palace, not
a military leader at the center of his warriors. Heissassins murdered the King Conrad
of Jerusalem, and many others both Christian and Moslem princes and lords., the
fanatical murderer feared the unermeidlichsten and cruel death, not because they hadthe firm hope that they immediately awaken to the bliss of paradise again, or as a
beautiful, strong, happy people would be born again. " (Meinert's History of Relig IS
338,. Arnold III to VII c 149 p 148 p 204 10 Even Marin I. 297 ff.....)
Here you can see how the blindest submission could be generated in the will of a
superior, the boldest energy and the staunchest toleration by the moored hope for an
afterlife, this was but even creates all the way to the historic Prinzipe by the mere
early implantation, and how here with the poorest faith it is different with the ward,
which we consider to be the best.
In such a way we see the faith of the elders pass to the children in the schools,spread from the pulpit, by missionaries, by true and false prophets, and apostles,
continue on and on. And the more he has already spread, so he finds it easier to
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further spread, like fire, grab the infection easier to get, the further they have to be
used. Who can still do last stop?
To influence the propagation of the faith enters the equally powerful duration. To
what parents, ancestors, the first parents believed, dare not easily doubt. Gradually
grow together as the faith with their whole being and life of the people, that it would
have to give up themselves to abandon him, and really almost always gives him onlywith his subjugation and destruction. The best reasons to fail the solidified faith,
safer, depending untriftiger the faith, because faith is itself a major source close to the
reasons and manner, especially in his own stuff. And so the faith of the individual is
held by the connection at the same time with the whole faith to him and before him.
"The more we - as I read in a mission reports from Amoy in China 1) - are known to
the people, the more apparent to us is the powerful influence that the prevailing
superstition and fear to call by opposition to same as a nerd put on them.'s the simple
fact that idolatry has been common for centuries among them, a very sufficient proof
that they completely over raises the need to test for the vast majority of the lower
classes. "
1) Calw Missionsbl. 1847 1 July. No. 13th
And elsewhere 2) : "I made a Brahmans on the upside of idolatry attention,
whereupon he replied. So did our forefathers, and we must do it well, no real
Bramahne can leave the religion of his fathers Each tribe has its own religion, Padre
(missionaries) theirs and ours that we. "
2) In a letter Dr. Haug's. from Pune in western East Indies. 7 Sept., 1861. Abroad in 1862. No. 5
But what has he, now the unbeliever asks for a reason, a faith for value and claims
to validity, which takes place in this manner all the way to the same principle as fire
and plague its spread through humanity, a belief that its main root in the credulity has
adopted the Child and the people without understanding, spread by those who do not
have it often himself, and remains so confident as childish and effeminate, the foolish
man remains who cherishes him, and capture of the rational only is by sacrificing
reason. Do not have thousands and thousands of errors and tales spread in the sameway, and yet we see the faith of the peoples, he is not fully manifest error and fairy
tales? And a belief does not contradict the other? The poets, priests and rulers have
invented it, and now he goes around the world.
These objections are on the surface, but let's go a little deeper.
It is true that faith is accepted by everyone without first reasons: it does not require
the theoretical and practical subject, but will not be detained without reason in
general. Of the Child, in lower elementary and peoples layers yes, but that's not what
keeps him in the long run. The child is not child forever, the nations grow, and in
every nation grow some over the others, and some of the people on the other up, andthe adults have dominion over the children and the faith of the children and of the
part of the people which remains on the child's level. In adults, but the faith has to
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pass his samples. You know he is not often in detail, but it is and it is always a
whole. He has survived a French revolution, he has a year were 1848, he survived the
attack of the materialists of all time, and he will be all over. And if some sacrifice
after a long test of reason even reason to believe, it must still be the reason apart from
the most important reasons for faith itself. If above all priests and rulers strive to
plant it, if even those striving to plant it, do not do it themselves, so there must bevery broad and compelling reasons for binding to plant him. So let's historic
reproduction in itself a reason more adequately to hold the fort planted to be true, but
it may have returned to the community and the necessity of reproduction in general
and compelling reasons.
And again, if the historically propagated belief in general is full of errors and fairy
tales, and faith against the other runs, the specific provisions and arrangements of the
faith of the general and essential points are to be distinguished thereof. The relative
agreement about the fact that it is a divine overand otherworldly to give the human
this world, and that man's highest and ultimate salvation was put into the relationshipto develop, through all the ages and nations is quite wonderful. So also must therefor,
not for the Changing and Competing in the belief that a general validity and force of
reasons is required. And as much as we like to give special form of the price of faith,
we have therefore not abandon all faith. One should not pour baby with the
bathwater; God will pour you out with the bathwater?
The great achievement of the contradictions that appear in knowledge, is not to lift
the knowledge, but to promote it, because every solution of a contradiction
knowledge walks up the steps. Should it be different in faith?
To say that the story of God and the afterlife has spread like any other mythical and
bears the stamp of any other fable, as the very fact of the distribution itself is thus in
contradiction and even how much else Where is the fable, the tale otherwise obtained
such distribution, such duration so firm belief would have produced. While there are
probably some children's fairy tales and fables that one since ages in India told as
with us, but these are also very special rarities, their distribution is only very poorly
against the Faith of God, and what is the main thing that everyone keeps them. fables
in India and here Rather, the historical subject would be able, not to spread the great
fable of God and the afterlife so far so long to get into power, if it would really be a
fable. For here the following observation occurs, appropriate to finally lead us to theargument from design.
Error and truth have in common that they can reproduce historical, and that the
spread is all the easier, the farther it has taken root, the belief holds the easier the
longer it has been held, but it is the difference that goes with the truth indefinitely,
with the error of only up to certain limits, by the true faith, how it spreads, somewhat
resistant helpful and conducive to something resistant to going against the wrong
thing, and with the proliferation Duration of faith also grows and finally needed
outweighs the benefit of the true faith. And it's not hard to find.
Why do we call a belief true and good? Because it is the nature of things and the
needs of the people. Why wrong and bad? Because he that is in conflict. What
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follows already a priori ? The more the faith spread and the longer it lasts, the more
opportunity it will offer and find to develop his correspondence or his conflict with
the nature of things and of men, and to prove, to the same main effects and
consequences arise only develop in accordance with its scope and duration. From the
correspondence is an advantageforfrom the conflict a counteraction againstmust
emerge his distant dissemination and longer preservation, which grows with thespread and duration. In a word, it is the ratio of the theoretical and practical principle,
which determines the final success. The historical principle is in itself the good and
bad, true and false beliefs equal stead, but it is related to it in an opposite situation to
the theoretical and practical Prinzipe. The ultimate goal is to match all in all
relationships, and they can be found only in a true and good faith rather than
definitive.
It is also here with faith as with fire. Caught fire so much easier to get, the more it
has already resorted to, but also consumed the easier his substance, and would long
be considered on the earth, if not always nachwchse new substance. Thus, a beliefthat the substance does not always re-grows from the nature of things and a true and
general needs of the people who do not persist in the length. The longer it endures,
the more he has resorted to himself, the more his conflicts with the nature of people
and things develop its adverse effects accumulate and spread, the closer he moves his
turning points, and so we see any error, fall fable after another, but the truth is
consolidating more and strengthen, gain greater and firmer ground.
Each and every evil bad faith in faith once reached to any time those turning point
beyond which his distant spread and its duration increases the farther its decline over
the conditions of its growth. Then begins when it is the belief of employees by verygeneral terms, to the whole belief au sick. The initially powerless against the power
of the historical principle persons struggling theoretical and practical principles are
gaining ground, the more, the more they themselves with new weapons of the
historical principle of the quantity torrent cutting or compelling power of speech and
deeds can waffnen. Unbelief, in those times, where the historic principle loses its old
power back time looking here and there, outstrip the faith, while a flock of old
creditors opposed to the tighter and tighter together chart him under the flag of the
historical principle, until finally the decided defeat of disbelief and the overgrowth of
the old faith by the new yourself. And it's no different with the temporary weakeningof faith in the periods of transition to such as the streams flow for a time more
economical to swell after the stronger.
So many foolish and harmful belief would not even last as long and spread so far if
it does not collapse executed with mostly good and true, and both could be so easy
and simple divorced, has struck again in connection to the people root. Only one in
the whole and true faith can improve the existing ones are overthrown, and that is the
need to overcome all the power of persistence, which gives the historical principle of
the once existing beliefs. Only closer not watched in themselves, but in virtue of his
connection with some predominantly truths and goods, and not on, so the paradoxthat the foolish and harmful in one faith through the theoretical and practical
principle, while it is running, but can be kept arises forever, but until the master in the
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whole and finds bessseren truer faith.
From other side, the historical principle also comes into conflict with itself by is the
nature of the wrong and bad faith itself to rest on unilateral determination and reasons
therefore generally not be able to. So faith starts against the faith to