26. Profession of Faith in Empirical Idealism

I. God as the object of religious relationship. God is to be conceived as the concrete unity of the two moments into which the formed world falls for human consciousness: the given objective and the subjective side of existence, produced by the spirit. Through the division of existence into these two sides, the divine essence does not dwell in our conscious mind as a concrete agent, but as an abstract idea, which cannot come to a content through immersion in any objective, but only through the real, continuous process of development of humanity. This process of development is the manifestation of God, and in the final result of this process, the total essence of God is manifested.

II. Man in relation to God and the world. Human development is a continuous overcoming of the two contradictions described above, and thus a continuous manifestation of God. The reason for human imperfection lies in the division of the original unity of the world into object and subject. This imperfection expresses itself in the sphere of action as unfreedom. We are unfree only in those parts of our activity in which the interpenetration of subject and object has not yet been realized by us. In this case we are subject to the power of the objective. The latter ceases as soon as we have grasped the spirit of a matter and have mastered it in accordance with its own nature. Seen from this point of view, human development is at the same time a moral and indeed an ongoing process of liberation.

[In Eduard von Hartmann's handwriting:] Dr. Rudolf Steiner 8.12.92