Written no earlier than 1909.
First published in 1930 in the Lenin Collection XII.

Printed from the manuscript.

L. FEUERBACH. COLLECTED WORKS,

Vol. 8, 1851.

"LECTURES ON THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION"
8°. R. 807
The Preface is dated January 2, 1851, - Feuerbach speaks here about the reasons for his non-participation in the 1848 revolution with its "shameful, fruitless end" (VII)* [492]**.
The 1848 revolution lacked a sense of place and time ***, the constitutionalists awaited freedom from the word of the lord ****, the republicans (VII-VIII) [492] - from their own wish ("it was enough to wish for a republic to bring it to life")... (VIII) [492].
"If the revolution breaks out again and I take an active part in it, then you can... be sure that this revolution is victorious, that the day of the last judgment over monarchy and hierarchy has come" (VII) [491].
Feuerbach did not understand the 1848 revolution.
1st lecture (1-11) [493-502].
Page 2 [494]: "We have had enough of both philosophical and political idealism; we now want to be political materialists."

Sic!!

* L. Feuerbach. Sammtliche Werke, Bd. 8, Leipzig, 1851. Ed.
** L. Feuerbach. Selected Philosophical Works, Vol. II, M., 1955. Ed.
*** - sense of place and time. Ed.
**** - of the lord. Ed.

"Überspanntes" away!
3-4 [495-496] - Why Feuerbach retired to the countryside: breaking with the "world believing in God," page 4 (line 7 from below*) (cf. page 3 in f.**) - living with "nature" (5) [496], ablegen all "überspannten"*** ideas.
7-11 [498-502] Feuerbach gives an outline of his works (7-9 [498-500]: "History of Modern Philosophy") (9-11 [500-502] "Spinoza," "Leibniz") 33.

2nd lecture (12-20) [503-510].
12-14 [503-504] - "Bayle."
"Sensibility" in Feuerbach
15 [505-506]: Sensibility **** for me means "true, not artificial, but actually existing unity of the material and spiritual, it is therefore the same as reality for me."
Sensuous not only stomach, but also head***** (15) [505].
(16-20 [506-510]: Feuerbach, work on immortality 34, summary).
3rd lecture (21-30) [510-518].
I was criticized for "The Essence of Christianity" 35, that in my view man depends on nothing, "they objected to this supposed deification of man by me" (24) [513].
"The being which man considers to precede him, ... is nothing other than nature, not your god" (25) [513-514].
"The unconscious being of nature, in my view, is an eternal being, without origin, the first being, but first in time, not in rank, physically, but not morally the first being"... (27) [515].
In my negation there is also affirmation... "Certainly, the conclusion from my teaching is that there is no God"

* - line 7 from below - строка 7 снизу Ред.
** - in fine - at the end. Ed.
*** - discard all "eccentric." Ed.
**** - Sensibility. Ed.
***** - sensuous not only the stomach, but also the head. Ed.

SUMMARY OF FEUERBACH'S BOOK "LECTURES ON THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION"
(29) [517], but this follows from the understanding of the essence of God (= expression of the essence of nature, the essence of man).
4th lecture.
"The foundation of religion is the feeling of dependence" (31) [518] ("Fear"* 33-4-5-6 [519-523]).
"The so-called speculative philosophers are... those philosophers who do not adapt their concepts to things, but, on the contrary, things to their concepts" (31) [519].

cf.** Marx and Engels 36 (5th lecture)
- especially death generates fear, belief in God (41) [527].
"I hate the idealism that tears man out of nature; I am not ashamed of my dependence on nature" (44) [530].
"As little as I want to deify man in 'The Essence of Christianity,' as I was foolishly accused,... so little do I want to deify nature in the theological sense..." (46-47) [532].
6th lecture - Cult of animals (50 [535] ff.***).
"That which man depends on... is nature, the object of the senses... All the impressions that nature makes on man through the senses... can become motives for religious veneration" (55) [540].
(7th lecture.)
By egoism, I mean not the egoism of the "philistine and bourgeois" (63) [546], but the philosophical principle of conformity with nature, with the reason of man, against "theological hypocrisy, religious and speculative fantasy, political despotism" (63 i. f.) [546]. Cf. 6 4 [546-547], very important 37.

"Egoism" and its meaning
Id.**** 68 i. f. [551] and 69 i. f. [551-552] - egoism (in the philosophical sense) is the root of religion.

* - "fear." Ed.
** - confer - compare. Ed.
*** - and following. Ed.
**** - Idem - the same. Ed.

(70 [552]: The Scholars* can only be defeated with their own weapons, i.e., quotations)... ... "man die Gelehrten nur durch ihre eigenen Waffen, d. h. Zitate schlagen kann"... (70) [552].
on the question of the word energy
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——
Incidentally, on page 78 [558], Feuerbach uses the expression:
Energy, i.e., activity**. This is worth noting.
Indeed, in the concept of energy, there is a subjective moment absent, for example, in the concept of motion. Or, more accurately, in the concept or usage of the term energy, there is something that excludes objectivity.
Energy of the moon (cf.) versus *** motion of the moon.
——
107 i. f. [583] ... "Nature is the original, the first and the last being"...
sensuous = the first, self-existing, and true
111 [586]: ... "For me... in philosophy... the sensuous is the first; but the first not only in the sense of speculative philosophy, where the first means that which one must go beyond, but also the first in the sense of the undeducible from another, existing through itself and true."
... "The spiritual is nothing outside and without the sensuous."
NB generally page 111 ... "the truth and essence (NB) of the senses, from which... philosophy... proceeds"...
112 [586-587]... "Man thinks only through his sensuously existing head, reason has a firm sensuous basis in the head, in the brain, in the center of the senses."
Also on page 112 about the fidelity (testimonies****) of the senses.

* - Scholars. Ed.
** - energy, i.e., activity. Ed.
*** - in relation to. Ed.
**** - testimonies. Ed.

SUMMARY OF FEUERBACH'S BOOK "LECTURES ON THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION"
114 [588-589]: Nature = the first, *unableitbares, ursprungliches Wesen*.
"Thus, 'The Essence of Religion' is connected with 'The Principles of Philosophy'" 38 (113) [588].
"I do not deify anything, and therefore I do not deify nature either" (115) [589].

NB

116 [590-591] - in response to the criticism that Feuerbach does not provide a definition of nature:
"I understand by nature the totality of all sensory forces, things, and beings which man distinguishes from himself as non-human... Or, taking the word practically, nature is everything that, independent of supernatural suggestions of theistic faith, appears to man directly, sensuously, as the basis and object of his life. Nature is light, electricity, magnetism, air, water, fire, earth, animal, plant, man, insofar as he acts involuntarily and unconsciously—by the word 'nature' I mean nothing more, nothing mystical, nothing obscure, nothing theological" (above: in contrast to Spinoza).
It turns out that nature = everything except the supernatural. Feuerbach is vivid but not profound.

Engels defines the difference between materialism and idealism more profoundly 39.
... "Nature is everything you see that is not the work of human hands and thoughts. Or, if we delve into the anatomy of nature, nature is a being or a totality of beings and things whose manifestations, revelations, or actions, in which their existence and essence precisely manifest and consist, have their foundation not in thoughts, or intentions and decisions of the will, but in astronomical or cosmic, mechanical, chemical, physical, physiological, or organic forces or causes" (116-117) [591].
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Here the matter boils down to the opposition of matter to spirit, the physical to the psychological.
———— 121 [594-595] - against the argument that there must be a first cause (= God).
"Only the limitations of man and his tendency to simplify for convenience substitute eternity for time, infinity for the never-ending movement from cause to cause, an immobile deity for tireless nature, eternal rest for eternal motion" (121 i. f.) [595].
124-125 [598] People, out of subjective needs, replace the concrete with the abstract, contemplation with concept, many with one, the infinite Σ* of causes with one cause.
*objectiv = auβer uns*
But these abstractions "are not ascribed any objective value or existence, no existence outside of us" (125) [599].
... "Nature has no beginning and no end. Everything in it is in interaction, everything is relative, everything simultaneously acts and is a cause, everything in it is multifaceted and reciprocal";...
there is no need for God here (129-130 [602-603]; simple arguments against God).
... "The cause of the first and universal cause of things in the sense of theists, theologians, so-called speculative philosophers, is the human reason"... (130) [603]. "God is... the cause in general, the concept of cause as embodied essence, become autonomous"... (131) [603-604].
"God is abstract nature, i.e., nature abstracted from sensory contemplation, thought, transformed into an object, into an entity of reason; nature in the proper sense is sensory, actual nature, as it is immediately revealed and presented to us by the senses" (133) [605-606].
immediate- ly
Theists see the cause of motion in nature (which they transform into a dead mass or matter) in God (134) [607]. But the power of God is, in fact, the power of nature (Naturmacht: 135 [608]).
... "For we know the properties of things only from their actions"... (136) [608-609].
Atheism (136-137) [609] does not destroy neither *das moralische Über* (= *das Ideal*), nor *das naturliche Über* (= *die Natur*).
... "Is not time merely a form of the world, the way in which individual beings and phenomena of the world follow one another? How, then, can I attribute a beginning in time to the world?" (145) [616].
time and world
... "God is merely the world in thought... The distinction between God and the world is merely the distinction between spirit and sensation, thinking and imagining"... (146) [616-617].
They want to present God as a being existing outside of us. But does this not, on the contrary, acknowledge the truth of sensory existence?
"Is it not acknowledged" (thereby), "that there is no existence outside of sensory existence? Do we have any other sign, any other criterion of existence outside of us, of existence independent of thought, other than sensibility?" (148) [618].
existence outside of us - independent of thought
... "Nature... in its separation from its materiality and corporeality... is God"... (149) [619-620].
NB

nature outside, independent of matter = God

* - neither the moral higher (= the ideal), nor the natural higher (= nature). Ed.

* - sum. Ed.
* - objective = outside of us. Ed.

theory of "copies" "Deriving nature from God is the same as wishing to derive the original from the image, from the copy, the thing from the thought of this thing" (149) [620].
Humans are characterized by *Verkehrtheit* (149 i. f.), *verselbstandigen* abstractions—such as time and space (150) [620]:
"Although... humans have abstracted space and time from spatial and temporal things, they nevertheless presuppose these as the first causes and conditions of their existence. They therefore conceive of the world, i.e., the totality of all real things, the substance, the content of the world, as having arisen in space and time.
time outside of temporal things = God
Even for Hegel, matter arises not only in space and time but also from space and time"... (150) [621]. "It is also unclear why time, separated from temporal things, could not be identified with God" (151) [621].
time and space "In reality, the opposite is the case, ... not things presuppose the existence of space and time, but, on the contrary, space and time presuppose the presence of things, for space, or extension, presupposes the presence of something that is extended, and time—movement: for time is merely a concept derived from movement—presupposes the presence of something that moves. Everything is spatial and temporal"... (151-152) [622].

* - the ability to pervert (at the end of 149), to make independent. Ed.

SUMMARY OF FEUERBACH'S BOOK "LECTURES ON THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION"
"The question of whether God created the world, ... is a question about the relation of spirit to sensibility" (152 [623])—the most important and difficult question in philosophy, around which the entire history of philosophy revolves (153 [623])—the dispute between Stoics and Epicureans, Platonists and Aristotelians, Skeptics and Dogmatists in ancient philosophy, Nominalists and Realists in the Middle Ages, Idealists and "Realists or Empiricists" (sic! 153) in modern times.
cf. Engels idem in "Ludwig Feuerbach"
153
To some extent, the inclination towards one or another philosophy depends on the character of people (bookish people versus practitioners).
153 "I do not deny... wisdom, goodness, beauty; I only deny that they, as these generic concepts, are beings, in the form of gods, or properties of God, or in the form of Platonic ideas, or Hegelian self-positing concepts"... (158) [628]—they exist only as properties of humans.
(materialism) contra theology and idealism (in theory)
Another reason for belief in God: humans project onto nature the idea of their purposeful creation. Nature is purposeful—*ergo*, it was created by a rational being (160) [629-630].
"What humans call the purposefulness of nature and thus understand is, in reality, nothing other than the unity of the world, the harmony of causes and effects, generally the mutual connection in which everything in nature exists and acts" (161) [630].
... "We have no reason to imagine that if humans had more senses or organs, they would also know more properties or things of nature. There are no more in the external world, in inorganic nature, than
If humans had more senses, would they

* - therefore. Ed.

discover more things in the world? No.
in organic nature. Humans have precisely as many senses as are necessary to perceive the world in its entirety, in its totality" (163) [632-633].
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important against agnosticism 40
———— 168 [636-637]—Against Liebig for phrases about "infinite (divine) wisdom"...
||¯Feuerbach and natural science!! NB Compare now Mach and Co. 41¯||
174-175-178 [642-645]—Nature (Natura) = republican; God = monarch. |¯This is often found in Feuerbach!¯|
188-190 [653-656]—God was once a patriarchal monarch, and now he is a constitutional monarch: he rules, but according to laws.
NB

(compare Dühring 42)
Where does the spirit (Geist) come from?—the theists ask the atheist (196) [661].
They form too low an opinion of nature (*despectierliche*: 196) and too high an opinion of the spirit (*zu hohe, zu vornehme* (!!) *Vorstellung*).
wittily!
From nature alone, one cannot explain even a *Regierungsrath* (197) [662].
"For the spirit develops along with the body, with the senses... it is connected with the senses... where
the skull, where the brain, there also the spirit; where the organ, there also its function" (197 [662]: cf. above (197) "spirit in the head").
Idem Dühring 43 "Spiritual activity is bodily" (197-198) [662].
The emergence of the physical world from the spirit, from God, leads to the creation of the world out of nothing—"for where does the spirit get
* - too high, too noble (!!) conception. Ed.
** - government councilor. Ed.

SUMMARY OF FEUERBACH'S BOOK "LECTURES ON THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION"
matter, physical substances, if not from nothing?" (199) [664].
... "Nature is physical, material, sensible"... (201) [665].

nature is material
Jakob Böhme = "materialistic theist": he deifies not only the spirit but also matter. For him, God is material—this is his mysticism (202) [666].

... "Where the eyes and hands take over, the gods cease to exist" (203) [667].
"The evil in nature" (theists) "is attributed to... matter, or the inevitable necessity of nature" (212) [675-676].
necessity of nature
======== embryo of historical materialism 44

213 in the middle [676] and 215 in the middle [678] "natural" and "civil world"*.
======== (226) [687-688]: Feuerbach says that he ends the first part (on nature as the basis of religion) here and moves on to the second: in *Geistesreligion* ** the properties of the human spirit are revealed.
(232) [692-693]—"Religion is poetry"—one can say this, for faith = fantasy. But am I (Feuerbach) destroying poetry? No. I am abolishing (aufhebe) religion "only insofar as" (Feuerbach's emphasis) "it is mere prose, not poetry" (233) [693].
 
NB
Art does not require its works to be recognized as reality (233).
Besides fantasy, Gemüt *** (261) [717], the practical side (258) [714], the search for the better, protection, help, etc., is extremely important in religion.

* - "natural" and "civil world". Ed.
** - religion of the spirit. Ed.
*** - feeling. Ed.

(263) [718-719] - In religion, people seek consolation (atheism is deemed *trostlos*). - - -
necessity of nature "Such a conception, corresponding to human self-love, is the idea that nature does not act with unchanging necessity, but that above the necessity of nature stands a being that loves man" (264) [719].
And in the following phrase, "Naturnotwendigkeit" ** of the falling stone (264) [720].
NB

Page 287 in the middle [738-739] twice: also "Notwendigkeit der Natur" ***.

Religion = childhood of humanity (269) [723], Christianity made God out of morality, created a moral God (274) [727-728].
Feuerbach against the abuse of the word religion
Religion is a rudimentary formation - one can say: "education is the true religion"... "However, this is an abuse of words, for the word religion is constantly associated with superstitious and inhumane ideas" (275) [728].
Hymn to enlightenment - (277) [730].
NB
"A superficial view and assertion that religion is entirely indifferent to life, especially to social and political life." "I would not give a farthing for such political freedom which leaves man a slave to religion" (281) [733].
Religion is inherent in man ("this proposition... translated into simple German means") = superstition is inherent in man (283) [735].

* - cheerless. Ed.
** - "natural necessity". Ed.
*** - "necessity of nature". Ed.

SUMMARY OF FEUERBACH'S BOOK "LECTURES ON THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION"
"The Christian has a free cause of nature, a master of nature, to whose will, to whose word, nature is subject, a God who is not bound by so-called causal connection, not bound by necessity, not chained to the chain that links effect to cause and cause to cause, whereas the pagan god is bound by natural necessity and cannot even save his favorites from the fateful lot of death." (Thus, Feuerbach systematically speaks of Notwendigkeit der Natur).

necessity of nature

\
"But the Christian has a free cause because he does not bind himself to the general order, to the necessity of nature, in his desires" (301) [750]. ((And three more times on this page: Notwendigkeit der Natur.))

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NB

NB
And on page 302 [751]: "... all laws or necessities of nature to which human existence is subject" ...|¯¯ cf. 307 [755]: "Lauf der Natur" *.

/

\NB "To make nature dependent on God means to make the world order and the necessity of nature dependent on will" (312) [759-760].
And on page 313 (top) [760] - "Naturnotwendigkeit"!!

/

320 [766]: "necessity of nature" (der Natur)...
In religious conceptions "we have... examples of how, in general, man transforms the subjective into the objective, i.e., makes something existing outside of thought, representation, imagination - that which exists only in his thought, representation, imagination" (328) [773].
what is the objective? (according to Feuerbach)

* - "course of nature". Ed.

Entleibter Geist* = God "Thus, Christians tear the spirit, the soul of man out of the body and make this torn, disembodied spirit their God" (332) [777].
Religion gives man an ideal (332). Man needs an ideal, but a human one, corresponding to nature, not supernatural:
"Let our ideal be not a castrated, disembodied, abstract being, but - a whole, real, all-sided, perfect, educated man" (334) [778].
——— Mikhailovsky's ideal is merely a vulgarized repetition of the ideal of advanced bourgeois democracy or revolutionary bourgeois democracy.
——— _____

Sinnlich, physisch ** ((remarkable equation!))
"Man has no conception, no notion of any other reality, any other existence, except the sensory, physical" (334) [779].
¯¯¯¯¯
NB
"If it is not shameful to admit the origin of the sensory, material world from the thinking or willing of some spirit, if it is not shameful to assert that things are not thought because they exist, but exist because they are thought, then let it not be shameful to admit their origin from the word, let it not be shameful to assert that not words exist because things exist, but things exist only thanks to words" (341-342) [785-786].

* - disembodied spirit. Ed.
** - sensory, physical. Ed.

SUMMARY OF FEUERBACH'S BOOK "LECTURES ON THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION"
A God without the immortality of the human soul is only a God in name:
... "Such a God is... the God of some rationalistic natural scientists, who is nothing but personified nature or natural necessity, the universe, the cosmos, with which, of course, the idea of immortality does not agree" |¯349¯| [791].
The last (30th) lecture, pages (358-370) [799-810], can almost be quoted in its entirety as a typical example of enlightening atheism, with a socialist tinge (about the mass of needy, etc., page 365 in the middle [805]) and so on. Concluding words: my goal is to make you, the listeners,
"from friends of God - friends of man, from believers - thinkers, from worshippers - workers, from candidates for the other world - researchers of this world, from Christians, who, according to their own admission and consciousness, are 'half-animals, half-angels' - into whole men" (end of 370 [810]).

Feuerbach's italics
Following are Zusatze und Anmerkungen * (371-463) [811-894].
There are many details, quotations, containing repetitions.
I will skip all of this. I will note only the most important of what is of some interest - the basis of morality is egoism (392) [829].
("Love of life, interest, egoism")... "there is not only individual or personal egoism, but also social, familial, corporate, communal, and patriotic egoism" (393) [830].

Germs of historical materialism!

* - appendices and notes. Ed.

... "Good is nothing other than that which corresponds to the egoism of all people" (397) [834].
NB

NB

The germ of historical materialism, cf. Chernyshevsky 45
"Indeed, it is sufficient to cast a glance at history! Where does a new era begin in history?
Everywhere where, against the exclusive egoism of a nation or caste, the oppressed mass or majority asserts its entirely legitimate egoism, where classes of people (sic!) or entire nations, having triumphed over the arrogant haughtiness of the ruling minority, emerge from the wretched and oppressed state of the proletariat into the light of historical and glorious activity.
Thus, the egoism of the currently oppressed majority of humanity must realize and will realize its right and initiate a new era of history. What is to be abolished is not the aristocracy of education, of spirit—no!
But it is intolerable that a few should be noble, while all the rest are base; on the contrary, all must—at least they must—be educated; not property in general should be destroyed—no! but it is intolerable that a few should have property, while all the rest have nothing; property should belong to all" (398) [835].
NB

Feuerbach's "Socialism"

——— These lectures were delivered from December 1, 48 to March 2, 49 (Preface, p. V [490]), and the preface to the book is dated January 1, 51.
How far Feuerbach had already fallen behind Marx ("The Communist Manifesto" 1847, "Neue Rheinische Zeitung," etc.) and Engels (1845: "Lage" 46) at this time (1848-1851).
———

SUMMARY OF FEUERBACH'S BOOK "LECTURES ON THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION"
Examples from the classics of the indifferent use of the words 'gods' and 'nature' (398-399) [835-836].
Pages 402-411 [838-847]—excellent, philosophical (and at the same time simple and clear) explanation of the essence of religion.
"The mystery of religion is, in the end, only the mystery of the combination in one and the same being of consciousness with unconsciousness, of will with involuntariness" (402) [839].
NB
I and Not-I are inextricably linked in man. "Man does not understand and cannot bear his own depth and therefore splits his being into an 'I' without 'Not-I,' which he calls God, and a 'Not-I' without 'I,' which he calls Nature" (406) [842].
NB
Page 408 [844]—an excellent quote from Seneca (against atheists), that they make nature into a god. Pray!—work! (p. 411 [846]) 47.
Nature is God in religion, but nature as a *thought-being*.
"The mystery of religion is the 'identity of the subjective and objective,' i.e., the unity of human and natural being, but one that differs from the actual being of nature and humanity" (411) [847].
NB
"Human ignorance is bottomless, and human imagination is boundless; the power of nature, deprived of its foundation by ignorance and of its limits by imagination, is divine omnipotence" (414) [849].
Very good! **
... "Objective being as subjective, the essence of nature as distinct from nature, as human essence, the essence of man as distinct from man, as non-human
Very good!

* - thought-being. Ed.
** - Very good. Ed.

a remarkable passage!
essence—this is what a divine being is, this is what the essence of religion is, this is what the mystery of mysticism and speculation is..." (415) [850].


——— Speculation for Feuerbach = idealistic philosophy. NB.
———
NB

profoundly true!
"Man separates in thought the adjective from the noun, the property from the essence... And the metaphysical God is nothing but a brief list or aggregate of the most general properties extracted from nature, which, however, man, through the power of imagination, precisely by such separation from the sensory essence, from the matter of nature, again transforms into an independent subject or being" (417) [852].
NB

Remarkable (against Hegel and idealism)
The same role is played by Logic (418 [852-853]—clearly referring to Hegel)—transforming *being, essence* into a special reality—"how unreasonable it is to wish to transform metaphysical existence into physical, subjective existence into objective, logical or abstract existence once again into non-logical, real existence!" (418) [853].
... "So, there is an eternal rift and contradiction between being and thinking?" Yes, but only in the head; in reality, this contradiction has long been resolved, but, of course, in a way that corresponds to reality, not your school concepts, namely—resolved through no less than the five senses (418).
charmingly said!

* - being, essence. Ed.

Page of the manuscript by V.I. Lenin. Summary of Feuerbach's book "Lectures on the Essence of Religion." - 1909.

Reduced

SUMMARY OF FEUERBACH'S BOOK "LECTURES ON THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION"
428 [862]: Tout ce qui n'est pas Dieu, n'est rien, i.e., tout ce qui n'est pas Moi, n'est rien *.
well said! **
431-435 [865-869]: A good quote from Gassendi 48. A very good passage: especially 433 [867] God = a collection of adjectives (without matter) about the concrete and abstract.
NB
|¯435¯| [868-869]—"The head is the chamber of representatives of the universe"—and when our heads are filled with abstractions, *generic concepts*, we naturally derive (ableiten) "the individual from the general, i.e., ... nature from God."
NB
______

individual and general = nature and God

¯¯¯¯¯¯
436-437 [870]: (Note No. 16). I am not against constitutional monarchy, but only a democratic republic "is immediately, for reason, the form of state corresponding to human essence."
ha-ha!!
——— ... "A witty manner of writing consists, among other things, in presupposing intelligence in the reader, in not expressing everything, in leaving it to the reader to say to himself about the relations, conditions, and limitations under which a given proposition only has meaning and can be thought" (447) [880].
apt!
——— Interesting response to critics (of Feuerbach) Professor von Schaden (448-449) [880-881] and Schaller (449-450-463) [882-883-894].

* - All that is not God is nothing, i.e., all that is not I is nothing. Ed.
** - well said! Ed.
*** - generic concepts. Ed.

NB

"being and nature," "thinking and man"
... "I definitely place nature in the place of being, and man in the place of thinking," that is, not abstraction, but the concrete - - - *dramatic psychology* (449) [882].

——— This is why the term "anthropological principle" in philosophy, used by Feuerbach and Chernyshevsky, is narrow. The anthropological principle and naturalism are merely imprecise, weak descriptions of materialism.
——— Well said!
"Jesuitism is the unconscious original and ideal of our speculative philosophers" (455) [888].
On the foundations of philosophical materialism:
"Thinking posits the discrete of reality as continuous, the infinite multiplicity of life as identical to the single. The recognition of the essential, indelible difference between thinking and life (or reality) is the beginning of all wisdom in thinking and in life. Only distinction here is the true connection" (458) [890].
End of Volume 8.
——— Volume 9 = *Theogony* (1857). It seems there is nothing interesting here, judging by a quick perusal. However, § 34 (p. 320 ff.), 36 (p. 334) should be read. NB § 36 (p. 334) - from the review, nothing interesting is seen. Quotes and quotes in confirmation of what Feuerbach has already said.
———

* - dramatic psychology. Ed.