XI. Withdrawal from the church

816 The break with the church and religion has become complete. The more recent education and the liberated self-consciousness have not only become free from the church statutes, but they have completely freed themselves from all religion.

[Notes for 816 here]

817 How they cry out to us, how? You want to dissolve, overthrow, eradicate religion? What a crude transition from theory to practice! We have rather dissolved and overthrown it, but purely and solely through theory. Theory, but the true, the ruthless theory, i.e., the theory which does not regard its object — (religion) — as it stubbornly enough demands — (for it can deceive itself about itself) — not as it demands grumbling and thundering — (so much the worse! Its vehemence speaks against it: why would it otherwise want to attain practically, through threats, what it would have to attain much more surely on the path of free research) — in short, which does not regard the object according to its presuppositions — (for these can be very false, a prejudice, a perverted conception of itself, a false appearance) — but draws these presuppositions themselves into investigation, this theory has decided the matter of religion.

[Notes for 817 here]

818 Not we are crudely practical, but religion is, when it wants to be recognised simply, when it proscribes real knowledge and will only tolerate a research which is guided and determined by fear of its threats. Religion is practical when it does not want its presuppositions examined or, if it can no longer resist the liberal demands of the world, only tolerates a research which finally recognises its presuppositions. So practical is religion, that it is finally completely indifferent to it how and in what manner its presuppositions are recognised, if only it happens; yes finally it is satisfied if it happens only in appearance, if it happens hypocritically.

[Notes for 818 here]

819 We alone behave purely theoretically towards religion, when we investigate its presupposition, the presupposition that it belongs to two worlds, the heavenly and the earthly, its presupposition that it is the sole bond between the heavenly, essential and the earthly, inessential world. You others are those who, even after this theoretical work of critique, when it has proved that those two worlds are only inner oppositions of self-consciousness and are only falsely conceived by religion, still behave practically. You do not investigate theory and do not prove to it that it is false, but you only accuse it, reproach it, say it is tyrannical, etc. Every one of your turns which you use against critique is practical — the most completed practice which you follow, however, is that you finally entirely and completely ignore the works of critique and reluctantly close yourselves off against it.

[Notes for 819 here]

820 Our practice is knowledge, which dissolves for us all illusions which religion makes for itself about itself. Theory has freed us from these illusions — from religion itself.

[Notes for 820 here]

821 Now, then declare, they call to us, that you have left the religious and ecclesiastical association, or are resolved to leave.

[Notes for 821 here]

822 See, how little it is a matter for you of the cause, of truth, of humanity!

[Notes for 822 here]

823 Do you think that something would be done if we simply jumped over the religious and ecclesiastical barriers? Any knave, any adventurer can do it, and the philistine, who is swamped in care for his egoistic interests, has long since done it in his way, when he does not direct his glances beyond the swamp of his daily life and thereby abolishes those barriers for his person by ignoring them.

[Notes for 823 here]

824 Do you think it depends only on our person and we would be satisfied if we are only free?

[Notes for 824 here]

825 Also under the papacy, when it had reached the highest stage of its power, there were atheists, and indeed atheists of very various kinds. Read once a page in Calvin's writings, and you will learn how many and how many kinds of atheists there were in a time which is otherwise praised as particularly strong in faith.

[Notes for 825 here]

826 We want to break with church and religion not only for our person, but in a universal manner, so that the break becomes an affair of the world, the general cause of history.

[Notes for 826 here]

827 Nothing, however, is more general than theory, which has to do only with the nature of the object and may count on the general true nature of man when it is a question of bringing the truth of a matter to recognition. What I do for my person, only between my four walls, can be highly indifferent to others. If I do it publicly, my example can be contagious and move others to follow; but even in this happiest case, the matter becomes only an affair of fashion, which can be ridiculous tomorrow. What did it help even Louis XIV to make piety into fashion? Nothing, except that he made the following fashion all the more piquant and excited people to exchange it all the more gladly for his own.

[Notes for 827 here]

828 No! to the matter, to the matter we want finally to come! In theory we want to finish, in order to prepare for history once and for all its new path.

[Notes for 828 here]

829 The inner, the essence of the matter shall be unveiled, the depth of the spirit shall be torn open, so that mankind knows where it stands, so that our true essence, which religion has robbed us of and withheld and badly disfigured, comes again to us as our own, as our true, pure essence, develops in us and finally becomes free. Therefore theory must ruthlessly dissect the object, religion, and tear away the prejudices, the fetters, the bonds, the false flesh from our heart.

[Notes for 829 here]

830 Why then do you demand a declaration from our side that we have left the religious and ecclesiastical association? Are our works not there for you? Are you so completely inaccessible to theory that you cannot even take the correct notice of it?

[Notes for 830 here]

831 Critique works its way through all religious and ecclesiastical presuppositions; shall it now, when at the end it has dissolved all barriers and become real freedom, still step before you in particular and say: "I am free!" How silly! Do you want to praise those painters who could not yet give their figures their true expression and had to put slips in their mouths on which their inner was to be read in clear words? Or does critique depict itself so badly that it must still say in the caption what it is, or what it is not?

[Notes for 831 here]

832 The critic cannot and may not even come upon the thought of declaring that he leaves the ecclesiastical association. Firstly, he would give his work a denial, and if it is solid, an unjust and senseless denial, if he as an individual person still believed he had to say what he could correctly only say when he occupied himself with the matter as a universal power. Secondly, he would give the lie to his work in still another way if he wanted to appear with a declaration which would still recognise the church, whose foundation and presuppositions he has annihilated, as a power. The church, from whose association I step out, I recognise through the exit itself as a power which I can only escape by flight and to which I would on the contrary have to submit unconditionally if I did not expressly step out of its association. For the critic, however, the church no longer has any power from which he would have to escape by flight.

[Notes for 832 here]

833 He does not flee from the prison, but he wants that it should no longer stand at all. He does not storm it from outside, but crumbles it from within. He remains with will in the prison, to show that for freedom there is no prison, that namely true, earnest freedom bursts its walls.

[Notes for 833 here]

834 If I had voluntarily left the theological faculty, the matter would have been settled only for my person and indeed very falsely, since with my exit I would have declared that critique and free research have simply wrong against the laws and presuppositions of the faculty.

[Notes for 834 here]

835 The consequence of a historical existence has in general never voluntarily stepped out of it, but has always been expelled by it. We do not step out of the faculty, but it expels us; we do not step out of the church, but it has to expel us, if it still has as much strength and will as belongs to this act.

[Notes for 835 here]

836 The consequence of a historical existence has in general never voluntarily stepped out of it, but has always been expelled by it. We do not step out of the faculty, but it expels us; we do not step out of the church, but it has to expel us, if it still has as much strength and will as belongs to this act.

[Notes for 836 here]

837 To expel us from the theological faculty or to make access to it difficult or to cut it off completely is easy, since it has the form of a worldly, limited corporation and the governmental power can come immediately to its aid. It is also easy because through our right, through our claims or through our desire to enter into its association, we come into immediate contact with it and offer it our person.

[Notes for 837 here]

838 It is, however, harder for the church to muster so much courage as to expel us from it. It no longer has any hierarchical representation, because it in fact no longer has any strong, particular will (the state has appropriated it) — and we do not fall to its burden through the desire to take part in its blessing and its means of grace.

[Notes for 838 here]

839 Should it nevertheless — although it is not to be seen how it as a church could find the means and ways for this — so far rouse itself that it expressly excommunicated us: would it then be time for us to declare that we step out of it or have already long stepped out?

[Notes for 839 here]

840 Eh! Let us not speak of chimeras! The church no longer has any particular will which it could direct against us.

[Notes for 840 here]

841 First it is sublimated into the mere general talk about the necessity of ecclesiastical life. Shall we now declare that we no longer take part in this talk? To what end? Shall we finally also stand on the street and say and publicly make known that we are no longer children?

[Notes for 841 here]

842 But an enormous power is the general powerlessness, which rules over all public and private relations, over art and science, and designates everyone who unveils it and refutes it through the deed as a traitor and inhuman. Say it once, that you see in nature nature and nothing but nature, in humanity humanity and nothing but humanity, that you regard natural phenomena as natural phenomena, take, cultivate and live through all human relations as human, that you love and cultivate art as art, science as science, that you satisfy all your needs from nature, from yourselves, from the treasure of history and from the inexhaustible spring which flows from contact with humanity, say it and that powerlessness will fall into fury and rage against you. What? it will say, beyond nature you do not direct your glance upwards, you believe that humanity suffices itself, you want to regard art and science not only as servants of the Highest? What? that lack of courage heats itself further, nature without its creator is for you not a mere clod of earth, humanity without its lord is for you not a mere nothing, art and science, if they want to emancipate themselves from religion, are for you not the inventions of the devil? Nature, finally concludes this powerless fury, is nothing but the mould of decay, man without his lord an animal which, after a series of unhappy deceptions, experiences the last deception that it collapses unsatisfied, art and science, if they want to be nothing but art and science, are nothing but appearance and lie. After this fury of destruction has spent itself against everything that exists in heaven and on earth and has trampled everything, the noblest and best, underfoot, it speaks in the opium-intoxication of its destruction-mania of a future state where everything has become new, or rather, where a quite new, now quite unthinkable, a nature which is not nature, a humanity which is not humanity, is created, i.e., where the nothing rules into which it has plunged everything real.

[Notes for 842 here]

843 See, this lack of courage is the enormous power with whose inert resistance — a resistance which will now, however, where everything is attacked to the quick, combine with passion and fanaticism — you have to fight. It does not want to admit that humanity finally gains confidence in itself, learns to know itself as the sole source for the satisfaction of its needs and relies on itself. It actually does not want the work, fears bravery and is frightened before freedom.

[Notes for 843 here]

844 — This last enemy of mankind, of thinking and of freedom, is not concerned with the maintenance of ecclesiastical statutes and dogmas — they are as good as unknown to it, it does not interest itself in scripture against critique, the question of the authenticity or inauthenticity of the biblical writings is highly indifferent to it: its god and its kingdom of heaven are rather pure indefiniteness, unclarity, contentlessness itself, i.e., they are nothing but another word and the short expression for the indefiniteness in which all human relations appear to it, for the unclarity with which it regards the world, for the indolence to really enter into this world, for the nothing as which all human strivings appear to it.

[Notes for 844 here]

845 He who in the circle in which he lives, in the family, in civil society, in the state, does not know how to find the soul and can become one with it, for whom therefore all these circles are something foreign and spiritless, he can indeed find nothing satisfying in them: he believes only in the foreignness and spiritlessness of these circles, their essence is foreign and spiritless to him, he believes only in this foreign essence and this essence is to him god and the transcendent, future world. The businessman who works in his office without thinking and knowing that his work serves a larger whole, who is thus petrified in the mechanism of his limited work and stands in no express and living connection with the state whole, expresses this incoherence with the essence of the state and the alienation of the state whole against him in the belief in an essence and in a transcendent world which are foreign to him and to the world in which he lives and stand outside all connection with it. Just so the theorist, to whom the essence of the matter he treats remains foreign and who does not dare to grasp this essence and think it as human freedom, the theorist therefore who remains a slave of his object, and indeed the slave of an unrecognised object, must make the slavish dependence on a foreign essence into his true and highest determination: — he does it in religion. His incapacity to recognise the inner coherence of events and to see in history the work of human freedom, the historian venerates as divine providence, and the boredom which indolence feels in world history transforms itself for him, because he holds this boredom for the correct and for the necessary impression of history, into the boredom of a contentless eternal life.

[Notes for 845 here]

846 Although now this indefiniteness and unclarity is highly indifferent towards ecclesiastical statutes, yes even prides itself not a little on having freed itself from "human statutes", and knows how to speak bravely against the "obscurantists and fanatics", although it can even be indifferent towards public religious worship and usually really is — how many who abhor the atheism of critique and have suddenly become the most passionate defenders of faith in God and in a transcendent life, have for years seen the interior of a church? — despite this indifference towards the church, that indefiniteness is nevertheless the completion of the ecclesiastical essence. It is precisely the most terrible alienation of man from his true essence. Like the church, it behaves indifferently or hostilely towards all human relations, like the church it gets excited against those who mean it seriously with those relations, regard them as something essential and deepen themselves into their true essence, like the church it asserts indeed that it first gives its true consecration to human strivings and relations, but like the church it also gives them only an external and false consecration and afterwards lets these relations go and develop as they will, i.e., it lets them go badly enough, since it has not given them their support in their true essence, it must even spoil them, since it simply prevents them, like the state, the family, art, science, from seeking their support in themselves.

[Notes for 846 here]

847 The complete lack of courage and despair of man in himself is the completion of the ecclesiastical essence, which draws man away from his world and, if it nevertheless cannot completely alienate him, commands him at least to live only hypocritically in this world.

[Notes for 847 here]

848 The church promises man a new nature, i.e., a nature which is none, but as long as he is in this world, it must leave him this nature and allow him to win his subsistence from it through his work. But actually he should not see nature in nature, he should owe nothing to his work, he should be nothing. It therefore commands him not to see its laws in nature, not the expression of its laws in his activity, not the success of his work in his enjoyment: he should rather conceal his work under the form of prayer, which can be directed not to the law but only to a changeable will, and afterwards disavow it by ascribing the success of it to a foreign will in thanks.

[Notes for 848 here]

849 I.e., man should occupy himself with nature and yet also not, he should work and act as if he did not work, and when he has worked, he should pretend as if he had not done it.

[Notes for 849 here]

850 The true and heavenly life is that in which one neither marries nor is given in marriage — if now "because of the weakness of the flesh" marriage is not to be avoided, the apostle wants that those who have wives be at least as if they had none. Marriage should for the sake of heaven be only an appearance.

[Notes for 850 here]

851 The church must allow that the believer obeys the human authority and is subject to worldly lords besides the One, the heavenly lord. But it commands him at the same time to regard the worldly authority only as an appearance, namely not as worldly, but as divine. He should not regard it as his authority, not as expression of his will, as depositary of the general will, but as a being foreign to him, as a power which is foreign to his will: it is instituted by God.

[Notes for 851 here]

852 The commandments of the church have never been more obediently followed than in our days, when industry subjugates nature and man nevertheless does not dare to confess that he is the lord of the earth; marriage cannot be more crassly declared a mere appearance than when its validity is made dependent on an ecclesiastical consecration which stands in no inner relation to it and has not the slightest influence on its moral conduct; and no church father could be more indifferent, indolent and apathetic towards the state and authority than the subject in the present Christian state is.

[Notes for 852 here]

853 One does very wrong when one speaks of the decline of ecclesiastical life. It has never been so powerful as now. Its influence extends even to those who have perhaps never entered the church again since their confirmation.

[Notes for 853 here]

854 How is it now? Shall we leave the church? But where should we then go? Can we escape contact with lack of courage, indolence and hypocrisy? Do we not ourselves still have to free ourselves from all the weaknesses which cling to us from our origin out of an inwardly false, rotten condition? Have we then already freed truth, morality, bravery from their opposite and secured it against it?

[Notes for 854 here]

855 No! We live in the midst of lack of courage and hypocrisy and our only task is to fight, to drive away lack of courage, to make the weak brave, to unmask hypocrisy and to give the timid courage for sincerity.

[Notes for 855 here]

856 Have we done that if we withdraw?

[Notes for 856 here]

857 As if we could withdraw! Everywhere we turn, we find our opponents, to whom no greater favour could be done than if we could be placed outside all contact with them.

[Notes for 857 here]

858 The church persecutes us everywhere, for its dominion has become general and penetrates everything. Why? Because it has finally betrayed its whole secret, developed its true essence.

[Notes for 858 here]

859 It is nothing but the expression, the isolated appearance and the sanction of the imperfection and sickness of the existing relations. It is the general essence of all human relations and strivings, but as the perverted essence, as the essence torn away from them, thus also disfigured, the expression of their essencelessness and perversity.

[Notes for 859 here]

860 Are we free if we leave the theological faculty? No! For theological science is only the consequent presentation of the imperfection of all sciences, it is ex professo the limitation of science, a limitation which in the other sciences makes itself of itself through the influence of the Christian spirit, i.e., through lack of courage and dependence on presuppositions.

[Notes for 860 here]

861 If we leave the church, do we then escape the power of the Christian state, i.e., tutelage, mistrust, limitation of morality and freedom? The church is only the isolated appearance of the unfreedom which in the Christian state penetrates all relations.

[Notes for 861 here]

862 Let us therefore confess it: we cannot at all leave the church, because it is the limitation of freedom and science which we could abolish not through a word, through a simple declaration, but only through the deed, i.e., through unceasing struggle.

[Notes for 862 here]

863 Of the critic it is known that he has renounced all presuppositions of the church, but as little as the church therefore expels him from itself, so little does he step out of it. The church and he fight, but they have not externally separated from each other. For expulsion and exit the The exit from the church. matter is not only too serious, because it is a question on both sides of being and not-being — but the battlefield is also far too large for the victory to be decided through a throwing out or voluntary withdrawal: the battlefield is the whole world, it is a question of all human goods, of the question whether they are to be withheld from us, limited and disfigured by unfreedom, it is a question in one word of the principle of the whole coming history. Is this question decided if an individual or if several declare that they no longer belong to the church?

[Notes for 863 here]

864 And if millions declare that the results of critique have convinced them of the untruth of Christianity and they hold themselves obliged according to this conviction to declare that they saw themselves forced to step out of the ecclesiastical association, then for the matter in question nothing has yet happened and again: they cannot even step out of the church, since the Christian state not only holds them fast in the ecclesiastical association, but in appearance only presents in detail what the church, its essence, is.

[Notes for 864 here]

865 Not the church becomes burdensome to us — also we do not fall to its burden — but the state is what falls to our burden through its Christian demands. We cannot be born, cannot leave the school bench, cannot enter into marriage, without the state forcing us to receive a consecration from the church which we could not demand, have not demanded, never demand and will never recognise as a consecration. The church is precisely nothing particular for itself, but the isolated expression of the essence of the state and as Protestant it has itself stepped out of this isolation and become a state institution. The clergy are now the most important state servants, namely those who constantly remind us of what the Christian state is and what we are in it.

[Notes for 865 here]

866 The Christian state is the state of unfreedom and tutelage, the state which has not yet mustered the courage to be really a state. Unfree and tutored are not only the subjects, the governed, but unfree is also the government, since its principle, mistrust, makes the governed into a mass foreign to it, threatening danger. It can always only with fear and it must even for the sake of its principle constantly think of the possibility that the governed finally take the resolve to want to belong to a real state.

[Notes for 866 here]

867 So that they do not come to this resolve, the Christian government cares for the unconditional maintenance of baptism, confirmation, ecclesiastical blessing of marriage and watches over it that not even at the grave may it be expressed in a human manner that it is a man whom his nearest and dearest and friends to the In the Christian state it counts as a misfortune that a man is born. The newborn is a damned, impure being, to whom the love of its parents, the inclination they have already given it in advance, the hope with which the mother has carried and nourished it under her heart, the pains with which the mother bore it, help nothing. All those human relations, conditions and states to which it owes its origin and into which it enters, do not yet give it the right to be recognised as a man; it is precisely not to be recognised as a man; only an external action, remaining completely foreign to its humanity, to the feelings of its parents and its future human formation, which is performed on it without its knowledge and without its will, and the reading of a formula to which no one pays attention except the single one who reads it, thus an action which designates immaturity as its true essence and immediately at the cradle depicts its future determination to be subject to a foreign will, gives it the capacity to enter into the Christian state, i.e., it is first recognised by this state when its humanity, its origin, the love of its parents, the love and the pains of its mother are denied. Confirmed for the Christian state man first becomes when he takes the vow that he professes a religion which imposes on him the duty to become a little child, to regard the state of the immature little child as his highest state, as his true condition, and which forbids him to become a man. Marriage the Christian state first recognises when through the act of ecclesiastical marriage it has declared that it is in itself a wrong, and when bride and bridegroom have heard a speech about the heavenly bridegroom, i.e., a speech which brings it home to them that they are not to think of their marriage but of the only true marriage in which they as members of the church are to stand with the only true bridegroom.

[Notes for 867 here]

868 The Christian state declares humanity for an inessential appearance, which one must lay aside in order to become a Christian, i.e., a citizen of a transcendent, citizen of the unreal world.

[Notes for 868 here]

869 The essential life which is led in the Christian state is therefore the life in the kingdom of heaven, a life which is not only indifferent towards human rights and moral relations, but also wages war and actually, if it were possible, would have to eradicate them.

[Notes for 869 here]

870 But it is not possible, because man cannot completely deny himself. The mother, who already loved her child when she carried it under her heart, also loves it afterwards not because it is, but despite the fact that it is baptised, i.e., despite the fact that by means of baptism it was declared that she had brought an impure being into the world, which she as such and as the fruit of an impure desire must hate and, if she stands in divine love, must regard as a foreign being as a child of divine wrath. She loves it, however, despite baptism, only as her child and as a pledge of the love of her husband. Although we further vow in confirmation to be immature little children and what we are only through another, through God or his anointed, we nevertheless strive to become something through ourselves, the spouses love each other not because of the ecclesiastical consecration of their bond, but despite this consecration, despite the fact that the life in heaven and the striving after the crown of the heavenly bridegroom was recommended to them as their highest task; they love each other because they find the ground of their love in themselves.

[Notes for 870 here]

871 is, i.e., despite the fact that by means of baptism it was declared that she had brought an impure being into the world, which she as such and as the fruit of an impure desire must hate and, if she stands in divine love, must regard as a foreign being as a child of divine wrath. She loves it, however, despite baptism, only as her child and as a pledge of the love of her husband. Although we further vow in confirmation to be immature little children and what we are only through another, through God or his anointed, we nevertheless strive to become something through ourselves, the spouses love each other not because of the ecclesiastical consecration of their bond, but despite this consecration, despite the fact that the life in heaven and the striving after the crown of the heavenly bridegroom was recommended to them as their highest task; they love each other because they find the ground of their love in themselves.

[Notes for 871 here]

872 is, i.e., despite the fact that by means of baptism it was declared that she had brought an impure being into the world, which she as such and as the fruit of an impure desire must hate and, if she stands in divine love, must regard as a foreign being as a child of divine wrath. She loves it, however, despite baptism, only as her child and as a pledge of the love of her husband. Although we further vow in confirmation to be immature little children and what we are only through another, through God or his anointed, we nevertheless strive to become something through ourselves, the spouses love each other not because of the ecclesiastical consecration of their bond, but despite this consecration, despite the fact that the life in heaven and the striving after the crown of the heavenly bridegroom was recommended to them as their highest task; they love each other because they find the ground of their love in themselves.

[Notes for 872 here]

873 Real life therefore declares the essential life, commanded by the church, i.e., by the Christian state, for an essenceless appearance, just as the church for its part again declares real life for a mere appearance.

[Notes for 873 here]

874 Let one not believe that the church has hitherto been an external coercive institution and the power of the Christian state a force which rules man without or even against his will and forces him to deny himself and his rights. Is it possible that mankind bears a yoke which it has not laid upon itself?

[Notes for 874 here]

875 The ecclesiastical power of the Christian state, i.e., the Christian state itself, is nothing further than the expression, the appearance and external representation of our lack of courage. The exit from the church. We ourselves have hitherto not wanted to confess that we first as men and only as men possess our true and most important rights and have to fulfil our highest duties. Our essence we have hitherto separated from ourselves and let it stand opposite us as a foreign power, as if it were too great for us and as if we were too small for it. We wanted to be tutored, tutored under fear and trembling; we also wanted to be treated with mistrust and suspicion, for mistrust must fill the power which is actually our own power, only in appearance and as a foreign power stands opposite and must watch suspiciously over the maintenance of the appearance. Our faith that we cannot care for ourselves has created providence, which numbers the hairs on our head and places the guardian angels at our side, who never leave us and at every step and turn, on all paths, on the street, at our harmless gatherings and on our journeys watch over and guard us. We are simply immature: the power which has made our essence into its privilege thinks, speaks, acts for us or rather for itself and its doing and thinking benefits us only because we belong to it as private property. We are only private property and the serfs of another, to whom we have assigned our essence as his exclusive privilege.

[Notes for 875 here]

876 In a twofold manner we have hitherto given and led this life of immaturity, in a general and in a particular manner, in religion and in the Christian state. Our religious life is only the general expression for our life in the Christian state, the essence of what happens in the state, the superterrestrial confirmation of the immaturity, dependence and will-lessness which is our lot in the Christian state.

[Notes for 876 here]

877 We need say no more to prove that we cannot leave the church and that even the declaration that we have left the church could not bring us further and free us from the ecclesiastical power. The Christian state is in earnest and in reality what the church is in itself or in a puffed-up and chimerical manner.

[Notes for 877 here]

878 What then is to be done? How is help to come?

[Notes for 878 here]

879 History has already helped very far. The supernatural power of the church and the sovereign power in the Christian state are in the ground only a false appearance, only in appearance a power foreign to the tutored. This appearance has now through the development of the last centuries really become only appearance, reduced to appearance and as mere appearance become important and valuable. The church must now be content and it is really content with it, if only the masses, whose defection has become the theme of all its sermons, still apparently stand in connection with it. The Christian state knows, since we have done it publicly and before all the world, that we have broken with the whole ecclesiastical essence, and nevertheless it holds so fast to the system of tutelage that it forces us (e.g., at the entry into marriage) to submit to ceremonies which we have designated as senseless and as a mockery of the act they are to consecrate. It is content with the appearance and has from its side, as far as it is at all possible for it, decided the matter. It forces us with violence to submit to the ecclesiastical forms, i.e., precisely through our submission to declare them for a contentless appearance, to prostitute them publicly as such and to accustom the general consciousness to regard them as such. The Christian state itself makes these forms into a mere appearance, into what they are.

[Notes for 879 here]

880 Although it finally knows that we have freed ourselves from all its ecclesiastical and police presuppositions, that we have stepped out of the state of immaturity and no longer need its ecclesiastical and state-police mediators and guardian angels, it nevertheless holds us back in the state of immaturity, does not permit us to associate as a community which, inwardly free from all ecclesiastical presuppositions, only yields to the still existing power when it submits to the ecclesiastical ceremonies, and every constitutional way of presenting our difficult situation and proposing its abolition is cut off from us.

[Notes for 880 here]

881 Does no harm! The association would only give our cause the false appearance of a private affair, while it is nevertheless the cause of the whole following history, and the impossibility of negotiating with a government, the circumstance that a principle cannot be satisfied even by individual concessions, is only a proof that it is a question of a new form of all public relations and that world history intends a complete break with the old.

[Notes for 881 here]

882 The state does everything it can do to make this break really thorough, complete and rending, when it itself regards those who have long outgrown its religious foundation and theory as immature and does not cease to treat them as such. Tutelage is thereby reduced to a mere appearance and has already become a mere appearance, since the theory of the tutored has in the last time completely outgrown the theory of the tutors.

[Notes for 882 here]

883 The theory which has enlightened us about our essence and given us the courage to be ourselves and to reappropriate our essence has made the Christian state into an essenceless appearance.

[Notes for 883 here]

884 The theory which has helped us so far remains also now our only help to make ourselves and others free. History, over which we do not command and whose decisive turns lie beyond intentional calculation, will overthrow the appearance and raise the freedom which theory has given us to the power which gives the world a new form.

[Notes for 884 here]

885 The exit from the church is an absurdity, negotiations with the Christian power are impossible, critique is the only power which enlightens us about the self-deceptions of the existing and gives us the superiority, and history will provide for the crisis and its outcome.

[Notes for 885 here]