40
That the collision between the State and the Roman Church in fact goes so far, and that the demands on which the Archbishop insists are grounded in a principle whose recognition the State, when it took over the provinces here, promised, one will in Berlin admittedly not confess to oneself, because one harbours anxieties for the religious interest itself, whose consistent and extreme assertion one fears in the Archbishop and his conduct. One dare not let it come to an open struggle with him, because one needs him for oneself. Hence this whole theological form of the struggle hitherto. Hence the idea of using the Hermesians for the struggle against the supposed pretensions of the Archbishop — the Hermesians, who are Catholic enough to prove all Roman dogmas with the help of Kantian enlightenment, enlightened and timid enough to appeal in the most important matters, concerning faith and its ground, from the Pope to the State, and so Roman that they again ascribe infallibility to the Pope in accidental matters as well as in the entanglements of the Church with the world. In regard to mixed marriages, no one has declared for the government, and they cannot declare themselves against the deeply grounded Roman principle. The true reason why the Roman claims were not sharply scrutinised, why the true struggle with them was not possible and could not be permitted, now comes ever more to light. The State must take a religious interest in itself and restrict the further development of philosophy. Hitherto it had been, through its connection with the State, bound in solidarity, hence also constrained; it had, since it was apparently left free and was favoured besides, i.e., participated in the advantages of the government, set its own limit. But as it is fettered, it is driven beyond all fetters and limits. The fettered Prometheus was as such freer than when he still went about freely and taught men to sacrifice.
[Notes for 40 here]