[In the following essay, Lowie summarizes the key elements of Feuerbach's thought, and proclaims him to be a pivotal figure in modern philosophy.]

It is no imputation on the English-speaking reader if the name of Feuerbach merely suggests a radical thinker, whose most popular work was translated by George Eliot, instead of some definite philosophical achievement. If any writer has had to suffer from unmerited neglect, it is Feuerbach. To the majority of his countrymen he has for a long time been hardly more than a name. His merciless scrutiny of conventional creeds precluded popular appreciation. In very different quarters his independence aroused similar animosity. He became the butt of those academic minds against whose arrogance, timidity and opportunism his life was a protest. Histories of philosophy degrade him to the rank of a recreant disciple of Hegel. Even Lange, the noted author of the History of Materialism, could not free himself from prevalent prejudices, and his estimate of Feuerbach, based as it is on inadequate study of the subject, is wholly unsatisfactory. The same must be said of the fair-minded, but likewise inadequate essay in the Encyclopedia Britannica. As a necessary consequence the efforts of admirers, absorbed as they are in dispelling persistent misconceptions, have been diverted from the nobler task of welding into a comprehensive and connected narrative the highly interesting, but unfortunately disjointed materials for a biographical account.

Yet, though Feuerbach threaded the loneliest paths in the realm of thought, though in a hundred ways he is estranged from the public, though he was neglected alike by contemporary and later criticism, he played a part in the development of modern ideas, of which it would be difficult to exaggerate the historical significance. To ignore him is to have an imperfect comprehension of the rise of that new faith that marks the twentieth-century “children of the world.”

Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach was born on July 28th, 1804, in Landshut, Bavaria. At a very early age he resolved to study theology, not, as he explained subsequently, as the result of any extraneous influence, but because of a vague yearning for something that neither his immediate surroundings nor his secondary education could supply. Accordingly, while only a pupil of the gymnasium at Ansbach, he devoted much of his energy to Hebrew and scriptural literature. In 1823 he went to the university of Heidelberg, which, after a year's stay, he left for that of Berlin. Here, however, he was strongly attracted by Hegel's lectures, and neglected divinity completely. Soon he discovered that he could never conscientiously profess theology, and joined the faculty of philosophy. Returning to Bavaria in 1826, he pursued further studies at the university of Erlangen, where he obtained his doctor's degree, and established himself as privatdocent in 1828.

This lowest rung in the ladder of academic preferment was to be the last he ever attained to. A heretical work entitled Thoughts on Death and Immortality, of which the anonymity had not been carefully guarded, rendered him persona ingrata to the college authorities. His father's prophecy on the publication of the book, that it would bar him forever from advancement, was fulfilled. Though a comprehensive history of Modern Philosophy from Bacon to Spinoza and a monograph on Leibnitz established Feuerbach's professional reputation, three successive applications for a professorship were ignored. Attempts to secure a position in Paris, Berne, and even Greece, also miscarried. But aside from regret at the pecuniary loss, the effect of this failure was far from displeasing. A professorial career had no temptations for him. He hated the society of bookworms and patrons. He hated city life with its stifling atmosphere and petty conventionalities. He lacked utterly the ability for formal marshaling of knowledge and for adaptation to a particular audience, that distinguishes the successful teacher. What Feuerbach needed was freedom and enjoyment of nature. According, his long stay at Bruckberg, a small village near Nuremberg, where he settled after marrying in 1837, became the happiest period of his life. To support himself he wrote articles for scientific reviews: at first for the representative paper of the old Hegelian school: later for Dr. Jahrbücher, then the most radical of German periodicals, and in constant danger of confiscation by the government.

In this congenial solitude Feuerbach's mind matured and produced his first epoch-making work, his Essence of Christianity. Unlike Strauss and other biblical critics, Feuerbach selected for his theme not the authenticity and historical value of scriptural records, but the significance of Christianity as a psychological, anthropological phenomenon. His task was twofold. In the first portion of his work he describes the genesis of primitive Christian ideas. All are interpreted anthropologically as the products of the Christian mind which unconsciously attributed objective reality and divinity to its own human attributes. Hence the irreconcilable conflict with reason. God is essentially human, inasmuch as the concept is composed of exclusively human attributes; yet, at the same time, he is non-human, inasmuch as the näive consciousness of early Christians ignored the human origin of their creed. As long as primitive doctrines were accepted on faith, they were pure and subjectively warrantable. When, however, later theological pseudo-philosophy attempted to establish them as inexpugnable dogmas, the dualistic basis of Christianity caused a complete distortion of its true meaning. The second part of the work is a critique of the various perversions and contradictions that necessarily resulted from inability to comprehend the natural development of this religion.

As the Essence of Christianity obviously treated but one side of the religious problem, Feuerbach, in 1845, published a small volume on The Essence of Religion, which supplied the deficiency. Here his attention was confined to pagan forms of belief. He showed that nature worship arose from the consciousness of absolute dependence on a non-human factor and the consequent desire of man to conciliate the object on which he depends. In the earlier work Christianity had been characterized as the apotheosis of man as opposed to nature. Inasmuch as it demonstrated the importance of nature in other religious conceptions, the Essence of Religion supplemented its predecessors in scope.

His connection with Ruge, and the two analyses of religion brought Feuerbach to the front of that party of progress that fomented the revolution of 1848. “For a while,” said Engels many years later, “we were all Feuerbachians.” Feuerbach, however, was essentially a thinker, with little aptitude for practical affairs. He declined a nomination for deputy to the national convention, and, to the despair of well-meaning friends, steadfastly refused to write on politics. While he left his retreat in 1848 to join the democratic convention at Frankfort, his participation was that of an interested and sympathizing spectator rather than of an active member, and he soon recognized the impracticableness of a revolution at that time. This did not prevent him from holding the strongest theoretical views on government. The democratic trait revealed in his aversion to caste distinctions in city life colored all his political views and personal habits. He was a democrat who opposed even the idea of a constitutional monarchy, and never swerved from this uncompromising standpoint. In later years, when the establishment of Prussia's hegemony prepared the way for the unification of Germany, the course of events found Feuerbach an indifferent observer. Unity without liberty, territorial aggrandizement without moral achievement in the direction of republicanism, did not appeal to him. While Strauss, touched by the spirit of jingoism, gave vent to the general outburst of national feeling, the sturdy philosopher, battered by adversity and disease, but unshaken in his convictions, began to support the socialist labor organization of Nuremberg.

In the stirring days of '48 the rumor circulated that Feuerbach was to get a professorship as a concession to the radical party. The students at Heidelberg were particularly desirous of securing a thinker “who had never desecrated reason and science by justifying existing conditions.” The liberal movement failed, and their hopes were not fulfilled, but Feuerbach consented to give them a private course of lectures in amplification of his Essence of Religion. In thus requiting the students' devotion he sacrificed his own feelings, for his repugnance to “chewing the cud” was well-nigh insuperable. An indefatigable student, thinker and reader, he regarded writing and teaching as an unprofitable waste of energy, as mere recapitulation of knowledge already acquired and conclusions already arrived at. Besides, he was but an indifferent speaker. In spite of all drawbacks, however, he could not have wished a more appreciative audience. When he entered the lecture-room for the first time, the students rose in a body to honor the “German Spinoza,” and he concluded the course amidst tremendous applause. To the horror of conservative Heidelberg professors he showed his democratic sentiments by granting free admission to laborers and mechanics—a further proof of his thoroughgoing radicalism.

The lectures to the students mark the acme of Feuerbach's direct influence and recognition by the public. They were followed by an era of total neglect. Fallen on the evil days of the reaction commencing with the overthrow of the revolutionary forces, Feuerbach was a prophet preaching in the wilderness. To escape from the insupportable yoke of redoubled despotism thousands of liberals fled to America. Himself the object of police surveillance, our thinker regarded Europe as an immense dungeon and also contemplated crossing the Atlantic. Several considerations restrained him; he lacked means, he had a family to provide for, and the accounts of his friend Kapp were far from alluring; last, but not least, he was working at his masterpiece, his Theogony. It had absorbed years of study and large sums spent in accumulating material; he was loth to defer indefinitely the finishing strokes.

In 1857 this chef-d'œuvre at last appeared. It created no such stir as the Essence of Christianity. In fact, it evoked very little comment, and, as far as it was noticed at all, very little praise from critics of any party. The reaction that sought to wipe out the “antediluvian premises” of the popular rising was unfavorable to the spread of liberal views. Besides, among liberals themselves there was a feeling of indifference to the theme on which Feuerbach had been so persistently harping. Those shallow minds who merely seek a corroboration of their own views and disregard the painful processes by which definite scientific conclusions are obtained, considered the Theogony as a mere rehash of former publications. Among former associates interest in politics bred impatience of work in other directions.

While among liberals the book met with but a cold reception, it aroused positive indignation amidst the rank and file of professional students of philosophy. Feuerbach was known to have been a disciple of Hegel. He had written in defense of Hegel, and his lectures as a privatdocent had been based on the Hegelian system. Even the Essence of Christianity was not looked upon as an irrevocable act of heresy against the old master. An acute observer might, indeed, have predicted his final separation from formal philosophy at the very beginning of his literary activity. In 1844 he defined his critical attitude in these unmistakable words: “No religion! is my religion; no philosophy! is my philosophy.” But a lingering tang of speculative reasoning still seemed to justify the expectation that the prodigal son would ultimately fly back to the arms of metaphysics. These hopes were shattered by the Theogony. The new work was not merely an integration and further development of the heterodox views formerly advocated, but an indication of the complete rejection of the old speculative method.

From beginning to end Feuerbach proceeds inductively. He commences by subjecting to a critical exegesis the fifth verse of Homer's Iliad. Theologians had contended that the words “And the will of Zeus was accomplished” show Homer's recognition of the dependence of men's fates on the will of God. But the wrath of Zeus, says Feuerbach, is directly caused by the request of Achilles; the will of Zeus is preceded by and dependent on the will of Achilles. Consequently, the real sense of the verse is: “Thus the wish of Achilles was accomplished.” As a parallel instance he quotes the pestilence caused by Apollo. Apollo's will and action are not independent; they are likewise the direct result of a man's wish. His destruction of the Greek army begins at the request of the priest Chryses and ceases at his request. By multiplying examples it is thus shown that gods and men represent two sides of one phenomenon, viz.: the wishes of men. Men are the beings that desire; gods are the beings whose essence is the fulfilment of human desires. In man will and power are distinct; divinity is characterized by the unity of will and power. Gods are relatively to man transient phenomena, inasmuch as he involuntarily forgets them when engrossed by everyday strife. The question then is: Under what conditions do the gods become phenomena for the religious consciousness? Theophanies, as Feuerbach designates the appearance of the gods to human consciousness, occur at religious ceremonies and festivals, the essence of all of which is either thanksgiving or prayer, thanks being offered for wishes fulfilled, prayer for the fulfilment of wishes, or, negatively, for the aversion of disaster. But thanks are necessarily preceded by prayer, the fulfilment of a wish by the unfulfilled wish, whether expressed or implied. Consequently, the wish is the original phenomenon of religion. Wherever urgent desires arise, gods arise, as is shown by the appearance of Thetis and Apollo in the Iliad and by the first theophany in the Odyssey. The appearance of gods independently of human desire is a poetic fiction, presupposing belief in the existence of gods and consequently lacking genetic significance. Why do theophanies become necessary whenever a wish obtrudes itself with irresistible force? Because the fulfilment of the wish depends not merely on man's exertions and skill, but also on the concomitant circumstances. With the thought of his own impotent will, frustrated by the force of circumstances, is associated the thought of an unlimited, irresistible will accomplishing all ends. This will, of which the image is deep-rooted in man's interests and egoism, is called god, and is invoked by man when confronted by the possibility of failure. The so-called religious feeling, which theists consider inseparable from the human mind, is nothing but the feeling of impotence impregnated with the desire to conquer the resistance of conditions, with the inordinate, instinctive desire for happiness. On the basis of a stupendous array of material gathered, not from later rationalizing theologians, but from the classical, scriptural and patristic sources in which the original religious feeling manifests itself, Feuerbach arrives at his fundamental theogenetic law: Gods are personified wishes; the instinctive desire for happiness is the essence of religion. And with constant reference to the anthropological data yielded by philological considerations and by the study of primitive literature and history, he shows the connection of subsidiary religious phenomena with his basic principle.

The repudiation of metaphysics involved in this steadfast appeal to empirical facts was doubtless a necessary consequence of Feuerbach's individuality. This tendency was, however, certainly strengthened by the influence of the empirical sciences. Feuerbach's connection with natural science was not causal. In bidding farewell to Hegel he had administered a stinging rebuke to the old idealist by stating his intention to study anatomy and physiology. As the conviction that he could never hope for a chair in philosophy turned to certainty, he conceived the plan of specializing in some branch of empirical knowledge. This plan was soon abandoned, but his interest in the study of nature persisted, and was fostered amidst the favorable surroundings of Bruckberg. He was thus led to advocate a union of philosophy and science, which, as he remarked, would prove more fertile than the former's mesalliance with theology. With his predilection for science and his high estimate of the philosophical significance of scientific truths, he was naturally brought into contact with the left wing of German naturalists, who were then preaching their gospel of force and matter. Feuerbach's connection with the materialists was close, but it was essentially moral rather than intellectual. It was the courage with which these encyclopædists of the nineteenth century attacked current hypocrisy, political and intellectual conservatism, it was their self-sacrificing devotion to the cause of truth as they saw it, their martyrdom in the assertion of academic freedom that established the bond of sympathy as far as Feuerbach was concerned. But he never assented to what has been stigmatized as the latent metaphysics of materialism. He was, indeed, far too independent to embrace any philosophical creed for better or worse. Besides, his thorough dialectic training saved him from indulging in those easily avoidable exaggerations and generalizations that have unjustly exposed the “naive” materialists to the charge of sciolism.

While Feuerbach was completing his mental development, the saddest period of his life was fast approaching. He had never been affluent. His income, derived largely from part ownership of a factory, was small. Considerable amounts contributed for its management drained his resources, but could not prevent the impending failure of the concern. In 1860 Feuerbach was obliged to announce his insolvency. He was forced to abandon the idyllic tranquillity of Bruckberg, and to drag out the rest of his life in the insufferable vicinity of Rechenberg. His new study in the garret was unbearably cold, for he could not afford to buy coal. Disagreeable noises disturbed his lonely cogitations. Exposed to constant want and irritation he could not repress some terrible expressions of anguish; but with unabated pride he winced at the thought of charity, and, true to his principle never to write for money, he withstood all solicitations for contributions to the press. In the meantime his friends were not idle. They managed to secure the Schiller prize for him, and by united efforts put him in a state of comparative ease. He now busied himself with the works of Humboldt, Lyell and Darwin, and showed his mental alertness by his last work, God, Freedom, Immortality, published in 1866, and by sketching the outlines of a system of moral philosophy. A stroke of apoplexy put an end to all productive labor, and he died on September 13th, 1872.

In estimating the objective value of Feuerbach's work a preliminary word of caution is necessary. Feuerbach's apostasy to school philosophy is shown not merely by his method and conclusions, but by the characteristic most conspicuous in a superficial glance—his style. Feuerbach's style was a revolt against the pedantic formality of his predecessors; he “thought as a philosopher, but he wrote as a man.” He invested the dry skeleton of abstract thought with flesh and blood. In his writings there is no artificial suppression of individual likes and dislikes. In forcible, picturesque language, overburdened at times with images and analogies culled rather for impressiveness than delicacy, he expresses his subjective opinions; and he never hesitates to lay about with sledge-hammer force when he runs a tilt against hypocrisy and obscurantism. To the worshipers of conventionalities this transgression of traditional scientific etiquette will seem unpardonable; but the large-minded critic who can discriminate between the spirit and the outward show of science will find that no philosopher so decidedly represents scientific objectivity as Feuerbach.

The very lack of an encyclopædic system, a deficiency that has been thrown up to him by adherents of the conservative school, serves to emphasize his connection with the leaders of modern science. Progressing with his age he recognized the impossibility of constructing the universe out of philosophical concepts, and rejected all systems as prison-cells of thought. Naturally he fails to satisfy the emotional demand for a complete, perfect edifice of knowledge. To the sciolism that requires a definite and emotionally acceptable answer to every question on ultimate problems, he opposes the attitude of criticism that is so distinctive of modern Naturphilosophie, the spirit that craves no absolutely valid revelations, but merely the greatest possible approximation to the truth, the spirit that recognizes no authority, disregards æsthetic or sentimental considerations, the spirit of Bazarof that bows to science not as a mass of established facts, but as a rational methodology. It is in this sense, it is by virtue of his essential “assumptionlessness”—in spite of superficial defection from scientific method, that Feuerbach may be called a pioneer of modern thought. His attention was confined to two problems, the problem of ethics and the philosophy of religion, but within this narrow range his superiority in method and spirit is unique.

The value of Feuerbach's fragmentary notes on moral philosophy depends not on the character and development of his ethical ideal, but on his subordination of the question what moral action ought to be to the question of what it is, and on his answering that question, irrespective of æsthetic or other prejudices. Dropping completely the rigid categorical imperative of traditional ethics, with its opposition of duty and pleasure and the notion that egoism is necessarily reprehensible, Feuerbach reduces all moral volition and action to the instinctive desire for happiness. He explains the apparent contradictions of asceticism and abnegation with this desire, proving that instead of contravening the law they are merely exceptional exemplifications of it. In these conceptions Feuerbach closely approaches Spencer's view that “pleasure somewhere, at some time, to some being or beings, is an inexpugnable element” of the conception of the ultimate moral aim. In the formulation of these ultimate aims there is a still more striking coincidence. While Spencer regards the goal of conduct as reached in proportion as activities “consist with, and are furthered by cooperation and mutual aid,” Feuerbach's ideal of morality is the reconciliation of others' desire for happiness with one's own. This ideal absolves Feuerbach from the absurd charge of hedonism, which would be justifiable only if he made egoism—in its crassest form—the aim of morality, instead of ascertaining it to be only the motive power of action. The problem of ethics thus becomes a pedagogical problem. Given a subjective conception of moral aims and the objective fact that action is based on the desire for happiness, it devolves on the moral philosopher to show by what steps instinctive egoism may be led to follow the desired path. In his incomplete sketch, never revised and expanded for publication, Feuerbach did not acquit himself of this task. It was executed by one of his admirers, the Austrian thinker Carneri, whose numerous writings on ethics constitute a system based on a union of Feuerbach's views with Darwinian doctrines. The sanity of these views is attested by the gradual appreciation of Feuerbach's ethical investigations, and by the general trend of modern thought.

Even more momentous is Feuerbach's contribution to the philosophy of religion. It may be readily acknowledged that in matters of detail he is subject to error, that some of his hypotheses are fanciful. We may scruple, with his friend Khanikoff, to accept the desire for happiness as the exclusive theogenetic principle. But these are relatively minor considerations. The important point is that at a time when even Strauss and von Kirchmann were subject to the influence of emotional considerations, while the average thinkers adhered to theological dogmatism, Feuerbach alone soared above prejudice, that he alone saw things in the cold light of reason without recoiling from the offensive epithets that were hurled against “the infamous atheist.” The so-called conflict between religion and science consisted and still to a large measure consists in the opposition of equally dogmatic theses and antitheses. It is fostered by personal feeling. The church fights for its old prerogatives, the believer for the creed endeared by tender associations. The militant scientist, from whom a more dispassionate judgment might be expected, cannot forget the arduous struggle that established the freedom of investigation. Not so Feuerbach. “Not against religion, but above religion,” is his motto. His attitude is not that of partisanship or Philistine indifference: his attitude is the attitude of the naturalist interested in the object observed. Science cannot regard the dogmas of faith as objects for refutation, for its sphere is that of the phenomenal universe only; where experience and logic are barred by supposition science is impotent. It is impossible for science to assail the truth of religion, because it is incompatible with the dignity of science to consider unproved assertions as if they were scientific propositions. The investigator, however, whose claim to the title of scientist as far as this subject is concerned, depends primarily on his “assumptionlessness,” on his indifference to the truth or falsity of religion, observes the historical fact that unproved assertions have been believed with a degree of certainty equaling or transcending that produced by scientific demonstration. This empirical fact, this psychological phenomenon, forms his subject. Theology becomes anthropology. The problem is no longer how god is possible, but what god is in the consciousness of the believer on the basis of empirical data. It is Feuerbach's undying merit to have supplanted metaphysical atheism with his empirical anthropology, to have established the only method that can raise the study of religion to the level of a science, and to have himself initiated the method with absolute consistency and fearlessness. Among those professors of philosophy whom Feuerbach stigmatized as the antipodes of true philosophers it has been customary to do honor to his ardor as a soldier of the éclaircissement and to the sterling qualities of his character, but to depreciate the value of his work, nay, to deny to him altogether the distinction of being a philosopher. But the old title of philosopher has ceased to be an honorary one. Naturphilosophie, a partial or complete sketch of the cosmos on an empirical basis, is the philosophy of the present and future. The man who has thrown light on a subject obscured alike by reactionary and radical sciolism, the man who rigorously applied the principles of modern research where dogmatism and logomachy had reigned supreme, needs no vindication in the forum of modern philosophy. We shall deck his grave not merely with the sword of Heine's soldier in the army of freedom, not merely with the martyr's crown of thorns, but with the unfading laurels of a conquering hero of assumptionless, realistic science.