addicted, and by the word
idealism he understands the belief in virtue, universal humanitarianism,
and a better world as a whole, of which he boasts before others, and in
which he himself at the very most believes, only as long as he must
endure the blues which follow necessarily from his customary
"materialistic" excesses, and so sings his favorite song--"What is
man?--Half beast, half angel."

As for the rest, Starcke takes great pains to defend Feuerbach against
the attacks and doctrines of those collegians who plume themselves in
Germany as philosophers now-a-days. It is true that this is a matter of
importance to those people who take an interest in the afterbirth of the
German classic philosophy, to Starcke himself this might appear
necessary. We spare the reader this, however.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] To this very day the idea is prevalent among savages and barbarians
that the human forms appearing in our dreams are souls which temporarily
leave the body, and that, therefore, the real man becomes liable for the
deeds done to the dreamer by his dream appearance. So Imthurm, for
example, found it in 1884 among the Indians in Guiana.

III.

The distinct idealism of Feuerbach is evident directly we come to his
philosophy of religion and ethics. He does not wish to abolish religion
by any means; he wants to perfect it. Philosophy itself will be absorbed
in religion. "The periods of human progress are only distinguishable by
religious changes. There is only a real historical progress where it
enters the hearts of men. The heart is not a place for religion, so that
it should be in the heart, it is the very being of religion." Religion
is, according to Feuerbach, a matter of the feelings--the feelings of
love between man and man which up to now sought its realization in the
fantastic reflected image of the reality--in the interposition through
one or more gods of the fantastic reflections of human qualities--but
now by means of love between "ego" and "tu" finds itself directly and
without any intermediary. According to Feuerbach love between the sexes
is, if not the highest form, at least one of the highest forms, of the
practice of his new religion.

Now, feelings of affection between man and man, and particularly
between members of the two sexes, have existed as long as mankind has.
Love between the sexes has been cultivated especially during the last
eighteen hundred years and has won a place which has made it,