efect
may only be looked for in the nature of the State. We are no longer
concerned with religion as the basis, but only as the phenomenon of
secular shortcomings. Consequently we explain the religious handicap
of the free citizens from their secular handicap. We do not assert
that they must remove their religious handicap as soon as they cast
off their secular fetters. We do not transform secular questions into
theological questions. We transform theological questions into secular
questions.

After history has for so long been dissolved in superstition, we
dissolve the superstition in history. The question of the relation of
political emancipation becomes for us the question of the relation of
political emancipation to human emancipation. We criticize the
religious weakness of the political State by criticizing the political
State in its secular construction, apart from the religious
weaknesses. We transmute the contradiction of the State with a
specific religion, like Judaism, into the contradiction of the State
with specific secular elements, and the contradiction of the State
with religion generally into the contradiction of the State with its
general assumptions.

The political emancipation of the Jew, of the Christian, of the
religious man in general, means the emancipation of the State from
Judaism, from Christianity, from religion generally. In its form as
State, in the manner peculiar to its nature, the State emancipates
itself from religion by emancipating itself from the State religion,
that is, by the State as State acknowledging no religion.

Political emancipation from religion is not a thorough-going and
consistent emancipation from religion, because political emancipation
is not effectual and consistent human emancipation.

The limit of political emancipation is immediately seen to consist in
the fact that the State can cast off a fetter without men really
becoming free from it, that the State can become a free State without
men becoming free men. Bauer tacitly assents to this in laying down
the following condition for political emancipation. "Every religious
privilege, and therefore the monopoly of a privileged Church must be
surrendered, and if few or many or even the great majority believe
they ought still to perform religious duties, this performance must be
left to themselves as a private matter." The State may therefore
achieve emancipation from religion, although the great majority are
still