Now there exists one great distinction between faith, on the one hand, and illusion and error on the other; in this respect, namely, that the two latter have the physical, the material for their object, hence can be checked and set right by this--that is, by reality. Faith, however, that has for its object the non-physical, the non-material, which is just whatever the believer chooses to conceive it to be, cannot be checked and set right by reality. On the contrary, the believer interprets the entire world in accordance with his concept, devours, so to speak, the world’s entire content of reality, and sets up a view of the world that is _unreal_, seeing that he interprets the physical from the transcendental standpoint--that is, abnormally; and therefore he is never in the position to be set right by reality, since he never can knock up against contradictions. One must know that one does not know before one can let oneself be taught. In perfect accordance with this essential feature of faith (so far as the theory of knowledge is concerned) is its morality and religion: _both are contrary to sense_. The essence of all morality is to be found in selflessness. Every act of selflessness requires a motive. To possess a motive one must exercise cognition, comprehension. As a matter of fact the essential nature of every faith-morality is selfish, despite all its acts of renunciation. Here one practises renunciation like a man who stints himself of a certain amount of money and invests it in a lottery. As he parts with his money that he may win back more in its place, so here the believer gives up money, goods, life--yea, honour and truth, everything, if so be he may draw the first prize above. The essence of all religion consists in the search for the aim and goal of life. This search faith satisfies by referring life as a whole to a something transcendent. But the existence of the transcendent is nothing else but the concept of it. To refer life as a whole to a transcendent thus means nothing but to refer itself to itself, which--so to speak--is the analytical expression for ignorance. Further development of these ideas is not essential to our task. Here we have only to bear well in mind that, as the world-theory from the standpoint of faith is one contrary to sense, so also is its morality and its religion. All three are functions of a nescience, and therefore void of actuality. III SCIENCE AND A WORLD-THEORY _There is present a something given--the world._ With reference to this something given, science takes up a position that in its own way is every whit as arbitrary as again in its way is that of religion; with this difference, however, that whereas the latter, so to speak, turns the clock of mental life backward, science would fain turn it forward.