But it behoves a being worthy the name of man also to know whether this life is merely a blind adventure, or whether it has aim and goal. The thinking man demands to know what he may expect after this life. He insists upon looking beyond this life. He claims an answer to the question, “Whence? Whither?” This demand to look out beyond life, this questioning, as to _the aim and goal of life_, is called _religion_. As with the query, “How must I conduct myself?” which permits of being answered in natural fashion then only when I know what I am, so is it with the question, “Whence am I, and whither am I bound?” Only when I know what I am, can this question also find a natural reply. A genuine religion, like a genuine morality, has its roots in cognition. _Both alike must be functions of cognition._ Such are the two reasons why for every thinking being a world-theory is not only a matter of giving honourable satisfaction to his dignity as a man, but also why it is a positive necessity. _In their absence genuine morality and genuine religion alike are impossible._ Now every backward glance into time, _i.e._ universal history, as well as every look round us in space, _i.e._ ethnology, reveals the fact that there never has been, and also that there is not, a people destitute of every trace, every touch of morality and religion. The only question is, Is this natural capacity of mankind for morality and religion a veritable function of cognition? The essence of all cognition is the individual. Every act of cognition is always something individual, personal, pertaining to me alone. Were all men to cognize alike, the content of this cognition would still be the individual possession of each and every single person. _Cognition separates._ Opposite to it stands another function of human nature--emotion. _Emotion unites._ If things cognizable are the affair of the individual, things emotional have to do with the mass. Every natural capacity of mankind for morality and religion consists altogether of what pertains to the emotions. Here all morality is founded upon an instinctive feeling of correlation which finds expression in the well-known saying:-- What you would not men did to you, See that you do not them unto! or in the maxim, “So conduct thyself towards others as thou wouldst wish that they should conduct themselves towards thee!” The unifying quality of emotion is made manifest in every form of compassion, which latter frequently rises to the pitch of an actual vegetative suffering with the afflicted person. Such facts, open to every one’s observation, awaken in all the instinctive feeling of an inner connection of beings, and yield a natural morality that is purely a function of emotion. It may be asked, “Could such a morality of emotion suffice humanity?”