It will be seen how much religious knowledge and the science of Nature differ by their very origin. The one is the theory of the receptive and logical life of the ego; the other is the theory of its active and spontaneous life. As both the receptive and the active life are one, however, the two orders of knowledge are neither isolated nor independent. But they must never be confounded. Their results will always remain heterogeneous; they are not of the same order, and cannot supply the place of each other. If you were to admit, _e.g._, that philosophers may succeed (as they have often been believed to do) in establishing a veritable objective science of God, and if they were thus to know God in Himself and apart from the religious ego, that scientific knowledge of God, even if it were possible, would not be religious knowledge; for to know God religiously is to know Him in His relation to us--that is to say, in our consciousness, in so far as He is present in it and determines it towards piety. This is the sense in which it is permissible to maintain that religion is as independent of metaphysics as it is of cosmology. It is the same with the knowledge of the world. To know the world as an astronomer or a physicist is not to know it religiously. To know it religiously is, while taking it as it is, and in no wise contradicting the scientific laws according to which it is governed, to determine its value in relation to the life of spirit; it is to estimate it according as it is a means, a hindrance, or a menace, to the progress of that life. In the same way, to know ourselves religiously is not to construct scientific psychology; but that psychology being once constructed, and properly constructed, it is to realise ourselves in our relation both to God and to the world, forcing ourselves to surmount the contradictions from which we suffer, in order that we may attain to unity and peace of mind. Thus, not only can religious knowledge never cast off its subjective character; it is in reality nothing but that very subjectivity of piety considered in its action and in its legitimate development.