You must agree, doctor, that a man who in a few phrases commits so many unconceivable blunders has no right to censure the metaphysicians or to attack revelation. It is rash, therefore, on your part, to declare that “however much metaphysicians may vainly attempt to define the absolute, however much religion may endeavor to excite faith in the absolute by the assumption of a revelation, nothing can conceal the defect of the definition.” Of what definition do you speak? Your own definition of the absolute, as “that which transcends the surrounding sensual world,” is certainly most deficient; but religion and metaphysics are not to be made responsible for it. Why did you not, before censuring the metaphysicians and the theologians, ascertain their definitions? We call _absolute_ a being whose existence does not depend on the existence of another being; and in this sense God alone is absolute. He is _the absolute_ antonomastically. And we call _absolute_ analogically any being also whose existence does not depend on any created being, although it depends on the creative and conservative action of God; and in this sense every created substance is absolute. And we call _absolute_ logically whatever is conceived through its own intrinsic constituents without reference to any other distinct entity; and in this sense we speak of absolute movement, absolute weight, absolute volume, etc. Without enumerating other less important meanings of the term, I simply observe that the absolute may be defined as that which is independent of extraneous conditions; and that the greater its independence, the more absolute and the more perfect is the being. Have you anything to say against this definition? We must, then, conclude that all your argumentation is nothing but a shocking display of false assertions, and, I may add, of “intellectual jugglery.” _Büchner._ I will accept your conclusion, if you can show that our conception of a God is not a childish delusion of our fancy. “An exact knowledge and unprejudiced observation of individuals and nations in an uncivilized state prove the contrary to be the fact. Only a prejudiced mind can, in the worship of animals practised by ancient and existing nations, find something analogous to a real belief in a God. It by no means corresponds to the idea of a God when we see man worshipping such animals as he from experience knows may injure or be useful to him.... A stone, a tree, a river, an alligator, a parcel of rags, a snake, form the idols of the negro of Guinea. Such a worship does not express the idea of an almighty being, governing the world and ruling nature and man, but merely a blind fear of natural forces, which frighten uncivilized man, or appear supernatural, as he is not able to trace the natural connection of things.... A god in the shape of an animal is no God, but a caricature” (pp. 184, 185).