But if the Lord's Supper effects nothing, consequently is nothing,--for only that which produces effects, is,--without a certain state of mind, without faith, then in faith alone lies its reality; the entire event goes forward in the feelings alone. If the idea that I here receive the real body of the Saviour acts on the religious feelings, this idea itself arises from the feelings; it produces devout sentiments, because it is itself a devout idea. Thus here also the religious subject is acted on by himself as if by another being, through the conception of an imaginary object. Therefore the process of the Lord's Supper can quite well, even without the intermediation of bread and wine, without any church ceremony, be accomplished in the imagination. There are innumerable devout poems, the sole theme of which is the blood of Christ. In these we have a genuinely poetical celebration of the Lord's Supper. In the lively representation of the suffering, bleeding Saviour, the soul identifies itself with him; here the saint in poetic exaltation drinks the pure blood, unmixed with any contradictory, material elements; here there is no disturbing object between the idea of the blood and the blood itself. But though the Lord's Supper, or a sacrament in general, is nothing without a certain state of mind, without faith, nevertheless religion presents the sacrament at the same time as something in itself real, external, distinct from the human being, so that in the religious consciousness the true thing, which is faith, is made only a collateral thing, a condition, and the imaginary thing becomes the principal thing. And the necessary, immanent consequences and effects of this religious materialism, of this subordination of the human to the supposed divine, of the subjective to the supposed objective, of truth to imagination, of morality to religion,--the necessary consequences are superstition and immorality: superstition, because a thing has attributed to it an effect which does not lie in its nature, because a thing is held up as not being what it in truth is, because a mere conception passes for objective reality; immorality, because necessarily, in feeling, the holiness of the action as such is separated from morality, the partaking of the sacrament, even apart from the state of mind, becomes a holy and saving act. Such, at least, is the result in practice, which knows nothing of the sophistical distinctions of theology. In general: wherever religion places itself in contradiction with reason, it places itself also in contradiction with the moral sense. Only with the sense of truth coexists the sense of the right and good. Depravity of understanding is always depravity of heart. He who deludes and cheats his understanding has not a veracious, honourable heart; sophistry corrupts the whole man. And the doctrine of the Lord's Supper is sophistry.