One thing has certainly been established: a _free sentiment_ can now assert itself with sovereignty in the most important spheres of intellectual life, without any barriers of stationary truths and immovable Christian dogmas; one is now free to fashion his religion and ideals to suit the _individuum ineffabile_. The latter asks no longer what religion demands of him, but rather how religion can serve his purposes. “For the gods,” it is said, “which we now acknowledge, are those we need, which we can use, whose demands confirm and strengthen our own personal demands and those of our fellow-men.... We apply thereby only the principle of elimination of everything unsuitable to man, and of the survival of the fittest, to our own religious convictions”; “we turn to that religion which best suits our own individuality” (_W. James_). Arrogant doubt can now undermine all fundamental truths of Christian faith until they crumble to pieces; beside it rises the free genius of the new religion, on whose emblem the name of God is no longer emblazoned, but the glittering seal of an independent humanity. Relative Truth. Freedom of thought appears still more justified when we take a further step which brings us to the _consequence of subjectivism_; _i.e._, when we advance so far as to assert that there are no unchangeable and in this sense no absolute truths, but only temporary, changeable, relative truths. And modern thought does profess this: there is no absolute truth, no _religio et philosophia perennis_; different principles and views are justified and even necessary for different times and even classes. This removes another barrier to freedom of thought, viz., allegiance to generally accepted truths and to the convictions of bygone ages. The logicalness of this further step can hardly be denied. If the human intellect, independent of the laws of objective truth, fashions its own object and truth, especially in things above the senses, why can it not form for itself, at different periods and in different stages of life, a different religion and another view of the world? Cannot the human subject pass through different phases? He indeed changes his costume and style of architecture; why not also his thoughts? Every product of thought would then be the right one for the time, but would be untenable for a further stage of his intellectual genesis and growth, and would have to be replaced by a new one. The nature of subjectivistic thought is no longer an obstacle to this. Besides, we have the modern idea of _evolution_, already predominant in all fields: the world, the species of plants and animals, man himself with his whole life, his language, right, family, all of them the products of a perpetual evolution, everything constantly changing. Why not also his religion, morality, and view of the world? They are only reflexes of a temporary state of civilization. Hence also here motion and change, evolution into new shapes!