Well, and why stop at God? Liberty of thought, which has been incessantly turning and adapting dogma to its progress, has it in its power to make a step beyond. Immutable faith is hemmed in by a circle which is daily shrinking. For the liberal Protestant this contraction has reached its extreme, and centre and circumference are one and the process is continuing. Why should not God Himself be a symbol? What is this mysterious Being, after all, but a popular personification of the _divine_ or even of ideal humanity; in a word, of morality? [Sidenote: The result practically a religion of morals. Perceived to be so in Germany.] Thus a purely moral symbolism comes in process of time to be substituted for a metaphysical symbolism. We are close upon the Kantian conception of a religion of duty, resting upon a simple postulate or even a simple generalization of human conduct, to the effect that morality and happiness are in the last resort in harmony. A faith in morals, thus understood, has been adopted by many Germans as the basis of religious faith. Hegelians have converted religion into a moral symbolism. Strauss defines morality as the “harmonization” of man with his species, and defines religion as the harmonization of man with the universe; and these definitions, which seem at first sight to imply a difference in extent and a certain opposition between morality and religion, aim in reality at showing their ultimate unity; the ideal of the species and the purpose of the universe are one, and if by chance they should be distinct, it would be the more universal ideal that morality itself would command us to follow. Von Hartmann, also, in spite of his mystical tendencies, concludes that there is no religion possible except one which will consecrate the moral autonomy of the individual, his salvation by his own effort and not by that of somebody else (autosoterism as distinguished from heterosoterism). From which it follows that, in Von Hartmann’s opinion, the essence of religious adoration and gratitude should be one’s respect for the essential and impersonal element in one’s self; in other words, piety is, properly speaking, no more than a form of morality and of absolute renouncement. [Sidenote: Also in France.]