With regard, then, to the co-operation of the sophistical understanding in the formation of philosophical error, and its share and influence on the spirit and the matter of any system of untruth, it furnishes an opposition to the idealistic confusion which the absolute will produces by its predominant idea of the unconditional. Here we have rather a predominating tendency to a realistic view of the world, according to the principle it adopts of the universal insignificance of all things, not merely in reference to morals or practical life, and in the domain of history, but also in nature and the whole creation. And with this view is associated a skeptical contempt for all who dare to think otherwise--all ordinary minds who can not rise to the height where the consciousness of knowing and believing nothing sits enthroned. This tendency, therefore, and this error of the sophistical understanding, is most immediately related to, and associated with, the dialectical confusion of the reason with its endless disputations. But as the absolute volition and pursuit of the unconditional can not well be thought of entirely apart from a certain perversion of the intellectual powers, so the operation of the sophistical understanding is impossible, without a certain admixture of an evil will and an intentional determination to oppose the truth. But notwithstanding this intrinsic connection between these two intellectual faults, yet in their outward manifestation, and in actual life, they often stand wide apart from each other. The true notion of a sophistical intellect will perhaps be best illustrated in a few words by recalling to your recollection the most celebrated writer of the eighteenth century, who exercised so great an influence not only on the minds of his countryman, but on the whole spirit of the age.[50] If, again, it were necessary to employ instances in order to give you a clear idea of the philosophical pursuit of the absolute, examples enough might be found among the German schools and philosophers of recent times. But to revert to the sophistical intellect: rarely has it been, and rarely will it be, found manifesting itself in such fullness as it did in this anti-Christian and worldly writer, who indeed worshiped the age which worshiped him, but mocked and scoffed at all besides. Now as to these two opposite systems of error and unbelief--rationalism, viz., and a false idolatrous system of nature--in their inmost essence they are both equally false and pernicious. In this respect there is nothing to choose between them; they are alike utterly abominable. Even in the judgment of theology, pantheism, as the one extreme of error on the side of nature, can scarcely appear less false and abominable than atheism as the other idealistic extreme. Both must be placed on the same line; for the one no less than the other is a full and perfect refusal to recognize the one Eternal Truth and the Living God.