To meet those attempts, religion would have to take only two precautionary measures on two closely related points; and in doing this it would indeed make use of that before-mentioned right to defend freedom of {280} investigation both in its own realm and in the border-territory. One precaution would consist in the requirement of the acknowledgment that even in that purely immanent mode of explanation the _idea of value is fixed_, but that the value of the new appears only when the new itself really comes into existence; that we therefore do not call, _e.g._, the inorganic _living_, because according to that mode of explanation life develops itself out of it; and that we do not ascribe to the animal the value of man, because according to that mode of explanation it also includes the causes of the development of man. Such a discrimination of ideas is indeed a _scientific postulate_, as we have had occasion to show at many points of our investigation; and we also complied with this requirement long ago in that realm of knowledge which is related to these questions as to the origin of things, but is more accessible and open to us, namely, in the realm of the development of the individual. We have spoken of this at length in Sec. 3. But in the interest of _religion_ also we have to request that the _differences of value_ of things be retained, even when man thinks he is able to explain their origin merely out of one another. For without this, all things would finally merge simply into existences of like value; man would stand in no other relation to God than would any other creature, irrational or lifeless; and the quintessence of religious life--the relation of mutual personal love between God and man, the certainty of being a child of God--would be illusory when there should no longer be a difference of value between man and animal, animal and plant, plant and stone. {281}