It would be most beneficial to both kinds of metaphysics that each of them should remain clearly separated from the other and confine itself to its own province, that it may there be able to develop its nature fully. Instead of which, through the whole Christian era, the endeavour has been to bring about a fusion of the two, for the dogmas and conceptions of the one have been carried over into the other, whereby both are spoiled. This has taken place in the most open manner in our own day in that strange hermaphrodite or centaur, the so-called philosophy of religion, which, as a kind of gnosis, endeavours to interpret the given religion, and to explain what is true _sensu allegorico_ through something which is true _sensu proprio_. But for this we would have to know and possess the truth _sensu proprio_ already; and in that case such an interpretation would be superfluous. For to seek first to find metaphysics, _i.e._, the truth _sensu proprio_, merely out of religion by explanation and interpretation would be a doubtful and dangerous undertaking, to which one would only make up one’s mind if it were proved that truth, like iron and other base metals, could only be found in a mixed, not in a pure form, and therefore one could only obtain it by reduction from the mixed ore. Religions are necessary for the people, and an inestimable benefit to them. But if they oppose themselves to the progress of mankind in the knowledge of the truth, they must with the utmost possible forbearance be set aside. And to require that a great mind—a Shakspeare; a Goethe—should make the dogmas of any religion implicitly, _bonâ fide et sensu proprio_, his conviction is to require that a giant should put on the shoe of a dwarf.