Preface.

termination of what belongs to the essence Essence: the fundamental nature or core identity of a subject, as opposed to its accidental or secondary features of
philosophy; and it is only through what
they have actually achieved for the problem of philoso-
phy that individual philosophers belong in the se-
quence of the history of philosophy. However, what
they have done for mathematics, physics, politics, and the like,
can only have an indirect original: "mittelbar," meaning mediated or not immediate
relation to philosophy. If we apply this
to research in the history of religion,
it is clear that we should let ourselves be guided
just as little by a positively accepted Positively accepted: referring to "positive" religion, which is based on specific, established dogmas or man-made laws rather than universal reason
or traditional concept of reli-
gion, as we should mistake that which constitutes
the external appearance original: "äuſsere Erscheinung" of a certain reli-
gion we are researching
for its actual essence as a religion.
We would do this reli-
gion as much injustice thereby,
as we would falsely judge a person
whose value as a human being we
wished to determine by the outward appearance of their ac-
tions, rather than by the inner coher-
ence of the same.
I place myself here in opposition both to the
older theologians who, with a ready
faith, [accept] everything that the Bible contains,