36
After a letter which I have just received from Father, it seemed necessary to me to reassure him concerning your intention to give up theology. He wrote that you had "among other things declared that you would not study theology, since you did not believe all that is taught there, had also let fall mocking remarks about the Lord's Supper and said that whoever once knows philosophy could never become a theologian; he had indeed objected, but Bruno is also philosopher and theologian at the same time, whereupon you answered: Bruno also believes in nothing." I ... naturally remain of the opinion that it is best for you to devote yourself to another science, if the presupposition remains that you are not sufficiently affected by that interest in religion which leaves no rest to him who is once seized by it until he has fought his way through all resistance and saved the truth. By religious interest I understand, however, that theoretical interest in religion which has its ground in the inner division and deficiency of philosophy — which, so long as it is not satisfied, is itself still sublated in the movement of philosophical science and stilled in the cognition of religion.
37
From philosophy you will not be able to get away, since you must fight your way through your transition, wherever you may go over.
38
Of life and immediate life there is now no more talk. I am just thinking how Adolph took you aside that night by the Tegel Lake and pointed to me and M. as brooding speculators. Whoever can no longer shut himself up within his four walls and yet mocks the sharpness of the concept will soon decay in our days and will not even be able to enter into life.