God - An Enquiry into the Nature of Man's Highest Ideal and a Solution of the Problem for the Standpoint of Science

The conception of God is the most important idea of philosophy, science, and religion, and our attitude toward it is of vital importance for our emotional, intellectual, and moral life. It is a thought which, more than any other, covers the unity of existence in its entirety, and its formulation touches upon a great number of other problems. Indeed, it is likely to present itself at any moment in one form or another. Thus it is a matter of course that the conception of God has been approached in various ways and can be treated in the most diverse manners.
About the Author
Carus was born in Ilsenburg, Germany, and went to universities in Strasburg, France, and Tübingen, Germany. In 1876 he received his Ph. D. from the latter school, served in the army, and taught school. In the summer of 1880, while teaching at the military academy of the Royal Corps of Cadets of Saxony in Dresden, Carus published a brief pamphlet denying the literal truth of scripture and describing the Bible as a great literary work comparable to the Odyssey. This document was Carus’s first step in a wide-ranging intellectual voyage in which he traversed philosophy, science, religion, mathematics, history, music, literature, and social and political issues. The Royal Corps, Carus later reported, found his published views "not in harmony with the Christian spirit, in accordance with which the training and education of the Corps of Cadets should be conducted." And so the corps offered the young teacher the choice of asking "most humbly for forgiveness for daring to have an opinion of my own and to express it, perhaps even promise to publish nothing more on religious matters, or to give up my post." He chose the latter, resigned effective Easter Sunday, 1881, and necessarily left Germany.