[251] ask the question, "Why did religion not prevent this loss man, cognitively, in his world?"--- his identification with realms of abstraction, or his division INTO the different realms of abstraction. Religion was not able to resist this development---and this again is a general statement about the situation of religion in our present society (which is transition to our next semester's considerations). In any case, religion was NOT able. And it was not able to because it did, actually, in the religious sphere, almost the same thing that man did in the sphere of the doctrine of man:^a GOD ALSO was lost, in the world which man encountered and wanted to rediscover cognitively. He became a being whose EXISTENCE was discussed. His activities became activities in the categories of physics. But since they contradicted (according to the tradition) the physical laws, a concept of miracle was established which had nothing to do with the mythological understanding of reality, but was a mis-product, a distorted product, of the estrangement^b of God FROM man, corresponding to an estrangement of MAN from man, in the search of man for his world. For this reason the modern mind, in his going-out, could not be kept back by the prayers of the priests to remain in the legendary symbolism. They couldn't keep him back because their own power was already internally broken, when they put religion down to the same level to which MAN was brought down: to the realm of an abstraction in the world of objects. So the only way left for religion was to protest. But if somebody says "No," he becomes narrow. He sees the dangers for his own situation, he sees that actually he is lost, and so he acts with