We support the well-being of matter, the material happiness of peoples, not because we are contemptuous of the spirit, like the French materialists, but because we know that the divinity of the human being is also revealed in his bodily appearance, that misery destroys and demeans the body, the image of God, and that the spirit is destroyed thereby as well. The great motto of revolution expressed by Saint-Just: “Bread is the right of the people” reads for us “Bread is the divine right of the human being.” We do not fight for the humans rights of the people, but for the divine rights of the human.
Heinrich Heine, On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany