accepts with a smile.  He who treats religious doctrines as science falls into empty mythology.  Principles of faith and principles of knowledge are in no way related to one another, neither by way of opposition nor by way of agreement; they never come into contact.  A theology in the sense of an actual science of God is impossible.  Further, out of its dogmas the Church constructs prescriptive symbols, a step which must be deplored.  It is to be hoped that some time religion will no longer have need of the Church.  In view of the present condition of affairs it must be said that the more religious a man is the more secular he must become, and that the cultured man opposes the Church in order to promote religion.

So-called natural religion is nothing more than an abstraction of thought; in reality positive religions alone exist.  Because of the infinity of God and the finitude of man, the one, universal, eternal religion can only manifest itself in the form of particular historical religions, which are termed revealed because founded by religious heroes, creative personalities, in whom an especially lively religious feeling is aroused by a new view of the universe, and determines (not, like artistic inspiration, single moments, but) their whole existence.  Three stages are to be distinguished in the development of religion, according as the world is represented as an unordered unity (chaos), or as an indeterminate manifold of forces and elements (plurality without unity), or, finally, as an organized plurality dominated by unity (system)—­fetichism with fatalism, polytheism, mono- (including pan-) theism.  Among the religions of the third stadium Islam is physical or aesthetic in spirit; Judaism and Christianity, on the other hand, ethical or teleological.  The Christian religion is the most perfect, because it gives the central place to the concept of redemption and reconciliation (hence to that which is essential to religion) instead of to the Jewish idea of retribution.

The concept of individuality became of the highest importance for Schleiermacher’s ethics, as well as for his philosophy of religion; and by his high appreciation of it he ranges himself with Leibnitz, Herder, Goethe, and Novalis.  Now two sides may be distinguished both in regard to that which the individual is and to that which he ought to accomplish.  Like every particular being, man is an abbreviated, concentrated presentation of the universe; he contains everything in himself, contains all, that is, in a not yet unfolded, germinal manner, awaiting development in life in time, but yet in a form peculiar to him, which is never repeated elsewhere.  This yields a twofold moral task.  The individual ought to rouse into actuality the infinite fullness of content which he possesses as possibility, as slumbering germs, should harmoniously develop his capacities; yet in this he must not look upon the unique form which has been bestowed upon him as worthless.  He is not