to feel himself a mere specimen, an unimportant repetition of the type, but as a particular, and in this particularity a significant, expression of the absolute, whose omission would cause a gap in the world.  It is surprising that the majority of the thinkers who have defended the value of individuality lay far less stress upon the micro-cosmical nature of the individual and the development of his capacities in all directions than on care for his peculiar qualities.  So also Schleiermacher.  Yet he gradually returned from the extreme individualism—­the Monologues affect one almost repellently by the impulse which they give to vain self-reflection—­which he at first defended.

In the Ethics (edited by Kirchmann, 1870; earlier editions by Schweizer, 1835, and Twesten, 1841) Schleiermacher brings the well-nigh forgotten concept of goods again into honor.  The three points of view from which ethics is to be discussed, and each of which presents the whole ethical field in its own peculiar way—­the good, virtue, duty—­are related as resultant, force, and law of motion.  Every union of reason and nature produced by the action of the former on the latter is called a good; the sum of these unities, the highest good.  According as reason uses nature as an instrument in formation or as a symbol in cognition her action is formative or indicative; it is, further, either common or peculiar.  On the crossing of these (fluctuating) distinctions of identical and individual organization and symbolization is based the division of the theory of goods: 

SPHERES.  RELATIONS.  GOODS.
Ident.  Organ.: Intercourse.  Right.  The State.
Individ.  Organ.: Property.  Free Sociability.  Class, House,
Friendship.
Ident.  Symbol.: Knowledge.  Faith.  School and
University.
Individ.  Symbol.: Feeling.  Revelation.  The Church
(Art).

The four ethical communities, each of which represents the organic union of opposites—­rulers and subjects, host and guests, teachers and pupils or scholars and the public, the clergy and the laity—­have for their foundation the family and the unity of the nation.  Virtue (the personal unification of reason and sensibility) is either disposition or skill, and in each case either cognitive or presentative; this yields the cardinal virtues wisdom, love, discretion, and perseverance.  The division of duties into duties of right, duties of love, duties of vocation, and duties of conscience rests on the distinction between community in production and appropriation, each of which may be universal or individual.  The most general laws of duty (duty is the Idea of the good in an imperative form) run:  Act at every instant with all thy moral power, and aiming at thy whole moral problem; act with all virtues and in view of all goods, further, Always do that action which is most advantageous for the whole sphere of morality,