[Illustration:  FRIEDRICH SCHLEIERMACHER]

You perceive that I am not speaking here of the endeavor to make others similar to ourselves, nor of the conviction that what is exhibited in one is essential to all; it is merely my aim to ascertain the true relation between our individual life and the common nature of man, and clearly to set it forth.  But the peculiar object of this desire for communication is unquestionably that in which man feels that he is originally passive, namely, his observations and emotions.  He is here impelled by the eager wish to know whether the power which has produced them in him be not something foreign and unworthy.  Hence we see man employed, from his very childhood, in communicating those observations and emotions; the conceptions of his understanding, concerning whose origin there can be no doubt, he allows to rest in his own mind, and still more easily he determines to refrain from the expression of his judgments; but whatever acts upon his senses, whatever awakens his feelings, of that he desires to obtain witnesses, with regard to that he longs for those who will sympathize with him.  How should he keep to himself those very operations of the world upon his soul which are the most universal and comprehensive, which appear to him as of the most stupendous and resistless magnitude?  How should he be willing to lock up within his own bosom those very emotions which impel him with the greatest power beyond himself, and in the indulgence of which he becomes conscious that he can never understand his own nature from himself alone?  It will rather be his first endeavor, whenever a religious view gains clearness in his eye, or a pious feeling penetrates his soul, to direct the attention of others to the same object, and, as far as possible, to communicate to their hearts the elevated impulses of his own.

If, then, the religious man is urged by his nature to speak, it is the same nature which secures to him the certainty of hearers.  There is no element of his being with which, at the same time, there is implanted in man such a lively feeling of his total inability to exhaust it by himself alone, as with that of religion.  A sense of religion has no sooner dawned upon him, than he feels the infinity of its nature and the limitation of his own; he is conscious of embracing but a small portion of it; and that which he cannot immediately reach he wishes to perceive, as far as he can, from the representations of others who have experienced it themselves, and to enjoy it with them.  Hence, he is anxious to observe every manifestation of it; and, seeking to supply his own deficiencies, he watches for every tone which he recognizes as proceeding from it.  In this manner, mutual communications are instituted; in this manner, every one feels equally the need both of speaking and hearing.