178 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



more even than the conception of religion as an 

 independent power in the life of the human soul, 

 something more also than the feeling of absolute 

 dependence, the definition with which his philosophical 

 ethics started. The bringing together of reason and 

 nature, of the divine and human, presented itself as 

 an endless process, as an ideal, undefinable and realisable 

 only in the infinite progress of human history, in the 

 distant future of humanity. But this, which for the 

 natural man would be an infinitely distant and not 

 clearly defined aim and end, has been brought near 

 and definitely fixed or revealed in the Christian doctrine 

 and the person of its Founder. In spite of the endless 

 process, of the infinite duration of human history, as the 

 goal of which the union of the divine and human 

 appears in the form of an ideal, we are in possession, 

 through the historical Christian dispensation, of a living 

 presentation of this union, of this ideal, in Christ. To 

 Schleiermacher it is inconceivable that the Christian 

 Church and Christian life could ever go beyond what 

 was revealed in and through its founder. 1 In this way 



1 The principal passage in which 

 this view is stated is to be found 

 in a posthumous work published by 

 L. Jonas (1843) from a manuscript 

 left by Schleiermacher and notes 

 taken of his lectures. In this work 

 (' Die Christliche Sitte nach den 

 Grundsiitzen der Evangelischen 

 Kirche im Zusammenhang darge- 

 stellt '), as the title shows, and 



guished from philosophical ethics ; 

 and secondly, the fact that the 

 principle of progress or develop- 

 ment in ethical theory and practice 

 is compatible only with the Pro- 

 testant (or as the title says evan- 

 gelical) conception of the Christian 

 Church, and that this notion of a 

 development is not compatible with 

 the point of view of Roman Catholi- 



especially also the standard pass- ! cism. "In the Catholic Church 



age (2nd ed., 1884, p. 72), two ! there can be no question of progress 



points are clearly brought out. j in the meaning we attach to it, as 



First, the importance of taking she does not believe in a develop- 



note of an historically existing ment of her own ordinances, which 



practical code of ethics as distin- she considers to be unchangeable, 



