308 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



was in immediate contact — that it was at one — with 

 the Infinite and the Eternal. But Schleiermacher never 

 lost himself so completely in this spiritual or cosmic 

 pantheism as some other contemporary thinkers, at 

 least transiently, did ; for he had an equal sense for 

 the value of individual existence, for the importance 

 of personal independence and individuality of develop- 

 ment. In this respect his view was more akin to that 

 of Leibniz who, in his ' Monadology,' opposed the pan- 

 theism of Spinoza. Schleiermacher thus early elaborated 

 a special expression in which the oneness of the In- 

 dividual and the All could be combined with a distinct 

 subjective feeling ; this he described as the feeling of 

 absolute dependence as far as the individual, the finite 

 self is concerned. In the two most original of his earlier 

 writings — in his ' Addresses,' 1799, and his ' Monologues,' 

 1801, — he emphasises what he considers to be equally 

 important manifestations of the religious sentiment — 

 viz., the feeling of being one with the All, and at the 

 same time of being individually, though absolutely, de- 

 pendent upon it. To give and to find oneself, to be 

 equally distant from the egotism of the lower self and 

 from an exaltation of the logical idea ; that is, for 

 Schleiermacher, the essence of the religious sentiment 

 or pious feeling : in it, whoever loses his own self in 

 the Universal, at the same time gains the intrinsic joy 

 of this absorption or devotion. Eeligion is accordingly 

 neither knowledge nor action but a state of feeling, 

 the sentiment of an all-embracing and all-absorbing 

 life. Eeligious doctrines or dogmas result from a 

 reflection upon this religious sentiment. They are, 



