OF THE SPIRIT. 313 



ethical principles as with Kant, yet no doubt the ethical 

 is the more important side in his religious philosophy. 

 In this regard he brought out as the central idea of 

 his ethical conception that of the " highest good," of a 

 " world of (spiritual) goods " which have to be realised 

 through and in human conduct. Thus, neither the 

 purely formal sense of moral obligation the categorical 

 imperative of Kant nor the utilitarian conception of 

 happiness formed the starting-point and central idea 

 of Schleiermacher's ethics. The central idea was that 

 of the " highest good " or (spiritual) " goods " which 

 have to be realised, the conception of the establishment, 

 through the combined individual effort of human beings 

 in human society and its historical development, of a 

 different and higher order of things than the existing 

 natural or lower order. This ethical ideal was indeed 

 not sufficiently and clearly defined by Schleiermacher. 

 The necessity for such a definition is, to a great extent, 

 removed as soon as we cease to restrict ourselves like 

 Kant to a purely logical and systematic construction 

 of an ethical code, and point to history and to the 

 actual realisation which moral and religious ideas have 

 so far attained in the society of which we are members. 

 There it was, in the Christian community in which and 

 for which he lived and worked, that Schleiermacher 

 looked for the practical solution of the problem. But 

 he not only found in the Christian Church the gradual 

 realisation of the divine order of things, of the Civitas 

 Dei ; he found in it also an ideal of conduct and of life 

 in the person of its Founder. Whoever recognises in 

 Him the beginning and the end, the origin and the 



