640 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



programme of the whole thought of the century, and 

 it is not without significance that of all the philosophies 

 which then ruled in Germany, his alone gained at that 

 time European influence : through Coleridge in Eng- 

 land, through Victor Cousin in France, through his 

 ' Philosophy of Nature ' in several European countries. 

 The controversy into which Fichte was drawn 

 through the attacks of narrow - minded and jealous 

 opponents had given prominence to the religious prob- 

 lem and to the position which contemporary philo- 

 sophic thought had taken up with regard to it. This 

 was still further accentuated by the appearance in the 

 last year of the eighteenth century of Schleiermacher's 

 25. Addresses. Their main object was to gain renewed 

 macher's attention, on the part of cultured readers, for the 



Addresses. 



religious problem, through bringing it into intimate 

 connection with recent speculation. It made manifest, 

 among other things, the deep religious spirit which 

 inspired Spinoza's system, a subject which, as already 

 stated, had come under discussion largely through the 

 influence of Jacobi's writings. 



These Addresses discussed, not so much special re- 

 ligious or theological doctrines, as the psychological 

 facts connected with and exhibited by the religious and 

 believing mind. Schleierinacher there propounded his 

 well-known psychological explanation of the religious 

 attitude of the human mind as being rooted in a feeling 

 of dependence. In the sequel of his expositions he gave 

 to this view a distinctly pantheistic expression, something 

 similar to what has in recent times been termed " cosmic 

 emotion." It depended upon the attitude of the human 



