The Sphere of Religion 271 



of the past is that their monuments embalm only their outward 

 forms, while the spirit has fled. 



But that would not be in any sense a distinctive mark of 

 religion. Nothing is really truth for us except as it is our own 

 conviction, or beauty for us except as we truly perceive and feel it, 

 or goodness except as it is good to our own insight. Truth, with- 

 out our conviction of its truth, would be mere facts in an encyclo- 

 paedia ; and morality, without our own conscience of right, mere 

 rules of good form. Nevertheless, the special quality of truth is 

 to be objectively valid and of goodness to be concerned with the 

 actual moral order. And, in the same way, the special quality 

 of religion is to be concerned with what is regarded not merely 

 as real, but as the ultimate reality ; and this is in no way altered 

 by the importance of our personal relation to it. 



This, as a matter of fact, is the only point on which Kant, 

 Schleiermacher, and Hegel are agreed. The difference in their 

 opinions about the seat of religion in the soul is as complete as the 

 possibilities admit, seeing that there is only intellect, feeling, or will 

 to which it could be ascribed. But they are at one in seeking 

 religion where they think they discern the creative element in 

 experience. Their real divergence does not concern religion, but 

 has to do with the point where ultimate reality touches the human 

 spirit, because for all alike the intercourse with the universe which 

 creates all our experience is, so to speak, a religious intercourse. 



Schleiermacher definitely held this view. The universe 

 is a great aesthetic unity all of which touches us in the creative 

 moment before intuition divides into thought and feeling. We 

 may call this intuition feeling, because feeling is the stem, yet it is 

 not feeling in the sense of conscious emotion, but is that moment 

 before consciousness divides into thought and action which is the 

 contact between the universe as one and the soul as one. This is 

 so essentially a religious intercourse that religion would naturally 

 develop out of it alongside of the reality which comes in by the 

 channel of it, were not the progress arrested by false worldly 

 prudences. To say generally that for Schleiermacher religion is 

 feeling is to miss his central conviction that its source is the peculiar 

 feeling or intuition which is the contact with the universe that 

 creates all experience of reality. 



Hegel, though denouncing Schleiermacher's view of religion, 

 as confusing it with mere personal emotions, does not really differ 



