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 480 SCHLEIERMA CHER. regard to the question of the " immanence or transcendence of God," without being willing to acknowledge it. It sounds Spinozistic enough when he says : God never was without the world, he exists neither before nor out- ' side it, we know him only in us and in things. Besides that which he actually brings forth, God could not produce any- thing further, and just as little does he miraculously inter- fere in the course of the world as regulated by natural law. Everything takes place necessarily, and man is distinguished above other beings neither by freedom (if by freedom we understand anything more than inner necessitation) nor by eternal existence. Like all individual beings, so we are but changing states in the life of the universe, which, as they have arisen, will disappear again. The common representa- tions of immortality, with their hope of future compensa- tion, are far from pious. The true immortality of religion is this — amid finitude to become one with the infinite, and in one moment to be eternal. Schleiermacher's optimism well harmonizes with this view of the relation between God and the world. If the uni- verse is the phenomenon of the divine activity, then considered as a whole it is perfect ; whatever of imper- fection we find in it, is merely the inevitable result of. finitude. The bad is merely the less perfect ; every- thing is as good as it can be ; the world is the best possi- ble ; everything is in its right place ; even the meanest thmg is indispensable ; even the mistakes of men are to be treated with consideration. All is good and divine. In this way Schleiermacher weds ideas from Spinoza to Leib- nitzian conceptions. From the former he appropriates, pantheism, from the latter optimism and the concept of individuality ; he shares determinism with both : all events, even the decisions of the will, are subject to the law of necessity. In ihQ philosophy of religion Schleiermacher created a new epoch by his separation between religion and related depart- ments with which it had often been identified before his time, as it has been since. In its origin and essence religion is not a matter of knowing, further, not a matter of willing, but a matter of the heart. It lies quite outside the sphere of speo