Page:History of Modern Philosophy (Falckenberg).djvu/504

 482 SCHLEIERMA CHER. world, and feel ourselves partially free In relation to them, we can only receive effects from God without answer- ing them ; even our self-activity we have from him. Nevertheless the feeling of dependence is not to be depress- ing, not humbling merely, but the joyous sense of an exalta- tion and broadening of life. In our devotion to the universe we participate in the life of the universe; by leaning on the infinite we supplement our finitude — religion makes up for the needy condition of man by bringing him into relation with the absolute, and teaching him to know and to feel himself a part of the whole. From this elevating influence of religion, which Schleier- macher eloquently depicts, it is at once evident that his definition of it as a feeling of absolute dependence is only half correct. It needs to be supplemented by the feeling of freedom, which exalts us by the consciousness of the oneness of the human reason and the divine. It is only to this side of religion, neglected by Schleiermacher, that we can ascribe its inspiring influence, which he in vain endeavors to derive from the feeling of dependence. Power can never spring from humility as such. This defect, however, does not detract from Schleiermacher's merit in assigning to religion a special field of spiritual activity. While Kant treats religion as an appendix to/ ethics, and Hegel, with a one-sidedness which is still worse,] reduces it to an undeveloped form of knowledge, Schleier- macher recognizes that it is not a mere concomitant phe- nomenon — whether an incidental result or a preliminary stage — of morality or cognition, but something independ- ent, co-ordinate with volition and cognition, and of equal legitimacy. The proof that religion has its habitation in feeling is the more deserving of thanks since it by no means induced Schleiermacher to overlook the connection of the God-consciousness with self-consciousness and the consciousness of the world. Schleiermacher's theory, more- over, may be held correct without ignoring the relatively legitimate elements in the views of religion which he attacked. With the view that religion has its seat in feeling, it is quite possible to combine a recognition of the fact that it has its origin in the will, and its basis in morals, and that.