nly the various reflections of his undivided nature in the mind of
the observer. In God ability and performance, intelligence and will, his
thought of self and his thought of the world coincide in one. Even
the concept of personality must not be ascribed to God, since it is a
limitation of the infinite and belongs to mythology; while the idea of
life, on the contrary, is allowable as a protection against atheism and
fatalism. When Schleiermacher, further, equates the activity of God and the
causality of nature he ranges himself on the pantheistic side in 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 outside it, we
know him only _in_ us and in things. Besides that which he actually brings
forth, God could not produce anything further, and just as little does he
miraculously interfere 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 representations of
immortality, with their hope of future compensation, 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 universe is the phenomenon of the
divine activity, then considered as a whole it is perfect; whatever of
imperfection we find in it, is merely the inevitable result of finitude.
The bad is merely the less perfect; everything is as good as it can be;
the world is the best possible; everything is in its right place; even the
meanest thing 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 Leibnitzian 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 the _philosophy of religion_ Schleiermac