and that, further, it has the
significance of being (to use Schopenhauer's words) the "metaphysics of the
people."

Although religion and piety be made synonymous, it must still be admitted
that in a being capable of knowing and willing as well as of feeling, this
devout frame will have results in the spheres of cognition and action. In
regard to _cultus_ Schleiermacher maintains that a religious observance
which does not spring from one's own feeling and find an echo therein is
superstitious, and demands that religious feeling, like a sacred melody,
accompany all human action, that everything be done with religion, nothing
from religion. Instead of expressing itself in single specifically
religious actions, the religious feeling should uniformly pervade the whole
life. Let a private room be the temple where the voice of the priest is
raised. Dogmas, again, are descriptions of pious excitation, and take their
origin in man's reflection on his religious feelings, in his endeavor to
explain them, in his expression of them in ideas and words. The concepts
and principles of theology are valid only as descriptions and presentations
of feelings, not as cognitions; by their unavoidable anthropomorphic
character alone they are completely unfitted for science. The dogmatic
system is an envelopment which religion accepts with a smile. He who treats
religious doctrines as science falls into empty mythology. Principles of
faith and principles of knowledge are in no way related to one another,
neither by way of opposition nor by way of agreement; they never come into
contact. A theology in the sense of an actual science of God is impossible.
Further, out of its dogmas the Church constructs prescriptive symbols, a
step which must be deplored. It is to be hoped that some time religion will
no longer have need of the Church. In view of the present condition of
affairs it must be said that the more religious a man is the more secular
he must become, and that the cultured man opposes the Church in order to
promote religion.

So-called natural religion is nothing more than an abstraction of thought;
in reality positive religions alone exist. Because of the infinity of God
and the finitude of man, the one, universal, eternal religion can only
manifest itself in the form of particular historical religions, which
are termed revealed because founded by religious heroes, creative
personalities, in whom an especially lively religious feeling i