s aroused by
a new view of the universe, and determines (not, like artistic inspiration,
single moments, but) their whole existence. Three stages are to be
distinguished in the development of religion, according as the world is
represented as an unordered unity (chaos), or as an indeterminate manifold
of forces and elements (plurality without unity), or, finally, as an
organized plurality dominated by unity (system)--fetichism with fatalism,
polytheism, mono- (including pan-) theism. Among the religions of the third
stadium Islam is physical or aesthetic in spirit; Judaism and Christianity,
on the other hand, ethical or teleological. The Christian religion is
the most perfect, because it gives the central place to the concept
of redemption and reconciliation (hence to that which is essential to
religion) instead of to the Jewish idea of retribution.

The concept of individuality became of the highest importance for
Schleiermacher's ethics, as well as for his philosophy of religion; and
by his high appreciation of it he ranges himself with Leibnitz, Herder,
Goethe, and Novalis. Now two sides may be distinguished both in regard to
that which the individual is and to that which he ought to accomplish. Like
every particular being, man is an abbreviated, concentrated presentation of
the universe; he contains everything in himself, contains all, that is, in
a not yet unfolded, germinal manner, awaiting development in life in time,
but yet in a form peculiar to him, which is never repeated elsewhere. This
yields a twofold moral task. The individual ought to rouse into actuality
the infinite fullness of content which he possesses as possibility, as
slumbering germs, should harmoniously develop his capacities; yet in this
he must not look upon the unique form which has been bestowed upon him
as worthless. He is not to feel himself a mere specimen, an unimportant
repetition of the type, but as a particular, and in this particularity a
significant, expression of the absolute, whose omission would cause a gap
in the world. It is surprising that the majority of the thinkers who
have defended the value of individuality lay far less stress upon the
micro-cosmical nature of the individual and the development of his
capacities in all directions than on care for his peculiar qualities.
So also Schleiermacher. Yet he gradually returned from the extreme
individualism--the _Monologues_ affect one almost repellently by the
impulse which they