Rightly to understand the position of Schleiermacher we must take account of his doctrine of _self_-consciousness. "In all self-consciousness," says he, "there are two elements, a Being ein Seyn, and a Somehow-having-become (Irgendweigewordenseyn). The last, however, presupposes, for every self-consciousness, besides the ego, yet something else from whence the certainty of the same [self-consciousness] exists, and without which self-consciousness would not be just this."[52] Every determinate mode of the sensibility supposes an _object_, and a _relation_ between the subject and the object, the subjective feeling deriving its determinations from the object. External sensation, the feeling, say of extension and resistance, gives world-consciousness. Internal sensation, the _feeling of dependence_, gives God consciousness. And it is only by the presence of world consciousness and God-consciousness that self consciousness can be what it is. We have, then, in our self-consciousness a _feeling of direct dependence_, and that to which our minds instinctively trace that dependence we call God. "By means of the religious feeling, the Primal Cause is revealed in us, as in perception, the things external, are revealed in us."[53] The _felt_, therefore, is not only the first religious sense, but the ruling, abiding, and perfect form of the religious spirit; whatever lays any claim to religion must maintain its ground and principle in _feeling_, upon which it depends for its development; and the sum-total of the forces constituting religious life, inasmuch as it is a _life_, is based upon immediate self-consciousness.[54] [Footnote 52: Glaubenslehre, ch. i. § 4.] [Footnote 53: Dialectic, p. 430.] [Footnote 54: Nitzsch, "System of Doctrine," p. 23.]