The accepted ethical code, in Schleiermacher’s opinion, makes man merely run about the earth as an ethical individual bent on improving the world. Living in this way, in a constant state of enthusiasm, he becomes in danger of losing himself and becoming unpersonal. He forgets that his primary duty is, first of all to be alone with himself, to look within himself, and, instead of being a mere human creature, to make himself into a personality. This renunciation of rationalism’s enthusiasm for activity is to be found in the _Monologues_, those splendid introspective meditations meant for the first New Year’s Day of the nineteenth century. One seems to hear in them Lao-tse and Chwang-tse criticising the moralism and the fanaticism for progress of Confucius. Man’s first task is, according to Schleiermacher, to realize his oneness with the Infinite and in the Infinite to see the world. Only that which results from this as action is really significant, and has importance for morality. Spinoza’s ethic consisted in keeping oneself at the highest level and living one’s life more after the fashion of a life of thought than after that of a life of corporeal existence. Schleiermacher’s ethic has the same objective except that he seeks to combine with it a more comprehensive interest in the world than is to be found in Spinoza. He is helped in this direction by his belief that progress is something immanent. We have, he says, no other perfecting to bring about in things than that which is inherent in them. Ethics, therefore, are not a setting up of laws, but the recognition and the description of the tendencies working for perfection which appear in the world itself, together with behaviour [pg 140] in accord with their spirits. The moral law is not distinct from the law of nature and pursues no other aims than the latter does. It is only the law of nature arriving in man at the consciousness of itself. Schleiermacher, therefore, feels that his task is not, as Fichte conceived his to be, the bringing of the universe under the sovereignty of reason; it consists solely in supporting the oneness of nature and reason in the sphere of human action, which is ever striving to realize itself within that universe. “All ethical knowledge is the expression of the ever-beginning but never completed efforts of reason to become nature.” Ethics are a contemplative “science.” They revolve around the two poles of natural science and human history. The ethic which results from this fundamental conception is, like those of Lao-tse and Chwang-tse, so toned down that there is no longer any real power in it. However completely Schleiermacher may try to conceal this fact by his wonderful powers of description, it plays only a subordinate _rôle_. What gives a meaning to human existence is something which is independent of deeds; it is the oneness with the Infinite which is experienced in feeling.