Schleiermacher, emotional and fervent, is of opinion that the only hope for religion lies in surrendering all its outworks and leading it back to its inmost stronghold, the purely personal _feeling_ of the individual. He tries to penetrate to the very foundation of human existence, to the depth where both consciousness and action originate, to the sources of personal life. He calls upon his reader to try to realise the original condition of the soul, in which the Ego and the object are blent in one, where there is consequently no question either of perception of the object or of perception of a self differing from the object. He describes this as a condition which we are incessantly experiencing and yet not experiencing, since all life consists in its perpetual cessation and recurrence. It is, he says, evanescent and invisible, like the fragrance exhaled by dew-laden flowers and fruits, chaste and light, like a virginal kiss, and holy and fecund, like a bridegroom's embrace; nay, it is not only _like_ all this, it _is_ all this; for this condition of the human soul is the marriage of the universe, of the All, with reason personalised; in this condition the individual is for a moment the world-soul and feels its infinite life to be his own. "This," says Schleiermacher, "is the nature of the first conception of every living and original energising force in your lives, to whatever province it may belong; it is such a condition that produces every religious emotion."[2] In consequence of this theory Schleiermacher regards every feeling, every emotion, in so far as it expresses the united life of the Ego and the All in the manner described, as religious. "The feelings, the feelings alone, provide the elements of religion." He maintains that there is no feeling which is not religious, unless it is the product of a diseased or depraved condition, adding a note to the effect that this holds good even of the feelings of sensual enjoyment, so long as they are not contrary to nature or depraved. His endeavour is to rescue religion from antagonism with science and culture by making it out to be the essence of every noble, nay, of every healthy feeling. A true German, he pantheistically maintains that the broad stream of life which flows through all created beings is the sacred fountain of all piety and all religions. Therefore he would do away with every definite religious system; even belief in God and immortality does not seem to him to be essential to religion. He exclaims enthusiastically: "Join with me in reverently offering a lock to the holy, outcast soul of Spinoza in the realm of shades. He apprehended the great world-spirit; the infinite was to him all in all, the universe his one and eternal love; with holy innocence and deep humility he mirrored himself in it, and it in return found its most pleasing mirror in him. He was full of religion and of the spirit of holiness."