Religion, according to Schleiermacher, has an existence independent of (though, no doubt, associated with) philosophy, superstition, or morality. Its essence consists neither in speculation nor in action, but in a certain type of feeling, of inner experience. Schleiermacher characterised this particular type of feeling as _a feeling of dependence_: the immediate consciousness that everything finite exists in and through the infinite, everything temporal in and through the eternal. That Schleiermacher should have described the specifically religious feeling in this particular way is comparatively irrelevant so far as our present purpose is concerned. The point of importance is that he was the first to recognise the _independence_ of religion, to see in it a legitimate and natural form of human activity, which exists, not for the sake of knowledge or of morality, but for its own sake, and on its own account. Here, though Hegel took a different view, Schleiermacher is one in spirit with the Romantic school; indeed, he may be said to have drawn the logical conclusions of Romanticism. The independence and originality of religion is the necessary consequence of a philosophy which set itself against the unbalanced intellectualism of the "enlightenment." The permanent significance of Romanticism lies here: That it discredited once for all the notion that there is only one road to reality--that of logic. It is not only philosophy, but religion and art that remove the veil which hides the supra-sensible world from us. And to close our eyes to the facts of religious experience, or to attempt to discredit them by the application of irrelevant terms such as "superstition," is not only to display ourselves as philistines, but also to forsake the highest traditions of science--veneration for experience, and the realms of fact. CHAPTER VIII MECHANISM AND LIFE RECAPITULATORY.--We have already observed the mechanical theory, in the hands of Descartes, expanding itself to cover organisms and the phenomena of life, and in La Mettrie's _L'Homme Machine_, reducing even human beings to the status of automata. These theories were, however, known to be insecurely based upon somewhat hasty generalisations, for, in point of fact, the science of biology was as yet in its infancy; the _data_ for a complete vindication of the mechanical position were as yet wanting. ADVANCE OF BIOLOGY.--Biological science, however, during the first half of the nineteenth century made considerable advances, and research continually kept bringing to light facts which seemed to substantiate the brilliant, if premature, hypothesis of Descartes. It will not be necessary for us to do more than take hasty note of certain important developments.