 One might think that mood would be a better category than emotion for interpreting Schleiermacher’s comments about the feeling (Gefühl) of absolute dependence. (On the differences between emotion and mood, see Beedie, Terry, and Lane, 2005.) Feeling is a broader category than emotion. Both moods and emotions can be felt, and the diffuseness of the feeling of absolute dependence might be thought to warrant this change of category. Furthermore, we might see in this change an opportunity to explain better the relation between the feeling of absolute dependence and the particular religious emotions. Moods, it seems, predispose emotions: if you’re irritable, you’re more likely to get angry upon being insulted; if you’re cheerful, you’re more likely to feel joy upon being told good news; and so forth. And this, we might think, is due to the fact that the particular emotions not only are predisposed by moods, but themselves embody moods: joy is cheerful, sorrow is depressed, anger is irritable, and so forth. Similarly, if you’re feeling absolutely dependent, you’re more likely to feel religiously contrite, joyful, grateful, and so forth, and each of these particular emotion types embodies the feeling of absolute dependence. This is perhaps a useful suggestion, inasmuch as Schleiermacher takes the feeling of absolute dependence to be implicit in all religious emotions. One objection to assimilating the feeling of absolute dependence to mood would be that intentionality seems to be a feature of emotions that distinguishes them from moods, and Schleiermacher clearly specifies the intentionality of the feeling of absolute dependence.