Religion as a primary instinct in man and the principal factor in his development was Herder's lifelong and predominant interest.

He identified himself with Christianity, but it was a Christianity understood by him in the most liberal sense, a Christianity free from dogma, a spirit rather than a creed.

As kindred to religion, poetry in his conception was inseparable from it in the essential being of man--poetry not as expressed in conventional forms but as the breath of the human spirit, and one of the most precious gifts for the purifying and elevation of humanity.

These conceptions he owed, not to Kant, to whom he had listened in Koenigsberg, but to a less systematic teacher, J.G.Hamann, whose eccentric character and visionary speculations had gained for him the designation of the "Magus of the North." Goethe came to be acquainted with the writings of Hamann, and had a genuine admiration of him as a seer struggling with visions to which he was unable to give adequate utterance.[75] It was in his conversations with Herder, however, that he was introduced to those deeper conceptions of man and his possibilities which implied a complete emancipation from the mechanical philosophy which he had hitherto been endeavouring to find in a mystical religion.
[Footnote 74: R.Haym, Herder's biographer, says of him: "Einen unbedingt erfreulichen, harmonischen Eindruck kann dieser Mann, der selbst von den 'graeulichen Dissonanzen' redet, in die Aeussererungen zuweilen ausklingen moechten, auch auf den guenstigst gestimmten Betrachter nimmermehr machen." (_Herder nach seinem Leben und seinen Werken_, Berlin, 1887, i.p.

396.)] [Footnote 75: Goethe attached so much importance to many of Hamann's utterances that, as late as 1806, he had thoughts of bringing out an edition of Hamann's works.] During the six months that Herder resided in Strassburg he was under treatment for a serious ailment of his eyes, and Goethe was assiduous in his attendance on him, often remaining with him for whole days.
Their intercourse was not an unmixed pleasure for either.