The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Volume V Part 1

The German Cla.s.sics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English.

Volume 5.

by Various.

THE ROMANTIC PHILOSOPHERS--FICHTE, SCh.e.l.lING, AND SCHLEIERMACHER

By FRANK THILLY, PH.D., LL.D. Professor of Philosophy, Cornell University

The Enlightenment of the eighteenth century had implicit faith in the powers of human reason to reach the truth. With its logical-mathematical method it endeavored to illuminate every nook and corner of knowledge, to remove all obscurity, mystery, bigotry, and superst.i.tion, to find a reason for everything under the sun. Nature, religion, the State, law, morality, language, and art were brought under the searchlight of reason and reduced to simple and self-evident principles. Human inst.i.tutions were measured according to their reasonableness; whatever was not rational had no _raison d'etre_; to demolish the natural and historical in order to make room for the rational became the practical ideal of the day. Enlightenment emphasized the worth and dignity of the human individual, it sought to deliver him from the slavery of authority and tradition, to make him self-reliant in thought and action, to obtain for him his natural rights, to secure his happiness and perfection in a world expressly made for him, and to guarantee the continuance of his personal existence in the life to come. In Germany this great movement found expression in a popular commonsense philosophy which proved the existence of G.o.d, freedom, and immortality, and conceived the universe as a rational order designed by an all-wise and all-good Creator for the benefit of man, his highest product; while other thinkers regarded Spinozism as the only rational system, indeed as the last word of all speculative metaphysics; for them logical thought necessarily led to pantheism and determinism. In France, after reaching its climax in Voltaire, it ended in materialism, atheism, and fatalism; and in England, where it had developed the empiricism of Locke, it came to grief in the scepticism of Hume. If we can know only our impressions, then rational theology, cosmology, and psychology are impossible, and it is futile to philosophize about G.o.d, the world, and the human soul.

Consistently carried out, the logical-mathematical method seemed to land the intellect in Spinozism or in materialism--in either case to catch man in the causal machinery of nature. In this dilemma many were tempted to throw reason overboard as an instrument of ultimate truth, and to seek for certainty through other functions of the human soul--in feeling, faith, or mystical vision of some sort; the claims of the heart and will were urged against the proud pretensions of the intellect (Hamann, Herder, Jacobi). Another way of escape was found by subst.i.tuting the organic conception of reality for the logical-mathematical view of the _Aufklarung_; nature and life, poetry, art, language, political, social, and religious inst.i.tutions are not creations of reason, not things made to order, but organic--products of evolution (Lessing, Herder, Winckelmann, Goethe).

Man, himself, moreover, is not mere intellect, but a being in whom feelings, impulses, yearnings, will, are elements to be reckoned with.

And reality is not as transparent as the Enlightenment a.s.sumed it to be; existence divided by reason leaves a remainder, as Goethe had put it.

It was Immanuel Kant who tried to arbitrate between the conflicting tendencies of his age. He was an _Aufklarer_ in so far as he brought reason itself to the bar of reason and sat in judgment upon its claims, and, likewise, in so far as he insisted on the objective validity of physics and mathematics. But he was as much opposed to the pretentiousness of dogmatic metaphysics as to the pusillanimity of scepticism and the _Schwarmerei_ of mysticism. He repudiated the shallow proofs of the existence of G.o.d, freedom, and immortality no less emphatically than he rejected materialism with its atheism, fatalism, and hedonism. He tried to save everything worth saving--rational knowledge, modern science, the basal truths of the old metaphysics, and the most precious human values. For the scientific intelligence, so he held, nature and the self are absolutely determined; every physical occurrence and every human act are necessary links in a causal chain. But such knowledge is possible only in the field of phenomena (_Erscheinungen_); through sense-perception and the discursive understanding we cannot reach the inner core of reality; nor can we pierce the veil of appearances by means of intellectual intuitions, mystical visions, feeling, or faith, i.e., through the emotional and instinctive parts of our nature. It is the presence of the moral law or categorical imperative within us that points to a spiritual world beyond the phenomenal causal order and a.s.sures us of our freedom, immortality, and G.o.d. It is because we possess this deeper source of truth in practical reason that freedom and an ideal kingdom in which purpose reigns are vouchsafed to us, and that we can free ourselves from the mechanism of the natural order.

It is moral truth that both sets us free and demonstrates our freedom, and that makes harmony possible between the mechanical theory of science and the teleological conception of philosophy. The scientific understanding would plunge us into determinism and agnosticism; from these, faith in the moral law alone can deliver us. In this sense Kant destroyed knowledge to make room for a rational faith in a supersensible world, to save the independence and dignity of the human self and the spiritual values of his people. In claiming a place for the autonomous personality in what _appeared to be_ a mechanical universe, Kant gave voice to some of the deeper yearnings of the age.

The German Enlightenment, the new humanism, mysticism, pietism, and the faith-philosophy were all interested in the human soul, and unwilling to sacrifice it to the demands of a rationalistic science or metaphysics. In seeking to rescue it, the great criticist, piloted by the moral law, steered his course between the rocks of rationalism, sentimentalism, and scepticism. It was his solution of the controversy between the head and the heart that influenced Fichte, Sch.e.l.ling, and Schleiermacher. They differed from Kant and among themselves in many respects, but they all glorified the spirit, _Geist_, as the living, active element of reality, and they all rejected the intellect as the source of ultimate truth. They followed him in his anti-intellectualism, but they did not avoid, as he did, the attractive doctrine of an inner intuition; according to them we can somehow grasp the supersensible in an inner experience which Fichte called intellectual, Sch.e.l.ling artistic, Schleiermacher religious. The bankruptcy of the intelligence was overcome in their systems by the discovery of a faculty that revealed to them the living, dynamic nature of the universe. They were all more or less influenced by the romantic currents of the times, seeking with Herder and Jacobi an approach to the heart of things other than through the categories of logic. Like Lessing and Goethe, they were also attracted to the pantheistic teaching of Spinoza, though rejecting its rigid determinism so far as it might affect the human will. They likewise accepted the idea of development which the leaders of German literature, Lessing, Herder, and Goethe, had already opposed to the unhistorical _Aufklarung_, and which came to play such a prominent part in the great system of Hegel.

Johann Gottlieb Fichte was born in Ramenau, Oberlausitz, May 19, 1762, the son of a poor weaver. Through the generosity of a n.o.bleman, the gifted lad was enabled to follow his intellectual bent; after attending the schools at Meissen and Schulpforta he studied theology at the universities of Jena, Leipzig, and Wittenberg with the purpose of entering the ministry. His poverty frequently compelled him to interrupt his studies by accepting private tutors.h.i.+ps in families, so that he never succeeded in preparing him self for the examinations. In 1790 he became acquainted with Kant's philosophy, which two students had asked him to expound to them, and to which he now devoted himself with feverish zeal. It revolutionized his entire mode of thought and determined the course of his life. The anonymous publication of his book, _Attempt at a Critique of all Revelation_, in 1792, written from the Kantian point of view and mistaken at first for a work of the great criticist, won him fame and a professors.h.i.+p at Jena (1794).

Here, in the intellectual centre of Germany, Fichte became the eloquent exponent of the new idealism, which aimed at the reform of life as well as of _Wissenschaft_; he not only taught philosophy, but _preached_ it, as Kuno Fischer has aptly said. During the Jena period he laid the foundations for his "Science of Knowledge"

(_Wissenschaftslehre_) which he presented in numerous works: _The Conception of the Science of Knowledge_, 1794; _The Foundation of the Entire Science of Knowledge_, 1794; _The Foundation of Natural Rights_, 1796; _The System of Ethics_, 1798--(all these translated by Kroeger); the two _Introductions to the Science of Knowledge_, 1797 (trans. by Kroeger in _Journal of Speculative Philosophy_). The appearance of an article _Concerning the Ground of our Belief in a Divine World-Order_, 1798, in which Fichte seemed to identify G.o.d with the moral world-order, brought down upon him the charge of atheism, against which he vigorously defended himself in his _Appeal to the Public_ and a series of other writings. Full of indignation over the att.i.tude which his government a.s.sumed in the matter, be offered his resignation (1799) and removed to Berlin, where he presented his philosophical notions in popular public lectures and in writings which were characterized by clearness, force, and moral earnestness rather than by their systematic form. There appeared: _The Vocation of Man_, 1800 (translated by Dr. Smith); _A Sun-Clear Statement concerning the Nature of the New Philosophy_, 1801 (trans. by Kroeger in _Journal of Speculative Philosophy_); _The Nature of the Scholar_, 1806 (trans. by Smith); _Characteristics of the Present Age_, 1806 (trans. by Smith); _The Way towards the Blessed Life_, 1806 (trans. by Smith). After the overthrow of Prussia by Napoleon, in 1806, Fichte fled from Berlin to Konigsberg and Sweden, but returned when peace was declared in 1807, and delivered his celebrated _Addresses to the German Nation_, 1807-08, in which he sought to arouse the German people to a consciousness of their national mission and their duty even while the French army was still occupying the Prussian capital.

Fichte was appointed professor of philosophy (1810) in the new University of Berlin, for which he had been invited to construct a plan and in the establishment of which he took a lively interest.

During the last period of his life he devoted himself to the development of his thoughts in systematic form and wrote a number of books; most of these were published after his death, which occurred January 27, 1814. Among them we mention: _General Outline of the Science of Knowledge_, 1810 (trans. by Smith); _The Facts of Consciousness_, 1813; _Theory of the State_, published 1820. The Complete Works, edited by his son, J.H. Fichte, appeared 1843-46. New editions of particular works are now appearing.

The world for Fichte is at bottom a spiritual order, the revelation of a self-determining ego or reason; hence the science of the ego, or reason, the _Wissenschaftslehre_, is the key to all knowledge, and we can understand nature and man only when we have caught the secret of the self-active ego. Philosophy must, therefore, be _Wissenschaftslehre_, for in it all natural and mental sciences find their ultimate roots; they can yield genuine knowledge only when and in so far as they are based on the principles of the Science of Knowledge--mere empirical sciences having no real cognitive value.

The ego-principle itself, however, without which there could be no knowledge, cannot be grasped by the ordinary discursive understanding with its spatial, temporal, and causal categories. Kant is right: if we were limited to the scientific intellect, we could never rise above the conception of a phenomenal order absolutely ruled by the causal law. But there is another source of knowledge: in an act of inner vision or intellectual intuition, which is itself an act of freedom, we become conscious of the universal moral purpose; the law of duty or the categorical imperative commands us to be free persons. We cannot refuse to accept this law without abandoning ourselves as persons, without conceiving ourselves as _things_, or mere products of nature; the choice of one's philosophy, therefore, depends upon what kind of man one is--upon one's values, upon one's will. The type of man who is a slave of things, who cannot raise himself out of the causal mechanism, who is not free, will never be able to conceive himself otherwise than as a cog in a wheel. Fichte accepts the ego, or spirit, as the ultimate and absolute principle, because it alone can give our life worth and meaning. Thus he grounds his entire philosophy upon a moral imperative which presents itself to the ego in an inner vision.

He also tells us that we can become immediately aware of the pure activity of the ego, of our free action, in a similar act of intellectual intuition. But we cannot know this free act unless we perform it ourselves; no one can understand the idealistic philosophy who is not free; hence philosophy begins with an act of freedom--_im Anfang war die Tat_.

In order that we may rise to free action, opposition is needed, and this we get in the spatial-temporal world of phenomena, or nature, which the ego creates for itself in order to have resistance to overcome. Fichte conceives of nature as "the material of our duty,"

as the obstacle against which the ego can exercise its freedom. There could be no free action without something to act upon, and there could be no purposive action without a world in which everything happens according to law; and such a causal world we have in our phenomenal order, which is the product of the absolute spiritual principle.

By the ego Fichte did not mean the subjective ego, the particular individual self with all its idiosyncrasies, but the universal ego, the reason that manifests itself in all conscious individuals as universal and necessary truth. In his earlier period he did not define his thought very carefully, but in time the absolute ego came to be conceived as the principle of all life and consciousness, as universal life, and ultimately identified with G.o.d. His philosophy is, therefore, not subjective idealism, although it was so misinterpreted, but objective idealism; nature is not the creation of the particular individual ego, but the phenomenal expression, or reflection, in the subject of the universal spiritual principle.

Upon such an idealistic world-view Fichte based the ethical teachings through which he exercised a lasting influence upon the German people and the history of human thought. The universal ego is a moral ego, an ego with an ethical purpose, that realizes itself in nature and in man; it is, therefore, the vocation of man to obey the voice of duty and to free himself from the bondage of nature, to be a person, not a thing, to cooperate in the realization of the eternal purpose which is working itself out in the history of humanity, to sacrifice himself for the ideal of freedom. Every individual has his particular place in which to labor for the social whole; how to do it, his conscience will tell him without fail. And so, too, the German people has its peculiar place in civilization, its unique contribution to make in the struggle of the human race for the development of free personality. It is Germany's mission to regain its nationality, in order that it may take the philosophical leaders.h.i.+p in the work of civilization, and to establish a State based upon personal liberty, a veritable kingdom of justice, such as has never appeared on earth, which shall realize freedom based upon the equality of all who bear the human form.

The Fichtean philosophy holds the mirror up to its age. With the Enlightenment it glorifies reason, the free personality, nationality, humanity, civilization, and progress; in this regard it expresses the spirit of all modern philosophy. It goes beyond the _Aufklarung_ in emphasizing the living, moving, developing nature of reality; for it, life and consciousness const.i.tute the essence of things, and universal life reveals itself in a progressive history of mankind. Moreover, the dynamic spiritual process cannot be comprehended by conceptual thought, by the categories of a rationalistic science and philosophy, but only by itself, by the living experience of a free agent. In the categorical imperative, and not in logical reasonings, the individual becomes aware of his destiny; in the sense of duty, the love of truth, loyalty to country, respect for the rights of man, and reverence for ideals, spirit speaks to spirit and man glimpses the eternal.

Among the elements in this idealism that appealed to the Romanticists were its anti-intellectualism, its intuition, the high value it placed upon the personality, its historical viewpoint, and its faith in the uniqueness of German culture. They welcomed the _Wissenschaftslehre_ as a valuable ally, and exaggerated those features of it which seemed to chime with their own views. The ego which Fichte conceives as universal reason becomes for them the subjective empirical self, the unique personality, in which the unconscious, spontaneous, impulsive, instinctive phase const.i.tutes the original element, the more extravagant among them transforming the rational moral ego into a romantic ego, an ego full of mystery and caprice, and even a lawless ego. Such an ego is read into nature; for, filled with occult magic forces, nature can be understood only by the sympathetic divining insight of the poetic genius. And so, too, authority and tradition, as representing the instinctive and historical side of social life, come into their own again.

Fichte's chief interest was centred upon the ego; nature he regarded as a product of the absolute ego in the individual consciousness, intended as a necessary obstacle for the free will. Without opposition the self cannot act; without overcoming resistance it cannot become free. In order to make free action possible, to enable the ego to realize its ends, nature must be what it is, an order ruled by the iron law of causality. This cheerless conception of nature--which, however, was not Fichte's last word on the subject, since he afterward came to conceive it as the revelation of universal life, or the expression of a pantheistic G.o.d--did not attract Romanticism. It was Sch.e.l.ling, the erstwhile follower and admirer of Fichte, who turned his attention to the philosophy of nature and so more thoroughly satisfied the romantic yearnings of the age.

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Sch.e.l.ling was born at Leonberg, Wurtemberg, January 27, 1775, the son of a learned clergyman and writer on theology. He was a precocious child and made rapid progress in his studies, entering the Theological Seminary at Tubingen at the age of fifteen. Between the ages of nineteen and twenty-two he wrote a number of able treatises in the spirit of the new idealism, and was recognized as the most talented pupil of Fichte and his best interpreter. After the completion of his course at the University (1795), he became the tutor and companion of two young n.o.blemen with whom he remained for two years (1796-98) at the University of Leipzig, during which time he devoted himself to the study of mathematics, physics, and medicine, and published a number of philosophical articles. In 1798 he received a call to a professors.h.i.+p at Jena, where Fichte, Schiller, Wilhelm Schlegel, and Hegel became his colleagues, and where he entered into friendly relations with the Romantic circle of which Caroline Schlegel, who afterward became his wife, was a s.h.i.+ning light. This was the most productive period of his life; during the next few years he developed his own system of philosophy and gave to the world his most brilliant writings. In 1803 he accepted a professors.h.i.+p at Wurzburg, but came into conflict with the authorities; in 1806 he went to Munich as a member of the Academy of Sciences and Director of the Academy of Fine Arts; in 1820 he moved to Erlangen; and in 1827 he returned to Munich as professor of philosophy at the newly-established University and as General Curator of the Scientific Collections of the State. He was called to Berlin in 1841 to help counteract the influence of the Hegelian Philosophy, but met with little success. He died in 1854.

The earlier writings of Sch.e.l.ling either reproduced the thoughts of the _Wissenschaftslehre_ or developed them in the Fichtean spirit.

Among those of the latter cla.s.s we note: _Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature_, 1797; _On the World-Soul_, 1798; _System of Transcendental Idealism_, 1800. During the second period, in which the influence of Bruno and Spinoza is prominent, he works out his own philosophy of ident.i.ty; at this time he publishes _Bruno, or, Concerning the Natural and Divine Principle of Things_, 1802, and _Method of Academic Study_, 1803. In the third period the philosophy of ident.i.ty becomes the basis for a still higher system in which the influence of German theosophy (Jacob Bohme) is apparent; with the exception of _Philosophy and Religion_, 1804, the _Treatise on Human Freedom_, 1809, and a few others, the works of this period did not appear until after Sch.e.l.ling's death. His previous philosophy is now called by him "negative philosophy;" the higher or positive philosophy has as its aim the rational construction of the history of the universe, or the history of creation, upon the basis of the religious ideas of peoples; it is a philosophy of mythology and revelation. Translations of some of Sch.e.l.ling's works are to be found in the _Journal of Speculative Philosophy_, an American periodical founded by W.T. Harris, which devoted itself to the study of post-Kantian idealism. His Complete Works, edited by his son, appeared in 14 volumes, 1856. There is a revival of interest in his philosophy, and new editions of his books are now being published.

Like most philosophers of note, Sch.e.l.ling reckons with the various tendencies of his times. With idealism he interprets the universe as identical in essence with what we find in our innermost selves; it is at bottom a living dynamic process. If that is so, nature cannot be a merely externalized obstacle for the ego, nor a dead static spatial mechanical system; as the expression of an active spiritual principle there must be reason and purpose in it. But reason is not identified by Sch.e.l.ling with self-conscious intelligence, for with the faith-philosophies and Romanticism he takes it in a wider sense; in physical and organic nature it is a slumbering reason, an unconscious, instinctive, purposive force similar to the Leibnizian monad, Schopenhauer's will, and Bergson's _elan vital_. In this way the dualism between mechanism and teleology is reconciled. Nature is a teleological order, an evolution from the unconscious to the conscious; in man, the highest stage and the climax of history, nature becomes self-conscious. With this organic conception both Romanticists and many natural scientists of the age were in practical agreement; it was the view that had always appealed to Goethe--and Herder before him--and it gained for Sch.e.l.ling a large following. In his earlier system he regarded nature as a lower stage in the evolution of reason and sought to answer the problems: How does Nature become Consciousness or Ego? the problem of the Philosophy of Nature; and, How does Consciousness or the Ego become Nature? the problem of Transcendental Idealism. In his philosophy of ident.i.ty, nature and mind are conceived as two different aspects of one and the same principle, which is both mind and nature, subject and object, ego and non-ego. All things are identical in essence but differentiated in the course of evolution. It was not inconsistent with these tenets that Sch.e.l.ling sought, in his last period, to discover the meaning of universal history in the obscure beginnings of mythology and revelation rather than in the lucid regions of an advanced civilization.

With the opponents of rationalism Sch.e.l.ling agrees that we cannot reach the inner meaning of reality, "the living, moving element in nature," through the scientific intelligence, but that we must envisage it in intuition. "What is described in concepts," he tells us, "is at rest; hence there can be concepts only of _things_ and of that which is finite and sense-perceived. The notion of movement is not movement itself, and without intuition we should never know what motion is. Freedom, however, can be comprehended only by freedom, activity only by activity." Sch.e.l.ling, who is a poet as well as a philosopher, comes to regard this intuition or inner vision as an artistic intuition. In the products of art, subject and object, the ideal and the real, mind and nature, form (or purpose) and matter, are one; here the harmony aimed at by philosophy lies before our very eyes, and may be seen, touched, and heard. The creative artist creates like nature in realizing the ideal; hence, art must serve as the absolute model for the intuition of the world--it is the true and eternal organ of philosophy. Like the artistic genius, the philosopher must have the faculty for perceiving the harmony and ident.i.ty in the universe; esthetic intuition is absolute knowing. Art aims to reveal to us the profoundest meaning of the world, which is the union of form and matter, of the ideal and the real; in art alone the striving of nature for harmony and ident.i.ty is realized; the beautiful is the infinite represented and made perceivable in finite form; here mind and nature interpenetrate. In creative art the artist imitates the creative act of nature and becomes conscious of it; in esthetic intuition, or the perception of beauty, the philosophical genius discovers the secret of reality; nature herself is a poem and her secret is revealed in art. This philosophy is a far cry from the logical-mathematical method of the _Aufklarung_; it is a protest against this, a protest in which the leaders of the new German literature, Herder, Goethe, Schiller, as well as the Romanticists, willingly joined. Goethe's entire view of nature, art, and life rested upon the teleological or organic conception; he, too, regarded the ability to peer into the heart of things--to see the whole in its parts, the ideal in the real, the universal in the particular, as the poet's and thinker's highest gift. He called it an _apercu_, "a revelation springing up in the inner man that gives him a hint of his likeness to G.o.d." It is this gift which Faust craves and Mephisto sneers at as _die hohe Intuition_.

Da.s.s ich erkenne was die Welt Im innersten zusammenhalt, Schau alle Wirkungskraft and Samen Und tu' nicht mehr in Worten kramen.

There was much that was fantastic in the _Naturphilosophie_ and much _a priori_ interpretation of nature that tended to withdraw the mind from the actualities of existence; it often dealt with bold a.s.sertions, a.n.a.logies, and figures of speech, rather than with facts and proofs. But it had its merits; for it aroused an interest in nature and nature-study, it kept alive the _philosophical_ interest in the outer world, the desire for unity, _Einheitstrieb_, which has remained a marked characteristic of German science from Alexander von Humboldt down to Robert Mayer, Helmholtz, Naegeli, Haeckel, Ostwald, Hertz, and Driesch. It opposed the one-sided mechanical method of science, and emphasized conceptions (the idea of development, the notion of the dynamic character of reality, pan-psychism, and vitalism) which are still moving the minds of men today, as is evidenced by the popularity of Henri Bergson, who, with our own William James, leads the contemporary school of philosophical Romanticists.

Fichte's chief contribution to German thought was the _Wissenschaftslehre_, Sch.e.l.ling's the _Naturphilosophie_, and Schleiermacher's the philosophy of religion. All these thinkers took account of the prevailing tendencies of the times--_Aufklarung_, Kantian criticism, faith-philosophy, Romanticism, and Spinozism--and were more or less affected by them. Schleiermacher also came under the influence of Fichte, Sch.e.l.ling, and Greek idealism, particularly of Plato's philosophy; many were the sources from which he drew his material for the construction of a great system of Protestant theology that exercised a profound influence far beyond the boundaries of his country and won for him the t.i.tle of the founder of the New Theology.

Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher, the son of a clergyman of the reformed church, was born at Breslau, November 21, 1768, and was educated at the Moravian schools at Niesky and Barby. Made sceptical by the newer criticism, he left the Moravian brotherhood and entered the University of Halle (1787), where he devoted himself with equal zeal to the study of theology and philosophy. After his ordination in 1794 he occupied various pulpits until 1803, when he was made a professor and university preacher at Halle. In 1806 he removed from Halle to Berlin, becoming the preacher of Trinity Church in 1809 and professor of theology at the newly founded University in 1810, positions which he filled with marked ability until his death, February 12, 1834. It was in Berlin that he came into friendly touch with the leaders of the Romantic school, Tieck, Friedrich Schlegel, and Novalis, but he did not allow himself to be carried away by their extravagances. He distinguished himself as a preacher, theologian, philosopher, and philologist, and, by his study of the sources of philosophy, added much to the knowledge of its history. Among the books published during his life-time are: _Addresses on Religion_, 1799; _Monologues_, 1800; _Principles of a Criticism of Previous Systems of Ethics_, 1803; translations of Plato's _Dialogues_, with introductions and notes, 1804-28; _The Christian Faith_, 1821-22.

Complete Works, 1834-64.

Schleiermacher's conception of religion is opposed to the rationalistic theology of the eighteenth century, as well as to the Kantian moral theology which has remained popular in Germany to this day. For him religion is not science or philosophy; it does not consist in theoretical dogmas or rationalistic proofs; neither theories about religion nor virtuous conduct nor acts of wors.h.i.+p are religion itself; nor is religion based upon a rational moral faith, as Kant had taught. He bravely took the part of Fichte in the atheism-controversy, when the great leaders of German culture, Kant, Herder, and even Goethe, abandoned him to his fate. He rejected the shallow proofs of the _Aufklarung_, as well as the orthodox utilitarian view of G.o.d as the dispenser of rewards and punishments, and showed that the real foes of religion were the rational and practical persons who endeavored to suppress the yearning for the transcendent in man and to drive out all mystery in seeking to make everything clear to him. We cannot have conceptual knowledge of G.o.d, for conceptual thought is concerned with differences and opposites, whereas G.o.d is without such differences and oppositions: he is the absolute union or ident.i.ty of thought and being. Religion is grounded in feeling, or divining intuition; in feeling, we come into direct relation with G.o.d; here the ident.i.ty of thought and being is immediately experienced in self-consciousness, and this union is the divine element in us. Religion is the feeling of absolute dependence upon an absolute world-ground; it is the immediate consciousness that everything finite is infinite and exists through the infinite.

The conception of G.o.d as the unity of thought and being, and the idea of man's absolute dependence upon the world-ground, call to mind the pantheism of Spinoza. Schleiermacher seeks to tone this down by giving the world of things a relative independence; G.o.d and the world are inseparable, and yet must be distinguished. G.o.d is unity without plurality, the world plurality without unity; the world is spatial-temporal, while G.o.d is s.p.a.celess and timeless. He is, however, not conceived as a personality, but as the universal creative force, as the source of all life. The determinism implied in this world-view is softened by giving the individual a measure of freedom and independence. The particular individuals are subject to the law of the whole; but each self has its unique endowment or gifts, its individuality, and its freedom consists in the unfolding of its peculiar capacities. With Goethe, Schiller, and Romanticism, our philosopher rejects the rigoristic Kantian-Fichtean view of duty which, in his opinion, would suppress individuality and reduce all persons to a h.o.m.ogeneous ma.s.s; like them he regards the development of unique personalities as the highest moral task. "Every man should express humanity in his own peculiar way in a unique mixture of elements, in order that it may reveal itself in every possible form, and that everything may become real in the infinite fulness which can spring from its lap." "The same duties can be performed in many different ways. Different men may practise justice according to the same principles, each man keeping in view the general welfare and personal merit, but with different degrees of feeling, all the way from extreme coldness to the warmest sympathy." The command, therefore, is not merely: Be a person; but: Be a unique person, live your own individual life. There is no irreconcilable conflict between the natural law and the moral law, between impulse and reason. For the same reasons he defends the diversity of religions and the claims of personal religion; in each unique individual, religion should be left free to express itself in its own unique and intimate way. His ideal is the development of unique, novel, original personalities; and these are expressions of the divine, which rationalism cannot bring under either its theoretical or practical rubrics.

The individual cannot become conscious of, and prize, his own individuality without at the same time valuing uniqueness in others; the higher a value he sets upon his own self, the more the personalities of others must impress him. "Whoever desires to cultivate his individuality must have an appreciation of everything that he is not." "The sense of universality (_der allgemeine Sinn_) is the supreme condition of one's own perfection." Hence the ethical life is a life in society--a society of unique individuals who respect humanity in its uniqueness, in themselves and in others. "They are among themselves a chorus of friends. Every one knows that he too is a part and product of the universe, that in him too are revealed its divine life and action." "The more every one approximates the universe, the more he communicates himself to others, the more perfect unity will they all form; no one has a consciousness for himself alone, every one has, at the same time, that of the other; they are no longer only men, but mankind; rising above themselves and triumphing over themselves, they are on the road to true immortality and eternity." In the feeling of piety man recognizes that his desire to be a unique personality is in harmony with the action of the universe; hence that he can, ought, and must make the development of his uniqueness the goal, the strongest motive, and the highest good, and that he can surely realize what he is striving for, because the universe which created and determined him created him for that.

_FRIEDRICH SCHLEIERMACHER_

ON THE SOCIAL ELEMENT IN RELIGION (1799) [1]

TRANSLATED BY GEORGE RIPLEY

Those among you who are accustomed to regard religion as a disease of the human mind, cherish also the habitual conviction that it is an evil more easily borne, even though not to be cured, so long as it is only insulated individuals here and there who are infected with it; but that the common danger is raised to the highest degree, and everything put at stake, as soon as a too close connection is permitted between many patients of this character. In the former case it is possible by a judicious treatment, as it were by an antiphlegistic regimen, and by a healthy spiritual atmosphere, to ward off the violence of the paroxysms; and if not entirely to conquer the exciting cause of the disease, to attenuate it to such a degree that it shall be almost innocuous. But in the latter case we must despair of every other means of cure, except that which may proceed from some internal beneficent operation of Nature. For the evil is attended with more alarming symptoms, and is more fatal in its effects, when the too great proximity of other infected persons feeds and aggravates it in every individual; the whole ma.s.s of vital air is then quickly poisoned by a few; the most vigorous frames are smitten with the contagion; all the channels in which the functions of life should go on are destroyed; all the juices of the system are decomposed; and, seized with a similar feverous delirium, the sound spiritual life and productions of whole ages and nations are involved in irremediable ruin. Hence your antipathy to the church, to every inst.i.tution which is intended for the communication of religion, is always more prominent than that which you feel to religion itself; hence, also, priests, as the pillars and the most efficient members of such inst.i.tutions, are, of all men, the objects of your greatest abomination.

Even those among you who hold a little more indulgent opinion with regard to religion, and deem it rather a singularity than a disorder of the mind, an insignificant rather than a dangerous phenomenon, cherish quite as unfavorable impressions of all social organization for its promotion. A slavish immolation of all that is free and peculiar, a system of lifeless mechanism and barren ceremonies--these, they imagine, are the inseparable consequences of every such inst.i.tution and are the ingenious and elaborate work of men, who, with almost incredible success, have made a great merit of things which are either nothing in themselves, or which any other person was quite as capable of accomplis.h.i.+ng as they. I should pour out my heart but very imperfectly before you, on a subject to which I attach the utmost importance, if I did not undertake to give you the correct point of view with regard to it. I need not here repeat how many of the perverted endeavors and melancholy fortunes of humanity you charge upon religious a.s.sociations; this is clear as light, in a thousand utterances of your predominant individuals; nor will I stop to refute these accusations, one by one, in order to fix the evil upon other causes. Let us rather submit the whole conception of the church to a new examination, and from its central point, throughout its whole extent, erect it again upon a new basis, without regard to what it has actually been hitherto, or to what experience may suggest concerning it.

If religion exists at all, it must needs possess a social character; this is founded not only in the nature of man, but still more in the nature of religion. You will acknowledge that it indicates a state of disease, a signal perversion of nature, when an individual wishes to shut up within himself anything which he has produced and elaborated by his own efforts. It is the disposition of man to reveal and to communicate whatever is in him, in the indispensable relations and mutual dependence not only of practical life, but also of his spiritual being, by which he is connected with all others of his race; and the more powerfully he is wrought upon by anything, the more deeply it penetrates his inward nature, so much the stronger is this social impulse, even if we regard it only from the point of view of the universal endeavor to behold the emotions which we feel ourselves, as they are exhibited by others, so that we may obtain a proof from their example that our own experience is not beyond the sphere of humanity.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FRIEDRICH SCHLEIERMACHER]

You perceive that I am not speaking here of the endeavor to make others similar to ourselves, nor of the conviction that what is exhibited in one is essential to all; it is merely my aim to ascertain the true relation between our individual life and the common nature of man, and clearly to set it forth. But the peculiar object of this desire for communication is unquestionably that in which man feels that he is originally pa.s.sive, namely, his observations and emotions.

He is here impelled by the eager wish to know whether the power which has produced them in him be not something foreign and unworthy. Hence we see man employed, from his very childhood, in communicating those observations and emotions; the conceptions of his understanding, concerning whose origin there can be no doubt, he allows to rest in his own mind, and still more easily he determines to refrain from the expression of his judgments; but whatever acts upon his senses, whatever awakens his feelings, of that he desires to obtain witnesses, with regard to that he longs for those who will sympathize with him.

How should he keep to himself those very operations of the world upon his soul which are the most universal and comprehensive, which appear to him as of the most stupendous and resistless magnitude? How should he be willing to lock up within his own bosom those very emotions which impel him with the greatest power beyond himself, and in the indulgence of which he becomes conscious that he can never understand his own nature from himself alone? It will rather be his first endeavor, whenever a religious view gains clearness in his eye, or a pious feeling penetrates his soul, to direct the attention of others to the same object, and, as far as possible, to communicate to their hearts the elevated impulses of his own.

If, then, the religious man is urged by his nature to speak, it is the same nature which secures to him the certainty of hearers. There is no element of his being with which, at the same time, there is implanted in man such a lively feeling of his total inability to exhaust it by himself alone, as with that of religion. A sense of religion has no sooner dawned upon him, than he feels the infinity of its nature and the limitation of his own; he is conscious of embracing but a small portion of it; and that which he cannot immediately reach he wishes to perceive, as far as he can, from the representations of others who have experienced it themselves, and to enjoy it with them. Hence, he is anxious to observe every manifestation of it; and, seeking to supply his own deficiencies, he watches for every tone which he recognizes as proceeding from it. In this manner, mutual communications are inst.i.tuted; in this manner, every one feels equally the need both of speaking and hearing.

But the imparting of religion is not to be sought in books, like that of intellectual conceptions and scientific knowledge. The pure impression of the original product is too far destroyed in this medium, which, in the same way that dark-colored objects absorb the greatest proportion of the rays of light, swallows up everything belonging to the pious emotions of the heart, which cannot be embraced in the insufficient symbols from which it is intended again to proceed. Nay, in the written communications of religious feeling, everything needs a double and triple representation; for that which originally represented, must be represented in its turn; and yet the effect on the whole man, in its complete unity, can only be imperfectly set forth by continued and varied reflections. It is only when religion is driven out from the society of the living, that it must conceal its manifold life under the dead letter.

Neither can this intercourse of heart with heart, on the deepest feelings of humanity, be carried on in common conversation. Many persons, who are filled with zeal for the interests of religion, have brought it as a reproach against the manners of our age that, while all other important subjects are so freely discussed in the intercourse of society, so little should be said concerning G.o.d and divine things. I would defend ourselves against this charge by maintaining that this circ.u.mstance, at least, does not indicate contempt or indifference toward religion, but a happy and very correct instinct. In the presence of joy and merriment, where earnestness itself must yield to raillery and wit, there can be no place for that which should be always surrounded with holy veneration and awe.

Religious views, pious emotions, and serious considerations with regard to them--these we cannot throw out to one another in such small crumbs as the topics of a light conversation; and when the discourse turns upon sacred subjects, it would rather be a crime than a virtue to have an answer ready for every question, and a rejoinder for every remark. Hence, the religious sentiment retires from such circles as are too wide for it, to the more confidential intercourse of friends.h.i.+p, and to the mutual communications of love, where the eye and the countenance are more expressive than words, and where even a holy silence is understood. But it is impossible for divine things to be treated in the usual manner of society, where the conversation consists in striking flashes of thought, gaily and rapidly alternating with one another; a more elevated style is demanded for the communication of religion, and a different kind of society, which is devoted to this purpose, must hence be formed. It is becoming, indeed, to apply the whole richness and magnificence of human discourse to the loftiest subject which language can reach--not as if there were any adornment, with which religion could not dispense, but because it would show a frivolous and unholy disposition in its heralds if they did not bring together the most copious resources within their power and consecrate them all to religion, so that they might thus perhaps exhibit it in its appropriate greatness and dignity. Hence it is impossible, without the aid of poetry, to give utterance to the religious sentiment in any other than an oratorical manner, with all the skill and energy of language, and freely using, in addition, the service of all the arts which can contribute to flowing and impa.s.sioned discourse. He, therefore, whose heart is overflowing with religion, can open his mouth only before an auditory, where that which is presented, with such a wealth of preparation, can produce the most extended and manifold effects.

Would that I could present before you an image of the rich and luxurious life in this city of G.o.d, when its inhabitants come together each in the fulness of his own inspiration, which is ready to stream forth without constraint, but, at the same time, each is filled with a holy desire to receive and to appropriate to himself everything which others wish to bring before him. If one comes forward before the rest, it is not because he is ent.i.tled to this distinction, in virtue of an office or of a previous agreement, nor because pride and conceitedness have given him presumption; it is rather a free impulse of the spirit, a sense of the most heartfelt unity of each with all, a consciousness of entire equality, a mutual renunciation of all First and Last, of all the arrangements of earthly order. He comes forward in order to communicate to others, as an object of sympathizing contemplation, the deepest feelings of his soul while under the influence of G.o.d; to lead them to the domain of religion in which he breathes his native air; and to infect them with the contagion of his own holy emotions. He speaks forth the Divine which stirs his bosom, and in holy silence the a.s.sembly follows the inspiration of his words. Whether he unveils a secret mystery, or with prophetic confidence connects the future with the present; whether he strengthens old impressions by new examples, or is led by the lofty visions of his burning imagination into other regions of the world and into another order of things, the practised sense of his audience everywhere accompanies his own; and when he returns into himself from his wanderings through the kingdom of G.o.d, his own heart and that of each of his hearers are the common dwelling-place of the same emotion.

If, now, the agreement of his sentiments with that which they feel be announced to him, whether loudly or low, then are holy mysteries--not merely significant emblems, but, justly regarded, natural indications of a peculiar consciousness and peculiar feelings--invented and celebrated, a higher choir, as it were, which in its own lofty language answers to the appealing voice. But not only, so to speak; for as such a discourse is music without tune or measure, so there is also a music among the Holy, which may be called discourse without words, the most distinct and expressive utterance of the inward man.