ON EELIGION ON KELIGION SPEECHES TO ITS CULTURED DESPISERS FRIEDRICH SCHLEIERMACHER TRANSLATED, WITH INTRODUCTION, BY JOHN OMAN, B.D. OF THE [ UNIVERSITY j of LONDON KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO., LTD. PATEENOSTER HOUSE, CHARING CROSS ROAD 1893 CONTENTS. PAGB PREFACE vii INTRODUCTION ix FIRST SPEECH DEFENCE ...%....! SECOND SPEECH THE NATURE OF EELIGION . . . .26 THIRD SPEECH THE CULTIVATION OF KELIGION . . . .119 FOURTH SPEECH ASSOCIATION IN EELIGION, OR CHURCH AND PRIESTHOOD 146 FIFTH SPEECH THE RELIGIONS 210 EPILOGUE 266 THE FIRST EDITION 275 INDEX . . 285 190992 PREFACE. IN making this'translation, I have been deeply impressed with the truth of Friedrich Schlegel's saying, that the modern literature, though in several languages, is only one. Though this work, so far as I know, is now translated for the first time, it does not now begin to enter into English thought. Traces of the movement at least, of which it is the most characteristic product, may be found in our philosophy, our theology, and our literature. Seeing, then, that this book claims more than a merely philosophical interest, it may well be thought that I should have done something more to give it an English accent. Intuition, used broadly for immediate knowledge, and the All, the Whole, the j Word- Spirit for aspects of the world we feel and seem to know, can hardly be acknowledged as natural to our native tongue. But, though unfamiliar, I hope that, in their connections, they are not incomprehensible. My excuse for imposing upon the reader the necessity of a second translation in thought, must be found in Schleier- macher's own opinion. There are two ways, he considered, of making a good translation : either the author must be left alone as far as possible and the reader be made to approach, or the reader be left and the author be manipu- lated. In the former case, the work is translated as we believe the author would have done it, had he learned the language of the translation ; in the latter, as he would have written, had it been his native tongue. In philosophical viii PREFACE. works, lie thought the former method alone practicable. If the wisdom and science of the author are not to be trans- formed and subjected to the wildest caprice, the language of the translation must be bent to the language of the original. As we have not yet any example of a breach of this rule that encourages imitation, I have not been bold enough to make the attempt. Still I would fain believe that, except the first half of the Second Speech, the book is not beyond measure difficult. That section is acknowledged, even by the most patient Germans, to be obscure, and I would direct the reader's attention to the summary in the Appendix of its first form, which is very much simpler. Further, I might suggest that in the first' reading the Explanations be omitted, and that it be borne in mind that they are not meant to elucidate the text, but rather to expand or modify it into harmony with later positions. For a more careful study of the book, I have sought to make the Index helpful. My thanks are due to Professor Calderwood for encourage- ment in the work, and to my friend, Mr. G. W. Alexander, M.A., for revising the proofs and for many suggestions in the translation. ALNWICK, 1893. INTRODUCTION. As the " Speeches on Religion " were first published in 1799 this translation is in one sense exceedingly belated. In Germany itself, however, it has been more commented upon during the last twenty years than ever before. In 1868 Schenkel's Sketch of Schleiermacher's Life and Character was published. In 1870 Dilthey's Life of Schleiermacher fol- lowed, at least the first volume of it, which is all that has yet seen the light. In 1874 Ritschl published a treatise on " Schleiermacher's Speeches on Religion and their influence on the Evangelical Church of Germany." This was followed by two very elaborate articles on the " Speeches " by Lipsius in the " Jahrbiicher fur protestantische Theologie," wherein he drew attention to the very material changes in the various editions. In 1879 Piinjer made this apparent by a critical edition, which gave the first edition in the text, and the changes in foot-notes. Since then treatises have appeared on the idea of religion in the different editions by Braasch, on Schleiermacher's conception of Individuality by Frohne, on his relation to Christianity by Otto Ritschl, and on the quintessence of his theology, a severely hostile criticism, by Locke. Why this book should attain the classic position of being a subject for other books may well need to be explained to the English reader. Under various titles it may be found mentioned in certain learned treatises, but it would be difficult to learn from any English book the place it x INTRODUCTION. occupies either in theology or philosophy. The reason is not far to seek. The most earnest and thorough students of this period have either had a wholly philosophical or a wholly literary interest. For the former Hegel spoke the last word, and for the latter Goethe. This book, being the out- come of the literary, philosophical and religious movements of the time, has very naturally fallen between. Even to such a profound student of the time as Professor Adamson, Schleiermacher is simply a philosopher who stopped short at Spinoza, in parti-coloured combination with the theologian who ended in mysticism. Yet it may be questioned whether, after Kant's Critique and Goethe's Wilhelm Meister, any book of the period has had such a great and lasting effect, and it is certainly no question that it foreshadows the problems chiefly discussed among us to-day as is done by no other book of that time. We have still with us the unity of the church, the relation of church and state, inspiration, the non-christian religions, the essential nature of religion, the place of religion in life. Yet the interest and value of this book must now be chiefly historical. It marks the transition from the " Illu- mination " to the new time. Its very faults have a certain importance, for they are a true reflection of that age of ferment. As we try to recall those dim opponents, those cultured despisers of religion, we see, in the closing years of the century, a class of men engaged in high hope upon " an intellectual Tower of Babel/' which was to be the object both of their patriotism and their religion. It was a great and not very lucid time, and the thoughts of it roll across the pages of this book as a mixture of mist and broad sun- shine. Many estimates, not only of Schleiermacher himself, but of this book may be found in German writers. Zeller, the historian of Greek philosophy, says of him, ' that he was the greatest theologian of the Protestant Church since the Reformation. He was a churchman whose grand INTRODUCTION. xi ideas of the union of the Protestant confessions, of a more liberal constitution of the Church, of the rights of science and of religious individuality will force their way despite all resistance. He was a preacher of mark, a gifted and effective religious teacher, forming the heart by the under- standing and the understanding by the heart. He was a philosopher who without a perfected system sowed most fruitful seeds, and he led in a new era in the knowledge of Greek philosophy. He lent his aid in the work of the politi- cal regeneration of Prussia and Germany. In personal intercourse he exerted a wide and useful influence on count- less minds, awakening in many a new intellectual life.' Ueberweg, who quotes the above, says ' Schleiermacher's system is far inferior in formal perfection to Hegel's or Herbart's, but it is free from many of their limitations, and in its still largely unfinished form is more capable than any other post-Kantian philosophy of such a development as might remedy the defects of other systems/ Neander, who ascribed to the " Speeches " more than to any other influence his conversion from Judaism to Christianity, and who passed through Schleiermacher to a more definite Christian standpoint, said, in announcing Schleiermacher's death, "We have now lost a man from whom will be dated henceforth a new era in the history of theology." Lipsius in his articles says, " However much or however little may ultimately remain of Schleiermacher's peculiar world of thought, his way of regarding the theory of perception is as epoch-making in the religious sphere as Kant's ' Critique of Reason ' in the sphere of philosophy." Treitschke, the historian of Germany in the Nineteenth Century, who ascribes to Schleiermacher a place second to none in awaking the patriotism of his native land for the great struggle with Napoleon, says, "He became the renovator of our theology, the greatest of all our theologians since the Reformation, and even yet no German theologian arrives at inward liberty who has not settled accounts with xii INTRODUCTION. Schleiermacher's ideas." Probably one of the most remark- able testimonies is from Glaus Harms, the preacher, evangelist and missionary organizer. The " Speeches," lie says, gave him an impulse to an eternal movement. But he adds, " He that begat me had no bread for me." Probably that phrase sums up the defects of the book as well as possible; it stirs emotions which it does not always satisfy. Of all criticisms on this book, however, none is profounder or more helpful for its interpretation than Friedrich Schlegel's truly German verdict, " It is a work of infinite subjectivity." That is the ground both of its excellence and its defects. Beyond any book probably that ever was writ- ten, it is a revelation of the individuality of its author. In a quite unusual degree Schleiermacher lived his philosophy, and he succeeded in keeping his promise to reveal the sacred secrets of his deepest impulses even better than he was aware. His most original doctrine was his conception of individuality, and it was not a mere doctrine with him but an ideal of life. Though he was only thirty-one when this book appeared, he had- felt, probably more than any man alive at that time, the various influences of his age. There were more learned men, and men of greater faculty in various directions, but none had by the same fortunate variety of life and indomitable perseverance been able to come into such general contact with the thoughts and feelings both of the learned and of the people. In the technical sense of the word he was not a profound scholar, but, as a German puts it, he was a through and through cultured spirit. At marshalling great masses of detail, wherein his countrymen excel, he was no adept, but in the larger knowledge which consists in insight and assimilation, he has had few equals. ( He was an early riser and a diligent employer of his time. Not even sickness was allowed to interfere with his work. He even despised himself when he allowed it to depress his INTRODUCTION. xiii spirits or damp his ardour. A person who had the un- fortunate custom of sleeping too much he thought more to be pitied than one who suffered from toothache, colic, or any similar ill. He acquired slowly, his memory not being readily retentive, but from that very cause he was compelled to profounder reflection and deeper interest. But the circumstances of his life had done even more than his studies to give breadth and character to his mind. Chief among the influences that moulded him, we must reckon the piety of his home and his education among the Moravians. He himself ascribed to them the largest place in determining his opinions and moulding his character. Piety, he says, was the first feeling developed in him, and it was not " the daughter of theology." " I can recall its first stirrings. It was during a walk with my father, who never again allowed me to lose sight of it." All his later years, despite doubt and change, were, he believed, f linked each to each by natural piety.' His father was a chaplain of the Reformed Church to a regiment in Silesia. He was constitutionally disquali- fied for understanding his son and Schleiermacher's re- lation to him was probably the first germ of his doctrine of individuality which claims respect for the natural character even of the youngest. Schleiermacher's heredi- tary gifts did not come to him from his father but from his grandfather, an earnest conscientious man who had some marvellous experiences among certain enthusiasts on the Lower Khine. This grandfather was one of the last persons in Germany to be publicly charged with witchcraft. Even the description of his person as under middle height, pale countenance, light blue eyes and prominent nose might have been applied to his grandson. Schleiermacher's father grew up amid these strange doings with doubts he never dared to utter. " For twelve years," he said, in a letter to his son, " I preached as an actual unbeliever " ; evidently having accepted Kant's xiv INTRODUCTION. position that it was a preacher's duty to support the moral law by appealing to the ordinary faith of the people. Before his son's birth he seems to have returned to the orthodox faith. At all events, he dealt with his son's aberrations in the most uncompromising, denunciatory way. All his life he was burdened with debt, incurred chiefly in book buying. He had wide interests and read extensively, and his advice to his son is full of practical wisdom and insight, yet he leaves the impression of being dogmatic and even domineering, obstinate, and unstable. Consequently, it was only after time had mellowed him that he entered into kindlier and closer relations with his son. Schleier- macher's mother, again, leaves in her letters the most beautiful impressions of piety, wisdom, and goodness. She, however, died when her son, born in 1 768, was only fourteen. A year before her death, Friedrich had been placed in the school of the Moravian Brethren in Upper Lusatia. The Moravians were at that time doing for Germany what the Methodists were doing for England. Amid barren Deism and argumentative orthodoxy they maintained a dis- tinctively religious spirit. Traces of their influence are everywhere apparent in this book, and in the notes he openly acknowledges his admiration for their institutions. tf Verily," he says in a letter, concerning their love feasts, " there is not throughout Christendom in our day a form of public worship that expresses more worthily or awakens more thoroughly the spirit of true Christian piety." And after all his wanderings, he felt he had become a ' ' Moravian again of a higher order." Tet his sojourn among them was not without much out- ward and inward conflict. His early letters are strongly marked by the peculiar phraseology of the Brethren. He strove hard for the supernatural experiences known as intercourse with Jesus. After a time, he believed he had found peace, and resolved to remain always among the Brethren, though it were only to work at a trade. Yet the INTRODUCTION. xv Halle professor who was charged with, botanizing in a green jacket, was not quite extinguished. We hear from other quarters of pleasant days spent in the woods, and he asks his sister to hint to his father that his purse has caught consumption from fruit. In his seventeenth year he was transferred/along with his bosom friend, AlbertiniJ to the seminary at Barby, which was at that time the University of the Brethren. " The increase of liberty," he says, " seemed to loosen the fetters of the mind " ; and again he calls this period " the first blossoming time of the mind/^J_ A number of brilliant spirits formed themselves into a " club." They read the " Jena Literaturzeitung," an able periodical that looked at life from the standpoint of Kant; and from a "friendly one-eyed man" in Zerbst, they obtained such books as Wieland's poems and Goethe's "Werther." This was enough to let them know that there was a large world of thought outside. The attempts of their teachers to hedge in this mental activity, only increased their suspicion that their doubts could not be answered by better means ; and even when prevailing opinions were controverted, there was always a feeling that the other side had not been heard. FThe Illumination had been working in Germany for about j twenty years, and was now everywhere prevalent] and all the zeal of the Moravian teachers could not stop toe chinks whereby the flood was entering. Their suspicion and their attempts at discipline only hastened the catastrophe ; and soon by manifold departure the poor club was scattered to the winds. Among the first, Schleiermacher felt that he also must be gone, if all his doubts were not to harden into absolute unbelief. In 1787, after overcoming much bitter opposition from his father, he entered Halle as a student. Halle was then at the height of its fame, and was almost entirely dominated by the spirit of the Illumination. This was the ground of his choice, for he believed that if ever he was to reach a xvi INTRODUCTION. fuller faith, it must be by hearing everything that could be said against it. During his two years' stay in Halle, he came entirely under the influence of the prevailing ideas. " I have always believed," he says in a letter to his father, "that examination and investigation and the patient interrogation of all witnesses and of all parties, is the only means for attaining sufficient certainty, and above all for setting a fast boundary between that on which a man must take a side and that which, without injury to his peace and happiness, may be left undecided : " a pretty accurate summary of the Illumination ideal. In Halle none of the theological professors impressed him greatly^ Semler, indeed, who has been called the father of the critical study of the Scriptures, was not without an influence on his views of Scripture exegesis, but Semler was now old and much troubled by disputes. Eberhard, however, a professor of philosophy, may be con- sidered a decisive influence in his life, for he led him to the careful study of Kant's Critique. If truth be told, Schleiermacher was a very bad attender at lectures and never perhaps entered much into the spirit of the University. But in the garret in his uncle's house, where he sat till two in the morning, he studied, not pursuing subjects but seeking truth for ' life and death.' j Even before leaving Halle, he wrote a treatise on the iclea of the Highest Good, wherein he tries to settle matters with Kant. But the frightful conflict he had just come through still depressed his spirits, and he had the worst opinion of the coarseness of his fellow- students. His circumstances also were of the worst, which rendered social intercourse somewhat trying for a proud spirit. Yet he could never be without a friend, and he found one in a fellow-student from Barby, a Swede, named Gustav von Brinkmann. This youth, to whom he after- wards dedicated this book, was a marvellous result of Moravian training, sporting with Amaryllis in preference to burning the midnight oil. But Schleiermacher was UNIVERSITY OF INTRODUCTION. xvii persuaded that more than any man he lived laborious days, and corrected and copied his love-letters for him and admired his endless poetical compositions. With all his faults, Brinkmann, by his larger knowledge of the world, was at this period a useful friend. Loiter two years' study his father's willingness and ability to support him were both exhausted. Yain efforts were made to obtain a situation as family tutor, and nothing was left but to go once more to uncle Stubenrauch, who had left Halle and was now settled as pastor at Drossen near Frankfort on the Oder.. Hopes were entertained of pos- sible acquaintances that might prove useful, and at all events he could have house-room while he was preparing for his theological examination. Of this uncle, the brother of his mother, he says, " would that I had so availed myself of his friendship as to be able to say in lieu of all praise, see what I have become and to him I owe it." In this uncle he encountered the very best type of the theological spirit of the Illumination, an up- right, earnest man, effective in his pastoral work, and deeply interested in all questions of human progress. In his house for a whole year Schleiermacher studied and thought, reading such' books as came his way, and having dim thoughts of authorship. Already his own world of thought was taking shape, he had revised Kant and come to some definite conclusions about him, and chiefly stimulated by the loves and poesies of friend Brink- mann he had thoughts that he did not think of revealing to his uncle in spite of their free and affectionate intercourse. With anything but liking for the business, he finally went to Berlin to pass his examination in theology. His father, who had married again, raised the needful money and not before time, for the candidate's clothes, much less than being fitted to make the right impression on the authorities in Berlin, were hardly decent enough for Drossen. To some extent the iron had at this time xviii INTRODUCTION. entered his soul. He was poor and not very well, and his slight deformity had been made a ground for refusing him a situation. But the examinations were successfully passed, and then it became his duty to make himself agreeable to persons with ecclesiastical patronage, relatives and acquaintances of his uncle, highly respectable ' moderates ' for the most part. Aunt Stubenrauch's urgent advice notwithstanding, this part of the undertaking was exceedingly badly done. " We observe gratefully," says his biographer, ' ' how in this matter one generation after another in Germany improves by practice." Finally, however, a situation was obtained for him. , He became tutor in the family of Count Dohna of Schlobitten^ A new phase of life now opened for the student, which he believed lasted as long as was good for him and no longer. ' Good like a Dohna/ was a proverb in East Prussia. At Schlobitten he found a simple and sincere piety along with genuine refinement.^ For the first time he felt the influence of cultured female society, an experience which he marks as an epoch. " With a knowledge of the female heart I won a knowledge of true manly worth." To Friedrike, the second daughter of the family, who died young, he spe- cially ascribes this service. " She has taken it with her into eternity and it will not I hope be the least that her beautiful existence has accomplished." " The love of art also was awakened in him, another dangerous possession for the ' enlightened understanding.' Above all he saw in the family life of which the wise and capable mother was the head, a beautiful fellowship ennobled by freedom, which shone all the more in contrast to the memory of his own youth. Wedike, a neighbouring pastor, an earnest, thought- ful, patriotic man, was of great help to him, but above all \ in long solitary walks he came to understand himself. At that time the eyes of all the civilized world were turned towards the revolution in France. Schleiermacher pondered INTRODUCTION. xix deeply on the matter, giving his whole sympathy to the popular side. , Even when in 1793 Louis XYI. was executed, though he regretted the cruelty, he could find no additional horror in the fact that the head that had been severed, was anointed. It was dangerous ground in the house of a Prussian nobleman, more especially as he defended his conviction, not merely with passionate earnestness, but with argument and eloquence which put the irate Count to rout. Yet the crisis came on education, not politics. The Count had his own ideas on education, and especially on the position of family tutors. The tutor had different views, which were sustained by a very strong sense of self- respect and of duty to his pupils. A great reserve of somewhat sarcastic utterance also occasionally cropped through his respect for his superiors. Finally the irascible Count lost all self-control and spoke words which he dimly desired to withdraw, but which the tutor assured him would only make their relations more unpleasant if he did. Wherefore, amid many tokens of good-will from every side, and not least from the Count himself, Schleier- macher departed with his heart almost breaking, but only able to say, when he was paid double, that his employer did himself much wrong. f In Schlobitten he parted with the Illumination, and began his own development. None of his doctrines were yet clear, but traces of them all, dim foreshadowings in feeling rather than in thought, can be traced in his letters, his sermons and in a fragment on the ' Value of Life,' which he wrote, at this time and had some thoughts of publishing. On the question of church and state especially he had come to the conclusion that nothing can guarantee | complete tolerance but the entire separation of the two. / \ This shows how far he had departed from the Illumination ] ideal which considered the church simply an institution for j the moral education of the people. His uncle feared evil ' results and thought the clergy would starve, but the a 2 xx INTRODUCTION. nephew Bad more faith in the power of the religious sentiment. This position was doubtless first suggested to him by the Moravian system, but it received confirmation from the course of events in France, and was fixed by the evils the ecclesiastical states caused to Germany in the early days of Napoleon, when the princes of Germany crowded "like flies on the bleeding wounds of their country." I After a few months in Drossen, he went to Berlin, where the friendly influence of his relative Sack obtained for him a position in an educational institution. Utter lack of discipline, which his short sight prevented him from deal- ing with, made his days unhappy, and in six months he went to be curate to a relative at Landsberg on the Warthe. While at Schlobitten, he had discovered his vocation as a preacher, and had already begun his method of careful mental preparation without writing, from which he never afterwards departed. As a preacher he at once took his place. His sermons of this period are marked by great moral earnestness, which at times recalls Kant rather than Jesus Christ. At the same time it is apparent that he has been making a deeper study of Christianity and re- flecting on his relation to its Founder. Two years passed here peacefully and happily, in spite of small conflicts with the authorities about educational matters to which he had zealously devoted himself. Books were difficult to obtain, but he thought the more, and was more diligent in corre- spondence with friends, especially with his sister Charlotte, who was still among the Moravians, and his father, who now began to understand him. This change much consoled him after his father's death, which happened about the close of these years. Finally, he entered on his career as an author, by translating, along with his patron Sack, Blair's Sermons, the models of the respectable ' moderates ' of that time. When his relative Schumann died, the congregation INTRODUCTION. xxi asked of the authorities in Berlin that Schleiermacher should be appointed, but he was considered too young, and the place was given to his uncle Stubenrauch, much to the old man's sorrow. As compensation, Schleiermacher was appointed preacher at the Charite Institute in Berlin. In September, 1796, he entered upon his work. Berlin had hitherto been the chosen home of the Illumin- ation, and the leading preachers were all of the highly respectable, cautious type of Rationalist, known, in Scotland at least, as the ' moderate/ The Illumination, or as it might better be translated, the ' Enlightenment,' was not a purely theological movement. Kant defines it as " man's emergence from self-caused pupilage," and he gives its watch-word as sapere aude, have courage to use your own understandings. It is peculiarly the movement of the Eighteenth Century. In_JEngland it culminated in the Freethinkers, and in the form of Deism was in direct antagonism to the prevailing Christian faith. In France the same movement under Voltaire was not only more hostile to Christianity, but less earnest. Rousseau carried the same teaching into social and political questions and the " Gospel of Jean- Jacques " was the creed of the Revolution. Its essential feature was a demand for a reason for everything from the standpoint of the individual. The consequence was individualism in politics, sen- sationalism in philosophy, and utilitarianism in morals. In Germany, the movement never assumed the same spirit of opposition to the church, and as a political develop- ment was hardly possible, it took an almost exclusively theological aspect. Its creed consisted of a personal God full of wisdom and goodness ; immortality ; and the necessity of religious ideas for moral motives. In its directly theological aspect, the movement became Rationalism, the belief in Scripture as containing a revelation already implicit in man's mind, which in practice came to mean the discovery of its own abstractions in the written word. xxii INTRODUCTION. In so far as this Enlightenment was the end of man's nonage, it was inevitable and right. The authority of the church had been extended to every department of life. In all research, men wrought 'with the sword of Damocles over their heads.' Now the rights of research were es- tablished, and the church was directed to its own sphere : and only in complete ignorance of history can it be main- tained that this did not happen to the eminent profit of both. But this good was more than counterbalanced by its easy-going optimism, its shallowness, its frivolity and self-satisfaction. Understanding was the final test, and argument the only proof. Religion was reduced to a few commonplaces; God was a scientific abstraction ; aspiration succumbed to utter paltriness ; and the deeper needs of man were fast becoming incomprehensible. From one point of view Kant is the coping-stone of this movement, from another he is the foundation of the new time. He sought to found again the old Illumination theology, in the same abstract way. His book, " Eeligion within the Limits of mere Reason," makes religion simply a handmaid of morality. If men were what they should be, the mere moral law ought to carry its own authority, but, to remedy the [defect, the idea of a Lawgiver and an all-seeing Eye is useful. Yet it is never to be forgotten that all this is only a reflection of morality. Chiefly by allegorizing, he weaves the dogmas of Christianity into his system, everything finally being reduced to ethics and metaphysics. Yet Kant, of all men, introduced a more earnest spirit into the time. His true fore-runner was Butler, with his maxim, " if conscience had might as it had right, it would absolutely govern the world/' " There is nothing absolutely good in the world," Kant said, at the beginning of his " Critique of Practical Reason," " a good will alone excepted." An action was not moral according to its consequences, but INTRODUCTION. xxiii according to the law from which it sprang. This law is not an abstraction from experience of personal and social requirement, but is uttered by reason the universal element in man. Finally, while all consciousness is purely phe- nomenal, man by the freedom of his will is rooted in the real world, and takes his place as a thing in itself. Whether the critical philosophy will ultimately be found to have circumnavigated the world of thought, or to be simply a larger and more barren and dangerous excursion into polar seas, may still be doubtful, but the greater moral earnestness that Kant made possible for his time is now a matter of history. . For ten years Schleiermacher had been constantly renew- j ing his study of Kant. He found his style of exposition r barbarous and he was annoyed by his misunderstandings not only of others, but of himself. Still he kept continually ( gnawing ' at him. Already he had rejected his proof of the "Vyorld and Freedom and God, and had departed considerably from his theory of perception, but he had firmly \settled with himself that the blessedness of life is within 'and that the end of life is not happiness but the fulfilment of the law of reason. By this study of Kant, Schleiermacher, though he did not come out quite unspotted from intercourse with the Romanticists, at least rescued his soul from deadly peril and, in the midst of the overweening individualism of his contemporaries, held firm ground in universal truth and law. In Plato Schleiermacher found the substance of Kant's teaching. Of late years also he had made a more earnest \- study of Aristotle. Spinoza was only known to him through ( Jacobi's work, but he was already a devoted admirer and | pupil, and among his papers of this time is found a very f careful study of this great writer, wherein he corrects Jaoobi'a views on some important points. In severe studies of this nature his life had hitherto been spent. Such literature as he had read was mostly of an xxiv INTRODUCTION. earlier time, and the great literary movement that began with Leasing, and was now culminating in Goethe and the young Romance, was, before he settled in Berlin, little known to him and not deeply interesting. Berlin was already the seat of the conflict between the old classical and the new Romantic schools. Schleiermacher was introduced to the Romanticists by Alexander Dohna, the eldest son of the Count of Schlo- bitten. Berlin of late had increased largely in population and in material prosperity. Many Jewish families especially had become rich. Being excluded from all public concerns, they devoted themselves to society. Their ambition was to have literary gatherings, and sociality was laboured for as a fine art. Henrietta Herz, the wife of the most famous Jew- ish physician in the town, was a leader in this world ; being beautiful, and having a mind of unusual receptivity, she was among those who made what was called a house. Schleiermacher was introduced at one of her gatherings and, having the very best recommendation in Alexander Dohna, he soon became her most intimate friend. His position at the Charite was not the happiest. A wit said that the veterinary institute opposite was a place where dogs were treated like men, while the Charite was a place where men were treated like dogs. His sphere as a preacher was circumscribed and he had no scope for any other kind of activity in his office. Yet to the astonishment of his friends he loved his work, and with the abounding literary intercourse now open to him, he was almost in felicity. The famous Wednesday Club was just beginning, and Schleiermacher became a member. Soon all the leading spirits of the new School met there, wonderfully discordant minds, but united now by a common purpose. There were the two Schlegels, the orderly, laborious but vain and irritable Wilhelm, whose power of translation was almost genius, and the younger Friedrich, quick, brilliant and INTRODUCTION. xxv attractive, but superficial and unstable. Tieck, with his restless fancy gleaming from his eager- face, was there, and Wackenroder, a profound and pious soul, who died at twenty-five, and Novalis, whom Schleiermacher himself celebrates in this book, a,nd others of less note. Of these, Friedrich Schlegel was Schleiermacher's bosom friend. For a time they lodged together, and even entertained thoughts of literary partnership. At Schlegel's instigation the " Speeches " were written. There is a graphic scene in Schleiermacher's letters of Schlegel making him register a solemn vow of literary activity in the presence of friends who had gathered to celebrate his birthday. Schleier- macher was therefore, by constant intercourse and devoted friendship, powerfully under the influence of the Romantic School when he wrote this book. The true intellectual father of the School was Goethe, and his Wilhelm Meister was their ideal. He preferred in- sight to argument, and an individual thing to an abstraction. Nature he regarded as a beautiful, progressive whole, with- out upheaval or interruption. " Life is Nature's most beauti- ful discovery and death is her device for having more life." Her greatest production is man. He is most worthy of study, but all reality in its place deserves to be rightly apprehended by loving observation. Herder carried Goethe's thought into history. " Alex- ander conquered Persia, because he was Alexander the son of Philip/' yet withal there is a grand and even progress of human culture. The germ of much of Schleiermacher's thought is here the importance of the individual, the place of intuition, everything a revelation of the Universe, the Universe itself v one glorious, eternally active whole. What with Goethe was art with the younger generation was criticism. By critical resolve they determined to be the uncritical ^Eolian harp of every feeling. The cultiva- tion of the individual was the high end of life, a doctrine xxvi INTRODUCTION. which, with such men as Friedrich Schlegel did not mean much else than a rejection of the command ( Let a man deny himself.' They were all enthusiasts for the modern literature, the principle of which they considered not beauty but interest. Politically, Germany was at its lowest degrada- tion, and the only unity in the empire was the new litera- ture. Art, therefore, was religion and patriotism in one. " We sought," says Steffens, " to rear an intellectual Tower i of Babel, that all men might behold." The great end was 'to have an artistic appreciation of everything. Under- standing was nothing, imagination was everything. Schleiermacher himself, though he complains that the want of the artistic sense was his worst limitation, would sell the understanding of the world for a singularly small equivalent in imagination. This desire to sympathetically think again all human experience, led to such ardent and careful historical research as is altogether without parallel. The impress of the School is more marked in the first edition than in the later form of this work, but, as he himself observed, it was so deep that no changes could remove it. The literary companions were the cultured despisers to whom he addressed himself. Their artistic sense most nearly resembled his religious sense. He sought to make them regard the Universe as the great work of art. For their idea of individuality he laid a philosophical and religious basis. Their historical research gave him warrant for claiming a high value for positive religions. Perhaps their contempt for established institutions coloured his idea of the church. Their exaltation of feeling, joined to Moravianism, led to his view of religion. Finally, their models determined the style of this book, described as literary chiaroscuro. But Schleiermacher's previous philosophical discipline and earnest thinking out of his own position raised him far above the ordinary standpoint of the Romantic School. Schelling said, on reading the " Speeches," " whosoever INTRODUCTION. xxvii would produce anything of the kind must have made the profoundest philosophical studies, or he must have written it under blind divine inspiration." Dilthey, with careful toil, has not only indicated every / rivulet that trickled into the stream of Schleiermacher's thought, but has circumnavigated every lake from which it . might have come. By his help we can trace the growth of the system which underlies this work. Schleiermacher was conscious of his system, and was pained that no one was able to discover it ; and, to instructed eyes at least, it is closely interwoven both with argument and with appeal. Subsequently, it was elaborated, filled in, and more scientifically expressed, but the main outlines were never changed. Kant is his starting-point, and he interprets him some- what after the manner of Fichte. Kant asked himself this question : What is this skein of self-consciousness, just what we are conscious of and no more, and what are its laws ? His answer was to conceive it very much as a spider's web. The elements out of which it is composed float in promiscuously, and are called the manifold of sense. They are spun into a net, according to a definite scheme. Lines converge at definite [angles : this is time and space. These concentric lines are bound together by cross-threads at definite intervals : they are categories of judgment. Finally, all the lines converge to one point : it is the synthetic unity of apperception, the conscious I. Of this skein alone you are conscious. By thought you cannot get outside of it, but by the claims of morality, as it were by shaking the net, you learn that there is a spider underneath that spins the web. and stout beams outside, known as the world and God, to which it is attached. The claims of the moral law demand free-will that must be noumenal not phenomenal, and goodness and happiness must ultimately be one, therefore there must be a God. Schleiermacher rejected this proof. He did not accept xxviii IN TROD UCTION. free-will except as the outcome of the nature apart from external compulsion, and he held that the Good does not involve happiness. But for him also thought is activity, the mind is creative, and not merely receptive. From Kant's practical philosophy he accepted with unwavering conviction the view that the moral law is the utterance of reason, and that the highest good is to live in harmony with reason. I To Fichte reason is nothing but the universal element in life. It is in deadly struggle with all that is individual. The ideal of reason was one for all men, to be established in opposition to all accidents of life and diversities of character. Practically, this was apt to mean that everyone ^ was wrong who was different from Johann Gottlieb Fichte. Theoretically, it came more and more to mean that the individual reason was simply the universal reason self- limited. For many years it did not occur to Schleiermacher to question the position that reason is the identical element in all men. The study of Plato and Leibnitz seems to have suggested to him that reason itself might be the source of individuality. Leibnitz's monads he regarded as an importa- tion from Fairyland, yet they served to make him see that the individual might be such a copy of the Universe as to be not merely a part of it, but an exhibition of it. He had long and earnestly been studying Spinoza, and acknowledged a large debt to him. Yet the Spinozism of Schleiermacher is more in form than substance. In his con- ception of the Universe Spinoza's distinction between natura, naturans and natura naturata re-appears, natura naturans being the World-Spirit. We also find his doctrine of the immanence of the Infinite in the finite, and his distinction between things in their observed relations, and things as seen sub specie dsternitatis. But to Spinoza the individual was merely a delusion of the imagination, a section arbitrarily cut out of the Universe, while the motive of all INTRODUCTION. xxix Schleiermacher's speculation was to find reality for the individual as a whole within a whole. The Universe, in accordance with the new philosophy, was conceived as infinitely active. In this part of Schleier- macher's doctrine there are distinct traces of Schelling. This activity divides itself, but division is not separation, but parallelism and interaction. This division that is not separation, is found throughout the Universe. God indeed is the union of knowledge and being, yet even He is only known in His works. Spirit and body are not one, yet they are nothing separate. The spiritual and sensuous in life again are co-ordinate in morals, and the super- natural and the natural in religion. The threads are, as it were, spun for a moment apart, then woven into an inseparable cord. There are thus no hard drawn lines in the Universe, but it weaves all its activities together. The fact that the individual is thus a part of one vast whole, however, does not make it less a whole in itself. Rather it must, before it could in such circumstances main- tain an existence, have a principle fashioning its individu- ality, uniting what comes to it from the Universe and again re-acting upon the Universe. Thus the Universe and the individual are equally real. Without the reality of the Universe, the individual were nothing, for all its life consists in being acted upon by the Universe and acting upon the Universe again. By what means the Universe acts upon us, whether by special noumena or directly, we cannot tell, but all our experience goes back to the point where our own activity and the activity of Universe are in contact and mutual understanding. By going back in thought, we reach a mystic point beyond which we cannot go, but which is the source of all our knowledge. That is the touch of our spirits with the Universe whereby, like the touch of lips that love, there are large mutual understandings. This is the source and the type of all experience. Per- ception therefore rests not on reasoned knowledge but on xxx INTRODUCTION. belief ; it is a transaction with the Universe and therefore a religious act. Jacobi, whom Schleiermacher always reverenced as a kindred soul, is apparent in this, but there are many resemblances to Berkeley. There is no evidence that Schleiermacher studied Berkeley, but Berkeley's influence on the thought of Germany of that time, though indirect was much larger than is usually acknowledged. To Berkeley also perception was a religious act, it was talking v with God. The chief difference is that Berkeley regarded experience as wholly given, Schleiermacher makes the in- dividual mind share in the manufacture of it. The conscious individual, therefore, is a product and representation of the Infinite, in constant interaction with the Infinite. The Universe is like a great work of art, having leading ideas running through the whole, wrought out with infinite variety of detail in every part. Mankind for example is an individuality exhibiting the Universe. It contains the general character of the Universe and the particular form also in which it is embodied. Similarly a nationality is an individuality. It embraces the general character of humanity, and exhibits it in a special form as well. Similarly each man is a characteristic presentation of his people. Man's spirit in this respect is like his body. The body is part of the material world. It is a product of the same laws that made any organism. An animal organism is a characteristic presentation of organic life, and a human organism of animal organization. Yet they all consist of one material, organized ever more elaborately by one set of laws. In the same way, the same spiritual matter and the same spiritual laws have organized the individual mind. This explains how Schleiermacher only distinguished individuals quantitatively, not qualitatively. Positive religions we find are only permutations and combinations of the same elements, all variety being variety of degree INTRODUCTION. xxxi and position. We might call it the atomic theory of the individual. Quality is explained quantitatively, and the reason that this can be accomplished is that we are dealing with a production of the Infinite, having in itself a certain infinity. One man for example is distinguished from another by the prominence of his imagination. All his other faculties are grouped round it. Another man is equally imaginative, but his other faculties are grouped differently. Again imaginations may differ in kind, having many elements each of which may be prominent, while all the others may be variously grouped. The conscious individual, as a product and representation of the Universe in ceaseless interaction with it, may have three aims. All the elements of his experience, being products of a Universe which is a whole, have connections and relations. He may therefore endeavour to refer the different parts of his experience to one another by dis- covering their casual and other connections. This is the aim of science. Again, he may take himself as an inde- pendent manifestation of the Universe, and, starting from the common elements of reason, proceed to carry out the purpose of the Universe by applying them in accordance with his own nature and circumstances. This is the aim of morals. Finally, he may begin at the other end with the distinct phenomena of life, and travel backwards towards the Universe. This is the aim of religion. As every perception is an interaction of the whole Universe with our whole being, the religious man who has once had a feeling and intuition of the Universe can reach the Universe from every experience. And if the sense ]/ were not hindered it would naturally reach this intuition, just as every man, were there not obstructions, would naturally have scientific and moral interests. Whether by external or internal observation, if carried far enough, we should finally reach the Universe. But men are hindered by mechanical burdens, and above all by the present XXX11 INTRODUCTION. worldly-wise calculating type of education. Even art, which should be inspired by religion, and is fitted in turn to adorn it, satisfies men with a narrower object than the Universe. By reflection we best awake to this larger sense. We find that our souls are an epitome of all mankind. Whatsoever any man has thought or felt comes to us as our thought and feeling. Nay, all that can be thought is only possible to be thought because in some sense it is ourselves already. As Plato expressed it/ all knowledge is only recollection. Ourselves and all that we know only exhibit one Universe. This waking of the sense for the Universe is the larger life. Before we were conscious only of paint, now, how- ever dimly, we perceive the picture. How it shall define itself in idea is not yet apparent and is a question of science, and how it shall affect our actions is a question of ethics ; but already there is a life of feeling. Fear unmixed it cannot be, but it may be fear feebly changing to love, and everything from fear to the perfect love which makes us feel we are one with the Universe without a doubting or a jarring note. Eeligion therefore is sense and taste for the Infinite, and is neither metaphysics nor morals, but as essentially a part of human nature as either knowledge or action. Because this has been obscured or forgotten, religion has \ fallen into evil repute. Simply by setting religion byjtself, Schleiermacher hopes to fulfil the task he has set himself of awaking a new regard for religion. This purpose is much more distinctly the aim of the first than of the second edition. " As a rule," Schleiermacher himself said, " one age only knows how to meet the errors of its predecessor by com- mitting another error."" He somewhat exemplifies bis own judgment, if not by actual perpetration, at least by an omission that made others perpetrate it. He did not show how knowledge and conscience are implicit in feeling, as INTRODUCTION. xxxiii they must be if it is immediately given by the Universe. He is even at times found speaking as if one feeling might correspond to two ideas, aad one sense for the Universe be represented by different conceptions of God. He does not show the ground of his own contention in later life that religion must rest on truth and freedom. Yet it must not be forgotten that he held no act of the mind single and distinct. An activity of the mind is marked only by the element that is most prominent in it, and surely the prominent element in religion is feeling. In Europe both science and morals had been nurtured by > Christianity, but science had already emancipated itself from authority and morals was seeking an authority of its own. It was necessary, therefore, to say that there was a I s religious element in man^nat affected by either, and that ' indifference to religion was indifference to the pro- foundest element in man evident in some way among all peoples. But this artistic conception of religion is not merely a ' simile to explain the nature of religion, it appears also in his conception of the church. Religion cannot be conveyed by instruction. All a master can do is to exhibit his own religion, just as an artist exhibits his own art to awake the sense for art in his pupils. The vaster the variety of . religious emotion the better, because the Infinite is best shown by the multitude and variety of its productions, and each individual is the more likely to find what will so harmonize with himself as to awake his own sense. There should, therefore, be only one church that one may learn more from those most different from him, and the visible societies should be as fluid as possible, schools where the pupil seeks the master, according to affinity, and departs to another according to need. The visible church does not consist of religious persons but of persons seeking religion, though how people could seek religion without, in some degree, having the sense b xxxiv INTRODUCTION. awakened for it, lie does not explain. The members of the true church, therefore, the masters in a divine art, shall be the priests, not indeed to exercise official authority, but by native superiority to have large respect and influence. The supreme foe of religion is death. Wheresoever there is activity there is hope. The state has been an evil in- fluence in religion, because it has misled the church in its own work, and subjected it to an authority to which no art can submit without disaster. The state did not create the evils. Evils were inevitable in this as in ail human affairs, but the state has fixed the evils and made them permanent. He takes the most pessimistic view of the state church, and hopes for little good till, by a revolution, it is overturned, or till some other institution is allowed to grow up alongside of it. In all this the pupil of the Moravians is manifest. He calls attention to assemblies where no one man is priest by office, but any man speaks who has the inspiration, apparently assemblies of Moravians. But there is also a reason in his theory for making the visible society what Strauss has called " a merely infusorial life." Keligion seeks only one system, the Universe. Wherefore, custom and formality must be its chief foes. Hence, he never altered his description of the visible church in the text, though in the notes he acknowledges that the church con- tains more religious people than he had thought and should, in so far as it is the communion of the pious, be an organization. The last Speech has probably had more influence of various kinds than any part of the book. The polemic against the abstract jejune spirit of the Illumination applied to religion the same principle that had already been accepted by the younger generation in literature. Religion, being infinite, must have a principle of individualization. - 1 Here Schleiermacher's doctrine of individuality found appli- cation. Each religion is not distinguished by the quantity of religious matter, but by the special form in which the INTRODUCTION. xxxv matter is organized. The same religious matter appears ia all religions, but the fundamental intuition, selected, not by any superiority but by some need or some insight of the people and the age that believe it, and the mode in which the rest is grouped around it, distinguish a positive religion. What this would mean in respect of Judaism he seeks to show. Though inadequate, there is deep and fruitful historical insight. The relation of Judaism to Christianity he never fully acknowledged, and even in later life he preached almost exclusively from the New Testament. In his conception of Christianity his Moravian education appears. In Moravianism the doctrine of the total depravity of man and reconciliation by grace overshadowed all else. Hence, the fundamental view of Christianity is " the universal resistance of all things finite to the unity of the Whole and the way the Deity treats this resistance," and the prevailing Christian note is sadness, and its attitude ceaseless polemic against the difference between actuality and the religious idea. The relation of this central intuition of Christianity to its historical beginning and subsequent historical development is in the first edition very slight. The historical Christ seems at times only to be the discoverer and originator. But we shall better understand the changes in the second edition when we know Schleiermacher's life up till its appearance in 1806. The " Speeches " were at first little known to the theo- logical world. The adherents of the old rationalistic school were repelled by the pantheistic expressions in the book, which were more prominent in the first edition than in its later form. Sack, to whom Schleiermacher felt it his duty to acknowledge his authorship, marvelled why he should still wish to be a preacher of Christianity. Schleiermacher replied, " I hold the position of a preacher the noblest that a truly religious, virtuous and earnest soul can fill, and I shall never, with my will, exchange it with any other." b 2 xxxvi INTRODUCTION. The elder Kanfcians, such as Schiller, thought the book pre- tentious and barren, and troubled it no more. But in the Komantic circle, now gathered at Jena, it created a great enthusiasm. " Novalis and Schlegel," Caroline Schlegel wrote Schleiermacher, " have made religion the order of the day/' Novalis wrote many poems under the immediate inspiration of the l< Speeches." Already the interest of the older school in antiquity was passing, and the new school were deep in the Middle Ages. The new religion of intuition and feeling accorded with this vein, and soon the Christianity of the Middle Ages was the chief object of glorification. Already Schleiermacher was in opposition, telling Novalis that the papacy was the corruption, not the perfection of Catholicism, but the artistic admiration for Catholicism continued till many members of the Romantic School found their way into the Church of Eome. The offence of this book to the church party was increased by the " Confidential Letters on Lucinde " which followed it. Already Schleiermacher and Schlegel had drifted far apart. Schlegel had wonderful gifts of adap- tation. He had even maintained for a time a friendship with Fichte, a man whose nature was nothing but ethical, ethical in the narrowest sense. But already Schleiermacher had had such proofs of Schlegel's unreliableness as even his self- sacrificing devoted friendship which gives him the high distinction of being the only person in the circle in whose letters Dilthey has found no duplicity, was unable to pass. Schlegel had caused Dorothea, the daughter of Mendelssohn, to separate from her husband, the banker Yeit. Schleier- macher sought to avert the separation, but when it was done he urged Schlegel to marry her. Schlegel showed himself utterly base and selfish in the whole matter, but Schleiermacher strove through it all to believe in him. Schlegel was always in want of money, always at least after he had drained his friends, and in his desire for funds he wrote a novel " Lucinde." Imagination utterly failed INTRO D UCTION. xxxvii him, and to fill his book he set forth his relation with Dorothea, in a way which Dorothea herself considered a desecration of the temple of love, and Schleiermacher, in remonstrating with him, described as a ' public exhibition/ But necessities were urgent, and Schlegel published his book. At once a storm of adverse criticism arose. Dorothea straightway turned round and besought Schleiermacher to do something to defend her husband. He very unwillingly consented. The criticism had been more prudery than purity, and Schleiermacher hated all unreality; he also found in the book his own theory that the union of soul and body is necessary for a complete human life, but his " Letters/' " though a good commentary, bore traces of being on a bad text." Once more Schleiermacher stood largely alone. He occupied his mind in writing his " Monologues/' which developes his moral philosophy as the " Speeches " deve- loped his religious philosophy. He also wrote upon the Jewish question, opposing the desire to convert the Jews to a nominal Christianity, and urging that all civil privileges should be accorded them in order that they might not be led to endanger Christianity by embracing it through indifference. But neither of those writings, so far as they were known to be his, tended to re-establish him ecclesias- tically. Yet it was another matter that drove him from Berlin. The current ideas of marriage were partly the resulfc of the corrupt society of the Berlin that had grown ug around the court of Frederick the Great, and partly of the spirit of a time when all institutions were in the crucible. Even Fichte is found recommending Dorothea Veit, after she had separated from her husband, to his wife's care. Schleier- macher did not escape the spirit of the time. With a sub- tilty that frequently prevented him from seeing practical consequences, but which kept all his aberrations from being matters of caprice, he wrought his views into his xxxviii INTROD UCTION. system. He then held that where there was no true union, but where marriage was an emphatic hindrance to the development of the soul, separation was a duty. Here we find the weakness of all his early philosophiz- ing. He was excessively short-sighted, the sensuous side of him was weak, he was of student's habits, and had a student's way of looking at life. To him an idea was a sufficient motive, and the ideal a sufficient standard ; and ne was utterly ignorant of how much was needed to restrain '' *i- Even with himself, however, this theorizing came to a *<* ^5* practical result. Eleonore Griinow, the wife of a pastor in Berlin, had made an unhappy marriage. Griinow was not ly somewhat of a boor towards his wife, but Dilthey says immoral man. Schleiermacher began by giving sym- pathy and good advice. Finally he advised divorce, and when no other prospect was open for Eleonore, he offered To leave her absolutely free, he accepted Sack's urgent offer to leave Berlin for a pastorate at Stolpe, away in the ' far north-east on the Baltic Sea. Eleonore finally resolved to continue to bear her burden, and though Schleiermacher P asse( ^ through a very bitter struggle, long after, when he met Eleonore in an assembly, he went up to her and said, " God has been good both to you and me, Eleonore." I n much affliction of body as well as mind, almost entirely without the stimulus of literary companionship, with the utmost difficulty in obtaining the materials for study, he wrote in Stolpe his " Outlines of all Existing Theories of Morals." Plato alone he spared. The moderns seemed to him all to aim at one uniformity of ideal, without any acknowledgment of individuality. __ , He also wrote on church reform, largely in the spirit of the Fourth Speech of this book. He would have union, \ not uniformity, freedom of belief and action. The diminished external dignity of churchmen he considered INTRODUCTION. xxxix good. He wished to see matters so arranged that no one should be tempted to enter the ministry as an easy way of getting a livelihood, as was the case especially with persons of a lower social rank. He could wish another career to be open for all who do not love the calling, but as that is not possible, he would exclude