No More Learning

The antagonism between Herder and Kant, which first
? appears in the department of the philosophy of history, Herder carried into all the chief points of the Kantian philo sophy in his later writings (" Metakritik" ; " Kalligone" ;
" Von Religion, Lehrmeinungen und Gebrduclien"). It is worth while to look at this a little more closely, as character istically illustrating the two sides of modern thought. Herder wishes to substitute for Kant's critique of the reason a physiology of the cognitive faculties, which would explain the evolution of the higher from the lower faculties. He rejects the distinction between a purely receptive sensibility and a purely spontaneous understanding, as also that between the simple matter of experience and the d priori forms of perception --space and time. These last, in Herder's view the result of actual experience, being an abstraction from its contents ; in themselves they are the objective forms in which forces work and manifest themselves to us. Our sense-per ceptions are not given us as a chaotic multiplicity which our spontaneity only afterwards and arbitrarily unifies without
reference to the object ; on the contrary, our senses, by virtue of their own organic structure, give us a multiplicity reduced to an ordered unity inherent in the object itself, recognised, not created by us. Hence the understanding is not so spe cifically different from the sense-organism as Kant main tained, but operates as judgment and classification in all sense-perceptions and in memory, not excepting even the lowest sensation ; it is the same primary force of nature, show-
G. T. D-
? ? ? 34
BASIS OF MODERN THEOLOGY. [Bk. I.
ing itself here less clearly, there more distinctly and actively, now in separate, then in a connected series of operations. So too in the distinction between phenomena and noumena, Herder can only see a delusion of the imagination, since the true noumena must not be conceived as outside and behind the phenomena, but as within and of them, viz. , as the or ganising forces in organic processes ; to look for " the thing-in- itself " behind the phenomenal world, is to look for the wood behind the trees. Again, Herder is equally unable to follow Kant in assigning freedom and necessity to the intelligible and phenomenal worlds respectively ; on the contrary, the two are the inseparable elements of the very nature of all living force. In so far as forces act according to their own nature, they are free ; in so far as they are limited by other similarly free acting forces, there arise higher equations, which we call laws of nature ; these do not destroy freely
acting forces, but presuppose them. Thus human freedom also is only the highest force of our nature, which is free in so far as by virtue of its self-determination it obeys our nature's laws. On the other hand, it would be mere con fusion of thought to imagine a causality outside causality and a nature outside nature. Specially emphatic is Herder's con demnation of the way in which Kant, in the dialectic of pure reason, represents the idea of God as an illusion, which is afterwards required again by the practical reason ; as if be sides the reason which proscribed this fiction there were a second reason which could command its return from banish ment in the realm of the fabulous. This, says Herder, is
? juggling with reason, and can neither lead to real conviction nor to pure morality ; for a God thus postulated is no God at all, but only a last resource for a destitute moral system, while his existence is as problematical to the speculative reason as the man in the moon. But to reason not divided
against itself God is certainly no problematical distant Being, whose
existence must first be artificially inferred, or, failing this, be made a moral postulate. " On the contrary, he is the primal Being, recognised by the reason as given in all being, the primal force in all forces, the supreme reason of the world. If there is a reason which and knows that its own cause, there also a supreme reason which and knows that
the cause of the unity of all things. "
This the same line of thought as we found in Herder's
? ? it is
is
is
is
is,
it is,
? Ch. II. ] HERDER.
35
essay on Spinoza. It does not essentially differ from Kant's suggestion, in his Critique of Judgment, as to the divine basis of the reign of law and purpose in the natural and moral worlds. A reconciliation of the two points of view would, therefore, seem not impossible, especially when we remember Herder's statement elsewhere, that natural science only leads to the conception of nature as the totality of order and form, not directly to that God whom the religious mind desires to find in creation, because he would satisfy its longing for life and well-being. This involves the admission that the re ligious ideal of God and the metaphysical idea of a first cause answer to the needs of two different sides of our mind, which must not be directly identified. This was the truth contained
in Kant's distinction between the ideal of the practical reason and the speculative idea of the unconditioned ; Kant's error, against which Herder with good reason protested, lay in representing this valid distinction as a deep and apparently impassable gulf. This is characteristic generally of the whole antagonism between the two men ; the whole truth is nowhere wholly on one side , each is strong just where the other is weak. Kant's critical and analytical method was met
? by Herder's bold, synthetical intuitions. In order to ensure to
the mind its active share in all cognition, Kant had ban ished its object to the dim, incognisable distance of das Dingansich. Herder replied to this subjective theory by maintaining that all cognition is only the recognition of what is necessarily presupposed as given. Kant had separated the various functions of the mind in cognition ; Herder
their unbroken connection as members in the evolution of one and the same force. But Herder's theory of cognition never ceased to vacillate in an ill-defined way between a naive realism and a rational idealism. He slurred over the antitheses, which Kant had laboured scientific ally to solve, by the help of an indefinite intermediate idea. Herder's attempted correction of Kant could be accomplished only by starting from his critical philosophy and using its resources. This was, and still the task of
post- Kantian philosophy.
Having thus reviewed Herder's philosophical position in its
maturest stage, we come next to consider the form assumed by his theory of religion in accordance with it. He expounded his theory in series of works, dealing partly with the Bible,
emphasised
? ? a
is,
? 36 basis of modern theology. [Bk. i.
partly with dogmatic theology, between the years 1793 and 1797. Their basal idea is much more nearly related to Kant's philosophy of religion than Herder, in the heat of his polemic,
was able to see. The real difference that Kant's rational ism was softened by Herder's rich humanism, and brought by the help of history nearer to ecclesiastical Christianity. Chris tianity the ideal religion, and religion ideal humanity. This the ruling idea in these theological writings of the last period of Herder's life. But in order to effect this equalisation of religion and humanity, he does not, like Kant, work from above downwards he does not construct a religion " within the limits of reason," but he works upwards by the method of historical study. had always been one of his fundamental convictions that Christianity a history, an actual fact, an object of experience, and that can therefore be only rightly understood by the aid of its historical documents-- through the
Bible. Hence the study of the Bible the Alpha and Omega of all theological studies. This view he had expressed with eager enthusiastic warmth in his early Notes on the New
Testament and his Letters on the Study of Theology. But now, while still remaining quite true to and as before giving an aesthetic interpretation of the Gospels which halts mid-way between rationalism and supernaturalism, an unmistakable change has taken place in his method of exegesis. His in terest the Gospel narratives had formerly been that of the
? but he now at the same time the critical historian, investigating the origin of the Gospels and their re
lation to each other. Herder thus followed Semler, Lessing, and Eichhorn in that scientific examination of the documents of early Christianity which was fraught with such important
consequences to the theology of our century and though he was still prejudiced in favour of the traditional authors of the Gospels, he nevertheless rich subtle observations, espe cially with regard to the chronological order of the Gospels. His keen eye discovered in the Gospel of Mark the oldest written form of the apostolic tradition next order he placed the Gospel of the Hebrews. Both of these were used as authorities by the Hellenist Luke writing his history and only subsequently appeared the Greek Gospel of Matthew, consisting of a free translation and amplification of the Gospel of the Hebrews. Last of all came the Gospel of John, as " the echo of the older Gospels higher key. " In the
religious apologist
? ? in a
in in
it
;
;
is it,
is, is
in ;
is
;
It ;
is
in
is
is
it is
? Ch. II. ] HERDER.
Apostle John wished not only to expound, but also to purify the Palestine gospel-tradition ; hence he narrated only a few miracles, and even these only as symbols of the permanent miracle of the person of Christ. Whilst the earlier Gospels had still represented Christ as the Son of God in the narrower sense, John sought to teach the higher conception of the Son of God and Saviour of the world, and for this purpose made his whole Gospel systematically the Gospel of the Spirit.
This is really a just description of the Fourth Gospel. But a Gospel written with a dogmatic purpose, and standing in so close a connection with the speculative movements of its time, as Herder shows to be the case with this, cannot be an his
torical authority for the life of Jesus. Obvious as this infer ence was drawn neither by Herder nor by Schleiermacher after him and may be added that the latter was inferior to his predecessor in insight into the peculiar character of this Gospel. The inability to draw this conclusion was due in both cases to sympathy, as idealistic theologians, with the spiritual Gospel which converts history into ideas and ideas into history, and thus, in sense, furnishes the modern theologian with a pattern for his semi-allegorical, semi-apologetical interpretation of the Gospel narratives as " symbolic facts. " For this reason
Herder, like Schleiermacher, entertained a pronounced pre ference for John's Gospel, because, --assuming its apostolic authorship, --he thought he found the justification of his own procedure in interpreting the gospel history harmony with his free idealising feeling, and in attributing everything repugnant to to the national and temporal limitations of the narrators. Herder does not, true, carry this principle out so consistently as Schleiermacher. In relation to the gospel miracles, he still unable to get beyond strange
vacillation between their symbolical interpretation and ad herence to their real historical character. He quite agrees with Lessing, that the truth of a doctrine cannot be dependent upon miracle. " Was necessary for fire to fall from heaven
2000 years ago in order that we may now see the bright sun Must the laws of nature have been then suspended, we are now to be convinced of the internal necessity, truth, and beauty of the moral and spiritual kingdom " Nevertheless, Herder still regards at all events the three miracles " of the Baptism, Transfiguration, and Resurrection of Christ as the three bright spots in the celestial authentication of the con-
? ? ? ?
if
?
a
in
it
it is
a
it
it is
in it
;
is, it
? 38
BASIS OF MODERN THEOLOGY. [Bio I.
secrated one;" for, he characteristically continues, "they have a secret advocate in the human heart. " Since the stories of the miraculous appealed to his feelings and aesthetic taste, he suppressed the doubts of his intellect, which had embraced, as we have seen above, a philosophical view of the world in which there was no place for miracles. It is not allowable, therefore, to explain this surprising hesitancy and want of clearness in Herder's treatment of the Biblical miracles simply on the principle of accommodation, or from his fear of the de structive tendencies of the time ; but the reason of it must be found in his whole mode of thought. It was always such an essential peculiarity of his nature to look at ideas and actual facts in closest conjunction, that he was unable in the case of Biblical traditions to critically separate ideal contents from historical realities ; in fact, he could scarcely understand that this was required by science. Instead of explaining the re pugnant points in the miraculous narratives and dogmatic con ceptions of the Biblical writers by reference to their psycho logical origin in the religious and poetical motives of the
narrators or the community, Herder had recourse to a time- honoured substitute for scientific criticism ; involuntarily and unconsciously he recast the language of the Bible in the mould of his own, he allegorised. The result of this procedure was essentially the same as the " moral interpretation of the Bible " demanded by Kant. Herder's fierce opposition to this latter only proves that he did not see the divergence of his rational istic interpretation from the original sense of the text. The Christs of the Synoptists, and of John, and of Paul, freed respectively from the outer coverings of Nationality, of Alex andrian speculation, and of Pharisaic dogmatism, were all made together to teach his Christianity of humanity, because he was under the honest impression that he was thereby only translating the meaning of the Biblical writers into the language of our own time. This self-deception, though fatal to the scientific value of his Biblical labours, was really use ful, and perhaps necessary to the practical success of his attempted reconciliation of ecclesiastical traditions and modern culture. Moreover, with all this, Herder was the immediate precursor and kindred spirit of Schleiermacher, whose in
fluence in the reconstruction of dogma was also closely con nected with the weakness of his historical criticism.
Like Lessing, Herder drew a distinction between Christ's
? ? ? ? Ch. II. ] HERDER. 39
religion and the religion of which Christ is the object. Christ's religion is the rule of salvation, supplied by the teaching and life of Jesus in the perfect and universally valid form, viz. ,
" The knowledge of God as the Father, of man as his instru ment, of man's weakness as an object of grace and help, of the divine in man, of the strength, purity, and nobility, which must be roused and nourished. Love, therefore, --pre- venient, pure, uniting, active, -- is the only way of deliverance from all evils that oppress man, the only motive power capable
of establishing a kingdom of God among men. " Precisely this, according to Herder, was the ruling idea of Jesus, and the object of his life. " In his heart was written : God is my Father and the Father of all men ; all men are brothers. To this religion of humanity he dedicated his life, which he was ready wholly to offer up, if his religion might be that of all men. For it concerns the fundamental nature of our race -- both its
and final destiny. Through it the weaknesses of mankind serve to call forth a nobler power ; every oppressive evil, human wickedness even, becomes an incentive to its own defeat. The truest humanity breathes in the few speeches of Jesus which have come down to us ; it is nothing else than humanity which he manifested in his life, and sealed by his death, just as the chosen name by which he called himself was the Son of Man. As a spiritual saviour of his race, he sought to train up men of God, who would labour from pure motives for the good of others and reign by their patience as kings in the realm of truth and kindness. An object such as this must evidently be the sole purpose of providence with our race ; and all the wise and good on earth must and will co-operate to this end, in proportion to the pureness of their thought and endeavour ; for what other ideal could man have of perfection and happiness on earth, save this universally operative humanity ? "
According to Herder, therefore, the distinctive character of Jesus was, that he bore in his heart the ideal of man as the child of God, exemplified it in his life and death for our imitation, and at the same time trained up men of God and established a society of them, a kingdom of God among men, in which will be realised the purpose of providence with our race. The " Divine Sonship " of Christ is only another expression for this ideal " man of God," who knows God as his Father and all men as his brethren, and in self-sacrificing devotion to the
? original
? ? ? 40 BASIS OF MODERN THEOLOGY. [Bk. I.
good of men passively and actively fulfils the will of God. Was not this fundamentally Kant's meaning when he de scribed Jesus as the pre-eminent representative example of the idea of a race of men well-pleasing to God ? Herder, indeed, strongly denounced Kant's theory as " a romance, a mass of misleading fictions, an ignoble perversion of Scripture," etc. ; but this denunciation was doubtless primarily due to the mistaken notion that Kant had wished to substitute a personified idea for the historic Jesus. Herder's mistake was rendered possible by Kant's method of expounding his posi tion, as his constructive rationalism led him to start from the idea, and to connect the historical person of Jesus with it only as an example ; while Herder started from the historical person as the source of the Christian religion of humanity, and portrayed the idea as the essence of the manifestation of this person. The latter method is undoubtedly more advan tageous from the theological point of view ; but we must not deny the philosopher the right of starting from the idea, with its basis in the reason, and of accentuating the distinction be
tween it and the historical person in whom it is presented
for imitation, though it does not derive from him its ultimate
origin.
Again, just as Kant had distinguished the pure moral faith
of the reason from the "statutory" faith of the Church, so Her der distinguishes the religion of Christ, identical with the pure religion of humanity, from the religion of which Christ was the object, or the " doctrines" about the two natures in Christ, the legal conflict between Christ and Belial, the satisfaction made by Christ's death, etc. Of these ecclesiastical dogmas,
Herder speaks much more contemptuously than Kant, calling them childish questions, old second-hand phrases, masquerade and hypocrisy ; for Kant had found a meaning even in these doctrines, by interpreting them as symbols of the inner pro cesses of moral feeling. Herder's harsh judgment is no doubt to be partially explained by his practical experience as teacher, which showed him how many continue to cling to these husks of dogma, and so never reach the true kernel itself. But it
was more especially the consequence of the optimism inherited by Herder from Leibnitz, Shaftesbury, and Rousseau, and shared by Goethe ; he was convinced of the essential good ness of human nature, and could only look upon evil as a shadow, a weakness, which would of itself disappear with the
? ? ? ? Ch. II. ] . HERDER. 41
development of man's powers. Like Goethe, Herder was incapable of appreciating the profound difference between idea
and actuality, duty and inclination, or the struggle of the good and the bad principle, which was so important in Kant's ethics and religious philosophy. Hence both of them found Kant's doctrine of a " radical evil," which formed the basis of his moral interpretation of the doctrine of the atonement and justification, an incomprehensible stumbling-block. As the natural consequence of this unqualified antagonism to the dogmas of sin and salvation Herder found himself unable to explain them ; he regarded them as purely " arbitrary doc trines, having nothing to do with religion, which is an affair of the heart," and even as " the tomb of religion. " Herder did not sufficiently consider that they could never have arisen and influenced the Church, if they had not been the product and the expression, --however imperfect, --of the heart's religious energies, experiences, and needs ; and this to a large extent explains the insignificance of Herder's direct influence on theology. Schleiermacher, on the other hand, whose philo sophic views generally approached much more nearly Herder's than Kant's, was nevertheless able to adopt and assimilate the doctrines of sin and salvation, and was for this very reason in a position to carry out that reconstruction of Protestant theology at which Herder aimed.
Herder approaches Schleiermacher most nearly in his doc trine of the Holy Spirit, expounded in his discussion of the third article of the Apostles' Creed, in the essays, Vom Geist des Christenthums, and Von Religion und Lehrmeinungen.
By tracing historically the development of the idea of Holy Spirit, he shows that its meaning in Christianity is nothing else than the spirit of Christ, as animating and guiding the Chris tian Church and uniting all nations in the Kingdom of God. He places it in contrast, not less to the dogmatic conception of a personal principle inspiring man from without, than to the philosophical idea of an autonomous legislation of the reason.
The idea of magical inspiration he had already strongly pro tested against in his Briefc fiber das Studium der 1 heologie.
Inspiration must not be conceived as either the depression or as the wild exaltation of our mental powers. "Can He who made the eye be compelled to blind us in order that we may see ? Can the Spirit, who animates creation and all our powers, destroy them in order that in their stead he may pro
? ? ? ? 42
BASIS OF MODERN THEOLOGY. [Bk. I.
duce light within us? " On the contrary, inspiration and en lightenment are the awakening of the noblest powers of the mind ; perfectly undisturbed contemplation, calmest self-pos session, the most quietly effective truth, clear thoughts, en lightened views, happy resolves, pure actions -- these are the noblest gifts of the Spirit. The purest stage of revelation is to see things as they are, face to face, without figures and dreams. Least of all may we look for dark fanaticism in the revelation of him whom John calls light-giving Reason mani fested on earth. His revelation, i. e. , the truth which he clearly saw and uttered, was deliverance from everything unnatural, the restoration of mankind to the full use of its powers. Wherefore what we have to do is to turn from everything unnatural, from all magic, all bibliolatry, to nature and truth, which is also the spirit of the Bible.
But, on the other hand, it is precisely this nature and truth which Herder cannot find in the abstractions of philosophy. " That egoism which of itself issues commands and derives all its power to obey the law from the might of its own proud formal dictatorship, can hardly be the Spirit of God ; for in a formal legislation without contents, there is neither might nor blessedness, neither life nor spirit. But it is life that impels thee to what thou oughtest to do and to be. As in the realm of nature a universal law assigns to each impulse its limits, the observance of which limits leads to enjoyment, their dis regard to discomfort ; so the same law must be operative in the realm of man's spiritual impulses. Here too watches a bene ficent spirit within us, awakening our slumbering powers, aveng ing their misuse, and saving us from excess. You may call it reason, conscience, etc. ; the wise have ever recognised it as a voice of God. " It was this pure impulse in man which was aroused by Christianity, not by the inculcation of virtue, for thereby no impulse is roused, but by awakening love. Every man has within him a good spirit, a divine voice, a canon and criterion of truth ; not as a universal legislation for all rational beings, but, as a definite and perfectly individual ideal of what he himself is and ought to be. To become conscious of this
ideal, to acknowledge to obey its active impulse and con trolling limitations, this living virtue in each finds him self united to others fellowship of mutual activity, for no impulse acts in isolation, and the noblest characteristic in man, the impulse of all impulses, love, the basis of all social life.
? ? ? is
in
a is it,
;
it
? Ch. II. ] -HERDER.
Herder therefore maintains that the Christian spirit is
neither the principle of magical inspiration nor simply the legislative reason, but the inward impulse to truth and good ness, as the power of enthusiasm, truth, and love, which does not merely command men to do the good, but is itself operative, which does not issue a universal imperative, but places before each his special individual ideal, and, as being the purest impulse in men's nature, necessarily unites them
in social bonds. He opposed the abstractness and power- lessness of Kantian ethics on the same lines as those on which Schleiermacher, Fichte, Schiller, and others had tried to
r j i
remedy the incompleteness of the categorical imperative and to restore to their proper place man's moral emotions and impulses and individual needs. In conclusion, we may sum up our view of the relation of Herder's philosophy of religion to that of Kant in the words of Haym (Herder, II. 654)
? : " Not only was Herder's religion of equity, goodness, and loving-kindness larger-hearted than Kant's religion of rigid
duty, but it also fitted itself much better to the original docu ments, and, in fact, to the historical elements of Christianity generally. Kant's religion of reason, with his principle of
moral interpretation, did violence to the words of the Bible and the creeds ; Herder's religion of humanity put itself by a little conciliation into accord with the words of Christ and the apostles.
Kant primarily impressed upon the intellectual conceptions of the traditional religion a new moral form ; Herder let intellectual conceptions alone, and, in opposition to all dogmatic theology and all philosophical formulae, empha sised the inward contents of that religion, consisting in the emotions and dispositions of the heart. Both aimed at purify ing and rationalising Christianity, the one by a morality of pure reason, the other by a morality not less emotional than rational. "
? ? ? CHAPTER III.
schleiermacher's period of romanticism.
Two years after Herder's book on Religion und Lehrmein- ungen, appeared the work of Schleiermacher, then a young preacher in Berlin, Reden iiber die Religion an die Gebildeten unter ihren Verdchtern (1799). The object of the two books was essentially the same ; they protested against religion being confounded with the opinions of the schools, whether theological or philosophical, and against its being mixed up with politics ; in a word, against dogmatic and politico- ecclesiastical Christianity. They insisted, on the other hand, on the inwardness of the religious life, the immediateness of religious feeling, and especially on the free play of religious individuality. But the Romanticism of the younger writer led him so to exaggerate this common drift that it became unhistorical subjectivism and an exclusively emotional mys ticism, which Herder's many-sided humanism and historical
could never have approved. But in spite, or rather because, of this extreme one-sidedness, Schleiermacher's book made a deeper impression upon its time than Herder had been able to produce with his own more moderate writings, designed to effect a compromise between the extreme views. To-day, the mystical, poetical, rhetorical language of the Reden is hardly to our taste; but to the educated classes of his own time, whose thoughts and feelings were those of idealistic
Romanticism, this language was intelligible, and well calculated to bring home to them the peculiar value of religion, and, -- if not to accomplish the reconciliation of modern culture and the ancient faith of the Church, --at any rate to prepare the way and show its possibility. Though we can find but little in the paradoxical positions of these Reden which is permanent and valuable as it stands, they are still historically important, as containing the fertile germs, the refined and ripened products of which we shall hereafter meet with in Schleier
? insight
? ? ? Ch. III. ] SCHLEIERMACHER.
45
macher's great work on dogmatics, which accomplished the reconciliation of Herder's religion of humanity with the doctrines of the Church.
That Schleiermacher's system is much more akin to Herder's than to those of Kant, Fichte, or Schelling, is an
indisputable fact, hitherto always overlooked only because Herder, standing mid-way between philosophers and theolo gians, has had the misfortune to be ignored by both parties as
not belonging to either of them. In his attack on the chief positions of Kant's theory of religion,--the transcendental postulates of freedom, immortality, and God, --we find Schleier- macher in his earliest writings fighting side by side with
Herder. As Herder had rejected a causality outside causality, and held freedom and necessity to be combined in the nature of the rational will, i. e. , the will determined by its own law (comp. ante, p. 34), so Schleiermacher, in an essay on
freedom, substituted for Kant's dualism a
determinism, according to which the will is determined by the nature of the conceptions at any time present in the mind as a whole. As Herder had condemned Kant's procedure in basing his postulate of God on the conception of the supreme good, so Schleiermacher, in a subtle analysis of this idea,1 showed the untenability of Kant's definition of it as the combination of virtue and happiness ; for happiness is by no means a conception of the pure reason, being conditioned by time and sensation, and hence cannot belong to the "supreme good," either in a future world or in this, for the "supreme good" means simply "the totality of what is possible by the laws of pure reason. " Moreover, as Schleiermacher elsewhere remarks, according to Kant's
which bases the belief in God and immortality upon impure motives derived from the interests of happiness, this belief must wane in good men as their motives wax in purity. Further, as Herder had resorted to an idealised Spinozism. as against the onesidedness of subjective idealism, so Schleiermacher felt the necessity of combining, as mutual correctives, Spinozism and the onesided idealism of Kant and Fichte which made the universe merely the reflection of our limitations, hoping thus to gain a " higher realism " as the foundation of religion. Thus Spinoza's cognitio Dei intuitiva
1 In Dilthey, Beilagen, pp. 10-15.
? argument,
psychological
? ? ? 46 BASIS OF MODERN THEOLOGY. [Bk. I.
lies at the root both of Herder's and Schleiermacher's
conception of religion. Herder teaches that our reason must
recognise God as the primal Being in all being, the primal Force in all forces, the supreme Reason in the world ; he speaks of "a feeling of the invisible in the visible, of the one in the many, of power in its effects, as the root of all ideas of the reason " to which we must trace back the origin of religion. With this, Schleiermacher almost verbally agrees, pronouncing the "contemplation of the universe," and "the feeling of the infinite in the finite " the pivot of religion. But at this point appears a significant difference. Herder failed definitely to distinguish the intuitive perception and recog nition of the revelation of God in the world and in men, either from thinking or in particular from moral willing and action ; hence he gives so wide a meaning to religion that it is in danger of being lost in the indefiniteness of ideal humanity, and to a large extent becomes equivalent to morality ; Schleiermacher, on the other hand, in order to ensure to religion its special sphere, drew so sharp a line between the immediate sight and feeling of the infinite and reflective thinking and the moral life, that religion seems to
be confined to the mystical emotions of the individual, and its influence on the thoughts and actions of men, and there with its power of forming communities, to be destroyed. With both thinkers religion is a matter of the heart, but it is so with Herder in the sense that the heart's emotion is one with conviction and purpose ; with Schleiermacher it is so in the sense that the heart with its emotions with draws into its own mystical depths, fearing any freezing contact with thought and purpose. This is the point of contact between Schleiermacher and Romanticism, in which the subjective idealism of philosophy had become the practical cultus of the ego, more specifically the apotheosis of the heart with its noble or ignoble feelings. Novalis was only expressing the views of Schleiermacher as he then was, when
he said, "Religion arises whenever the heart comes to feel
itself; when it makes itself into an ideal object, and all absolute
feeling is religious. "
In order to discover the origin of religion within the soul,
Schleiermacher, in the second Rede, refers to the moment prior to all definite consciousness, in which the universe comes into contact with our sensibility, when sense and object are
? ? ? ? Ch. III. ] SCHLEIERMACHER. 47
still one, not yet separated respectively into perception and feeling. In spite of the poetical description of this moment as " the direct betrothal, too holy for error or mistake, of the universe with the incarnate reason in creative,
productive embrace," we cannot understand why in it should lie the origin specially of religious states of mind, since this moment is simply that of the direct affection of the senses, which is
the source of all perception and sensation. This difficulty
is not solved by what follows : " So far as your feeling ex presses the life and being common to you and the universe,
it constitutes your piety ; your sensations, and the effects upon
you of all the life surrounding you, are all elements, and the
sole elements, of religion ; there is no feeling which is not religious, save such as indicates an unhealthy condition of life. " Here, as in the words of Novalis just quoted, feeling
and religion are simply identified ; and the facts are over- / looked, which can escape no impartial student of the religious
life, that there are feelings which, without being unhealthy, have nothing to do with religion, and that religion has an active side of conception and purpose, in addition to a passive
side of feeling.
But Schleiermacher speaks not only of feeling but also of
intuitions (Anschauungen), which in the first edition of the Reden hold the first place, even though afterwards subordi nated to feeling. The relation of the two is not clearly stated, but it is plain that Schleiermacher could not ignore the intuitions if he wished to state the definite contents of the religious consciousness, and not rest satisfied with the complete indefiniteness of feeling, The object of religious intuition is indeed the universe, yet not directly as such, but in its finite revelations in nature and human life. In nature it is not masses of natural or beautiful forms, but laws which reveal the divine unity and unchangeableness of the world, and which therefore affect us religiously. Yet there the question arises, whether the aesthetic view of nature is really so im material to religion, whether it does not affect the mind much sooner than the intellectual view ; further, whether the reign of law in nature is an object of direct intuition and not rather the result of reflective thought. The external world can only be understood by the internal, and this again only by the contemplation of self in the mirror of mankind at large; whilst the individual, when looked at from the moral point of view, is
? ? ? ? 48 BASIS OF MODERN THEOLOGY. [Bk. I.
isolated and found wanting, as measured by the standard of the ideal, religion discovers even here a characteristic life and wonderful harmony of the whole. Leaving the whole and contemplating himself, the devout man finds there too the marks of the highest and the lowest, a compendium of humanity. Further, even when intuition fails us, imaginative
can travel beyond nature and mankind, and reach further forms of the universe. With these intuitions are connected the religious feelings of humility, love, thank fulness, pity, remorse ; feelings which, Schleiermacher holds, do not belong to morality but only to religion, since they do not exist for the sake of some action, but are their own cause and end, as factors of the highest and most inward life. These feelings have a peculiar complexion in each religion, comparable with the different styles and tastes in music ; and the character of a religion is determined solely by this common element of
feeling, not by a system of propositions deducible from each other and capable of logical concatenation. For this very reason, everything in religion is equally true, as far as it is the pure product of feeling and has not yet been moulded by thought. The distinction of " true and false," therefore, does not apply to religion at all ; every religion is true in its own way, though it must not be forgotten that the whole realm of
religion is boundless, and can assume the most diverse shapes. Religion is never intolerant, but only religious systems. The mania for systems repudiates everything foreign to each,
while religion shuns the cold uniformity which would be fatal to its divine profusion. It is only the adherents of the dead letter, which religion rejects, that have filled the world with the tumult of religious controversies : they who have had a true vision of the Eternal were always peaceful souls, being either alone with themselves and the Infinite, or, if they looked around on others, gladly according to each his special characteristics. To a devout soul, religion makes everything holy and precious, even what is unholy and common, whether corresponding to its own thought and action or not ; for religion is the sworn foe of all pusillanimity and narrowness,
v / She cannot be held responsible for fanatical actions, simply because she does not of herself impel to action at all. Religious feeling is neither bound, nor permitted directly to influence action ; it rather invites to peaceful, absorbing enjoyment, than impels to external acts. Feelings and
presentiment
? ? ? ? Ch. III. ] SCHLEIERMACHER. 49
actions naturally form two concurrent series, " nothing should be done at the instigation of religion ; but every thing with religion ; religious feelings should accompany active life without intermission like a sacred melody. "
We see that Schleiermacher is here pleading the cause of
a mystical religion of the heart ; a religion which is satisfied
with the peaceful absorbing enjoyment of its own feelings, and does not think itself called upon to formulate either an intel- \ lectual truth or a consistent system of dogmas, or to take an active part in the world's life, thus with large-hearted toler ance giving free play to the thoughts and ways of mankind.
With all respect for this large-hearted humanity, we are compelled to ask two questions : Firstly, how far does the actual history of religion correspond to the description of it here given ? Has any vigorous religion ever actually abstained from laying claim to the exclusive possession of the truth, or
rom giving expression to its emotions in corresponding deeds, in energetic action upon the world ? Has not precisely the early youth of all religions, when their enthusiasm was most spontaneous and least controlled by reflection or confined in systems, been marked also by the most intolerant self-assur- ance, the most narrow exclusiveness, and the most passionate zeal in proselytising ? And is the vehemence, distinguishing disputes about religious dogmas from other conflicts of opinion, due really to intellectual thought, and not rather to the pathos of the emotions finding expression in these dogmas? If it be rejoined that it was not Schleiermacher' s object to describe the positive religions, but only the ideal religion, conceived by him as the goal of historical development, this would at once give rise to the further question, Can we accept it as characteristic of the ideal religion, that it should be the self- abandonment of each to the enjoyment of his individual feel ings, without seeking at all to influence the thought and action of individuals, to say nothing of the community ? In fact, the only conclusion to which we can come that this isolation,
favoured by Romanticism, of the emotional religion of the
individual heart not less impossible, psychologically, than unhistorical, inasmuch as destroys all the social elements by which religion has formed communities and become power in history. Schleiermacher, true, could not escape the necessity of offering an explanation of the facts of the actual formation of religious conceptions and religious societies, ac-
' * |v
/
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a
it is
it
is
is,
? 50
BASIS OF MODERN THEOLOGY. [Bk. I.
? \
companying every religion ; but the way in which he does this serves rather to illustrate than to obviate the error of his
principle.
The dogmas and propositions which experience shows to
be connected with religion, are, according to Schleiermacher, simply the result of the comparison of the emotions, and the means of their expression and communication to others ; for religion itself they are not necessary, but are only an adven titious creation of reflection. A man may have a great deal of religion without the aid of such concepts as " miracle, in spiration, revelation," but reflection on and comparison of his religious feelings necessarily put them in his way. Hence they have an unlimited right in religion, but only as religious ex pressions for subjective states of feeling, the meaning of which must not be extended to the sphere of metaphysics or morals. " Miracle " is the religious name for an occurrence ; the re ligious man recognises miracles not in a few only, but in all occurrences. " Revelation " is any original and new com munication of the universe and its inmost life to man, giving birth" to a special class of intuitions and emotions. " Inspira tion signifies the feeling of higher enthusiasm and freedom. " Prophecy" is the presentiment foreshadowing and anticipat ing the further course of a present train of events. All these terms therefore denote subjective experiences essential to all religious life, and therefore present in some degree in every religious man. Hence, since each man can and ought to experience these things for himself, faith must not depend upon external authority, at any rate only temporarily. " Not every man who believes in sacred Scriptures has religion, but only he who has a living and direct understanding of them, and who, therefore, so far as he himself is concerned, can most
with them. " Finally, Schleiermacher dis cusses from the same point of view the concepts, God and
Immortality. These, too, he holds, are not presuppositions and conditions of religious feeling, but the product of reflection on it. Hence the form given to the concept of God is of secondary importance ; it depends upon the bent of the imagination, whether we think of the Spirit of the Universe as free personality, or give up the personal idea of the Deity, in humble consciousness of the limitations of personality ; in any case, whichever conception a man adopts, the main ques tion whether he has feeling of God, and this feeling of the
easily dispense
? ? is,
a
? Ch. III. ] SCHLEIERMACHER. 5 1
Divine will always be better than his conception of it.
last point may certainly be conceded, although one may with good reason urge against the rest, that our idea of God is still of much greater importance to the content of religious
to its ethical character, than SchTeier- macher was willing to admit. ) To the ordinary idea of im
mortality our apologist for religion is not so much indifferent
as hostile ; it seems to him irreligious rather than religious,
as betraying a clinging to the finite form of existence, whereas personality ought rather even here to be renounced from love
to God, in order to live in the One and the All. "In the
midst of the finite to become one with the infinite, and to be
eternal in every moment, -- this is the immortality of religion. "
(We may let the mysticism of this view pass without sup- . posing that the last, or even a decisive, word has been pro-"-^ >>*( "
feeling, particularly
(The
? nounced on the question of immortality^
The third Discourse draws a very dark picture of the age
of the Aufkldrung, the shallow utilitarianism of which stifled
all sense of religion ; and the fourth proceeds to speak of
Church and priesthood, describing religious fellowship both as it is and as it ought to be. The actual Church Schleier- macher considers to be only an association of those who are still seeking religion, in which all are supposed to receive, and only one to give. It is therefore opposed in almost every
respect to the ideal religious community. Though indispens able at present as an institution for scholars and learners, it suffers under unavoidable defects ; the authority and the method of the transmission of religious doctrines inevitably produce sectarianism, superstition, adherence to ceremonies, and the distinction of priests and laity. All these evils are made intolerable, and the real ruin of the Church brought about by the interference of the State in the Church's life. Left to
itself, its imperfect condition would have led to the separation of the true Church, the living members uniting in small societies around leaders chosen by themselves. But these true inspired members were excluded by the connection of Church and State from the leadership of the community, and their place was unworthily filled by officially appointed teachers, whose duty was to educate the citizens in the habits of thought favourable to orderly government. Besides this, articles of belief were settled, and ceremonies enjoined, and the whole degraded into a political institution. This state of things cannot be main-
O^0,
yDU * /
? ? ? 1/
\/
52 BASIS OF MODERN THEOLOGY. [Bk. I.
tained. " Away with all such connection between Church and State ! I shall continue, like Cato, to reiterate this oracle until the end, or until I see the connection annihilated. " With the end of our artificial culture and social system will have come a time when, as in the sacred youth of the world, no other society will be necessary to help men to be religious than that of the devout home. There will no longer be any distinct office of teacher, no difference between teacher and congre gation ; the calling of the minister will be a private occupation, the temple a private room, an assembly of likeminded friends will form the Church. Then only will the exalted fellowship of truly religious souls spread in all directions, as an academy of priests pursuing religion as an art and a study, as a circle of brothers united by the closest ties of sentiment and mutual
? Such was the ideal Church of Schleiermacher in his early years, an ideal in which Moravian mysticism is
combined with Romantic exaggeration in fantastic idealism. Herder, notwithstanding his equally great dislike of an official State Christianity, took a far more sober view of the functions
understanding.
of the Church in the moral education of the people.
The fifth Discourse treats of the Positive Religions. As something infinite, religion can exist in the world only under a multiplicity of specific manifestations, that in the various positive religions, and not as an empty abstraction, such as the
so-called " natural religion" would be. The preference given to the latter in his time, Schleiermacher thinks, was due simply to the fact, that those to whom religion general was ob noxious like that form of best which really not religion at all, and has the fewest of its characteristics. So-called " natural religion " commonly so refined away, and so nearly akin to metaphysics and ethics, as to exhibit few of the cha racteristic traits of religion. On the other hand, every positive religion has a specific individual character. The character of such a religion not determined by its share of the totality of religious views and feelings, for these may all be met with in some form every actual religion but each individual religion produced when some special view of the universe
made a centre-point, and everything else subordinated to it. In so far as each man can do this for himself, there would
naturally be as many individual religions as religious indi viduals. And, in fact, Schleiermacher explicitly says, Any man who can fix the date of the birth of his religion, and trace
? ? is
is
in
is
is
;
it
is in
is,
? Ch. III. ] SCHLEIERMACHER.
53
its origin to the direct action upon him of the Deity, i. e. , to " revelation," has his own special and real religion. Here everything is life and freedom and true natural development, whereas in " natural religion " everything is abstract, and its strength lies in the negation of what is positive and character istic ; it is like the soul that refused to come into the world, because it wished to be not a definite man, but man in general. This subjectivism, which resolves all connection between his torical religions into accidental individual phenomena, was afterwards abandoned by Schleiermacher himself when he sought to combine the claims of individuality with the import ant functions of the social element.
The development of religion Schleiermacher conceives as
following the successive stages (then erroneously accepted) of fetishism, polytheism, and monotheism. In this connection he has occasion to speak of pantheism, which he does not regard as a special form of religion, but as a speculative theory, quite reconcilable with true religious feeling, as long as we do not understand by it a masked materialism. The fundamental idea of Judaism Schleiermacher holds to be retribution, which was only possible in the narrow field of a limited national community; its importance as preparatory to Christianity he rates very low. " I hate in religion this idea of historical relations ; eadh religion has its own eternal neces- ' sity, and has always its own independent origin"--a statement characteristic of Schleiermacher' s want of historical insight, a defect from which even his later theology is never quite free. The fundamental idea of Christianity he considers to be, that the corruption of the world, consisting in alienation from God,
is put an end to and a mediation is effected between the finite and God by individual points, scattered over the whole, in which both the Divine and the human are united. " Ruin and salvation, enmity and mediation, these are the two in separably connected fundamental relations underlying this habit of feeling, and determining the shape of the entire re ligious content and form of Christianity. " That presupposition of universal ungodliness is the cause of the polemical character and the sense of " sorrow " which, Schleiermacher thinks, are special characteristics of Christianity. But since Christianity at the same time discerns in history constantly new dispensa tions on the part of God for retrieving this ruin, ever higher revelations and mediators with a view of uniting the Divine
,
? ? ? ? 54
BASIS OF MODERN THEOLOGY. [Bk. I.
and the human, it makes the history of religion itself the
material of religion and so raises religion as it were to a
higher power (just as, according to Schlegel, the poetry of Romanticism, by taking the given forms of poetry itself as its material, raises poetry to a higher power. ) Of the founder of Christianity it is further maintained, that the wonderful thing about him was not so much the purity of his moral doctrine, which only expressed what is common to him with all men who have attained to full spiritual consciousness, nor his character, combining exalted power with touching gentleness ; what was truly divine in him was the clearness of his idea of the neces sity of a mediation between everything finite and God, or of the necessity of redemption for man imprisoned in the finite.
" His consciousness of the directness of his knowledge of God and of his existence in God, and of his power of arousing it in others, was at the same time the consciousness of his medi atorial office and of his deity. " " But never," adds Schleier- macher, " did Jesus claim to be the only mediator" ; he never
? required men to accept his ideas for the sake of his person, but only the latter for the sake of the ideas ; he never repre sented the views and feelings which he communicated as the totality of religion, neither did his disciples ever wish to limit the absolute freedom of the revelation of the spirit ; and so
neither does the Bible forbid any other book to be or become a Bible too. Christianity will last for ever in so far as there will never be a time when no more mediators are needed ; but nevertheless it repudiates the claim to be the sole and sove reign form of religion ; it wishes to see other younger, and, if possible, stronger and nobler forms of religion springing up
beside and a prophetic mind could perhaps even now indi cate the point which must be the centre of communion with the Deity for future generations. This view of the possibility of a more perfect religion than Christianity Schleiermacher afterwards limited to continuous development within Chris
tianity itself, just as in his later Glaubenslehre he no longer regarded Christ as one mediator among several, but as the only one whose consciousness of God was perfect and of unceasing efficacy for the whole race.
We can easily understand that so original and paradoxical a work as these " Discourses on Religion " would arouse much opposition on all sides; the narrow circle of the author's Romantic friends only did meet with approval, and
? ? in it
a
it,
? Ch. III. ] SCHLEIERMACHER.