work, as well as rich in personal and moral progress. He relieved
Friedrich Schlegel entirely of his nominal responsibility for
the translation of Plato, which they had together undertaken
(vols. 1-5, 1804-1810; 3rd ed., 1855-186I; vol. 6, Repub.
1828; 2nd ed., 1855-1862). At the same time another work,
Grundlinien einer Kritik der bisherigen Sittenlelzre (1803; 2nd
ed. 1834), the first of his strictly critical and philosophical
productions, occupied him. This work is a severe criticism of
all previous moral systems, especially those of Kant and Fichte,
Plato's and Spinoza's finding most favour; its leading principles
are that the tests of the soundness of a moral system are the
completeness of its view of the laws and ends of human life
as a whole and the harmonious arrangement of its subject-matter
under one fundamental principle; and, though it is almost
exclusively critical and negative, the book announces clearly the
division and scope of moral science which Schleiermacher
subsequently adopted, attaching prime importance to a
“ Giiterlehre, ” or doctrine of the ends to be obtained by moral
action. But the obscurity of the style of the book as well as
its almost purely negative results proved fatal to its immediate
success. In 1804 Schleiermacher removed as university
preacher and professor of theology to Halle, where he remained
until 1807, and where he quickly obtained a reputation as
professor and preacher, and exercised a powerful influence in
spite of the contradictory charges of his being atheist, Spinozist
and pietist. In this period he wrote his dialogue the Weihnachlsfeier
(1806; 4th ed. 1850), a charming production, which
holds a place midway between his Reden and his great dogmatic
work, Der christliche Glaube, and presents in the persons of its
speakers phases of his growing appreciation of Christianity
as well as the conflicting elements of the theology of the period.
After the battle of ]ena he returned to Berlin (1807), was soon
appointed pastor of the Trinity Church there, and the next
year married the widow of his friend Willich. At the foundation
of the Berlin university (ISIC), in which he took a prominent
part, he was called to a theological chair, and soon became
secretary 'to the Acaderrry of Sciences. He was thus placed in a
position suited to his powers and in domestic and social surroundings
adapted to meet the wants of his rich nature. At the
same time he approved himself in the pulpit and elsewhere
as a large-hearted and fearless patriot in that time of national
calamity and humiliation, acquiring a name and place in his
country's annals with Arndt, Fichte, Stein and Scharnhorst.
He took a prominent part too in the reorganization of the
Prussian church, and became the most powerful advocate of
the union of the Lutheran and Reformed divisions of German
Protestantism. The twenty-four years of his professional
career in Berlin were opened with his short but important outline
of theological study (Kurze Darstellung des theologischen S ludiums,
1811; 2nd ed. 1830), in which he sought to do for theology
what he had done for religion in his Reden. While he preached
every Sunday, he also gradually took up in his lectures in the
university almost every branch of theology and philosophy-New
Testament exegesis, introduction to and interpretation of
the New Testament, ethics (both philosophic and Christian),
dogmatic and practical theology, church history, history of philosophy,
psychology, dialectics (logic and metaphysics), politics,
pedagogy and aesthetics. His own materials for these lectures
and his students' notes and reports of them are the only form in
which the larger proportion of his works exist-a circumstance
which has greatly increased the difficulty of getting a clear
and harmonious view of fundamental portions of his philosophical
and ethical system, while it has effectually deterred
all but the most courageous and patient students from reading
these posthumous collections. As a preacher he produced a
powerful effect, yet not at all by the force of his oratory but by
his intellectual strength, his devotional spirit and the philosophical
breadth and unity of his thought. In politics he was
an earnest friend of liberty and progress, and in the period of
reaction which followed the overthrow of Napoleon he was
charged by the Prussian government with “ demagogic agitation
” in conjunction with the great patriot Arndt. At the same
time he prepared for the press his chief theological work Der
christliche Glaube nach den Grundsdtzen der evangelischen Kirche
(1821-1822; end ed., greatly altered, 1830-1831; 6th ed.,
1884). The fundamental principle of this classical work is, that
religious feeling, the sense of absolute dependence on God as
communicated by Jesus Christ through the church, and not
the creeds or the letter of Scripture or the rationalistic understanding,
is the source and lawof dogmatic theology. The
work is therefore simply a description of the facts of religious feeling, or of the inner life of the soul in its relations to God, and these inward facts are looked at in the various stages of their development and presented in their systematic Connexion. The aim of the work was to reform Protestant theology by means of the fundamental ideas of the Reden, to put an end to the unreason and superficiality of both super naturalism and rationalism, and to deliver religion and theology from a relation of dependence on perpetually changing systems of philosophy. Though the work added to the reputation of its author, it naturally aroused the increased opposition of the theological schools it was intended to overthrow, and at the same time Schleiermacher's defence of the right of the church to frame its own liturgy in opposition to the arbitrary dictation of the monarch or his ministers brought upon him fresh troubles. He felt himself in Berlin more and more isolated, although his church and his lecture-room continued to be largely attended. But he prosecuted his translation of Plato and prepared a new and greatly altered edition of his Christliche Glaube, anticipating the latter in two letters to his friend Lticke (in the Sludien und Kritfken, 1829), in which he defended with a masterly hand his theological position generally and his book in particular against opponents on the right and the left. The same year he lost his only sona blow which, he said, “ drove the nails into his own cothn.” But he continued to defend his theological position against Hengstenberg's party on the one hand and 'the rationalists von Colln and D. Schulz on the other, protesting against both subscription to the ancient creeds and the imposition of a new rationalistic formulary. In the midst of such labours, and enjoying still full bodily and mental vigour, he was carried off after a few days' illness by inflammation of the lungs, on the 12th of February 1834. 4
Philosophical System.-A great antithesis lies at the basis of all thought and life-that of the real and the ideal, of organism, or sense, and intellect. But the antithesis is not absolute, for in life and being both elements are united-though without its presence life and thought would be impossible. In the actual world the antithesis appears as reason and nature, in each of which, however, there is a- combination of its two elements-the ideal and the real the reason having a preponderance of the first and nature a preponderance of the second. At the basis of nature lies universal reason as its organizing principle, and when reason becomes a conscious power in man it finds itself in conflict as well as in harmony with external nature. The whole effort and end of human thought and action is the gradual reduction of the realm and the power of this antithesis in the individual, the race and the world. Though the antithesis is real and deep, the human mind cannot admit its absolute nature; we are compelled to suppose a transcendental reality or entity in which the real and the ideal, being and thought, subject and object, are one. Consciousness itself involves the union of the antithetic elements, and prior to moral action nature is found organized and reason manifested or symbolized therein. We are ourselves proofs of the unity of the real and the ideal, of thought and being, for we are both, our self-consciousness supplying the expression of the fact. As we have in ourselves an instance of the identity of thought and being, we must suppose a universal identity of the ideal and real behind the antithesis which constitutes the world. This supposition is the basis of all knowledge, for thought becomes knowledge only when it corresponds to being. The sup position may be called a belief, but it is so only in the sense in which belief appears in the religious department, .where it is the ultimate ground of all action. The supposition is the basis of all ethics, for without the conviction of the correspondence of thought and reality action would be fruitless and in the end impossible. It is above all the substance of religious feeling, which is the immediate consciousness of the unity of the world, of the absolute oneness behind the infinite multiplicity of contrasts; indeed, it is the religious conviction of the unity which is the best guarantee of the truth of the suppositions of philosophy. It is “ the religious consciousness of the unity of the intellectual and physical world in God ” which is to overcome the, scepticism of the critical philosophy. But, though
