III.
Such philosophy as this was, of course, capable of innumerable forms. Let us illustrate more in detail from the work of particular men: Best do they comprehend truth, declares in substance the young Friedrich Schlegel, best do they comprehend truth who have experienced the most moods. The truly philosophical attitude towards life and reality is therefore one of a sort of courageous fickleness. Schlegel himself called it the romantic irony, and endeavored to found a system upon it. This is his rather grotesque attempt to revive the Socratic method and doctrine. Socrates had founded his whole life as a conversational teacher, who never preached but always asked questions, upon a sort of ironical confession that he was not wise. “This,” he used to affirm, “is my only wisdom, to know that I am an utterly ignorant man.” Well, somewhat so, but still with a difference, thinks Schlegel, the romantic genius confesses that marvelous as is his present divination of the truth of things, it is, after all, a quick divination, so to speak, which will away again erelong, and will give place to some other theory, equally creditable to its clever possessor, equally true, but also equally fickle and therefore false. “The deepest truth known to me is that erelong my present truth will change:” such, thinks Schlegel, is true wisdom. For the world, as you see, is the world for the self, for the inner life, for the heart. And the heart is so strong and lively a thing that it will change frequently. “The world exists for me; and to-morrow I propose to make a new world:” such is Schlegel’s early interpretation of the essence of Fichte’s view. But alas, Fichte’s ethical idealism, with the moral law left out, is too grotesque in its mutilation to become a coherent doctrine. Friedrich Schlegel gave up this fickleness in later years, went over to the Catholic church, and devoted himself otherwise to
