Part 21

Fichte began to teach at Jena soon after 1790. Grasping firmly Descartes’ principle, “Cogito, ergo sum,” he conceived that, as we can only know ourselves, there is no proof that the datum supposed to be external is anything but a form of our own consciousness; and thus he arrived at a subjective idealism not unlike that of bishop Berkeley.(735) Under his view God was only an idea or form of thought; a regulative principle of human belief, the moral order of which the mind was conscious in the universe; and, as atheism was suspected to follow as an inference from his views, he became the subject of persecution. But the instincts of the heart, as well as the arguments of the understanding, were too potent for him; and when he had thus as it were shut up man within the circle of his own finite self, he strove to find a logical passage into a knowledge of the infinite by a principle analogous to that of Spinoza; viz. by regarding both self and the outer world, the subjective and objective, to be identified in some absolute self-existence, of which they were respectively phases.(736)

This aim was only partially effected by Fichte, and was completed by his distinguished successor, Schelling.(737) Schelling saw that the subjective tendency had been pushed too far; and, relying on the spiritual sense through which men of all ages have conceived that they saw the infinite, the reality of which accordingly seems to be attested by a universal induction, he tried to grasp the idea of the self-existent One, who is the one absolute Reality, the one eternal Being, the eternal Source from which all other light is derived, and from which all things develope. “Intellectual intuition” he thought to be the means by which we have this knowledge of the infinite, and are able to trace the development of it into its limitations in nature and in the mind. The method is analogous to that of Spinoza, save that the infinite is studied dynamically instead of mechanically, as a movement not a substance, in time not in space.

The roll of these great thinkers, whose speculations were suggested by the formal side of Kant’s philosophy, is not yet full. But the two which have been named wrote and affected thought, the one before, the other soon after, the commencement of the present century. Hegel followed in the same track, but influenced thought at a later period.(738) He too aimed at solving the same problem as Schelling: he too sought to transcend the conditions of object and subject which limit thought; but it was by assuming a representative or mediate faculty that transcends consciousness, and not, as Schelling, an intuitional or presentative.(739)

Such were the philosophers who aimed at solving the problem of knowledge and being from the intellectual side. Jacobi on the other hand attempted it from the emotional. Perceiving the necessity of finding some justification for the material element which Kant had assumed in his philosophy, he sought it in faith, in intuition, in the direct inward revelation of truth to the human mind. He thought that, as sensation gives us an immediate knowledge of the world, so there is an inward sense by which we have a direct and immediate revelation of supernatural truth. It is this inward revelation which gives us access to the material of truth. His position was analogous to that of Schelling, but he asserted the element of feeling as well as intuition.

These philosophies, of Fichte, Schelling, and Jacobi, formed one class of influences, which were operating about the beginning of the century, and were the means of redeeming alike German literature and theology. Their first effect was to produce examination of the primary principles of belief, to excite inquiry; and, though at first only reinforcing the idea of morality, they ultimately drew men out of themselves into aspirations after the infinite spirit, and developed the sense of dependence, of humility, of unselfishness, of spirituality. They produced indeed evil effects in pantheism and ideology;(740) but the results were partial, the good was general. The problem, What is truth?—was through their means remitted to men for reconsideration; and the answers to it elicited, from the one school,—It is that which I can know:—from the other,—It is that which I can intuitively feel:—threw men upon those unalterable and infallible instincts which God has set in the human breast as the everlasting landmarks of truth, the study of which lifts men ultimately out of error.

These systems had even a still more direct effect on the public mind. They were the means of creating a literature, which insinuated itself into public thought, and familiarised society with spiritual apprehensions long obliterated. The school of literature commonly called the Romantic,(741) commencing with such writers as Schlegel and Novalis, fanciful as it may in some respects seem to be, created the same change in the belief and tastes of the German mind as the contemporary school of Lake Poets in England. The German literature bore the marks either of the old scholasticism, or of the materialism introduced from France, or of the classic culture introduced by Lessing and his coadjutors. The element now revived was the mediæval element of chivalry, the high and lofty courage, the delicate æsthetic taste, which had marked the middle ages. Herder,(742) to whom Germany owes much, disgusted with the stoical and analytic spirit of the Kantian philosophy, had already attempted, and not in vain, to throw the mind back to an appreciation of old history, and especially had manifested an enthusiastic admiration of Hebrew literature; but now, as if by one general movement, the public taste was turned to an appreciation of the freshness of feeling, and fine elements of character, which existed in the Christianity of the middle ages.(743)

This literary movement prepared the way for and accompanied another, which, though occurring a little later, may be reckoned as the third influence which caused a religious reaction. Indeed it is the one to which the Germans attribute the chief effect. It is found in the outburst of national patriotism which took place in the liberation wars of 1813;(744) the spontaneous chivalry which made the heart of Germany beat as the heart of one man, to endeavour to hurl back Napoleon beyond the limits of the common fatherland. In that moment of deep public suffering, the poetry and piety of the human heart brought back the idea of God, and a spirit of moral earnestness. The national patriotism,(745) which still lives in the poetry of the time, expelled selfishness: sorrow impressed men with a sense of the vanity of material things, and made their hearts yearn after the immaterial, the spiritual, the immortal: the sense of terror threw them upon the God of battles. It was the age of Marathon and Salamis revived; and the effect was not less wonderful.(746)

A fourth influence remains to be noticed, which was in its nature more strictly theological, and limited to the church. When after the return of peace the tercentenary of the Reformation was celebrated in 1817, an obscure theologian at Kiel, named Harms,(747) published a set of theses as supplements to the celebrated theses of Luther, which, by the excitement and controversy unexpectedly occasioned by them, turned attention anew to the study of the reformational and biblical theology, and created a revival of the spiritual element which was too much forgotten.

Such were the four influences—the philosophical, the literary, the political, the spiritual,—which entered into German life, and produced or increased the reaction that took place in German theology in the period which we are about to sketch.

We placed the limits of this second period from about 1810 till the literary revolution caused by alarm at Strauss’s work in 1835.(748) It was in 1810, in the depth of Prussian humiliation, when Halle had passed into one of the kingdoms dependent on France, that the university of Berlin was founded. Schleiermacher, Neander, and De Wette, were its teachers. The first was the soul of its theological teaching; and through his agency it became the great source of a religious reaction. It is around these names that our studies most centre. The signs indeed of some other movements are traceable. The deistic rationalism is not dead, but it is dying: it is a thing of the past: a return to strict dogmatic orthodoxy is also visible in the Lutheran clergy rather than in the university; but it is as yet in its infancy: and a new form of gnosticism is observable in the philosophy of Hegel, but the full development of it belongs to the next period. The field is now occupied by the partial reaction to orthodoxy, which aimed at a reconciliation of science and piety, of criticism and faith.(749) Schleiermacher, with is follower Neander, will typify the philosophical and more orthodox side of it; perhaps De Wette, and at the end of the period Ewald, the critical.

Schleiermacher(750) was by education and sympathy eminently fitted to attempt the harmony of science and faith, to which he devoted his life. Gifted with an acute and penetrating intellect, capable of grappling with the highest problems of philosophy and the minutest details of criticism, he could sympathise with the intellectual movement of the old rationalism; while his fine moral sensibility, the depth and passionateness of his sympathy, the exquisite delicacy of his taste and brilliancy of imagination, were in perfect harmony with the literary and æsthetic revival which was commencing. German to the very soul, he possessed an enthusiastic sympathy with the great literary movements of his age, philosophical, classical, or romantic. The diligent student and translator of Plato,(751) his soul was enchanted with the mixture at once of genius, poetry, feeling, and dialectic, which marks that prince of thinkers, and he was prepared by it for understanding the speculations of his time. The dialectical process through which Plato’s mind had passed (30) represents not improbably, in some degree, the history of Schleiermacher’s own mental development as traceable in his works. The conviction derived from Plato’s early dialogues, that the mind, in travelling outward to study the objective, could not prove the highest realities, but must have faith in its own faculties, prepared him for imbibing the philosophy of Jacobi. The looking inward to the deep utterances of the soul, the interpretation of the objective world by means of the internal, prepared him for Fichte. The mystical attempt to understand the ideas themselves, to use the archetype for creating an ontology from the objective side, observable in Plato’s latest works, found its parallel in Schelling. Schleiermacher had large sympathies with these three processes, but mainly with the first; which was to be expected from his purpose. Aiming at gaining spiritual certitude rather than speculating for intellectual gratification, Jacobi’s philosophy appeared to combine the excellences of the other two systems, the subjective character of the one, and the intuitional of the other; with the additional advantage of seeming to give expression to the instincts of the heart, as well as the intuitions of the mind. Beyond all these qualities, Schleiermacher inherited from his Moravian education the spirit of pietism, which, almost extinguished by the recent activity of mind, had retired to the quiet sphere where a Stilling(752) or an Oberlin(753) communed with God and laboured for man.

Possessing therefore the two great elements which had been united in the Reformation,—endowed on the one hand with the largest sympathy with every department of the intellectual movement, and the mastery of its ripest erudition, and at the same time with a soul kindled with a hearty love for Christianity,—he was fitted to become the Coryphæus of a new reformation, to attempt again a final reconciliation of knowledge and faith. Whether we view him in his own natural gifts and susceptibilities; in the aim of his life; in his mixture of reason and love, of philosophy and criticism, of enthusiasm and wisdom, of orthodoxy and heresy; or regard the transitory character of his work, the permanence of his influence; church history offers no parallel to him since the days of Origen.(754)

His early education was received in the university of Halle; an institution which had long been the home of pietism, and has continued with but few intervals(755) to evince much of the same Christian spirit. He became professor there early in the century,(756) until the town passed, as already stated, into the power of the French. He removed to Berlin when that university was founded,(757) and continued to exercise his influence there, from the pulpit and the professor’s chair, for a quarter of a century, until his death.(758)

Before the conclusion of the last century, while still the literary influence of Weimar was at its height, he wrote Discourses on Religion,(759) to arouse the German mind to self-consciousness; which produced as stirring an effect in religion(760) as Fichte’s patriotic addresses to the German nation subsequently in politics; and from them may be dated the first movement of spiritual renovation, as from the latter the first of German liberation from foreign control. In successive works his views on ethics and religion were gradually developed, until, in his _Glaubenslehre_ (31) he produced one of the most important theological systems ever conceived. We can give no idea of the compass exhibited in that work, nor spare time to trace the growth in Schleiermacher’s own mind as new influences like that of Harms, which he rejected, indirectly influenced him; but we must be content to define his general position in its destructive and constructive aspects.

The fundamental principles(761) were, that truth in theology was not to be attained by reason, but by an insight, which he called the Christian consciousness,(762) which we should call Christian experience; and that piety consists in spiritual feeling, not in morality. Both were corollaries from his philosophical principles.

There are two parts, both in the intellectual and emotional branches of our nature;—in the emotional, a feeling of dependence in the presence of the Infinite, which is the seat of religion; and a consciousness of power, which is the source of action and seat of morality;—and in the intellectual, a faith or intuition which apprehends God and truth; and critical faculties, which act upon the matter presented and form science.(763) In making these distinctions, Schleiermacher struck a blow at the old rationalism, which had identified on the one hand religion and morality, and on the other intuition and reason. Hence from this point of view he was led to explain Christianity, when contrasted with other religions, subjectively on the emotional side, as the most perfect state of the feeling of dependence; and on the intellectual, as the intuition of Christianity and Christ’s work: and the organ for truth in Christianity was regarded to be the special form of insight which apprehends Christ, just as natural intuition apprehends God; which insight was called the Christian consciousness.(764) Thus far many will agree with him. Perhaps no nobler analysis of the religious faculties has ever been given. Religion was placed on a new basis: a home was found for it in the human mind distinct from reason. The old rationalism was shown to be untrue in its psychology. The distinctness of religion was asserted; and the necessity of spiritual insight and of sympathy with Christian life asserted to be as necessary for appreciating Christianity, as æsthetic insight for art.

In its reconstruction of Christian truth, however, fewer will coincide. Following out the same principles; in the same manner as he regarded the intuitions of human nature to be the last appeal of truth in art or morals, so he made the collective Christian consciousness the last standard of appeal in Christianity. The dependence therefore on apostolic teaching was not the appeal to an external authority, but merely to that which was the best exponent of the early religious consciousness of Christendom in its purest age.(765) The Christian church existed before the Christian scriptures. The New Testament was written for believers, appealing to their religious consciousness, not dictating to it. Inspiration is not indeed thus reduced to genius, but to the religious consciousness, and is different only in degree, and