Reinhold to Jacobi.
[CCCCX.]
What a poor and miserable condition of things is not the present, even at the best, when men endowed with the purest love of truth and the greatest acumen, in spite of long years of inquiry, can attain to no result, concerning the questions most important to man, which really and truly satisfies them, or which, even supposing that it suffices to quiet their own doubts for a time, they are able to communicate to other equally upright investigators, so as to carry conviction to the minds of the latter also.
Jacobi to Reinhold.
[CCCCXI.]
In your complaints, dear old friend, about the insufficiency of our philosophizing, I can, alas, join with all my heart; and yet I know no better remedy than to continue to philosophize or—to become Roman Catholic. There is no third alternative, as also there is no third alternative between Christianity and heathendom, that is, between the deification of nature and Socratic-Platonic anthropomorphism. Most willingly would I exchange my feeble, philosophical Christianity for positive, historical Christianity, and I cannot understand why, in spite of this wish, I have never been able to adopt the latter. You see, dear Reinhold, that I am ever the same. A thorough heathen as to the understanding, but in point of feeling entirely a Christian, I float between two waves, which, as far as I am concerned, will not commingle their waters, so that I might be upborne by both; on the contrary, when the one upheaves me, the other draws me down.
Schleiermacher to Jacobi.
[CCCCXII.]
You refer me to your letter to Reinhold, and in this I find the same complaint that runs through all your writings, put forward in a couple of very simple formulas, which I am glad to lay hold of, in order to be able through their aid to place before you, for the present in an equally simple form, the difference that exists between us. You say you are a heathen in point of understanding, a Christian in point of feeling. To this my logic gives the following answer:—Heathen and Christian are, as such, opposed to each other within the same sphere, that of religion: have reason and feeling such equal claims within this sphere, as to allow of their dividing into these two contradictory forms? Religiosity belongs to feeling; that, which to distinguish it herefrom, we denominate religion, but which is in reality always more or less dogmatics, is only the interpretation of the feeling resulting from the reflective powers of the intellect. If your feeling be Christian, can your understanding put a heathen interpretation on it? This I cannot allow.
My proposition, on the contrary, stands thus: in point of understanding I am a philosopher; for to be such is to exercise the original and independent activity of the understanding, and in point of feeling I am religious and a Christian, and have entirely renounced all heathenism, or rather I have never possessed any. You, however, as we all know, are also a philosopher, as regards your understanding, and firmly determined, in opposition to all those who think it necessary to become Roman Catholic, to continue to philosophize. So far we are entirely agreed; for I will not, either, in all eternity allow myself to be deprived of the right to philosophize. When, therefore, you say that you are at the same time a heathen, in as far as your understanding is concerned, this can only mean, that your philosophizing understanding cannot adopt, along with its philosophy, that which your Christian feeling gives it to construe. But, surely, supposing you had a heathenish religious feeling, your understanding would not either be able to adopt what this feeling would give it to interpret, and you only call this negation heathenish, because it is founded in the fact, that your understanding refuses to overstep the bounds of nature; but as I will by no means allow myself to be entangled in a contradiction, I have placed myself on the footing to demand of others that they shall prove to me where is the ultimate limit of nature. When, therefore, my Christian feeling is conscious of a divine spirit indwelling in me, which is distinct from my reason, I will never give up seeking for this spirit in the deepest depths of the soul’s nature; and when my Christian feeling becomes conscious of a Son of God, who differs from us in another way than merely being better than the best of us, I will never cease to search for the genesis of this Son of God in the deepest depths of nature, and to say to myself, that I shall most likely learn to understand the second Adam just as soon as the first Adam, or Adams, whose coming into existence I must also admit without being able to understand.
This is my mode of establishing an equilibrium between the two waves; it is in reality, likewise, an alternation of the rising of the one and the sinking of the other. But, dear friend, why should we not be content with this? Oscillation is, after all, the universal form of all finite existence, and there exists in me at the same time an immediate consciousness that the undulation is, in fact, caused by the two foci of my own ellipse, and that through it I enjoy the fulness of earthly life. My philosophy and my dogmatics are thus firmly determined not to contradict each other, but for this very reason, neither pretends to be complete; and as long as I have been able to think they have always been more or less attuning themselves to each other and drawing nearer to each other.
After what I have said, I think it will hardly be necessary for me to lay before you my confession in regard to the present return to the letter of Christianity. One age bears the penalty of the misdeeds of another, but seldom knows how to redeem itself, except by the perpetration of a new misdemeanour. By the utter subversion of the letter of the Scriptures all historical continuity was dissolved, and it is as great madness to destroy such continuity in religious matters as in political matters. That had, therefore, to be re-established; but, as Tieck has admirably expressed it, in attempting to screw the thing back we shall only be destroying the historical continuity in the opposite direction.
The Bible is the original interpretation of the Christian feeling, and for this very reason so firmly established that we ought not to attempt more than further to understand and develop it. This right of development, however, I, as a Protestant theologian, will allow no one to defraud me of; but at the same time I am of opinion that doctrinal language, such as it has been formed since the time of Augustine, is so deep and full of meaning, that, if handled with good sense, it will be quite adequate to bring about such approximation between philosophy and dogmatics as is possible. But I will say no more of this, but, in reference to the difference in our philosophy, address myself to your second proposition: “There is no third alternative between deification of nature and anthropomorphism;” for I have been told that you were of opinion that I could not think very highly of you, because the foundation of your philosophy was the idea of a personal God, which I denied. This fundamental principle you have expressed in your letter to Reinhold in the proposition I have quoted. At least so it seems to me. Because you can see no third alternative, and because you will not deify nature, you deify human consciousness. But, dear friend, in my eyes the one is as much a deification as the other, and this view, that both are deifications, is in my opinion the third alternative. We can in no way escape from the antithesis between the real and the ideal, or however you may choose to designate it.
Are you better able to conceive of God as a person than as natura naturans? If you form to yourself a living conception of a person, must not this person of necessity be finite? Can an infinite reason and an infinite will really be anything more than empty words, when reason and will, by differing from each other, also necessarily limit each other? And if you attempt to annul the distinction between reason and will, is not the conception of personality destroyed by the very attempt?
On the other side I see the same. Anthropomorphism, or let me rather say ideomorphism, is, however, unavoidable in regard to the interpretation of the religious feeling: whether hylomorphism is not equally indispensable in regard to natural science, I cannot undertake to determine, because I am not sufficiently acquainted with the subject. But I make use of the first with full right within the domain of religion because of the view that I take, while within the domain of philosophy I maintain that one expression is as good and as imperfect as another, that we cannot form any real conception of the highest Being; but that philosophy properly consists in the perception that this inexpressible reality of the highest Being underlies all our thinking and all our feeling; and the development of this knowledge is, according to my conviction, what Plato understood by dialectics. But further than this, I believe, we cannot get. This is my view; allow me to entertain the hope that you will favour me with yours.
One word more in reference to your simile of the two waves, the waters of which will not unite in you. In me they also refuse to unite; but while you desire this union, and miss it painfully, I submit cheerfully to the separation. Understanding and feeling in me also remain distinct, but they touch each other and form a galvanic pile. To me it seems that the innermost life of the spirit consists in the galvanic action thus produced in the feeling of the understanding and the understanding of the feeling, during which, however, the two poles always remain deflected from each other.
Schleiermacher to Henrietta Herz.
[CCCCXIII.] Berlin, 23rd April, 1819.
Being doubtful as to whether this letter will find you still at Rome,1 dear friend, I send it to our friend Rühs, who will take care to forward it to you… . . Here everything is wonderfully quiet, with the exception of the dead Kotzebue, whose ghost is playing the very devil with us,2 so that when any two men fall out, you may be sure he is behind it all. This makes many people very uneasy, lest the university should be dissolved; but I remain tranquil, because I know that difficult matters are not so easily carried through… . . I am celebrating to-day my silver-wedding with the Church, and have invited my theological friends on the occasion. I have much reason to thank God for his merciful guidance during these twenty-five years of my office, and I would fain live through a part of the next quarter of a century also; see the end of it I shall not; but in the meanwhile others will have come forward to take my place… . . God bless you, dear friend! How I wish you were back again among us. Hearty greetings to all friends.
← Vacation Rambles · Contents · Birth of a Son →