Is this but a vain delusion? Does impotence hide behind this sense of freedom? Such is the interpretation which vulgar natures put upon a thing they do not understand! But this empty talk of men who debase themselves has long ago ceased to echo in my ears; between their point of view and mine the living fact renders judgment at every moment. When they see time passing, they always complain, and they tremble at an hour’s approach! Through every change they pass unimproved, ever remaining the same vulgar natures that they are. But can they cite a single instance in which they might not have met the circumstances which confronted them differently? It would be easy for me to crush them still more in the midst of their troubles, forcing from them the contrite confession that the alien tyranny of which they complain is nothing but their own inertia, that they did not really want what they seemed to want, but only wished to appear desirous of it. Thus showing them the base limitations of their own consciousness and will, I might teach them to believe in a true will and true consciousness.

But whether they learn the truth or no, my own belief that I shall meet with nothing that can hinder the progress of my self-development or drive me from the goal of my endeavors, lives in me because of past acts. Ever since reason obtained the mastery of my being, and freedom and self-knowledge took up their abode in me, I have walked through diverse courses of life with this clear confidence. While enjoying the beautiful freedom of youth I succeeded in the crucial act of casting off the mummery in which long and tedious hours of educational sacrilege had clothed me;³ I learned to deplore the brief independence enjoyed by the majority of men who allow themselves to be bound by new chains;⁴ I learned to despise the contemptible efforts of the lifeless,⁵ who have forgotten even the last trace of the brief dream of freedom, who mistake what transpires in youth when freedom is just awakening and wish to keep the young faithful to old ways. In a stranger’s home my sense for the beauty of human fellowship was first awakened;⁵ I saw that it requires freedom to ennoble and give right expression to the delicate intimacies of human nature, which remain forever obscure to the uninitiated who respect them only as natural bans.⁶ Amid all the diversities of this world’s motley spectacle I learned to discount appearances and to recognize the same reality whatever its garb, and I also learned to translate the many tongues that it acquires in various circles. Watching the great ferments of life, both the turbulent and the quiet ones,⁶ I learned to understand the mentality of mankind, and how it cleaves ever to superficialities. In the quiet solitude that was my lot I looked to the inner nature of things, I took note of all purposes to which humanity is committed by its essence, and observed all dispositions of the spirit in their everlasting unity; through living contemplation I learned to assess at the right value the dead language of the schools. I have felt joy and pain, I know each sorrow and each smile, and in all that has happened to me since my real life began, is there anything from which my being did not gain strength or acquire something new, wherewith to nourish my inner life?

Let the past, therefore, be my security for the future. How can the future, being like the past, affect me differently if I remain constant to myself? I see the content of my life before me clear and fixed. I know in what respects my being has already achieved its individual form and definition, and by acting with thorough consistency on every hand, with full and undivided strength,⁷ I shall preserve what has thus been achieved. How can I help but rejoice in novelty and in variety, which but confirms in new and ever different ways the truth whereof I am possessed. Am I so certain of myself that I do not require⁷ such further confirmations?⁸⁸ Am I so complete as not to welcome joy and sorrow alike, indeed whatever the world calls weal or woe, seeing that everything in its own way serves the purpose of further revealing my being’s relationships? If but this be accomplished, of what importance is it that I be happy! Moreover, I also know what I have not yet made my own, I know where I am still adrift amid vague generalities and for a long time have painfully felt the lack of an individual point of view. My powers have long been busy in these directions, and some day I shall compass what is lacking, by my activity and meditations, harmonizing it inwardly with everything already mine. There are sciences which I have still to explore thoroughly, for my outlook on the world can never be complete without their knowledge. Many types of humanity are still strange to me; there are ages and peoples that I know no better than the average man does, my imagination has not in its own way entered into their thought and character, they occupy no definite place in my picture of mankind’s development.⁹ Many activities which have no place in my own being I do not understand, and I am frequently at a loss how to estimate their relation to all that is great and fine in humanity. I shall acquire all these things gradually, one with the other; the fairest prospect opens out before me.¹⁰ What a galaxy of individuals I see close at hand, men so different from myself yet all of them engaged in perfecting the humanity that is in them! What an amazing number of learned men are about me, who out of pride or hospitality offer me the golden fruit of their lives in handsome jars, and the plants of distant times and places too, transplanted to the fatherland by their faithful toil!¹¹ Can fate enchain me so that I shall not be able to approach this goal of mine? Can it deny me the means of self-development, put me out of easy touch with the labors of the present generation and with the monuments of the past? Can it cast me out of this fair world in which I live into those barren wastes where contact with the rest of humanity is impossible, where vulgarity surrounds me on all sides with its everlasting monotony, and nothing lovely, nothing distinct stands out in the thick and sodden atmosphere?¹² To be sure, this has befallen many, yet it can not happen to me; I defy that to which thousands have succumbed. A man must sell himself in order to become a slave, and fate dares bid only for one who offers himself at a price. What is it that lures the vacillating person away from the place where his spirit prospers? What can possibly impel him to throw away the finest treasures in cowardly folly, as the fleeing warrior does his weapons?⁹ It is the craving for base, external gain,¹³ it is the excitement of sensual desires already jaded so that the familiar draughts no longer satisfy. How could this happen to me in view of my despising such shadows! I have gained the position I occupy by industry and toil, with deliberate effort I have built a world of my own in which my spirit can flourish. How are firm connections like these to be loosened by some transient incitement whether of fear or of hope? How is some vain bagatelle to lure me from my true home and from the circle of my beloved friends?

But to continue living in this happy sphere and to become ever more closely related to it is not my only requirement; I long for another world. I still have many new ties to form; my heart must beat to the law of new loves as yet unknown to me, that the relation of these to the rest of my being may be revealed. I have experienced every kind of friendship, I have tasted the sweet joy of love with pure lips, I know what befits me in both relationships, what rule of life is appropriate to my nature. But the most sacred of all ties has yet to lift my life to a new level; some beloved soul and I must melt into one being, so that my humanity may touch other humanity in the finest of all relationships, and I may know the transfigured, higher life which will develop at this rebirth of freedom in me, the beginning of a new world for my regenerated self. I must be consecrated to paternal rights and duties, so that the maximum of power which freedom exercises over other free beings may not remain dormant in me, that I may show how he who believes in freedom preserves and protects reason in the young, and how in this great problem a discerning spirit can untangle the finest maze of his and other’s rights.¹⁴ But will not fate overreach me just in respect to this dearest wish of my heart? Will not the world at this point take revenge upon my defiant freedom, upon my arrogant disrespect for its power? Where may she dwell with whom I might suitably link my life? Who can tell me whither I must go to seek her? For such a boon no sacrifice is too dear, no effort too great! But what if I should find her already tied, so that she hesitates to come to me?¹⁵ Shall I be able to liberate her? And if I do win her, can my will decide whether as husband I shall also enjoy fatherhood?¹⁰ Here I stand at the boundary where my will is limited by another freedom, and by the course of life, a mystery of nature. I have hope; man can do much; by strength of will and serious effort he surmounts many difficulties. But should hope and effort both prove vain, if all is denied me, am I then conquered at this point by my fate? Has it then really prevented my inner life from reaching a higher level, and succeeded by its caprice in limiting my development? The impossibility of outward accomplishment does not prevent an inner process; I should pity the world more than myself and my beloved, for having lost a beautiful and rare example, a phantom that has strayed from a more perfect future into the present,¹¹ capable of giving warmth and life to the world’s dead conceptions. As long as we belong to one another, she and I, imagination will transport us, though we have not actually met, into our lovely paradise. Not in vain have I seen the soul of woman in so many different forms, and come to know the characteristic charms of her sequestered life.¹⁶ The further I still was from marriage, the greater was my care to learn the nature of its sacred domain; I know what is right there, and what is not. I have pictured to myself all its possible forms in their perfection, even as a distant, future freedom will reveal them, and I know exactly which of these forms is appropriate to me. It is thus that I also know her, the unknown love, with whom I could unite myself for life most intimately, and I am already attuned to the lovely life which we should lead together. Being obliged in my present unhappy solitude to undertake and arrange many things alone, to suppress much, and to practice much renunciation and control, in matters both great and small, there constantly hovers before me a vivid realization of how in that life all this would be different and much better. She too must surely find it so, wherever she may be, she who is so constituted that she could love me and find her satisfaction in me. The identical longing, something far more than an indefinite desire, lifts her, as it does me, above the barren actualities for which she was not intended,¹⁷ and if we should suddenly be brought together by a stroke of magic, nothing would be strange to us; we should walk easily and gracefully into our new life as if we had been engaged through fond acquaintance of long standing. And thus, even without that stroke of magic, we are not deprived inwardly of our higher life together. It is for this life and by it that we are fashioned, and only its external manifestation is lost to the world.¹²

Oh that men knew how to use this divine power of the imagination, which alone can free the spirit and place it far beyond coercion and limitation of any kind, and without which man’s sphere is so narrow and precarious! How much actually touches each of us in the course of his brief life? How many sides of our nature would remain unformed and undeveloped, if man’s inner life were limited to those few things with which he came into actual external contact?¹⁸ Yet men are such creatures of the senses in respect to morality that they do not even trust themselves unless some overt act testifies to the truth of their feelings. He who puts such limitations on himself must live to no purpose in the great society of mankind! The opportunity to behold its life and action can be of no avail to him; helplessly he must complain of the world’s dull monotony and the languor of its movements. He is ever wishing for new conditions, for other external provocatives to action, and looking for new friends as soon as the old have made what possible impression they could upon his soul. Life is everywhere too slow for him. But suppose it did lead him into a thousand new paths at a quicker pace, could the infinite be thus exhausted in the brief span of an individual life? What men of this type cannot even wish for, I actually achieve through the inner play of my imagination. For me imagination supplies what reality withholds; by virtue of it I can put myself in the position of any other person I notice; my spirit bestirs itself, transforms the situation to accord with its nature, and judges in imagination¹³ just how it would act in such a case. To be sure, men’s average judgments of other people’s natures and actions are unreliable, for they reckon by some artificial rote or useless stereotype; and afterwards they act far otherwise than their previous judgments would lead them to do. But when the exercise of imagination is not merely mechanical, but accompanied by inner reflection, as it must be wherever there is true life, and when judgment is the conscious issue of such reflection, then the object contemplated,¹⁴ though it be foreign to one’s experience and only imagined, shapes the spirit, as much as if possessed by it in reality and dealt with externally. Thus in the future as in the past I shall take possession of the whole world by virtue of inner activity,¹⁹ and I shall make better use of things in quiet contemplation than if I had to respond to every quickly passing impression with an overt act. Every relationship makes a deeper impression in this way, the spirit grasps it more definitely, and one’s own nature is more perfectly reproduced in free, unbiased judgments. What the external life really contributes in addition is thus only a confirmation and test of an inner life which is prior and richer; the development of the spirit is not confined within the narrow limits of the external. Hence I no longer complain when my lot in the world is monotonous, nor when its course is hectic and irrational. I know that my external life will never manifest or perfect all sides of my inner nature.²⁰ It will never place me in circumstances of such magnitude that my action will decide the weal and woe of thousands, circumstances in which I could give outward proof that in comparison with one of reason’s sublime and holy ideals all else is nought to me. Perhaps I shall never come into open conflict with the world and be able to show how little all that the world has power to give or to withhold can disturb my inner peace and integrity. But I myself know how I should act even in such circumstances, and I know that my spirit has long since been ready and prepared for everything of that kind. Thus, though I remain in seclusion, I nevertheless live upon the great and open stage of the world’s actions. Thus, even in my solitude, I have already tied the knot with my beloved; our union is a fact, and indeed is the better part of my life. Thus, too, I shall surely keep possession of my only riches, the love of my friends, whatever may happen to them or to me in the future.

Men are indeed fearful that friendship will not last long, the mind seems to them fickle; a friend may change, his wonted love disappearing with his wonted disposition; loyalty is a rare treasure. And men are right. For if any of them look beyond utility in their friendships, it is the mere atmosphere surrounding a personality that they are prone to love, or perhaps some particular virtue, which they never trace to its inner root in the character, and if in the course of life’s entanglements they come to miss these qualities, they are not ashamed to confess even after many years that they were mistaken in their friends.²¹ I am not favored with a fine figure²² or with anything else that is wont to catch the hearts of people at first sight, and yet everyone who has not seen into my inner nature creates for himself some superficial impression of me. Thus I come to be loved for a goodness of heart that I should not want to have, or for a modest nature which I have not got,¹⁵ or for cleverness such as I heartily despise. This kind of love, to be sure, has often enough deserted me, and it does not belong among those riches that I prize. I consider that love alone a true possession, which my very self evokes and wins over to me anew, time and again.

How could I count as my own, an affection that is called forth entirely by an impression of me due to weak discernment. I wash myself clean of any such claim, in order not to deceive these people; but verily their false love shall not pursue me either, any longer than I can endure it. To throw them off will cost me but a single exhibition of my inner nature, one which they cannot mistake; I need but lead them straight to that which my own spirit treasures as its best, but which they cannot endure. Thus I shall rid me of this plague, that they who ought to hate me,¹⁶ love me and consider me one of their number. I shall gladly return to them the independence which they sacrificed to a false impression. But I can always count on those who are really devoted to me, who love my inner character; my spirit holds them fast and will never forsake them. They have known me, they have looked on my soul, and if they love my spirit as it is, they must love it ever more deeply,¹⁷ the more it develops and unfolds.

I am as certain of keeping this treasure as I am of my own being; I have never lost a friend who has been truly dear to me. You, who in the fresh bloom of youth, in the midst of a life that was strong and joyous, had to depart from our circle²³—yes, I can address the dear image that dwells in my bosom, and that continues to live on in my life, in my love and in my sorrow—never has my heart forsaken you. In my thought I have imagined your development, even as it would have taken place, had you lived to see the flames that now enkindle the world;²⁴ your thinking has merged with mine, our love’s conversation and the mutual contemplation of each other’s souls never ceases, but continues to affect me as if you were living beside me as you formerly did. And you, my dear friends, who are still living in fact, though far from me, and who often send fresh impressions of your lives and thoughts, what matters distance to us?²⁵ We were together a long while and were less close to one another than we are now; for what is being together, save community of spirit? What I do not see of your lives I construct for myself; you are present to me in all things, both inward and outward, that would vitally stir your souls, and a few words between us serve to confirm my imagination or to put it on the right track where I was in chance of error. You, who are even now with me in loving comradeship, you know how little I desire to roam abroad;²⁶ I will stay in my place, and will not forego the fair opportunity of exchanging life and thought with you at every moment.

Where such communion is possible, there is my paradise. If you are possessed of a different thought, well and good: distance cannot separate us.—But can death? Ah, what is death, but a greater distance?

Sombre thought, that implacably shadows all meditation upon life and the future!²⁷ I can assert that death will never part my friends from me, for I take up their lives in mine, and their influence upon me never ceases. But it is I myself who slowly perish in their death. The life of friendship is a sequence of harmonizing chords, to a keynote which dies out when the friend passes away. Of course, within oneself reechoing tones are heard without cease for a long while and the music is carried on; but the accompanying harmony in him, of which I was the keynote, has died away, and it was this that gave me my key, just as I gave him his. What I produced in him is no more, and thereby a part of my life is lost. Every creature that loves another kills something in that other through its death, and he who loses many of his friends is finally slain himself at their hands, since cut off from influencing those who were his world, his spirit is driven inward and forced to consume itself. There are two cases in which man’s end is inevitable. He must perish for whom the death of friends has irretrievably destroyed the balance between the inner and the outer life. And he too must perish for whom this balance is otherwise destroyed, he who has attained the perfection of his individuality, and in whom, therefore, no further activity is essential, even though he be surrounded by the richest of worlds. A completely perfected being is a god, it could not endure the burden of life,¹⁸ and has no place in the world of mankind.²⁸ Death, therefore, is a necessity, and may it be the mission of my freedom to bring me nearer to this necessity. May it be my highest goal to be able to wish to die!²⁹ I wish to give myself to my friends so completely, and embrace their whole being so closely, that each may help to slay me with sweet pangs, when he leaves me, and I wish to perfect myself more and more, so that my soul may in this way also approach ever nearer the wish to die. The death of man is always the result of these two elements combined; not all my friends will leave me ere I die, nor shall I ever actually reach my goal of perfection. I shall approach my end from all sides in just proportion as befits the equipoise of my nature; of this good fortune I am assured by my perfect tranquillity¹⁹ and my quiet contemplative life.³⁰ For a nature such as mine the highest point is reached when its inner development seeks an external embodiment, since every kind of nature in its perfection approaches its opposite.³¹ The idea of perpetuating my inner being, and with it the whole outlook which humanity gave me, in a work of art is for me a premonition of death.²⁰³² As I first became aware of my maturity, this idea was born in me; now it waxes daily and assumes a definite form. Prematurely, I know, and yet voluntarily I shall release it from my mind, before the fire of life has died in me. For should I allow the work to ripen and grow perfect within me, my very being itself would pass away as soon as its faithful copy was ready for the world. It would have achieved its end.

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Footnotes

1. Cf. pp. 28-31, for other references to this “original act of freedom.” Schiele, pp. 106-107 has a valuable comment on the origins of this conception and of its place in the thought both of Schleiermacher and of his contemporaries, especially Fichte. The relation between individuality and limitation is also discussed on pp. xxxii, xlix, li, 127, in comparing Schleiermacher and Spinoza. ↩

2. Cf. above pp. 17-18. ↩

3. In connection with this comment on his education in the Moravian seminary consult pp. xv-xix, and the notes on pp. 60. An interesting series of letters between Schleiermacher and his father describes the “casting off of the mummery.” (Letters, v. 1, pp. 46-67ff.) ↩

4. Schleiermacher may be thinking in this connection of Albertini and other friends of his in the Moravian seminary, who relapsed from an abortive emancipation into permanent submission to the rule of the brotherhood. (Cf. Schiele, p. 107 and Dilthey, pp. 15-29ff.; N. E. 19-22 ff.) ↩

5. The reference is to the home of the Dohna family in Schlobitten, where Schleiermacher was happily engaged as tutor from 1790-1793. See above pp. xxxivff. and Dilthey, pp. 44-61; N. E. 55-71. ↩

6. I. e., the French Revolution and the intellectual changes in Germany. Cf. p. 62 and note * on the same page. See also p. xxxiii-xxxiv, with respect to Schleiermacher’s “quiet solitude” during these times. ↩

7. This idea of consistent and even action occurs repeatedly (cf. pp. 42, 88) and is to be associated with the quality of equanimity that Schleiermacher says is fundamental to his character. (See p. 42) Mystics, among them Jakob Boehme, often recommend a similar even-tempered attitude toward all things. ↩

8. Cf. pp. 29-34 with respect to these “confirmations.” ↩

9. A very characteristic statement of the romanticist interest in history. Cf. Herder. See above pp. xxi, xxviii-xxix. ↩

10. “The fairest prospect”: cf. title of this soliloquy. ↩

11. A. W. Schlegel’s translations of foreign classics were cases in point. ↩

12. The leaders of the Reformed Church were anxious to get Schleiermacher away from his unchurchly companions in Berlin. In 1798 Sack had offered him a position as court-preacher in Schwedt. In 1802 events did force him to go to Stolpe, See Introduction, pp. livff. Also cf. Letters, v. 1, pp. 178ff. and Schiele, p. 108; Dilthey, N. E. pp. 412ff. ↩

13. A letter of Schleiermacher’s to his sister (Letters, v. 1, p. 186) comments on the materialistic office-seeking prevalent in Berlin at the time. (See Schiele, p. 108.) See preceding note. ↩

14. Cf. p. 60 and note on the same page. ↩

15. Eleonore, Schleiermacher’s beloved, was married to a preacher named Grünow. This match was childless. Schleiermacher thus reflects that he is limited by “another freedom,” namely the relationship between Eleonore and Grünow, and should this be surmounted, perhaps by the “mystery of nature” in respect to childbirth. These difficult circumstances, which made this love between Schleiermacher and Eleonore an unhappy one, account in some measure for the strained sentiment of the ensuing passage (pp. 78-81). See Dilthey, pp. 479ff.; N. E. 523ff. And Briefe of this period, 1800-1804. ↩

16. In his letters to Henriette Herz, Schleiermacher speaks of the beneficent influence of women upon his spirit. See Letters, v. 1, pp. 187-188ff. ↩

17. Eleonore was unhappy in her marriage to Grünow. See above p. 79 and note † on the same page. ↩

18. Cf. p. 56. ↩

19. See above, p. xlv for comment on this praise of the imagination. ↩

20. Schleiermacher used this idea in his Christology to criticize the view that any external revelation of Christ’s nature could be complete. (See Schiele, p. 108.) ↩

21. Cf. p. 45. ↩

22. On the contrary, he was small and slightly deformed. (See Schiele, p. 108.) ↩

23. The reference here is to his friend Okely, who was one of his closest companions at the Moravian seminary and who separated from the brotherhood as Schleiermacher did. Shortly after their emancipation, Okely was drowned at Northampton. See above p. xvii, also Schiele, p. 109, and Dilthey, pp. 15ff, 23, 29. ↩

24. The revolutions taking place. Cf. pp. 62 and note. ↩

25. This refers to Friedrich Schlegel and Dorothea Veit who had left Berlin to live together in Jena (1799). See above p. liv, and Schiele, p. 109, and Dilthey, pp. 468ff. ↩

26. The reference is particularly to his friends Henriette Herz and Eleonore Grunow. See above pp. 78-81, and Schiele, p. 109, and Dilthey, pp. 479ff.; N. E. 523ff. ↩

27. In a letter to his sister Schleiermacher includes a portion of this passage on death, with the following explanation: “This passage, which I have copied from a little book of mine, comes straight from my soul; it is a trifle obscure, like the whole book, but when you once understand it, it is right enough.” (See Letters, v. 1, p. 251ff. and Schiele, p. 109.) ↩

28. Cf. pp. 34, 48, 70. ↩

29. Cf. Novalis’s Hymnen an die Nacht, and Fragmentarisches. ↩

30. Cf. pp. 42ff. and note on p. 75. ↩

31. Cf. pp. 34, 48. ↩

32. Schleiermacher played with the characteristically “romantic” idea of putting his point of view into a novel, but never actually carried out the project. It would have meant “approaching his opposite,” for as he says (p. 34 above), his was not the artist’s imagination. Cf. pp. xxxviii-xl above, also Schiele, p. 109, and Dilthey, pp. 446ff.; N. E. 490ff. ↩