In the second and third editions of the Soliloquies, 1810 and 1822, Schleiermacher made significant changes in the text. Passages so changed are indicated by numerals in my translation, which follows the first edition, and the corresponding changes are now given here. pp. 104-112.
As explained in the Preface (pp. v-vi) I have included only such revisions of the text as involve material changes in the meaning, omitting all changes which Schleiermacher seems to have made for purely stylistic reasons, since the literary significance of these would tend to be modified, if not lost, in translation. I am entirely indebted to F. M. Schiele’s critical edition of the Monologen (referred to as Schiele) for the detailed comparison of Schleiermacher’s three versions involved in these notes, and with slight modifications the following system of signs, used in citing the changes, has also been borrowed from him.
A Original text of 1800.
B Text of 1810.
C Text of 1822.
The portion of A modified in B and C is printed in italics. If the change is a substitution made in both B and C, the substituted passage follows immediately upon the italicized passage without intervening signs. If the substitution occurs only in B, then the sign B intervenes, if only in C, then C. Additions are indicated by italicizing the word which immediately precedes them, and then printing: B, or C, or BC (when both) adds. Deletions are indicated by italicizing the deleted passage and following it with the words: Omit from B, or C, or BC.
OFFERING
¹ No choicer—No more confidential.
² The highest—The most intimate.
³ Enduring … granted you—Dependable, for throughout life you will know the joy, which this pure insight into a fellow-being has aroused.
⁴ Thought—Murmuring.
REFLECTION
⁵ Very natural—Oft recurring.
⁶ Life—C adds: revealing all the hidden springs of action.
⁷ Whole—Essential.
⁸ Become … Eternal—C: attain an immediate awareness of your relations to the Infinite and Eternal.
⁹ Like … grave—With gloomy fanaticism, like unto that which kills wives or slaves beside a husband’s grave.
¹⁰ Know—C: find therein.
¹¹ Greatest pleasures—(I have here followed C in the text above as giving the most consistent sense). A and B read: “good therein.”
¹² To create … beauty—To make of his life something charming and admirable.
¹³ Their … ear—C: I am given to understand their sense of life as like the mood of an untrained listener … his ear …
¹⁴ A permanent creation—Like the artist’s instrument (C: voice) whence that harmony proceeds.
¹⁵ Only—I have a clear vision of.
¹⁶ Is free (omit).
¹⁷ Transmuted … life—Viewed as part of a free, inner life.
¹⁸ Knows—C adds: well how to distinguish.
¹⁹ What man … world—Self and not-self, alike in his life and in the world.
²⁰ What the … primary—To the multitude the external world, the world emptied of spirit, is the primary and greatest reality.
²¹ To me … reflected—For me the spirit, the inner world, opposes itself boldly to the outer world, the realm of matter, of things. Does not the spirit’s union with a body point to its greater union with everything corporeal? Do I not grasp the outer world by force of my senses? Do I not carry the eternal forms of things forever within me? And hence, do I not recognize these things only by the reflected light of my inner being?
²² Is there … conscious thereof? (omit from BC).
²³ All those … free doing—Thus for me the earth is the stage of my own free activity, and in every feeling, however much the outer world may seem to force it on me, in those feelings too wherein I sense the kinship of material existence with Universal Being, there is free, inner action on my part. [The point here is that even in the religious feelings of absolute dependence man’s soul is active and not entirely passive. See pp. 141-142, 154. (Slight differences exist between B and C here.) ]
²⁴ Every real … knead me—There is always some influence passing from me to it also, and I do not feel myself limited by it in any different sense than by my own body. But what I truly regard as existing independently of me and limiting me as a finite and particular being, what I consider to be the real world endowed with omnipresence and omnipotence, is the eternal community of spiritual beings, their influence upon each other, their mutual development, the sublime harmony of freedom. And it is fitting that this reality should fashion and transform the surface of my being. This heavenly world alone shall mold me.
²⁵ World—C adds: of spiritual beings.
²⁶ Perceptions I have—Elements.
²⁷ Holy—C: happy.
²⁸ Plays the melody—Sets the harmony.
²⁹ But—To be sure.
³⁰ It indicates … I do.—It determines what results are still possible and what not, but it does not determine the intrinsic strength of my effort to secure them.
³¹ Whether external … activity—(I have inserted this clause from B and C in order to bring out the meaning of A better.)
³² Objective result—Valid for others, too.
³³ An illusion … necessity—A mask behind which there hides sometimes a comic and then again a tragic, deceptive necessity.
³⁴ Reveals … being—Refers me to my being in its entirety.
³⁵ Without being … nature—C: without longing to lose himself in thinking of the infinite realm of being in all its forms and gradations?
³⁶ Spirit’s action—C: life of the spirit.
³⁷ Perhaps—For many.
³⁸ Ultimate … thought—C: depths of meditation.
³⁹ Intimate (this from B and C). A: sacred.
⁴⁰ Consideration—C: contemplation.
⁴¹ In what … acting—Observe the form and limit appropriate to your action.
⁴² The spirit … but itself—The spirit creates its world by the force of its will, and the activity, which manifests itself in the variety of its creation, is one of purest freedom; at rest in action, ever conscious of its immutable identity, it leads a blessed life. For therein it requires nothing but itself, and its … .
⁴³ Lamenting—Believing.