Friedrich von Schlegel

“ Philosophy, as the universal science, embraces in its consideration the whole man. As, therefore, it evidently involves the occasion, so it is not unlikely that cases may occur where it can happily borrow, now from one now from another of the sciences, its external form and peculiar formularies. It can, in short, advantageously avail itself of all in turn. Only, such a use, to be profitable, must be free. And this freedom will best evince itself in the deliberate choice and the diversity of the images. ”

“ The prescient genius of Leibnitz had foretold a century and a half ago, that the study of languages would be found one day to throw a great light on history. No one better realized this prediction than Schlegel. In the first part of this work, he has proved, by his own example, that language is not a mere instrument of knowledge, but a science in itself; and when I consider the noble use he has made of his Sanscrit learning; when I contemplate all the great and brilliant results of his oriental researches, I must recal the sort of regret I expressed a few pages above. ”

“ True life can spring only from the vivifying spirit of eternal truth. In science the absolute is the abyss which swallows up the living truth, and leaves behind only the hollow idea, and the dead formula. In the political world the absolute in conduct and speculation is that false spirit of time, opposed to all good and to the fulness of divine truth, which in a great measure rules the world, and may entirely rule it, and lead it for ever to its final ruin. As errors would not be dangerous or deceptive, and would have little effect, unless they contained a portion or appearance of truth ”

“ To the all-seeing eye of Providence, every human life, however brief its duration, however apparently insignificant, presents a point of internal development and crisis, consequently a species of history, cognizable and visible to that Eye only, and therefore not entirely without an object. But this point of view belongs to another order of things, and is no longer historical—it has reference to the immortal destinies of the human soul, and the connection of the present life with another world invisible to us. But our historical science is limited to the department of man's present existence ”

“ The philosophy of life, then, can not be any mere absolute philosophy of reason. And as little can, or ought it to be purely and absolutely a philosophy of nature; not, at least, an exclusive one, that is, exactly such and nothing more. Such a philosophy of nature may, indeed, in its physiological aspect, possess unequaled scientific wealth, and be full of profound and ingenious thoughts. But still the right principles and the regulative ideas of human life can never be deduced from it easily, and without having recourse to forced constructions. ”

“ I affirm that in man the understanding is not the principal organ for the perception of divine truth—that is to say, the understanding alone. On the understanding alone, indeed, the light may dawn and may even be received—but if the will be not there—if the will pursue a separate and contrary course; that light of higher knowledge is soon obscured, and soon becomes clouded and unsteady; or, if it should still gleam, it is changed into the treacherous meteor of illusion. Without the co-operation of a good will, this light cannot be preserved or maintained in its purity ”

“ Living in an age which is only an epoch of momentous transition from the adolescence to the virility of the human mind, he was evidently, together with some other chosen spirits of his time, the precursor of an era of Christian philosophy, when, to use the language of a young, but very distinguished French writer, [32] "the sterile dust of futile abstractions will be swept away, and the antique faith will appear crowned with all the rays of science." ”

“ On the contrary, torn to pieces by conflicting passions in its inmost being, it is really in the highest degree inconsequent, as acting in direct opposition to its beginning and origin, which, like all other created beings, it took and received from God.
Truly consequent or consistent a man can not be except in the truth, i.e., in Him out of whom all truth, and from whom all existence is derived and flows—in other words, in God. Science, therefore, is an applied thinking, i.e., one that has passed into life, and thereby become real and certain ”

“ True philosophy, therefore, honoring that which has been given from above and that which is existent from without, must neither raise itself in hostility to the one, nor attempt to interfere violently with the other. For it is exactly when, keeping modestly within its proper limits of the inner spiritual life, it makes itself the handmaid neither of theology nor of politics, that it best asserts its true dignity and maintains its independence on its own peculiar domain. ”

“ Long as Germany had been habituated to the genius of Schlegel, she herself seems to have been startled by the appearance of a work where the boldest, the most unlooked for, the sublimest vistas of philosophy were opened to her astonished view.
[lix]
Bespeaking then the indulgence of the reader, I will now proceed to lay before him an outline of some of the principal ideas on psychology and ontology, contained in the Philosophy of Life.
The consciousness of man is composed of mind, soul, and body. The soul is the centre of consciousness. ”

“ That philosophy of so-called pure, but properly empty thinking, separated and abstracted from actual reality, without end and without beginning, without ground as without aim, knows nothing of our postulate of life, in the full extent and sense of this word, so far as any thing is full and complete for man. The thinker, once entangled in the meshes of such a philosophy, can not admit of such an hypothesis, will allow to it no value, or, rather, knows nothing of it, and would never be able to make any thing of it. ”

“ The tendency, however, to a state of struggle and doubt is universal. It seems to be nothing less than a characteristic property of human nature, and to have its foundation in the dissension subsisting between reason and fancy, which has so firmly established itself in the mind of man. It may happen, no doubt, that in a mind whose opinions are settled both in theory and practice, no instability will be found to subsist in the plans which guide and regulate life, but that, on the contrary, they are, on the whole, followed out with fixed resolution and decided energy. ”

“ Filled with this idea, and animated by that pure zeal for science, which is its own best reward, Schlegel resolves to betake him to the study of the Sanscrit tongue. But for the considerations I have ventured to suggest, such a resolution on the part of such a man would be surely calculated to excite regret. We should be inclined to lament that a mind so original, already saturated with so much elegant literature and solid learning, should be thus doomed in the bloom of its existence, to consume years in the toilsome acquisition of the most difficult of all languages. ”

“ Moreover, if it is not allowable to ascribe fancy or a soul to God, so neither can He be spoken of as possessing reason as an essential faculty in the same proper sense as understanding and will are attributed to Him. God is indeed the author of reason; and the sound reason is even that which adheres to the center of truth, as He, in creating it, designed and ordered. But from this it does not by any means follow that He is himself the reason which He has created, or that He is even one with it. Were it so, then the advocates of absolute science, the rationalists, would be in the right ”

“ This is not the case indeed, at least not in the same degree and manner, with the reason, as the faculty of calm prudence in man—the internal standard of the moral equilibrium of his nature. Still, actually to produce, truly to bring forth or to create, is, with all its reasoning, utterly beyond its power; and if at times, as is the case with the false philosophy and mere dialectical thinking, it does make the attempt, it gives birth to naught but lifeless abortions and mere thought-created phantoms of abstract nothingness. ”

“ But after the internal word, which had been communicated by God to man, had become obscured; after man's connection with his Creator had been broken; even outward language necessarily fell into disorder and confusion. The simple and divine truth was overlaid with various and sensual fictions, buried under illusive symbols, and at last perverted into a horrible phantom. Even Nature, that, like a clear mirror of God's creation, had originally lain revealed and transparent to the unclouded eye of man, became now more and more unintelligible, strange and fearful ”

“ With respect to natural science in general, and the possibility of our attaining to it, the case stands thus:—If nature be a living force—if the life which reigns within it be in a certain though still very remote degree akin to the life of man and the human soul—then is a knowledge of nature easily conceivable, and right well possible (for nothing but the like, or at least the similar and cognate, can be known by the like) even though this cognition may still be extremely defective, and at best can never be more than partial. ”

“ As the highest and greatest of man’s endowments, it was almost deified, whatever did not appear at once and easily explicable by reason, being forthwith and indiscriminately pronounced a prejudice, and, as such, to be got rid of with all diligence. In this state of things, modern German philosophy commenced its career with attempting to show that this sovereign reason, which had set itself forth as the first and highest in man, is extremely defective, and comes far short of the requisitions both of science and life. ”

“ As a property, however, it can only be ascribed to those beings who, like man, behold the law of God far above them, but by no means to that Being who is Himself the sum and source of all moral laws. But let us now revert to our first question of the predication of reason to the Deity. If, in our present reigning systems, and especially in the latest German philosophy, reason is, notwithstanding, ascribed to Him, or, rather, the eternal, unconditional, and absolute reason is itself called God, and rationality is made to be His essence ”

“ The moral being of man, a prey to internal discord, may be said to be quartered, because the four primary faculties of the soul and mind of man—Understanding and Will, Reason and Imagination, stand in a two-fold opposition one to the other, and are, if we may so speak, dispersed into the four regions of existence. Reason in man is the regulating faculty of thought; and so far it occupies the first place in life and the whole system and arrangement of life; but it is unproductive in itself, and even in science it can pretend to no real fertility or immediate intuition. ”

“ The French philosophy was in fact a new Pagan idolatry of nature, and even the most splendid discoveries of natural science, which might and ought to have pointed to a higher principle, were not contemplated in their true spirit, nor employed to proper advantage, but were even made the instruments of a fanatic hostility towards the Deity. Even among the comparatively better natural philosophers of France, materialism was too generally the basis of their science, and a sensual enthusiasm for nature too much the prevailing tone of their writings. ”

“ In the same way as a scientific physician regards the health of the body, or its right temperature, as a happy equipoise—a middle line not easy to be observed between two contending evils—we must ever expect in such an organic imperfection a tendency to, or the seeds of, disease in one shape or another.
Political events form but one part, and not the whole, of human history. A knowledge of details, however great and various it may be, constitutes no science in the philosophic sense of the word, for it is in the right and comprehensive conception of the whole that science consists. ”

“ I have spoken of this freedom of will as peculiar to man, since it is not necessary, and rather would be a most arbitrary hypothesis, were we to go so far as to assert, that, assuming the existence of other free but created essences, our own special kind of freedom is the only possible and conceivable one. Still, for our present purpose, it is allowable to make such a purely hypothetical simile and comparison, if (a point on which the experiment itself must decide) it be likely to render our own peculiar form of consciousness more intelligible and conceivable. ”

“ And, in fact, in the history of the human mind and philosophy, and even of science generally, the essential characters of these leading phases of scientific aberration are only too distinctly legible to him who contemplates that great intellectual picture with an eye unblinded by prejudice.
The error most peculiar to the reason, and which, in its domain, springs up almost indigenously, is one that has already been frequently mentioned—viz., the phantom, of the unconditional, or the delusion of absolute necessity. Now, all the data on which man’s knowledge must be based have a triple source ”

“ With a few slight shades of difference, the political views of Goerres mainly accord with those of Schlegel; but, living under the free government of Bavaria, the former is able boldly to proclaim truths which the latter at Vienna was able only to hint. Goerres unites the strong, practical sense of Gentz—the masterly learning and profound and comprehensive understanding of F. Schlegel—to great boldness of character, and a style of peculiar force and condensation. ”