Page:A Brief History of Modern Philosophy.djvu/193

190 he acquired, both by independent reflection and by the study of the works of Kant, a clear insight into the limits of human knowledge. He did not join the circle of romanticists until later. Dilthey has described this course of the development of the critical romanticist in his Leben Schleiermachers. Schleiermacher's position in the history of philosophy is characterized by the fact that he keeps the spirit of the critical philosophy alive within the ranks of romanticism. His Socratic personality, in which the capacity of complete inner devotion was united with a remarkable degree of calm discretion, furnished the basis for the combination of romanticism and criticism. According to his view the things which criticism destroyed and would no longer regard as objectively true did not necessarily lose their religious value if they could be supported as the symbolic expression of an affective personal experience. Schleiermacher reveals his romanticism especially in the fact that he does not distinguish sharply between symbol and dogma. He failed to see that as a matter of fact he assigned to religion a different position in the spiritual life than that which the church could accept. In his Reden über die Religion an die Gebildeten unter ihren Verächtern (1799) he defined immediate intuition and feeling, by which man is enabled to experience the infinite and the eternal, as the psychological basis of religion. Here every antithesis is annulled, whilst knowledge must forever move from idea to idea and volition from task to task. The only method by which intellectual, aesthetic and moral culture can attain their completion is by finally resting on subjective concentration such as is given in feeling alone. Hence Schleiermacher defines religion from the standpoint of human nature, not vice versa. He seeks to show the value of religion for life.