Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/434

Rh 412 SCHLEIERMACHER the interaction of these elements with their interpenetration as its infinite destination. The dualism is therefore not absolute, aud, though present in man's own constitution as composed of body and soul, is relative only even there. The ego is itself both body aud soul, the conjunction of both constitutes it ; our " organization " or sense nature has its intellectual element, and our " intellect " its organic element There is no such tiling as " pure mind" or "pure body." The one general function of the ego, thought, becomes in relation to the non-ego either receptive or spon- taneous action, and in both forms of action its organic, or sense, and its intellectual energies co-operate ; and in relation to man, nature, and the universe the ego gradually finds its true individuality by becoming a part of them, " every extension of consciousness being higher life. " The specific functions of the ego, as determined by the relative predominance of sense or intellect, are either functions of the senses (or organism) or functions of the intellect The former fall into the two classes of feelings (subjective) and perceptions (objective) ; the latter, according as the receptive or the spontaneous element predominates, into cognition and volition. In cognition being is the object and in volition it is the purpose of thought : in the first case we receive (in our fashion) the object of thought into ourselves ; in the latter we plant it out into the world. Both cogni- tion and volition are functions of thought as well as forms of moral action. It is in those two functions that the real life of the ego is manifested, but behind them is self-consciousness permanently present, which is always both subjective and objective conscious- ness of ourselves and of the non-ego. This self-consciousness is the third special form or function of thought, which is also called feeling and immediate knowledge. In it we cognize our own inner life as affected by the non-ego. As the non-ego helps or hinders, enlarges or limits, our inner life, we feel pleasure or pain. ^Esthetic, moral, and religious feelings are respectively produced by the reception into consciousness of large ideas, nature, mankind, and the world ; those feelings are the sense of being one with these vast objects. Religious feeling therefore is the highest form of thought and of life ; in it we are conscious of our unity with the world and God ; it is thus the sense of absolute dependence. Schleiermacher's doctrine of knowledge accepts the fundamental principle of Kant that knowledge is bounded by experience, but it seeks to remove Kant's scepticism as to knowledge of the Ding an sich, or Sein, as Schleiermacher's term is. The idea of knowledge or scientific thought as distinguished from the passive form of thought of aesthetics and religion is thought which is produced by all thinkers in the same form and which corresponds to being. All knowledge takes the form of the concept (Begrijf) or the judgment (Urtheil), the former conceiving the variety of being as a definite unity and plurality, and the latter simply connecting the concept with certain individual objects. In the concept there- fore the intellectual and in the judgment the organic or sense element predominates. The universal uniformity of the production of judgments presupposes the uniformity of our relations to -the outward world, and the uniformity of concepts rests similarly on the likeness of our inward nature. This uniformity is not based on the sameness of either the intellectual or the organic functions alone, but on the correspondence of the forms of thought and sensation with the forms of being. The essential nature of the concept is that it combines the general and the special, and the same combination recurs in being ; in being the system of sub- stantial or permanent forms answers to the system of concepts and the relation of cause and effect to the system of judgments, the higher concept answering to " force " and the lower to the pheno- mena of force, and the judgment to the contingent interaction of things. The sum of being consists of the two systems of sub- stantial forms and interactional relations, and it reappears in the form of concept and judgment, the concept representing being and the judgment being in action. Knowledge has under both forms the same object, the relative difference of the two being that when the conceptual form predominates we have speculative science and when the form of judgment prevails we have empirical or historical science. Throughout the domain of knowledge the two forms are found in constant mutual relations, another proof of the funda- mental unity of thought and being or of the objectivity of know- ledge. It is obvious that Plato, Spinoza, and Kant had contri- buted characteristic elements of their thought to this system, and directly or indirectly it was largely iudebted to Sehelling for fundamental conceptions. Schleienndchcr's Ethics. Next to religion and theology it was to the moral world, of which, indeed, the phenomena of religion aud theology were in his systems only constituent elements, that he specially devoted himself. In his earlier essays he endeavoured to point out the defects of ancient and modern ethical thinkers, particularly of Kant and Fichte, Plato and Spinoza only finding favour in his eyes. He failed to discover in previous moral systems any necessary oasis in thought, any completeness as regards the phenomena of moral action, any systematic arrangement of its parts, and any clear and distinct treatment of specific moral acts aud relations. His own moral system is an attempt to supply these deficiencies. It connects the moral world by a deductive process with the fundamental idea of knowledge and being ; it oIliTs a view of the entire world of human ;ietk>u which at all events aims at being exhaustive; it presents an arrangement of the matter of the science which tabulates its constituents after the model of the physical sciences ; and it supplies a sharply defined treatment of specific moral phenomena in their relation to the fundamental idea of human life as a whole. Schleiermaehcr defines ethics as the theory of the nature of the reason, or as the scientific treatment of the effects produced by human reason in the world of nature aud man. As a theoretical or speculative science it is purely descriptive and not practical, being correlated on the one hand to physical science and on the other to history. Its method is the same as that of physical science, being dih- tinguished from the latter only by its matter. The ontological basis of ethics is the unity of the real aud the ideal, and the psychological and actual basis of the ethical process is the tendency of reason and nature to unite in the form of the complete organiza- tion of the latter by the former. The end of the ethical process is that nature (i.e., all that is not mind, the human body as well as external nature) may become the perfect symbol and organ of mind. Conscience, as the subjective expression of the presupposed identity of reason and nature in their bases, guarantees the practicability of our moral vocation. Nature is preordained or constituted to become the symbol and organ of mind, just as mind is endowed with the impulse to realize this end. But the moral law above nature. Strictly speaking, the antitheses of good and bad and of free and necessary have no place in an ethical system, but simply in history, which is obliged to compare the actual with the ideal, but as far as the terms " good " and " bad " are used in morals they express the rule or the contrary of reason, or the harmony or the contrary of the particular and the general. The idea of " free " as opposed to necessary expresses simply the fact that the mind can propose to itself ends, though a man cannot alter his own nature. In contrast to Kant and Fichte and modern moral philosophers Schleiermacher reintroduced and assigned pre-eminent importance to the doctrine of the swnmum bonuin, or highest good. It represents in his system the ideal aud aim of the entire lite of man, supplying the ethical view of the conduct of individuals in relation to society and the universe, and therewith constituting a philosopl iy of history at the same time. Starting with the idea of the highest good and of its constituent elements (Giitet), or the chief forms of the union of mind and nature, Schleiermacher's system divides itself into the doctrine of moral ends, the doctrine of virtue, and the doctrine of duties ; in other words, as a development of the idea of the subjection of nature to reason it becomes a description of the actual forms of the triumphs of reason, of the moral power mani- fested therein, and of the specific methods employed. Every moral good er product has a fourfold character : it is individual and universal ; it is an organ and symbol of the reason, that is, it is the product of the individual with relation to theicommunity, and represents or manifests as well as classifies and rules nature. The first two characteristics provide for the functions and rights of the individual as well as those of the community or race. Though a moral action may have these four characteristics at various degrees of strength, it ceases to be moral if one of them is quite absent. All moral products may be classified according to the predominance of one or the other of these characteristics. Universal organizing action produces the forms of intercourse, and universal symbolizing action produces the various forms of science ; individual organiz- ing action yields the forms of property and individual symboliz- ing action the various representations of feeling, all these constitut- ing the relations, the productive spheres, or the social conditions of moral action. Moral functions cannot be performed by the indi- vidual in isolation but only in his relation to the family, the state, the school, the church, and society, all forms of human life which ethical science finds to its hand and leaves to the science of natural history to account for. The moral process is accomplished by the various sections of humanity in their individual spheres, and the doctrine of virtue deals with the reason as the moral power in each individual by which the totality of moral products is obtained. Schleiermacher classifies the virtues under the two forms of Gesinnung and Fertigkcit, the first consisting of the pure ideal element in action and the second the form it assumes in relation to circumstances, each of the two classes falling respectively into the two divisions of wisdom and love and of intelligence and appli- cation. In his system the doctrine of duty is the description of the method of the attainment of ethical ends, the conception of duty as an imperative, or obligation, being excluded, as we have seen. No action fulfils the conditions of duty except as it combines the three following antitheses : reference to the moral idea in its whole extent aud likewise to a definite moral sphere ; connexion with exist- ing conditions and at the same time absolute personal production ; the fulfilment of the entire moral vocation every moment though.