Very young he knew modern languages well, though with a defective ear, and having no local or contemporary attachments he devoted himself systematically to the study of foreign divines. The characteristic universality of his later years was not the mere result of untiring energy and an unlimited command of books. His international habit sprang from the inadequacy of the national supply, and the search for truth in every century naturally became a lecturer whose function it was to unfold from first to last the entire life of the Church, whose range extended over all Christian ages, and who felt the inferiority of his own. Döllinger's conception of the science which he was appointed to carry forward, in conformity with new requirements and new resources, differed from the average chiefly by being more thorough and comprehensive. At two points he was touched by currents of the day. Savigny, the legal expert of a school recruited from both denominations and gravitating towards Catholicism, had expounded law and society in that historic spirit which soon pervaded other sciences, and restored the significance of national custom and character. By his writings Protestant literature overlapped. The example of the conspicuous jurist served as a suggestion for divines to realise the patient process of history; and Döllinger continued to recognise him as a master and originator of true scientific methods when his influence on jurisprudence was on the wane. On the same track, Drey, in 1819, defended the theory of development as the vital prerogative of Rome over the fixity of other churches. Möhler was the pupil of Drey, and they made Tübingen the seat of a positive theology, broader and more progressive than that of Munich.
The first eminent thinker whom he saw and heard was Baader, the poorest of writers, but the most instructive and impressive talker in Germany, and the one man who appears to have influenced the direction of his mind. Bishop Martensen has described his amazing powers; and Döllinger, who remembered him with more scant esteem, bore equal testimony to the wealth and worth of his religious philosophy. He probably owed to him his persistent disparagement of Hegel, and more certainly that familiarity with the abstruse literature of mysticism which made him as clear and sure of vision in the twilight of Petrucci and St. Martin as in the congenial company of Duperron. Baader is remembered by those who abstain from sixteen volumes of discordant thought, as the inventor of that system of political insurance which became the Holy Alliance. That authority is as sacred and sovereignty as absolute in the Church as in the State, was an easy and obvious inference, and it had been lately drawn with an energy and literary point to which Baader was a stranger, by the Count de Maistre, who was moreover a student of St. Martin. When the ancient mystic welcomed his new friend, he was full of the praises of De Maistre. He impressed upon his earnest listener the importance of the books on the pope and on the Gallican church, and assured him that the spirit which animates them is the genuine Catholicism. These conversations were the origin of Döllinger's specific ultramontanism. It governed one half of his life, and his interest in De Maistre outlasted the assent which he once gave to some of his opinions. Questions arising from the Savoyard's indictment against Bacon, which he proposed to Liebig, formed the connection between the two laboured attacks on the founder of English philosophy.
Much of that which at any time was unhistoric or presumptive in his mind may be ascribed to this influence; and it divided him from Möhler, who was far before him in the fulness of the enjoyment of his powers and his fame, whom he survived half a century, and never ceased to venerate as the finest theological intellect he had known. The publication of the Symbolik made it difficult for the author to remain in Wirtemberg; Tübingen, he said, was a place where he could neither live nor die happy; and having made Döllinger's acquaintance, he conceived an ardent wish to become his colleague at Munich.
Im Verkehre mit Ihnen, und dem Kreise in dem Sie leben, habe ich mich aufs anmuthigste erheitert, sittlich gestärkt, und religiös getröstet und ermuthigt gefunden; ein Verein von Einwirkungen auf mich würde mir gewährt, deren aller ich in fast gleichein Grade bedürftig war.
Döllinger negotiated his appointment, overcame the resisting ministerial medium through the intervention of the king, and surrendered his own department of theology, which they both regarded as the most powerful agency in religious instruction. Möhler had visited Göttingen and Berlin, and recognised their superiority. A public address to Planck, praising the Protestant treatment of history, was omitted by Döllinger from the edition of his miscellaneous writings. They differed so widely that one of them hesitated to read Bossuet's Defensio, and generally kept the stronger Gallicans out of sight, whilst the other warmly recommended Richer, and Launoy, and Dupin, and cautioned his pupils against Baronius, as a forger and a cheat, who dishonestly attributed to the primitive Church ideas quite foreign to its constitution. He found fault with his friend for undue favour to the Jesuits, and undue severity towards Jansenism. The other advised him to read Fênelon, and succeeded in modifying this opinion.
Sie werden vielleicht um so geneigter sein, mir zu verzeihen, wenn ich Ihnen melde, dass ich inzwischen recht fleissig die Jansenistischen Streitigkeiten, durch Ihre freundliche Zuschrift angeregt, studirt habe, und Ihrer Darstellung ohne Zweifel jetzt weit näher stehe als früher. Selbst die Bulle Unigenitus erscheint mir in einem weit günstigeren Lichte als früher, obschon ich die Censur mancher Quesnel'scher Sätze immer noch nicht begreifen kann. Sie schrieben mir, dass die Fénelon'sche Correspondenz einen grossen Einfluss auf Ihre Betrachtungsweise ausgeübt habe. Auch bei mir ist dieses der Fall.
But in describing the failure of scholastic theology, the exaggeration of De Maistre, the incompetence of the Roman censorship, the irreligion of Leo X., and the strength of Luther's case against the Papacy, the sensitive Suabian made a contrast, then, and long after, with Döllinger's disciplined coolness and reserve.
Dann war wirklich die bestehende Form der Kirche im höchsten Grade tadelhaft, und bedurfte der Reinigung. Die Päpste waren Despoten, willkührliche Herrscher geworden. Gebräuche hatten sich angehäuft, die im höchsten Grade dem Glauben und der christlichen Frömmigkeit entgegen waren. In vielen Punkten hatte Luther immer Recht, wenn er von Missbräuchen der Römischen Gewalt spricht, dass dort alles feil sei.—Tetzel verfuhr ohnediess auf die empörendste Weise, und übertrieb, mit einer religiösen Rohheit und einem Stumpfsinn ohne Gleichen, das Bedenkliche der Sache auf die äusserste Spitze.
The disagreement which made itself felt from time to time between the famous colleagues was not removed when one of them wished the other to change his confessor before his last illness.