Ah! soon will the sailor, in bitter despair,
To his foundering skiff be clinging!
And that’s what the beautiful Siren there
Has done with her charming singing.
FRIEDRICH SCHLEIERMACHER.
He was an admirable dialectician, and did more than any other writer to promote in Germany a sympathetic study of Plato. Yet there is a touch of Romanticism in the vague, shadowy and mystic language in which he presents the elements of Christian thought and life.—Sime.
Wilhelm Von Humboldt says that Schleiermacher’s speaking far exceeded his power in writing, and that his strength consisted in the “deeply penetrative character of his words, which was free from art, and the persuasive effusion of feeling moving in perfect unison with one of the rarest intellects.”—American Cyclopædia.
Extracts From Schleiermacher.
True Pleasure.—Pleasure is a flower which grows indeed of itself, but only in fruitful gardens and well cultivated fields. Not that we should labor in our minds to gain it; but yet he who has not labored for it, with him it will not grow; whoever has not brought out in his own character something profitable and praiseworthy, it is in vain for him to sow. Even he who understands it best can do nothing better for the pleasure of another than that he should communicate to him what is the foundation of his own. Whosoever does not know how to work up the rough stuff for himself, and thereby make it his own, whosoever does not refine his disposition, has not secured for himself a treasure of thoughts, a many sidedness of relations, a view of the world and human things peculiar to himself—such a man knows not how to seize the proper occasion for pleasure, and the most important is assuredly lost for him. It is not the indolent who finds so much difficulty in filling up the time set aside for repose. Who find vexation and ennui in everything? From whom are we hearing never ending complaints about the poverty and dull uniformity of life? Who are most bitter in their lamentations over the slender powers of men for social intercourse, and over the insufficiency of all measures to obtain joy? But this is only what they deserve; for man cannot reap where he has not sown.