The Philosophy of History, Vol. 2 of 2

by Friedrich von Schlegel

never be called English or German—but should be general and European. And if this is not so entirely the case as in the nature of things it ought to be—we must ascribe it to the defects of particular forms. Of this truth the example of the French language may convince us; for no one will deny the metaphysical profundity of Count Maistre, or the dialectic perspicacity of the Viscount De Bonald. Although those absolute principles which appear to characterize the European nations at this time, have much less influence on real life and on the social relations in Germany than in any other country; yet the false spirit of the absolute seems to be quite native to German science and philosophy; and for a long period, has been the principal cause which has cramped the religious spirit and feelings so natural to the German character, or at least has given them a false direction.

With regard to religious opinions, Protestantism in Germany has not been split into a multitude of new, various, and jarring sects, as in other countries, such as England, Holland, and North America, where it was exclusively or for the most part predominant; for even the Hernhutters were not properly a sect. It is only very recently the Pietists have formed themselves into a party opposed to the Rationalists—but their doctrines are not sufficiently precise and determinate to constitute them a sect, according to the proper signification of that word.

Pietism consists rather in a deep, though vague, sentiment of religion, and in a fusion of various and opposite religious views and doctrines. Undoubtedly this moral fusion of opinions, as well as that outward complication of the interests and doctrines of Catholicism and Protestantism, and of so many private views in matters of religion, produced many wild and fanciful abortions peculiar to the age; many pure idiosyncrasies among the Protestants, whether they made half advances towards the Catholic church, or pursued the opposite path of absolute individualism—or among the Catholics still more monstrous amalgamations—Protestant or semi-Protestant innovations in doctrine aimed at by individuals—innovations which originated in the principles of Illuminism, and were countenanced by the well-known policy of certain sovereigns. Much as we may feel disposed, or are even bound to oppose with all our might, such moral abortions, when the question regards their practical operation—yet I do not think we ought to pronounce an absolutely unfavourable judgment on their general intellectual tendency. The real primary evil of the eighteenth century—an utter indifference for all religious doctrines and concerns,—the dangerous spirit of complete indifferentism, from whose contagion many purely Catholic countries did not escape, took less strong hold in Germany, and obtained less general diffusion than in any other country. A deep, indelible religious feeling still continued

to characterize the German nation, and to give a tone to its philosophical speculations. We should not pay too much attention to some transient and partial paradoxes:—I well recollect the words of an old, very experienced, pious, and enlightened ecclesiastic, who well understood the German character, and who used to say; “If we don’t give a religion to the Germans, they will make one out for themselves.”

Even in the greatest errors of their philosophy, a certain religious bearing and tendency can easily be pointed out. However in a country like Germany, where religious opinions and interests are so various and so intermixed, a long time must elapse before a profound philosophy, which would satisfy these yearnings of religious desire, can attain its full moral developement, or assume a clear outward tangible form. If I before said of the English, in reference to the struggle going on between the conflicting elements of their government—a struggle which in one form or other every great European nation has to settle in its own interior, and to bring to a successful issue—that it would appear by many expressions in their parliamentary proceedings, from those in particular at the head of affairs, and who are best acquainted with them, that a secret self-apprehension besets the minds of English politicians;—so I may now say of our German nation, among whom the conflict lies principally, or more immediately in the sphere of religion and philosophy; that more

than all other nations the Germans are destitute of self-knowledge and of mutual concord; and the cause of this must be sought for in the unfulfilment of their religious and philosophical destiny, and in the yet unallayed discord between opposite elements of faith and various systems of science.

In the first period of German literature, the Protestants had quite the preponderance; but since then, the balance, at least in science, has been completely restored. I speak here of internal religious principles, and not of outward confessions of faith, which cannot be made the criterion for a philosophic classification. For otherwise by descending into details, I might cite, among the few quite irreligious organs of German philosophy, some writers (happily rare exceptions) who belonged to Catholic Germany; and on the other hand, among those foremost and most distinguished in reviving the pure Platonic philosophy, and whose profound religious conceptions have given quite a Christian form to natural philosophy itself, I might adduce the names of men who were members of the Protestant church. Philosophy itself has not to determine, nor to illustrate religious dogmas, nor does it stand in immediate connection with them. The main point to which I wish to direct attention, and which is necessary to render philosophy Christian; is that an internal harmony or unison should be preserved between faith and science; next that the principle of

divine revelation should be regarded as the basis, not only of theology but of every other science; and lastly, that even nature herself should be studied and investigated by this high religious light, and thus made to receive from science a new and transparent lustre. The modern German philosophy even in its infancy, when it was yet pretty closely allied to the English school, and mostly started with the same problems (though it gave to these a deeper and a wider solution), aimed at this harmony between faith and science. It understood both indeed in the very limited sense of a mere faith of reason and science of reason, influenced as it was by the Rationalism then so generally diffused, not only in Protestant but even in Catholic countries, and notably in Catholic Germany. But at the same time other profound thinkers sought another and higher foundation for philosophy in the idea of revelation; a revelation which some understood in a mere general and speculative, though not irreligious, sense—and others in the Christian sense of positive faith and pious feeling. The capital vice of German philosophy is the absolute—the philosophic reflection of the general vice of the spirit of the age, which exerts an absolute influence on life itself—whether this vice of German philosophy assume the form of the absolute ego,[27] or that of the

Pantheistic naturalism,[28] or that of absolute reason.[29] It is this which originally gave to the natural philosophy of the Germans a false Pantheistic direction, for the real materialism which has found so many advocates among the French Naturalists, has from the very ideal tendency of the German mind, experienced little favour in Germany. Yet this foreign influence was not of long continuance—German physics became deeply imbued with a religious spirit, and the German natural philosophy is now in the hands of its first representatives decidedly Christian. And this progress in the great work of the religious regeneration of science, I must consider as the noblest triumph of genius, for it is precisely in the department of physics the problem was the most difficult; and all that rich and boundless treasure of new discoveries in nature, which are ever better understood when viewed in connection with the high truths of religion, must be looked upon as the property of Christian science. The various systems of philosophic Rationalism, mutually subversive, as they are, of each other, will fall to the ground, and the vulgar Rationalism which is but an emanation of the higher, and which still prevails in

some particular schools, and in many of the lower walks of German literature, will finally disappear; in proportion as German philosophy becomes imbued with the spirit of religion, and German science becomes thoroughly Christian, or Catholic. In the firm hope that this will certainly happen, I have given publicity to these first essays of a philosophy I had long in secret prepared; and of which the first part, “the Philosophy of Life,” treats of consciousness, or of the inward man: the second, “this Philosophy of History,” which I now have here brought to a close, considers the outward man, or the progress of states and nations through all ages of the world.