SCHLEIERMACHER 



SCHLIEMANN 



213 



other works from his manuscripts or from notes of 

 his lectures taken by students. Of these the most 

 important are Die Christliche Sitte (1843), Leben 

 Jesv, Sermons, a work on Dialectic, and a sketch 

 of a system of Ethics. A collection of letters, of 

 great importance for understanding Schleiermacher's 

 very singular personality, was edited by Dilthey in 

 four volumes ( 1860-64 ; partly trans, by Frederica 

 Rowan, 1860). Dilthey began a biography, of 

 which only the first volume has appeared (1870). 

 A multitude of larger and smaller books and 

 articles dealing with the man and his work appeared 

 on occasion of the centenary of his birth, 1868. In 

 18-25 Thirl wall published a translation of his Essay 

 'on St Luke; his Introduction to Plato's Ditdorjues 

 was translated into English by I Ml, son in 1836 ; 

 and a volume of Selected Sermons was Issued in 

 England in 1890. 



.Schleiermacher has been for theology what Kant 

 was for philosophy. Kant submitted the theo- 

 retical and practical reason to a critical analysis, 

 in order to distinguish the primordial and perennial 

 laws of thought and will from the ever-changing 

 sensations which supply the materials of experi- 

 ence. In like manner Schleiermacher undertook 

 a critical analysis of religion, in order to discover 

 what in it was the original essence and what 

 were the derivative forms. Dogma, he taught, 

 is not religion, but a statement about re- 

 ligion which is the product of reflection ; religion 

 iteelf is feeling, the immediate sense of our 

 dependence on the divine source of all things, on 

 God. But devout feeling, though the inmost 

 part of individual life, is riot itself merely indi- 

 vidual ; the individual man is conditioned liy the 

 community he belongs to, and the mode in which 

 that community experiences the religious emotion, 

 in a manner common to its members, rests on and 

 is conditioned liy the historical and fundamental 

 fact of the establishment of the community. In 

 this fact we may iecngiii.se a ' revelation,' inasmuch 

 as a creative religious personality communicates to 

 others ite own peculiar religious feeling, it con- 

 sciousness of (io<l. K\ery historical religion rests 

 in this sense on a revelation, on the communication 

 of the original religious life of creative personalities, 

 gnch as could not be thought out a priori or deduced 

 from universal truths. This is especially true of 

 Christianity, which is peculiarly a positive religion, 

 one to be realised through experience, inasmuch as 

 it has for ito very centre the relation to the histori- 

 cal person of Jesus Christ as the redeemer ; and by 

 this fact all statements of doctrine as to G<xl and 

 the world and mankind must be regulated. The 

 Christian church recognises that it has received 

 ' Redemption ' liberation and strengthening of the 

 consciousness of God heretofore trammelled by 

 nature as the influence of the person of Christ, and 

 that it continues to receive the same by means of 

 the spirit of the church, which has proceeded from 

 Christ. From this experience the church is led up- 

 wards to its cause in the person of Christ, and for 

 that reason lielieves in the typical perfection of 

 Christ ; this distinguishes Christ from all other 

 men, yet without abrogating his true humanity. 

 Similarly our faith in Christ rests only on that 

 quickening of the pious disposition which we 

 experience through and from him, and which in 

 a sense is common to us with him. But this faith 

 is independent of all historical reports of miraculous 

 events that took place in him or by him. It is not 

 because of the Bible and its miracles that we believe 

 in Christ; it is lierauso of Christ, whose influence 

 we experience in our consciousness of redemption, 

 that we believe in the Bible. That is, we ascribe 

 to the Bible a normative dignity, as containing a 

 substantially true picture of Christ ; while it 

 must not, however, prevent us from submitting 



its story in detail to the same critical tests as 

 we apply to all historical traditions whatsoever. 

 Schleiermacher did not expressly deny all miracle ; 

 but he laid down the general principle that it is 

 not to the advantage of piety to hold, in the case 

 of any single events, that their connection with 

 the order of nature is interrupted by their depend- 

 ence upon God. His general conception of the 

 relation of God to the world, of the mutual corre- 

 spondence of the infinite with the many finite 

 causes ( which approximates very closely to Spinoza s 

 view ), excludes the possibility of miracles in the 

 fully supernaturalistic sense of the word. In this 

 reference Schleiennacher has avoided and super- 

 seded alike supra-naturalism and rationalism, by 

 emphasising Christian experience, and insisting on 

 the historical character of the Christian religion 

 in the person and influence of Christ. He has inter 

 penetrated theology with philosophical idealism liy 

 taking as its basis the human self consciousness. On 

 the other hand, he set philosophy free from the un- 

 historical individualism and rationalism which had 

 clung to it even in Kant's hands liy widening the 

 religious and ethical consciousness into the social 

 consciousness of the community ; in the common 

 consciousness of ethical beings he discovered reason 

 historically developing itself, and saw in the indi- 

 vidual reason no more than the special form of 

 manifestation, the organ which is but its servant. 

 By means of his dogmatics and his ethics Schleier- 

 macher has done more than any other thinker to 

 solve the great problem of this age the recon- 

 ciliation of the individual with the community, of 

 private conscience with the claims of historical 

 tradition. 



See, besides books referred to above, the article 

 RELIGION in this work ; Lichtcnberger, HiHorii of German 

 Theology in the Nineteenth, Century ( 1873 ; Eng. trans, 

 by Hastie ) ; and The Development oj Theology ince Kant 

 (1890), and The I'hitotopliy of Religion (Eng. trans. 

 1886-88), by the present writer. 



Mrhli-swia. See SLESWICK. 



>rlil'll>lall. a town of Lower Alsace, on the 

 left bank of the III, 27 miles by rail SSW. of Stras- 

 bnrg. It manufactures wire-gauze. In the 13th 

 century it was made a free imperial town, and in 

 the 15th was chosen by Agricola as the seat of a 

 higher school that greatly helped to foster human- 

 istic studies ; Erasmus was a pupil. In 1634 the 

 town became French ; it was fortified by Vauban 

 in 1676. The ( lei mans, after capturing the town 

 in 1870, razed the fortifications. Here Martin 

 Bucer(q.v.), the Reformer, was bom. Pop. (1875} 

 9094; (1885)9172; (1895)9304. 



Schlieniuim, HEINRICH, the excavator of the 

 sites of Troy ami Mvcenoe, was a native of Meck- 

 lenburg-Schwerin, born at Neubuckow on Gth 

 January 1822. Whilst working in a merchant's 

 office and afterwards trading on his own account 

 in St Petersburg, he acquired a knowledge of the 

 principal languages of modern Europe and of 

 ancient Greek. Having in the meantime become 

 possessed of a large fortune, he began in 1870 to 

 explore and excavate at his own cost the ruin- 

 heaps of Hissarlik in the Troad (Asia Minor), and 

 continued the work for twelve years. Schliemann 

 maintained that it was the site of ancient Troy 

 (<(. v. ). For carrying off, contrary to his agree- 

 ment with the Turkish government, all the spoils 

 he unearthed, he was compelled, through a judg- 

 ment of the Greek courts, to pay the Ottoman 

 Porte the sum of 2000. But he retained posses- 

 sion of his collections, and in 1882 presented 

 them to the German nation ; they are now pre- 

 served in the Ethnological Museum at Berlin. 

 In 1876 Schliemann commenced, in like manner, 

 to excavate the site of ancient Mycenae in Greece ; 



