166 



PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



23. 



Schelling. 



24. 



Morality 

 and 

 Religion. 



to a more artistic and poetical view of life and culture, 

 to a speculation more in harmony with the artistic spirit 

 which permeated Goethe's and Schiller's creations. 



In Fichte's successor, Schelling, the ethical was gradu- 

 ally replaced by the ?esthetical ideal, leading with some 

 of his friends and disciples to the vagueness and moral 

 laxity of the romantic movement. The ethical problem 

 as such fell into the background, making way for the 

 sesthetical problem on the one side and the spiritual 

 problem on the other. 



The controversies alluded to referred to the relation 

 of morality and religion. I have already mentioned 

 that all through the period which preceded the new 

 philosophical movement, a tendency had grown up to 

 rationalise the existing doctrine of the Church, the 

 traditional articles of Christian faith, to establish a 

 reasoned philosophical creed, not in opposition to, but 

 in harmony with, the deeper sense and meaning of the 

 teachings contained in the New as well as the Old 

 Testament, the Mosaic and Christian revelation. The 

 fundamental idea of these endeavours was the conviction 

 that the Divine spirit revealed itself primarily to man- 

 kind in the recesses of the moral consciousness and 



of the Kantian philosophy. Thus 

 the evil tendency presents itself in 

 Fichte's ethical system merely as a 

 retarding influence : it is the vis 

 iiiertice of all natural beings which 

 has to be overcome by the propel- 

 ling strength of the ennobling 

 power of human character. " In 

 this way," he says, " Kant's view 

 receives greater clearness viz., 

 that the radical evil in man is 

 inborn and that it has nevertheless 

 its origin in freedom. It is quite 



conceivable that man should re- 

 main for some time, or perhaps 

 during his whole life, upon a lower 

 stage, inasmuch as nothing would 

 propel him upward. . . . But it 

 is not necessary that he should re- 

 main there. . . . It is just as pos- 

 sible for him to place himself at 

 once at the highest point, and if 

 he has not done so this comes 

 from his not having made use of 

 his freedom." ('Werke,' iv. p. 

 182.) 



