176 



PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



All purely abstract morality or ethics, dominated by 

 the idea of duty, must fail to give due weight to the 

 individual differences of human beings, to conceive of 

 duty as something different for every rational being. 

 These systems emphasise only what should be common 

 to all, the universal law, whether of thought or of 

 conduct, be it Natural, Moral, or Divine. Against this 

 view Schleiermacher assimilates, from the monadology 

 of Leibniz, the idea that the individual is, in every 

 instance, an independent mirror of the whole universe, 

 capable of reflecting in itself and destined to reflect the 

 whole from an individual point of view, to realise in an 

 individual example the common ideal. 



In connection with this appreciation of individuality 

 and personality, Schleiermacher attaches, in his ethical 

 treatises, more importance to what the moral life should 



logical point of view there was a 

 want of empirical psychology such 

 .as has been all along cultivated 

 pre-eminently in this country. It 

 may incidentally be mentioned that 

 this one-sided regard for the ab- 

 stract, the pure, possibly the ideal 

 self, is intimately connected with 

 Fichte's autocratic and domineering 

 character, which stands in marked 

 contrast to the sympathetic and 

 receptive mind of Schleiermacher. 

 How this gradually led to an 

 estrangement between these two 

 great thinkers is brought out in a 

 masterly manner by Dilthey (loc. 

 cit., pp. 334-348). He quotes the 

 following passage from Fichte's 

 ' Sittenlehre, ' Werke, iv. p. 254 : 

 " Already we have separated clearly 

 pure reason from individuality. 

 The expression and realisation of 

 what is pure in a reasoning self is 

 the moral law, individuality is 

 what distinguishes one individual 



from another. The connecting link 

 of the pure and empirical lies in 

 this, that a rational being must fain 

 be an individual but not necessarily 

 this or that one ; that any one is 

 this or that individual is accidental 

 and of empirical origin. The em- 

 pirical is the will, the understand- 

 ing, and the body. The object of 

 the moral law is distinctly nothing 

 individual but reason in general " 

 [ Vemunft iiberhaupt]. "... The 

 absolute annihilation of the indi- 

 vidual and merger of the same in 

 absolute pure reason or in God, is 

 indeed the last aim of finite reason ; 

 only this is not possible in time." 

 Dilthey communicates (Appendix, 

 p. 123) a passage from Schleier- 

 macher's ' Diary ' as probably bear- 

 ing upon this : " That one cannot 

 have individuality without person- 

 ality is the elegiac] theme of true 

 mysticism." 



