OF THE SPIRIT. 



339 



ence. 1 Expression has been given to this belief in 

 the self - confident and even triumphant teachings of 

 materialism from the time of the French encyclopedists 



1 In the present connection as 

 referring to the problem of the 

 Spirit it may suffice to select out 

 of an enormous literature on 

 the subject a few outstanding 

 pronouncements. Among leading 

 intellects who have exerted great 

 influence upon current philosophi- 

 cal thought, especially in Germany, 

 no one has more emphatically and 

 uncompromisingly rejected the 

 conception of the miraculous than 

 Eduard Zeller. In this regard 

 his ' Polemics with Albrecht 

 Ritschl ' are well worth reading. 

 In an anonymous and highly 

 interesting article, contributed in 

 the year 1860 to the 4th volume 

 of Sybel's ' Historische Zeitschrift ' 

 (p. 90, sqq. ), Zeller reviewed the 

 principal distinctive features of the 

 Tubingen historical school of which 

 Ferd. Chr. Baur (1792-1860) was 

 the head and centre. Of these 

 the first was expressed as follows : 

 " Of the two presuppositions of 

 the older supernaturalistic the- 

 ology ; that we possess in the 

 biblical records firstly, plain 

 history, and secondly, a super- 

 natural event not governed by the 

 general laws of historical happen- 

 ing of these two presuppositions 

 Baur dropped the second, the first 

 he did not dare, in the main, to 

 meddle with. Thus there arose for 

 him the task of showing that it was 

 only necessary to understand rightly 

 the biblical reports in order to 

 find in them, instead of supposed 

 miracles, only natural and fully 

 intelligible events " (reprinted in 

 Zeller's ' Vortrage und Abhand- 

 lungen,' vol. i., 2nd ed., p. 297). 

 Incidentally the author refers 

 (p. 302) to Schleiermacher's and 

 Hegel's views on this subject : 



" Schleiermacher as critic and ex- 

 egete took up -to the writings of 

 the New Testament mainly a 

 rationalistic position, whilst, indeed, 

 in his Glaubenslehre with the fun- 

 damental miracle of the ideally per- 

 fect Christ he opened the door to 

 all other miracles. , . . Hegel also, 

 to begin with, took up a rational- 

 istic position to positive religion. 

 ... In the sequel, when the recon- 

 ciliation of faith and knowledge 

 became the watchword of his 

 philosophy of Religion, he explained 

 that the historical side was im- 

 material for the believer as it only 

 depended upon the idea contained 

 therein : and thus he expresses 

 himself so vaguely that the most 

 opposite views could appeal to him 

 with equal justice." Further on 

 Zeller gives a very clear definition 

 of his objection to the miraculous : 

 "A miracle is an event which 

 stands in contradiction to the 

 analogy of all other experience, 

 and this is, indeed, the essence 

 and the notion of a miracle" (p. 

 304). He then goes on to repeat in 

 substance what David Hume had 

 already said in his Essay on 

 Miracles a century before. 



To these expositions of Zeller 

 Albrecht Ritschl replied in a paper 

 published in the ' Jahrbucher fiir 

 Deutsche Theologie ' (1861) on " the 

 Historical method of investigating 

 early Christianity" (vol. vi. pp. 429- 

 459). This reply, as well as the ar- 

 ticle of Zeller which provoked it, are 

 important as showing how Ritschl, 

 in following Schleiermacher, ap- 

 proaches the sacred histories from 

 a position which differs completely 

 from that of science or meta- 

 physics. The substance of his 

 argument is that the authors of 



