OF THE SPIRIT. 



315 



macher's philosophy without his theology. The histori- 

 cal process, the actually existing religion, is the prac- 

 tical solution of the theoretical problem. 



Nevertheless, the posthumous publication of Schleier- 

 macher's Lectures, which range over a large field, com- 

 prising dialectics, ajsthetics, psychology, ethics, history 

 of philosophy, &c., gave abundant proof that he strove 

 to the end to give also a broader and deeper theoretical 

 foundation to his theological teaching, that he was work- 

 ing at the main philosophical problem, the psychological 

 foundation of religion, the problem of the Spirit. It is 

 interesting to inquire how it has come about that this 

 truly philosophical side of Schleiermacher's teaching, 

 notably his quite original treatment of psychology, has 

 been so little noticed, and has had, till quite recently,^ 



it may be spoken of. Is it the 

 iudividual self, or the Bewusst- 

 sein ilberhaupt, or the collective 

 Self? Is it au individual thing or 

 a logical abstraction, or is it the 

 concrete universal ? This point is 

 never cleared up. But Schleier- 

 naacher anticipates, though only 

 implicitly, the recent doctrine of 

 the two selves, the subjective and 

 the social self. The first a " mirror 

 of the Universe," to use the Leib- 

 nizian term ; the second only a unit 

 among a great many other units 

 or persons, distinguished from 

 them and other surrounding things. 

 I cannot help thinking that Eng- 

 lish psychologists, vporking on the 

 lines marked out so clearly by Prof. 

 Jas. Ward, would do well to 

 study and interpret Schleier- 

 macher's earlier writings and bring 

 out the psychology which is hidden 

 in them. In a paper " On the 

 Synoptic Aspect of Reality," pub- 

 lislied in the ' Proceedings of the 

 University of Durham Philosophi- 



cal Society' (vol. v. pp. 45-61), I 

 have traced a little more fully 

 the direction of this line of reason- 

 ing. It is only since I wrote this, 

 and four years after the text of 

 this chapter was written, that I 

 have become acquainted with the 

 interesting study of E. Fuchs, and 

 I am much gratified to find how 

 helpful his analysis of Schleier- 

 macher's early speculations is to- 

 wards an adequate psychology of 

 religion as a personal and a social 

 factor in human life. 



^ It seems to me to be a principal 

 merit of Bender's work that he has 

 drawn attention to Schleiermacher's 

 psychology in opposition to a con- 

 ception prevalent at the time that 

 the foundation of Schleiermacher's 

 religious speculation was essentially 

 metaphysical. "That the in- 

 dividual comes to life only in the 

 whole and the whole only in in- 

 dividuals — these are the two poles 

 around which, from the beginning, 

 Schleiermacher's, sphere of thought 



