162 



PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



47. 

 Schleier- 

 macher's 

 Religious 

 Discourses. 



to find a way out of it.^ It is therefore not surprising 

 to see how other courses of thought which bore on 

 the same subject were hailed with interest or with 

 enthusiasm as they presented themselves about the same 

 time, i.e., at the end of the eighteenth century. Among 

 these must be mentioned, as perhaps the most important 

 and fruitful, the appearance of Schleiermacher's ' Eeligious 

 Discourses' (1799). These discourses were published 

 with a significant sub-title, as addressed to the " edu- 

 cated among the despisers" of religion. It is not my 

 intention to enter now into an adequate consideration 

 of Schleiermacher's views, which will occupy us fully on 

 a future occasion, as they mark probably the most 

 important attempt during a long period to get out of 



1 This perplexity is well brought 

 out by Reinhokl in his ' Letters on 

 the Kantian Philosophj^' which 

 appeared in two volumes in 1790 

 and 1792. They are admirably 

 analj^sed in Kuno Fischer's work 

 on ' Fichte and his Predecessors, ' 

 which forms the fifth volume of 

 his ' History of Modern Philosophy ' 

 (see especially p. 54, &c.) Kant 

 started in his first ' Critique ' with 

 a purely logical problem which he 

 expressed in the abstract question : 

 How are synthetical judgments a 

 priori possible ? His answer to 

 this question was partly logical, 

 partly psychological. A strictly 

 scientific examination of the solu- 

 tion he gave belongs, as I stated 

 above (p. 125), to a much later 

 period, when both logic and psy- 

 chology had been much further 

 developed. Kant's age was hardly 

 prepared to give an exhaustive and 

 satisfactory reply ; but the abstract 

 question presented itself to that 

 age in various concrete forms which 

 were intelligible to the reasoning of 



a much larger circle of educated 

 persons. Among these, three prob- 

 lems stand out most prominently : 

 1. How is scientific knowledge pos- 

 sible ? 2. How is morality or moral 

 obligation possible ? 3. How is reli- 

 gion possible ? That scientific know- 

 ledge did exist — notably mathe- 

 matics and natural philosophy — 

 there was no doubt ; that a moral 

 code must exist, and that this is 

 closely connected with a higher or 

 spiritual view of things, was not de- 

 nied, — neither by such destructive 

 sceptics as Voltaire in France, nor 

 hardly even by such radical think- 

 ers as David Hume in England. 

 The more practical forms in which 

 the abstract question of Kant 

 presented itself, the desire to have 

 a philosophy which made it intel- 

 ligible how science (presupposing a 

 natural order), a supreme law of 

 conduct (presupposing a moral 

 order), and religious belief could 

 exist together and in harmony, 

 appealed at once to the age in 

 which Kant lived. 



