scepticism. Then it was germinating, now it has attained its full development; and I may say that, after all I have passed through, I have become a Herrnhuter again, only of a higher order." He always cherished and revered the simple, ardent piety of the Herrnhuters, and their worship became his ideal of what all elevating and edifying Christian worship should be. Indeed, their influence is seen in his fundamental conceptions of religion, of theology, and of the church. A Herrnhuter indeed he always was, only of a higher order, a mystic, but more than a mystic. He was a man of too large a personality to remain only such, especially in an age like that.

On the intellectual side of his development, as we shall see, he came under the influence of the philosophical movements of his time, or rather of movements that passed more comprehensively under the name of Illuminism. But his religious culture stood by him. He only sought to strike below these movements, and to secure a position that should enable him to comprehend what was true in them, but that should also comprehend much more. On the speculative side he developed as a sceptic. But on the religious side, he was a mystic to the end, and it contributed to his rescue, not only from the old Rationalism that Kant had fought down, but from the new Rationalism of the Illumination itself, of which Kant was one of the chief promoters, against which Schleiermacher subsequently reacted, and ultimately it saved him from other influences of the Illumination. But his immense speculative and dialectical ability modified his mystical tendencies, giving us a higher type of mysticism, free

from the intellectual crudeness which he found so prevalent in the Moravian church.

2. What called itself the Illumination in Schleiermacher's day was an effort to emancipate the human mind, in different departments of its activity, from the bondage of tradition. In philosophy it was represented by Kant, in literature by Goethe, in pedagogy by Rousseau, in politics by the French Revolution, which in Germany found no counterpart, but with which many who were animated by the new spirit, Schleiermacher among them, to a degree sympathized; in theology it was represented, with essential modifications, by Schleiermacher himself. In early life he had disclosed a sceptical attitude with respect to alleged historic facts and had passed sleepless nights over the dark problem of eternal punishment. Although profoundly religious, he was always in a high degree intellectually inquisitive and was conscientious in seeking to secure for his faith a solid foundation. While connected with the school at Barby, at the age of nineteen, his speculative difficulties reached the crisis point. He challenged the doctrine of eternal punishment, of the atonement, of the deity of Christ, of the supernatural character of Christianity in general as then taught, and he regarded the arguments of his teachers on moot questions as inconsequential and inconclusive. He charged that they were silent about objections brought by its critics against the Christianity of tradition, that they endeavored to conceal sceptical opinions from him, and gave him no adequate opportunity to know them or to investigate their validity. This naturally only stimulated him to know the utmost. All this mental activity and independence,

although lingering still in the realm of scepticism, or rather perhaps because of it, shows his gift for theology and his vocation to it. He lays his mental difficulties before his father and his maternal uncle, a professor at Halle University. He receives judicious counsel from his uncle, but evokes a storm of indignant, yet not the less pathetic, reproach from his dogmatic and pietistic father, and then follows a temporary strain in the relations of parent and son, although happily without permanent bad results. The correspondence that follows. is profoundly interesting, as illustrating the strength of paternal and of filial affection in the German household. The very extreme of filial devotion is manifest in the son's willingness to leave the whole question of his proIcedure to the decision of the father and the school authorities. But his intellectual and moral independence and the strong individuality of his character are seen in the tenacity with which he maintains the right of free inquiry, while a trace of the early dogmatic influence is evident in a certain semi-apologetic attitude toward his father, as though he was doing the father a wrong in thus wounding his feelings, and as if somehow the necessity of changing his opinions involved a personal fault. The upshot of the matter is a break with the school authorities, but with mutual good will and respect. In 1787, therefore, at the age of nineteen, without knowledge of the world, a diminutive, shy, awkward, somewhat unkempt youth, but self-reliant and awake to the vast significance of human life, he is sent to the University of Halle and enters upon a new sphere of intellectual activity. He was fortunate in coming under the influence of his uncle, a man of toler

ant spirit and well-balanced judgment, whose shaping hand in Schleiermacher's development is abundantly acknowledged. For two years he led a desultory student life, foraging widely and gathering only that for which at the time he hungered. What he says of himself, the year after leaving the university, is also true of his university course: "Although there are certain. branches of knowledge for which I have a kind of repugnance, there is not one for which I have an exclusive predilection. . . . Everything that I do is done with a certain degree of impetuosity. . . I do not, therefore, prosecute any occupation according to a fixed. hour or day, but fitfully and during irregular periods."

From this it would seem that there was no unity in his work, and no reference to anything beyond the immediate present. He had no definite objective point, but followed the impulse that led him to satisfy the immediate hunger of the mind. Semler, the pioneer in Biblical criticism, and Knapp, the dogmatician, are teachers in the university, but there is no evidence that he got much from them. He was awakened, however, to the study of history, he continued his classical studies; and his uncle and Eberhard, the latter a teacher of philosophy, led him to the study of Kant, and under this influence he laid his foundation in philosophic knowledge. His father, who had a great admiration for the moral earnestness and austerity of Kant, and who had been a student and once a disciple of his, had already recommended the study, and early in his university course he writes his father as follows, 1 "As for the Kantian philosophy, which you recommend me to

1" Life and Letters," Vol. I, p. 68.

study, I have always had a very favorable opinion of it, because it brings back the reason from the desert wastes of metaphysics into its true, appropriate sphere." This sphere is, of course, the individual moral consciousness, and here we see the beginnings of the influence of philosophic Illuminism upon him. Obliged to leave the university at the end of two years, at the age of twentyone, he spends the following year, 1790, in the home and under the guidance of his uncle, who also had left the university and had taken a pastorate at Drossen. Here he undertakes to gather up the results of his previous studies and to unify his knowledge. He reads Kant once more. During the six or seven subsequent years he is an almost constant student of Kant and becomes gradually able clearly to differentiate his own philosophical position. He dips into Aristotle's ethics, into Greek history, and is in preparation for the subsequent translation of Plato's works, a very laborious task which he began with Friedrich Schlegel, but completed alone. At this time he became a candidate for the ministry and took his examination for licensure. During these three formative years, he, in his own independent way, had passed under the influence of philosophic Illuminism. The three subsequent years he spent in Schlobitten, as tutor in the household of a nobleman, with whose family he always held most friendly and advantageous relations, and here opens a new era in his life. Here for the first time he is called to the exercise of his preaching gifts. He adopts the Scottish preacher Blair as his model, striving for his clearness of thought, in comparison with which he regards his own style as obscure. Coöperating with a clergyman of Berlin, a family rela