VOLUME V

THE GERMAN CLASSICS

Masterpieces of German Literature

TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH

Patrons' Edition IN TWENTY VOLUMES

ILLUSTRATED

1914

VOLUME V

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Special Writers

FRANK THILLY, PH.D., LL.D., Professor of Philosophy, Cornell University: The Romantic Philosophers—Fichte, Schelling, and Schleiermacher.

GEORGE H. DANTON, PH.D., Professor of German, Butler College: Later German Romanticism.

Translators

PERCY MACKAYE, Dramatist and Poet: Departure; Would I were Free as are My Dreams.

A.I. DU P. COLEMAN, A.M., Professor of English Literature, College of the City of New York: Taillefer; The Lion's Bride; The Crucifix; The Old Singer; From My Childhood Days; The Invitation; A Parable; At Forty Years; etc.

MARGARETE MÜNSTERBERG: Selections from The Boy's Magic Horn; Union Song; The Mother Tongue; Spring Greeting to the Fatherland; Freedom; Charlemagne's Voyage; Chidher; etc.

HERMAN MONTAGU DONNER: Lützow's Wild Band; Cavalryman's Morning Song.

LOUIS H. GRAY, PH.D.: Addresses to the German Nation.

FREDERIC H. HEDGE: The Destiny of Man; The Wonderful History of Peter Schlemihl; The Golden Pot.

GEORGE RIPLEY: On the Social Element in Religion.

J. ELLIOT CABOT: On the Relation of the Plastic Arts to Nature.

MRS. A.L.W. WISTER: From the Life of a Good-for-nothing.

MARGARET HUNT: The Frog King, or Iron Henry; The Wolf and the Seven Little Kids; Rapunzel; Haensel and Grethel; The Fisherman and His Wife.

F.E. BUNNETT: Selections from Undine.

H.W. DULCKEN: Song of the Fatherland; The White Hart; Evening Song; Before the Doors.

C.T. BROOKS: Men and Knaves; Prayer During Battle; Song of the Mountain Boy; The Chapel; etc.

W.W. SKEAT: The Shepherd's Sang on the Lord's Day; The Hostess' Daughter; The Good Comrade.

W.H. FURNESS: The Lost Church; The Minstrel's Curse.

HENRY W. LONGFELLOW: The Luck of Edenhall; Remorse; The Castle by the Sea.

KATE FREILIGRATH-KROEKER: On the Death of a Child.

C.G. LELAND: The Broken Ring.

ALFRED BASKERVILLE: Morning Prayer; The Castle of Boncourt; Woman's Love and Life; The Spring of Love; etc.

BAYARD TAYLOR and LILIAN BAYARD TAYLOR KILIANI: The Women of Weinsberg; Barbarossa; the Grave of Alaric.

JOHN OXENFORD: The Sentinel.

LORD LINDSAY: The Pilgrim Before St. Just's.

BAYARD TAYLOR: He Came to Meet Me.

CONTENTS OF VOLUME V

The Romantic Philosophers—Fichte, Schelling, and Schleiermacher. By Frank Thilly

Friedrich Schleiermacher

On the Social Element in Religion. Translated by George Ripley

Johann Gottlieb Fichte

The Destiny of Man. Translated by Frederic H. Hedge Addresses to the German Nation. Translated by Louis H. Gray

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling

On the Relation of the Plastic Arts to Nature. Translated by J. Elliot Cabot

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Later German Romanticism. By George H. Danton

Ludwig Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano

The Boy's Magic Horn. Selections translated by Margarete Münsterberg. Were I a Little Bird The Mountaineer As Many as Sand-grains in the Sea The Swiss Deserter The Tailor in Hell The Reaper

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm

Fairy Tales. Translated by Margaret Hunt. The Frog King, or Iron Henry The Wolf and the Seven Little Kids Rapunzel Haensel and Grethel The Fisherman and His Wife

Ernst Moritz Arndt

Song of the Fatherland. Translated by H.W. Dulcken Union Song. Translated by Margarete Münsterberg

Theodor Körner

Men and Knaves. Translated by C.T. Brooks Lützow's Wild Band. Translated by Herman Montagu Donner Prayer During Battle. Translated by C.T. Brooks

Maximilian Gottfried von Schenkendorf

The Mother Tongue. Translated by Margarete Münsterberg Spring Greeting to the Fatherland. Translated by Margarete Münsterberg Freedom. Translated by Margarete Münsterberg

Ludwig Uhland

The Chapel. Translated by C.T. Brooks The Shepherd's Song on the Lord's Day. Translated by W.W. Skeat The Castle by the Sea. Translated by Henry W. Longfellow Song of the Mountain Boy. Translated by C.T. Brooks Departure. Translated by Percy MacKaye Farewell. Translated by Alfred Baskerville The Hostess' Daughter. Translated by W.W. Skeat The Good Comrade. Translated by W.W. Skeat The White Hart. Translated by H.W. Dulcken The Lost Church. Translated by W.H. Furness Charlemagne's Voyage. Translated by Margarete Münsterberg Free Art. Translated by Margarete Münsterberg Taillefer. Translated by A.I. du P. Coleman Suabian Legend. Translated by Margarete Münsterberg The Blind King. Translated by C.T. Brooks The Minstrel's Curse. Translated by W.H. Furness The Luck of Edenhall. Translated by Henry W. Longfellow On the Death of a Child. Translated by Kate Freiligrath-Kroeker

Joseph von Eichendorff

The Broken Ring. Translated by C.G. Leland Morning Prayer. Translated by Alfred Baskerville From the Life of a Good-for-nothing. Translated by Mrs. A.L.W. Wister

Adalbert von Chamisso

The Castle of Boncourt. Translated by Alfred Baskerville The Lion's Bride. Translated by A.I. du P. Coleman Woman's Love and Life. Translated by Alfred Baskerville The Women of Weinsberg. Translated by Bayard Taylor and Lilian Bayard Taylor Kiliani The Crucifix. Translated by A.I. du P. Coleman The Old Singer. Translated by A.I. du P. Coleman The Old Washerwoman. From the Foreign Quarterly The Wonderful History of Peter Schlemihl. Translated by Frederic H. Hedge

Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann

The Golden Pot. Translated by Frederic H. Hedge

Friedrich Baron de la Motte-Fouqué

Selections from Undine. Translated by F.E. Bunnett

Wilhelm Hauff

Cavalryman's Morning Song. Translated by Herman Montagu Donner The Sentinel. Translated by John Oxenford

Friedrich Rückert

Barbarossa. Translated by Bayard Taylor and Lilian Bayard Taylor Kiliani From My Childhood Days. Translated by A.I. du P. Coleman The Spring of Love. Translated by Alfred Baskerville He Came to Meet Me. Translated by Bayard Taylor The Invitation. Translated by A.I. du P. Coleman Murmur Not. Translated by A.I. du P. Coleman A Parable. Translated by A.I. du P. Coleman Evening Song. Translated by H.W. Dulcken Chidher. Translated by Margarete Münsterberg At Forty Years. Translated by A.I. du P. Coleman Before the Doors. Translated by H.W. Dulcken

August von Platen-Hallermund

The Pilgrim Before St. Just's. Translated by Lord Lindsay The Grave of Alaric. Translated by Bayard Taylor and Lilian Bayard Taylor Kiliani Remorse. Translated by Henry W. Longfellow Would I were Free as are My Dreams. Translated by Percy MacKaye Sonnet. Translated by Margarete Münsterberg

ILLUSTRATIONS—VOLUME V

Heidelberg Friedrich Schleiermacher. By E. Hader The Three Hermits. By Moritz von Schwind Johann Gottlieb Fichte. By Bury Volunteers of 1813 before King Friedrich Wilhelm III in Breslau. By F.W. Scholtz Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling. By Carl Begas The Jungfrau. By Moritz von Schwind The Magic Horn. By Moritz von Schwind Ludwig Achim von Arnim. By Ströhling Clemens Brentano. By E. Linder The Reaper. By Walter Crane Wilhelm Grimm. By E. Hader Jacob Grimm. By E. Hader Hänsel and Gretel. By Ludwig Richter Ernst Moritz Arndt. By Julius Röting Theodor Körner. By E. Hader Maximilian Gottfried von Schenkendorf Ludwig Uhland. By C. Jäger The Villa by the Sea. By Arnold Böcklin Leaving at Dawn. By Moritz von Schwind Joseph von Eichendorff. By Franz Kugler Adalbert von Chamisso. By C. Jäger The Wedding Journey. By Moritz von Schwind Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hofmann. By Hensel Friedrich Baron de la Motte-Fouqué Wilhelm Hauff. By E. Hader The Sentinel. By Robert Haug Friedrich Rückert. By C. Jäger Memories of Youth. By Ludwig Richter August Graf von Platen-Hallermund

The Morning Hour. By Moritz von Schwind

THE ROMANTIC PHILOSOPHERS—FICHTE, SCHELLING, AND SCHLEIERMACHER

By FRANK THILLY, PH.D., LL.D. Professor of Philosophy, Cornell University

The Enlightenment of the eighteenth century had implicit faith in the powers of human reason to reach the truth. With its logical-mathematical method it endeavored to illuminate every nook and corner of knowledge, to remove all obscurity, mystery, bigotry, and superstition, to find a reason for everything under the sun. Nature, religion, the State, law, morality, language, and art were brought under the searchlight of reason and reduced to simple and self-evident principles. Human institutions were measured according to their reasonableness; whatever was not rational had no raison d'être; to demolish the natural and historical in order to make room for the rational became the practical ideal of the day. Enlightenment emphasized the worth and dignity of the human individual, it sought to deliver him from the slavery of authority and tradition, to make him self-reliant in thought and action, to obtain for him his natural rights, to secure his happiness and perfection in a world expressly made for him, and to guarantee the continuance of his personal

existence in the life to come. In Germany this great movement found expression in a popular commonsense philosophy which proved the existence of God, freedom, and immortality, and conceived the universe as a rational order designed by an all-wise and all-good Creator for the benefit of man, his highest product; while other thinkers regarded Spinozism as the only rational system, indeed as the last word of all speculative metaphysics; for them logical thought necessarily led to pantheism and determinism. In France, after reaching its climax in Voltaire, it ended in materialism, atheism, and fatalism; and in England, where it had developed the empiricism of Locke, it came to grief in the scepticism of Hume. If we can know only our impressions, then rational theology, cosmology, and psychology are impossible, and it is futile to philosophize about God, the world, and the human soul. Consistently carried out, the logical-mathematical method seemed to land the intellect in Spinozism or in materialism—in either case to

catch man in the causal machinery of nature. In this dilemma many were tempted to throw reason overboard as an instrument of ultimate truth, and to seek for certainty through other functions of the human soul—in feeling, faith, or mystical vision of some sort; the claims of the heart and will were urged against the proud pretensions of the intellect (Hamann, Herder, Jacobi). Another way of escape was found by substituting the organic conception of reality for the logical-mathematical view of the Aufklärung; nature and life, poetry, art, language, political, social, and religious institutions are not creations of reason, not things made to order, but organic—products of evolution (Lessing, Herder, Winckelmann, Goethe). Man, himself, moreover, is not mere intellect, but a being in whom feelings, impulses, yearnings, will, are elements to be reckoned with. And reality is not as transparent as the Enlightenment assumed it to be; existence divided by reason leaves a remainder, as Goethe had put it.

It was Immanuel Kant who tried to arbitrate between the conflicting tendencies of his age. He was an Aufklärer in so far as he brought reason itself to the bar of reason and sat in judgment upon its claims, and, likewise, in so far as he insisted on the objective validity of physics and mathematics. But he was as much opposed to the pretentiousness of dogmatic metaphysics as to the pusillanimity of scepticism and the Schwärmerei of mysticism. He repudiated the shallow proofs of the existence of God, freedom, and immortality no less emphatically than he rejected materialism with its atheism, fatalism, and hedonism. He tried to save everything worth saving—rational knowledge, modern science, the basal truths of the old metaphysics, and the most precious human values. For the scientific intelligence, so he held, nature and the self are absolutely determined; every physical occurrence and every human act are necessary links in a causal chain. But such knowledge is possible only in the field of phenomena (Erscheinungen); through

sense-perception and the discursive understanding we cannot reach the inner core of reality; nor can we pierce the veil of appearances by means of intellectual intuitions, mystical visions, feeling, or faith, i.e., through the emotional and instinctive parts of our nature. It is the presence of the moral law or categorical imperative within us that points to a spiritual world beyond the phenomenal causal order and assures us of our freedom, immortality, and God. It is because we possess this deeper source of truth in practical reason that freedom and an ideal kingdom in which purpose reigns are vouchsafed to us, and that we can free ourselves from the mechanism of the natural order. It is moral truth that both sets us free and demonstrates our freedom, and that makes harmony possible between the mechanical theory of science and the teleological conception of philosophy. The scientific understanding would plunge us into determinism and agnosticism; from these, faith in the moral law alone can deliver us. In this sense Kant destroyed knowledge to make room for a rational faith in a

supersensible world, to save the independence and dignity of the human self and the spiritual values of his people. In claiming a place for the autonomous personality in what appeared to be a mechanical universe, Kant gave voice to some of the deeper yearnings of the age. The German Enlightenment, the new humanism, mysticism, pietism, and the faith-philosophy were all interested in the human soul, and unwilling to sacrifice it to the demands of a rationalistic science or metaphysics. In seeking to rescue it, the great criticist, piloted by the moral law, steered his course between the rocks of rationalism, sentimentalism, and scepticism. It was his solution of the controversy between the head and the heart that influenced Fichte, Schelling, and Schleiermacher. They differed from Kant and among themselves in many respects, but they all glorified the spirit, Geist, as the living, active element of reality, and they all rejected the intellect as the source of ultimate truth. They followed him in his anti-intellectualism, but they did not avoid, as he did, the

attractive doctrine of an inner intuition; according to them we can somehow grasp the supersensible in an inner experience which Fichte called intellectual, Schelling artistic, Schleiermacher religious. The bankruptcy of the intelligence was overcome in their systems by the discovery of a faculty that revealed to them the living, dynamic nature of the universe. They were all more or less influenced by the romantic currents of the times, seeking with Herder and Jacobi an approach to the heart of things other than through the categories of logic. Like Lessing and Goethe, they were also attracted to the pantheistic teaching of Spinoza, though rejecting its rigid determinism so far as it might affect the human will. They likewise accepted the idea of development which the leaders of German literature, Lessing, Herder, and Goethe, had already opposed to the unhistorical Aufklärung, and which came to play such a prominent part in the great system of Hegel.

Johann Gottlieb Fichte was born in Ramenau, Oberlausitz, May 19, 1762, the son of a poor weaver. Through the generosity of a nobleman, the gifted lad was enabled to follow his intellectual bent; after attending the schools at Meissen and Schulpforta he studied theology at the universities of Jena, Leipzig, and Wittenberg with the purpose of entering the ministry. His poverty frequently compelled him to interrupt his studies by accepting private tutorships in families, so that he never succeeded in preparing him self for the examinations. In 1790 he became acquainted with Kant's philosophy, which two students had asked him to expound to them, and to which he now devoted himself with feverish zeal. It revolutionized his entire mode of thought and determined the course of his life. The anonymous publication of his book, Attempt at a Critique of all Revelation, in 1792, written from the Kantian point of view and mistaken at first for a work of the great criticist, won him fame and a professorship at Jena (1794). Here, in the intellectual centre of Germany, Fichte became the

eloquent exponent of the new idealism, which aimed at the reform of life as well as of Wissenschaft; he not only taught philosophy, but preached it, as Kuno Fischer has aptly said. During the Jena period he laid the foundations for his "Science of Knowledge" (Wissenschaftslehre) which he presented in numerous works: The Conception of the Science of Knowledge, 1794; The Foundation of the Entire Science of Knowledge, 1794; The Foundation of Natural Rights, 1796; The System of Ethics, 1798—(all these translated by Kroeger); the two Introductions to the Science of Knowledge, 1797 (trans. by Kroeger in Journal of Speculative Philosophy). The appearance of an article Concerning the Ground of our Belief in a Divine World-Order, 1798, in which Fichte seemed to identify God with the moral world-order, brought down upon him the charge of atheism, against which he vigorously defended himself in his Appeal to the Public and a series of other writings. Full of indignation over the attitude which his government assumed in the matter, be offered his

resignation (1799) and removed to Berlin, where he presented his philosophical notions in popular public lectures and in writings which were characterized by clearness, force, and moral earnestness rather than by their systematic form. There appeared: The Vocation of Man, 1800 (translated by Dr. Smith); A Sun-Clear Statement concerning the Nature of the New Philosophy, 1801 (trans. by Kroeger in Journal of Speculative Philosophy); The Nature of the Scholar, 1806 (trans. by Smith); Characteristics of the Present Age, 1806 (trans. by Smith); The Way towards the Blessed Life, 1806 (trans. by Smith). After the overthrow of Prussia by Napoleon, in 1806, Fichte fled from Berlin to Königsberg and Sweden, but returned when peace was declared in 1807, and delivered his celebrated Addresses to the German Nation, 1807-08, in which he sought to arouse the German people to a consciousness of their national mission and their duty even while the French army was still occupying the Prussian capital.

Fichte was appointed professor of philosophy (1810) in the new University of Berlin, for which he had been invited to construct a plan and in the establishment of which he took a lively interest. During the last period of his life he devoted himself to the development of his thoughts in systematic form and wrote a number of books; most of these were published after his death, which occurred January 27, 1814. Among them we mention: General Outline of the Science of Knowledge, 1810 (trans. by Smith); The Facts of Consciousness, 1813; Theory of the State, published 1820. The Complete Works, edited by his son, J.H. Fichte, appeared 1843-46. New editions of particular works are now appearing.

The world for Fichte is at bottom a spiritual order, the revelation of a self-determining ego or reason; hence the science of the ego, or reason, the Wissenschaftslehre, is the key to all knowledge, and we can understand nature and man only when we have caught the secret of the self-active ego. Philosophy must, therefore, be Wissenschaftslehre, for in it all natural and mental sciences find their ultimate roots; they can yield genuine knowledge only when and in so far as they are based on the principles of the Science of Knowledge—mere empirical sciences having no real cognitive value. The ego-principle itself, however, without which there could be no knowledge, cannot be grasped by the ordinary discursive understanding with its spatial, temporal, and causal categories. Kant is right: if we were limited to the scientific intellect, we could never rise above the conception of a phenomenal order absolutely ruled by the causal law. But there is another source of knowledge: in an act of inner vision or intellectual intuition, which is itself an act of freedom,