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~~MAM~AA~~MMA~Mk~M~~MMMMM~M~M~MMMM~M~"~~~MA I.J\.J'""\~\s·\.J,_\.,$,~'s ~\"\"\""-I. ~ ~.", ""."".~ 1\.J\·:.·I·.t· .. · J." • ...,A ,. r::!! .• "A ,,',,' ... 4.. • 4. I .• \ • .... ,1 f( 1 'i. '1. ., '1.'/ I,.,. 'i.' '1././. I '/. I ''/. I '/. I ''/. I ";.1/. I ~ \ .... \ '/. I ';;. \ "/, \ ''/, \ "-;' I ';;, \ <~ \ .~ \ --', \ -;; \.-;., I _,' On the Essence o[ Religion 97 by preconceived suspicions, can I hope that, even if you do not come to like my manifestation, you will at least agree with me concerning Second Speech: its form and recognize it as a heavenly being. I wish I could present religion to you in some well-known form so On the Essence of Religion that you might immediately remember its features, its movements, and its manners and exclaim that you have here or there seen it just this way in real life. But I would deceive you. For it is not found among human beings as undisguised as it appears to the conjurer,. and for some time has not let itself be viewed in the form peculiar to it. The particular disposition of various cultivated peoples no longer shows itself so purely and distinctly in individual actions, since their You know how the aged Simonides, through repeated and prolonged commerce has become more many-sided and what they have in com hesitation, reduced to silence the person who had bothered hirn with mon has increased through all sOTts of connections. Only the imagi the question, "What are the gods after all?'" I should like to begin nation can grasp the entire idea behind these qualities, which are with a similar hesitation about the far greater and more comprehen encountered only singly as dispersed and mixed with much that is sive question, "What is religion?" foreign. This is also the case with spiritual things, and among them Naturally, this would not be with the intention of keeping silent with religion. It is weIl known to you how everything is now full of and leaving you in embarrassment as he did, but that, kert waiting harmonious development; and precisely this has caused such a com in impatient expectation, you might for a time steadily dlrect your pieted and extended sociability and friendliness within the human gaze to the point we seek, while completely excluding all other soul that none of the soul's powers in fact now acts among us distinctly, .... thoughts. It is, after all, the first requirement of those who only con as much as we like to think of them as distinct. In every accomplish CJI \C jure common spirits that onlookers, who want to see their manifes ment each is immediately precipitated by polite love and beneficial tations and be initiated into their secrets, prepare themselves through support of the other and is somewhat deAected from its path. One abstinence from earthly things and through holy silence; then, without looks around vainly in this cultured world for an action that could distracting themselves by the sight of other objects, they look with furnish a true expression of some capacity of spirit, be it sensibility undivided attention at the place where the vision is to show itself. or understanding, ethicallife or religion. How much more will I be permitted to insist on a similar obedience, Do not, therefore, be indignant and explain it as disdain for the since I am to call forth a rare spirit that does not deign to appear in present if, for the sake of darity, I frequently lead you back to those any oft-seen familiar guise, a spirit you will have to observe attentively more childlike times where, in a less perfected state, everything was a long time in order to recognize it and understand its significant still, distinct and individual. If I begin at once with that theme, and features. Only if you stand before the holy circles with the most un in some way or other meticulously come back to it, th!s is to warn you prejudiced sobriety of mind that clearly and properly comprehends emphatically about the confusion of religion with things that some every contQur and, full of desire to understand the presented object times look similar to it and with which you will everywhere find it on its own terms, is neither seduced by old memories nor corrupted mixed. If you put yourselves on the highest standpoint of metaphysics and 'The story is from Cicero, De natum deorum, 1.22. Simonides of Ceos (c. 556-468 morals, you will find that both have the same object as religion, namely, B.C.) was a Iyric poet and epigrammist from the Aegean, who served after 476 .at the court of Hieran of Syracuse. Schleiermacher frequently appeals, often ironi the universe and the relationship of humanity to it: This similarity cally, to his audience's post-Winckelmann love of Hellenism; see the references in has long since been a basis of manifold aberrations; metaphysics and the Second Speech to Prometheus, Creek mythology, Eleusinian mysteries, and morals have therefore invaded religion on many occasions; and much Creco-Roman deities and religion; and in the Fourth Speech to Creek poets, sages, and Plato. On the wider Hellenizing movement, see Werner Scht'Jltz, "Das grie chische Ethos in Schleiermachers Reden und Monologen," Neue ZtiitschTift für sys 'On the broader focus of the 1806 edition on "thinking" and "acting" and the new tematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie 10 (1968), pp. 260-88, and E. M. Butler, "more scientific" definition of these spheres in relation to religion, see the Intro The Tyranny of Greece over Germany (Cambridge, 1935)' duction, "Revisions of the Work." 96 98 On Religion On the Essence 0/ Religion 99 that belongs to religion has concealed itself in metaphysics or morals from metaphysics and carry it into morality so that this great work under an unseemly form. But shall you, for this reason, believe that should not remain anonymous, but so that the picture of the lawgiver it is identical with the one or the other? I know that your instinct teils might be engraved at the front of so splendid a code. But mix and you the contrary, and it also follows from your opinions; for you stir as you will, these never go together; you play an empty game with never admit that religion walks with the firm step ofwhich metaphysics materials that are not suited to each other. You always retain only is capable, and you do not forget to observe diligently that there are metaphysics and morals. This mixture of opinions about the highest quite a few ugly immoral blemishes on its history. If religion is thus being or the world and of precepts for a human life (or even for two) to be differentiated, then it must be set offfrom those in some manner, you call religion! And the instinct, which seeks those opinions, to regardless of the common subject matter. Religion must treat this gether with the dirn presentiments that are the actual final sanction subject matter completely differently, express or work out another of these precepts, you call religiousness! But how then do you come relationship of humanity to it, have another mode of procedure or to regard a mere compilation, an anthology for beginners, as an in another goal; for only in this way can that which is similar in its subject tegral work, as an individual with its own origin and power? How do matter to something else achieve a determinate nature and a unique you come to mention it, even if only to refute it? Why have you not existence. I ask you, therefore, What does your metaphysics do - or, long since analyzed it into its parts and discovered the shameful if you want to have nothing to do with the outmoded name that is plagiarism? too historical for you, your transcendental philosophy?3 It c1assifies I would take pleasure in alarming you with some Socratic questions the universe and divides it into this being and that, seeks out the and bringing you to confess that, even in the most common things, reasons for what exists, and deduces the necessity ofwhat is real while you know the principles according to which like must be related to spinning the reality of the world and its laws out of itself. Into this like and the particular subordinated to the universal, and that you realm, therefore, religion must not venture too far. It must not have only wish not to apply these principles here in order to be able to . the tendency to posit essences and to determine natures, to lose itself make fun of a serious subject in a worldly manner. Where, then, is in an infinity of reasons and deductions, to seek out final causes, and the unity in this whole? Where does the unifying principle lie for this to proclaim eternal truths. dissimilar material? If it is 'an attractive force of its own, then you And what does your morality do? It develops a system ofduties out must confess that religion is the highest in philosophy and that me of human nature and our relationship to the universe; it commands taphysics and morals are only subordinate divisions of it; for that in and forbids actions with unlimited authority. Yet religion must not which two varied but opposed concepts are one can only be the higher even presume to do that; it must not use the universe in order to under which the other two belong. If this binding principle lies in derive duties and is not permitted to contain a code of laws. "And yet metaphysics, you have recognized, for reasons that are related to what one calls religion seems to consist only of fragments of these metaphysics, a highest being as the moral lawgiver.