Note 30 — Lecture VI. Free Thought In The Theology Of Germany From 1750-1835.

It may be interesting to trace more fully the parallel noticed in the text between the development of Plato's thoughts and Schleiermacher's early studies.

Though it is impossible to arrange the dialogues of Plato in the chronological order in which they were composed, so as to be able to study the master in his successive styles, yet several systems of arrangement, founded on different principles, seem to coincide so far as to render it probable that Plato's great theory of ideas or forms grew upon him through these stages: viz. (1) it was viewed as a fact of mind, an innate conception of forms (e.g. in Meno); (2) as useful in guiding perplexed minds to truth, and sifting philosophical doctrines by means of the dialectical process, e.g. in the Theætetus and Parmenides; (3) as representing an objective [pg 428] reality, a true cause in nature external to the mind, as well as an hypothesis in science (e.g. in the Republic); (4) as having a mystical connexion with divinity, and furnishing a cosmogony, Whether this passage, from the subjective conception to the objective reality, be really or only logically the order of development in Plato's ideal theory, it is clear that the growth of Schleiermacher's mind admits of comparison with this supposed order of development in Plato; though there is a slight variation in the steps of the process. Schleiermacher went through three stages, (1) the philosophy of Jacobi, (2) of Fichte, and probably (3) of Schelling; from which he learned respectively, (1) to have faith in our intuitions, (2) to construe the outward by the inward, (3) to believe in the power of the mind to pass beyond the inward, and apprehend absolute truth. If the resemblance to the above account of Plato were exactly perfect, the love of a philosophy like Fichte's ought to have preceded that of Jacobi. Schelling's influence, it ought to be noted, is very slight on Schleiermacher, compared with that of the others. The traces of it which appear are perhaps resolvable into a similarity to Jacobi's system.