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Halle as well in as a series of monographs presented before the Prussian Academy of Sciences. He collected sufficient material for his philosophical ethics to be edited by A. Schweizer (Entwurf eines Systems der Sittenlehre, Berlin, 1835) and in briefer and more scientific form by A. Twesten (Grundriss der philosophischen Ethik, 1841). Schleiermacher regarded ethics as the speculative science of reason, and as including the conceptual presentation of all influence of reason on nature so far as it falls within the sphere of human experience. In the widest sense it is the philosophy of history or of civilization, and is not imperative but descriptive. It is not limited to the practical, but finds activity of reason also in the acquisition of knowledge and the enrichment of the inner life. Ethics must, accordingly, describe the union of reason and nature through the agency of the former, its end being the realization of the union of reason and nature. The power through which reason works in nature is ethically termed virtue, and the mode in which virtue tends to produce ethical good is termed duty. Ethics can be adequately presented only by the combination of these three elements, but the most important is the doctrine of the good, which is summed up by the concept of the supreme good that includes all the products of the rational activity of man. The subject of the ethical process is man as a species; although a distinction may be drawn between individual and class morality, this difference is relative, since each person is at once both an individual and a member of the race. Again, the influence of reason on nature may be twofold: organizing, as making nature the tool, or symbolizing, as reproducing nature. The combination of the individual and class activity of reason with the organizing and symbolizing tendencies results in a fourfold form of moral activity, which is represented respectively by nation and State, family and society, school and Church. The theory of virtue and duty is discussed but briefly by Schleiermacher. While virtue, as the individualized power of reason, is a unity, it may be divided into four categories: wisdom, or inclination to knowledge; love, or inclination to manifestation; discretion, or readiness in knowledge; and steadfastness, or readiness in manifestation. The theory of duty is summarized by Schleiermacher as constant conduct so that all virtues act with reference to all good, though in concrete cases the claims of the various spheres must be duly weighed. Here the relative antitheses of appropriation and association on the one hand and of the universal and individual type on the other give rise to A fourfold classification: the duty of right, corresponding to the universal association; the duty of vocation, corresponding to the universal appropriation; the duty of love, corresponding to the individual association; and the duty of conscience, corresponding to the individual appropriation.

Both its terminology and its omission of the entire concept of obligation deprived this ethical theory of the power which otherwise it might have possessed. In avoiding the errors of Kant and Fichte, Schleiermacher went to the opposite extreme of regarding morality as originally present and as the inevitably developing content of life. In this way he

created something midway between ethics and the philosophy of history, but without the loftiness and

strength required by ethics, and withr3. Criti- out the observation of actual factors cism of the demanded by the philosophy of history.

tian, in virtue of the special definiteness of his consciousness of self, does in a special way the same thing that general reason constrains others to do. While the theory that Christianity is a new development and a higher point of view is merely touched on, in reality the Christian determination of ethical conduct prevails and conditions both the direction of interest and the choice of material. The two forms of Christian activity are purification and extension. Purificatory activity is manifested in the Church either as the influence of the community on individual members (church discipline) or as the influence of individuals on the community (church reform), and from the Church this purificatory influence extends to the home, the State, and international relations. Extensive activity, proceeding from the union of the divine spirit with the nature of man, is manifested either as a state of mind or as talent, the former being characteristic of the Church and the latter of the State, while the Christian spirit works even beyond the bounds of the Church in education and missions. Manifestative activity is developed in the service of God. In the narrower sense of the term this service is public worship, and in its wider sense the free expression of Christian morality;, and at the same time this manifestative activity contains an element of public morality and of social and intellectual life, to all of which it gives the stamp of purity, freedom, and perfect humanity.

The last fifteen years of Schleiermacher's life show him at the height of his activity. He exercised a profound influence both through his sermons and through his lectures, which covered the greater part

of philosophy and the most of theology 14. Schlei- excepting the Old Testament. He be-

sies of the period and was the object of constant suspicion. In Jan., 1823, a formal charge was actually brought against him on the basis of certain expressions used by him in private correspondence, and he lived in continual uncertainty whether he would be permitted longer to reside in Prussia. To all this was added his participation in the agenda controversy; and it was only after the modified royal agenda had been adopted (see AGENDA, § 5) that Schleiermacher again enjoyed the favor of the king. In the third decade of the century Schleiermacher was busy editing the Berlin hymnal and opposing the proposed creed for the united Lutherans and Reformed. He contributed a number of articles to the newly founded Theologa'sche Studien -und Kritiken, in one of which he vigorously opposed rationalistic depreciation of the creeds, at the same time advocating all the principles of theological progress. He visited England in 1828 and Sweden in 1833 but his health was failing, and in Feb., 1834, he died.