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CLASSICAL ESSAY |
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by Friedrich Albert Lange
One thing is certain, that man needs to supplement reality by an ideal world of his own creation, and that the highest and noblest functions of his mind cooperate in such creations. But must this act of intellectual freedom always keep on assuming the deceptive form of a demonstrative science. In that case materialism, too, will always reappear, and will destroy the bolder speculations with an attempt to satisfy the instinct of the reason towards unity by a minimum of exaltation above the real and demonstrable. We may not doubt of another solution of the problem especially in Germany, since we have in the philosophical poems of Schiller a performance which unites with the noblest vigor of thought the highest elevation above reality, and which lends to the ideal an overpowering force by re. moving it openly and unhesitatingly into the realm of fantasy. This must not be taken to mean that all speculation must also assume the form of poetry. Schiller's philosophical poems are more than mere products of the speculative instinct. They are emanations of a truly religious elevation of the soul to the pure and troubled sources of all that man has ever worshipped as divine and supermundane. May metaphysics ever continue its efforts towards the solution of its insoluble problem! The more it continues theoretical, and tries to compete in certainty with sciences of reality, all the less will it succeed in obtaining general importance. The more, on the other hand, it brings the world of existence into connection with the world of values, and tries to raise itself by its apprehension of phenomena to an ethical influence, the more will it make form predominate over matter, and without doing violence to the facts, will erect in the architecture of its ideas a temple of worship to the eternal and divine. Free poetry, however, may entirely leave the ground of reality and make use of myth in order to lend words to the unutterable. Here then we stand too before an entirely satisfactory solution of the question as to the immediate and more distant future of religion. There are only two ways which can permanently call for serious consideration, after it has been shown that mere rationalism loses itself in the sands of superficiality, without ever freeing itself from untenable dogmas. The one way is the complete suppression and abolition of all religions, and the transference of their functions to the state, science, and art; the other is to penetrate to the core of religion, and to overcome all fanaticism and superstition by conscious elevation above reality and definitive renunciation of the falsification of reality by myths, which, of course, can render no service to knowledge. The first of these ways involves the danger of spiritual impoverishment; the second has to deal with the great question whether, at this very time, the core of religion is not undergoing a change which makes it difficult to apprehend it with certainty. But the second difficulty is the lesser one, because the very principle of the spiritualization of religion must facilitate and lend a more harmonious form to every transition rendered necessary by the intellectual requirements of a progressive age. |
The Cambridge Companion to German Idealism
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