FRIEDRICH SCHLEIERMACHER

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ON THE SOCIAL ELEMENT IN RELIGION (1799)¹
TRANSLATED BY GEORGE RIPLEY

Those among you who are accustomed to regard religion as a disease of the human mind, cherish also the habitual conviction that it is an evil more easily borne, even though not to be cured, so long as it is only insulated individuals here and there who are infected with it; but that the common danger is raised to the highest degree, and everything put at stake, as soon as a too close connection is permitted between many patients of this character. In the former case it is possible by a judicious treatment, as it were by an antiphlegistic regimen, and by a healthy spiritual atmosphere, to ward off the violence of the paroxysms; and if not entirely to conquer the exciting cause of the disease, to attenuate it to such a degree that it shall be almost innocuous. But in the latter case we must despair of every other means of cure, except that which may proceed from some internal beneficent operation of Nature. For the evil is attended with more alarming symptoms, and is more fatal in its effects, when the too great proximity of other infected persons feeds and aggravates it in every individual; the whole mass of vital air is then quickly poisoned by a few; the most vigorous frames are smitten with the contagion; all the channels in which the functions of life should go on are destroyed; all the juices of the system are decomposed; and, seized with a similar feverous delirium, the sound spiritual life and productions of whole ages and nations are involved in irremediable ruin. Hence your antipathy to the church, to every institution which is intended for the communication of religion, is always more prominent than that which you feel to religion itself; hence, also, priests, as the pillars and the most efficient members of such institutions, are, of all men, the objects of your greatest abomination.

Even those among you who hold a little more indulgent opinion with regard to religion, and deem it rather a singularity than a disorder of the mind, an insignificant rather than a dangerous phenomenon, cherish quite as unfavorable impressions of all social organization for its promotion. A slavish immolation of all that is free and peculiar, a system of lifeless mechanism and barren ceremonies—these, they imagine, are the inseparable consequences of every such institution and are the ingenious and elaborate work of men, who, with almost incredible success, have made a great merit of things which are either nothing in themselves, or which any other person was quite as capable of accomplishing as they. I should pour out my heart but very imperfectly before you, on a subject to which I attach the utmost importance, if I did not undertake to give you the correct point of view with regard to it. I need not here repeat how many of the perverted endeavors and melancholy fortunes of humanity you charge upon religious associations; this is clear as light, in a thousand utterances of your predominant individuals; nor will I stop to refute these accusations, one by one, in order to fix the evil upon other causes. Let us rather submit the whole conception of the church to a new examination, and from its central point, throughout its whole extent, erect it again upon a new basis, without regard to what it has actually been hitherto, or to what experience may suggest concerning it.

If religion exists at all, it must needs possess a social character; this is founded not only in the nature of man, but still more in the nature of religion. You will acknowledge that it indicates a state of disease, a signal perversion of nature, when an individual wishes to shut up within himself anything which he has produced and elaborated by his own efforts. It is the disposition of man to reveal and to communicate whatever is in him, in the indispensable relations and mutual dependence not only of practical life, but also of his spiritual being, by which he is connected with all others of his race; and the more powerfully he is wrought upon by anything, the more deeply it penetrates his inward nature, so much the stronger is this social impulse, even if we regard it only from the point of view of the universal endeavor to behold the emotions which we feel ourselves, as they are exhibited by others, so that we may obtain a proof from their example that our own experience is not beyond the sphere of humanity.

You perceive that I am not speaking here of the endeavor to make others similar to ourselves, nor of the conviction that what is exhibited in one is essential to all; it is merely my aim to ascertain the true relation between our individual life and the common nature of man, and clearly to set it forth. But the peculiar object of this desire for communication is unquestionably that in which man feels that he is originally passive, namely, his observations and emotions. He is here impelled by the eager wish to know whether the power which has produced them in him be not something foreign and unworthy. Hence we see man employed, from his very childhood, in communicating those observations and emotions; the conceptions of his understanding, concerning whose origin there can be no doubt, he allows to rest in his own mind, and still more easily he determines to refrain from the expression of his judgments; but whatever acts upon his senses, whatever awakens his feelings, of that he desires to obtain witnesses, with regard to that he longs for those who will sympathize with him. How should he keep to himself those very operations of the world upon his soul which are the most universal and comprehensive, which appear to him as of the most stupendous and resistless magnitude? How should he be willing to lock up within his own bosom those very emotions which impel him with the greatest power beyond himself, and in the indulgence of which he becomes conscious that he can never understand his own nature from himself alone? It will rather be his first endeavor, whenever a religious view gains clearness in his eye, or a pious feeling penetrates his soul, to direct the attention of others to the same object, and, as far as possible, to communicate to their hearts the elevated impulses of his own.

If, then, the religious man is urged by his nature to speak, it is the same nature which secures to him the certainty of hearers. There is no element of his being with which, at the same time, there is implanted in man such a lively feeling of his total inability to exhaust it by himself alone, as with that of religion. A sense of religion has no sooner dawned upon him, than he feels the infinity of its nature and the limitation of his own; he is conscious of embracing but a small portion of it; and that which he cannot immediately reach he wishes to perceive, as far as he can, from the representations of others who have experienced it themselves, and to enjoy it with them. Hence, he is anxious to observe every manifestation of it; and, seeking to supply his own deficiencies, he watches for every tone which he recognizes as proceeding from it. In this manner, mutual communications are instituted; in this manner, every one feels equally the need both of speaking and hearing.

But the imparting of religion is not to be sought in books, like that of intellectual conceptions and scientific knowledge. The pure impression of the original product is too far destroyed in this medium, which, in the same way that dark-colored objects absorb the greatest proportion of the rays of light, swallows up everything belonging to the pious emotions of the heart, which cannot be embraced in the insufficient symbols from which it is intended again to proceed. Nay, in the written communications of religious feeling, everything needs a double and triple representation; for that which originally represented, must be represented in its turn; and yet the effect on the whole man, in its complete unity, can only be imperfectly set forth by continued and varied reflections. It is only when religion is driven out from the society of the living, that it must conceal its manifold life under the dead letter.

Neither can this intercourse of heart with heart, on the deepest feelings of humanity, be carried on in common conversation. Many persons, who are filled with zeal for the interests of religion, have brought it as a reproach against the manners of our age that, while all other important subjects are so freely discussed in the intercourse of society, so little should be said concerning God and divine things. I would defend ourselves against this charge by maintaining that this circumstance, at least, does not indicate contempt or indifference toward religion, but a happy and very correct instinct. In the presence of joy and merriment, where earnestness itself must yield to raillery and wit, there can be no place for that which should be always surrounded with holy veneration and awe. Religious views, pious emotions, and serious considerations with regard to them—these we cannot throw out to one another in such small crumbs as the topics of a light conversation; and when the discourse turns upon sacred subjects, it would rather be a crime than a virtue to have an answer ready for every question, and a rejoinder for every remark. Hence, the religious sentiment retires from such circles as are too wide for it, to the more confidential intercourse of friendship, and to the mutual communications of love, where the eye and the countenance are more expressive than words, and where even a holy silence is understood. But it is impossible for divine things to be treated in the usual manner of society, where the conversation consists in striking flashes of thought, gaily and rapidly alternating with one another; a more elevated style is demanded for the communication of religion, and a different kind of society, which is devoted to this purpose, must hence be formed. It is becoming, indeed, to apply the whole richness and magnificence of human discourse to the loftiest subject which language can reach—not as if there were any adornment, with which religion could not dispense, but because it would show a frivolous and unholy disposition in its heralds if they did not bring together the most copious resources within their power and consecrate them all to religion, so that they might thus perhaps exhibit it in its appropriate greatness and dignity. Hence it is impossible, without the aid of poetry, to give utterance to the religious sentiment in any other than an oratorical manner, with all the skill and energy of language, and freely using, in addition, the service of all the arts which can contribute to flowing and impassioned discourse. He, therefore, whose heart is overflowing with religion, can open his mouth only before an auditory, where that which is presented, with such a wealth of preparation, can produce the most extended and manifold effects.