preacher at Trinity church in 1809,
professor of theology in 1810, member of the philosophical section of the
Academy in 1811, and its secretary in 1814. Reared in the Moravian schools
at Niesky and Barby, he studied at Halle; and, between 1794 and 1804, was a
preacher in Landsberg on the Warthe, in Berlin (at the Charite Hospital),
and in Stolpe, then professor in Halle. He first attracted attention by the
often republished _Discourses on Religion addressed to the Educated among
those who despise it_, 1799 (critical edition by Puenjer, 1879), which was
followed in the succeeding year by the _Monologues_, and the anonymous
_Confidential Letters on Lucinde (Lucinde_ was the work of his friend Fr.
Schlegel). Besides several collections of sermons, mention must further
be made of his _Outlines of a Critique of Previous Ethics_, 1803; _The
Celebration of Christmas_, 1806; and his chief theological work, _The
Christian Faith_, 1822, new edition 1830. In the third (the philosophical)
division of his _Collected Works_ (1835-64) the second and third volumes
contain the essays on the history of philosophy, on ethical, and on
academic subjects; vols. vi. to ix., the Lectures on Psychology, Esthetics,
the Theory of the State, and Education, edited by George, Lommatsch,
Brandis, and Platz; and the first part of vol. iv., the _History of
Philosophy_ (to Spinoza), edited by Ritter. The _Monologues_ and _The
Celebration of Christmas_ have appeared in _Reclam's Bibliothek_.

Schleiermacher's philosophy is a rendezvous for the most diverse systems.
Side by side with ideas from Kant, Fichte, and Schelling we meet Platonic,
Spinozistic, and Leibnitzian elements; even Jacobi and the Romanticists
have contributed their mite. Schleiermacher is an eclectic, but one who,
amid the fusion of the most diverse ideas, knows how to make his own
individuality felt. In spite of manifold echoes of the philosophemes of
earlier and of contemporary thinkers, his system is not a conglomeration
of unrelated lines of thought, but resembles a plant, which in its own way
works over and assimilates the nutritive elements taken up from the
soil. Schleiermacher is attractive rather than impressive; he is less a
discoverer than a critic and systematizer. His fine critical sense works in
the service of a positive aim, subserves a harmonizing tendency; he
takes no pleasure in breaking to pieces, but in adjusting, limiting, and
combining. There is no one of the given v