iews which entirely satisfies him,
none which simply repels him; each contains elements which seem to him
worthy of transformation and adoption. When he finds himself confronted by
a sharp conflict of opinion, he seeks by careful mediation to construct
a whole out of the two "half truths," though this, it is true, does not
always give a result more satisfactory than the partial views which he
wishes to reconcile. A single example may be given of this conciliatory
tendency: space, time, and the categories are not only subjective forms of
knowledge, but at the same time objective forms of reality. "Not only"
is the watchword of his philosophy, which became the prototype of the
numberless "ideal realisms" with which Germany was flooded after Hegel's
death. If the skeptical and eclectic movements, which constantly make their
appearance together, are elsewhere divided among different thinkers, they
here come together in one mind in the form of a mediating criticism, which,
although it argues logically, is yet in the end always guided by the
invisible cords of a _feeling_ of justice in matters scientific. In its
weaker portions Schleiermacher's philosophy is marked by lack of grasp,
pettiness, and sportiveness. It lacks courage and force, and the rare
delicacy of the thought is not entirely able to compensate for this defect.
In its fear of one-sidedness it takes refuge in the arms of an often
faint-hearted policy of reconciliation.

We shall not discuss the specifically theological achievements of this
many-sided man, nor his great services in behalf of the philological
knowledge of the history of philosophy--through his translation of Plato,
1804-28, and a series of valuable essays on Greek thinkers--but shall
confine our attention to the leading principles of his theory of knowledge,
of religion, and of ethics.

The _Dialectic_[1] (edited by Jonas, 1839), treats in a transcendental part
and a technical or formal part of the concept and the forms of knowledge.
_Knowledge_ is thought. What distinguishes that thought which we call
knowledge from that other thought which does not deserve this honorable
title, from mere opinion? Two criteria: its agreement with the thought of
other thinkers (its universality and necessity), and its agreement with
the being which is thought in it. That thought alone is knowledge which is
represented as necessarily valid for all who are capable of thought, and
as corresponding to a being or repro