e divorced from Laws or Things. The only
morality is "full Humanity;" "Nature alone is worthy of honor, and
sound health alone is worthy of love;" "Let the discourse of love,"
counsels Julius, "be bold and free, not more chastened than a Roman
elegy"--which is certainly not very much--and the skirmishes of
inclination are, in fact, set forth with an almost antique simplicity.
Society is to be developed only by "wit," which is seriously put into
comparison with God Almighty. As to practical ethics, one is told that
the most perfect life is but a pure vegetation; the right to indolence
is that which really makes the discrimination between choice and
common beings, and is the determining principle of nobility. "The
divine art of being indolent" and "the blissful bosom of
half-conscious self-forgetfulness" naturally lead to the thesis that
the empty, restless exertion of men in general is nothing but Gothic
perversity, and "boots naught but _ennui_ to ourselves and others."
Man is by nature "a serious beast; one must labor to counteract this
shameful tendency." Schleiermacher ventured, it is true, to raise the
question as to whether the hero ought not to have some trace of the
chivalrous about him, or ought not to do something effective in the
outer world--and posterity has fully supported this inquiry.

Friedrich's next most important move was to Paris (1802), where he
gave lectures on philosophy, and attempted another journal. Here he
began his enthusiastic studies of the Sanskrit language and
literature, which proved to have an important influence on the
development of modern philology. This is eminently true of his work
_On the Language and Wisdom of the Indians_ (1808). In 1804 he removed
to Cologne, where he entered with great eagerness into the work of
re-discovering the medieval Lower Rhenish School of religious art and
Gothic architecture. In 1808 he, with his wife Dorothea (the daughter
of Moses Mendelssohn, who years before this time had left her home and
family to become his partner for life), entered the Roman Catholic
church, the interests of which engaged much of his energies for the
remainder of his life.

[Illustration: #A HERMIT WATERING HORSES# MORITZ VON SCHWIND]

He lived most of the time in Vienna, partly engaged in the literary
service of the Austrian government, partly in lecturing on history and
literature. He died in 1829 in Dresden, whither he had gone to deliver
a course of lectures.

Friedr