Schillers Philosophical Letters

Philosophical Letters, by
Frederich Schiller

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Title: The Philosophical Letters
Author: Frederich Schiller
Release Date: October 26, 2006 [EBook #6799]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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SCHILLER'S PHILOSOPHICAL LETTERS.
By Frederich Schiller

CONTENTS:
PREFATORY REMARKS THEOSOPHY OF JULIUS ON THE
CONNECTION BETWEEN THE ANIMAL AND THE SPIRITUAL
NATURE IN MAN PHYSICAL CONNECTION PHILOSOPHICAL
CONNECTION

PREFATORY REMARKS.
The reason passes, like the heart, through certain epochs and transitions,
but its development is not so often portrayed. Men seem to have been
satisfied with unfolding the passions in their extremes, their aberration,
and their results, without considering how closely they are bound up
with the intellectual constitution of the individual. Degeneracy in
morals roots in a one-sided and wavering philosophy, doubly
dangerous, because it blinds the beclouded intellect with an appearance
of correctness, truth, and conviction, which places it less under the
restraining influence of man's instinctive moral sense. On the other
hand, an enlightened understanding ennobles the feelings,--the heart
must be formed by the head.
The present age has witnessed an extraordinary increase of a thinking
public, by the facilities afforded to the diffusion of reading; the former
happy resignation to ignorance begins to make way for a state of
half-enlightenment, and few persons are willing to remain in the
condition in which their birth has placed then. Under these
circumstances it may not be unprofitable to call attention to certain
periods of the awakening and progress of the reason, to place in their
proper light certain truths and errors, closely connected with morals,
and calculated to be a source of happiness or misery, and, at all events,
to point out the hidden shoals on which the reason of man has so often
suffered shipwreck. Rarely do we arrive at the summit of truth without
running into extremes; we have frequently to exhaust the part of error,
and even of folly, before we work our way up to the noble goal of
tranquil wisdom.

Some friends, inspired by an equal love of truth and moral beauty, who
have arrived at the same conviction by different roads, and who view
with serener eye the ground over which they have travelled, have
thought that it might be profitable to present a few of these resolutions
and epochs of thought. They propose to represent these and certain
excesses of the inquiring reason in the form of two young men, of
unequal character, engaged in epistolary correspondence. The
following letters are the beginning of this essay.
The opinions that are offered in these letters can only be true and false
relatively, and in the form in which the world is mirrored in the soul of
the correspondent, and of him only. But the course of the
correspondence will show that the one-sided, often exaggerated and
contradictory opinions at length issue in a general, purified, and
well-established truth.
Scepticism and free-thinking are the feverish paroxysms of the human
mind, and must needs at length confirm the health of well-organized
souls by the unnatural convulsion which they occasion. In proportion to
the dazzling and seducing nature of error will be the greatness of the
triumphs of truth: the demand for conviction and firm belief will be
strong and pressing in proportion to the torment occasioned by the
pangs of doubt. But doubt was necessary to elicit these errors; the
knowledge of the disease had to precede its cure. Truth suffers no loss
if a vehement youth fails in finding it, in the same way that virtue and
religion suffer no detriment if a criminal denies them.
It was necessary to offer these prefatory remarks to throw a proper light
on the point of view from which the following correspondence has to
be read and judged.

LETTER I.
Julius to Raphael. October.
You are gone, Raphael--and the beauty of nature departs: the sere and

yellow leaves fall from the trees, while a thick autumn fog hangs
suspended like a bier over the lifeless fields. Solitary, I wander through
the melancholy country. I call aloud your name, and am irritated that
my Raphael does not answer me.
I had received your last embrace. The mournful sound of the carriage
wheels that bore you away had at length died upon my ear. In happier
moments I had just succeeded in raising a tumulus over the joys of the
past, but now again you stand up before me, as your