UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
PARALLEL THEMES AND THEIR
TREATMENT IN SCHILLER
AND SHAFTESBURY
BY
ALLAN L. CARTER
A THESIS
PRESENTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN
PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR
THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
PHILADELPHIA, PA.
1919
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
PARALLEL THEMES AND THEIR
TREATMENT IN SCHILLER
AND SHAFTESBURY
BY
ALLAN L. CARTER
A THESIS
PRESENTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN
PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR
THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
PHILADELPHIA, PA.
1919
i ' .
PRESS OF
STEINMAN & FOLTZ
Lancaster, Pa.
TO MY MOTHER
WHOSE DELIGHTFUL COMPANIONSHIP AND
VALUABLE COUNSEL MEAN A VERY
GREAT DEAL TO ME V
420204
FOREWORD
This study is the development of an investigation undertaken
at the instance of Doctor Clement Vollmer for his seminary
in "The Relations of Eighteenth Century Thought to Litera-
ture." I am indebted to Doctor Vollmer not only for suggest-
ing the subject, but also for much incisive comment in the field
and for many helpful suggestions about my work. My thanks
are also due Doctor Daniel Bussier Shumway for helpful guid-
ance and his unfailing interest during all stages of my study.
I am greatly obliged to the members of the Germanic Associa-
tion whose lively discussion of my paper proved as helpful as
it was delightful. I wish also to thank Doctor Josiah H. Penni-
man for my use of his fine editions of Shaftesbury's "Char-
acteristics" and of related critical material.
A. L. C.
PARALLEL THEMES AND THEIR TREATMENT
IN SCHILLER AND SHAFTESBURY
INTRODUCTION
My aim in this study is chiefly expositional ; I seek to present
the essential similarities in the central themes of Schiller and
of Shaftesbury and to describe the manner in which these themes
are treated, hence no attempt is made to take up the writings
chronologically, or to determine the validity of any theme for
the complete structure of either writer. It is not my purpose
to attempt to prove that Schiller borrowed, or did not borrow,
his doctrines from Shaftesbury; moreover, I believe that one's
attitude on such questions, where the evidence is so obviously
conjectural and slight, is at most matter for personal preference,
certainly it does not permit of scientific establishment.
Real justification for a work of this kind is to be sought less
in the challenging statements 1 about the historical relations of
Schiller and Shaftesbury, although these necessarily have their
place, than in the need for a succinct account of their simi-
larities in belief and of the intellectual and emotional processes
by which these beliefs are bodied out.
To anyone attempting to write about the philosophical views
of Schiller there are at once presented numerous difficulties ;
these exist both in the very inconsequential manner in which
the material is brought to paper as well as in the more funda-
mental matter of terminology. 2 It is open to question whether
1 At the present there exists the most oppositeness in view about the rela-
tions of Schiller and Shaftesbury: Schiller has been made to appear in all
degrees of intellectual kinship with Shaftesbury, varying from a direct dis-
ciple to an absolute antithesis. In reviewing the statements made apropos
of Schiller and Shaftesbury up to the present, one cannot but be convinced
that a good deal of the critical work which has been offered is so general
that it can have no specific reference, and that the broad assumptions of
bond between the two authors are as applicable to the relations of other
writers who have been interested in similar themes.
2 The following works deal with the problems presented in Schiller's ter-
mini: Prolegomena zu einem Lexikon der aesthetisch-ethischen Terminologie
Friedrich Schillers, Julia Wernly, Leipzig, 1909. Schillers aesthetisch-
sittliche Weltanschauung, Dr. Paul Geyer, Berlin, 1896.
8 Parallel Themes in Schiller and Shaftesbury
Schiller is saying anything new in these somewhat remarkable
terms, and what Carlyle remarks rather facetiously on the
Kantian philosophy in general may be here not without appli-
cation to Schiller. 3 Schiller is not fundamentally a philosopher,
and although he establishes an exceedingly close articulation
in much of his writing between his freer poetical bent and his
formal interests in philosophy, yet he never achieves the con-
sciously crisp sequence and the orderliness of thought which are
so desirable in philosophical studies, and into some of his articles
he brings a baffling poetic fancifulness of term which leaves the
real thought content vague. Furthermore, there is in no strict
sense of the term a regular philosophical system in Schiller,
and while he does not share Shaftesbury's attitude toward one, 4
his poetic drift always bears him outside any purposive cata-
loguing of ideas, and consequently what is subsidiary in one
essay often assumes prime importance in another work.
This shifting of emphasis presents a peculiar problem in
Schiller; and it has undoubtedly contributed much to the anti-
podal views which obtain of his relations to Kant. To the
student of Schiller's incomposite philosophical studies, then,
the essential difficulty is to know where to take him, what
essay or group of letters to accept as the true norm of his think-
ing, and what opinion to relegate into the background as beside
the main drift of his thought, or as irrelevant and even as anti-
thetical to it. Manifestly, there is much to the credit of the
attitude which seeks to obtain a broad reading of his philos-
3 Life of Friedrich Schiller, Thomas Carlyle, London, 1825 (reprint 1875),
Part Three, p. 98. "To an exoteric reader the philosophy of Kant almost
appears to invert the common maxim; its end and aim seem not to be 'to
make abstruse things simple,' but to make simple things abstruse. Often a
proposition of inscrutable and dread aspect when resolutely grappled with
and torn from its shady den, and its bristling entrenchments of uncouth
terminology, and dragged forth into the light of day, to be seen of the natural
eye, and tried by merely human understanding, proves to be a very harmless
truth, familiar to us from old, sometimes so familiar as to be a truism."
4 Characteristics, fifth edition, I: 290. "But for the philosopher who pre-
tends to be wholly taken up in considering the higher faculties, and exam-
ining the powers and principles of his understanding: if in reality his phil-
osophy be sovereign to the matter professed; if it go beside the mark, and
reaches nothing we can truly call our interest or concern; it must be somewhat
worse than mere ignorance or idiotism. The most ingenious way of becoming
foolish is by a system."
Parallel Themes in Schiller and Shaftesbury 9
ophy, 5 if actually to the exclusion of certain of the minutiae,
and it has important advantages on the side of conservatism.
On the whole, it is probably true that few poets have striven
more earnestly than Schiller to make their intellectual judg-
ments the children of uncontaminated reason, for he lived at
a time when reason not only reigned supreme as the trusted
arbiter in all disputes, but was confidently looked to as the
interpreter of all the hidden things of life. But take Schiller
where you will, there is always the potential emotional element
lurking in the background, ready at a moment's notice to spring
forward and save a too finely spun intellectual fabric by sub-
stituting a cloth of commoner pattern.
For the sake of completeness and truth it is necessary to add
that Schiller is frequently the mere rhetorician and, occasionally,
perilously close to the pedant, his curious fondness for the intel-
lectual jugglery of the paradox being, perhaps, his worst failing.
Again, there is an added difficulty in the distance in time
from the present. Even under favorable circumstances it is
hard to reconstruct the intellectual trend of former periods
sufficiently well to furnish their accurate and well regulated
picture in entirety. This is especially true of the eighteenth
century which, intellectually, at least, seems so incompatible
with the present. This difficulty of remoteness in time is
equally applicable to Shaftesbury, whose work even beyond
its stylistic difficulties of archaism and classicism presents
peculiar problems. In England, on the whole, Shaftesbury has
not been taken very seriously, being frequently dismissed as a
charlatan, or what is worse, "an intellectual coxcomb"; al-
though unquestionably of influence, he has never been read in
England with the indulgence that he has received from the
Germans. 6 Shaftesbury, unlike Schiller, does not invent terms
6 This Professor E. C. Wilm has striven to do in his valuable book, "The
Philosophy of Schiller in its Historical Relations," Boston, 1912.
6 It is illuminating and interesting in this connection to make a comparison
of the attitude toward Shaftesbury as represented in the English works of
Saintsbury, Leslie Stephen, and Bosanquet with the discussion on Shaftes-
bury in Hettner which may be taken as normative for the Germans. Bosan-
quet, for instance, says: "Shaftesbury is far from being a great philosopher,
and does little more than reproduce in terms of the individual's sensibility
the current ideas of the age"; and Hettner: "We have every reason to return
to his writings, for in them we may learn not only the truth, but also the
beauty of speculative thinking."
io Parallel Themes in Schiller and Shaftesbury
as he goes along, nor does he ever engage, wilfully at least, in
metaphysical obscurity; the real difficulty in arriving at a suit-
able interpretation of his work lies in the spirit with which
he treats his subject, whether it be his jest or his earnest.
Various degrees of influence of Shaftesbury upon the writings
of Schiller have been assumed in all the more thoroughgoing
investigations of Schiller's philosophical thought. In general
there have been two ways of looking at the question, both of
which have in turn been the result of the decision regarding
Schiller's relations to Kant. 7 The first and older view is held
by those who believe that Schiller became essentially Kantian
following his intensive study of Kant's philosophy during which
period Schiller was supposed to go over to the Kantian prin-
ciples definitively. These writers, then, place whatever influ-
ence is traceable to Shaftesbury in the earliest philosophical
writings of Schiller, and they assume a repudiation of Shaftes-
bury when Schiller takes up the study of Kant. The later
view which has for its sponsor no less than the able writer
Windelband has been elaborated by Professor Oskar F. Wal-
zel; 8 it has not, however, remained unchallenged. 9 This view
undertakes to derive the closeness of opinion between Shaftes-
bury and Schiller from Schiller's contact with Herder 10 and
Wieland, 11 both of whom have been known as ardent champions
of Shaftesbury in Germany. Such a conception tends to dis-
regard any possibility of influence from Shaftesbury which
may have resulted through Schiller's early study of Fergusson,
and Professor Walzel in his discussion seems to distinguish
7 As is well known, the relations of Schiller to Kant have been the sub-
ject of the most opposite views. That Schiller's work is not only the logical
complement, but that it represents a further development of the Kantian
ethics is the opinion advanced in a fairly recent book on the subject by Leon-
ard Nelson: Die kritische Ethik bei Kant, Schiller und Fries, Goettingen,
19 14. See, also, Professor Anton Applemann's: Der Unterschied in der
Auffassung der Ethik bei Kant und Schiller. New York, 1917.
8 See especially his introduction to the eleventh volume of the Saekular
Cotta edition of Schiller's works, Stuttgart, 1904.
9 Schiller als Denker, B. K. Engel, p. 7; 15.
10 Der Einfluss Shaftesburys auf Herder, Stanford University Disserta-
tion. Irvin C. Hatch.
11 Wieland and Shaftesbury, Charles Elson, Columbia University Press,
1913. Shaftesburys Einfluss auf Ch. M. Wieland, Herbert Grudzinski,
Stuttgart, 19 ft.
Parallel Themes in Schiller and Shaftesbury 1 1
between Shaftesbury's indirect influence through Fergusson in
the Garve translation and Shaftesbury's more direct influence
through Herder and Wieland which came later, what this dis-
tinction is, however, remains unsaid. Such an interpretation
very naturally finds its culmination in Schiller's elaboration
of the "beautiful soul" as brought out in his essay on "Grace
and Dignity." This conception, therefore, is taken as evi-
dence of the denial of Kant and the enthronement of Shaftes-
bury in a point which contains the crux of the whole question.
Those who hold to the opinion that Schiller is definitely Kantian
quite conceivably are less apt to bring forward the essay on
"Grace and Dignity" and accord it the position of the keystone
in Schiller's thought, as many writers incline to do, but they
insist rather upon the importance of such later work as "On
the Service to Morals of Aesthetic Habits," in which it is not
impossible to see an expansion of the Kantian doctrine and a
limitation of Shaftesbury's theme. As matter of fact, however,
all these views may be well substantiated from the evidence
assembled from Schiller's essays, although too frequently one
of the other of these opinions has been supported merely through
exclusion of part of the work. In fine, the assumptions on
Schiller's kinship, or on his endebtedness, as some would have
it, to Shaftesbury up to this time amount to this: (i) that
Schiller borrowed the idea of practising virtue out of pure in-
clination from Shaftesbury; (2) that the conception of the
"beautiful soul" is a sort of rehabilitation of Shaftesbury's
"virtuoso"; (3) that the principle of the advancement of moral
ends through aesthetic means is the same in both authors;
(4) that Schiller develops his early pantheism in the Shaftes-
burian vein; (5) that Schiller's notion of world harmony is as
referable to Shaftesbury as to Leibnitz.
Hence it follows, if the assumptions of those who see essential
closeness in thought between Shaftesbury and Schiller are taken
at their full significance, that Shaftesbury's work is entirely
prelusive to Schiller, Schiller doing little more than to comment
upon the operation of the earlier ideas and adding simply what
might be termed the natural accretion to Shaftesbury's system
during the eighteenth century.
Obviously the difficulty in the way of these theories about
the influence of Shaftesbury upon Schiller is the fact that these
12 Parallel Themes in Schiller and Shaftesbury
writers who support them are attempting to assume specific
reference for what is nothing more than a broad principle, or
even a generalization. It cannot be said that any of the ideas
mentioned are in a strict sense the exclusive property of Shaftes-
bury; in fact, they are such as might easily suggest themselves
to any mind strongly bent by an interest in aesthetics and
ethics. 12 Moreover, the external evidence that Schiller knew
Shaftesbury at first hand is insufficient; and there is no reason
to suppose that Schiller would bridle any enthusiasm for Shaftes-
bury in his letters where he is particularly open and full.
If any explanation why Schiller wrote as he did in the Shaftes-
burian or Platonic vein is necessary, it is much more likely to
be found in a study of his personality and temperament 13 than
in his relations to earlier thinkers.
n As an illuminating fact for these theories of influence it may be men-
tioned that in Dr. Rand's recently published "Second Characters" of Shaftes-
bury, which Schiller could not possibly have known, there is, perhaps, the
closest approach to Schiller's ideal of aesthetic training and the value of
such training for the individual and for the state.
13 A study of this kind for Shaftesbury has already been made by M. F.
Libby : Influence of the Idea of Aesthetic Proportion on the Ethics of Shaftes-
bury. American Journal of Psychology, XII. More technical still is the
work of Georg Kilian: Psychologisch-statistische Untersuchungen ueber die
Darstellung der Gemuetsbewegungen in Schillers Lyrik, 19 10.
PARALLEL THEMES AND THEIR TREATMENT IN
SCHILLER AND SHAFTESBURY
General Characterization of Their Ethics
Schiller and Shaftesbury show greatest kinship in their con-
ception and treatment of ethics. 1 The quintessence of both
is essentially Greek and is derivable particularly from the ideas
of Plato 2 and Socrates which, as is well known, remained uncul-
tivated throughout the middle ages only to blossom forth with
freshness at the end of the seventeenth century under the influ-
ence of the Cambridge Platonists. In seeking to characterize
somewhat generally, by way of introduction, the main trend
in these ethical principles it is enough to point out that their
main bent is on the side of intuitive goodness and the perfec-
tional possibilities of mankind, both Schiller and Shaftesbury
being, as matter of fact, broadly classifiable as aesthetical intu-
itionalists in their ethics. 3 Both systems are supported further
by the fact that the perfectional possibilities of mankind are
aided in their development by the addition of happiness. Al-
though both these ethical systems are fundamentally intuitive
and perfectional, they are rarely ever purely so. Both authors
proceed occasionally from and toward hedonistic principles, and
they substance out their systems by them. Jural ethics, whether
the result of religion or of severely rationalistic precepts, are
distasteful to both writers.
1 Hettner's remark in his History of English Literature, p. 175, that the
German phrase "Trachtet zuerst nach dem Schoenen, und das Gute wird
Euch von selbst zufallen" is referable to Shaftesbury's doctrine is inter-
esting.
2 See Leslie Stephen : History of English Thought in the Eighteenth
Century, vol. 2, p. 24; and Hettner, History of English Literature, p. 174.
3 The mooted question whether Schiller in the final analysis, particularly
of his later works, is to be accounted moralist or aesthete seems to be wholly
a matter of emphasis; while on the whole, the earliest penchant discernible
in his writings lies clearly towards an interest in morals, what is basic in
his later writings is not so clear. Similarly, Shaftesbury proceeds from
his interest in morals, though not towards aesthetics, since with him the
aesthetical judgment is coextensive with the ethical judgment, and the per-
ception of the good follows in the same way as the perception of the beau-
tiful.
13
14 Parallel Themes in Schiller and Shaftesbury
Intuition; the Moral Sense; Aesthetic Education
That man is by nature good is one of the keynotes of Shaftes-
bury and this idea is so thoroughgoing that he holds it is only
by some violent perversion of his nature that man is capable
of anything bad. 4 Schiller supports the same view, although,
curiously enough, he finds Kant's arguments correct in which
he establishes a basic propensity in man toward evil; such an
interpretation of human nature, however, is revolting to Schiller. 5
In this fundamental conception lienotabledifferences. Shaftes-
bury invariably exaggerates the inherent moral sense of man,
while Schiller prefers to treat it as a subjective tendency which
needs much care and especial training. It is in the fuller devel-
opment of the ineradicable good that Shaftesbury goes beyond
what Schiller would be likely to subscribe to, although Schiller
is content to be less explicit upon this point in his formal utter-
ances. Goodness with Shaftesbury, almost uniformly, results
from conformity with an external and hence objective thing —
something to be recognized as freely and as unerringly as the
excellence of a work of art. Schiller takes the more conven-
tional view of goodness, that it is the spiritual part of man
which expresses itself from within outwards towards ideal con-
duct, but which corresponds with the symmetry and perfection
of the universe. The real divergence, however, is that good-
ness, according to Shaftesbury, is something full-fledged, and
that whatever modifications it suffers are pretty sure to be on
the detrimental side, while with Schiller the process of education
is again and again referred to as absolutely necessary before
the supreme achievement of a beautiful morality can be approxi-
mated.
Schiller's chief contention in the moral education of mankind,
the insistence upon the necessity of preliminary training in
4 Shaftesbury even prescribes the development of the sensuous nature
within proper limits. Characteristics: 1:259-260. Proper self-love is cited
as the highest form of wisdom.
6 One cannot escape the feeling that Schiller would be much more willing
to subscribe to the doctrine of ineradicable goodness to the extent of Shaftes-
bury were he not so much bound by his logic and, more especially, by the
fear of "the incisive Kantian question," as he puts it. Compare his essay
on "The Service to Morals of Aesthetic Habits."
Parallel Themes in Schiller and Shaftesbury 15
aesthetics as an absolute basis for moral conduct, 6 has, broadly-
speaking, in its elaborate transcendental psychology nothing
with which Shaftesbury's main contention that the study of
art helps to form a just taste which becomes of value in sensing
harmony may be compared.
In Shaftesbury there is matter of fact, if not altogether com-
monplace, reasoning upon the value of training for the moral
nature of man. Proceeding, here as elsewhere, to draw example
from the physical side of man as well as from the animal king-
dom, he starts with the thesis that unused parts become impaired
and finally diseased, and that animals who do not fulfill the
tasks that nature has set them become unnatural, "lose their
instinct and ingenuity of their kind, whilst they continue in
the pampered state." 7 So with man, also, it has been arranged
that most are kept busy; some men, however, are provided with
all things by the labors of others and are apt to remain inactive
if they do not devote themselves "to letters, sciences, arts,
husbandry and public offices, and they accordingly sink into
settled idleness, supineness, and inactivity." Shaftesbury con-
cludes: Such a life "must produce a total disorder of the passions,
and break out in the strangest irregularities imaginable." 8
At bottom, Shaftesbury's discussion on this point is merely
a plea for legitimate exercise; he is not narrowly concerned with
the particular kind of exercise taken, unless it be for the fine
gentlemen where he undoubtedly recommends a certain amount
of activity with the arts. Schiller, on the other hand, intends
his system to be more embracive and more broadly applicable.
Laboriously in his "Letters on Aesthetic Education" with in
many places a disconcerting wealth of paradoxical statement
and even of fanciful treatment, Schiller evolves much fine-spun
theory, and , while he never once comes firmly to grips with his
formal subject, the cornerstone of his faith, the essential close-
ness of virtue and beauty, is clear and it is placed conspicuously
at the beginning of the work. 9
6 Twenty-third Letter: "In a word, there is no other way of making the
sensual man reasonable but by first making him aesthetic."
7 Characteristics: II: 132.
8 Characteristics: 11:133.
9 First Letter. (Goedeke's Schiller, X: 276.)
1 6 Parallel Themes in Schiller and Shaftesbury
The chief principles elaborated in this discussion (we have
Schiller's word for it) are Kantian; certain it is that they bear
little resemblance in their treatment to Shaftesbury's ideas.
There is much circumventive logic about the intellectual and
the emotional impulses, masquerading as the "matter-bent"
and the "form-bent," really the earlier contentions in new
guise. Schiller finally presses on to an abstraction of beauty,
the main principles established on the way being that melting
beauty relaxes the tense man, makes the sensual man thought-
ful and the intellectual man susceptible to the world of senti-
ment, while energetic beauty imparts vigor to the relaxed man. 10
The central point of the treatise, however, is reached where
the aesthetic condition by eliminating the conflicting elements
in man's nature clears the way for the natural impulses to func-
tion unobstructed.
In the idea that only out of the aesthetic condition can the
moral properly develop Schiller in a sense inverts Shaftesbury's
contention, since Shaftesbury holds that there must first be