Schiller studied at the Hohe Karlsschule between Ludwigsburg and Stuttgart beginning in 1773, at first struggling while majoring in Law and then improving markedly only as of 1775 in his study of Medicine, finally receiving his doctorate on December 15, 1780 after his third attempt at a dissertation and comprehensive examinations. While a student, Schiller wrote two philosophical speeches—“Rede über die Frage: Gehört allzuviel Güte, Leutseeligkeit und grosse Freygebigkeit im engsten Verstande zur Tugend?” (Speech on the Question: Does all too much Kindness, Sociability, and great Generosity necessarily Constitute Virtue?, 1779) and “Die Tugend in ihren Folgen betrachtet” (The Consequences of Virtue Considered, 1779–1780). Both speeches were assigned by Carl Eugen, Duke of Württemberg (1728–1793) and written in praise of Franziska von Hohenheim (1748–1811)—the Duke’s mistress from 1772 to 1785, when she became his second wife—on consecutive birthdays. In addition to the two philosophical speeches, Schiller wrote one minor case study on the depression of a classmate, “Über die Krankheit des Eleven Grammont” (On the Illness of Cadet Grammont, 1780), and three medical dissertations: his rejected first dissertation, Philosophie der Physiologie (Philosophy of Physiology, late 1779); his second unsatisfactory submission, De discrimine febrium inflammatoriarum et putridarum (On the Difference between Inflammatory and Putrid Fever, November 1780); and his third, successful submission, Versuch ueber den Zusammenhang der thierischen Natur des Menschen mit seiner geistigen (Essay on the Connection between the Animal Nature and the Intellectual Nature of the Human Being, November 1780).

The Karlsschule Speeches

“Rede über die Frage: Gehört allzuviel Güte, Leutseeligkeit und grosse Freygebigkeit im engsten Verstande zur Tugend?”

Textual Genesis: Schiller’s first composition on moral philosophy was written for the occasion of the celebration of the thirty-first birthday of Baroness Franziska von Hohenheim, held at the Karlsschule, which, according to Hohenheim’s diary (Hohenheim, 16), Schiller delivered on 10 January 1779, two months after his nineteenth birthday on November 10. The speech demonstrates the distinct influence of Schiller’s professors, including Balthasar Haug’s (1731–1792) teachings on classical rhetoric (Alt, 102–103), the Enlightenment works taught by Jakob Friedrich Abel (1751–1829), foremost evident in the intertextual presence of Moses Mendelssohn’s (1729–1786) book Phädon, oder über die Unsterblichkeit der Seele (Phaedo, or On the Immortality of the Soul, 1767), an adaptation of Plato’s seventh dialogue on the death of Socrates. Freely invoking foremost pagan characters in examples of true virtuous acts, the speech also features allusions to Christ’s “Sermon on the Mount” and the Old Testament tale of Absalom, as well as references to Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock’s (1724–1803) ode “Für den König” (For the King, 1753) and his epic poem Der Messias (The Messiah, 1748–1773). Schiller’s speech also invokes Ossian’s (James Macpherson) “Temora” (Song 1, 1763) in his description of its central figure Cathmor. According to Johann Wilhelm Petersen (1758–1815), Schiller’s classmate and the co-editor of Schiller’s first journal, Wirtembergisches Repertorium der Litteratur (Württembergian Repertorium of Literature, 1782–1783), the heated baroque punctuation and underlining of key terms in Schiller’s first speech demonstrate the stylistic influence of revolutionary Stuttgart poet, publisher, and organist Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart (1739–1791), as well as the Scottish Common Sense virtue theory in Johann Joachim Spalding’s (1714–1804) 1745–1747 translation of Shaftesbury’s (1671–1713) The Moralists, a philosophical Rhapsody (1705), Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s (1729–1781) 1756 translation of Francis Hutcheson’s (1694–1746) System of Moral Philosophy (1755), and Christian Garve’s (1742–1798) 1772 translation of Adam Ferguson’s (1723–1816) Institutes of Moral Philosophy (1769; Alt, 104–105). The manuscript resides at the Schiller National Museum/German Literature Archive in Marbach in a bound manuscript including twenty-eight additional speeches by other cadets (NA 21: 107).

Contents: Schiller’s First Virtue Speech presents the case for what constitutes virtue in three sections, the first presenting Socrates as history’s greatest role model for virtue, the second presenting the case against the merely superficial appearance of virtuous acts driven by ulterior motives, and the third on the importance of an inner struggle accompanying the difficult choice to act virtuously, even when acting virtuously is personally disadvantageous. These three subsections are followed by a lengthy and unsteady summary in which Schiller performs a balancing act between the appearance of piety and a spirit of heresy.

In the opening of §1 of the speech (paragraphs 1–6), Schiller, responding to an order from the duke to serve as “Lobredner” (laudatory speaker), coins a guiding construct for both his future critical thought and artistic production. Regarding the reciprocal relationship between inner freedom and happiness, in paragraph 1 and paragraph 2, Schiller poses the teleologically informed question: what distinguishes virtue from vice in the case of superficially laudable acts—“die schimmernde That vor dem Auge der Welt” (the glittering deed before the eyes of the world; NA 20: 3). Schiller finds the answer in “die innere Quelle der That” (the moral source of the deed; NA 20: 3), which he glosses as “Liebe zur Glückseligkeit” (love of happiness; NA 20: 3). As in his later writings, “der scharfsehende Verstand” (the sharp insight of reason [later Formtrieb; formal drive]; NA 20: 3), checking “Neigung” (impulse and inclination [later Stofftrieb; material or sense drive]; NA 20: 3), guides the moral decision-making process. Reason tests each choice according to whether it will lead to “höherer zu weiterumfaßender Glükseligkeit” (higher, more widespread happiness NA 20: 3) than its alternatives. To this moral formula, Schiller adds the measure of greater and lesser virtue: “Je heller also, je gewaltiger, je dringender die gegenseitige Neigung desto höherer Verstand—desto höhere Liebe—desto höhere Tugend” (The more vibrant, more powerful, more urgent the opposing inclinations, the greater the reason demonstrated—the higher love—the greater virtue; NA 20: 3). If the love of higher happiness (i.e., universal and moral happiness), which requires selfless conduct on the level of the individual, guides the subject in all choices between competing inclinations regarding virtue and vice, then the gravest and most extreme and thus most graphic moral act is the free choice to die in the name of virtue and freedom rather than to live an unfree life of enslavement (be the coercion external or internal). In paragraph 3, Schiller argues that the defining moment in the history of moral choice is Socrates’ decision to choose death over coercion as a contribution to the freedom and happiness of all. According to Schiller’s introductory formula, Socrates’ “höchster Kampf” (greatest struggle; NA 20: 4) culminates in the reconciliation of competing inclinations of reason (toward higher happiness) and of the most basic of natural sensual drives (e.g., toward survival). Since there can be no more “entsezliche Freyheit” (terrible freedom), no clearer demonstration of self-determination or “höchster Verstand” (highest reason; NA 20: 4) than the choice between two inclinations that results in the most disadvantageous personal consequences, it follows that the choice of one’s own death best demonstrates the reconciliation of duty and desire and the greatest possible freedom from sensual-physical coercion. In paragraphs 4–6, §1, Schiller concludes with a definition of virtue, which is also Schiller‘s formula for altruism: “Liebe zur Glükseeligkeit, geleitet durch den Verstand—Tugend ist das harmonische Band von Liebe und Weißheit!” (Love of happiness, guided by reason—virtue is the harmonious band that unites love and wisdom; NA 20: 4). The definition of virtue as the harmony of love and wisdom, which constitutes the thesis as well as the metaphorical leitmotif of the speech, appears another four times, at least once in each segment of the speech (NA 20: 4, 5, 6, 8).

In §2 (paragraphs 7–11), Schiller, like Shaftesbury and Hutcheson before him, strictly differentiates between the moral inspiration of a deed and its reception, and thus between true virtue and the mere appearance of virtue masking ulterior motives. To illustrate the political application of the idea that the end of virtue is happiness of the whole, Schiller contrasts Socrates’ sublime reconciliation of reason and sensuality (ennobled reason)—the measure of totality of character—with a world history of tyrants and rebels, again, at least partially lifted from Hutcheson and Ferguson. The contrastive analysis of the actions of the tyrants and rebels demonstrates a lacking totality of character in each of them, which results in moral perversions marked either by a dangerously one-sided dictatorship of sensuality (here love) or of theoretical reason (here wisdom). Schiller proceeds to analyze these exempla according to the Socrates criterion, that is, whether or not their actions advanced the goal of humankind, namely happiness of the whole. The actions of the tyrants and rebels are divided into two clear categories: actions dominated by abstract reason unchecked by feeling, and actions dominated by sensuality unchecked by reason. The actions break down as follows in terms similar to those in Mendelssohn’s description of the sophists—“Geiz, Ehrfurcht oder Wollust” (greed, awe, or lasciviousness; Mendelssohn, 7–8): 1) actions dictated by reason—François Ravaillac’s regicide and Catiline’s arsonist murder represent “verlarvtes Laster” (paragraph 10; vice in disguise; NA 20: 5); and 2) actions dictated by sensuality—Julius Caesar’s entertainment of the masses with games and gifts represents “Herrschsucht” and “Ehrgeiz” (paragraph 8; hunger for power and ambition; NA 20: 5), while Augustus Caesar’s desire to become immortal represents “wollüstiges Gefühl” (paragraph 9; lasciviousness; NA 20: 5), and Absolom’s embrace of the lowest citizens represents “Durst nach Herrschaft” (paragraph 10; thirst for domination; NA 20: 5). According to Schiller’s argument, acts that may appear to contribute to the happiness of the whole, such as rebellion against tyranny, often prove not to be motivated by virtue after all, but by selfish drives of the mind or the body that actually threaten the happiness of the whole. Throughout, Schiller restates his thesis, concluding of his tyrants and rebels that either, “Hier also war Güte die Larve des in der Tiefe der Seele laurenden Lasters” (paragraph 11; Thus here, kindness was merely masking vice lurking deep in the soul; NA 20: 5), or “Hier war die Güte mit Weißheit aber nicht mit Liebe im bund” (paragraph 11; Here kindness was in league with wisdom [reason] but not with love [feeling]; NA 20: 5).

§3, on moral resistance (paragraphs 12–16), represents one of the great masterpieces of Schillerian double-speak, a skill that was evidently as valuable at the Hohe Karlsschule as it would prove to be in Schiller’s dealings with censors. Indeed, it is baffling why it took until 1788 for Schiller to be accused of outright blasphemy. Returning to his description of Socrates’ decision to choose death before coercion as “höchster Kampf” (paragraph 3), Schiller introduces the measure of “Kampf der Seele” (paragraph 13; inner moral struggle; NA 20: 6) as the measure of virtue: “Die schönste That ohne Kampf begangen hat gar geringen Werth gegen derjeningen die durch großen Kampf errungen ist” (paragraph 13; The most beautiful deed done without struggle has precious little worth when compared to that which is achieved through great struggle; NA 20: 6). A person with all the trappings of wealth runs no risk in an act of charity, indeed, such a person is likely to gain from such an act, thus there is no “Gegengewicht” (counterbalance) to the “Neigung Wohlzuthun” (paragraph 13; inclination to do good; NA 20: 6), and the act is merely superficially good, but not virtuous. Following the order of considerations in his title, Schiller proceeds to address whether “Leutseligkeit” (sociability) necessarily constitutes virtue. According to the established formula, “jene Großer dort der seinen Adel seine Hoheit von sich legt” (paragraph 14; that particular person of importance there, who sets aside his nobility, his highness; NA 20: 6) and fraternizes with the common man, does not demonstrate virtue, because he lacks “das Gefühl eigener innerer Erhabenheit” (paragraph 14; the feeling of one’s own inner sublimity; NA 20: 6) that would serve as a counterbalance to an empty act of sociability, since such an encounter likely serves only to inflate his pride: “So ist demnach allzuviel Güte und Leutseligkeit und große Freygebigkeit das harmonische Band von Liebe und Weißheit nicht;—so hat sie keinen Kampf gekostet; […] Sie ist nicht Tugend!” (paragraph 15; Therefore, all too much kindness, sociability, and great generosity does not constitute the harmonious band between love and wisdom—for it cost no struggle […] This is not virtue!; NA 20: 7).

In the conclusion (§4), it is difficult to overlook the subversive irony that the “Lobredner” Schiller showers both the Duke and his extra-marital partner Hohenheim with praise, though neither were popular with the students, and that he does so in terms that parallel his description of Socrates directly after he had disqualified self-serving gestures of sociability by the privileged toward the lower classes from the category of truly virtuous acts. The speech ends with a brazenly disingenuous vision of mourning, in which first “die Söhne der Zukunft” (the sons of the future) weep at Carl Eugen’s funeral (a “Fest” or celebration), and then yet another future generation searches—evidently in vain—through the gravestones for those of “Wirtembergs trefflicher Carl” (Württemberg’s worthy Carl) and “Franziska, die Freundin der Menschen” (Franziska, the friend, [or girlfriend] of humanity; NA 20: 9).

Philosophical Significance and Impact: Although the First Virtue Speech has been widely overlooked by scholars, it could hardly be more significant for Schiller’s later literary, philosophical, and political thought. Schiller quietly lays the philosophical foundation for a life-long program to promote a reasoned, secular alternative to a faith-based role model, embarking from and concluding with the thesis that the destiny of humankind is happiness, and the path to happiness is virtue, both of which rely on what became the familiar Schillerian connection between moral rationalism and sensual foundation (Alt, 106). What qualifies Socrates above all others as not only “den erhabensten Geist, den je das Altertum gebahr” (paragraph 3; the most sublime thinker whom the ancient world ever bore; NA 20: 3), but also the individual who accomplished the most sublime deed—“Erhabner nichts unter hohem, bestirntem Himmel vollbracht!” (Nothing more sublime was ever done under the great starry heavens; NA 20, 4)—is his rejection of belief in a reward in the afterlife—later, the Augustenburg Letters (1793), “ein Surrogat der wahren Tugend” (a surrogate for true virtue; NA 26: 330–31)—and his demonstration that dutifully giving one’s only life without the comfort of a belief in the afterlife—as opposed to abandoning a dreary prelude to a blissful life after death—for the sake of the future happiness of others, is the most extreme test of virtue. Schiller returns to the singularity of this test in the subsequent paragraphs and in four later portrayals of Socrates’ wisdom and his willingness to die for his principles in works on aesthetics and morality between 1786 and 1795: “Brief eines reisenden Dänen” (Letter from a Traveling Dane, 1786; NA 20: 106), Über die tragische Kunst (On Tragic Art, 1791; NA 20: 106), Ästhetische Briefe (Aesthetic Letters, NA 20: 338–339), and Über Naive und Sentimentalische Dichtung (On Naive and Sentimental Poetry, 1795; NA 20: 447).

The First Virtue Speech begins not only a decades-long pursuit of happiness through art intended to resonate and effect change in the sphere of public authority, but also the approach to moral philosophy and politics through the aesthetic. The enduring presence of Scottish Enlightenment eudaimonism and reconciliation philosophy in Schiller’s thought is nowhere more evident than in the First Virtue Speech, which features the key concepts of disinterested virtue, the role of virtue in the perfection of the individual and civil society, and the means and end of happiness as the destiny of humankind. The parade of imbalanced tyrants and rebels presented in the text—Julius Caesar, Augustus Caesar, Ravaillac, and Catiline (NA, 20: 4–6), partially lifted from Hutcheson and Ferguson—very closely follow Shaftesbury’s thesis that not all “good” acts are necessarily virtuous (Shaftesbury, Characteristics, volume II, part II, §I, 29–30); each stands in negative contrast to the stoic model of a ruler, Marcus Aurelius (NA 20: 8). The story of Absolom, the biblical son of King David, who conspired against his father and was killed during the coup attempt of his father, Officer Joab, has many of the elements of Schiller’s dramas Die Verschwörung des Fiesko zu Genua (The Conspiracy of Fiesco at Genoa) and Don Karlos; Socrates’ sublime composure and autonomy in the face of death parallels those of Marquis Posa in Don Karlos, Maria Stuart, and Johanna in Die Jungfrau von Orleans (The Maid of Orleans); Ravaillac’s murder of a tyrant mirrors Fiesko’s revolutionary hunger for power in Fiesko, and Catiline mirrors both Fiesko’s hunger for power as well as Karl Moor’s terror campaign in Die Räuber (The Robbers).

Already in the portrayal of Socrates’ “entsezliche Freyheit” (paragraph 3) as the model of the dramatic sublime, Schiller establishes the paradigms for his later essays on drama theory and the sublime. A number of the features of the text call into question oversimplified views of Kant’s influence on Schiller. The reconciliation philosophy model of the text’s motto has essentially the same component and structures that mark his post-Kantian works, for example, in his 1784 speech, “Was kann eine gute stehende Schaubühne eigentlich wirken?” (What Effect Can a Good Permanent Theatre Actually Achieve?), Schiller expands the band between wisdom and love, and that between intellectual and animal nature, to address the “ästhetische[n] Sinn, oder das Gefühl für das Schöne” (aesthetic sense or sense for beauty), which makes possible “einen mittleren Zustand” (an intermediary state; NA 20: 90) or harmonic resolution of drives. In the final line of his Winter 1792–1793 Jena lecture on aesthetics, Allgemeingültigkeit des Geschmacksurtheils (Universal Validity of the Judgment of Taste): “Das Schöne ist das Mittelglied zwischen Sittlichkeit und Sinnlichkeit” (The beautiful is the mediator between morality and sensuality; NA 21: 81). The formula for the moral-aesthetic judgment of tyrants appears again in Schiller’s Philipp der Zweite, König von Spanien (Philipp II, King of Spain, 1786), an adaptation of Louis Sébastien Mercier’s (1740–1814) treatment of the same (1785), in which Philipp, like all rulers, is judged by the measure of his virtue and contribution to the happiness of the whole. In his best-selling history book, Geschichte des Abfalls der Niederlande von der Spanischen Regierung (History of the Revolt of the Netherlands against Spanish Rule, 1788), Schiller invokes the familiar condemnation of the conqueror of his second published poem, “Der Eroberer” (The Conqueror, 1777), in contrasting the revolutionary virtue of the Dutch with “schimmernden Thaten der Ruhmsucht und einer verderblichen Herrschbegierde” (glimmering deeds of the quest for glory and a destructive desire to dominate; NA 17: 10), both products of an imbalance of drives (see below).

Arguably, an important aspect if not the main focus of each of Schiller’s subsequent theoretical treatises is the common sense conviction that both the end and the means—the regulative moral principle—of humanity is autonomy and happiness of the whole through autonomy and happiness of the individual, appearing as the end of all human pursuits in Die Räuber (III, 2; NA 3: 78); in Die Schaubühne als moralische Anstalt betrachtet (The Stage Considered as Moral Institution, 1784; NA 20: 88); in Philosophische Briefe (Philosophical Letters, 1786; NA 20: 107); in Ueber die tragische Kunst (On Tragic Art, 1790–1792). In Ueber den Grund des Vergnügen an tragischen Gegenständen (On the Reason for the Enjoyment of Tragic Objects, 1792; NA 20: 133), it is nature’s end for humans that they be happy and in Ueber Anmuth und Würde (On Grace and Dignity, 1793; NA 20: 149), the “Glückseligkeitstrieb” (drive to pursue happiness; NA 20: 282) drives the human individual’s decisions (NA 20: 282). It takes Schiller an entire two and a half sentences to get to the regulative idea of the Ästhetische Briefe, which is “happiness” (NA 20: 309). Schiller likewise revisits his analysis of the “moral source of the deed” repeatedly in both drama and theory, no more clearly than in his letter to Augustenburg of July 13, 1793 and in the Ästhetische Briefe, in which he describes the paradoxical gulf between the “Inhalt” (motivation), “Verhandlungsart” (act itself), and “Folgen” (consequences) of rebellion, employing the now sixteen-year-old “band that unites wisdom and love” again in the context of rebellion, specifically the French Revolution, which demonstrates the dictatorship of reason in its leaders and the dictatorship of sensuality in its followers. Where the abstract theoretical human being, Schiller concludes, is capable of rationalizing diabolical disregard for humanity, the sensual human being can fall no deeper than to an animal state (NA 26: 263), both due to a lack of “Totalität des Charakters” (totality of character; NA 20: 318).

“Die Tugend in ihren Folgen betrachtet” (The Consequences of Virtue Considered, 1779–1780)

Textual Genesis: As was the case with the first Karlsschule speech on virtue of 1779, Schiller’s second came in response to an assignment directly from Duke Carl Eugen of Württemberg to write a speech in honor of Baroness Franziska von Hohenheim for the celebration of her (thirty-second) birthday on January 10, 1780, two months after Schiller’s twentieth birthday on November 10, 1779. In contrast to the first speech, the second speech topic was assigned to only twelve cadets, and Schiller’s speech was among those chosen to be delivered in person on Hohenheim’s birthday. The source for the widely available print version of the speech is a bound manuscript that appears to have been written by Schiller’s classmate Friedrich von Hoven (1759–1838), which was first published in 1839 (NA 21: 122). Here, more specifically than in the first speech, Schiller alludes to the works of the greatest “Weisen dieses Jahrhunderts” (thinkers of this century; NA 20: 32), his Scottish Enlightenment paradigms Shaftesbury, Ferguson, Hutcheson, and Adam Smith. Ferguson, in particular, who is also cited in a similar context in paragraph 2 of Schiller’s first rejected dissertation, Philosophie der Physiologie (1779), prefigures Schiller’s concept of an anthropological drive to progress from the animal nature of the human being toward a teleological concept of inevitable moral refinement. Schiller was likewise familiar with earlier iterations of this model evident in the thought of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) and Christian Wolff (1679–1754; NA 21: 122), who also proposed a teleological development from the egoism of a state of nature toward an altruistic community of morally educated individuals.

Contents: The Second Virtue Speech comprises an essay of seven book pages, including an opening address to the duke (paragraph 1) followed by an introduction addressed to Hohenheim (paragraph 2); §1, “Folgen der Tugend auf das Ganze” (Consequences of Virtue for the Collective); §2, “Folgen der Tugend auf den Tugendhaften selbst” (Consequences of Virtue for the Virtuous Individual); and a closing address to Hohenheim (paragraph 15). In the opening address to the duke, Schiller specifically characterizes his speech as a response to the duke’s assignment, and declares the topic entirely worthy of one who, surrounded by jubilating youth, appears to embody the motto—“o daß ich alle glüklich machen könnte!” (Oh, that I were able to make everyone happy; NA 20: 30). Following this dubious characterization of the duke—whose university the writer Schubart described as a “Sklavenplantage” (slave plantation)—Schiller introduces the parameters and operative terms of the speech, namely that the task alone warms a youthful heart to devotion to “den göttlichen” (the divine, NA 20: 30), due to the “Aussicht in ihre erhabene Folgen” (the prospects of its sublime consequences), namely “nur Vollkommenheit, nur Glükseeligkeit” (only perfection, only happiness; NA 20: 30). With this equation of perfection and happiness, Schiller delivers a second guiding construct for his thought looking forward—following love of happiness as the source of all moral action in the first speech—the secularist conviction that virtuous earthly happiness is the decidedly secular teleological end of the human being. Virtue makes the human being the “Abglanz der unendlichen Gottheit” (reflected glory of the infinite deity; NA 20: 30), which itself is a projection of human ideals; virtue is the most divine aspiration in that it mirrors the order of nature; and happiness arrived at through virtue is the highest conceivable form of human perfection.

In the introduction and address to Hohenheim (paragraphs 2–4), Schiller, who famously self-identified as a “Weltbürger” (citizen of the world) in 1784 (NA 22: 93), considers all human beings as “Bürger des grosen Weltsystems” (citizens of the great universe; NA 20: 30), declaring that the value of such a citizen can only be measured according to the positive or negative influence one exerts on the “Vollkommenheit dieses Systems” (perfection of this system; NA 20: 30). Since, according to Schiller, the harmony of the driving forces of the system self-evidently serves to promote the development of the sentient members of creation toward perfection (happiness), the morality of any given act can only be measured by the contribution to the “Vollkommenheit der geistigen Weesen” (perfection of the thinking beings; NA 20: 30–31), that is to say, to their happiness. In a rhetorical run reminiscent of the doublespeak in the First Virtue Speech, Schiller proposes that perfection is “Verherrlichung der Gottheit” (Glorification of the deity; NA 20: 31) and proceeds in the next sentence to define this concept of the divine not in Judeo-Christian terms, but as “Übereinstimmung mit den Eigenschaften der Gottheit” (correspondence to the characteristics of the deity; NA 20: 31), which he then defines as “Vollkommenheit der Geisterwelt” (perfection of the sentient-rational realm; NA 20: 31), which, in turn, does not require a god at all. Indeed, the “Weesen des Unendlichen” (nature of the infinite) again rings sufficiently and scientifically Deist, but in no sense religious, as the speech satisfies coercive religio-political expectations while driving the topic toward secular moral philosophy. Schiller then states with all clarity that his actual topic concerns beings “in der empfindenden und denkenden Natur” (in sentient and rational nature; NA 20: 31). The speech takes an important aesthetic turn when Schiller argues the case in terms of Ferguson’s gravitation analogy: “Kraft dieses Gesezes wird uns das allezeit ergözen, was das Ganze vollkommener, das allezeit schmerzen müssen, was das Ganze unvollkommener macht” (By virtue of this law, we will always be delighted by what makes the whole more perfect, and will always experience pain at what makes the whole less perfect; NA 20: 31), which appears almost word for word in his first dissertation (NA 20: 11). The general consequence of virtue—happiness of the collective—contributes to a second, more personal, consequence, namely the happiness of the individual who acts virtuously. Schiller summarizes §1 by introducing §2: a virtuous condition is that of a “weiser wohlwollender Geist” (wise sentient-rational being of good will; NA 20: 32) who can make other minds more perfect, the clearly less important consequence of which is that the former also attains happiness through an act of virtue.

In §1, “Folgen der Tugend auf das Ganze” (Consequences of Virtue for the Whole; paragraphs 5–9), Schiller embarks from Ferguson’s gravitation analogy to argue that as in the realm of physics, so in the sentient-rational realm, the universal band of love bonds one human spirit to another. Love is the dynamic force of creation that drives the created, and that uplifts the individual “zum unendlichen Schöpfer” (to the infinite creator; NA 20: 32). Love unites the realm “aller denkenden Naturen” (of all thinking beings; NA 20: 32) under one organizing metaphorical moral and physical prime mover, here “Eines alliebenden Vaters” (One all-loving father; NA 20: 32). Schiller proposes that, as in the “Körperwelt” (physical realm) without the law of gravity; without love, the sentient realm would run riot “in anarchischem Aufruhr” (in anarchical turmoil; NA 20: 32). Just as love is the first drive after mere survival, the first effect of the interconnection of all thinking beings is “gegenseitige Ausbildung der Seelenfähigkeiten” (reciprocative formation of intellectual competencies; NA 20: 32) toward perfection, that is, happiness. Here, knowledge flows from one to another, sharp powers of reason correct crude conviction, the fire of youth is tempered by deliberate earnestness, and bilateral exchange of insights leads to mature reason, and ignites “Tugendliebe” (love of virtue; NA 20: 33). Thus, “Vollkommenheit der höheren Geisteskraft” (perfection of higher rational power; NA 20: 33) is the first consequence of the interconnection of all thinking beings through love. In paragraph 3 of §1, Schiller addresses the struggle between advancement and regression of humankind on the level of the individual, progressing from the love of parent to progeny, to that of the philosopher to an abandoned child, to a series of historical and legendary examples including Antonin, Trajan, Lykurgus, Montesquieu, Gellert, Haller, and Addison. Such examples that can enlighten a progression of human generations and races “mit dem Lichte der Wahrheit” (with the light of truth; NA 20: 33), that is, bring them closer to their sublime end, which has been established as happiness of the collective through happiness of the individual. Conversely, the vice of one individual (e.g., La Mettrie or Voltaire) can poison the minds of a thousand vulnerable individuals and cast a progression of human generations and races “in das barbarische Dunkel tierischer Wildheit” (into the barbaric darkness of animal savagery; NA 20: 33). In the final two paragraphs of §1 (paragraphs 8–9), Schiller returns to his function as laudatory speaker and restates the case in praise of the duke as the aforementioned father—a “vollkommener Geist” (perfectly sentient-rational thinker; NA 20: 34) who, himself inspired by “Allmächtige Tugend” (Almighty Virtue [herself]; NA 20: 34), transforms a “bildungslose[] Jugend” into the next Solon or Plato—who benefits from the virtuous support of the baroness. Here, as in the First Virtue Speech and below, Schiller dedicates a conspicuous degree of attention to future generations gathered around the grave of the duke and the baroness: “Thränen des Danks auf Ihre Asche” (Tears of gratitude on your ashes; NA 20: 35).

In §2, “Folgen der Tugend auf den Tugendhaften selbst” (Consequences of Virtue for the Virtuous Individual; paragraphs 10–12), Schiller returns to a focus of the First Virtue Speech, the “Flittergold[] unwürdiger Thaten” (the tinsel of dishonorable deeds; NA 20: 35) masquerading as virtue. Since providence provides for happiness to result even from vice, Schiller concludes that the “innere Folgen” (inner consequences; NA 20: 35) of virtue, though unseen, result in clear sublimity of character and purpose that would force a conqueror like Alexander the Great to flee even in the midst of victory, or free the philosopher to be happy even when languishing in prison. Although Schiller argues here that many would act entirely immorally if the internal and external consequences of virtue were not heavenly and those of vice hellish, he quickly returns to the argument in the First Virtue Speech that a system of reward and punishment can only lead to a simulation of virtue. The inner consequences of virtue—“Ruhe der Seele” (composure of spirit), “Stärke des Geists” (intellectual fortitude), “Selbstgewisheit” (self-certitude), and an “unerschütterter Karakter” (unshaken disposition; NA 20: 35)—provide defense against all travails, and make possible freedom in the face of tyranny—be it in the form of internal coercion of drives or the external coercion of the villain. As was the case in the First Virtue Speech, Schiller provides exempla of such composure: a Regulus can cheerfully face a barbaric death while the Caesars of this world tremble beneath their crowns; Seneca has peace of mind while remorse hounds the tyrants; and when a tyrant like Domitian threatens the rule of law, every moral sensation will bear the menacing witness “des Rächers” (of the avenger), and conscience and the judgment of history “sich erheben” (rise up; NA 20: 36) against the wicked.

In the transitional final lines of §2 (paragraph 12) and in the closing paragraph of the speech (paragraph 13), Schiller delivers yet another characteristically dubious address to Hohenheim. The happiness that comes from an inner experience of virtue has the consequence that it selflessly “eine Welt um sich beglükt” (makes happy a world around oneself; NA 20: 36), placing the truly virtuous character in a sublime sphere high above “alle Lobsprüche” (any laudation; NA 20: 36). The precise logic of the final paragraph concludes in two short and pregnant sentences that everything Hohenheim in fact possesses—“Irdische Belohnungen” (earthly rewards), “Sterbliche Kronen” (mortal crowns), and Schiller’s assigned task of delivering “die erhabenste Jubellieder” (the most sublime songs of joy; NA 20: 36) on two of her consecutive birthdays—is beneath the dignity of virtue, and, unlike true, historic acts of virtue, fade away in death, constituting Schiller’s third curious invocation of her death in the two Virtue Speeches (NA 20: 9, 35, 36).

Philosophical Significance and Impact: As in the First Virtue Speech, Schiller’s Second Virtue Speech draws heavily on the works of earlier philosophers from the ancient Greek as well as German and Scottish Enlightenment traditions. The tradition of Aristotelian eudaimonist virtue ethics, in which every action either contributes to the end of the happiness of the collective or does not, provides a common thread. The results of decisions and actions are not measured by utility, but by the moral source of the deed regardless of the results, as is frequently the case in Schiller’s tragedies. In the First Virtue Speech and his first dissertation, Philosophie der Physiologie, Schiller had already grounded his moral aesthetics in Scottish terms closely resembling Ferguson’s gravitation analogy. According to Ferguson, it is human nature to be attracted to that which causes pleasure and to be repelled by that which causes pain (NA 20: 11), and by this point, Schiller had also already cited Garve’s translation of Ferguson’s Institutes of Moral Philosophy, likewise in the first dissertation (NA 20: 30–36). The chain-of-being philosophy, reminiscent of Alexander Pope’s (1688–1744) Essay on Man (1733–1734; Alt, 108), becomes a staple of Schiller’s theoretical and poetic works, which repeatedly invoke the connection between the pursuit of happiness of the ant or the worm and the human being, notably in “An die Freude” (Ode to Joy, 1785/1786). The notion of perfection presented in the speech most closely resembles Ferguson’s An Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767, published in German in 1768), in which Ferguson argues that even the “rudest state of mankind” distinguished itself through the “desire of perfection” (Ferguson I: 1, 13). Ferguson, like Shaftesbury and Hutcheson before him, equated the measure of perfection with the happiness achieved. Ferguson’s An Essay on the History of Civil Society is informed throughout by the postulates, “to diffuse happiness, is the law of morality” (Ferguson I: 6, 62) and “the happiness of individuals is the great end of civil society” (Ferguson I: 9, 95), notions Schiller clearly adopts here.

The model of the sublime, as illustrated in the example of Socrates in the First Virtue Speech, returns in the portrayal of a series of exempla of historic acts of virtue. At its moral-aesthetic extreme, Schiller repeatedly cites the willingness to die for the freedom and happiness of others as an ideal of the sublime that later informed his treatises Vom Erhabenen (Concerning the Sublime, 1793) and Über das Erhabene (On the Sublime, 1794–96/1801). Schiller’s aesthetic focus becomes most evident at the beginning of §2, in which he invokes the conqueror figure featured in his second published poem, “Der Eroberer” (The Conqueror, 1777), as well as the concept of the sublime addressed in the portrayal of the death of Socrates in the First Virtue Speech written in 1778. Indeed, although Socrates is not mentioned by name in the Second Virtue Speech, the descriptions of sublime sacrifice close with an allusion to the portrayal of his death, and the feeling of terrible and divine freedom that accompanies the experience of “einige Stralenzüge der Gottheit getroffen zu haben (to have touched just some rays of the deity; NA 20: 36)”—the rare ability to follow “zum Pfade der Seeligkeit ein zitternder Schein” (a quivering ray leading to the path of happiness; NA 20: 3) that leads an individual to choose freedom through reason regardless of personal consequences. This “hohe[] Bestimmung” (lofty destiny; NA 20: 33) of secular sublimity is a logical consequence of the natural drive to happiness, indeed, it is an act in accordance with “Vorsehung” (providence; NA 20: 35) as Schiller presents it, not as a religious concept, but as a function of secularist teleology and Common Sense anthropological psychology. Since all evidence indicates that the human being exists to be happy and thus free, the pursuit of happiness is the destiny of the individual and the collective.

Schiller’s Second Virtue Speech is his first work of many to assert that the source and the consequences—the means and the ends—of virtue are “Vollkommenheit” (perfection) and “Glükseeligkeit” (happiness; NA 20: 30); the same pair appear in similar contexts in, among other texts, Philosophie der Physiologie (1779; NA 20: 11), in Über Naiive und Sentimentalische Dichtung (On Naive and Sentimental Poetry, 1795; NA 20: 427–428), and nowhere more clearly than in the fourteenth of the Ästhetische Briefe: “[…] es ist zufällig, ob unsere Glückseligkeit mit unsrer Vollkommenheit, oder ob dieser mit jener übereinstimmen werde” (it is random, whether our happiness corresponds to our perfection, or whether the latter corresponds to the former; NA 20: 354). Ergo, notions that Schiller meant anything more grand than human happiness by perfection ignore compelling evidence. Thus, Schiller’s critique of Voltaire and La Mettrie is telling in the choice of disparaging terms, namely “unvollkommen” (NA 20: 33), for which the translation “imperfect” or “lacking” would constitute a surprising unwillingness to recognize Schiller’s persistent equation of “Vollkommenheit” with “Glückseligkeit,” and thus that their materialism is not only unhappy, but leads to unhappiness.

The concept of “gegenseitige Ausbildung der Seelenfähigkeiten” (reciprocative formation of intellectual competencies; NA 20: 32) toward perfection/happiness through reason—“Verfeinerung der Begriffe” (refinement of concepts; NA 20: 32)—appears in similar contexts as “richtigere Begriffe” in der Schaubühne-Speech of 1784 (NA 20: 97), in the Augustenburg Letter of July 13, 1793 as “Berichtigung der Begriffe” (revision of concepts; NA 26: 265), and in a letter to Goethe of October 16, 1795 as “strenge Bestimmtheit der Gedanken” (strict determinacy of thoughts; NA 28: 79; High 2004, 117). Schiller’s warning in the speech that the French materialist thought of La Mettrie and Voltaire could cast back (zurückstoßen) the individual and the collective “in das barbarische Dunkel tierischer Wildheit” (into the barbaric darkness of animal savagery; NA 20: 33) bears a striking similarity to an excerpt of fifteen years later in the Augustenburg Letters—not only in phrase but in function and environment—in which Schiller describes the flawed attempt of the French to achieve political freedom as a result of an imbalance of sensuality over reason as having cast back (zurückgeschleudert) “dieses unglückliche Volk […] und ein ganzes Jahrhundert, in Barbarey und Knechtschaft” (this unhappy people […] and an entire century into barbarism and enslavement; NA 26: 262). The parallels run from the French contexts to the verbs (zurückstoßen/zurückschleudern), adjectives and nouns—barbarische Dunkel and tierischer Wildheit in 1780, Barbar and Wilder in the Ästhetische Briefe), and the eccentric use of the term “unglücklich” to cover two meanings, both unfortunate and unhappy, in an extended equation of perfection with happiness and imperfection with unhappiness. See the summary of Schiller’s discourse on inner balance of character or imbalance of drives from 1779–1795 in the discussion of the First Virtue Speech above. Significantly, Schiller’s theory of 1793—that religion, like popular taste or any form of heteronomy that coerces desired behaviors, can only serve as a “Surrogat der wahren Tugend” (surrogate for true virtue; NA 26: 330–331)—was already in place in 1780.

Schiller’s Second Virtue Speech introduces a great number of philosophical terms and phrases central to and better known from his later literary works. Among the very large number of concepts present in his eudaimonist ode “An die Freude,” one of the more striking examples regards the series of allegorical images portraying joy as the prime drive behind all human activity. In both the speech and the poem, everything in a mechanistic universe is held intact by the laws of nature—be they in the realm of physics (gravity) or individual sensuality and intellect—in the speech “Räder der Natur” (gears of nature; NA 20: 32) and in the poem: “Freude, Freude treibt die Räder / in der großen Weltenuhr” (Joy, joy, drives the gears / in the great clock of the cosmos; NA 1: 170). In both speech and poem, the realm “aller denkenden Naturen” (of all thinking beings; NA 20: 32) is united under one organizing moral and physical principal and prime mover, here, a kaleidoscope of metaphors for virtue, love, and joy, among them; in the speech, the concept “Eines alliebenden Vaters” (of One all-loving father; NA 20: 32) and in the poem: “Brüder—überm Sternenzelt / muß ein Lieber Vater wohnen” (Brothers—over the tent of stars / there must live a father dear; NA 1: 169). The concept of reciprocative formation of intellectual competencies in which the transfer of “Wonne des Freunds in die Seele des Freunds” (Joy of the friend into the soul of a friend; NA 20, 33) reappears in the joy of being “eines Freundes Freund” (a friend to a friend; NA 1: 169) in the poem. Schiller’s concept of “Vorsehung,” like that of, among others, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson in their invocation of a phrase from Virgil’s Aeneid to justify the US War of Liberation—“annuit coeptus”—to declare that providence approves of freedom and happiness, posits that since providence is a projection of human nature, it cannot do anything but corroborate. One aspect of the concept of providence in Schiller’s speech plays a further important role in both “An die Freude” and in his tragedy Don Karlos (1787), namely, the idea that providence “ist eben so mächtig das Laster eines Einzigen in die Glükseeligkeit der Welt enden zu lassen, als sie diese durch Tugend glüklich machen kann” (is just as powerful to allow the vice of an individual to result in the happiness of the collective as it is to make the collective happy through virtue; NA 20: 35). Indeed, according to the poem, “durch den Riß gesprengter Särge” (through the cracks of blown-up coffins), one still sees joy standing “im Chor der Engel” (in the choir of angels; NA 1: 170). In Don Karlos, Posa delivers two variations of the same, arguing to Philipp II that the path to happiness through freedom includes the freedom of “des Uebels grauenvolles Heer” (the terrifying army of evil; NA 6: 192) to run amok throughout the cosmos, and the conviction that neither loss of life nor failure of mission are valid moral considerations when freedom and happiness are at stake: “Ob er vollende oder unterliege—/ Ihm einerlei!” (Whether he succeed or succumb—/ Should make no difference to him; NA 6: 268). In the same audience scene with Philipp II (Don Karlos, III, 10), Posa invokes the concept of happiness through virtue presented in the Second Virtue Speech literally twelve times. This trend regarding concepts from Schiller’s Karlsschule speeches continues through Schiller’s latest philosophical writings, as the parallels to the Ästhetische Briefe and Über Naiive und Sentimentalische Dichtung of 1795 indicate.

Both speeches ring entirely disingenuous in their praise of both the duke and Hohenheim, even more so in light of testimony from Schiller’s classmate, Andreas Streicher—with whom he fled Württemberg—who preserved the following lines written by Schiller in 1783: “Was ihr an Reitz gebricht / hat sie an Diamanten” (What she lacks in charm / she makes up for in diamonds; Streicher, 233). There is a clear parallel between Streicher’s report and the comment in act II scene 2 of Schiller’s third drama, Kabale und Liebe (Intrigue and Love, 1784), in which the court servant reports that the duke gathers funds to buy his mistress diamonds by selling his subjects to England to fight in North America (NA 5: 28–29).

Philosophy in Schiller’s Medical School Writings

Schiller changed subject majors from Law to Medicine in 1775, producing a total of three minor and three major works on philosophy, medicine, and psychology. An earlier minor work was a report on the religious conviction, moral constitution, dislikes, inclinations, hygienic habits, and relationships to faculty of classmates assigned to all cadets at the Karlsschule, “Bericht an den Herzog Karl Eugen über die Mitschüler und sich selbst” (Report to Duke Karl Eugen on the Classmates and on Myself), written in Fall 1774 when Schiller was still a Law student, and first published in 1841 (NA 22: 3–16). The second minor work was the “anatomische Schulaufgabe” (anatomical class assignment; NA 22: 352) “Beobachtungen bei der Leichen-Öffnung des Eleve Hillers” (Observations on the Autopsy of Cadet Hiller, 1778) that detailed Hiller’s death due to pericarditis and tuberculosis. The third minor work was a report on a suicidal classmate suffering from “Hypochondrie” (psychosomatic depression), “Über die Krankheit des Eleven Grammont” (On the Illness of Cadet Grammont, June 26–July 21, 1780, first published in 1856), an early work of “Seelenkunde” (psychology). The three major works include Schiller’s first, rejected dissertation, Philosophie der Physiologie (Philosophy of Physiology, Fall 1779), his second dissertation, Versuch über den Zusammenhang der tierischen Natur des Menschen mit seiner geistigen (Essay on the Connection between the Animal and the Intellectual Nature of the Human Being, November 30, 1780), and a third medical thesis written in Latin and submitted on November 1, 1780, De discrimine febrium inflammatoriarum et putridarum (On the Difference between Inflammatory and Putrid Fever). Although it is rich in literary language and citations of, among other works, Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Aesop’s fable, “The Braggart,” the Latin thesis focuses almost exclusively on the physical or animal processes regarding fevers, and is thus of substantially less interest philosophically.

Philosophie der Physiologie (Philosophy of Physiology, 1779)

Textual Genesis: Schiller’s first, rejected dissertation was conceived in German as Idee einer Physiologie, which was translated into Latin and submitted as Philosophia Physiologiae. The Latin thesis was divided into five chapters, comprising a total of forty-seven paragraphs, according to the thesis advisor Johann Friedrich Consbruch’s (1736–1810) review of November 6, 1779, of which only those few sentences cited by Consbruch remain. The final version was submitted in German as Philosophie der Physiologie on November 30, 1780, of which only a copy of the first chapter (eleven paragraphs) is extant from the personal collection of Schiller’s classmate Karl Philipp Conz (1762–1827). The opening table of contents demonstrates a number of significant parallels to Schiller’s final dissertation of November 1780 in addressing 1) Mental Life, 2) Nutritive Life of the Body, 3) Procreation, 4) The Relation between these Three Systems, and 5) Sleep and Natural Death (Dewhurst & Reeves, 149). The interdisciplinary focus on the relationship between the body and the psyche was common at the Karlsschule during this period due to Abel’s seminars on related topics, as indicated by the dissertation titles of Schiller’s classmates Immanuel Gottlieb Elwert and Friedrich von Hoven. The crux of Schiller’s thesis regards an ongoing theoretical debate about the possibility of a “Mittelkraft” (transmutative force), which had been featured prominently in Haug’s Schwäbisches Magazin between July and November of 1776. The transmutative force, located in what Albrecht von Haller (1708–1777) termed the “Nervengeist” (nerve spirit) within the nerve canals rather than in the brain, is neither body nor psyche, but communicates with both to produce ideas (Alt, 160). The thesis was rejected by Klein, Reuß, and Consbruch due to its often playful sense of humor, a flowery writing style that was deemed inappropriate for a medical dissertation, “der gefährliche Hang zum besser wissen” (the dangerous tendency to know it all; Klein), the author’s “Feuer” (fire; Carl Eugen; NA 21: 114–115), and the disrespectful tone with which Schiller criticized Haller and other established medical authorities, whom he refers to as “metaphysische Donquixotte” (metaphysical Don Quixotes) and “die Geister der Toden in ihren Gräbern” (the spirits of the dead in their graves; NA 20: 16).

Contents: Chapter 1, “Mental Life,” §1, “The Destiny of the Human Being,” opens with a clearly stated regulative idea of the pursuit of an unachievable ideal of perfection that preempts any utopian readings (NA 20: 10; paragraph 1). Citing Ferguson as “Ein Weiser” (a wise philosopher; NA 20: 11; NA 21: 118), Schiller presents an early version of his later aesthetic drive theory: That which brings the human individual closer to their destiny will result in happiness, whereas that which distances them from this goal will result in pain. They will thus seek to avoid pain and pursue delight (NA 20: 11). Schiller indicates that all subsequent references to happiness and perfection regard the same state, thus both terms regard regulative ideas that are either rarely achieved or fleeting (paragraph 2). As in the First Virtue Speech, Schiller again declares of the destiny of the human being, “Diß ist Glükseeligkeit” (This is happiness; NA 20: 10–11), before establishing that the law of love demands that the human being is destined to promote the perfection of all individuals as part of the great system of nature, including animals (paragraph 3). Schiller further concludes that not only the happiness of one’s fellow sentient being but also the experience of compassion for the pain of a fellow sentient being results in the happiness of the feeling subject (paragraph 4). Indeed, this is the end of every form of sensual pleasure. §2, “The Influence of Matter on the Mind,” establishes that everything that takes place within the labyrinth of an individual being is a matter of psychology rather than physiology (paragraph 5). Schiller raises the question of how the psychological being interacts with the material world, concluding that while the material world is independent of feeling and subjective understanding, the individual is not, yet the separation of the two within the system of things would negate concepts of morality, freedom, and happiness (paragraph 6). Schiller addresses the concept of the experience of the miraculous, which he declares is a non-entity, since everything that happens in the physical and psychological world must be possible based on the inalterable relationship between the two (paragraph 7). He then posits the existence of a “Mittelkraft” (transmutative force) between the material world and the intellect, through which matter can change the intellect (NA 20: 13; paragraph 8–paragraph 9). §3 “Transmutative Force” argues that experience demonstrates that change within the individual is possible without any action, a phenomenon Schiller attributes to the transmutative force (paragraph 10–paragraph 11). In §4, Schiller describes how the process from matter to intellectual idea via the transmutative force is a process from the subject through the mechanical auxiliary forces and protective mechanical forces of each unique material organ, namely “Schützkräfte,” that belong to what Schiller calls the “Bau” (material structure), while the material structure and the transmutative force taken together constitute the organ, which does not lie in the transmutative force but in the material construct (paragraph 12). That is to say, a chain of powers proceeds from material nature into the intellect: from sensation, to judgment, to material idea in the transmutative force, to a change in the mind that Schiller refers to as the “Idee” (idea; NA 20: 15; paragraph 13). In §5, “Categorization of the Perceptive Organs” (paragraph 14), the five organs of perception are divided into two main classes. The first is necessary for the perception of constructs, for which the senses of sight, hearing, and taste are responsible. The second class comprises two organs responsible for the senses of smell and feeling. Together these organs comprise the system of sensual perception.

Part 2: “System of Sensual Perception,” §6, “Nerve, Nerve Spirit” (paragraph 15), dismisses a number of “Quixotic” theories of how nerves function and declares that the nerve is an infinitely fine, simple, and dynamic substance he calls the “Nervengeist” (nerve spirit), which constitutes the transmutative force (NA 20: 16), any change in which results in sensation. The nerve spirit is active in all organs, each of which has a different function and attitude toward the object and its own conduit through the nerves (paragraph 16). Schiller leaves the question of the difference between the machinations of the “Nervengeist” to future generations and turns to the subject of how objects come into contact with the transmutative force itself. §7, “The Attitude,” addresses the mechanics of the sensual organs, beginning with the eye, concluding that the nerve spirits are not a function of the object but of the organ, here the eye itself, which paints the object through auxiliary forces such as membranes (paragraph 17). The protective powers are eyelids, eyebrows, tears, etc.; the eye is immediately responsible for the perception of characteristics such as light, darkness, color, and form, while the mind concludes the size and distance of an object through comparison with other senses (NA 20: 17). Similarly, the ear originally receives a sound in its highs and lows, and like the eye, through comparison with other senses, establishes elasticity, hardness, and distance of the origins. Schiller follows the same pattern in analyzing the senses from the most direct to the most basic, from taste (paragraph 18), smell (paragraph 19), to touch (paragraph 20), articulating the necessary mechanical powers of each as well as complex and simple functions, ultimately dividing these aspects into animal and intellectual aspects of the senses.

Part 3: “Material Thinking, § 8, “The Thought Organ, Material Imagination, Theories”: The first principle of intellectual life is “Vorstellung” (perception, NA 20: 19), through the five organs addressed above, through which the material world impresses the mind. Schiller describes perception as a change of state in the mind through which the mind differentiates the “I” of the subject from the change in the environment (paragraph 22). The second principle of intellectual life, in the main task of perception, is the response to material conditions through “Denken” (thought; NA 20: 19). Citing Garve, Schiller defines perception as a simple act of a simple power set into motion by the nerve spirit through sensation, the work of which is concluded as soon as the sensation ends, and not necessarily requiring activity on the part of the “Verstand” (mind; paragraph 23). Temporary changes due to sensation remain the object of contemplation, introducing a new organ that is neither sense nor “Seele” (psyche; NA 20: 20), commonly referred to as “das allgemeine Sensorium” (the general sensorium), but which Schiller defines as the instrument of the mind, or “das Denkorgan” (the thought organ, brain), which maintains the sensation for contemplation (paragraph 24). Schiller introduces the first of two theories that explain how the thought organ and the imagination respond to the material ideas of sensation (paragraph 25), presenting a three-part thesis: I) “Are these impressions in the channels of the nerve spirit, or in the nerves, caused by the activity in the nerve spirit?” addresses the question of whether sensations are physically manifested in the channels of the nerve spirit, or if the flow of nerve spirits is so delicate that their flow does not erase impressions (paragraph 26), concluding that the theory of an “Eindruck” (impression) negates the very concept of the nerve spirit, thus sensations are a matter of constant movement, not permanent impressions, which he compares to scars. II) “Material ideas of the imagination constitute movements of the nerve spirit that are in harmony with those originally in the sensual spirits”: The more active the entire system is, the more productive is the imagination (paragraph 27). Schiller concludes that the main concept is motion, which supports his theory of interaction between nerve spirit and “Seele” (psyche), and pursues the question of whether material ideas of the imagination are not oscillations of fibers stretched like the strings of an instrument which comprise the thought organ. III) Are the concrete ideas of the imagination oscillations emanating from fibers that are stretched like strings of an instrument, the sum total and relationship of which comprise the thought organ? The limitless variety of objects made visible by the light are created by only seven basic colors and yet these thought-fibers should somehow be able to perceive all of these sensual and intellectual perceptions? Nor has the art of dissection nor analogy for the moment nor anything in the entire physical construct of the human being contributed any solution to this question (paragraph 28). Schiller argues that its dynamic state, which ceases in death, explains why the thought organ has been found to be the least elastic and softest part of the human body. Schiller points out that Charles Bonnet’s (1720–1793) hypothesis is a combination of all three of the theories above, but cannot be proven (paragraph 29).

§9, “Association: Application of the Theories,” concludes that the concrete ideas of the imagination are not in a constant state of activity, and posits that additional causes activate dormant ideas and present them to the mind (paragraph 30). Chains of perception are based on sensual-intellectual association, which is based on relationships of time, place, or effect (paragraph 31). Schiller posits the primacy of the signifier, in this case a brook, which, upon entering the consciousness, sets off a chain of associations, possibly including a person who was standing at a tree by the brook or a sound that was heard near the brook, on and on until a new sensual idea interrupts the chain system and starts a new one. Analogical examples regard theories of resonant musical notes and colors, for example, that projecting light on a red object in a dark room will illuminate all other red objects, or playing a note on one piano will result in a second piano responding with a reproduction of the same note (paragraph 32). Schiller concludes the analogy by arguing that the first piano represents the sensual world, the air represents the nerve spirit, and the second piano represents the thought organ (paragraph 33). The nerve spirit transfers the vibrations from the sensual world to the mind, resulting in the “sinnliche Idee” (sensual idea; NA 20: 24), which in the mind will correspond to the mimicry of the second piano of the first piano, and so on as a mere echo of the idea (paragraph 34). For actual mental association to occur, corresponding fibers must already exist in the thought organ (paragraph 35). In a chain of association, the ocean can remind of a ship, and the ship can remind of the American War, only if one had previously experienced a ship or had knowledge of the American War, once again revealing a flaw in Bonnet’s theory. The “monstrous” consequence is that association is impossible without empirical knowledge (paragraph 36). Schiller concludes that even the simplest idea corresponds to its own spirit and its own channels, which are as constant as physical arteries themselves (paragraph 37). These channels are interconnected, and associations remain nonetheless exceedingly arbitrary, though the channels remain fixed, and the spirits do not mix. As a result, Schiller again criticizes Haller for proposing that fixed impressions can be set into motion by the mind through perception (paragraph 38), concluding that he cannot explain material associations through the mechanics of the thought organ because the thought organ is determined and eternal, while material association is infinitely complex and mutable (paragraph 39). Thus, the psyche cannot be the organizing principle of material association, since it would have to have access to all dormant ideas simultaneously.

§10, “The Influence of the Mind on the Thought Organ,” posits that material association is the basis of thought—the guiding thread of the creative intellect, serving to unite, divide, compare, and contrast ideas, and thus direct the will to desire or rejection (paragraph 41). This argument would appear to result in the will being organically determined at the most basic level, thus limiting the freedom of will. The “Seele” (psyche) actively influences the thought organ. The psyche can focus more closely on select material ideas, resulting in stronger spiritual ideas through focused attention (paragraph 41). Thus it is the psyche that ascertains the motives and their strength. Schiller divides the will into two parts, the first of which dictates attention, and the final, which is a slave of the “Verstand” (intellect), dictates action. Freedom thus does not lie in the decision to act in accordance with what the intellect has recognized is best—because this is a moral law—but rather because one chooses what the intellect can determine is best. All morality of the human individual has its basis in attention, that is, in the active influence of the psyche on the material ideas in the thought organ. Those material ideas strengthened most by active focus can become residual and stand out deuteropathically before all others. They will affect the psyche more directly, and will play a more powerful role for the intellect in all associations and become a tyrant over the second will (paragraph 42). As a result, there are people who, in the end, mechanically commit moral or immoral acts due to a narrow focus of attention. Thus, all morality is a function of attention. The focused attention results in the most lively idea that clings to the psyche and rules over the intellect and the will. This is the source of all passions and dominant ideas, and at the same time, a warning to avoid both. If the psyche focuses attention on a number of ideas through association, it is said to be creating (erdichten); if the psyche concentrates on particular aspects of certain ideas and removes them from their contexts, it is said to be selecting (absondern). The psyche retains in the thought organ the ideas that have been placed in new chains of association by the creative synthesis and those that have been removed from their contexts by analysis. The capacity for attention—those ideas thought into new associations, and those removed from their associations by analysis—are captured in the thought organ, appearing to capture them in material forms because consciousness unites the ideas in memory. Therefore, as a result of attention, when one material idea deeply affects the mind, then a similar material idea will do the same, and the association will be more intense. Thus, the capacity for attention is responsible for imagination, recollection, analysis, creativity, and desire; and it is the active influence of the psyche on the thought organ that brings all of this about (paragraph 43). Consequently, the thought organ is the true tribunal of the intellect, each is subject to the other, and the intellect is dependent on the thought organ with the exception of attention. Schiller closes the section by addressing the potential for aberration as a result of a state of illness due to confusion of the spirits in the thought organ, which can turn the wise into fools and the most gentle individuals into furies, closing with examples of how the overexertion of an active intellect can destroy both intellect and memory, citing, for example, thinkers like Garve, Mendelsohn, and Swift, who overexerted the instrument of their intellect to the point that it is permanently out of tune (paragraph 44).

§11, “Sensations in Mental Life”: The psyche is not only a thinking, but a feeling entity; the latter alone makes it happy, and the former alone makes it capable of happiness. It is a fact of creation that feeling is the state in which the psyche is aware of betterment or decline (paragraph 45). Feeling is distinct from perception in that the latter perceives itself as an external object and the former perceives itself. Schiller provides the sight of the sun and the stars, the sound of a brook or a harp or a raven cawing, as common changes of state caused by the perception of an external object (paragraph 46), and a series of comparatives and superlatives categorize visual and auditory responses to such impulses; sounds one enjoys are melodic and beautiful, and sounds one dislikes are ugly and discordant. According to the first law, which opened the essay, I can enjoy nothing but that which makes my current state more perfect, and can only dislike that which makes me less perfect (paragraph 47).

Philosophical Significance and Impact. Foreshadowing his third dissertation, Schiller seeks to counter the “materialistischen Medizinerzynismus” (materialistic cynicism of the physicians)—a parallel to the “Körpermaterialismus” (physical materialism; Safranski, 11) of his character Franz Moor in Die Räuber, who reduces every imaginable virtue to the mere satisfaction of a physical drive. Schiller’s virulent assault on the materialism of Bonnet (NA 20: 22) finds telling parallels in his later critiques of Voltaire and La Mettrie in the Second Virtue Speech of January 1780, in which he contrasts what he characterizes as their resignation to imperfection with his own pursuit of happiness (NA 20: 33). In his attack on La Metterie’s concept of the human being as a machine, as well as in his distaste for Rousseau’s concept of the state as machine, Schiller was very early on the path to the individual becoming the state as in the Ästhetische Briefe and the “state as the perfect work of art” (Nilges, 13).

In the second paragraph of Philosophie der Physiologie, Schiller again defines the destiny of humankind as “Glükseeligkeit” (happiness; NA 20: 10–11), returning to the end of all human activity that remains in some form through the Ästhetische Briefe. Likewise, at the very outset, Schiller delivers the second of very many previews of what is to come in his philosophical and literary works by invoking a regulative idea that preempts any abstract utopian readings: “Ewigkeit ist das Maas der Unendlichkeit, das heist, er [der Mensch] wird ewig wachsen, aber es niemals erreichen” (Eternity is the measure of infinity, that means, the human being will grow eternally, but never achieve [the measure of infinity]; NA 20: 10). Note that Schiller’s definition of the regulative idea here is a paraphrase of Mendelssohn’s Socrates, who will play a role in Schiller’s mature works on freedom and the subime: “[…] der Weg zu derselben [Vollkommenheit] ist unendlich, kann in Ewigkeiten nicht ganz zurückgelegt werden” ([…] the path to the same [perfection] is infinite, and cannot entirely be achieved in eternities; Mendelssohn, 188). The consistent primacy of the concept of perfection-as-happiness first becomes clear in the first dissertation, and though many have sought to dismiss this preoccupation as a phase, there is no evidence for this position and a great deal to the contrary; Glückseligkeit is, in fact, the stated end of aesthetic education in the first paragraph of the Ästhetische Briefe of 1795 (NA 20: 309). Schiller quickly describes the path via virtue to happiness intimately bound up with the “Bestimmung des Menschen,” a contemporary key term foremost articulated by Spalding (Macor 2022), and transforms the term to his own radical dialectical ends to include an organic source to all moral action.

Schiller’s articulate emphasis of feeling as the counterbalance of reason and matter has wide-reaching consequences for his oeuvre in the ensuing decades. He returns to the conviction that virtue, or happiness, love, loyalty (“Die Bürgschaft;” The Pledge, 1797) or hope (“Hofnung,” 1797) are not empty illusions through the conclusion of his final drama. His insistence of the equality of every link in the chain of being is demonstrated in the presence of animal rights arguments both here, in the First Virtue Speech (NA 20: 11); in his final, successful dissertation (NA 20: 75); and in his discussion of the rational animal and the happy coexistence of the human being and nature in Wilhelm Tell. The first dissertation provides a preview of the theory of mutual recognition that appears in his mature philosophical writings—nowhere more prominently than in the Ästhetische Briefe—“Wir sind […] nicht mehr Individuen, sondern Gattung” (We are […] no longer individuals but constitute a species; Twelfth Letter; NA 20: 347)—and likewise informs his final dramas, in which denial of recognition through occupation awakens the oppressed to their inalienable rights. The reconciliation of matter and mind (and any number of ostensible polarities) is a declaration of an ideal of reconciliation of self and nature as well as self and other, based on the conviction that the rational animal can exist for only one purpose, namely to pursue the loftiest moral ideals of reason in harmony with nature. Schiller’s portrayal of sensation and association in Philosophie der Physiologie, in which he combines elements of Gestalt Therapy and free association in his portrayal of the association between ocean, ship, and the US War of Liberation (NA 20: 24) became a psychological model for the relationship between inspiration and creative artist. Schiller’s letter to Körner of December 1, 1788 (NA 25: 149), in which Schiller similarly describes the obscure process of artistic creation, was cited by Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) in Die Traumdeutung (The Interpretation of Dreams, 1899) as the inspiration for the psychoanalytical method of free association. As compelling as this citation is, a better model for free association is Schiller’s first dissertation.

Professor Reuß, who shared Consbruch’s criticism of Schiller’s literary style and academic inconsistency, unwittingly described the text’s primary virtue in his review: “Philosophia Physiologiae enthält den ganzen Umfang der Physiologie […] in Verbindung mit philosophischen Abhandlungen, Säzen und Betrachtungen” (Philosophia Physiologiae contains the entire scope of Physiology […] in connection with philosophical treatises, theorems, and observations; NA 21: 114–115). Schiller’s reconciliation of philosophy and physiology, likewise evident in the Virtue speeches of 1779 and 1780, delivers a moral-aesthetic model that remains evident in his enduring 1787 drama Don Karlos and his criticism of the Enlightenment in the poem “Die Götter Griechenlandes” (The Gods of Ancient Greece, 1788), as it is in his latest aesthetic treatises of the mid-1790s, including the two essays on the sublime, the Kallias letters, and the Ästhetische Briefe. What Reuß describes here is an important moment in the history of aesthetics that Pugh has identified as Schiller’s “fundamental role at the inception of this branch of philosophy” (Pugh, xii).

Versuch über den Zusammenhang der tierischen Natur des Menschen mit seiner geistigen (Essay on the Connection between the Animal and the Intellectual Nature of the Human Being, 1780)

Textual Genesis: After his first dissertation was rejected in 1779, Schiller submitted two further theses in November 1780, the Latin treatise on fevers rejected by Reuß, Consbruch, and Klein, and a third, successful dissertation, one of the first written in German at the Karlsschule, entitled Versuch über den Zusammenhang der tierischen Natur des Menschen mit seiner geistigen. The thesis was approved by the same medical faculty, and Schiller passed his medical exams in December 1780 and was assigned as regimental physician to the Stuttgart Grenadier Regiment of General Johann Augé (NA 23: 38). The influence of his professors and leading outside scholars is evident in the many parallels between Schiller’s text and Abel’s Eine Quellenedition zum Phiolosophie Unterricht an der Stuttgarter Karlsschule (1773–1782) (A Source Edition on Teaching Physiology at the Stuttgart Karlsschule 1773–1782), as well as Ernst Plattner’s Anthropologie für Aerzte und Weltweise (Anthropology for Physicians and Philosophers, 1772). The criticism and praise delivered by Schiller’s examiners ring ironic, given the career he chose, including “jene poetische Ausdrücke” (these poetic forms of expression) and an excessive tendency for “Einbildungskraft” (imagination; 124), among others. The thesis was subsequently published by Cotta in Stuttgart.

Contents: In §1, “Introduction,” Schiller contrasts the description of the body as the prison of the spirit that binds it to the earthly and hinders its flight to perfection with the position that knowledge and virtue are not only the end but also the means to happiness, and that all perfection of the human being is gathered in the improvement of the body (paragraph 1). Schiller seeks to refute both arguments by pointing out that the former is only tolerated due to its idealistic focus on characters like Cato, Brutus, Seneca, and so on, while the latter is the result of ideological fanaticism, concluding that a balance between the two positions may provide a middle path toward truth (paragraph 2). Schiller concludes that historically too much weight has been given to the intellect as independent from the body, and declares his intention to establish the important and real contribution of the body’s animal system of perception to the actions of the intellectual system of perception “Seele” (mind; paragraph 3).

Part A, “The Physical Connection,” Chapter 1: “Animal Nature strengthens the Activity of the Mind,” begins with §2, “The organ of psychological influences—of nutrition—of reproduction.” Schiller embarks from an elementary thesis: the perfection of the human individual lies in the exercises of powers in consideration of the structure of the universe (paragraph 4). Since the most precise harmony is required between the totality of human power and the end of all human activity, the highest possible achievement of these powers lies in their mutual subordination to each other. But the activity of the mind (Seele) is connected through unknown necessity and manner to the activity of matter. Thus, changes in the physical world must be modified and refined by a class of intermediary organic powers, the senses, before they can awaken a perception. Therefore, other organic powers, the machines of voluntary physical actions, step between mind and world, in order to communicate the changes in the material world to the mind, and thus ultimately, operations of thought and perception must correspond to specific actions / motions of the inner sensorium, which combined constitute the organism of psychological activity. Matter is subject to eternal change, and exhausts itself through its own activity, while the simple entity, the mind, possesses permanence and stability (paragraph 5). Matter is unable to keep pace with mental activity, and thus, as matter, the organism and with it all function of the mind would be lost without the organic system of nutrition to maintain fading health through a constant chain of new creations. Finally, mortality would depopulate the planet due to an imbalance between loss and renewal, in the process precluding overpopulation through the loss of one generation and the rise of another (paragraph 6). In order to maintain contributive succession, a third system of organic powers is necessary, namely rejuvenation through reproduction. These three organisms constitute the human body. In the process, nothing new is created, and everything that is new is only possible through evolution.

§3, “The Body,” describes the two main classes of organic powers, the first of which is the sensitivity of the nerves and the irritability of the muscles (contraction upon external stimulation), addressing the fact that the current state of science allows only an analogous description of the functions of nerves as the principle of sensitivity and motion through the transfer of a powerful fluid called the “Lebensgeister” (vital spirits; paragraph 7). The second class regards the laws of physics, including the mechanics of motion and the chemistry of the human body, and the vegetative or regenerative physical processes, of which Schiller concludes that vegetative and animal mechanics comprise physical life (paragraph 8).

§4, “Animal Life,” posits that since attrition is more or less controlled by the mind, the same is necessarily true of physical renewal (paragraph 9); since the body is subject to the consequences of its constitution and surrounded by hostile forces, the power to protect the body and to create conditions beneficial to survival must lie in the mind. The mind must receive information on the negative or positive state of the organs and derive displeasure from a negative state and derive pleasure from a positive state, in order to remove or flee the former and prolong or pursue the latter. To this end, the organism is connected to the sensory powers and the mind is drawn into the interests of its body. This is more than organic (“Vegetation”)—more than dead model, nerves, and the mechanics of muscles—now it is animal life. In a significant footnote, Schiller differentiates between the end of animal life and that of human life, explaining how, in the animal, means and end coincide, and that the animal senses pleasure in order to merely prolong animal life, while the human being experiences pleasure and pain in order to maintain animal life to the end of extending intellectual life, thus constituting the difference between animal and human being. Since animal life is essential for psychological health, it may not be damaged and thus the mind must be aware of physical life through an irresistible power (paragraph 10), and sensations of positive and negative animal states remain beyond the comprehension of the intellect, which would subject them to passions, sloth, or stupidity, and would require that the animal human being possess a complete knowledge of physiology beyond that of the most renowned scientists (Harvey, Boerhave, Haller). Therefore, the mind cannot have any idea of the state that requires change.

§ 5, “Animal Sensations,” analyzes how, in contrast to those sensations that stem from rational operations, animal sensations arise as direct expressions of the current state of the organs, and direct the will to quick aversion or desire, without activating the sense of reason (paragraph 11). Responses to sensations that ensure preservation provide a pleasant affectation, and the painful affectation accompanies sensations that threaten the organism’s collapse. Consequently, animal sensations have two sources: 1. the current condition of the machine, 2. the powers of sensitivity [sensory powers]. This explains why animal sensations move the mind to passions and actions irresistibly, and gain the upper hand against even the highest intellectual powers (paragraph 12). The power of abstraction and of philosophy over passions and opinions is unable to negate those of blind necessity, but can weaken and darken them through focused attention; for example, the stoic’s ability to subordinate pain to higher perfection and general happiness, or the Roman youth Mucius, who earned release from captivity by thrusting his hand into fire without showing pain. Ultimately, although the mind through virtue and philosophy may provide happiness while facing a funeral pyre, it cannot protect the machine from the law of necessity that governs the lower needs of physical life—hunger, pain, and the elements—and each experience teaches human beings that they are something unfortunate between a beast and an angel (paragraph 13). Citing Heinrich Wilhelm von Gerstenbergs’ (1737–1823) Ugolino (1768), Schiller describes how animal sensations overpower and forcefully bind the mind to the organism. In order to satisfy hunger and thirst, the human being is capable of deeds that terrify humanity, unwillfully becoming a traitor, a murderer, or a cannibal (paragraph 14). The powers of animal sensation are the strongest, and experience demonstrates that an excess of animal sensation has proven more destructive than a lack thereof (paragraph 15). The system of animal sensations and actions that ensure well-being marks the end of animal nature, but also provides the basis on which the constitution of intellectual instruments rests, and thus the first link in the connection of animal and human natures in determining the fragility and duration of intellectual activity itself (paragraph 16). § 6, “Moral Objections Against the Connection Between the Two Natures,” concludes the first chapter by asking whether is it not absurd and unjust to entangle simple, necessary, and immutable animal nature with a human nature informed by an eternal vortex of vicissitude and self-aware necessity (paragraph 17).

Part B, “Philosophical Connection,” Chapter d: Animal Drives Awaken and Develop Mental Drives”:

§ 7 proposes the theoretical separation of the body from the intellect as the most certain method for explaining how intellectual drives develop, by analyzing how the human being proceeds to action, develops powers, and which steps are taken toward perfection (paragraph 18). The process requires that one ignore the actual development of the individual and look at the evolution of the entire human race, beginning with an abstract case: provided there is perception, volition, and a sphere of action and free transition between mind (Seele) and physical world, and between world and mind, how will the human being act?

§8, “The Mind Without Connection to the Body,” traces the evolution of a concept by pursuing the sensation that first demonstrated that an action would lead to an improved state to the will to create a concept based on this experience, the prerequisite of both of which is the initial sensation (paragraph 19). Since there can be no sensation without a preceding idea, there can be no idea without an idea. Schiller’s circular argument demonstrates that considering the intellectual nature of the human being without considering the animal nature of the human being bears no fruit, since it prescribes that either the human being was at birth and eternally intellectually active or will never be inspired to intellectual activity through sensation (paragraph 20).

§9, “In Connection,” expands the attempt to connect the animal nature and the intellectual nature of the human being through the power of sensation (paragraph 21). The modification of the bodily instrument through sensation provides an impulse to the inner clockwork of the intellect and sets it in motion. The transition from pain to aversion is the fundamental law of the mind, and all other operations are similarly automatic.

§10, “On the History of the Individual,” follows the growth-stages of the “Seele” (mind) and the “Geist” (intellect): a.) early childhood, b.) youth, and c.) adolescence and adulthood (paragraph 22). a.) Citing Haller, Schiller describes the infant and young child as both more and less than animal; the human animal is in one sense more wretched than the animal, because it lacks instinct (paragraph 23; NA 21: 129). In both cases, animal and human, the pain of hunger causes protest with neither knowledge of the source nor the solution. Its nature is entirely passive; b.) Citing Haller and Garve, Schiller demonstrates that the youth is capable of reflection, but only regarding the satisfaction of animal drives, and every inclination proceeds from sensuality to the mind (work, love of parents, friends, and divinity), while all further objects remain dark and cold, only significant when they are connected to sensual reward, as intellectual means to an animal end (paragraph 24; NA 21: 129); c.) in the adolescent and adult, the frequent repetition of conclusions regarding what leads to pleasure and what to pain results in skills, and transference enables the discovery of beauty in what had been mere means—what was mere drive becomes inclination, the original end is forgotten, and the means itself becomes the end (paragraph 25), citing Mohammed’s conversion of the Saracens as an example of teaching people the path toward wisdom (paragraph 26). In a lengthy footnote (NA 20: 52–53), Schiller cites Garve’s explanation of the evolution from drives to simple ends to curiosity, which leads to enlightenment and the discovery that the ideas that promote the higher happiness, perfection, and virtue of the human individual and engagement with ideas of good will constitute the highest of all intellectual ends.

§11, “From the History of the Human Race,” examines the universal history of the human race from birth to maturity, to demonstrate the validity of the preceding chapters (paragraph 27). Hunger and nakedness led the human being to become hunter, fisher, shepherd, farmer, and builder. Sensuality resulted in families, individual defenselessness brought together hordes, and thus arose social duties (paragraph 28). Soon the field could no longer support the tribe, and hunger scattered groups in distant lands and climates, teaching them new products, new refinements, and ways of responding to new environments. Traditions were handed down and refined. The human being learned to turn the powers of nature against themselves, to cast them in new relationships, and created the first simple and healing arts. What was at first art in service of the well-being of the animal became an increase in knowledge. In the fire where the primitive human being cooked fish, Börhaave discovered the mixture of bodies; with the knife with which the savage cut game, Lionet invented the knife that discovered the nerves of insects; with the compass for measuring hooves, Newton measured heaven and earth. Citing Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Schiller describes how the force of an internally active nature combined with the meagerness of the initial environment led tribal leaders to think more daringly, and, under the direction of the stars, they sailed to new territories. New environments brought new dangers, new needs, and new challenges for the intellect (paragraph 29). The collision of animal drives pitted one horde against another, forged raw iron into sword, created adventurers, heroes, and despots. Cities were fortified, states created, and with the states arose the duties and rights of citizens, arts, numbers, lawbooks, clever priests, and gods. What were once needs were transformed into luxuries. Citing Virgil’s Aeneid, Schiller traces cultural developments: veins are excavated, the ocean floor mined, trade and development flourish, East and West admire each other, foreign products are adapted to artificial environments, and the agricultural arts and products of three continents gather in one (paragraph 30). Artists learn to create works from nature, melodies soften the savage, beauty and harmony ennoble morality and taste, and art leads to science and virtue. Citing Schlözer, Schiller describes the removal of boulders, lakes and forests, and the creation of canals and irrigation systems that transform deserts into fields, and the intellect is refined by the refined climate. The state employs the citizens for the needs and comforts of life, and industriousness provides the state with security and peace both internally and externally, providing the thinker and the artist the leisure that led to Augustus Caesar’s golden age (paragraph 31). The arts and sciences flourish, natural science and physics replace superstition, history reflects on the prehistoric world, and philosophy mocks the folly of the humans. As luxury degenerates into weakness and indulgence, bringing pestilence and pollution, the human being finds cures, and discovers cinchona bark, mercury, and poppy seeds. Chemistry discovers individual elements, alchemists enrich natural history, and Swammerdam’s microscope reveals nature’s secret processes. Necessity and curiosity refute superstition and discover nature’s greatest masterpiece, the human being. The worst-case scenario of sickness and death thus brings about the greatest achievement, forcing the human being to learn its place (Schiller cites a maxim inscribed at the temple of Apollo at Delphi). The plague gives rise to Hippocrates and Sydenham, just like war produces generals, and the arrival of syphilis reforms medicine. The search for the appropriate enjoyment of sensuality, which was supposed to lead to the perfection of the mind, leads to the discovery that its recreational use, in fact, improves the reality of human life by necessitating a response to adversity (paragraph 32); the aberrations of the first end of nature—merchants, conquerors, luxury—accelerate a development that could have been more simple and regulated, but the human being had to first crawl in the dust like an animal before realizing that it is also capable of the flight of intellect; the body is thus the first impetus to activity, sensuality the first step toward perfection (paragraph 33).

Chapter B, b: “Animal Sensations Accompany Mental Sensations,” §12, “Law,” states that human understanding (Verstand) and all perceptions that come from its activity are extraordinarily limited. In order to provide understanding with greater impulse and to lead the will away from danger and toward perfection, both intellectual and animal natures are closely interconnected and communicate any change reciprocally. The fundamental law of combined natures states: The activities of the body correspond to the activities of the mind, and every surge in intellectual activities is always accompanied by a surge in bodily actions (paragraph 34). Therefore, intellectual desire is always accompanied by animal desire, and intellectual aversion is accompanied by animal aversion. Conversely, lethargy of the mind results in physical lethargy.

§13, “Intellectual Pleasure Promotes the Health of the Machine,” concludes that any sensation that affects the entire mind shocks the entire construct of the body, from the most important (heart, arteries, nerves) to the least significant (body hair). Pleasurable sensations bring about a higher degree of harmonious activity—the heart beats free, blood flows gently or quickly, based on the pleasant or adverse nature of the impulse, and metabolism, secretion, and excretion proceed unhindered. Therefore, the state of the greatest temporary mental desire is also the state of the greatest physical well-being (paragraph 35). Even secondary activities are necessary for perfection; deriving from the confusion of all impulses, a total sensation of animal harmonies constitutes the most concentrated sensation of animal pleasure fused with and increased by higher intellectual or moral pleasure (paragraph 36). Thus, every pleasant emotion is the source of enumerable physical pleasures, a phenomenon evident in examples of the ill who were cured by joy; the victim of homesickness returns home and is transformed from near death into the picture of health; the dungeon prisoner who receives words of release; the malnourished sailor who hears the word “land”; the sight of a beloved person. This state of the mind responsible for deriving pleasure from every event and resolves every pain in the perfection of the universe is the most beneficial to the performance of the machine, and this state is virtue (paragraph 37).

§14, “Mental Pain Undermines the Health of the Machine,” posits that, conversely, temporary unpleasant emotions are detrimental to physical health. Ideas experienced by an angry or terrified individual, which Plato called fever of the psyche, can be considered convulsions of the thought organ, which spread through the entire nerve system and destroy health by bringing vital spirits and bodily functions into discord. Thus, the state of the greatest mental anguish is the state of the greatest physical sickness (paragraph 38), in which the mind is informed of imposing ruin by a thousand obscure sensations and overwhelmed by a complete sensation of pain that stems from the original intellectual pain (paragraph 39).

§15, “Examples,” examines the damage done to the physical constitution by chronic psychological pain, including forms of anger such as indignation, which can be comparable to the highest fevers (paragraph 40). Sufferers appear gaunt and pale, with deep-set eyes. Schiller cites Cassius in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar as an example of “Furcht, Unruh, Gewissensangst, Verzweiflung” (fear, restlessness, guilty conscience, despair; NA 20: 60); Gloucester in Shakespeare’s Richard III as a victim of the uneasiness that comes from the very core of the human machine; and finally, the non-existent case history of Franz Moor—Life of Moor. Tragedy by Krake, in reality an early draft of Die Räuber Act V, Scene 1—who reduces all feelings to abstract concepts, and awakens pale and sweating from a nightmare vision of the afterlife in response to sensations too confused for the slow process of reason. Here, the ascending central image of a dream sets the entire system of dark ideas into motion and disturbs the function of the thought organ, causing an unusually intense feeling of pain that renders lame the entire nerve system (paragraph 41). The shudders that plague those about to commit a crime or who have committed a crime are identical to those of a patient suffering a fever; nightly tossing and turning is likewise accompanied by an increased pulse rate and a genuine fever caused by the sympathetic connection between mind and machine; for example, Lady Macbeth going to bed constitutes a case of phrenetic delirium. Even actors are affected by playing a role; Schiller cites Garrick’s convulsions of gout after portraying Lear or Othello; the sympathy of audience members may result in convulsions and fainting (paragraph 42). Schiller concludes that, due to their vices, those plagued by foul moods, the villain who lives in a chronic state of hatred, and the envious person martyred by the perfection of others are the greatest enemies of their own happiness and health (paragraph 43).

In §16, “Exceptions,” Schiller points out that even pleasant emotions have proved fatal, and unpleasant emotions have brought about miraculous cures (paragraph 44). When joy rises to the point of ecstasy, the action of the brain moves beyond harmony to convulsion, and can prove fatal, because it has crossed the line of natural emotion and health (paragraph 45). As for the second case, there are many examples of a moderate degree of anger breaking through the most chronic obstructions, or fear brought on by a fire healing chronic rheumatism and incurable paralysis (paragraph 46).

§17, “Lethargy of the Mind makes the Actions of the Machine more Lethargic,” cites Haller’s theory that mental activity during the business of the day can quicken the pulse in the evening, while mental lethargy can either weaken or even stop it (paragraph 47). A phlegmatic state is accompanied by a slow pulse, blood is watery and viscous, and abdominal circulation suffers. The lunatics described by Muzell demonstrated slow and laborious breath, had no drive to eat or drink nor for natural excretion, the pulse was irregular, and all bodily functions were slumberous and dull. The paralysis of the mind during terror or amazement, for example, is sometimes accompanied by a general suspension of all physical activity. Is the mind the cause of this state, or is it the body that paralyzes the mind?

§18, “Second Law,” declares that what is true about the transference of intellectual sensations to animal sensations also applies in the opposite, the transference of animal sensations to intellectual sensations. Sicknesses of the body, often the natural consequence of overindulgence, are punished by physical pain, but the very foundation of the mind must also be attacked, such that the two-fold pain sharply encourages moderation (paragraph 48). Thus, a second law of mixed natures is that the general sensation of animal harmony is a source of mental pleasure, while animal displeasure should be the source of mental displeasure. Like two identically tuned string instruments, when a string on one is struck, the string on the other will reproduce the same note only somewhat weaker (paragraph 49). The remarkable sympathy that constitutes the human being as a single being comprised of heterogeneous principles is not a matter of mind and body, but rather the human being is the most intimate mixture of both.

In §19, “Intellectual Moods Follow Bodily Moods,” Schiller cites Brother Martin in Goethe’s Götz von Berlichingen (1773) in addressing the heaviness, the absence of thought, the moroseness that follows overindulgence, and likewise the miraculous effects of wine in those who drink with moderation (paragraph 50). Similarly, the good mood or sense of well-being that accompanies bright and healthy weather is partly a result of the association of ideas, but predominantly a consequence of the facilitation of the body’s natural functions, which in turn results in a disposition for all activities of the intellect, an open heart for human sensibilities, and the practice of moral duties. Schiller’s analysis posits that ancient cultural differences to some extent result from environment, while they are only one factor of many: the climate of Greece contributed to the appearance of thinkers and authors (Homer, Plato, and Phidias), while the weather of Lapland (Finland) did not. Schiller traces the development of German civilization from a landscape of forests and swamps inhabited by hunters to an era of moral development. Bodily disorders can also disrupt the entire system of moral sensibility and pave the way for the worst of passions (paragraph 51). Citing his own robber Moritz Spiegelberg (Die Räuber, II, 3), Schiller concludes that a human being who has been corrupted by sensual indulgence is more vulnerable to extreme behaviors than one who has maintained a healthy body: the best way to create a bandit is to corrupt both body and soul. Further examples include Catiline, who proceeded from libertine to arsonist, and Fiesco (Giovanni-Luigi Fieschi), who was a lech before he conspired to bring down the republic of Genoa, demonstrating that evil minds often inhabit sick bodies. In the case of malignant diseases, evidence of the sympathetic relationship between body and mind may be observed in early symptoms, such as the sudden transformation of the patient’s character signaling the collapse of the mind as a result of a collapse of the body. Citing a “great physician” (possibly Schiller’s professor Consbruch), Schiller describes the condition as “der Vorschauer (Horrores)” (preliminary horror; paragraph 52). Citing the parallel nervous breakdowns of Franz Moor (Die Räuber, V, 1) and Shakespeare’s Winchester (Henry VI, Part 2, III, 3), Schiller concludes that once the disease has shown physical symptoms, the universal disorder of the machine demonstrates the reciprocal dependence of the mind and the body: just as the deep pain of the mind originated from the disorders of the machine, in reverse the mind helps render these physical disorders severe and universal.

§ 20, “Restriction of the Preceding Section,” Citing Corinthians (15: 55–57), Schiller addresses common examples of the afflicted who rise above their suffering full of courage, and of the dying who face the death of the machine with sublime composure. In response, Schiller posits that wisdom is capable of protecting against the terrors of the organism, and that religious faith can likewise protect against the onslaught of the material, arguing that the preceding state of the mind dictates how one confronts changes in vital actions (paragraph 53). Schiller declares it an irrefutable truth that philosophy and a courageous mind uplifted by religion are capable of weakening the influence of animal sensation and to remove the mind from its coherence with matter. The thought of the deity, of the harmony of one’s past life, and the anticipation of a happy future cast a bright light on every idea in the mind, while the mind of the fool and the nonbeliever is cast into the dark sensations of the mechanism (paragraph 54). Citing Addison’s The Death of Cato (1712; V, 1), Schiller illustrates that when the philosopher and the believer experience pain, they can transform the feeling of bodily collapse into pleasure. The unusual cheerfulness of the mortally ill also has a physical cause, which occurs in conjunction with Hippocrates’ description of fatal symptoms (paragraph 55). Namely, this cheerfulness is malignant. The nerves under attack by fever lose sensitivity, and the inflamed body parts cease to hurt with the onset of gangrene. Feeling is lost in the dead nerves and a fatal indolence appears to indicate recovery. The mind experiences the illusion of pleasurable sensation for having lost a chronic feeling of pain. Sympathy between the body and the mind ceases as soon as this connection is severed.

§21, “Further Outlooks Regarding the Connection,” addresses insanity, sleep, stupor, epilepsy, and catalepsy, in which the free and rational intellect is subject to the despotism of the abdomen, as well as cases of hysteria and hypochondria, temperaments, idiosyncrasies, and consensus. Schiller notes that although it would be advantageous to demonstrate the truth based on medical experience at the sickbed, which is one of the main schools of the psychologist, it would go beyond the realistic parameters of the thesis (paragraph 56); he concludes that it has been established that animal nature is completely commingled with intellectual nature, and that this combination constitutes perfection (Vollkommenheit).

Chapter B, c: “Physical Phenomena reveal Mental Activity,” §22, “Physiognomy of Emotions,” analyzes the correspondence between the animal and the intellectual nature, which provides the basis for the field of physiognomy. This neural connection we are told results in sensations exposing the most covert emotions, for example, even the hypocrite is unable to mask passion. Every emotion can be recognized by its specific expressions, that is, its own peculiar dialect. Where noble and benevolent emotion beautifies the body, base and hateful emotions lend the body a bestial appearance. Thus, the mild appearance of the philanthropist is inviting to the needy, while the defiant look of the angry person repels, which constitutes the most indispensable guide to social interaction. The correspondence between physical appearances and emotions can be demonstrated in the attraction to the physical gestures of heroism and fearlessness, in the unattractiveness of the physical gestures of terror and fear—the attractive features caused by an old and sublime thought—and similar patterns follow for the experience of the infinite, mountains, storms and waves, and looking into a precipice (paragraph 57). The expression of hatred is repellent, the expression of love is attractive, and similar formulas regard the experience of pride, pettiness, fever, pain, and pleasurable reflections, which imbue the entire body with grace. Schiller concludes that these physical expressions are the result of a mechanical process of communication between the nerves and the mind that is no different than the relationship of paralysis to an injured ligament. It is possible for the recurrence of an emotion and sympathetic physical expressions for a psychic state to become habitual along with its physical expressions. If the emotion becomes an enduring characteristic, its sympathetic features will be etched into the machine and thus deuteropathically become organic, bringing about a perennial physiognomy of the individual that is all but inalterable, thus the mind shapes the body, and the experiences of youth may determine features for the remainder of life just as they inform moral character (paragraph 58). This phenomenon is observable in the lack of expression of the weak-minded, and can be extended to the emotions and characteristics described above. Regarding organic parts, for example, the shape and size of the nose, eyes, mouth, ears, and the color of the hair, and so on, it may be possible to draw certain limited scientific conclusions, though, to date, Lavater’s work on physiognomy has only described prejudices and produced no valid scientific results (paragraph 59). In a footnote, Schiller draws attention to a further sympathetic relation between certain physical sensations and the mental associations they provoke, for example, a stomach cramp resulting in disgust and the recurrence of disgust reciprocally resulting in a cramp.

Chapter B, d: “Relaxation of Animal Nature is a Source of Perfection,” §23, “It appears to act as a Hindrance,” addresses the necessity of sleep. If the animal part of the human being provides all of the great advantages discussed above, it remains nonetheless ignoble, for the mind is slavishly bound to the activity of its tools, such that a periodic relaxation of the organism forces inactivity on the mind and periodically renders it inactive through sleep, which undeniably robs us of a third of our existence (paragraph 60). Further, our power of thought is extraordinarily dependent on the laws of the machine such that the former can impose a sudden stop to mental activity just when one is on the open path to truth. The intellect can barely stop to ponder an idea when the sluggish material being fails. The strings of the thought organ become slack at the slightest exertion; the body fails when it is needed most. What amazing steps the human being would make if it could think in a state of uninterrupted intensity? How could the human being reduce every idea to its ultimate elements, which the human being would pursue every phenomenon to its most hidden sources, if it could ceaselessly have them in mind? Why is this not the case?

§24, “Necessity of Relaxation,” comprises a preamble to the concluding sections presented in five basic principles of the function of relaxation (paragraph 61): 1) The pleasurable experience was necessary to lead the human being toward perfection, therefore the human being is only perfectible because it experiences pleasure; 2) The nature of a finite being makes unpleasant sensations unavoidable, thus, although evil cannot be banned from the best of worlds, philosophers claim to find perfection in it; 3) The nature of a mixed being necessarily implies unpleasant sensations, because it is mostly dependent on them, therefore both pain and pleasure are necessary; 4) Every pain and every pleasure grows to infinite proportions; 5) Every pain and every pleasure of a mixed being aims at the destruction of that being.

§25, “Explanation,” addresses the established law of the association of ideas: every feeling affects another feeling of the same kind and thus grows. The greater and more complex it becomes, the more associated feelings it arouses until it eventually dominates and occupies the mind entirely. Thus, every sensation is self-generating; every temporary state of the emotional faculty contains the beginning of a subsequent similar state of greater intensity (paragraph 62). Every mental sensation is associated with a similar animal sensation, to some extent dependent on nerve reactions. As the mental sensations increase, the nerve actions necessarily increase. Pathology teaches us that no nerve ever suffers in isolation, and every excess of focus here means a lack of focus there. Thus, every action of the nerves is self-generating. Just as nerve movements intensify mental sensations, mental sensations intensify nerve activity, forming a circle in which sensation must constantly grow. The activities in the machine causing the sensation of pain run counter to the harmonious tone that sustains them, that is, they constitute sickness. Sickness, however, cannot grow infinitely, therefore pain, which aims at the destruction of the subject, ceases with the total destruction of the machine. In the state of a pleasant emotion, the nerve activity is harmonious, favorable to the continued existence of the machine, and the state of the greatest psychological pleasure is the highest state of physical well-being, however, the pleasant emotion cannot perpetuate bodily health eternally (paragraph 63). To a certain degree, these neural actions are beneficial and truly constitute a state of health. If they exceed this point, they may bring about the highest level of activity and the highest momentary perfection, but they are then an excess of good health, which is no longer health. Health is only the good condition of natural processes that serves to perpetuate a future similar state. Therefore, an essential element of the concept of health is permanency. The body of the most debilitated lech achieves its highest harmony in the moment of excess, but such harmony is short lived, followed by a deep state of apathy, and is evidence of an unhealthy state. Consequently, exaggerated physical activity accelerates death as much as the greatest disharmony or the most acute sickness. Thus, both pleasure and pain draw us more quickly toward an unavoidable death, unless something exists that restricts their growth.

§26, “Merit of Relaxation”: Precisely this limitation of the fragile machine, which appeared to provide arguments for its imperfection, serves to correct all of the malignant consequences of what the physical mechanism would otherwise inevitably bring about. Precisely this decrease and slackening of the organs prevents human strength from quickly wearing out, and does not allow for emotions to grow perpetually toward destruction (paragraph 64). Relaxation marks the phases of growth for every emotion, its climax and defervescence, providing the disturbed spirits time to recover their harmonious tone and the organs time for recovery. Therefore, the highest degrees of ecstasy, terror, and rage result in exhaustion, weakness, and fainting. Citing his own translation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth (II, 4): Schiller addresses the social function of sleep, during which the vital spirits return to the healthy balance necessary for continued existence; all of the tangled ideas and feelings, all of the strenuous activities that have tormented us during the day, are resolved in the total relaxation of the sensorium (paragraph 65). The harmony of the psychological process is restored and greets the newly awakened human being with more composure. Precisely this feature of the animal necessarily caused some who could have become happy to be sacrificed for the good of the public order and be forced to bear the oppression of hard labor. Many others, whom we tend to envy, probably without justification, had to torture their mental and physical powers with unceasing exertion in order to preserve peace in society at large. The same applies to the suffering of the sick and of unreasoning animals. Sleep seals the eye of grief, relieves the prince and the politician of the heavy burden of government, provides the sick vitality and brings peace to the harried soul, relieves the laborer from the voice of the overseer, and the abused animal from the tyranny of the human being (paragraph 66).

§27, “Division of the Connection”: Finally, when the mind has achieved the end of its existence, the incomprehensible internal mechanism renders the body incapable of continuing as its tool. Wisdom itself in its economy created physical nature, such that despite constant compensation, attrition retakes the upper hand. Matter dissolves into its ultimate elements again, which now move through the kingdoms of nature in different forms and relationships to serve other purposes.

Philosophical Significance and Impact

Embarking from the position that materialist scientists and philosophers had been all too ready to limit the function of the body to that of a prison for the mind and the personality, Schiller’s radical dialectical approach seeks not only to reconcile body and mind, animal and intellectual natures, but to demonstrate that it is in fact the body that makes moral improvement and happiness possible. Following the rejection of his first dissertation, Schiller’s proposal for what would become his third dissertation announces the unusual divided approach “aus dem philosophischen und physiologischen Fach” (from the philosophical and physiological field; NA 21: 124). In an early version of his later aesthetic drive theory, Schiller states at the outset: “Was den Menschen jener Bestimmung näher bringt, es sei nun mittelbar oder unmittelbar, das wird ihn ergözen. Was ihn von ihr entfernt, wird ihn schmerzen. Was ihn schmerzt, wird er meiden, was ihn ergözt, danach wird er ringen” (That which brings the human individual closer to their destiny, either directly or indirectly, will make them happy. That which distances them from this goal will cause them pain. That which hurts them, they will avoid, that which delights them, they will pursue; NA 20: 11). For Schiller, as evidenced by the moral focus of his earliest and latest theoretical works, the pursuit of totality, harmony, and ultimately happiness through the reconciliation of drives was the unsolved problem of humanity. As a result, there are clear parallels between the earliest theoretical works that stretch far beyond the concrete references to Franz Moor and Fiesko, who are discussed as psychological case histories here (NA 20: 60). Schiller’s discussion of pleasurable excess and the immoral pursuit of basic drives follows closely Shaftesbury’s articulation of the problem in Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times (1711): to the harmonious and whole individual, “low and sordid pleasures,” even “when Will and Pleasure are synonymous”—are detrimental (Shaftesbury, Characteristics, volume II, part II, §I, 29–30).

The thesis regarding the imbalance of drives, which dates back at least to the First Virtue Speech and the first dissertation (NA 20: 11), appears repeatedly in Schiller’s later theoretical works. In Ueber Anmut und Würde (On Grace and Dignity, 1793), Schiller articulates three possible states of the inner balance or imbalance of drives: 1) barbarism, the dictatorship of reason over feeling; 2) savagery, the dictatorship of feeling over reason; and 3) totality, the reconciliation of feeling and reason and of duty and inclination. All three ideas play significant roles in the Ästhetische Briefe in Schiller’s analysis of the harmony of the Form- and Stofftrieb (Twelfth Letter; NA 20: 344–346). Already in the “Schaubühne” Speech of 1784, Schiller calls for the cultivation of “einen mittleren Zustand” (an intermediary state; NA 20: 90) which he refers to in the third of the Ästhetische Briefe as “den dritten Charakter” (the third character; NA 20: 315) or “mittlere Stimmung” (intermediary disposition; NA 20: 375). Schiller thus draws a line from the harmonious band of virtue in the First Virtue Speech of 1779—the mediator between sensual and moral nature—to the concept of the totality of the whole individual presented in the fourth of the Ästhetische Briefe. Here, through the moral education of the individual, a transition is created between the “Herrschaft bloßer Kräfte” (rule of mere might or state of nature/necessity) and the “Herrschaft der Gesetze” (rule of the laws of reason; NA 20: 315), resulting in “Totalität des Charakters” (totality of character; NA 20: 318). Although drive theories were proliferating around 1780, Schiller’s version is among the earliest and most enduring, predating Johann Friedrich Blumenbach’s (1752–1840) Über den Bildungstrieb und das Zeugungsgeschäfte (On the Formative Drive of the Generation Process, 1781) and Karl Philipp Moritz’s (1756–1793) Magazin zur Erfahrungsseelenkunde als ein Lesebuch für Gelehrte und Ungelehrte (Journal of Experiential Psychology, as Reading for Scholars and Laypersons, 1783–1793). The final lines of Schiller’s “Die Weltweisen” (The Worldly Philosophers, 1795)—reminiscent of his successful dissertation, are cited prominently in both Richard von Krafft-Ebing’s (1840–1902) Psychopathia Sexualis (1886) and Freud’s Das Unbehagen in der Kultur (Civilization and its Discontents, 1930). Likewise, the concept of perfection-as-happiness, which appears here in the fourth text in just over a year in its most articulate form, lays the groundwork for the Spieltrieb (play drive) in the fifteenth of the Ästhetische Briefe: the human being “ist nur da ganz Mensch, wo er spielt (is only fully human when at play; NA 20: 359).

Although it has often been pointed out that Schiller had read Lavater’s Physiognomische Fragmente (1775–1778), there is little note of the fact that Schiller disapproved of Lavater’s work in moral terms as directly contrary to his own theory of human freedom. In fact, far from employing Lavater’s theories, Schiller deconstructed them in his portrayals of the brilliant and unattractive Franz Moor, the brilliant victim of racism Hassan in Fiesko, and the unattractive, yet moral and sensitive Christian Wolf in “Der Verbrecher aus verlorener Ehre” (The Criminal of Lost Honor, 1786)—tracing the challenges of all three characters to early-life trauma related to lack of personal, familial, and institutional recognition. Here, Schiller concludes that Lavater’s attempts to interpret the physical forms of a range of unusual characters may in the end result in Lavater himself becoming a cartoon. The appearance of the psychosomatic phenomenon of homesickness central to Schiller’s first novella, “Eine großmütige Handlung” (A Magnanimous Act, 1782), first appears here, as do the derivative metaphor of the sickly plant in a new climate (which appears repeatedly throughout Schiller’s works), and the frequently invoked microscope and autopsy metaphors, both of which represent scientific insight into nature’s most secret processes.

Too much is made of the intentionally elusive Deist references to God and the creator in Schiller’s university works, which were written in a coercive environment in which superficial gestures of piety were policed by the duke himself. The logic of Schiller’s decidedly anti-religious historical anthropology is particularly evident in the chronology of the appearance of his “clever priests,” who necessarily pre-exist the “gods” they create (NA 20: 54), and in his clear habit of following his few mentions of God (singular) with an immediate reminder that there have been many gods (plural), for example, in “An die Freude,” in which Schiller inverts the concept of divine judgment through verb tense as a purely human affair: humans judge first, after which God, a human projection, can do nothing but agree—“richtet Gott wie wir gerichtet” (God judges as we have judged; NA 1: 171). Once free of the religious constraints of the Karlsschule, and despite censorship, Schiller consistently characterizes the socio-political and anthropological function of religion as that of a temporary behavioral guide for an unenlightened populace—a “Surrogat der wahren Tugend” (surrogate for true virtue; NA 26: 330–331)—a transitional need he compares to the voluntary use of handcuffs by a violent mental patient in his letter to Prince Augustenburg of December 1793.