HENRIK

STEFFENS (1773-1845)  , German philosopher, scientist and poet, of Norwegian extraction, was born on the 2nd of May 1773 at Stavanger, and died in Berlin on the 13th of February 1845 . At the age of fourteen he went with his. parents to Copenhagen, where he studied theology and natural science . In 1796 he lectured at Kiel, and a year later went to Jena to study the natural philosophy of Schelling . He went to Freiberg in 'Soo, and there came under the influence of Werner . After two years he returned to Copenhagen, but his lectures excited' so much disapproval that he took a professor= ship at Halle in 1804 . During the War of Liberation he served as a volunteer in the cause of freedom, and was present at the capture of Paris . From 1811 he was professor of physics at Breslau until 1832, when he accepted an invitation to Berlin . Steffens was one of the so-called Philosophers of Nature, a friend and adherent of Schelling and Schleiermacher . More than either of these two thinkers he was acquainted with the discoveries of modern science, and was thus enabled to correct or modify the highly imaginative speculations of Schelling . He held that, throughout the'scheme of nature and intellectual life, the mainprinciple is Individualization . As organisms rise higher in the scale of development, the sharper and more distinct become their outlines, the more definite their individualities . This principle he endeavoured to deduce from his knowledge of geology, in contrast to Lorenz Oken, who developed the same theory on biological grounds .

The influence of his views was considerable . Not only did Schelling and Schleiermacher modify their theories in deference to his scientific deductions, but the intellectual life of his contemporaries was considerably affected . His lectures in Copenhagen in 1802 were attended by many leading Danish thinkers, such as Oehlenschlager and

Grundtvig . Schleiermacher was so much struck by their excellence that he endeavoured, unsuccessfully, to obtain for Steffens a chair in the new Berlin University in 1804, in order that his own ethical teachings should be supported in the scientific department . His chief scientific and philosophical works are: Beitrage zur innern Naturgeschichte der Erde Mot); Grsndzuge der philes . Naturwissenschaft (1806) ; Anthropologie (1824) . He wrote also Ueber die Idee der Universitaten (1835), and Ueber geheime Verbindungen auf Universitaten (1835); works on religious subjects, Karikaturen des Heiligsten (1819-1821) ; Wie ich wieder Lutheraner wurde and was mir das Luthertum ist (1831) ; Von der falschen Theo- wild dent wahren Glaubern (new ed., 1831); poetical works, Die Familien Walseth and Leith (1827); Die vier Norweger (1828) ; Malcolm (1831), collected in 1837 under the title of Novellen . During the last five years of his life he wrote an autobiography, Was ich erlebte, and after his death was published Nachgelassene Schriften (1846) . See Tietzen, Zur Erinnerung an Steffens; Petersen, Henrik Steffens (Ger. trans., 1884) ; Dilthey, Leben Schleiermachers .