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CHAPTER II.

SCHELLING.

§ I. LIFE OF SCHELLING.

FREDERICK WILLIAM JOSEPH SCHELLING was born in Leonberg, in Würtemberg, 27th of January, 1775. At the University in Tübingen he first knew Hegel, and their friendship was enduring and productive. At Leipzig he studied Medicine and Philosophy; in the latter he became the pupil of Fichte. He afterwards filled Fichte's vacant chair at Jena, where he lectured with immense success. In 1807 he was made a member of the Munich Academy of Sciences. And in Bavaria, honored, rewarded, and ennobled, he remained till 1842, when the King of Prussia seduced him to Berlin; and there, in the chair once held by Hegel, he opened a series of lectures, in which he was to give the fruit of a life's meditation.

His appearance at Berlin was the signal for violent polemics. The Hegelians were all up in arms. Pamphlets, full of personalities and dialectics, were launched against Schelling, apparently without much effect. His foes at length grew weary of screaming; and he continued quietly to lecture. In 1845, the writer of this work had the gratification not only of hearing him lecture on Mythology to large audiences, but also of hearing him in the expansiveness of private conversation pour forth his stores of varied knowledge. His intellectual vigor was such, that although seventy summers had whitened his hair, he seemed to have still a long lease of life; and indeed he continued nine years longer to inspire the respect of all who knew him. He died on the 20th August, 1854.

§ II. SCHELLING'S DOCTRINES.

Schelling is often styled the German Plato.

In such parallels there is always some truth amidst much error. Schelling's works unquestionably exhibit great power of vivid imagination conjoined with subtle dialectics; if on this ground he is to be styled a Plato, then are there hundreds to share that title with him. His doctrines have little resemblance to those of his supposed prototype. Curiously enough, his head was marvellously like that of Socrates; not so ugly, but still very like it in general character.

Schelling may be regarded as having been the systematizer of a tendency, always manifesting itself, but then in full vigor in Germany-the tendency towards Pantheism. This tendency is not merely the offspring of Mysticism. It may be recognized in the clear Goethe, no less than in the mystical Novalis. In some way or other, Pantheism seems the natural issue of almost every Philosophy of Religion, when rigorously carried out; but Germany, above all European countries, has, both in poetry and speculation, the most constantly reproduced it. Her poets, her artists, her musicians, and her thinkers, have been more or less Pantheists. Schelling's attempt, therefore, to give Pantheism a scientific basis, could not but meet with hearty approbation.

We may here once more notice the similarity, in historical position, of the modern German speculations to those of the Alexandrian Schools. In both, the incapacity of Reason to solve the problems of Philosophy is openly proclaimed; in both, some higher faculty is called in to solve them. Plotinus called this faculty Ecstasy. Schelling called it the Intellectual Intuition. The Ecstasy was not supposed to be a faculty possessed by all men, and at all times; it was only possessed by the few, and by them but sometimes. The Intellectual Intuition was not supposed to be a faculty common to all men; on the contrary, it was held as the endowment only of a few of the privileged: it was the faculty for philosophizing. Schelling expresses his dis

dain for those who talk about not comprehending the highest truths of Philosophy. "Really," he exclaims, "one sees not wherefore Philosophy should pay any attention whatever to Incapacity. It is better rather that we should isolate Philosophy from all the ordinary routes, and keep it so separated from ordinary knowledge, that none of these routes should lead to it. Philosophy commences where ordinary knowledge terminates."* The highest truths of science cannot be proved, they must be apprehended; for those who cannot apprehend them there is nothing but pity; argument is useless.

After this, were we to call Schelling the German Plotinus, we should perhaps be nearer the truth than in calling him the German Plato. But it was for the sake of no such idle parallel that we compared the fundamental positions of each. Our ob ject was to "point a moral," and to show how the same forms of error reappear in history, and how the labors of so many centuries have not advanced the human mind in this direction one single step.

The first point to be established is the nature of Schelling's improvement upon Fichte: the relation in which the two doctrines stand to each other.

Fichte's Idealism was purely subjective Idealism. The Object had indeed reality, but was, solely dependent upon the Subject. Endeavor as we might, we could never separate the Object from the Subject, we could never conceive a possible mode of existence without being forced to identify with it a Subject. Indeed the very conception itself is but an act of the Subject. Admitting that we are forced by the laws of our mental constitution to postulate an unknown something, a Noumenon, as the substance in which all phenomena inhere, what, after all, is this postulate? It is an act of the Mind; it is wholly subjective; the necessity for the postulate is a mental necessity. The Non-Ego therefore is the product of the Ego.

* Neue Zeitschrift für Speculative Physik, ii. 84.

There is subtle reasoning in the above; nay more, it contains a principle which is irrefutable: the principle of the identity of Object and Subject in knowledge.* This Schelling adopted. Nevertheless, in spite of such an admission, the nullity of the external world was too violent and repulsive a conclusion to be long maintained; and it was necessary to see if the principle of identity might not be preserved, without forcing such a conclusion.

The existence of the objective world is as firmly believed in as the existence of the subjective: they are, indeed, both given in the same act. We cannot be conscious of our own existence without at the same time inseparably connecting it with some other existence from which we distinguished ourselves. So in like manner we cannot be aware of the existence of any thing out of ourselves without at the same time inseparably connecting with it a consciousness of ourselves. Hence we conclude that both exist; not indeed separately, not independently of each other, but identified in some higher power. Fichte said that the Non-Ego was created by the Ego. Schelling said that the two were equally real, and that both were identified in the Absolute. Knowledge must be knowledge of something. Hence Knowledge implies the correlate of Being. Knowledge without an Object known, is but an empty form. But Knowledge and Being are correlates; they are not separable; they are identified. It is as impossible to conceive an Object known without a Subject knowing, as it is to conceive a Subject knowing without an Object known.

Nature is Spirit visible; Spirit is invisible Nature: the absolute Ideal is at the same time the absolute Real.

*This is the stronghold of Idealism, and we consider it impregnable, so long as men reason on the implied assumption, that whatever is true in human knowledge is equally true (i. e. actually so co-ordinated) in fact; that as things appear to us so they are per se. And yet without this assumption Philosophy is impossible.

Our readers will recognize here a favorite saying of Coleridge, many

Hence Philosophy has two primary problems to solve. In the Transcendental Philosophy the problem is to construct Nature from Intelligence-the Object from the Subject. In the Philosophy of Nature the problem is to construct Intelligence from Nature-the Subject from the Object.* And how are we to construct one from the other? Fichte has taught us to do so by the principle of the identity of Subject and Object, whereby the productivity and the product are in constant opposition, yet always one. The productivity (Thätigkeit) is the activity in act; it is the force which develops itself into all things. The product is the activity arrested and solidified into a fact; but it is always ready to pass again into activity. And thus the world is but a balancing of contending powers within the sphere of the Absolute.

In what, then, does Schelling differ from Fichte, since both assert that the product (Object) is but the arrested activity of the Ego? In this: the Ego in Fichte's system is a finite Egoit is the human soul. The Ego in Schelling's system is the Absolute-the Infinite-the All, which Spinoza called Substance; and this Absolute manifests itself in two forms: in the form of the Ego and in the form of the Non-Ego-as Nature and as Mind.

The Ego produces the Non-Ego, but not by its own force, not out of its own nature; it is the universal Nature which works within us and which produces from out of us; it is universal Nature which here in us is conscious of itself. The souls of men are but the innumerable individual eyes with which the Infinite World-Spirit beholds himself.

What is the Ego? It is one and the same with the act which renders it an Object to itself. When I say "myself”—when I form a conception of my Ego, what is that but the Ego making

of whose remarks, now become famous, are almost verbatim from Schelling and the two Schlegels.

* System des Transcendentalen Idealismus, p. 7.

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