Part 32

The principal writings of this period are:—“_Exposition of my System of Philosophy_” (Journal for Speculative Physics, ii. 2); the second edition, with additions, of the “_Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature_” 1803; the dialogue, “_Bruno, or concerning the Divine and the Natural Principle of Things_” 1802; “_Lectures on the Method of Academical Study_,” 1803; three numbers of a “_New Journal for Speculative Physics_,” 1802-3. The characteristic of the new standpoint of Schelling, to which we now arrive, is perfectly exhibited in the definition of reason, which he places at the head of the first of the above-named writings; I give to reason the name absolute, or the reason in so far as it is conceived as the total _indifference of the subjective and the objective_. To think of reason is demanded of every man; to think of it as absolute, and thus to reach the standpoint which I require, every thing must be abstracted from the thinking subject. To him who makes this abstraction, reason immediately ceases to be something subjective, as most men represent it; neither can it be conceived as something objective, since an objective, or that which is thought, is only possible in opposition to that which thinks. We thus rise through this abstraction to the reality of things (_zum wahren an-sich_), which reality is precisely in the indifference point of the subjective and the objective. The standpoint of philosophy is the standpoint of reason; its knowledge is a knowledge of things as they are in themselves, _i. e._ as they are in the reason. It is the nature of philosophy to destroy every distinction which the imagination has mingled with the thinking, and to see in things only that through which they express the absolute reason, not regarding in them that which is simply an object for that reflection which expends itself on the laws of mechanism and in time. Besides reason there is nothing, and in it is every thing. Reason is the absolute. All objections to this principle can only arise from the fact, that men are in the habit of looking at things not as they are in reason, but as they appear. Every thing which is, is in essence like the reason, and is one with it. It is not the reason which posits something external to itself, but only the false use of reason, which is connected with the incapacity of forgetting the subjective in itself. The reason is absolutely _one_ and like itself. The highest law for the being of reason, and since there is nothing besides reason, the highest law for all being, is the law of identity. Between subject and object therefore—since it is one and the same absolute identity which displays itself in both—there can be no difference except a _quantitative_ difference (a difference of more or less), so that nothing is either simple object or simple subject, but in all things subject and object are united, this union being in different proportions, so that sometimes the subject and sometimes the object has the preponderance. But since the absolute is pure identity of subject and object, there can be no quantitative difference except outside of the identity, _i. e._ in the finite. As the fundamental form of the Infinite is A = A, so the scheme of the finite is A = B (_i. e._ the union of a subjective with another objective in a different proportion). But, in reality, nothing is finite, because the identity is the only reality. So far as there is difference in individual things, the identity exists in the form of indifference. If we could see together every thing which is, we should find in all the pure identity, because we should find in all a perfect quantitative equilibrium of subjectivity and objectivity. True, we find, in looking at individual objects, that sometimes the preponderance is on one side and sometimes on the other, but in the whole this is compensated. The absolute identity is the absolute totality, the universe itself. There is in reality (_an-sich_) no individual being or thing. There is in reality nothing beyond the totality; and if any thing beyond this is beheld, this can only happen by virtue of arbitrary separation of the individual from the whole, which is done through reflection, and is the source of every error. The absolute identity is essentially the same in every part of the universe. Hence the universe may be conceived under the figure of a line, in the centre of which is the A = A, while at the end on one side is A⁺ = B, _i. e._ a transcendence of the subjective, and at the end on the other side is A = B⁺, _i. e._ a transcendence of the objective, though this must be conceived so that a relative identity may exist even in these extremes. The one side is the real or nature, the other side is the ideal. The real side developes itself according to three potences (a potence, or power, indicates a definite quantitative difference of subjectivity and objectivity). (1) The first potence is matter and weight—the greatest preponderance of the object. (2) The second potence is light (A²), an inner—as weight is an outer—intuition of nature. The light is a higher rising of the subjective. It is the absolute identity itself. (3) The third potence is organism (A³), the common product of light and weight. Organism is just as original as matter. Inorganic nature, as such, does not exist: it is actually organized, and is, as it were, the universal germ out of which organization proceeds. The organization of every globe is but the inner evolution of the globe itself; the earth itself, by its own evolving, becomes animal and plant. The organic world has not formed itself out of the inorganic, but has been at least potentially present in it from the beginning. That matter which lies before us, apparently inorganic, is the residuum of organic metamorphoses, which could not become organic. The human brain is the highest bloom of the whole organic metamorphosis of the earth. From the above, Schelling adds, it must be perceived that we affirm an inner identity of all things, and a potential presence of every thing in every other, and therefore even the so-called dead matter may be viewed only as a sleeping-world of animals and plants, which, in some period, the absolute identity may animate and raise to life. At this point Schelling stops suddenly, without developing further the three potences of the ideal series, corresponding to those of the real. Elsewhere he completes the work by setting up the following three potences of the ideal series: (1) Knowledge, the potence of reflection; (2) Action, the potence of subsumption; (3) the Reason as the unity of reflection and subsumption. These three potences represent themselves: (1) as the true, the imprinting of the matter in the form; (2) as the good, or the imprinting of the form in the matter; (3) as the beautiful, or the work of art, the absolute blending together of form and matter.

Schelling sought also to furnish himself with a new method for knowing the absolute identity. Neither the analytic nor the synthetical method seems to him suitable for this, since both are only a finite knowledge. Gradually, also, he abandoned the mathematical method. The logical forms of the ordinary method of knowledge, and even the ordinary metaphysical categories, were now insufficient for him. Schelling now places the intellectual intuition as the starting point of true knowledge. Intuition, in general, is an equal positing of thought and being. When I behold an object, the being of the object and my thought of the object is for me absolutely the same. But in the ordinary intuition, some separate sensible being is posited as one with the thought. But in the intellectual or rational intuition, being in general, and every being is made identical with the thought, and the absolute _subject-object_ is beheld. The intellectual intuition is absolute knowledge, and as such it can only be conceived as that in which thought and being are not opposed to each other. It is the beginning and the first step towards philosophy to behold, immediately and intellectually within thyself, that same indifference of the ideal and the real which thou beholdest projected as it were from thyself in space and time. This absolutely absolute mode of knowledge is wholly and entirely in the absolute itself. That it can never become taught is clear. It cannot, moreover, be seen why philosophy is bound to have special regard to the unattainable. It seems much more fitting to make so complete a separation on every side between the entrance to philosophy and the common knowledge, that no road nor track shall lead from the latter to the former. The absolute mode of knowledge, like the truth which it contains, has no true opposition outside of itself, and as it cannot be demonstrated by any intelligent being, so nothing can be set up in opposition to it by any.—Schelling has attempted to bring the intellectual intuition into a method, and has named this method construction. The possibility and the necessity of the constructive method is based upon the fact that the absolute is in all, and that all is the absolute. Construction is nothing other than the proving that the whole is absolutely expressed in every particular relation and object. To construe an object, philosophically, is to prove that in this object the whole inner structure of the absolute repeats itself.

In Schelling’s “_Lectures on the Method of Academical Study_” (delivered in 1802, and published in 1803), he sought to treat encyclopædiacally, every philosophical discipline from the given standpoint of identity or indifference. They furnish a connected and popular exposition of the outlines of his philosophy, in the form of a critical modelling of the studies of the university course. The most noticeable feature in them is Schelling’s attempt at a historical construction of Christianity. The incarnation of God is an incarnation from eternity. The eternal Son of God, born from the essence of the father of all things, is the finite itself, as it is in the eternal intuition of God. Christ is only the historical and phenomenal pinnacle of the incarnation; as an individual, he is a person wholly conceivable from the circumstances of the age in which he appeared. Since God is eternally outside of all time, it is inconceivable that he should have assumed a human nature at any definite moment of time. The temporal form of Christianity, the exoteric Christianity does not correspond to its idea, and has its perfection yet to be hoped for. A chief hindrance to the perfection of Christianity, was, and is the so-called Bible, which, moreover, is far inferior to other religious writings, in a genuine religious content. The future must bring a new birth of the esoteric Christianity, or a new and higher form of religion, in which philosophy, religion and poesy shall melt together in unity.—This latter remark contains already an intimation of the “_Philosophy of Revelation_,” a work subsequently written by Schelling, and which exhibited many of the principles current in the age of the apostle John. In the work we are now considering, there are also many other points which correspond to this later standpoint of Schelling. Thus he places at the summit of history a kind of golden age. It is inconceivable, he says, that man as he now appears, should have raised himself through himself from instinct to consciousness, from animality to rationality. Another human race, must, therefore, have preceded the present, which the old saga have immortalized under the form of gods and heroes. The first origin of religion and culture is only conceivable through the instruction of higher natures. I hold the condition of culture as the first condition of the human race, and considere the first foundation of states, sciences, religion and arts as cotemporary, or rather as one thing: so that all these were not truly separate, but in the completest interpenetration, as it will be again in the final consummation. Schelling is no more than consistent when he accordingly apprehends the symbols of mythology which we meet with at the beginning of history, as disclosures of the highest wisdom. There is here also a step towards his subsequent “_Philosophy of Mythology_.”

The mystical element revealed in these expressions of Schelling gained continually a greater prominence with him. Its growth was partly connected with his fruitless search after an absolute method, and a fitting form in which he might have satisfactorily expressed his philosophic intuitions. All noble mysticism rests on the incapacity of adequately expressing an infinite content in the form of a conception. So Schelling, after he had been restlessly tossed about in every method, soon gave up also his method of construction, and abandoned himself wholly to the unlimited current of his fancy. But though this was partly the cause of his mysticism, it is also true that his philosophical standpoint was gradually undergoing a change. From the speculative science of nature, he was gradually passing over more and more into the philosophy of mind, by which the determination of the absolute in his conception became changed. While he had previously determined the absolute as the indifference of the ideal and the real, he now gives a preponderance to the ideal over the real, and makes ideality the fundamental determination of the absolute. The first is the ideal; secondly, the ideal determines itself in itself to the real, and the real as such is the third. The earlier harmony of mind and matter is dissolved: matter appears now as the negative of mind. Since Schelling in this way distinguishes the universe from the absolute as its counterpart, we see that he leaves decidedly the basis of Spinozism on which he had previously stood, and places himself on a new standpoint.

IV. FOURTH PERIOD: THE DIRECTION OF SCHELLING’S PHILOSOPHY AS MYSTICAL AND ALLIED TO NEW-PLATONISM.

The writings of this period are:—“_Philosophy and Religion_,” 1804. “_Exposition of the true relation of the Philosophy of Nature to the improved Theory of Fichte_,” 1806; “_Medical Annual_” (published in company with _Marcus_) 1805-1808.—As has already been said, the absolute and the universe were, on the standpoint of indifference, identical. Nature and history were immediate manifestations of the absolute. But now Schelling lays stress upon the difference between the two, and the independence of the world. This he expresses in a striking way in the first of the above named writings, by placing the origin of the world wholly after the manner of New-Platonism, in a breaking away or a falling off from the absolute. From the absolute to the actual, there is no abiding transition; the origin of the sensible world is only conceivable as a complete breaking off _per saltum_ from the absolute. The absolute is the only real, finite things are not real; they can, therefore, have their ground in no reality imparted to them from the absolute, but only in a separation and complete falling away from the absolute. The reconciliation of this fall, and the manifestation of God made complete, is the final cause of history. With this idea there are also connected other representations borrowed from New-Platonism, which Schelling brings out in the same work. He speaks in it of the descent of the soul from intellectuality, to the world of sense, and like the Platonic myth he allows this fall of souls to be a punishment for their selfhood (pride); he speaks also in connection with this of a regeneration, or transmigration of souls, by which they either begin a higher life on a better sphere, or intoxicated with matter, they are driven down to a still lower abode, according as they have in the present life laid aside more or less of their selfhood, and become purified in a greater or less degree, to an identity with the infinite; but we are especially reminded of New-Platonism by the high place and the mystical and symbolical significance, which Schelling gives in this work to the Greek mysteries (as did Bruno), and the view that if religion would be held in its pure ideality, it can only exist as exoteric, or in the form of mysteries.—This notion of a higher blending together of religion and philosophy goes through all the writings of this period. All true experience, says Schelling in the “_Medical Annual_,” is religious. The existence of God is an empirical truth, and the ground of all experience. True, religion is not philosophy, but the philosophy which does not unite in sacred harmony, religion with science, were unworthy of the name. True, I know something higher than science. And if science has only these two ways open before it to knowledge, viz., that of analysis or abstraction, and that of synthetic derivation, then we deny all science of the absolute. Speculation is every thing, _i. e._ a beholding, a contemplation of that which is in God. Science itself has worth only so far as it is speculative, _i. e._ only so far as it is a contemplation of God as he is. But the time will come when the sciences shall more and more cease, and immediate knowledge take their place. The mortal eye closes only in the highest science, where it is no longer the man who sees, but the eternal beholding which has now become seeing in him.

With this theosophic view of the world, Schelling was led to pay attention to the earlier mystics. He began to study their writings. He answered the charge of mysticism in his controversy with Fichte as follows:—Among the learned of the last century, there was a tacit agreement never to go beyond a certain height, and, therefore, the genuine spirit of science was given up to the unlearned. These, because they were uneducated and had drawn upon themselves the jealousy of the learned, were called fanatics. But many a philosopher by profession might well have exchanged all his rhetoric for the fulness of mind and heart which abound in the writings of such fanatics. Therefore I am not ashamed of the name of such a fanatic. I will even seek to make this reproach true; if I have not hitherto studied the writings of these men correctly, it has been owing to negligence.

Schelling did not omit to verify these words. There were some special mental affinities between himself and _Jacob Boehme_, with whom he now became more and more closely joined. A study of his writings is indeed indicated in Schelling’s works of the present period. One of the most famous of Schelling’s writings, his theory of freedom, which appeared after this (“_Philosophische Untersuchungen über das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit_,” 1809), is composed entirely in the spirit of Jacob Boehme. We begin with it a new period of Schelling’s philosophizing, where _the will_ is affirmed as the essence of God, and we have thus a new definition of the absolute differing from every previous one.

V. FIFTH PERIOD:—ATTEMPT AT A THEOGONY AND COSMOGONY AFTER THE MANNER OF JACOB BOEHME.

Schelling had much in common with Jacob Boehme. Both considered the speculative cognition as a kind of immediate intuition. Both made use of forms which mingled the abstract and the sensuous, and interpenetrated the definiteness of logic with the coloring of fancy. Both, in fine, were speculatively in close contact. The self-duplication of the absolute was a fundamental thought of Boehme. He started with the principle, that the divine essence was the indeterminable, infinite, and inconceivable, the absence of ground (_Ungrund_). This absence of ground now projects itself in a proper feeling of its abstract and infinite essence, into the finite, _i. e._ into a ground, or the centre of nature, in the dark womb of which qualities are produced, from whose harsh collision the lightning streams forth, which, as mind or principle of light, is destined to rule and explain the struggling powers of nature, so that the God who has been raised from the absence of ground through a ground to the light of the mind, may henceforth move in an eternal kingdom of joy. This theogony of Jacob Boehme is in striking accord with the present standpoint of Schelling. As Boehme had apprehended the absolute as the indeterminable absence of ground, so had Schelling in his earlier writings apprehended it as indifference. As Boehme had distinguished this absence of ground from a ground, or from nature and from God, as the light of minds, so had Schelling, in the writings of the last period, apprehended the absolute as a self-renunciation, and a return back from this renunciation into a higher unity with itself. We have here the three chief elements of that history of God, around which Schelling’s essay on freedom turns: (1) God as indifference, or the absence of ground; (2) God as duplication into ground and existence, real and ideal; (3) Reconciliation of this duplication, and elevation of the original indifference to identity. The first element of the divine life is that of pure indifference, or indistinguishableness. This, which precedes every thing existing, may be called the original ground, or the absence of ground. The absence of ground is not a product of opposites, nor are they contained _implicite_ in it, but it is a proper essence separate from every opposite, and having no predicate but that of predicatelessness. Real and ideal, darkness and light, can never be predicated of the absence of ground as opposites; they can only be affirmed of it as not-opposites in a neither-nor. From this indifference now rises the duality: the absence of ground separates into two co-eternal beginnings, so that ground and existence may become one through love, and the indeterminable and lifeless indifference may rise to a determinate and living identity. Since nothing is before or external to God, he must have the ground of his existence in himself. But this ground is not simply logical, as conception, but real, as something which is actually to be distinguished in God from existence; it is nature in God, an essence inseparable indeed from him, but yet distinct. Hence we cannot assign to this ground understanding and will, but only desire after this; it is the longing to produce itself. But in that this ground moves in its longing according to obscure and uncertain laws like a swelling sea, there is, self-begotten in God, another and reflexive motion, an inner representation by which he beholds himself in his image. This representation is the eternal word in God, which rises as light in the darkness of the ground, and endows its blind longing with understanding. This understanding, united with the ground, becomes pre-creating will. Its work is to give order to nature, and to regulate the hitherto unregulated ground; and from this explanation of the real through the ideal, comes the creation of the world. The development of the world has two stadia: (1) the travail of light, or the progressive development of nature to man; (2) the travail of mind, or the development of mind in history.