The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume V | Page 6

anti-intellectualism, its intuition, the high value it placed upon the personality, its historical viewpoint, and its faith in the uniqueness of German culture. They welcomed the Wissenschaftslehre as a valuable ally, and exaggerated those features of it which seemed to chime with their own views. The ego which Fichte conceives as universal reason becomes for them the subjective empirical self, the unique personality, in which the unconscious, spontaneous, impulsive, instinctive phase constitutes the original element, the more extravagant among them transforming the rational moral ego into a romantic ego, an ego full of mystery and caprice, and even a lawless ego. Such an ego is read into nature; for, filled with occult magic forces, nature can be understood only by the sympathetic divining insight of the poetic genius. And so, too, authority and tradition, as representing the instinctive and historical side of social life, come into their own again.
Fichte's chief interest was centred upon the ego; nature he regarded as a product of the absolute ego in the individual consciousness, intended as a necessary obstacle for the free will. Without opposition the self cannot act; without overcoming resistance it cannot become free. In order to make free action possible, to enable the ego to realize its ends, nature must be what it is, an order ruled by the iron law of causality. This cheerless conception of nature--which, however, was not Fichte's last word on the subject, since he afterward came to conceive it as the revelation of universal life, or the expression of a pantheistic God--did not attract Romanticism. It was Schelling, the erstwhile follower and admirer of Fichte, who turned his attention to the philosophy of nature and so more thoroughly satisfied the romantic yearnings of the age.
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling was born at Leonberg, W��rtemberg, January 27, 1775, the son of a learned clergyman and writer on theology. He was a precocious child and made rapid progress in his studies, entering the Theological Seminary at T��bingen at the age of fifteen. Between the ages of nineteen and twenty-two he wrote a number of able treatises in the spirit of the new idealism, and was recognized as the most talented pupil of Fichte and his best interpreter. After the completion of his course at the University (1795), he became the tutor and companion of two young noblemen with whom he remained for two years (1796-98) at the University of Leipzig, during which time he devoted himself to the study of mathematics, physics, and medicine, and published a number of philosophical articles. In 1798 he received a call to a professorship at Jena, where Fichte, Schiller, Wilhelm Schlegel, and Hegel became his colleagues, and where he entered into friendly relations with the Romantic circle of which Caroline Schlegel, who afterward became his wife, was a shining light. This was the most productive period of his life; during the next few years he developed his own system of philosophy and gave to the world his most brilliant writings. In 1803 he accepted a professorship at W��rzburg, but came into conflict with the authorities; in 1806 he went to Munich as a member of the Academy of Sciences and Director of the Academy of Fine Arts; in 1820 he moved to Erlangen; and in 1827 he returned to Munich as professor of philosophy at the newly-established University and as General Curator of the Scientific Collections of the State. He was called to Berlin in 1841 to help counteract the influence of the Hegelian Philosophy, but met with little success. He died in 1854.
The earlier writings of Schelling either reproduced the thoughts of the Wissenschaftslehre or developed them in the Fichtean spirit. Among those of the latter class we note: _Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature_, 1797; _On the World-Soul_, 1798; _System of Transcendental Idealism_, 1800. During the second period, in which the influence of Bruno and Spinoza is prominent, he works out his own philosophy of identity; at this time he publishes _Bruno, or, Concerning the Natural and Divine Principle of Things_, 1802, and _Method of Academic Study_, 1803. In the third period the philosophy of identity becomes the basis for a still higher system in which the influence of German theosophy (Jacob B?hme) is apparent; with the exception of _Philosophy and Religion_, 1804, the _Treatise on Human Freedom_, 1809, and a few others, the works of this period did not appear until after Schelling's death. His previous philosophy is now called by him "negative philosophy;" the higher or positive philosophy has as its aim the rational construction of the history of the universe, or the history of creation, upon the basis of the religious ideas of peoples; it is a philosophy of mythology and revelation. Translations of some of Schelling's works are to be found in the _Journal of Speculative Philosophy_,