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Mapa, plates, cherts, etc., mey be filmed et different reduction ratioa. Those too lerge to be entirely included in one exposure ara filmed beginning in the upper left hend comer, left to right end top to bottom, aa many frames es required. This following diegrems illustrste the method: Les cartas, planches, tebieaux, etc.. pauvant *trs film*s * das taux de r*duction diff*rants. Lorsqus la document est trop grand pour *tra reproduit en un seul clich*, ii est film* * partir da i'angle sup*rieur gauche, de gauche * droita, at de haut en Ims, en prenant la nombra d'imagas n*csssaire. Les disgrammas suivants illustrsnt la m*thoda. 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 GE SGH GERMAN PHIIOSOPHICAL CLASSICS VOB ENGLISH READERS AND STUDENTS. BDmS BT GEORGE S. MORRIS. SCHELLING'S TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM. X 'I vx i IN PEEPARATION FOR THK SAME SERIES: KANT'S ETHICS. Pfesidknt Porter. KANT*S CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT. Prof. Robert Adansok. HEGEL'S LOGIC. Dr. Wm. T. Harris. HEGEL'S ^ESTHETICS. Prof. J. S. Kidket. HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OP HISTORY AND OF THE STATE. HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. FICHTE'S SCIENCE OF KNOWLEDGE. LEIBNITZ'S NEW ESSAYS CONCERNING HUMAN UNDER- STANDING. ALREADY PUBLISHED: KANT'S CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON. Prof. Geo. 8. Morris. SCHELLING'S TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM. A CRITICAL EXPOSITION By JOHN WATSON, LL.D., F.R.S.C, PROFESSOR or MENTAL AND MORAL PHILOSOPHT, QUBBN** CNIVERSITY, KINOSTON, CANADA.' CHICAGO: S. C. GRIGGS AND COMPANY. 1882. "S^&^BA.V/^ v/ COPTRIOHT, 188S, bt s. c. orioos and company. i;-.iH'}r»«:»*^{».^.?' %^ CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT. Three phases of Schelling's speculations? (1) agnostic, (2) pantheistic, (3) theistic . . 1 Schelling, the link connecting Hegel with Kant through Fichte 3 Relations of the Transcendental Idealism to Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre and Hegel's Phcp- nomenologie des Geistes 3 The Critical problem 4 Conditions of experience 6 Are there supersensible realities? If so, they are not objects o^ "experience ''^' because they cannot be " scbematized." 8 Reason compels u.^ to seek for a totality of con- ditions 12 Rational Psychology, Cosmology and Theology uncritically. -identify Ideas of reason with supersepj^i>heiroalities . 13 Relation B( 'fheoretical to Practical Reason; possibility of reconciling free and natural causation . . . . v , 17 ▼ 000510 yi OONTSNTS. Practical Reason proves the freedom and immor* tality of man, and the existence of Qod 22 The world must be conceived by us as a teleo- logical system 25 CHAPTER ir. THE EARLIER PHILOSOPHT OF FICHTK. Free activity for Kant the essence of Reason . 28 Imperfect development of Kant*s doctrine . 30 Fichte's simplification of it by the denial of any reality out of relation to human intelligence 33 Contrast of Dogmatism and Idealism ... 35 Dogmatism leads to Determinism and Material- ism, and fails to explain conscious experience 37 Idealism starts from Intelligence as pure self- activity 40 Fundamental thesis, antithesis and synthesis . 42 Diremption of philosophy into Theoretical and' Practical 46 Relation of Fichte's three funduiijental proposi- tions to the philosophy of Kant .... 47 And to the Logic of Hegel . ... . . 50 The Psychology of Fichte . . . * , . 60 Stages of knowledge: sensation, perception, im- agination, understanding, judgment, reason 53 Practical Reason as the ultimate exp' ^ion of reality ... ... . '. . . 59 Porsnnality and Morality . . . . . . 61 Critical estimate of Fichte*s earlier philosophy 64 CONTKNTS. Vii CHAPTER III. 8CHELLIK0 8 EARLIER TREATISES. 70 71 78 Schelling's first work, The Possihility of a Form of Philosophy in General^ deduces the categories of quality and modality from Fichte*s fundamental propositions In The I as Principle of Philoaophy, the ab- solute and the finite Ego are strongly opposed, subject and object coordinated, and the world viewed as manifesting unconscious reason . The Philosophical Letters on Dogmatism and Criticism regards the existence of an "ob- jective" God as an un verifiable hypothesis, and conceives the absolute as the unrealisable goal of man^s strivings Essays in explanation of Idealism: (1) Space and Time modes of the self-activity of intelli- gence; (2) The Kantians err by confusing the logical opposition of Subject and Object with their actual separation; (3) The essence of Spirit is infinite self-limitation .... Schelling's Philosophy of Nature connected with Kant's Anfangsgriinde der Natur- wissenschaft and Kritik der Urtheilskraft . In the Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature the various phenomena of the material world are deduced from the nature of Perception and Sensation 92 The treatise On the World Soul reduces all 84 90 ▼lii COHTBNTS. the phenomena of nature to a single force manifesting itself in two opposite directions 94 In the First Outline of the Philosophy of Nature Schelling maintains nature to be Ml eternal process of self •limitation ... 96 CHAPTER IV. THE PROBLEM OF TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM. Schelling*s gradual separation from Fichte . 98 Philosophy of Nature and Transcendental Idealism two coordinate disciplines, the former dealing with the totality of objects and the latter with the totality of conscious acts 100 Criticism of philosophical dogmatism . . . 101 Intellectual Perception as the organ of phi- losophy . . 102 Method of Transcendental Idealism . . . 104 A single first principle necessary .... 105 \/ That principle pure self-consciousness . . . 106 And is self-evident 107 Distinction and relation of consciousness and self-consciousness . 110 Problem of Theoretical Philosophy: How do subject and object seem to be independent of each other? 112 The three "epochs'* or stages of knowledge . 114 CONTENTS. ix CHAPTER V. ^y THEORETICAL PHIL080PIIT. First stage of knowledge: from sensation to perception 115 Sensation an immediate feeling of necessity . 115 Not the product of something out of relation to intelligence 117 But of the first self-limitation of intelligence . 118 As such it excludes all reflection . . . .119 Failure of dogmatism to account for it . . 120 Perception the explicit opposition of subject and object, or the consciousness of a real world of matter 121 Dogmatic materialism does not account for the consciousness of reality 122 Perception the act in which the ideal self con- templates the real self as limited . . . 122 The objective world seems to be independent of intelligence because the relation of the ideal to the real self is not made explicit . . . 124 The perception of its own contrary activities by intelligence yields as product the forces of matter, the synthesis of which is gravity . 124 Second stage of knowledge: from perception to reflection 125 The distinction of internal and external per- ception 125 The feeling of self given in the perception of time 12G CONTENTS. Consciousness of an external object given in the perception of space 128 Inner and outer world correlative .... 128 The object as an extensive quantity is substance, as intensive quantity it is accident . . .129 Substance presupposes causality and both reci- procity 129 All substances are in reciprocal causation . 132 The knowledge of such substances a process in which the idea of the world as a unity is con- tinuously specified for the individual intelli- gence .*....... . . 133 Distinction of absolute and finite intelligence . 136 F*erception of the world as organized and of the various phases of organization .... 138 Third stage of knowledge : from reflection to will . 139 Schelling's development of the Kantian doc- trine of the categories, schemata and prin- ciples of judgment 139 The apparent opposition of intelligence and nature 140 Tne opposition explained from the nature of abstraction . 141 Conception as the product of abstraction . . 142 Judgment the union of conception and per- ceived object by means of the schema . . . 143 Transcendental abstraction, the categories and the transcendental schema ...... 143 True relation of conception and perception ex- plained from the nature of reflection . . 144 CONTENTS. XI The distinction of a prion and a posteriori purely relative 147 Distinction or non-distinction of inner and outer sense accounts for the character of the mathematical and dynamical categories re- spectively . . .. . . •. • . • • 147 Reduction of Kant^s categories to those of relation 140 Transition to practical philosophy . . . .150 CHAPTER VI. PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. The ultimate explanation of intelligence as knowing found in intelligence as will . .152 Contrast of the original act of self-consciousness and the act of self-determination . . . 153 Why is will apparently limited to specific objects? 155 Will the condition of individuality . . . 157 How do I obtain a knowledge of other intelli- gences besides myself, and seem to be acted upon by them? . . 157 The knowledge of nature as independent of the individual consciousness also explainv^'d from the nature of will . . . . . . . 161 Relation of will to perceived objects . . . 162 The idea and the ideal 163 Impulse the feeling of opposition between the ideal and the external world 165 Xll CONTENTS. The realization of will in the objective world a change in the perceptions of the willing agent 165 ' Action must therefore conform to the laws of nature, i.e., to the laws of intelligence as perceptive 171 Opposition of will and impulse .... 172 Freedom as identification with the moral law . 173 Happiness the coincidence of natural impulse and moral law 174 Justice the law of free beings 175 History the union of will and law as realized in perpetual progress 177 The goal of human history the complete reve- lation of God 179 CHAPTER VII. TELEOLOGT AND ART. Teleology the final solution of the problem of philosophy: Schelling's debt to Kant . . 181 Organisms are under mechanical law, and yet must be explained by the idea of final cause: imperfection of hylicism and conscious teleo- logy 183 Difference between Kant and Schelling on the question of immanent teleology .... 186 Art as the actual unity of the conscious and unconscious 187 coNTEirre. Xlll Contrast of the products of art and the organ- ized products of nature 188 Art as the organ of philosophy 189 CHAPTER VIII. THE SYSTEM OF IDENTITY. Main value of the Transcendental Idealism its application of the idea of process or develop- ment 191 Its general imperfection a want of systematic completeness . . 193 1. Schelling errs in coordinating Nature and Intelligence, instead of subordinating the former to the latter, but his view is a step in advance of Fichte^s subjective idealism . . 196 2. He wrongly conceives of Intelligence as in itself a negative infinite, but he also rightly regards it as an infinite process .... 201 3. Metaphysic and Psychology not clearly dis- tinguished, but the phases of subjective spirit well characterized 203 4. Mistake of subordinating Theoretical to Prac- tical Intelligence 205 5. Art not a true synthesis of the conscious and ' the unconscious 206' Schelling's System of Identity the logical result . of his previous speculations 208 Reason as the Absolute Identity of Intelligence XIV CONTENTS. and Nature, their difference being purely quantitative . • . 209 Fichte's criticism of the System of Identity rela* tively valid, but fails to do justice to the truth it contains 214 CHAPTER IX. SCHELLINO'S LATER PHILOSOPHY. Mysticism of Schelling's later speculation . . 218 Philosophy and Religion the link between the System of Identity and the "Positive" Philosophy ... .... . .219 Summary of the Enquiries into the Nature of Human Freedom 220 Not the Pantheism of Spinoza but his Realism is destructive of Individuality and Freedom . 220 Relation of Schelling to BOhmen .... 222 Possibility of evil not inconsistent with the per- sonality of God 223 Existence of evil due to the necessary self- revela- tion of God 226 Freedom a choice of good and evil in a timeless act 227 God not the author of evil, but evil a stage in the realization of good 228 The Philosophy of Mythology and the Philoso- phy of Revelation exhibit the self-revelation of God in the successive stages of the religious consciousness 229 eONTBNTS. XV Religion as the Positive Philosophy . . . 230 Criticism of the later philosophy of Scbelling 232 CHAPTER X. CONCLUDING REMARKS. Contrast of the first and last stages of Schel- ling's speculations 237 Comparison of the first stage with English Em- piricism and with the Critique of Pure Reason 238 Imperfection of the second phase of Schelling's speculations . . . . . . . . . 244 That imperfection arose from following the letter of Kant's "Dialectic" 247 Unsatisfactoriness of the last phase of Schel- ling's speculations, and its sources . . . 249 Hegel the true follower of Kant .... 250 SCHELLING'S TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM. CHAPTER I. THE PHILOSOPHY OP KANT. . TnVERYBODY is familiar with the saying of -*-^ Hegel, that Schelling "carried on his philo- sophical education before the public, and signalized each fresh stage of his advance by a new treatise." The essential truth of this criticism it would be vain to deny, but perhaps it suggests to the ordi- nary reader a lack of coherence and continuity, with which Schelling is not justly chargeable. Perpetual change, both in the substance and the form of his philosophy, there is, but it is the change of one who cannot stand still because he is the continual recipi- ent of fresh light, which he cannot avoid communi- cating to others. The phases of Schelling's philo- sophical faith may be regarded as three : first, the period of " storm and stress," in which, in harmony with Fichte's earlier philosophy, he refused to admit the reality of any Supreme Being other than the moral order of the world, as revealed to the indi- vidual in the idea of a moral perfection to which BCHBLLINO'S TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM. man can only approximate, and in the struggle to- ward which his true life consists ; secondly, the stage at which man and nature are regarded as two coordinate manifestations of a single activity, that is revealed in each with equal fulness and perfec- tion; and, lastly, the crowning stage, in which an attempt is made to prove the personality of God, while preserving the freedom and the moral respon- sibility of man maintained in the earlier stages. The mere mention of these three phases will sug- gest what is the truth, that there is no break in the continuity of Schelling's philosophy. In his first period Schelling does indeed deny the reality of what he calls an " objective God," by which he meant what Mr. Matthew Arnold has called a "magnified and non- natural man in the next street"; but he may be said to catch a glimpse of the glory of God in the ideal of infinite moral per- fection, and at any rate he has grasped with perfect clearness the principle of human freedom, however blind he may be to its ultimate implications. In the second stage, without letting go the freedom and responsibility of man, he has discovered that Nature is the expression of a rational process, in some sense the obverse of the process of human knowledge and action, and hence that man and Nature are alike manifestations of something not themselves. In THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT. 8 the third stage, Schelling seeks to gather up all the elements of trutli already discovered, and to fuse them in the perfect unity of a personal God. The philosophy of Schelling is thus itself an example of a lawr upon which he insists, that man moves on toward a goal which he only sees in a dim and imperfect way. It must, however, be added that Schelling saw much more clearly the problems which demand solution, than how to solve them. His philosophy is in large measure a failure ; but then it is one of those failures that are more significant than the petty successes of others. It would be hazardous to say that Hegel, with Kant and Aristotle, not to speak of Spinoza and Leibnitz, to stimulate his own marvellous insight, could not have dispen^'^d with the assistance of Fichte and Schelling ; but this at least may be admitted, that without them he would have found his task a much harder one. The inter- est in the philosophy of Schelling is thus twofold : firstly, as a record of the intellectual development of a singularly gifted mind, and, secondly, as form- ing the transition from Kant to Hegel through Fichte. The Transcendental Idealism is one of Schel- ling's many attempts to present the Critical Phi- losophy of Kant in a form less inadequate than that in which it was given to the world by its schelling'h transcbxdbntal idbambm. founder. With the Wiaaemchaftmlehi'f. of Fichte it is connected in the way of direct affiliation, as it is itself in turn the philosophical progenitor of Hegel's Phwnomenologie des Geistea ; or rather, as Schel- ling read Kant with the eyes of Fichte as well as with his own, so Hegel studied Kant to all the more advantage that he had profited by the disci* pline imparted to him by Fichte and Schelling. The great problems of man's beliefs, conduct, and destiny, which have exercised so great a fascination over men^s minds in all ages, receive from Kant that peculiar illumination which it is the glory of philo- sophical genius to cast upon them. What can we know ? What ought we to do ? What may we hope ? To these old questions Kant's thoughts were irresistibly drawn, and the answers which he gave to them, imperfect as in some ways they were, have already changed, and are destined still further to change, the whole system of beliefs which have slowly grown up through the ages. This revolu- tion has taken place because Kant, in virtue of his speculative endowment and his ethical enthusiasm, could not be content with the answers which had come down from the past. Every belief, however venerable, must show to him its right to exist, or be calmly and firmly set aside. Whether there is any God but Nature, whether man's actions are purely meclianical or are free, whether this life is the be-all and end-all, — these questions above all ^ must be submitted to the severest tests of reason, \ and must be answered without regard to men's individual hopes or fears. At the same time, no 6ne ever had less of the purely sceptical temper than Kant, the temper which is content to marshal the arguments for and against the beliefs of men, without seeking for new principles to be put in pla^e of the old. Kant never swerved from the conation that Reason must be able to solve the problems which it has itself raised ; and it makes one impatient to find his large, calm vision con- founded with the intellectual indolence or vanity which regards no solution as the only one possible. Philosophical criticism meant for Kant, as for his idealist followers, a demolition of the idols of the age, but not less the erection in their stead of new forms of truth and beauty. Like all the masters in philosophy, Kant's speculations were prompted and guided by the necessity laid upon him to seek for an explanation of the foundations of morality and religion. But he sobn found that, to arrive at any satisfactory conclusion, it was first necessary to de- termine how far knowledge was possible. The free- dom of the human will, the immortality of the soul, and the existence of God, were beliefs tenaciously ? ^ N|v7lr4^ RCIlELLINa'8 TRAN8CENDRNTAL IDBALinM. held or flippantly denied; but neither the dogmatist nor the sceptic seemed to him to have any rational and inexpugnable ground for the belief that was in him, but rather held it as an unreasoned conviction. Was there, then, any rational principle by which those questions might be at once and forever resolved? This at least seemed to Kant self-evident, that if our edifice of belief is to rest on a rock, and to be too strongly built to be carried away when the floods come and the winds blow and beat upon it, we must, before asserting the reality of anything supersensi- ble, begin by asking what it is that constitutes the strength and stability of that knowledge of common objects and common fasts which no one can seriously call in question. Of the truths of every-day life, the mathematical and physical sciences and history, — the facts of experience, in a word, — no one has yet been sceptical, however sceptical he may have been of a supersensible world beyond experience. Let us, then, find out the secret of their reality, and we shall probably be able to decide whether, and how far, the world beyond the senses is worthy of our credence. What, then, is experience? and how do we come to get knowledge by means of it ? It has almost universally been taken for granted that whatever is known by experience exists full- formed and complete before it is experienced, and TIIK rillLOSOPIlY OP KANT. that knowledge consists in the passive apprehension of this ^ireKxistent world of objects. But closer consideration .^hows this supposition to be self-con* tradictory, and incompatible with the facts supposed to be thus passively mirrored in the mind. A fact is something very different from the immediate apprehension at a given moment of a particular object or event; it is something that exists not merely when we apprehend it, but before and after that apprehension, — something therefore which is not particular, but universal. " Water rusts iron": here is a proposition which asserts the invariable, real or necessary connection of two phenomena, not simply their connection so long as they are present to the senses. In every fact something universal is implied, or every fact is an instance of a law. Ad- mitting, therefore, that the particular phenomenon is nothing for us apart from sense, but is given to us by sense, we must still hold that the latv is not so given. But how can law be imposed upon nature by our minds? Only upon the supposition that hature is not, as we at first suppose, something exist- ing apart from all relation to conscious beings, but something that exists only for such beings. Of course we do not create nature, but we constitute it as it is for us. What nature apart from us may be, we cannot possibly tell. The nature which we 8 schelling's transcendental idealism. know is made by the action of our thought upon the J^J!12^JjLl material supplied by the senses. And since the facts which we know are not isolated or random affections, but form a cosmos, we must regard experience as made for us by the subordination of all the particu- iLl^ ***i^ lars of sense to univejsal laws belonging to the very ***^2^ * ^lature of our intelligence as self-conscious. *'V^'**r '^ Thus the universal judgments which form the warp of experience are capable of being explained l^'j^^i^t'^1^ accordance with the conditions under which only our intellectual life can be carried on. There belong to our intellect certain functions of thought, or categories, which take hold of whatever units of sense may be presented to them and form the world of experience familiar to us all. In every single bit of experience thought is implied as reducing the thronging crowd (GewUhl) of impressions to order by bringing them under the supreme unity of a single self. The inquiry into the constitution of nature has led to the quite unexpected result that the univer- sal notions or categories — unity, substance, cause, etc. — which form the very soul, so to speak, of na- ture, exist for us only because we are sdf-con- scious. Thus, if we abstract in thought from those categories, nature becomes unthinkable, or drops back into the chaos of mere impressions from which I THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT. the activity of thought had rescued it. The next and more important question is, whether the prob- lem as to the existence of supersensible realities has become any easier for us now that we have discovered the conditions of sensible experience. This is a much harder problem than the other. That we have a knowledge of a world in space and time no one can doubt, even prior to an exhibition by philosophy of the elements implied in the knowl- edge of it as real ; but that over and above this world there are existences which are not in time or space seems at first sight problematical enough. For how can we know anything of realities that ex hypothesi are not in space and time, and so give us nothing definite to which we can apply those universal conceptions, by the employment of which detached impressions of sense emerge as universal laws? Can we, for example, say that in its true essence the soul is something not directly known, but only inferred from the successive modifica- tions or manifestations of it? How can we, in accordance with the conditions of knowledge, be certain that there is a God, who, if he exists, must be independent of the forms of space and time? How, in short, can there be any knowledge at all of the supersensible, which by its very nature must be out of space and time, and so incapable 10 schelling's transcendental idealism. of being known, so far, at least, as we have yet seen? Assuming for a moment that there actu- ally is a supersensible world, what can we know of it? Is it definable as a magnitude? Evidently not, for the term " magnitude " has absolutely no meaning for us unless we realize in thought the actual process by which an object is known as an extensive quantity, — unless, in other words, we represent it as generated in time by the suc- cessive addition of unit to unit. We speak of a color, a sound, or a taste, as having a certain degree of intensity; can we affirm the like of the supersensible? Impossible, for that which has degree must be represented as filling a given moment of time with an intensity somewhere be- tween zero and infinity. But at least the super- sensible may be defined as a substance or a cause ? Is not the soul a substance, and God a cause? At first, no doubt, they seem to be so, but an inquiry into the conditions of knowledge has shown us that a substance or cause not in time is quite incapable of being known. A substance, as we know it, is something that does not pass away with the mo- ments of time as they come one by one, but persists through time; whereas the supersensible is that which, if known at all, must be known as not in time. A cause, again, so far as our experience goes. THE PHILOSOPHY OP KANT. 11 is something which, as the condition of a certain change of state which follows it, must be in time and therefore be itself a change of state; the super- sensible would therefore cease to be supersensible were it in time, while on the other hand as out of time it cannot be known as a cause. From all this it seems plain enough that what- ever cannot be " schematized " — represented, that is, as conforming to the process by which the defi- nite or concrete becomes a possible object in time — cannot be knotvn in the sense in which we speak of knowing anything by experience. Shall we, then, at once conclude that the whole of knowable existence is exhausted in the world of sense, and that the existence of any supersensible reality is utterly incapable of being established? By no means; all that we are entitled to say is, that super- sensible realities, if there are such, are not capable of being " schematized," do not admit of the appli- cation to them of the categories, and can never become objects of actual sensible experience. Our inquiry into the conditions of knowledge has, so far as the supersensible is concerned, yielded only a negative result. But this result must not be regarded as worthless; it at least enables us to see that to the supersensible world, if such a world exists at all, the schematized categories have no 12 SCHELLINO's TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM. application. We cannot say, for example, that the soul, supposing it to be something diflferent from its manifestations, is a cause in the sense in which we say that a sensible phenomenon is the cause or condition of a change in nature ; for to do so would be to represent the soul as one of a series of sensi- ble phenomena, and therefore to deny its super- sensible nature. Nor can we speak of God as either a substance or a cause, since in that case he would be conditioned or dependent on something else, and would therefore cease to be God. It is not meant by this that there are supersensible realities — that yet remains to be determined,- — but only that, if there are such, they must not be brought under the categories or be regarded as objects limited in space and time. Our next question must therefore be, whether there is anything to lead to the conclusion that there are supersensible realities, and if so, what relation these bear to the sensible realities indubitably known to us. Intelligence in its application to the sensible world is concerned only with the relations of particulars to one another. Given a certain change, for example, and the understanding directs us to seek for its cause or condition in some precedent state of nature. But, besides this knowledge of the relations of par- ticular objects or events to one another, we find our- THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT. 18 selves impelled by Reason to seek, not merely for a definite condition for a given phenomenon, but to seek for all the conditions of it. The understanding is satisfied when it has found the special condition; Reason is not satisfied, but seeks for that which, as the complete totality of con- ditions, is not itself conditioned at all. And as an unconditioned totality is evidently incapable of be- ing made an object of sensible experience, it is so. far merely an idea, useful in prompting the under- standing to seek always for a prior condition of every phenomenon, but incapable, from the nature of the case, of ever becoming an object of experience. It supplies a rule for the understanding, but it does not, so far as we can yet see, add anything to our knowledge; it is regulative, not constitutive. We must therefore be exceedingly careful not to identify an idea of Reason with the knowledge of an actual "object" corresponding to it. That identification, however, has unwittingly been made by all those who have maintained that we actually have a know- ledge of supersensible realities, in the same way in which we have a knowledge of sensible or phenome- nal things. Hence the supposed sciences of Rational Psychology, the science of the soul in itself, Rational Cosmology, the science of the world as a whole, and Rational Theology, the science of God in his inner 14 schelling's transcendental idealism. nature. It has already been pointed out that the houl as a supersensible reality cannot be an object of experience, since it cannot be determined by any category without being represented as in time, and so as sensible or phenomenal. Those, therefore, who assert, on the one hand, that the soul is a supersensi- ble reality, and, on the other hand, that it is a sub- stance, simple, self-identical, and relative to possible objects in space and time, really make the soul at once sensible and supersensible, and thus fall into a manifest paralogism. If the soul is a substance, it is simply a part of the sensible world, and therefore not unconditioned, but conditioned: if it is uncondi- tioned, it is not a substance. Similarly, the world, as a complete whole, is confused by the Rational Cosraologist with the conditioned or limited phe- nomena which alone are actually known in expe- rience; that is to say, a pure idea of Reason is identi- fied with a supposed object of experience. It is no wonder, therefore, that the Rational Cosmologist finds himself maintaining mutually contradictory propo- sitions. Take, for example, the quantitative deter- mination of the woi'ld of experience. On the one hand, it is said that the world had an absolute begin- v ning in time and is limited in s;>acf;, while, on the other hand, it is maintained that it never began io be and has no limit in space. Either of these THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT. 15 propositions may be proved with equal cogency if we assume that the partial determination of the world by the understanding is the same thing as the complete determination of it, as it exists in the idea of Reason. But the moment we see that the idea of Reason is not capable of being presented as an actual object of experience, we discover that both proposi- tions are false. We cannot say that the world began to exist at some point of time or has existed from all eternity, because we can represent objects as quantitative only by "schematizing" them, i.e. by representing them as in time, which itself is capable of being represented only as a never-ending series. To know the world as complete in time is impossible; and equally impossible is it to know the world as necessarily incomplete in time; the only knowledge we have is of a series of conditions, which is never complete, but which, under the guiding idea of. Reason, we perpetually seek to complete. Turning now to the dynamical relations of things, we find the Rational Cosmologist again falling into self- contradiction. Thus it is held, on the one hand, that all things are connected by the law of natural causation, and, on the other hand, that there must be a sort of cause that is not necessitated, but free. Now the truth is that, while each of these proposi- tions is as susceptible of proof as the other, neither IG SCHELLINO'S TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM. is true so long as we suppose both to apply to the world as it is in itself, while both may be true on the supposition that the one applies to the phenomenal and the other to the noumenal world. To this point we shall immediately return. In the meantime we may look at Kant's criticism of Rational Theology. What course that criticism will take may be readily anticipated. The three arguments for the existence of a Supreme Being, who is the source of all reality, are held to be reducible, ultimately, to one — the ontological, which reasons from the conception to the actual existence of a Supreme Being. This argument really contains a fallacy similar to that implied in identifying the self, as known in sensible consciousness, with a supposed supersensible self. However necessary the idea of a Supreme Being may be as an ideal of Reason, giving satisfaction to the demand for perfect unity in knowledge, we cannot take this ideal as a proof of the reality of a Being corresponding to it. That such a Being exists is not impossible, but it is impossible that he can ever be known, since that would imply that he had become an object of con- tingent experience, and thus had ceased to be un- conditioned or supersensible. Practical reason may, and, as a matter of fact, Kant asserts emphatically that it does, establish the reality of a Supreme THE PHILOSOPHY OF Ka 17 Being, as well as the freedom of the human will and the immortality of the soul : but in no possible way can it be shown that any of the ideas of Reason have within the realm of actual knowledge other than a regulative use. We must, then, go on to ask what is the relation of Theoretical and Practical Reason. This question cannot be better answered than by a careful statement of the solution of the problem as to the relation of natural and free causation, to which we promised to return. It has already ap- peared that the seeming contradiction of natural and free causation can only be solved by drawing a distinction between the sensible and the supersensi- ble world, and refusing to attempt to determine the latter in the same way in which we determine the former. In his further discussion of this vexed question, Kant's aim is to show that the physical law of causality may perhaps be reconciled with the existence of a free causality, and that, looked at from the proper point of view, neither is contra- dictory of the other. No solution of the problem can for a moment be entertained which tries to weaken the universal validity of the law of cause and effect in nature. Any such attempt is fore- doomed to failure, since a denial of natural causa- tion carries with it logically the downfall of experi- 8 18 HCII£LLlNO*8 TRAN8CRNDKNTAL IDKALIHM. ence as a connected whole, including the facts and laws of the special sciences. Every change of state whatever must have a cause or condition without which it could not be. And this is just as true of human actions as of the mechanical movements of material bodies. If we could trace baclc the actions of men to their source, we should be able to see that they invariably follow the law of natural causation. An unmotived act is a mere absurdity. Any viola- tion of that law, either in the real in of matter or of mind, would be destructive of the whole of experi- ence. On the other hand, there is a manifest dis- tinction in the manner of causation between the actions of man and the unconscious or mechanical sequences, according to Anch the changes of ma- terial bodies or the acts of the lower animals take place. The former are purely mechanical, the latter are not. A billiard-ball when struck must move; an animal follows its immediate instincts: man, however, does not invariably follow the promptings of his immediate desires, but may subordinate them to some end set up by his reason. Hence we have the conviction that we are under a law of freedom. The question is whether this conviction can be philosophically justified. The ordinary method of solution, which consists in denying that the law of natural causation applies to human acts — the so- THE PHILOSOPHY OF KANT. called "liberty of indifference," or liberty to act apart from or contrary to motives — is no solution at all. Is any other solution possible ? Reason, as we have seen, sets up the idea of an unconditioned causality, — a causality that does not form a mere link in the chain of natural causa- tion, but is quite independent of it. If there is a causality of this kind, which can be shown to be not incompatible with the prevalence of natural law, the way will be left open for a positive solution of the problem of human freedom, — a solution which can only be given when we come to consider reason as practical, — that is, as setting up a purely intelli- gible world of moral laws. At present we cannot do more than show that free and natural causality may possibly coexist. When we ask whether the world has had a begin- ning in time or has existed from all eternity, we forget that a third supposition is possible, namely, that the sensible world is merely what it seems to us to be, and does not exist except in relation to our faculty of perception. Hence we do not, in solving the difficulty, need to suppose any super- sensible or intelligible world, but have only to draw attention to the fact that the world-in-itself is a mere idea, set up by reason, of a complete series of conditions,— an idea which, from the nature of 20 8CIIELLING*8 TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM. the ease, can never be realized, since every indefi- nitely extensible quantitative series is by its nature incapable of being completely summed up, and yet compels us to seek for its complete summation. But when we seek for the unconditioned in the case of causality, it is quite possible to conceive — nay, rea- son compels us to suppose — that there may be a kind of causality which is not conditioned, but un- conditioned. In our ordinary notion of freedom, as action according to an end prescribed by reason, this supposition of a causality which does not itself form a link in the chain of causes and effects in nature, is tacitly assumed. While, therefore, every cause actually known by us as an object of experi- ence is itself an effect presupposing a prior cause, it is not impossible that there may be another sort of causality which is not an object of sensible ex- perience, and therefore is not itself an effect. Such a cause, it is true, as supersensible, can never be- come an actual object of " experience," for in that case it would cease to be supersensible; but it may nevertheless be indisputably proved to be real. A causality of this kind would be unconditioned, and would not enter into the series of causes and eflFects known to us as in time. It might initiate a series of conditions presenting themselves in the world of sense, and yet might not itself be initiated. Sup- THE rillLOMOFIlY OP KANT. n posing, then, that there are two distinct kinds of causality — a causality which, us the condition of a change of state in the sensible world, is itself con- ditioned, and a causality that is the supreme condi- tion of a certain series of states in the world of sense, but is not itself a member of that series — how may these be shown to be not destructive of one another? To this question, Kant, as I under- stand him, would answer in |his way. My acts, looked at simply as objects of experience, belong to the phenomenal world, and so far come under the law that every phenomenal event must have a phenomenal cause. But reason, in so far as it is practical, takes me out of this merely phenome- nal world, and sets before me certain ends which it pronounces to be binding upon all rational be- ings. Thus there rises up before me a world dis- tinct from that which presents itself to me, in so far as I simply contemplate events as in time. Sup- pose now that I act in accordance with the ends prescribed by reason, will my acts then cease to be conformable to the law of natural causation? By no means. The man who obeys the law to do jus- tice to all' men does not therefore act in violation of the law cf aatural causation, that every event must have its condition in the phenomenal world. The difference between him and the immoral man 22 SCIIKLLING^S TUAN8CKNDENTAL IDKALISM. who steals liis neighbor's i>roperty is not. that the acts of the one come under tiie law of causality and the acts of the other do not, but that from the point of view of the moral law the one acts freely and the other does not. Freedom means conform- ity to the pure idea of Duty, not action contrary to motives. When I act in accordance with that idea, I initiate a series of acts from an idea of Reason; but these acts, looked at simply as follow- ing in time on volition, are an instance of the law of natural causality, that every event as condi- tioned is relative to another event as its condition. Kant, in other words, in distinguishing between free and natural causation, virtually says that the category of causality, in the sense in which it holds of sensible phenomena, is inadequate to express the character of the actions of man as originating from a regard for moral law. That his mode of pre- sentation is open to objection should not blind us to the essential truth for which he is contending, that from the point of view of man as a moral being, freedom is not only possible, but is not in- compatible with the law of natural causation. In what has just been said we have to some ex- tent anticipated the result of Kant's criticism of the Practical Reason, to which attention must now be directed. In the Critique of Pure Reason it has TIIK PIIILOBOI'IIY OP KANT. 23 been maintained that no knowledge of supersensible realities can be obtained, sinco such knowledge always implies a process of determining objects in time, whilst the supersensible is necessarily free from the limits of time. We have now to see how Kant would show from the nature of the practical reason that man is free and the heir of immor- tality, and that God exists. The central idea from which he starts is that of Freedom, which has already been shown to be at least possible. That we have the consciousness of a moral law is a fact which admits of no dispute; it is given to us in the contrast of what is and what ought to he. Were there no conception of the moral law we should never become conscious of freedom; while on the other hand, were there no freedom there could be no realization of the moral law. The pure idea of Duty and the idea of Freedom necessarily imply each other. That this pure idea is originated en- tirely by reason is evident from the fact that it cannot be derived from any observation of the facts of experience, not even from an observation of the sequence of our own acts on motives. Ex- perience can tell us what actually takes place, but it cannot set before us an intelligible world in which men might act quite differently from the way in which they do act. Thus we get the notion 24 SCH£LLING*S TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM. of a world in which all men should act purely according to ends prescribed by reason. As a matter of fact iiien do not so act. The natural desires prompt them to foL'aw inclination rather than reason, and thus a conflict arises between the law of Reason and the law of Desire. Hence it is that the moral law presents itself as obliga- tory — as a command to act according to reason, not according to desire; and that any swerving from the law of duty destroys the morality of an act. To do one's duty is therefore to act from reason : to follow inclination is to cease to be moral. But while to be moral our acts must take place in complete independence of all natural de- sire, it does not follow that to act freely is to act without regard for law. True freedom is that which consists in willing the moral law. When I act from the idea of duty I am free, and freedom of will is therefore identical with willing the idea of duty. The answer, then, to the question " What ought I to do?" is this: "Do that which will make thee worthy of happiness." This is a very different thing from saying " Do that which will bring thee happiness." Action regulated by the latter maxim is not moral, but rests upon self-love; for to seek for happiness is to act simply from a desire for the satisfaction of our natural inclinations, and all ac- THE PHILOSOPHY OP KANT. 25 tion so determined is incompatible with freedom. But, supposing action to be regulated purely by the idea of duty or a regard for moral law, will hap- piness as a matter of fact follow? It need hardly be said that it does not follow in this world. If, indeed, all men at all times acted in accordance with the idea of duty, we might say that happiness would be the lot of all, for free or moral action naturally tends to produce happiness. But a world in which all men on all occasions act morally is a mere idea, which can never be realized so long as man has a twofold nature, prompting him, on the one hand, to follow desire and, on the other, setting before him a pure moral law. We can only hope for the realization of such an idea, if a supreme reason is held to exist. A state of things, in which happiness is exactly proportionate to moral worth, is only conceivable in a world ruled over by a wise and good Author. Such a world, ruled over by such a Being, reason compels us to postulate, although it is not susceptible to the senses, nor can ever become an object of our experience. Thus, as it seems to Kant, we can see that the moral law must be obeyed, whether happiness may in this world follow in its train or no, while vet the divorce between desire and reason, virtue and happiness, inevitably leads to the certainty of a 26 schelling's transcendental idealism. Supreme Being and of a future life. And having established the existence of a Supreme Being, we can now determine with certainty that which to reason in its speculative aspect was at best prob- lematical. The world of nature as ruled c er by a single Supreme Being must be viewed as in some sense a manifestation of Infinite Intelligence, and hence as adapted to the realization of our moral nature. Accordingly the study of nature tends to assume the form of a teleological S3'stem in which all things are adapted to one supreme end. True, we cannot say that we comprehend the nature of God absolutely as he is, or that we are abstractly right in conceiving of nature as a system adapted to ends, but we are entitled to make the nature of God intelligible to ourselves by analogies drawn from the world of experience, and practically to view all things as forming a system presided over by an all-wise, all-perfect and all-powerful Being. The world of sense thus becomes for us a " sensu- ous symbol " of that higher world which is half- revealed and half-concealed from us. Knowing only in part, we can but laboriously spell out, from indications in the world of sense, what seem to be the designs of the Infinite Mind, but we have the satisfaction of knowing that all things work to- gether for good to those who obey the moral law, \ THE PHILOSOPHY OP KANT. 27 and to those who, in the interrogation of nature, are willing to spend themselves and to be spent. The former have a certificate of Reason that worthi- ness to be happy will ultimately bring happiness; the latter, freed from the danger of an " indolent " or " perverted " reason, know that in the careful examination of experience they are following the only path which can lead to the better comprehen- sion of Nature, Mind, and God. CHAPTER II. THE EARLIER PHILOSOPHY OP FICHTE. "CpVEN from the hurried summary of the Criti- -^-"^ cal Philosoph}'^ given in the preceding chap- ter, it must be evident to the reader that Kant regards Will, or Practical Reason, as constituting in a peculiar sense the essence of man. Were it possible for us to be purely contemplative beings, we should have no proper reason for regarding ourselves as free beings, or as destined to a higher life beyond the grave; nor should we have any proper reason for holding that the world mani- fests, however dimly and imperfectly, the unseen guidance of a Supreme Being. It is the revela- tion of moral law, as introducing us to an ideal world that ought to be, and ought to fashion the sensible world after its pattern, that enables us to learn what our true nature is and demands. Even in his account of the conditions of knowledge, however, Kant shows that his system, half uncon- sciously to himself, rests upon the conviction that the inner nature of intelligence is free activity real- izing itself through universal laws. Nature is not so much made for us as made by us. Intelligence, 28 THE EARLIER PHILOSOPHY OF FIGHTS. 29 it as the source of those universal conceptions which unite the material of sense in a connected system, is contrasted with sense as receptive, and is ex- pressly qualified as "spontaneous" and "active"; and the process by which the manifold of sense is determined in definite ways is a spontaneous ac- tivity of mind. That spontaneous activity is of the very essence of intelligence is implied in the " synthetical unity of self-consciousness," — that unity wh' h is the supreme condition of all knowl- edge that we can have. Free activity being thus, in Kant's view, regarded as the characteristic fea- ture of man as rational, it was only natural that Fichte, in seeking for a supreme principle from which a system of philosophy at once reasoned and true might be built up, should be led to start from the conception of man as self-conscious, active and free; and equally natural that his philosophy should explicitly formulate that subordination of theory to practice, of knowledge to morality, which had been in no obscure way indicated by Kant. Further reflection on the principle thus grasped, viewed in its relation to the Critical Philosophy as presented by its author, led to a simplification and restatement of it that at first sight makes it seem rather a new theory than a recast of the old. The aim of Kant was to prepare the way for 30 schelling's transcendental idealism. a philosophy that should hold nothing on suffer- ance. That which could be proved to be in ac- cordance with the necessary conditions of human knowledge and morality was alone to be admitted into the new and completely reasoned system. The principle was thoroughly sound, but even after all proper allowance has been made for numerous infelicities of statement, it cannot be said to have been thoroughly and consistently carried out to its issues. Even to state, and much more to trace to their source, all the instances in which Kant is untrue to that principle, is here impossible, but a few words may be said on the point by way of preparation for the understanding of the changes introduced by Fichte. Although, as has been said, Kant regards human intelligence as essentially active and spontaneous, he is not less certain that, so far as knowledge is concerned, it is active only in relation to the ma- terial of sense which is " given " to it. If it is asked, " given " by tvhat ? the answer of Kant is not by any means so clear as could be wished. Kant cer- tainly does not say that sensations are effects of a pre6xistent and independent " thing - in - itself," as those who study his philosophy only in part are apt to suppose; all that he says is, that our minds do not originate the particular element of knowledge, THE EARLIER PHILOSOPHY OF FICHTE. 31 but receive it from some other source. The state- ment is manifestly true, from the point of view of the individual man, and is little more than an ex- pression of the conviction — a conviction which Kant never dreams of questioning — that the objects which come before us, one by one, as parts of a real world, are not made 6// us, but revealed to us. At the same time, it must be admitted that here we have the irpioTov i/'sbdo'- of the Critical Philosophy. For Kant, even when he has defined the " thing-in-itself," as he afterward does, as a supersensible world, manifesting the presence of a Supreme Reason, re- gards both as hidden from us in their universal nature, by the necessary limitations of our minds, and as but dimly suggested by the world we know ; a view which, if taken literally, leads to the grave of all sound philosophy in the unknown and the unknowable. A similar mixture of truth and false- hood is implied in the view that space and time are forms of human perception, or at least of the percep- tions of all intelliorent beings who have a sensuous nature. In one aspect of it, the subjectivity of these "forms" draws attention to a truth which is simply an application of the principle of all true philoso- phy, the truth that space no less than time, and therefore all knowable objects in either or both, cannot be said to exist apart from their relation to 32 schelling's transcendental idealism. consciousness. In asserting that space and time belong to us as perceptive beings, Kant also meant to emphasize the truth, that the constitution of our minds, to be completely explained, must be brought into relation with the supersensible source of finite intelligence. Still further, his theory implies that the determination of objects, simply as in space and time, gives an imperfect and partial knowledge of things, and leaves, as problems to be solved, the true nature of the mind, the world and God. But while these points of view, taking hold ps they do of an aspect of truth of supremo importance, are all more or less implied in Kant, the view which is actually formulated by him, that space and time are mere modes of our perception, and hence that objects of perception are but phenomena, is not only unsatisfactory, but is inconsistent with the demand for a theory which shall fully explain how knowl- edge is possible. Not to prolong this criticism un- necessarily, it may be said, summarily, that in the limitation of the categories and schemata to human intelligence, and above all in the denial that in the principle of self-consciousness we reach a real knowl- edge of intelligence as it is in itself, Kant betrays a confusion of thought between two very different propositions: (1) that the finite intelligence, as such, requires ultimately to be explained by relation to THE EARLIER IMIlLOSOrilY OP FICllTE. 33 infinite intelligence, and (2) that human intelligence is by its very nature incapable of knowing things as they must present themselves to an intelligence free from all limitations. The first of these propo- sitions I regard as true, the second as false. For, while our intelligence necessarily implies relation to an infinite intelligence, it does not follow that the latter is in its essence different from ours, nor does it follow that the world which we know is not, when properly understood, the only world that there is to be known. An imperfection of a similar kind besets Kant's account of the Practical Reason. Between Reason and Desire, the " kingdom of nature " and the "kingdom of grace," he places an impassable gulf, and even his proofs of God and immortality suffer from the imperfect logic of his theory. On the other hand, the ideas of freedom, immortality and God are treated in a supremely suggestive way, and the direction in which the only possible solu- tions must be found is clearly marked out. It is unnecessary, however, at present, to speak of these points more at length, since Fichte here closely foiiows Kant, with the important and significant exception of the moral belief in a Supreme Reason existing apart from the ideal of such a reason in us. From what has been said it will be possible to make plain, in a few words, the way in which Fichte 8 84 SCHELLINO'S TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM. sought to develop Criticism into a system of philoso- phy. Starting from the conception of Reason, or the Ego as essentially active, he endeavors to show how knowledge and conduct may be explained, with- out, in any case, taking refuge in a conception incapable of verification. Hence he denies sum- marily that there are realities, supersensible or other, which can possibly exist or be known out of relation to reason. That the manifold or sensible is "given," he admits only in this sense, that when we look at knowledge as it exists for ordinary con- sciousness, without bringing it in relation to the practical originativeness of reason as manifested in will, the only test of reality which we have is the feeling of necessity, a compulsion to think -certain objects as real. Space and time, and the categories, again, are certainly modes in which the known world is determined by us, but they are also modes in which that world actually exists. The known world, however, can only be properly explained when it is brought into relation with reason as practical; then only is the mere feeling of compulsion, which is the empirical criterion of reality, seen to arise from the consciousness of self as willing. Only in willing do I become conscious of myself as active, that is. in my essential nature; and as the consciousness of self is the necessary condition of the consciousness of not- TUB £AKL1£R rUlLUSOrUY OF FlCllTE. 35 self, it is in will that I at once become aware of myself and of a not-self or real world contrasted with and yet relative to it. Reason is, therefore, the true " thing-in-itself," and hence Fichte, at least in the first stage of his philosophizing, with which only we have here to deal, does not admit that there is any supersensible reality but rer,son, as mani- fested in and to us, nor any God but the ideal of moral perfection, in the continual approximation to which the moral life of man consists. Whether, in discarding the supersensible as formulated by Kant, Fichte has not swept away the nobler part of his system, we shall afterward consider. Mean- time it will be advisable to give a statement of his philosophy, following rather more closely his own mode of statement, and entering somewhat more into detail. The moment we turn our thoughts to the con- tents of consciousness we find, says Fichte, that they divide up into two classes, — those which are accom- panied by a feeling of freedom, and those which are ac-ompanied by a feeling of necessity. To explain that class of ideas which is accompanied by the feel- ing of necessity, — to account, in other words, for experience, outer and inner, — is the problem of Philosophy. Now, to put forward any explanation of experience, it must be possible to rise above ex- 36 scuelling's transcendental idealism. perience so far as to make it, as a whole, an object of reflection, and this implies the faculty of abstracting from experience. Only two methods of explaining experience are logically possible, — that of dog- matism and that of idealism. According to ideal- ism, the explanation must be sought in intelligence in itself, as abstracted from all its relations to experience; according to dogmatism, the explana- tion must be sought in the thing-in-itself, as ab- stracted from the fact that it occurs in experience or is in consciousness. Now, there is a marked con- trast between the object of idealism and the ob- ject of dogmatism. Intelligence is neither a pure fiction nor an actual object or thing in experience; not the former, because even a pure fiction is freely produced by intelligence, and so presupposes intelligence; not the latter, because, while no ob- ject exists except for intelligence, the latter is not itself an object of experience in the ordinary sense of that term. The thing-in-itself, on the other hand, is a pure fiction, for, as beyond intelligence, it cannot be known at all. Thus the object of idealism and the object of realism are alike be- yond experience ; but they differ in this, that in- telligence is presupposed in all experience, while the thing-in-itself is at best a fiction set up by intelligence to account for experience. This does THE EARLIER PHILOSOPHY OP PICHTE. 37 not show that there is no thing-in-itself, but it raises a suspicion against it. ■ Neither of these systems can refute the other. Idealism cannot refute dogmatism. The idealist starts from the belief in free self-activity, but the dogmatist, in holding that all experience is to be explained by the action of an independent reality on consciousness, reduces that belief to an illusion, due, as Spinoza said, to a knowledge of our actions without a knowledge of their causes. Every dog- matist is necessarily a determinist and material- ist; the former because he makes free activity an illusion, and the latter because he explains intel- ligence as a mode of a thing-in-itself. Nor can dogmatism refute idealism. The basis, and the only basis, of dogmatism is the supposed necessity of explaining experience by a thing-in-itself. But if it can be shown that experience may be ex- plained by idealism, the whole structure built up by dogmatism falls to the ground. The insufficiency of dogmatism to explain actual experience may be easily shown. Intelligence is that which sees itself, or is at once object and subject; it, exists for itself and only for itself. If I think any object whatever, I must relate the object to myself. If the object is a mere inven- tion, I produce it for myself; if the object is real 38 sciielling's transcendental idealism. and independent of my invention, I contemplate it as it arises for me; but in either case the object as experienced exists only for me as intelligence, not for itself. A thing has no existence except for some intelligence. Hence, while intelligence is in its very nature dual, or at once ideal and real, the thing is only single or real; the former exists for itself, while the latter does not. On the one side, then, we have intelligence with its objects as referred to itself, and on the other side the thing-in-itself of the dogmatist, and there is no bridge from the one to the other. How does the dogmatist seek to connect them ? By the principle of causality. Intelligence with its objects he ex- plains as a product or effect of something which is out of relation to intelligence. But this is no expla- nation at all. Suppose a thing to act as cause on something else, and you have not advanced a single step in the explanation of intelligence. If the object acted upon is conceived as endowed with mechanical force, it will transmit the impression to another object, this to a third, and so along the chain of objects; but none of these objects comes thereby to be or exist for itself or to be conscious: it is acted upon, but it does not know itself as acted upon. Nay, endow your object with the highest property an object can be supposed to have, — the THE EARLIER PHILOSOPUY OF PICIITE. 39 -^ property of sensibility, — and it will not be excited to self-consciousness; it may react against an external stimulus, but it will not know itself as reacting. Thus conscious experience is not explained by the thing-in-itself, but simply ignored. All that we have is the mutual action of things on one another and the product of this action. A change in things is supposed to take place, but this change is nothing for experience, since experience implies conscious- ness. The dogmatist may say that the soul is one of the things-in-themselves, and in this way he may, no doubt, apply the category of cause and effect to it; but in so doing he has not explained experience, but simply put the soul among the fictions set up to explain it. Or, if it is said that the effect of the thing-in-itself — by whatever name it is called, matter or soul or God — is such as to produce con- sciousness, we have simply combined the idea of causality with intelligence without explaining any- thing, for the two ideas are perfectly distinct. Dogmatism thus fails to explain what it sets out to explain. Hence it is no philosophy at all, but an unthinkable absurdity. The moment we perceive the distinction between intelligence and mechanism, the whole attempt to explain the former by the lat- ter is seen to be in the literal sense preposterous. Only those who ignore intelligence can suppose that 40 schellixg's transcendental idealism. they have explained it by the hypothesis of things- in-themselves. Idealism explains the consciousness of objects from the activity of intelligence. Intelligence is purely active or self-determined, since it is that on which all else is to depend. It is not correct to say that it is a mode of being, for being implies the mutual action of things on one another, whilst on intelligence nothing can act, because nothing exists in knowledge but for it. It is not even something that acts, for that would imply that it exists prior to its activity. Now experience in its various mani- festations — the experience, for example, of a mate- rial world i^ space and time — is to be explained by the pure self-activity of intelligence, and hence intelligence must obey the laws originated by itself. This is the reason why the experience of objects is accompanied by the feeling of necessity. Intelli- gence can only act according to its own laws, and recognizing itself as determined by those laws, it feels itself restricted or limited in its nature. This conception of intelligence as acting according to the laws of its own nature is Transcendental or Criti- cal Idealism, as distinguished from a Transcendent Idealism, which supposes intelligence to act in a lawless or capricious way. In acting, intelligence manifests its laws, and these laws are all connected THE EARLIER PHILOSOPHY OP PICHTE. 41 together in a single system. How, then, are these laws discovered? Let any one think some object — say a triangle — and he will find by reflection that two things are implied: (1) The act of thinking, which is free or depends upon the will of the person thinking; and (2) the necessary manner in which that act can be realized. The latter is the law according to which thought acts, and which is revealed only by thinking freely. Thus the thinking is free, and yet it takes place according to a necessary law of thought. In this way a fundamental law of all thinking is discovered. But it can be shown by an examination of that law ' that a second act is implied in it, then that this act implies a third, and so on until all the acts on which the first depends are completed. If the presupposition of Idealism is sound, and the deduction has been correctly made, the results must harmonize with the laws of all experience. Thus Idealism proceeds from a fact of consciousness — which, however, is obtainable only by a free act of thinking — to the totality of laws of experience. It is not identical with experience, but it is when com- pleted a perfect picture of experience as a whole. Experience involves the cooperation of all the laws discovered by philosophy, not of any one of them in separation from the rest. The separate laws exist 42 schelling's transcendental idealism. only for the philosopher: they are merely ideal dis- tinctions, which he finds according to the method indicated. Those distinctions are, however, real laws, since they are discovered by contemplation of the manner in which intelligence necessarily acts. The fundamental principle, then, of the philoso- phy of Fichte is that of the self as an activity which returns upon itself. Let us now see how it may be formally established. It will be admit- ted by every one that there are in consciousness various objects. It is not asserted that such con- sciousness testifies to anything absolutely true, but only that there actually is a consciousness of objects. Let us suppose that we have in our empirical con- sciousness the perception or apprehension of the sensible object which we call a billiard-ball. Now, in philosophy we are not concerned, at least in the first instance, with the sensible properties by which one object is marked off and distinguished from other objects, but only with the relations of objects, whatever they may be, to consciousness. Expressed generally, therefore, our question is this: What is the relation of any o])ject whatever to consciousness ? We abstract from the various sensible properties of the billiard-ball, extension, roundness, solidity, etc., and in so doing we elimi- nate all that marks off the billiard-ball from other THE EARLIER PHILOSOPHY OP PICHTE. 43 objects of consciousness, and have as residue merely the consciousness of something, or of an object in general. For simplicity, let us term this something or object A. Now A is in consciousness. We do no* s?»' hat there is any real object — any object tu^i ex; apart from cons^. jusness, — but only that A is in consciousness. We affirm that if A is in consciousness, then it is in consciousness. The con- tent of this proposition is purely hypothetical, since we have not decided that there is any real A at all, but the form of the proposition is not hypo- thetical, but absolutely certain. " If A is, then it is A," is a proposition immediately certain, and therefore not in need of proof of any kind. The question is as to the ground of this law. We have posited that A actually is in consciousness, but not that it has any reality apart from consciousness. But to be in consciousness the A must be referred to the self. I posit the A in my consciousness, and in so doing I posit myself. We may see this very clearly by considering that if the first A were in consciousness, and the second A not in conscious- ness, we should manifestly be unable to make the affirmation A = A. The self must therefore be identical with itself. Hence we may substitute for A=A the proposition Ego = Ego, or Ego as object is identical with Ego as subject. In order that 44 SCHBLLINO'S TRANSCEKDBXTAL IDEALISM. the proposition A=A may be formed, both subject and object must be present in consciousness; and however frequently this proposition may be made, the same condition will be demanded. Now as the identity of the self is the basis of the proposition A= A, we get, by abstracting from the self and look- ing merely to the form of affirmation, the logical law of identity. Moreover, since all knowable ob- jects are only for the Ego, the reference of an object, whatever it may be, to the Ego is the con- dition of there being any real object in knowledge; hence that which is referred to the Ego is alone real, or the reference of an object to the Ego is the category of reality. Again, in empirical consciousness we find a dis- tinction drawn between one object and another; we afiirm, for example, that a cannon-ball is not a billiard-ball. Expressed abstractly, this yields the proposition not- A is not=:A. The relation of sub- ject and predicate in this proposition brings to light a second and quite distinct act from that implied in the proposition A=A. And as nothing is except for the Ego, the act is an act of the Ego. The act is one of opposition as the first act is one of posi- tion. But while the act is distinct and independent, the content or matter is dependent on the content or matter of the first proposition. Unless we posit THE EARLIER PHILOSOPHY OF FICHTE. 45 A, there can be no not-A. Now, as in the first act the Ego posited the Ego, in this act it must oppose to the Ego the non-Ego. Abstracting from the content and looking merely at the form of the act of opposition, we get the logical formula not-A is not=A, which we may call the logical law of opposition or contradiction; and this act when applied to any real object yields the category of negation. The two propositions just set forth, taken per «e, are, apparently, contradictory of one another. If the non-Ego is posited, there can be no Ego posited; if the Ego is posited, there can be no non-Ego pos- ited. Yet both are posited in the Ego, and there- fore must be somehow reconcilable with each other, unless the identity of self- consciousness is to be destroyed. Evidently, therefore, there must be a third act of consciousness in which the opposites are reconciled. This third act can only consist in uniting the two opposites without destroying either, and this is equivalent to the limitation of each by the other. The immediate, empirical Ego and non- Ego, or subject and object of consciousness, mutually limit one another or exist only in relation to one another, the combining activity being in the absolute Ego which posits both. This act may therefore be expressed in the formula: The absolute Ego opposes 46 SCIIBLLINg's TBANSCENDKNTAL IDKALIHM. in the Ego a limited Ego to a limited non-Ego. Further, by abstracting from the content and looking at the mere form of uniting oppofnites, we get the logical law of the ff round. A \h in part = not- A: A is in part not = not-A. In so far as A and not-A are equal, we have (/round of relation.' in ho far as A and not-A are not equal, we have f/round of dis- tinction. Moreover, in relation to real objectH the act of synthesis yields the category of limitation or determination. The synthesis contained in the third fundamental principle is the starting-point of both the theoretical and the practical philosophy of Fichte. That syn- thesis is expressed in the proposition: "In and through the absolute Ego, both the Ego and non-Ego are posited as each limitable through the other; or, in positing the Ego the reality of the non-Ego is negated, and in positing the non-Ego the reality of the Ego is negated, while yet the reality of each exists only for the Ego." Now, this synthesis may be broken up into two propositions: (1) The Ego posits the non-Ego as limited through the Ego; (2) The Ego posits the Ego as limited through the non-Ego. The former of these propositions is the basis of Practical Philosophy, the latter the basis of Theoretical Philosophy. Now, the proposition that the relative Ego and non-Ego mutually limit or THE BARLIBB PHILOSOPHY OP PICHTE. 47 t determine each other, while yet both are only for the absolute Ego, leaves it undecided what is the exact sense in which the mutual determination is to be understood, and also how the contradiction is to be reconciled. We have, therefore, to take each of the modes of determination and examine it separately before we can come to any decision as to the ulti- mate synthesis by which the two contradictions are reconciled with one another. How can it be the case that the Ego determines the non-Ego, while yet the non-Ego determines the Ego? This problem can only be solved by asking in what sense each proposition is true consistently with the relation of both Ego and non-Ego to the absolute Ego. If the three propositions which have just been "deduced," or shown to be implied in the very nature of intelligence, should seem somewhat ob- scure to the reader, their significance may be easily apprehended by bringing them into relation with the better known philosophy of Kant. The very titles of Kant's first two Critiques imply that in both it is Reason as a single indivisible unity which is under consideration, and that it is the same Rea- son variously determined which manifests itself now as knowing and again as practically active. Substitute Reason for the self-positing Ego of Fichte, and it is plain that the absolute thesis is simply a 48 SCIIELLINO'S TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM. formal statement of the nature of Reason as a self-conscious activity, which cannot be resolved into anything but itself, and which is neither theo- retical alone, nor practical alone, but the poten- tiality of both. Now, it requires little reflection to see that Reason, or the pure Ego, — which, if viewed in its mere abstraction or potentiality, can only be defined negatively as independent of all else, positively as absolute self-affirmation or self-reali- zation, — must differentiate itself before it can be Reason as it actually exists for us; it must, in other words, be distinguished according to its mode of manifestation, as theoretical or practical, and in either case there must be an opposition of subject and object, self and not -self. These terms are necessarily correlative: there can be for us no sub- ject which does not know an object or realize an object or end, and no object that is not known or realized. This condition at once of knowledge and of action is also implied in the philosophy of Kant, as we have seen, although he is not always quite true to himself. As, then, Fichte's first proposition asserts that Reason or Self-consciousness can never be shown to depend upon anything foreign to it — any unthinkable thing - in - itself, — so his second proposition maintains that the necessary condition of all reality is the distinction within consciousness TH£ KARLIER PHILOSOPHY OF FICHTE. 49 \ of subject and object. And this proposition, it will be observed, holds both of knowing and of act* ing. The third proposition or fundamental syn* thesis, simply makes explicit what is implied in the first two propositions taken in combination with one another. Subject and object must be opposed one to the other, since otherw'so there couM be no real consciousness, and the opposition i.iay be either theoretical or practical. But the opposition, as within consciousness, is not a real separati )M, but merely a formal or logical distinction. Reason manifests itself in the contrast of Sv;ir ?ind not-selt. otherwise it would not be reason, but yet it em- braces the distinctions which express its nature. Moreover, the opposition of self and not-self takes two diiferent directions, according a . the self seems to be dependent on the not-self or the reverse: as theoretical, the object seems to be "given" to the self; as practical, the self puts itself into the object. The further course of , hilosophy will therefore have two branches; the theoretical, in which the various ways in which reason makes objects intel- ligible to itself are exhibited, and the practical, in which is shown the manner in which it realizes its inner nature in a world produced by itself. It will not be necessary to follow Fichte in his " deduction " of the categories of reciprocity, cau- 50 schelling's transcendental idealism. sality and substantiality. The principle of the de- duction is in essence identical with Kant's "deduc- tion of the categories." All that need be borne in mind is that Fichte exhibits the categories not as forms belonging to the " constitution " of the human mind, but rather as movements in the living pro- cess by which Eeason manifests itself in the knowl- edge of the objective world. In his distinction of the threefold movement of intelligence, as well as in his attempt to connect the categories with one another in an organic system, he supplies the norm which, under the hands of Hegel, developed into an elaborate system of all the categories or modes of activity by which intelligence thinks the real world. It will be advisable, in order that the reader may see for himself how far Schelling in his Transcen- dental Idealism is original, to give a short sumniary of what in Fichte's system may be called Psychology. The main difference between Fichte and Kant in their theory of knowledge arises from the fact that the former refuses to make the problem easier to himself by ?,ssuming that there is a " manifold of sense/ somehow made real by its relation to the thing-in-itself. Hence Fichte is compelled to ex- plain the seeming independence of the world of sen- sible objects entirely from the nature of intelligence itself. The explanation is found so far in the nature THE EARLIER PHILOSOPHY OF FICHTE. 51 of the " productive imagination," a faculty described as a law of our minds by which the particulars appearing in our consciousness are, so to speak, thrown out of the knowing subject. The reason why the object seems to be inaependent and out of relation to consciousness is, that the process is one that takes place apart from any reflective con- sciousness of it. As in the first instance the object or non-Ego is contemplated in itself — this being the characteristic feature of mere knowledge, as distinguished from practical activity — it is not ex- plicitly related to the self, and hence it presents itself as if it were an independent reality. Philo- sophical reflection is therefore required to bring out the tacit relation of the object to the subject, and to show that the supposed independence and causal activity of the object is but a natural illusion. By the reality of an object, then, we must understand simply the limit which intelligence as knowing sets to itself by the very law of its being. A limit, however, which is made by intelligence, intelligence must be capable of removing, and as a matter of fact the process of knowing is the perpetual tran- scendence of a self-created limit. The imagina- tion is thus a continuous process of setting down and removing a limit ; in the very act, in truth, of opposing something as foreign to itself it removes 52 SCHELLINO'S TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM. I the opposition. Hence the various phases which constitute the ideal evolution of knowledge, and which we must follow out until we have completely exhausted them; when, as we may expect, we shall be compelled to seek for the final explanation of reality, not in contemplation of the object, but in the self- activity of the subject. The result of Fichte's metaphysical investigations has been to show that there can be no knowable reality out of all relation to intellig'^nce, and that the law which governs the development of human knowledge is, that that which intelligence at first thinks in an unconscious or unreflective way, it is compelled by the very law of its nature subse- quently to think in a reflective or conscious way. The elevation of unconscious into conscious knowl- edge constitutes the dialectic movement of thought by which the several stages of knowledge are reached. Now, when we fix our attention upon the process of knowledge itself, — when, in other words, we deal with the peculiar problem of psy- chology, — we find that there are various stages through which knowledge passes: sensation, per- ception, etc. In treating of these Fichte combines a description of these phases as they present them- selves to the individual with a deduction of them ; that is, he endeavors to show, not only that as a h THE EARLIER PHILOSOPHY OP PICHTE. 53 matter of fact knowledge has these stages, but why, in accordance with the necessary law of its devel- opment, it must have these stages and no others. The deduction of the categories he supplements by a deduction of the subjective phases of knowl- edge. . The first and lowest phase of knowledge is sen- sation. To the individual who is still at the stage of sensation nothing is present but an immediate feeling; in other w^ords, he seems to be absolutely passive or to be devoid of all reflection. A sensa- tion — which, as we know, must be the product of the Ego itself, since nothing can exist for intelli- gence except that which is in relation to it, and nothing can be in relation to it which it does not actively relate — seems to be passively taken up from without. A sensation, therefore, appears to be a purely passive state. The Ego simply finds it in itself; it does not apparently produce it. Sen- sation may thus be defined as a tinding-within-self (Empfndung) of a given state. But when, with the light which we have obtained from our meta- physical study of knowledge, we go on to ask whether the Ego is in reality, as it seems to be, absolutely passive, we at once see that it is not. If it were quite passive there would be no feeling at all. A mere impression coming from without 54 schelling's transcendental idealism. is not to be identified with a sensation actually experienced. To be experienced it must be appro- priated by the Ego, and this appropriation is an act, not a state. We must, therefore, regard sensation as a complex product, which on the one side is passive, and on the other side is active. Two fac- tors, passivity and activity, combine, and their com- mon product can only be something which is nei- ther mere activity nor mere passivity, but both in one. And if these two factors unite in a common product, they must mutually limit without destroy- ing one another. Sensation is thus a limitation of the Ego. In itself, or taken in abstraction from all its products or objects, the Ego is pure, un- limited activity. But an absolutely pure Ego is an unthinkable abstraction, because the Ego can only exist at all if it has some consciousness of itself. In order, therefore, that it may have any knowledge whatever, intelligence must in some way reflect, check, or render definite its unlimited activity. When the unlimited activity is thus re- flected — when, in other words, it is turned back toward the self — there is an interruption of the unlimited activity, which therefore becomes limited. The Ego is thus an activity turning back upon it- self. Accordingly it becomes aware of itself, finds itself, feels itself. So far we have explained why THE EABLIER PHILOSOPHY OP PICHTE. 55 \ intelligence is conscious of itself, but we have not explained how it happens that it does not recog- nize the limitation as produced by itself. To the individual, as we have seen, sensation appears to be a limitation of the Ego by something external to it. How are we to explain this illusion? The answer is perfectly simple : the Ego reflects its own activity, but it does not, and indeed cannot, at the same time reflect on this reflection; in other words it cannot become conscious of itself as at once determined and productive. Reflection, in its first form, is thus an unconscious activity. And as intelligence is unconscious of itself as produc- tive, what is produced necessarily seems to be given to it from some other source. Accordingly the Ego simply finds itself limited, without recogniz- ing that what it finds is really produced by itself, and this is sensation. Thus all the character- istics of sensation are explained. (1) The I seems to be passive, because it does not reflect on its own reflective activity; (2) self and its object are im- mediately identical, or, rather, seem to be identi- cal, because of the same absence of conscious re- flection, and (3) the union of passivity and activity is explained by the fact that the I reacts on its own activity, which is therefore to that extent ni 56 SCHELLING^S TRANSCBNDENTAL IDEALISM. passive. Hence every sensation is accompanied by a feeling of constraint or compulsion. The second stage of knowledge is perception. In perception, the Ego has before it an object or non- Ego in which it is, as it were, sunk and lost. At the same time, intelligence is no longer immediately identical with its object, as in sensation, but to it there is opposed a non-Ego or object by which it seems to be limited. Thus there is not onlv sensa- tion, but perception; not only a feeling of constraint, but the perception of a non-Ego which produces that feeling; not only a something limited, but a something which limits. In perception, these two elements are united together, so that there is no perception without a feeling of constraint, and no feeling of constraint without perception. This is a description of perception from the phenomenal point of view, and we have now to ask how the second stage of knowledge is to be philosophically explained. Each new step in the evolution of knowledge, as has been said, must arise from a new act of reflec- tion, and must give rise to a new product. What the Ego is, it must become for itself. Now we have seen that in sensation intelligence finds itself lim- ited. This limitation was, however, simply a feeling of limitation, not a definite reflection upon limita- tion. The next step, therefore, is to raise this fact \: THE EARLIER PHILOSOPHY OF FICHTE. 57 I of limitation into explicit consciousness, and this takes place when the Ego reflects on its limit, and by that very fact goes beyond it. Just as reflection of the pure activity of the self gave rise to its limi- tation, so reflection on its limitation is necessarily a transcendence of it. And beyond the limit of the Ego there can be nothing but that which limits it, i.e. a non-Ego. We know, from our metaphysical analysis of knowledge, that there can be no object in knowledge which is not the product of intelligence. How, then, does it come that the non-Ego seems to be completely independent of the Ego? Exactly for the same reason that sensation seems to be a pure passivity. In perception, intelligence reflects upon sensation, but for that very reason it cannot, at the same time, reflect on its reflection. Hence the non- Ego, which is really a product of the activity of the Ego, appears to be independent of it. As it does not see itself act, intelligence is not conscious of its own activity in perception, and hence the object seems to be independent of it. At the stage of per- ception, that which is perceived appears, and can only appear, as a product of the non-Ego. Starting from what. is given in perception, intelligence goes on to raise it into a higher form, and this it, of course, eflFects by a new act of reflection. This act of reflection is free or spontaneous: the Ego can 68 scHEL ling's transcendental idealism. only reflect on what is given to it in perception, but the act of reflection is its own spontaneous activity. This act of imagination is, on the one hand, free, and on the other hand determined: free, inasmuch as it is a product of the spontaneous activity of the Ego, and determined, since the Ego must conform to the attributes of the object as given in perception. The marks or attributes of the resulting mental image are thus referred to the real object, which appears as the substance of which those are attri- butes; and the existence of the image is ref^arded as due to the activity of the object, or as an efi'ect of which the latter is the cause. It thus becomes evi- dent that the imagination is the true condition of the categories. From the same source spring the pure perceptions of space and time, which are poten- tial infinities issuing fro»*~ the imaginative activity of intelligence. So far we have explained only the universal con- ditions of the representation of objects. The prod- uct of imagination has, however, to be fixed or related, and this is due to the Understanding. The understanding, again, is itself subject to a new act of reflection, which implies a capacity for reflec- tion upon an object or abstraction from it. This new act of reflection is Judgment, which itself rests upon Reason, the activity by which complete abstrac- THE £ARLI£B PHILOSOPHY OF FHJHTE. 59 tion is made from the whole world of objects and attention concentrated entirely on intelligence it- self. Thus we reach jmre Self-consciousness^ the point from which our inquiry originally started. The circle of knowledge has thus been completed, and it only remains to determine the relations of knowledge and action. It has been shown that, apart from the relation of self and not-self, subject and object, no knowl- edge whatever is possible. But in this relation there is an unresolved remainder to which attention must now be directed. Starting from knowledge, as it is found in our actual experience, we have found that to take away either the subject or the object is to make knowledge an impossibility. A self that has nothing before it is merely the poten- tiality of knowledge, whilst an object existing apart from self is for knowledge nothing at ail. But in the apprehension of an object as distinct from the self, while yet in relation to it, there is a convic- tion or feeling that the object is necessary, or, in other words, that it is something not made by us. As Fichte properly maintains, the presence of this feeling of necessity is the criterion by which, in our ordinary knowledge, we satisfy ourselves that what is before us is a real object, and not simply a fiction of our own minds. The connection of this feeling 60 sciielling's transcendkntai, idkauhm. of necessity with the Kantian tliing-in-itself is obvi- ous. Kant, starting from the point of view of the individual man who gradually acquires knowledge, was led to hold that objects in Hpace and time im- ply, besides the formal ( onstitution of our knowing faculty, a certain sensuous element that in " given " to us, not produced by ns, and that, apart from this "given" element, there is no knowledge of an actual object. Taking one step farther, he asserted that the thing-in-itself is not known in our ordinary or sensible experience, but that its nature remains a problem for subsequent consideration. Similarly, Fichte, hardly changing in the least degree Kant's view as properly understood, maintains that our ordinary experience of a real world is accompa- nied by the feeling that what is before us is not made by us, but is independent of us, This convic- tion must, however, be justified. It is not enough simply to accept the object as something necessary or real; we must further show, from the nature of the self, or Reason, how it comes about that we apparently refer reality to an independent world, while yet there can be no world but that which is in relation to us as conscious beings. Now it is evident that the explanation of the feel- ing of necessity, which is for us as knowing intelli- gences the test of the reality of the world, must be THE EARLIER PHILOSOPHY OF FICHTE. 61 found in the nature of self-consciousness. To seek for the explanation of it in any transcendental reality, such as Kant seemed to find in the noume- nal or supersensible world, is inconsistent with the first principle of IdtMlisin. That which is to explain reality must be in direct and indissoluble connection with the self. Now we found that the self which is to unite knowledge and action is the self as an activity returning upon itself, or estab- lishing its reality by the fact of its own activity. This pure activity, unlike the limited activity of the knowing self, is absolutely unlimited or infinite in its activity: it is its nature to be incapable of inter- ference from anything alien to itself. Kant, as we have seen, finds in reason as practical the essence of human freedom, and by means of the ideal set up by reason as the ultimate goal of all things, he is led to regard the world of ordinary experience as manifesting palpable traces of a Divine Mind, Fichte grasps the Practical Reason as an absolute and universal self, revealing itself to us as an Ideal which we must make the goal of all our efforts. The self as it actually exists at any moment is thus contrasted with the idea of an infinitely perfect self with which we are to seek for identification. This ideal self is not, however, to be regarded with Kant as identical with a Supreme Reason, conceived of as ^5* 62 MCIIKLLINU^H TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM. beyond the sphere of our knowledge, and therefore as unknowable. The absolute self is, in short, simply our ordinary self conceived of as an ideal to which in this world, and in virtue of our freedom, we must continually approximate. To each Individ ual as a self-conscious activity the absolute self is necessarily given, not as an object known, but as an ideal to be realized. Admitting, then, that human reason necessarily contains the ideal of an infinitely perfect self, what is the relation of this ideal self to the self as standing in relation to known objects? Can we connect the feeling of necessity, which is the mark of reality for us as knowing, with the neces- sary ideal of reason? Fichte has no doubt what- ever that knowledge must be explained from the nature of the self as freely determining itself to activity. Only in the consciousness of myself as active, as willing the moral law, have I a belief in the reality of myself as a person. Now morality, as consisting in an approximation to the ideal self, necessarily implies strife or effort. The law of my mind wars against the law of my members; the desires have to be overcome, and they can be over- come only by a fierce struggle against the imme- diate self and toward the ideal self. Thus the world appears to me as something alien to my nature, which yet it is my nature to overcome. THE EARLIER I>fIIL0H01MI Y OK FICIITE. 63 This foreign element is necessary to the moral life, which would ceasu were there no opposition. The reality of the world thus means for me the con- sciousness of a something resisting all my efforts, or, subjectively, the consciousness of an infinite striving toward a goal that perpetually recedes from me. Thus we can distinguish what may meta- phorically be called a centrifugal and a centripetal direction in the self, the former impelling us onward and the latter manifesting itself as a return to self. Were either of these absent, there would be no con- ciousness of self, and therefore no world of objects. Our finitude, then, consists in the fact that while our very nature is to realize the ideal self, we yet are pre- vented from doing so by the opposition that we con- tinually encounter. This opposition appears in our consciousness as a feeling of necessity or compulsion — that feeling which, as we saw, was the immediate criterion of reality for the knowing subject. Thus the circle of reality is completed. The feeling of a necessary reality, which from the point of view of knowledge is unintelligible, receives explanation from the consideration of man as a finite being striving after perfection and continually driven back into himself by something that seems foreign to him, but which is in reality the infinite Reason constituting his essential nature. 64 schelling's transcendental idealism. Before passing from the earlier philosophy of Fichte, which exercised so great an influence on Schelling, a short estimate may be made of its value as a solution of the great problems raised by Kant. In the whole of his inquiries, Kant assumes that reason is absolutely the same in all men, and that the conclusions of reason are to be ac- cepted as universally valid. But just because he unquestioningly starts from this assumption he never clearly distinguishes between reason in the individual man and reason as the essence of intel- ligence as such; or, rather, he assumes that the limitations hemming in the individual man are lim- itations which, as belonging to the nature of reason as such, are incapable of being transcended. Hence it is that, perceiving, as we all do, that the knowable world is constituted independently of our individ- ual consciousness of it, he fails to see with perfect clearness that there can be no world at all which is not in relation to int( lligence. Accordingly it seems self-evident to Kint that, besides the world revealed to human intelligence, there is a super- sensible world which is only dimly shadowed forth, and which, while known to exist, can never be made perfectly intelligible to us. And because the world of experience is only phenomenal, Kant is led to the conclusion that the mind in its true V THE EARLIER PHILOSOPHY OF FICHTB. 65 le le h nature is not properly known, but has to be sensu- ously figured by us in our imperfect human way. Finally, while God as the Supreme Good is unde- niably real. He is not strictly speaking known to us, but is made intelligible to us by analogies drawn from the world of sense. Now if we are strict to bring home to Kant the logical consequences of this separation of the phe- nomenal from the nouraenal world, we may easily show, as has been shown scores of times, that the noumenal world vanishes in smoke, and leaves us only with the so-called phenomenal or sensible world. It is illogical to say that the world in itself, the mind in itself, and God in himself, are not at all what we know them to be, because of that which we do not know we can assert nothing whatever. At the same time it must be said that this method of criticism is somewhat superficial, and entirely overlooks the deeper elements of the critical theory. For while the world, the mind, and God, are certainly not incapable of being known as they are, it is not less true that they are not adequately characterized by the ordinary categories of quantity, substance or cause. These categories, as Kant rightly says, are applicable to parts of experience, but not to experience as a whole; they express the nature of matter as the 6 66 schelling's teanscendental idealism. movable in space and time, but not the nature of mind ; and they completely fail to express the nature of God. Kant's imperfection, therefore, is not in asserting the limited nature of the sensible world, but in throwing around the noumenal world a half-transparent veil of mystery. Granting that the world, the mind and God are not adequately characterized as quantities, substances or causes, at least they are more adequately characterized by these categories than by that of pure Being, which might almost as well be pure Nothing. Tlie development of Kant's thought, therefore, demands a positive determination of the nature of those supersensible objects which he had defined only by negative predicates, or at best by analogies bor- rowed from that very sensible world which he rightly held to be limited, partial and dependent. Fichte's chief merit is that with unhesitating clearness and decision he removes the veil which Kant had drawn across the mysterious thing-in- itself. The absoluteness of reason and the identity of individual and universal reason being assumed by him as by Kant, the problem of philosophy as he figured it was: How do I, in virtue of my rea- son, come to know a world in space and time, and what is the inner nature of my reason? The an- swer to these questions Fichte found in a simpiifi- THE EARLIER PHIIa'SOPHY OF FICHTE. 67 cation of the Kantian theory. The mind of man is, in a sense, the only intelligible reality, and that which supplies the key to all the rest. Determine exactly the nature of human intelligence, and the necessary conditions of all reality will be laid bare. Hints for the simplification of Kant's view were plentifully supplied by Kant himself; and indeed all that Fichte needed to bring him to his peculiar point of view was to connect Kant's aci^ount of the transcendental unity of self-consciousness with the account of reason in its practical use, and to reject any mysterious unknowable thing-in-itself as a pure fiction.. It cannot, however, be said that Fichte has completely solved the problems raised by Kant. His <^hief merit lies in tV.e emphasis he bar; placed on the necessary relativity of existence and self- consciousness. His simpliii cation of Kant's theory leaves the deeper aspect o^ it very much as he iound it. The picture whi*'* ho presents to us of exist- ence is that of a number of finite intelligences, each striving 1;0 realize an ideal of perfection somehow given to it; but what is the relation of these intelli- gences to the world as a whole, or how thev are related to an infinite intelligence, he does not tell us. To the individual there is somshow given a self that at once consists in a perpetual struggle toward the infinite, and is itself the goal of the if ■ 68 schelling's transcendental idealism. struggle; but no attempt is made to connect this self with an absolute intelligence comprehending at once finite beings and the finite things known by them. Nor can it be said that Fichte's " deduction " of the reality of the world is more than a restate- ment of the problem. It is no doubt true that, apart from the free activity of the will, there could be no knowledge ; but it is equally true that apart from knowledge there could be no free activity. To say that the infinite striving after an unattain- able ideal explaius the feeling of reality is merely to say that freedom finds itself impeded. It is no proper explanation of the objective world to say that it so presents itself to the individual intelli- gence; we still wish to know what objective reality is, apart from the intelligence of any particular in- dividual, — or, rather, what the finite intelligence, tOi,ether with its world, is in relation to that which is somehow higher than either; and that question cannot be answered without a theory of knowledge less assumptive in its nature than the one with which Fichte presents us. This indeed is virtually implied in the changes which Fichte introduced in the later presentation of his system, which are all in the direction of defining the absolute Ego more closely, or, in other words, of explaining the re- lations of individual and universal intelligence. THE EABLIER PHILOSOPHY OP FICHTE. 69 It is evident, therefore, that subsequent speculation, starting from the unity of subject and object, which Fichte, following out the theory of Kant, was led to formulate with such force and clearness, must attempt to get a closer and deeper view of the rela- tions of Man, the World, and the Absolute. [ li i^i "ri CHAPTER III. SCHELLING'S EARLIER TREATISES. jjORN at Leonberg, in Wllrtemberg, in 1775, "^ thirteen years after the birth of Fichte, Schelling entered Tubingen as a student of theol- ogy at the age of fifteen, and began his career as a philosophical writer in his twentieth year. His first work was a little treatise on The PossihiUtij of a Form of Philosophy in General, in which he follows pretty closely the substance of Fichte's Idea of Phi- losophy. This essay is by Schelling himself said to have originated in a study of the Critique of Pure Reason, from reflection on which he was led to see the necessity of a single principle that should connect every part of philosophy in an organic whole. The need for such a principle was made stiil more plain to him by Schulzo's ^Ene^tdemus and Maimon's New Theory of Knowledge. Re also came to the conclu- sion that lieiuijold's El'^mentary Philosophy did not supply WfUit was wanteu, inasmuch as the principle on which it tried to base a complete system v-as not one from which the form as well as the content of philosophy could be derived. Fichte's review of uEnesideinus and tract on the Idea of Philosophy .■M., -^^f* Sf'HELLiyo's KARMER TREATISES. 71 convinced him that the principle of which he had been in search could only be found in self-conscious- ness, as that which, in establishing itself, is form and content in one. In this account of the origin of his little essay, Schelling displays somewhat too eager a desire to lay claim to an originality of which the work itself, however excellent in point of style, gives no special evidence. Its only claim to origi- nality lies in the attempt it makes to deduce from the three fundamental principles of the Fichtean philosophy not only the Kantian categories of qual- ity, but those of quantity and modality as well. The main significance of this youthful writing for Schel- liiig's philosophical development is the indication it gives of his tendency to read Kant with his own eyes as well as with those of Fichte, — a tendency which is still more plainly displayed in a somewhat longer treatise, The I as Principle of PhUosophy^ published in the following year (1795). By tht publication of this little work Schelling at once established his position as a philosophical writer, who, if he did not as yet give evidence of the originality of Fichte, at least had as firm a grasp of the principles of the Wissenschaftslehre as its author, who was also familiar with the phi- losophy of Spinoza and of Kant, and who had the capacity of expressing his ideas with wonderful il ^iU^^'J^^^ljjI^jSi?^^ 72 schellixg's transcendental idealism. ease and grace. In a letter to Reinhold, Fichte expressed great admiration for the ability shown by Schelling in this essay, and spoke of it as a commentary on the Wissenschaftslehre, which had been quite intelligible to many who had failed to comprehend his own exposition. At a later period, when Schelling had struck out an independent path of his own, Fichte refused to admit that his former disciple had ever properly compreli. nded the sys- tem of which he had been a supposed exponent. There is a certain justification for each of these estimates, contradictory as they are. The work in question, while it is in the main an independent statement of the philosophy of Fichte, yet exhibits unmistakable traces of Schelling's future diver- gence from Fichte, — a divergence, however, the germs of which are contained in Fichte himself. The aim of the work, as its title indicates, is to show that the Ego, or intelligence, is the supreme or unconditioned element in human knowledge. It " traces back the results of the critical philoso- phy to the ultimate principle of all knowledge," refusing to be bound by the mere letter of Kant's system. No doubt in Kant the true principle is implicit, but the way in which he separates the theoretical and the practical parts of his philoso- phy prevented him from seeing that the basis of SCHELLINa's EARLIER TREATISES. 73 s Is le \ the whole was the pure or absolute Ego. As ulti- mate and supreme, this principle can be derived from nothing else; it is, in Spinoza's phrase, "the light which reveals at once itself and darkness." It is vain to seek for the supreme principle of all knowledge in any object of knowledge, for each object as but a single link in the chain cannot possibly bind all the other links together. Not even God, as a supposed object of knowledge, can be for us the ground of reality, as Descartes supposed; for we cannot establish the reality of God until we have first found the supreme condition of any knowledge whatever. The principle we seek cannot be found even in the subject of knowledge, for just as an object exists only in contrast and relation to a subject, so a subject exists only in contrast and re- lation to an object; nay, the subject is itself knowa- ble only by becoming an object of knowledge, and is therefore conditioned. The supreme principle, then, is neither subject nor object, but that which is the condition of both; it is the pure or absolute Ego, which can never be an object of knowledge, but which establishes its reality in and through itself. This absolute Ego, while it is not an object of outer sense, cannot be thought, but only per- ceived or contemplated, and the organ by which it is known is well named by Fichte Intellectual ' 74 SCUKLLINO's TKANHC!KNI)KNTAf. ir)k.\I.rSM. Perception. The Absolute E^o, v^hi'-'I'i mu? which is not only independent of all else but is the condition of all posfsiblu reality. Of the Ego we cannot say that we have un immediate knowledge or consciousness, for consciousness im- plies the opposition of subject and object, or more definitely a straggle with the not-self or world of nature which pev'petually threatens to carry the self away in its ever-flowing stream of change. The infinite Ego is above all strife and change; it is an absolute unity or self-identity, excluding at once numerical multiplicity and numerical unity. The source of all possible reality, it is, as Spinoza said of his absolute Substance, infinite, indivisible and unchangeable. Still, the infinite Ego, which is best characterized as absolute Power, is the condi- tion of the finite self as related to finite objects, to which it appears as the command, not so much to be identical with self as to becomv identical with self. In the absolute Ego there iiiJ complete iden- tity of possibility and actuality, but the finite Ego must seek to make actual, by slow and painful steps, what is potentially in it, and hence for it the absolute Ego is an ideal to be realized. The approximation toward this ideal is possible to man , SniKLLINO's KARLIKR TKKATIKRr). 76 just because lie is identical in nature with the ab- solute Ego, and herein consists his practical free- dom; but as the world of nature stands in oppo- sition to him as a finite being, absolute freedom assumes the form of '/ # PhotDgraphic Sdences Corporation 23 WIST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. MSM (716)t73-4S03 ^t,^»»(iumMtwa^M:. 76 schblling's transcendental idealism* ' with the Wisaenschaftslehre. One point of distinc- tion manifestly is, that Fichte^s tacit opposition of the absolute and the finite Ego is brought by Schel- ling into clear and bold relief. Predicates are ap- plied to the former which make it apparent that all finite individuals are in some sense but modes of an intelligence which manifests itself in them, but is somehow distinct from them. This is espe- cially apparent in the deliberate application to the absolute Ego of predicates applied by Spinoza to the absolute substance which he calls God. It is true that Schelling still speaks in words of the absolute Ego as nothing apart from the totality of self-conscious beings; but on the other hand his assertion of the absolute identity of subject and object is, to say the least, as much in accordance with his own later thought as with the philosophy of Fichte. It is but another manifestation of the same tendency to go beyond the subjective idealism of Fichte, that Schelling insists upon the coordi- nation of subject and object. While denying as strongly as Fichte any " thing-in- itself " lying back of knowable objects, he yet opposes the object to the subject more strongly than Fichte, and seeks in the absolute Ego for the unity which is to I'econ- cile them. The reason why the supreme principle cannot be found in the finite self is mainly that schelling's earlieb treatises. 77 the latter exists only as conscious of an object, and • such consciousness, as implying distinction, neces- sarily implies limitation. If we follow out this idea we shall manifestly be led to the conclusion that the true absolute is to be sought in an ab- stract identity, which excludes all definiteness what- ever, and which, therefore, will be almost indis- tinguishable from the absolute Substance of Spinoza or the Unknowable of recent English philosophy. It is of course true that Schelling was very far from intending such a result, and that his theory contains a principle utterly discrepant from it; but there can be no doubt that here we have already the germ of the theory which he afterward devel- oped, that the true absolute is to be found in the complete indifference of subject and object. Lastly, it may be remarked that in this treatise Schelling already shows that tendency to view the world as moving toward an end, or as manifesting unconscious reason, which had been suggested to him by a study of Kant's Critique of Judgment, and which he was soon to apply, not merely as here, to man as a moral being, living in a world that seemed to be alien to him, but to the determination of nature itself as rising through various forms, each of which is the prophecy of that which includes and tran- scends it. 78 schelling's transcendental idealism. In the same year the Philosophical Letters on Dogmatism and Criticism were published. Nothing could exceed the force and grace of this little work, which may be regarded as the consummate flower of Schelling's period of storm and stress. Dogma- tism and criticism are here considered in their bearings on the independent existence of an "ob- jective" God. The work was meant as a counter- blast against the official followers of Kant, who, in Schelling*s estimation, were seeking to convert the Critical Philosophy into a dogmatism of a worse kind than that from which Kant had sought to free the minds of men. The result of Kant's specula- tions, it was held, was to show that Theoretical Reason, from its inherent weakness, is unable to conceive of God, while Practical Reason compels us to assume his existence as a " postulate ** required to establish the absoluteness of morality, and to furnish a motive for obedience to it. This attempt to base morality on a pure hypothesis Schelling denounces as neither Kantian nor rational. God is conceived of a' being entirely external to the world, and as formed in the image of man. He is at once a First Cause and a Moral Governor. How can the existence of such a being be proved ? " Theoretical Reason," it is said, " is by its neces- sary limitations forever prevented from framing bchelling's earlier treatises. 79 any c6nception of God." There need be no dispute about words; if we cannot "conceive" of God by theoretical reason, we must at least "believe," or "suppose" him to exist; how then is this belief or supposition to be justified? It is all very well to talk of " practical needs " establishing his reality, but if " needs " are to determine anything, why should not theoretical needs be as potent as prac* tical? If the existence of God is a mere assump- tion, it is not likely to bear much strain. If it is said that practical needs are more imperative than theoretical, the answer is that our needs cannot establish the reality of a being who is assumed to be unknowable. The so-called " practical needs " thus turn out to be an uncritical belief, — a belief, moreover, which belongs to that very theoretical faculty the weakness of which is made the reason for assuming it. Waiving this objection, how can it be shown that the First Cause is a Moral Gov- ernor? "The fact of the moral law," it is said, " proves the existence of an Absolute Being, and human freedom would be destroyed were hhe will of that being not conformed to the moral law." But if it is legitimate to reason fonvard in this way from human freedom to the existence of God, why should not others reason backward from the existence of God to the denial of human free- 80 SCHELLIN6*S TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM. dom? If there is an Absolute Cause, how can man possibly be free? The exponents of criticism are pure dogmatists. "Can there be a more pitiable spectacle," Schelling indignantly exclaims, "than a so-called philosophy, the burden of which is that while reason is too weak to conceive of God, a man will only act morally if he assumes the existence of a Being who rewards the virtuous and punishes the guilty ! '* A breath is enough to upset such a castle of cards. The real weakness of reason is not that it cannot know an objective God, but in sup- posing that there is such a God to know. The Critique of Pure Reason is not to be charged with the stupidities of its incompetent interpreters, but it has given occasion for them, from the fact that it is a criticism merely of the faculty of knowledge, and therefore begins with the opposition of subject and object. The question with which it starts — How do we come to form synthetical judgments?— may be thus put: How, by going beyond the ab- solute, does opposition arise ? Although synthesis is possible only through "Hn original unity in con- trast to multiplicity, the Critique of Pure Reason could not ascend to that unity, since it started from the opposition of subject and object as a fact. The disadvantage of this point of view is that knowledge seems to be something not belonging SCHELLINO'S EARLIER TREATISES. 81 to the very nature of intelligence, but something peculiar to the individual subject. The most that the Critique of Pure Reason has been able to show is, that dogmatism is theoretically incapable of proof. Dogmatism cannot be overthrown so long as we remain at the point of view of knowl- edge. No doubt it may be shown that the subject can only get a knowledge of the objective world by means of synthesis, and hence that objects are necessarily in relation to the subject. But this only proves that, within the sphere of conditioned or limited existence — the sphere in which object and subject are opposed to one another — there can be no object out of relation to a subject; it deter- mines nothing as to the unconditioned or absolute unity which combines subject and object in one. All synthesis must finally end in a thesis. What is this thesis? We are seeking for that which is beyond the difference of subject and object, and this something must be either (a) an absolute sub- ject or (b) an absolute object. But just because theoretical reason moves only within the realm in which subject and object are opposed, it can give no answer to this problem. Hence completed dog- matism, as it exists, for example, in Spinoza, cannot be refuted by criticism, so long as both remain within the sphere of "knowledge." The battle 6 82 SCHELLING*8 TRANSOBNDBNTAL IDEALISM. must therefore be carried into the sphere of ac- tion and determined there. Criticism as well as dogmatism leads to " SchwHrmerei," if it holds that the object must finally be swallowed up in the subject; in other words, that absolute identity of subject and object is the goal of human prog- ress. To negate the object and to negate the sub- ject are at bottom the same, for in either case personality disappears. The only difference is that criticism starts from the immediate identity of the subject and goes on to unite subject and object; whereas dogmatism proceeds in the, reverse way. The former says that in morality the subject affirms itself, and holds that the goal is the synthesis of morality and happiness ; the latter begins with happiness, or the harmony of the subject with the objective world, and in this way seeks to find morality. In both systems morality and happiness are distinct principles which can be united only synthetically, that is, as ground and consequence, so long only as the individual is on his way to the goal. Were the goal reached, the distinction would disappear in absolute being or blessedness. So freedom and necessity must be united in the absolute; a will which is subject only to itself is at once free and necessary; free because it obeys the laws of its own being, necessary because in SCHELLING*S EABLIER TREATISES. 88 ihe is ays in obeying itself it is under the yoke of law. If, therefore, criticism is to separate itself definitely from dogmatism, it must deny that the absolute unity of subject and object, morality and happiness, freedom and necessity, is possible for man. That unity is not something capable of being realized, but an infinite problem; it is not something to be knoiin, but something to he done. Hence it is that conscious life is an infinite striving after the recon* ciliation of subject and object, a striving to attain to unlimited activity. Were the goal attained, moral life would vanish. The command of criti- cism, therefore, is: "Strive after unconditioned freedom, unlimited activity; seek to form thyself into the divine." The choice must be made be- tween the dogmatic supposition of an "objective" God, and the critical proof of huirao personality. One or the other must be given up. The more a people surrenders itself to dreams of a far-off supersensible world, the less is its moral enthu- siasm in this world. Not the weakness of reason, but its strength, shuts it out from the supersensi- ble; true criticism finds the secret of human free- dom in the divine idea which man carries in his own breast, and which he struggles with all his might to realize here and now. The main advance beyond Fichte, made in the 84 flCIIKLLINa'g TRANSCBNOBVTAL IDBAL81M. work of which a summary has just been given, lies in the conception of dogmatism as incapable of refutation by criticism, except within the sphere of practical reason, — a view which foreshadows Schel- ling's subsequent coordination of the philosophy of spirit and the philosophy of nature. About the same time as the last treatise appeared the New Deduction of Natural Rights, and in the years 1796 and 1797, in Fiehte and Niethammer*s Journal a series of four articles in elucidation of the Idealism of the Wissenscha/tslehre, which may be said to complete the work done by Schelling during his apprenticeship in philosophy under Pichte, and even to give unmistakable evidences of the coming master of his craft. In the first of these articles Schelling endeavors to show that tlie ordinary interpretation of Kant completely misrepresents his real meaning. From lierception, says Kant, all other knowledge borrows its worth and reality. When he speaks of " things- in-themselves '' he does not mean things which, as existing opart from knowledge, act on the knowing subject and produce affections of sense. For Kant there are no objects but those given in an original synthesis of perception. When he calls space and time ** forms " of perception, he does not mean that they are empty moulds lying ready-made in the K. HCIIKM.lN(rH KARMKR TRKATIHKK. 95 mind, but only that they are the forniH by which the syntlictic activity of the imagination in percep- tion actively relates objects in the most general way. These iorms of activity do not indeed present objects to usr but they are the conditions under which alone we can present objects to ourselves. And neither activity exists apart from the other. Space without time is sphere without limit; time without space is limit without sphere. As mere limitation time is negative, space as sphere or ex- tension is originally positive ; and hence perception is possible only through the cooperation of two opposed activities. The faculty which combines in itself these opposites is imagination. The reason why real objects are regarded as independent of the mind*s activity is, that upon the productive activity of the mind there supervenes a peculiar activity of the imagination whidh consists in repeat- ing the original activity on its purely formal side. Thus arises the outline or "schema" of an object in general as floating in space and time. This schema Kant separates from the conception of the understanding, as if the one were independent of the other; but while in speculation they may be distinguished, in actual knowledge they always go together, and only when object and schema are opposed to each other does there arise the conviction 8G HCU£LLlNU*tt TRAN8CKNDKNTAL IDKAUftM. of a real object as outside of the mind and inde- pendent of it. The world of nature is thus con- stituted by the series of acts in which intelligence as productive and reproductive advances toward complete self-consciousness. No error can be destroyed until its source is clearly pointed out; and hence Schelling goes on, in the second article, to show how the Kantians have come to misrepresent their master so grossly. In our actual knowledge the form and the matter of knowledge are indissolubly united, but philosophy must hypothetical ly destroy this unity in order to explain it. The problem is to account for the abso- lute harmony of object and idea, being and knowl- edge. Now when by philosophical analysis we have opposed the object as a thing outside of us to our knowledge of it, no immediate union of the two seems possible, and hence we try to find a point of connection in the conception of cause and effect: the object, we say, is the cause of our representa- tion of it. But such a conception cannot possibly explain the unity of subject and object, for the object as beyond knowledge cannot be really known. The difficulty can only be solved if it can be shown that the knowing subject does not apprehend some- thing foreign to itself, but in all knowledge knows only itself. Now a self-conscious being can only 8CI1KLLING*S RARLIBR TRRATISK8. 87 rs know itself as active, and hence conscious life is a perpetual process^ in which intelligence manifests its original infinity. On the other hand, intelligence is an object for itself only in so far as, acting in a definite way, it limits or makes itself finite. Rea- son is thus in its inmost nature a unity of infinite and finite. Hence the fact that perception implies two opposite activities. As limiting itself, a self-con* scious being is at once active and passive. Now passivity is simply negative activity, for an abso- lutely passive being would be a mere negation. The object of perception is thus not an object inde- pendent of intelligence, but intelligence itself as at once active and passive. Intelligence, however, cannot in the same act perceive itself and distin- guish itself from itself: hence in perception no dis- tinction is drawn between the perception and the object perceived. But in virtue of his freedom a self- conscious being is able to abstract from himself as perceived — an abstraction which has been already described as the faculty of concentrating attention on the general process of perception ; and so arises the consciousness of an object, the origin of which as lying beyond consciousness cannot be explained from the point of view of consciousness. Further, since the consciousness of an object is possible only as contrasted with free activity and the consciousness 4»-'----i -■ 88 schelling's tbanscendbntal idealism. of free activity only as contrasted with an object, to those still at the point of view of consciousness, man seems partly necessitated and partly free. Hence we can understand how the Kantians have come to regard the " form " of knowledge as supplied by us, the " matter " as coming from without. Our knowledge, if it is to be real, Schelling goes on to say in the third article, must rest upon something which is not obtained by means of conceptions and inferences, but which is just as immediately certain as our own existence. How does it happen that that which is distinct from the soul should yet be so closely bound up with our inner nature that it can- not be denied without denial of the consciousness of self? All the mistaken attempts to answer this question have assumed that we must start from con- ception or mediate knowledge. The fact of immedi- ate knowledge in perception is not denied, but it is said that such knowledge is due to the operation of external objects upon us. But (1) the hypothesis, at the most, explains, not perception, but sensation, the reception of an impression from an object, not the immediate knowledge of an object; and hence the perception at least must be regarded as a free act. (2) Since a cause must precede, in time, its effect, the thing-in-itself must act before we perceive it, and this leads to the absurd supposition of a double schelling's earlier treatises. 89 •le series of time. (3) In perception, object and idea are identical, whereas the supposed thing-in-itself must be separate from perception, — a view which lies at the base of all scepticism, as might be shown historically. The opposite view is, that there is no object independent of perception; that intelligence is an activity which goes back into itself, and that to go back into itself it must first have gone out from itself. The essence of spirit is to perceive itself. This tendency to self-perception is infinite, and in the infinite reproduction of itself consists its permanence. Spirit necessarily strives to contem- plate itself in its opposite activities, and this it can only do by presenting them in a common product, i.e. by making them permanent. Hence, at the standpoint of consciousness these opposite activities appear as at rest, or as forces which act only in op- position to an internal obstacle. Matter is simply spirit contemplated in the equilibrium of its activi- ties. That common product is necessarily finite, and spirit becomes aware of its finitude in the act of production. The ground of this limitation can- not lie in its present act, which is perfectly free; and hence in this act it does not limit itself, but finds or feels itself limited. The product of its free act, spirit, perceives as a quantity in space, the limit of this production as a quantity in time. Hence 90 schelling's transcendental idealism. arises the distinction of outer and inner sense, the former being simply the latter as limited. The limit of its production appears to spirit as contingent; the sphere of production, in which it perceives only its own mode of activity, as essential, necessary or substantial. But spirit is the infinite tendency to become an object to itself, to present the infinite in the finite. The goal of all acts is self-consciousness, and the history of those acts is just the history of self-consciousness. Hence the task Of philosophy can only be completed when we have reached the goal of complete self-consciousness. Such self-con- sciousness is tvill, in which theoretical and practical reason meet together. By freeing ourselves from our representations and holding them away from us, we are able to explain them, and so to connect the theoretical and the practical self. Thus we arrive at the Ego as the principle of freedom, beginning with which we can now see spirit and nature arise together. It does not lie within the plan of this work to give anything like an extended account of Schel- ling's Philosophy of Nature, but some idea of its principle and main positions is necessary as a prepa- ration for the proper understanding of the Tran- scendental Idealism. We have already seen that Bchelling, even in his appropriation and assimila- KtJHKLLlNG's EARLIER TREATISES. 91 tion of the thought of Fichte, shows a decided tendency to go back to Kant. This tendency is manifested still more clearly in that part of his philosophy which is now under consideration. Not Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre, but Kant's Metaphy- sisc.he Anfangsgrilnde der Nuturwissenschaft and Kritik der Urtheilskmft form the starting-point of his Philosophy of Nature. In the former work Kant had endeavored to show that matter must be resolved, not into a number of indivisible material units, as variously arranged in space, but into two ultimate forces — a force of attraction and a force of repulsion — by the relation of which to each other all phenomena of matter, as that which occupies or is movable in space, may be explained. In the latter work he had pointed out that the character- istics of organic beings can only be made intelli- gible to us if we think of them as if they were produced by an intelligence similar to our own. Schelling' endeavors to show that the fundamental ideas of those two works must be thought out to their issue, and combined in a true philosophy of nature. And just as Fichte refused to admit that there is any noumenal mind distinct from that which we actually know, so Schelling denies that the application of means to ends displayed in the whole of nature, and more clearly in organic beings, 92 SCH£LL1NG*S TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM.. can be accounted for by the " transcendent " prin- ciple of an intelligence distinct from the world, and acting externally upon it. In 1797 appeared the Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature, in which Schelling endeavors to connect the main principle of the philosophy of Fichte with a philosophy of nature, which in its broad outlines is identical with that contained in Kant. In a purely analytical way Kant had shown that matter implies the presence of two opposite forces. Schel- ling^s aim is to derive those forces from the nature of perception, and to explain the various phenomena of nature by the same method. The way in which the derivation is made has been partly explained above. All reality or objectivity implies the presence in consciousness of something, the primary origin of which must be sought in an unconscious or unre- flective act of production. Intelligence, which in its own nature is infinite, limits its productivity and presents to itself that which has the appearance of an independent object. At first this object is simply the purely abstract "something we-know-not- what," and hence it calls for more definite character- ization. This further definition of reality is the task of the philosophy of nature, which is therefore related to transcendental philosophy as a sub- ordinate or applied department of it, like the SCHELLINO'S EARLIER TREATISES. 93 ice is )t- r- le re ie philosophy of rights and the philosophy of morals in the system of Fichte. The first and funda- mental determination of matter is given in the conception of force, as specifying itself in attrac- tion and repulsion, which correspond respectively to the objective and subjective activities implied in perception. The former activity as coming back to the self, and centering, so to speak, in a point, is time; the latter activity, which strives continually outward in all directions, is space. Matter is there- fore definable as the product of the two forces of attraction and repulsion, and as in space and time. It must not be supposed for a moment that besides these forces there are material things outside of each other: forces are not properties of matter, but constitute its very essence, just as the infinite and finite activities are not attributes of which intelligence is the substratum, but are identical with intelligence. Matter, however, has certain specific forms, which must be shown to be compatible with the outline or schema of it which has just been drawn. The various states of cohe- sion — solidity, fluidity, etc., — are readily seen to be derivable from the relation of these two forces, but more difficulty is experienced when we come to consider the qualitative properties of matter. In sensation we find ourselves qualitatively determined. i 94 SCIIELLING*S TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM. Referred to an object, the determination is ooH' tingeni^ the object necessary. This necessary object, as product of the two forces, is purely quantitative or determined only as in space and time, but when qualified by the addition of the element of feeling, the general notion of the object becomes individual or determinate. Quality cannot indeed be reduced to quantity, but all quality rests on the intensity of the fundamental forces. It is not necessary to follow Schelling in hid attempt to reduce the varied phenomena of physicM to a unity in duality ; all that need be said is that, beginning with a consideration of combustion, ho considers successively light, air, electricity, magnet* ism and heat. More important is his consideration of life, which is closely connected with Kant*s con- ception of organisms as marked by the peculiarity that in them there is a unity of means and ends. Life is a process of individuation, and implies a con- tinual restoration of the equilibrium which the chemical process tends to destroy. Thus, in the living being the whole conditions the parts, and each part is at once cause and eft'ect. Accordingly we are compelled, in the case of living beings, to suppose an immanent adaptation of means to endii, instead of mere mechanical causality. In the Ideas., a twofold tendency is manifested: SCHELLING'S EARLIER TREATISES. 95 the one toward unity, the other toward specification ; bat, on the whole, the latter prevails. In the work entitled On the World Soul, published in 1798, the former tendency comes to the front, and Schel- ling seeks mainly for a principle which shall reduce the whole of nature to unity. This principle must not be sought in any transcendental, supernatural region, whether called God or Fate, but in nature itself. A principle such as is sought Schelling seemed to find in the conception of matter as a unity of opposite forces, and hence he naturally attempted to reduce all the varied phenomena of nature to the single principle of a force that always manifests itself in opposite directions. Accordingly nature must no longer be divided up into separate groups of phe- nomena, with a special kind of force for each, — mechanical, chemical, electrical, vital, — but in all must be seen the same force in various forms, the same unity in duality. Even the division of organic and inorganic beings, which at first sight seems to be an absolute one, is to be reconciled with the ulti- mate unity of all natural phenomena, and must therefore be regarded as merely relative. Schelling, of course, did not mean that, from the historical point of view, any transition from inorganic to organic things has ever taken place. It should be observed, however, that those who, like Mr. Herbert S' .1, 96 SCHELLINO'S TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM. Spencer, find a principle of order and unity in the conception of force, do not, any more than Schelling, find it necessary, in establishing the so- called " persistence of force," to prove genetic devel- opment: the two points of view are really distinct, and the one may be held irrespective of the other. In thus making the idea of force the supreme prin- ciple of nature, Schelling has manifestly stripped that conception of its purely mechanical connota- tion, and thus it becomes practically identical with the idea of nature as an eternal process or mani- festation of self-activity. This self-activity takes two directions, one forward or positive, and the other backward or negative. These logically distinguish- able activities of a single principle, when viewed as one, give us the notion of a single principle imma- nent in nature, which is the source of its organic unity. The somewhat unfortunate term " World Soul," borrowed by Schelling from Plato, is, there- fore, not meant to signify more than the unity of nature. In the First Outline of the Philosophy of Nature^ published in 1799, Schelling proceeds to develop, in a more systematic way, the principle which he had set forth in the World Soul, and which he had there sought to prove by an examination of the results of physical science. This principle he SCHELLINO^g EARLIER TREATISES. 97 ich he of he interprets, in accordance with the supreme prin- ciple of the science of knowledge, as pure activ- ity. Nature is not simply a product, but is at once that which produces and that which is produced. And just as the Ego is at once infinite and finite, unlimited and limited, so nature must be regarded as limiting its own infinite productivity, and thus as manifesting itself in two opposite activities which are yet in essence identical. Hence, each definite or specific product of nature is the result of the co- operation of those two forces and directions. The duality which the former treatise showed to be the condition of all natural phenomena is now derived from the idea of nature as productive. Nature is an infinite self-activity, realizing itself in the fiulie, and yet unexhausted in that realization. The vari- ous forms inrwhich it manifests itself are therefore only apparent products or completed results; in reality, nature is an eternal process that is evec ful- filling itself, and yet is never absolutely fulfilled, — just as, in the sphere of self-consciousness, practical reason consists in the perpetual striving toward an ideal goal that is never attained. CHAPTER IV. THE PROBLEM OP TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM. T OOKING back over Schelling's early develop- "*~^ ment, as rapidly sketched in the preceding chapter, we can see that there has been a gradual advance beyond his first position. Even more strongly than Fichte, Schelling rejects as absurd and unthinkable any "objective" God, independent of man and nature, and seeks to explain each entirely from itself. As we have seen, however, the uncondi- tioned which had been rejected as God gradually emerges, from a conteknplation of human intelligence, in the form of an absolute Ego, which is presupposed in all knowledge while yet it is distinct from the knowledge of the individual subject. But while Schelling tends to separate the absolute and the finite Ego much more sharply than Fichte, he is not yet pre- pared to say that the former is anything apart from the consciousness of the latter; in other words, the absolute is simply the supreme form of human knowledge. Vaguely conscious, however, that this subjective idealism was not a completely satisfactory explanation of the unity of reality and knowledge, 98 PROBLEM OF TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM. 90 Schelling endeavors to find in the conception of nature, as self-active and as rising through various grades up to organized and intelligent beings, an escape from the one-sided theory which he had adopted from Fichte. The way of escape was sug- gested by Kant, in his " Philosophy of Nature" and his " Critique of Judgment." But if the individual man is related, on the one hand to the absolute Ego, and on the other hand to nature, of which he is one of the highest manifestations, it was natural for Schelling to hold that the science of knowledge is but one of the points of view from which the universe as a whole may be regarded, the other point of view being contained in the philosophy of nature. To this conclusion the thoughts of Schelling had grad- ually been tending ever since he had made his "breach to nature." At first he regarded the phi- losophy of nature as simply the application of the conclusions reached in the philosophy of knowledge to external phenohiena; but at length he came to the conclusion Miat each led to the same point by a different route, and hence that they were coordinate branches of philosophy. Such a view, it is at once evident, could not be final; for, if philosophy is to be a single system, there must be some principle to unite these coordinate departments, and such a principle must be one which shall reduce intelli- Ji 100 8CHELLINU*8 TRANHC'BNOENTAL IDEALISM. gence and nature to the unity of a principle higher than either. At a later period in his development this became plain to Schelling himself, but at the period to which we have now come, he was content to coordinate the two without seeking for a unity combining both. This, then, is the view which pre- vails in the Transcendental Idealiam^ to the careful consideration of whic'ii we must now give our attention. Schelling begins by distinguishing between Tran- scendental Idealism and Philosophy of Nature. The aim of all philosophy is to explain that harmony of subject and object which alone makes knowledge possible, but which is at first held as a mere unrea- soned conviction. Nature is not an object com- pletely independent of all intelligence, but it is distinguishable from intelligence as the sum-total of objects from the complete series of acts consti- tuting the knowing subject. As neither intelli- gence nor nature exists in indepehdence, philosophy may start from either indifl'erently. When it begins with na^re, the problem is to explain how nature comes to be an object of intelligence: when, on the other hand, intelligence is made the starting point, the question is how intelligence can have before it an objectivENTAL iriKALIHM. which claims to set forth the grounds of all knowl- edge, to begin with the assumption that any single proposition in consciousness is objectively true, we are at least entitled to assume that con^ciouHuess proves itself — that what is in consciousness actually is in consciousness. Even the sceptic must make this assumption, for he at least takes it for granted that his denial of all real knowledge is a fact of consciousness. Let his denial, then, be the proposi- tion from which we start. It is assumed that the proposition *' there is no real knowledge" is actually in consciousness, and this proposition w© may repre- sent by the formula A=A. It is not asitrted that A has any truth apart from its occurrence in con- sciousness, but only that if A is true, it is true. The proposition is therefore purely analytical: nothing is asserted in the predicate but what is con- tained in the subject. From such a proposition no real knowledge can be extracted, since it is purely hypothetical. It may, however, be shown that it presupposes a synthetical act, without which it could not be in consciousness at all. For A to be in con- sciousness, it must be placed there by an act of con- sciousness, and to be recognized as identical with itself, this act of positing A mvM. be contemplated; in other words, consciousness must return upon itself or become its own object, and this is self-con* PROBLEM OF TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM. 109 true, ytical: is con- ion no [)urely hat it could In con- If con- with ilated; upon lf-con« sciousness. Here, therefore, we have a synthetical act implied in the bare consciousness of an identical proposition. The pure activity designated self- consciousness is an originative act in this sense, that prior to self-consciousness it has no existence; the self, in other words, is not an object known, but the pure activity without which there could be no self. While, therefore, we may still doubt whether there is any real object, we cannot doubt the reality of the act of self-consciousness. We have thus established a proposition absolutely indisputable, and may proceed to ask whether it presupposes any other proposition as certain as itself, although of course related to and dependent upon it. The proposition which has just been established is the fundamental proposition of philosophy in all its departments. It is not only the supreme condition of knowledge, but of action as well. Assuming, in the meantime, that a knowledge of objects is possi- ble, and that volition also is possible, it is evident that both alike presuppose our fundamental princi- ple. There can be no knowledge of anything apart from consciousness, and, as has been shown, no con- sciousness apart from the self-activity which we call self-consciousness; nor can there be any volition which is not in consciousness, and therefore none which is not made possible, and alone made possible. UO SCIIKLLINg's transcendental mEALIHM. by self-consciousness. Without determining at pre- sent whether there are any objects apart from con- sciousness, we can at least affirm that such objects, if they exist, are nothing /or consciousness. It need hardly be added that the question as to whether the I of self-consciousness is a thing-in- itself or a phenomenon is utterly meaningless. To speak of the I as a thing-in-itself is to suppose that the I exists otherwise than for itself, which is as absurd as to suppose that the I exists before it exists. To speak of the I as a phenomenon is to affirm it to be an object of consciousness, instead of being, as it •is, simply the primary activity without which no consciousness could be. The I is a pure activity that can only be defined as that which is not an object, and which therefore cannot properly be said to be, but only to be pure activity returning on itself. The pure activity of self-consciousness has been shown to be the necessary presupposition of con- sciousness. But consciousness involves the presence to it of some object, in relation to which it is limited or defined. There can be no consciousness which is not a consciousness of something. The question therefore arises, what is the relation of consciousness, as the corisciousness of an object, to pure self-con- sciousness? The dogmatist assumes that there is a real object existing independently of consciousness. PROBLEM OF TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM. Ill pre- con- iecis, as to ig-in- . To 3 that is as exists. '• n it to g, as it ich no ty that object, to be, ■If. IS been of con- resence lliraited hich is question (usness, |elf-con- re is a lusness, and that this object as active limits or determines consciousness. Such an explanation really explains nothing. The question is how an object becomes known, and it is no explanation to say that it exists independently of knowledge. Such an unknown and unknowable thing-in-itself, whether it exists or not, at least can be absolutely notliing for knowledge. The limitation of consciousness to an object must be explained in consistency with the supreme principle of knowledge, which, as we have seen, is self-con- sciousness as a pure activity. The object of con- sciousness, therefore, must be something relative to that activity; it must, in other words, be a limita- tion of intelligence by itself. The consciousness of self as activity thus implies the opposition to self of that which is not self, i.e. of an activity by which the pure activity of self-consciousness is limited or defined. The I can be conscious of itself only in contrast from a not-self. At the same time this not- self or limit is laid down by itself, and so in limiting itself it recognizes that the limit is its own. Thus the limit is one which, as posited by itself, it can in virtue of its self-activitv remove. The I is therefore a perpetual process of laying down and removing a limit. In one aspect intelligence is unlimited only as it is limited; in another aspect it is limited only as it is unlimited. To these two 112 uciiblling's traxscendbntal idealism. aspects correspond Theoretical and Practical Phi- losophy. In the one the limit is ideal, or only for the self; in the other it is real, or opposed to the self. We have now before us two acts of intelligence, the consciousness of self as pure activity and the consciousness of not-self as a limit to that activity. But each of these, as existing in one consciousness, must be combined in an act which is distinct from both. And this is a synthetical act, inas- much as both of the terms, self and not-self, must be present in it. Here, therefore, we have com- pleted the trinity of acts presupposed in all con- sciousness. We are still, however, far from the complexity of actual kurvledge; and hence, tak- ing this synthetical act as our starting-point, we must go on to develop from it the whole series of acts implied in knowledge. We cannot, how- ever, present the whole infinite series of acts, but must be contented with setting forth the main stages in knowledge. The first part of Transcendental Idealism seeks to explain, in consistency with the synthetical unity of self-consciousness, the presupposition of common consciousness that there are objects outside of us which we did not make for ourselves. The solu- tion of this problem cannot be given in the way '» "Wch dogmatism has attempted it ""-'"in, the existence of sTeh 1 ' '' *" poking them to act external '"' '"^ ^"P" «». »ince the condition „f a "v" ""'T "'- ^^^ i» the synthesis of . ^ "'"'«'' "■""■ '"Hii«ence that rneilr^r ""' "''"'' '' " •»" both in o,.e Th! ""' ■""• ""' ««■«"•. ^'"o-. not an H^^St "" ' '"«"='" ^"^ position ,.«„, ,„ b Jr "• '"" "■»' op- of opposition is tatt :,•;"' ""' ""P^""- ^0 oan see geneaitrhr '"'"■" "'"'•'-od. »«t in showing h ;i L, ""' '•"""•'» "■-' con- ■•«ng itse,, ml al e" ' 1""' T'"*' "*"' ''™- •'' ^-m to be limi J V"'^'' '''"' "f the high- ^e W that th Mtlr''''"« "«' ''-'f- ■•''aUve; but so long aT h " ""' "'^"'"'^ ""' «nd object remains i so ,„„ tr"'"" °*' ^"''J«o' «' the stage of ! ^' *''""''''o™' "^ *« are stage of consciousness or k„„„i j *nai synthesis must be impossible S?''""*''^''-* have to set forth n„ .i, '^""°- ^''us we shall " appears torsCr/r-'-'o object as «-»««. and. on the otrhal :f t"' "' '"»"'■ "-- to us .ho c„nXL:\";: "'^7' - '' ap. »'°»nd of phi,os„ph„ And / ""^ ^^-tage- begin with the first 1/ """""'* "^^ "ust 8 "''' ""'» ^'"P'est form in which 114 BCHELLINU^H TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM. the relation of subject and object presents itself. The successive "epochs" or stages of knowledge are (1) from Sensation to Perception, (2) from Perception to Reflection, (3) from Reflection to Will. tikumm I III — ^<— — MWiM^Jwiaw itself. rledge from on to CHAPTER V. THEORKTICAL PHILOSOPHY. Tj^OLLOWING the method inaugurated by Fichte, "*- Schelling always begins by " deducing " each stage of consciousness, that is, by explaining it in consistency witii the principle that all knowledge arises from a self-limitation: and only when this deduction has been completed does he go on to show that the result is consistent with the actual facts of consciousness. He begins, for example, at the point to which we have now come, by show- ing that the simplest form of consciousness must be the perception of a limit; and, having done so, he draws attention to the fact that the immedi- ate consciousness of a limit is identical with that stage of knowledge known as sensation. It will, however, be advisable rather to follow the reverse method; to begin with the characterization of sen- sation as it actually exists as a state of conscious- ness,, and then to consider the transcendental ex- planation ol it.. I. The first phase of knowledge is sensation. What then is sensation? In sensation conscious- ness seems to be purely passive or receptive ; it 113 116 schblling's transcendental idealism. simply finds something in itself, which stands op- posed to it, but which yet is felt. There is no affirmation that that which is felt is actually inde- pendent of feeling, but simply that what is felt is a limit to it. The matter of sensation is some- thing that immediately presents itself, and must be apprehended; it is not something which can be freely constructed. The content of sensation is, therefore, something alien to consciousness, while yet it is in consciousness. All sensation is the immediate consciousness of something as present, which cannot be made or unmade; but must sim- ply be accepted. The ticking of the clock, and the heat of the fire along with its red glow, are im« mediately present in sensation, and, so long as I am sensitive, they cannot be made or unmade, but must be taken as they are. Nor in sensation is there any opposition of something distinct from that which is felt, but the sensation and that which is felt are immediately identical or undistinguished from one" another. Just in so far as I exclude all reflection and immerse myself in the immediate object have I sensation. There is no thought of any object distinct from sensation, conceived as its cause, but subject and object are immediately identi- cal. Just as little does sensation involve the concep- tion of the I as the source of that which is felt. . THEORETICAL PHILOSOPHY. 117 e Un- as I made, ation from which lish^d ie all diate t of s its enti- eep- The essential characteristics, then, of sensation are, (1) that it is an immediate consciousness or feeling, and (2) a consciousness or feeling of ne- cessity. Now, when we make sensation an object of philosophical consideration, it is natural that we should attempt to explain it by the causal action of a thing-in-itself, or independent reality, upon con- sciousness. The feeling of necessity which accom- panies all sensation, and is essential to the reality of what is felt, is very naturally confounded with the existence of an object that exists independently of consciousness. This is the solution proposed by the dogmatic materialist. The object as active is conceived to act upon consciousness as one billiard ball hits upon another, and so, it is supposed, there arises the consciousness of something not-self. Now, even granting that any meaning can be attached to the idea of an independent matter, the feeling of necessity is not thereby explained. Ofle billiard ball is set in motion by another, but it has no con- sciousness of being acted upon. The materialist overlooks the fact that the feeling of necessity exists only for consciousness. Sensation is not a mere limitation, but a consciousness of limitation, and such consciousness necessarily presupposes that there is, at the very least, a reaction of consciousness against that which is opposed to it. No affection X 118 schelling's transcendental idealism. produced by an independent thing can be conceived as changing into a state of consciousness. If con- sciousness were a mode of existence, it might be correct to say that it is acted upon by something from without; consciousness, however, is not a mode of existence, but a mode of knowledge. The materi- alist who is consistent with himself, must reduce matter to a mere phantom, and regard mind and matter as functions of something that is higher than both. The true explanation of sensation must therefore be found within, and not without, consciousness; and this is equivalent to saying that consciousness is not absolutely passive in sensation, inasmuch as passivity implies the independent reality and activity of something distinct from consciousness. Still it is a fact that in sensation there is a feeling of neces- sity or compulsion, and so of limitation or depend- ence on something unknown. How is this to be explained consistently with the nature of knowl- edge, which allows of nothing as real, except that which exists in consciousness? There can be no difficulty in seeing what the answer must be, if we refer back to the analysis already made of self-con- sciousness. The consciousness of self we have seen to be a pure activity which, considered in itself, is absolutely unlimited or infinite. But, on the other THEORETICAL PHILOSOPHY. 119 hand, such a pure activity cannot be known unless there is opposed to it something limiting it; there is no consciousness of self apart from the consciousness of some not-self. Now, this not-self is still in con- sciousness, and so relative to the self. It must therefore be, not an actual reality apart from con- sciousness, but simply an activity acting in opposi- tion to the pure activity of self-consciousness, and therefore limiting it. Self-consciousness we may call a centripetal activity; consciousness of not-self a centrifugal activity. If, therefore, the former activity is opposed by the latter, the product must necessarily be the consciousness of a limitation of the free activity of self-consciousness. Conscious- ness is prevented from returning upon itself, and so feels or perceives that it is limited. And this feeling of limitation is sensation. It may be asked, how, if sensation is the product of a relation between two contrary activities, the consciousness of self and the consciousness of not- self, it is not accompanied by the consciousness of self. The answer is that sensation, as the first and simplest relation of these activities, excludes all reflection on that relation. In sensation there is no explicit opposition of subject and object, but an immediate unity of the two. Certainly the oppo- sition is implicit, and must appear the moment re- 120 scuelling's tbanscendbntal idealism. flection upon sensation begins; but the condition of such reflection is that there should be some- thing to reflect upon. Consciousness cannot at once perceive, and contemplate itself as perceiv- ing; the first . immediate product of the two con- trary activities must be an undifferentiated unity. And this explains the fact that in sensation there is simply an immediate feeling in consciousness that there is something we-know-not-what which limits or opposes us. Thus we have explained at once how there can be in sensation (1) the con- sciousness of a limit and (2) the consciousness of a limit. Any other explanation must deny either the one or the other. Dogmatic idealism explains the consciousness, but not the limit; for, in as- suming that sensation is a purely subjective state, it fails to explain the reality of the limit, and makes it a mere product of arbitrary imagination. Dogmatic materialism may account for the limit, if it is allowed to make the perfectly gratuitous supposition of an unknowable thing- in-itself, but it fails to explain how there should be any con- sciousness of a limit. The solution we have of- fered accounts both for consciousness and for the consciousness of a limit. The most stubborn dog- matist must, therefore, grant that his assumption s , ASM. condition be some- annot at perceiv- two con- d unity. 3n there iousness t which ined at le con- ness of either ^plains in as- state, 'i and ation. limit, "tons \ but con- J of- tbe dog. tion THEORETICAL PHILOSOPHY. Idl «f a subject without an object or .„ ni • . out a subject i. r«„^ ^ ^^J®^* ^^th UDject, ,s rendered superfluous. sciouTr;^^^^ ^^^ectandlbSrir^r^^^^^^^^^ becomes explicit r opposition ^n opposition to it and Umi* ^ , standing »f - oyec? t : "*"''"' *^ *"« -™ effect fe feUime there aril t J::-. "'^'•^'■'"•''' ^- """•Id. More exactl. J . """'"""^"e^^ « real '- -ten: ::2tt''' »■'--> -.a manifests itself a! "/"' '" ''^''' "»«» icseit as possessed of the aff.n . , «'-avity. And as the object is ' *" viewed as altogether indep den of th'"""""" «f perception, .natter is ZTj """'^ or thing-in-itself .„f * ''"'' "''Jeet ? .tself, not as something dependent for Its constitution upon Hip ..,!•. Planation of .^rltL , • ""»'"""" ««• -"Ject as tw M ::J^ ""'J-' "".> Pendent object butH "T """"" "'■ «« '"de- opposition oflbjectt.ro. /""'""'•'• ^'"' -»' 'vitbout con ct It 'irr'"'" "'«' P"«« the activ. relation!; "',"""■«'<"•« " "•>• No doubt the obLc "" •• "' '" • •"'■J'^^'- i"depe„dent,Xf Crce'li"'";'"' " "'""""^^ "-^ it is :ssnn..r:t J:; " "'^ """'' and therefore to exist foT. '''™*''"»''' theory of nercentin '""'"ousne^s, A true «.o olject rre : ""' "'"^'»™ «P""--> "0. ness of it. . '' °"'^ '» "«'• co«,eiou,. Let us get a clear coneen«n„ „<• *> «P>ained. Sensation "r the !'''''''''"•''« ''• ' "ess of a limit „ , ""med.ate conscious. '"nitation o t I "" "' "' *"« '•^«»" of a -^.thelrVrracritrt"'"'^"^-"""^—- fi'-t act of intelZ' ^f «»»«e'o„s„ess. I„ M, -«vitiesdid:oTi:^;r^'«-»^"-'- Piesent .(self m consciou«neM, but T..EOBET.CAL PMILOSOPHV. jj,, o»ly their pi-oduet At *i. «on contains in a kt T '"" ""'"'''""'■ «»■'- "f sensation n,„st „vea thif »»"'«'«P'atio» -'0 clear consciou., '"l"^-^"'''' or bring ie place. Sensation ca ll "' ''' ''"" ""^ '*''«' contemplation in an alT^- '"'"' "" ""J"'' "' tion itself. VIZ \ "' ''"'" "'='' of ^"'•^a- ^"-ni.itaS„"ar,:::;:;r^^""^"^»-- "•albeit its «.„. Ttt :;;" T ""''''' '•'■'' «f«'-ed to the self f »o»'«n.plation here --ensatiotvir: j;rr '^-'-'-f In other words ih. 1/ "^^ ^^<^ »^ »"• -iousness, not as before I , " -'^ T '" """■ •>"' t-o distinct activi ie?? k""^'" ■'"''''"'• objective-inexplicit 1 ''•"*"™ """^ »" O'-fficult, here s r '"" °"' '"""'«^- ^"^ activit/can Ino^ « 7 " '""" *•■« «"y»««va objecti e aeti r tI" ■ '^"'""" ''"""^■'"^ "'^ "^ l^ea, aetiv^JiT'^'^^^^^^^^^ '''■^"""^ainLatirX^^^^^^^^ -rds, the contemplation o t rr::? •/" "''" a negation of it h„f .• "^''"'^ '« "ot o of .t, bat a hmitatio„ of the self which 134 schelling's transcendental idealism. so contemplates it. Now this can only take place in so far as there is a third activity which relates the other two activities to one another, and so relates them that in so far as the one is active the other is passive and vice versa. This activity uniting the other two is one which floats between both. We have explained how it comes that in percep- tion there is an opposition of subject and object, but we have yet to explain how it is that the object is supposed to be independent of the subject. The explanation is of the same nature as that which accounted for the absence of the consciousness of its own activity by the self in sensation. In the con- sciousness of the real self as limited, there is the consciousness of something beyond the limit, and in becoming conscious of the ideal self as limited there is the consciousness of the self as independent of the limit; but there can be no consciousness of the relation of that self and the object without a new activity, and hence they are only brought into rela- tion at a subsequent stage in the development of self-consciousness. The thing-in-itself is therefore just the shadow of the ideal activity which has gone beyond the limit, a shadow thrown back upon the self by contemplation. From the two factors now obtained we can explain the nature of that which presents itself as THEORETICAL PHILOSOPHY. 1S5 )f re le |e . an eject in productive perception. On the one hand we have the ideal activity going beyond the limit, and on the other hand the objective or real activity restrained by the limit. Both of these must be comprehended by intelligence, for otherwise they would have no reality for knowledge. And each activity is relative to the other, while yet each is infinite. But intelligence cannot com'prehend both without giving rise to a product which com- bines them in a unity. In this unity, therefore, there must be the implicit distinction of two con- trary activities, each of which is infinite in itself but yet is limited by the other, the product being something finite. Now these contrary activities of the object of intelligence are just what we mean by the forces of matter, and their synthesis constitutes the essential nature of matter, i.e., gravity. II. In the first stage of consciousness we have advanced beyond sensation, as the me?e conscious- ness of a limit, to perception as the consciousness of a real object standing in opposition to the subject. We have now to distinguish the various phases of perception, or, in other words, to show how nature as an object of knowledge becomes divided for intelli- gence into an inner and an outer world. The ques- tion here is how intelligence separates itself from the object which it perceives, and turns back upon 126 schelling's transcendental idealism. itself : how, in other words, it not only perceives but knows itself as perceiving. In this section Schelling seeks to show, in accord- ance with the general principle of Transcendental J*hilosophy, that the world of nature as an object standing in contrast to the knowing subject, is really only a product of intelligence itself, and that perception must therefore be regarded as a process of intelligence, not as a dead product existing apart from intelligence. Accordingly he endeavors, in imitation of Fichte, to connect together, in the closest way, space and time and the categories, which Kant had separated. It further seems to him that the categories are all reducible to those classed by Kant under the head of Relation, and the hint which Kant threw out, of a close connexion between each group of categories, Schelling follows up, and so is led to develop the view, that substance and cause are simply lower forms of the category of reciprocity. Evidently there can be no consciousness of the self as perceiving a real world unless to the subject as perceiving there is explicitly opposed the object perceived. The former must be distinguished from the latter as inner from outer. And these two perceptions — the perception of the self as perceiv- ing, and of the object as perceived — are mutually THEORETICAL nilLOSOl'llY. 127 determined in relation to one another; there can be no perception of tlie self as inner unless there is a perception of the object as outer. In the contemplation of inner and outer sense there is necessarily a comprehension of both, and therefore the distinction between inner and outer — subject perceiving and object perceived — is quite contin- gent as respects the self which thus contemplates both. While therefore the self, as perceiving a real object, is limited to the perception of that object, and cannot at the same time comprehend itself as perceiving, the self, as that which knows at once itself and the object, is a free activity. Thus there is an immediate consciousness of the self as distinct from and contrasted with an outer object. In this feeling of self there is therefore a consciousness of the self as the subject of an im- mediate feeling. How then does the self become an object of immediate consciousness or feeling? Only in so far as it perceives itself to be in Time. In opposing to itself an object there arises the immediate consciousness of self, that is. the con- sciousness of self as, so to speak, concentrated in a point, and therefore as incapable of being extended except in one direction. In the consciousness of myself as feeling I appear to myself as pure in- tensity, and pure intensity is only in time, not in 128 HCHELLING's TRANSCENDBNTAL IDEALI8M. space. Time is thus simply the general activity by which intelligence relates its changing states to one another; it is the immediate consciousness by the self of its own independent activity. But the consciousness of self as relating its own states in succession is not possible apart from the conscious- ness of something which, in contrast to the self, is out of itself or in Space. Thus arises the con- trast of inner and outer perception, which together form the object of the intelligence as perceptive. In the discrimination of the subject as in time and the object as in space an advance has therefore been made beyond the undifferentiated unity of inner and outer sense which first presented itself. The object can only appear as pure extension when the consciousness of self as pure intension has arisen; each therefore has to be combined in a consciousness that includes both. Time and space are thus necessarily correlative, and each can only be measured by the other. To determine the quantity of time we refer to the space passed over by a body moving uniformly; to determine the quantity of space, we refer to the time which a body moving uniformly takes to pass over it. The sensible object, therefore, is knowable not as pure extension but as extension which is rela- tive to intension, that is, as Force. To determine 1 sfW THEORKTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 129 be bity )dy of fng lot lla- ine the intensity of a force we have to measure the space to which it can extend without becoming zero. Conversely this space is determined by the intensity of the force for the inner sense. Hence that which is known as merely in time appears not as necessary but as contingent, since it ex- isi<< only ideally or for the inner sense; while that which has a quantity in space appears as neces- sary or substantial. As, however, there is no outer sense except in relation to inner sense — no extension apart from intension — substance and ac- cident are essentially correlative. Here, then, we have the origin of the perceptions of Substance and Accident. That which is viewed as only in space is substance; that which is perceived as only in time is accident. Space and time, then, are not empty frames into which objects apprehended inde- pendently by perception are put, nor is substance a notion, which first exists in the mind ready-made, and is brought into play upon occasion of percep- tion; both are modes of activity by which intelli- gence constitutes the world of nature. Accordingly, Schelling goes on to show that substance leads neces- sarily to causality and both to reciprocity. It has been maintained by the Kantians that objectivity or substantiality belongs to things in themselves, while their successive states as only in 9 /■• iW ^ t'J" ! ■< l Um III .W W ^ III IW j > ■ 130 schbllinq's transcendental idealism. time are supplied by the knowing subject. It is easy to show that such a view does not explain the origin of perceived objects at all. There is no such contrast of the subjective sequences of mental states and the objective sequence of real events. An objective sequence is simply one which, as not due to the free activity of the individual, does not se^^m to be produced, but to be externally apprehended. But in truth the occurrence of the succession and the perception of the occurrence are the same object contemplated from different points of view. Let us suppose for a moment that per- ception consists in a mere succession of mental states. Now substance is that which, as fixed or indifferent to time, can neither come into exist- ence nor go out of existence. The accidents of any objects B and C, may arise or disappear, but not the objects themselves. If, therefore, C is causally deter- mined by B, it can only be the accidental in C that is determined by B, not C itself. In order that intelligence may recognize the accident B as the ground of the accident C, B and C must be opposed in one and the same act, and at the same time re- lated to each other. That there is an opiwsition between them is evident, for in a mere succession B must be driven out of consciousness by C, and go away into the past moment. But how they can THEORETICAL PHILOSOPHY. 131 le re- Isition jssion a»,nd hy can be related to one another is not comprehensible so long as the self is regarded simply as a succession of simple representations, each of which drives out the other. Now it has been shown that only ac- cidents can come into being or go out of being, not substances. What, then, is substance? It is only conceivable as fixed time. But time is not fixed, but fleeting — fleeting of course not in itself but for the self, — and therefore substances cannot be fixed, since the self is not itself fixed, but from the present point of view is simply this succession itself. The supposition, therefore, that the self as active is merely a succession of representations is a pure hypothesis, which reflection shows to be in- admissible. Substance, however, must be regarded as permanent, if there is to be any opposition be- tween C and B. Now the succession cannot be fixed, unless opposite directions enter into it. Mere succession has only one direction. This one direc- tion, taken in abstraction from the succession of feelings, is just time, which looked at externally has only one direction. Opposite directions can therefore only come into the succession, provided that the self, whilst it is driven from B to C, is again driv^en back at the same time to B; for in that case the opposite directions will negate each other, the succession will be fixed, and conse- 132 schelling's transcendental idealism. quently also the substances. Now, undoubtedly^ the self can be driven back from C to B, only in the same way in which it has been driven from B to C. That is to say, just as B contained the ground of a determination in C, C must again con- tain the ground of a determination in B. This determination in B cannot have been before C was, for the accidental of C is to contain the ground of that determination, and C arises for the self as this determinate object only in the present mo- ment, and hence also that determination in B, whose ground C is to contain, first arises at this stage. B and C must determine each o^her. It has been shown that any two objects are deter- mined as substances only by being known as mutu- ally determined in one indivisible moment. But intelligence is a perpetual process or continual pro- duction of new objects. Can it, then, be shown that the same principle is universally true, and that all the substances in the world are in reciprocal causa- tion? The mutual action tf two substances implies their co-existence, and it nev?d not be said that such co-existence exists only for intelligence. In the per- ception of substance space presents itself merely as extension or a side-by-side of exclusive parts: only in the perception of reciprocity does it appear in tl)e form of co-existeEce, or a side-by-side of objects ex- rZ — ;-.v-^::- THEORETICAL PHILOSOPHY. 133 as ly eluding one other. Space is therefore simply the reproduction, in an act of intelligence distinct from the actual knowledge of co-existing objects, of the mere form of co-existence. Primarily, space has no direction, and hence it is the possibility of all direc- tions; in the relation of causality there is only one direction; in the category of reciprocity all direc- tions alike are possible. Now substance and cause are only ideally distinguishable; actual knowledge is possible only as a synthesis of two substances in mutual action, which again are relative to others, and hence there can be no knowledge of objects not in reciprocal action; or in other words. Nature is a synthesis of objects, all of which determine each other. We have so far assumed that in intelligence is to be found the ground of the continuous production of objects. This has now to be proved. Originally the self implies an opposition of two diverse tenden- cies. But as the nature of the self is pure and absolute identity, it must continually strive to re- turn to identity, while yet it can never completely do so, because of its original duality. The condition of continuous production, i. e., the presentation of an object as opposed to the subject, is the perpetual re-establishment of the original conflict of opposite activities. Intelligence is intelligence only so long 134 SCHELLINU'S TRANSCENDENTAL IDRALISM. as the conflict continues. The opposition, to borrow a phrase of Mr. Spencer, is one " never to be tran- scended while consciousness lasts." Evidently, there- fore, it cannot come to an end with the production of any individual object; in other words, each indi- vidual object as such is but an apparent product of the infinite activity of intelligence. And here a diffi- culty arises. All empirical consciousness begins with an object immediately present, and in its first con- sciousness intelligence sees itself seemingly involved in a determinate succession of representations from which it cannot get free. On the other hand, individual objects are only possible as part of a sin- gle universe, and because of the causal relation of events the succession already presupposes not merely a multiplicity of substances, but a reciprocal action or dynamical co-existence of all substances. The difficulty, then, is this: Intelligence, as con- scious of the succession, can take hold of it only at one point, and hence, to be conscious of succession at all, it must presuppose as independent of itself a totality of substances and a reciprocity of action between them. There is no nature apart from intelligence, yet nature is apparently independent of intelligence, and the necessary presupposition of any consciousness of the parts of nature as revealed piecemeal. There is no way of solving this contra- THEORETICAL PHILOSOPHY. 135 diction but by distinguishing between absolute and finite intelligence. There must be a universe — a system of substances all mutually related — if the self Is originally limited at all. Because of this primary limitation — or, what is the same thing, the original conflict of self-consciousness — the uni- verse as a whole originates for the self, not gradually, but by one absolute synthesis. The idea of Nature as a whole, as Kant said, must precede the knowledge of its parts. But this does not explain the limitation of self-consciousness for me as a finite individual. This particular or second limitation must appear as occurring at a deform inate moment of time. All that is posited in this second limitation is already posited in the first limitation, but with this dififer- ence, that in the first all is posited at once or as a whole, while in the second it takes the form of a successive synthesis ^of parts. The absolute synthe- sis cannot be said to be limited by time, for time is impossible apart from it, while in the empirical con- sciousness the whole is produced only by the grad- ual synthesis of the parts, hence by successive repre- sentations. Now, in so far as intelligence is free from the limitation of time, it is just that absolute synthesis itself, and as such it neither begins to pro- duce nor ceases to produce; in so far as it is limited, it can only appear as entering the series at a defi- iV 136 SCHELLINO'S TBANSCENOENTAL IDEALISM. nite point. Not indeed as if the infinite intelli- gence were absolutely separate from the finite; for if we abstract from the particular limitation of the finite intelligence, we at once obtain the absolute intelligence, just as when we add on the limitation thus abstracted from absolute intelligence the latter becomes specialized as finite intelligence. It must not be supposed, however, that the absolute nynthesis and the special or empirical synthesis are two inde- pendent acts; on the contrary, in one and the same primary act there arises for intelligence at once the universe as a whole and the specification of it in the series of particular objects. It is easy to see why intelligence, in the point at which its consciousness begins, must appear as determined entirely without its own cooperation ; for, just because at that point consciousness, and with it freedom, arisei, that which lies beyond that point must appear as completely independent of freedom. What has just been said throws fresh light on the nature of the problem of philosophy. Each individual may consider himself as the object of these investigations. But, to explain himself, he must first negate all individuality within himself, for this is just what has to be explained. When all limits of individuality are taken away, there remains absolute intelligence. When all limits of ,/ PlJWMWWSWfrWP^W^gSBH! THEORETICAL IMIILOSOPilY. 187 / intelligence are negated, there remains simply the absolute I as the unity of subject and object. When we take away from the I all individuality, and even the limits on account of which only it h an intelligence, we yet cannot negate the funda- 1. ^tal character oi lic I, which makes it at once subject and object. Hence the I in itself, and in its very nature as its own object, is primarily limited in its activity. From this first or primary limitation of its activity arises immediately for the I the absolute synthesis of the infinite conflict which is the ground of that limitation. If now intelligence should remain at one with the absolute synthesis, there would indeed be a universe, but no intelligence. Hence intelligence must come out of that synthesis, and consciously reproduce it; and this is impossible unless there comes into that first limitation a particular or second limitation, which cannot consist in intelligence being identical with the universe as a whole, but in its perception of the universe from a particular point of view. The difficulty of explaining how everything is de- pendent on the original act of intelligence, while yet intelligence can take hold only of a determin- ate succession, is resolved through the distinction of absolute and finite intelligence. The empirical succession is merely the evolution in time of an S! 1 13& hciielung's transcendental idealism. 1 aosoluie synthesis, in which all that happens, or will happen, is wrapt up; and the reason why the succession must appear as independent is simply that the individual cannot produce it beforehand, but must wait for its fulfilment. The determination of the universe as an infinity of objects, all of which are in reciprocal action, is virtually the conception of the world as an organic unity. But this universal organism must be still further specified, since the knowledge of the objec- tive world as given in perception includes the recog- nition of a particular part of it as the immediate organ of its activity. Organization in geneial is succession checked and, as it were, petrified. The mechanical conception of the universe regards every part as tending away out of every other to infinity, or, subjectively, as a mere empirical series. An organism is that which has its centre within itself, or which forms a series that returns upon itself; and thus only can intelligence represent to itself organic as distinguished from inorganic beings. In the widest sense of the term all organized existence has an inner principle of movement, and is there- fore living. The various stages of organization are but phases in the ideal evolution of the universe. Just as intelligence is perpetually striving to repre- sent the absolute synthesis, so organic nature pre- ss TIIEORKTICAL PIIILOSOPIIV. 139 sents itself as a perpetual struggle with inorganic nature. It is only, however, in the highest organ- ism that intelligence recognizes itself. Hence in- telligence is not only organic, but it «;tands at the apex of organization. As we have before seen that intelligence could not determine the world as sub- stance and accident without contemplating it as cause and effect, nor the latter without going on to determine it as a system of substances mutually acting on each other, so we now see that even the category of reciprocity must give place to the idea of organization which, thought universally, leads to the notion of nature as a universal organism, in relation to which all individual organisms are accidents. III. We have now reached one of the most im- portant sections in the whole of the Transcend- eut(d Idealism — that in which Schelling endeavors to give a final explanation of the peculiar prob- lem of philosophy, so far as that can be done from the point of view of knowledge. In the consider- ation of Reflection, the last stage of Theoretical Philosophy, the distinction of Transcendental Ideal- ism from the doctrine contained in Kant's Ana- lytic is' most clearly seen. Here it is that Schel- ling, turning to good account the hints of Fichte, tries to free the critical theory of knowledge from 140 SCHEI.LIXg's TnANSC.'ENDENTAL IDKAI.ISM. that appearance of dogmatism whioli arose mainly from the way in which Kant, from historical causes, was led to present his theory; to connect the objects of perception, the schemata and the categories, in a more intimate way; to show the true dependence of the four groups of categories contained in Kant's table, and the relation of the special categories of each group to one another; and, finally, to show the origin of that irrational assumption of the independence of nature on intel- ligence which is the characteristic mark of dog- matism. This part of Schelling's work, unsatisfac- tory as in some respects it is, undoubtedly proved rich in suggestion to Hegel, when he came to develop his complete system of all the categories in the true order of their dependence, and to transform the doctrine of Kant into a self-consist- ent system of Absolute Idealism. In his characterization of perception, as the sec- ond stage of knowledge, Schelling has shown that what we have before us in our ordinary experi- ence is a system of objects in space and time, act- ing and reacting on each other, and containing among them organized beings. But while it is evident enough to an idealist philosophy that the world of nature is simply the other side of intel- ligence, this insight is impossible to one who is THEORETICAL PHILOSOPHY. 141 mainly itorical connect nd the lOW tlie tegories of the mother; rational m intel- of dog- isatisfac- proved came to tegories and to -consist- the sec- ^wn that experi- tme, act- Intaining lile it is Ithat the 3f intel- who is still at the stage of perception. It is impossible, because, while inner and outer sense have become for him an object which he knows, no separation of intelligence as active from nature as something distinct from that activity has yet been made. That this opposition is, as a matter of fact, actu- ally made by intelligence at a certain stage in its progress, the existence of dogmatic systems of phi- losophy is there to testify. It is, then, with this seeming dualism of intelligence and nature that we are here especially concerned. The necessary progress of knowledge has brought us to the point where that dualism can be accounted for, and par- tially at least exploded. How does it come that intelligence and nature, thought and reality, subject and object, seem to be mutually opposed? The first condition evidently is that intelligence should be able to free itsfilf from its immersion in nature as an object, and to contem- plate itself as active in knowing. To this power of separating one's self from the objective world, we may apply the common term abstraction. Now, in considering the nature of perception we found that it implies a universal and a particular element; or, in other words, the belief in nature as. a complete whole, and the limitation to specific objects of nature. Corresponding to this distinction we find, ;«' u I f l' i'. i I IS 14!Si H(?IIULMN(i*S TKANBCKNDKNTAt IDEAhlAM. as we should naturally expect, that abstraction is either partial or complete, empirical or transcenden- tal. And as the universal element in perception is implicit rather than explicit, while the particular element alone comes to the foreground, the elevation of intelligence to the stage of reflection naturally begins with a recognition of the relatively independ- ent activity of intelligence in its consciousness of particular or specific objects. Empirical abstraction therefore consists in a separation in consciousness from the special objects presenting themselves in perception, and a concentration upon the activity of thought in knowing those objects. Thus dualism is introduced into consciousness. The immediate identity of the act of knowledge with the object known is destroyed, and the act is contrasted with its object. The result of abstraction is therefore the origination in consciousness of a perception of the activity of thought, i.e., conception. It is evident that there is no propriety in asking how conceptions harmonize with objects, if by this is meant: How do conceptions which are completely independent of objects come to agree with them? This way of stat- ing the problem assumes that conceptions originate independently of objects, whereas a 'conception has no existence except as an act of abstraction from actual objects. There must, then, be a special act in TIIEOKKTK'AL IMIILOSOI'IIY. 143 which conceptions and perceived objects, originally united, are first opposed to one another, and then combined. This is the act significantly called Jmlg- ment (ur-theil). And as judgment, in specifying itself in particular judgments, must take place ac- cording to a rule, this rule must be capable of being made an object of reflection. To the rule itself Schelling gives the name employed by Kant, of a schema. The schema uifliers fom the fnar/e in being a rule in accordance with which u detenninate object may be produced, wV»ereas the im re only differs from the concrete object in not being limited to a definite part of space. By empirical reflection the activity of thought in subsuming a perception under a rule is made an object of consciousness, but complete liberation from perception is not thereby attained. The abstraction is essentially relative to the perception of particular objects, and hence, while the activity of thought is raised into conbrioijsness and distinguished from perception, there is still a reference to perception in the application of the schema in judgment to a par- ticular o'/ject. But the same power which enables intelligence to abstract from individual perceptions enables it to abstract from all objects, and to con- centrate attention upon the universal modes of activity by which objects are made possible at all. SSB 144 schelling's transcendental idealism. f I It I ; This supreme abstraction may be called transcenden- tal abstraction, the object of which is the pure con- ceptions or categories that constitute the fundamental modes of activity of intelligence as reflective. And just as the empirical conceptions and perceived objects are mediated by the empirical schema, so the category is related to the world in general through the transcendental schema. In considering the nature of transcendental ab- straction, Schelling's main aim is to avoid that absolute separation of tliought and reality, con- ception and perception, which gives color to the dualism upon which dogmatism is built. Hence he seeks to show that the opposition of intelligence and nature arises from the failure to apprehend the abstracting or separative character of reflec- tion. That " perceptions without conceptions are blind, and conceptions without perceptions are empty," he explains from the fact that perception is already the indissoluble unity of thought and its object. For (1) perception regarded as indepen- dent of conception is the mere form of objectivity, not objectivity itself ; it is simply the purely in- definite act by which possible objects may be related to each other as out of each other or in space. But the objective world is something quite ' different from mere outness ; it is a congeries THEOBETICAL PHILOSOPHY. 145 of substances, all of which are in mutual action and reaction. The determination of the objective world thus involves those definite ways in which thought relates objects to each other; it implies, in short, as has been show: in considering the sec- ond stage of knowledge, the categories of relation. (2) Conceptions isolated from perceptions are, on the other hand, the mere abstraction of activity in general. When abstraction is made from the em- pirical schemata — the modes in which intelligence relates individual objects to one another — there arises, on the one side, conceptionless perception, or the mere form of space, and, on the other side, per- ceptionless conception, or the mere form of relation. Hence the categories come to be regarded, as they are regarded in formal logic, merely as formal or abstract modes of relation. From the point of view of pure reflection or analysis, the categories are necessarily viewed as formal determinations, and hence the attempt of Kant to derive them from the functions of judgment in formal logic. Now, not to mention that these functions of judg- ment must themselves be derived from transcenden- tal philosophy, it is evident that, when separated from the schematism of perception, they are no longer conceptions making real objects possible for knowledge, but mere abstract forms of thought. 10 '■I '. •I' 146 schelling's transcendental idealism. Accordingly dogmatic philosophy has never been able to explain how it comes that conceptions har- monize with objects. When the two are absolutely separated, the only modes of explanation possible are to say, either that conceptions and objects are related as cause and effect, or that conceptions agree with objects because of a pre-established harmony between them. If we adopt the first view, we must suppose that objects produce conceptions, in which case conceptions can have no claim to universality and necessity; or that they are the formative cause of objects, in which case we are driven to a conclu- sion which is inconsistent with the facts, namely, that objects are formless matter. These difficulties all arise from not attending carefully to the way in which the distinction of conception and object origi- nates. Prior to the act of abstraction there is no such distinction: perception and its object consti- tute one indivisible act. The question as to the harmony of conception and perception is thus solved, the moment we see that the separation is due to an act of abstraction. Reflection concentrates itself upon the act by which an object of perception arises, and hence comes to oppose the conception to the object. But the opposition is merely relative or logical, not real. And as the object thus contrasted with the act is, as has been shown above, a necessary THEORETICAL PHILOSOPHY. 147 product of intelligence, so also must be the act which is inseparably bound ui^ with it. It is then at the stage of reflection that the dis- tinction of the unconscious and conscious production of intelligence is clearly seen. As conceptions are necessary acts of intelligence, they may be said to be a priori', as they are conscious acts, they seem to be obtained by abstraction from objects given inde- pendently of intelligence and may be termed a pos- teriori. The distinction is a purely relative one. For philosophy all reality is a priori, in the sense of being a manifestation of the activity of intelligence; from the point of view of reflection all knowledge, as the product of the unconscious activity of intelli- gence, is a posteriori, or empirical. To draw a broad line of demarcation between conceptions and percep- tions is utterly indefensible; the distinction exists only for the individurl who has not gone beyond the stage of reflection, and is forever done away in a philosophy which derives knowledge from the origi- nal duality of self-consciousness. Schelling claims that this view of reflection exhibits the true nature of the categories shown by Kant to be implied in experience. Their mechanism cannot be derived, as even Kant holds, from the purely formal functions of judgment. That mechanism can be explained only from the relation of the categories to inner 148 schelling's transcendental idealism. and outer sense. It is pointed out by Kant as a striking peculiarity of the dynamical categories — comprehending substance, cause and reciprocity as the modes of relation, and possibility, actuality and necessity, the forms of modality — that each has a correlate; while, on the other hand, the mathemati- cal categories of quantity and quality have no such correlates. But this is at once explained when we see that in the dynamical categories inner and outer sense are as yet unseparated, while quality and quantity, the mathematical categories, are connected respectiv1?ly with the inner sense and the outer sense. Substance and accident, for example, is that mode of activity by which intelligence determines a,n object in space whose accidents are in time, although this distinction is not drawn by intelli- gence at the stage of perception. Quality again is the intensity of a feeling viewed as in time alone, and quantity the extension of an object viewed as only in space. Again, the fact that in each class there are three categories, of which the two first are opposed to one another, while the third is the syn- thesis of the other two, proves that the mechanism of the categories rests upon a higher opposition. And as this higher opposition does not present itself at the stand-point of reflection or analysis — since analysis cannot go beyond the mere form of rela- THEORETICAL PHILOSOPHY. 149 tion — there must be an opposition which belongs to a higher sphere, or is the condition of the logical opposition. Moreover, this opposition runs through all the categories, and hence there must without doubt be only one fundamental category. This cate- gory we should expect to be that of relation, since this is the only one which we can derive from the original mechanism of perception. And this can actually be proved, Apart from reflection the objective world is not determined by the mathemati- cal categories. No object, for example, is a unity in itself, but only in relation to a single subjUt, which at once perceives and reflects on its perception. On the other hand, apart from any explicit reflection on the activity of thought, the objective world, to be known at all, must be determined in the way of snbstance and accident. Hence the mathematical categories are dependent upon or presuppose the dynamical categories. The former can only repre- sent as separate that which by the latter is repre- sented as united, since they belong to the inner and outer sense as such, and therefore only originate at the stage of reflection. The same conclusion may be reached even more simply if we consider that, in the original mechanism of perception, the third of each of the two groups of mathematical categories always presupposes the category of reciprocity. ( 150 SCHELLINO'S TRANSCBNDRNTAL lUKALIMM. The third category of quantiiy, that of totality, is not thinkable apart from the recipronal activity of objects on one another, nor does the third category of quality, that of limitation, apply to iin individual object, but only to two or move objicts standing to each other in the relation of reciprocity. The fun- damental categories are therefore the categoriei* of relation. Those of modality only come into opera- tion at the stage of reflection. PosKibility, actuality and necessity express merely a relation of the object to the complete faculty of knowledge (inner and outer seiise) so that they do not dotin'niiue the objective world in any new way. Just m the cate- gories of relation are the highest in actual percep- tion, so the categories of modality are the highest in relation to knowledge as a whole. Whence it is evident that they do not present themselves origi- nally in perception. By following knowledge through all iti phases we have come back to the opposition of intelligence and nature, subject and object, from which theoreti- cal philosophy begins. By means of transcendental abstraction the individual is capable of raising himself above all objects of perception, and contem- plating himself as purely active in relation to knowledge. Still the world remains for him some- thing which seems to be independent of intelligence, THEORETICAL PIllIiOROPHT. 151 we lence Ireti* ntal sing Iteni- to >me- mce, and must so remain until for tlie individual, as for philosophy, it is seen to be the product of intel- ligence itself. This insight cannot, however, be gained in a new act of knowledge, since the process of knowledge is now complete; hence, starting from the free activity of intelligence, we must see hov/ the ultimate problem of philosophy — the abso- lute identity of subject and object — fares when considered from the point of view of Practical Phi- losophy. CHAPTER 71. PRACTICAL FFILOSOPHY, "1"N the theoretical part of his system, Schelling ■*" has shown, by a consideration of the various ideal phases through which knowledge may be said to pass, that an ultimate explanation of intelligence, and therefore even of knowledge, must be sought in the nature of Will. Intelligence, regarded as merely theoretical, never goes beyond the conception of reality as something more or less alien to itself. It cannot indeed be said that in knowledge we regard ourselves as passively apprehending a world of objects, exis*^'-^^ apart by themselves and acting on our intelligence in a purely external or mechani- cal way. Such a view is the distorted explanation which is put forward by the dogmatist to explain knowledge. Not to speak of those objections that have already been made against this uncritical and unthinkable hypothesis, it utterly fails to account for the fact of intelligence as active or willing and as displaying its activity in a world of real objects, which passively submit to be moulded by it. It is no explanation of the consciousness of self as de- termining itself, or at least as apparently determin- PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 163 ing itself, to say that by abstracting from this and that object we become conscious of our own prac* tical activity, for it is just this power of abstraction which demands explanation. The perception of self- activity is therefore inexplicable, so long as we re- main at the point of view of knowledge. We can only explain the knowledge of our own mental activity as it exists for the reflective consciousness by supposing an absolute power of self-determina- tion which is utterly independent of any act of mere knowing. Even at the highest stage of knowl- edge we do not become conscious of the activity of intelligence as such. All knowledge implies the direction of intelligence outward upon objects, and hence there can be for knowledge no perception of intelligence as self-determining or practically active. The self is not one of the possible objects of knowledge: it is not simply a part of nature, but a pure self-activity which is the condition oT the knowledge of nature. It is thus evident that to explain intelligence as knowing we must go beyond it to intelligence as willing. Our investigation into the nature of knowledge has prepared us for this conclusion. As the original condition of knowledge we found that we had to assume a primary act of self-limitation by which the knowledge of objects was made possible at all. 154 SniELLINO's TRANSCENDENTAL IPEALI8M. The fundamental proposition of idealism is that nothing can exist for intelligence which is not its own product. There can be as object of intelli- gence nothing that is not in relation to intelligence, and intelligence can be acted upon by nothing but itself. To effect the transition from the sphere of knowledge to that of practical activity, we have again found ourselves compelled to suppose that intelligence is free or self-determined. It must not be supposed, however, that we have been mov- ing round in a circle without making any progress. The primary act of self-consciousness or self-limi- tation is a hypothesis which the idealist philosopher is compelled to assume, in order to explain the fact of knowledge; tlie absolute act of abstraction, by which a perception of intelligence as will is obtained, is one that can be shown to be possible for intelligence itself. Hence there is a contrast between the original act of self-consciousness and the act of self-determination which is now under consideration. Both are indeed acts of self-de- termination, or the absolute origination of an activity which, as dependent upon nothing foreign, is perfectly free. There are, however, two points in which the original act by which intelligence in limiting itself places an objective world in oppo- sition to itself, and the act by which it raises itself PRACTICAL PUILOSOIMIY. 155 i that lot its inteUi- igence, ig but sphere re have se that t must sn mov- ii'ogress. elf-Umi- losopher lain the itraction, will is possible contrast ess and ,w under self-de- of an foreign, points igence in in oppo- Lises itself above all objects, outer and inner, differ. In the first place, the original act of limitation does not enter into the consciousness of the individual as knowing, while the act of abstraction, by which intelligence contemp' vtes itself, is not only an ac- tivity, but is recognized by the individual as such. Secondly, the first act, as not entering into explicit consciousness, is independent of time, whereas the second act occurs at a definite point in the evolu* tion of self-consciousness, and is therefore in time. But, notwithstanding these points of contrast, self- determination or will manifestly lies at the basis of all objectivity, whether conscious or unconscious ; and hence will is in a peculiar sense of the very essence of intelligence. There could be no knowl- edge at all did not intelligence determine itself to activity, and hence will is the condition of knowl- edge. The activity by which a world of objects is perceived, and the activity by which intelligence consciously determines itself to action, are at bot- tom identical. So much is plain, but a difficulty arises when we go on to enquire into the nature of that con- scious self-determination which is of the essence of practical intelligence. In our explanation of the nature of knowledge it was sufficient to point out that there can be no object in relation to in- M 156 mchellinu'h trankcknuunial idealism. ielligence that is not actively produced by it. Thus we have determined the condition? of intelli- gence in general. But with the transition to the practical part of philosophy, a new difficulty arises. The innermost nature of intelligence is will, but will cannot be explained apart from its relation to specific objects. The absolute act of abstraction by which intelligence rises above all objects of knowledge is the condition of the explicit distinc- tion of intelligence and nature; in other words it, and it alone, explains how there can be any oppo- sition for intelligence of the active and the knowing self. This act as taking place in time demands explanation, while on the other hand as the supreme condition of all reality, outer and inner, it apparently admits of no explanation. To put the matter in a form that will probably be more easily intelligible: in willing I contrast my- self as purely self-determined with myself as ac- tively knowing objects, and, thus contemplating myself as raised above all particular perceptions, I set before myself an object as an ideal which I am freely to realise. But if all reality is produced by intelligence, how does it come that in willing I am determined to a certain specific object? How is the apparent limitation of my will to be ac- counted for? Just as in sensation, the first stags rRACTICAL 1>IIIL0H01>IIY. 157 ,y it. itelU- t\ie irise«!. 1, but Lion to •action jcts of iistinc- jrds it, y oppo- ad the ^n time iiand as ier and .n. To lably be ast my- as ac- iplating •options, Iwhich I (toduced willing ? How be ac- I'st stage of knowledge, intelligence found itself limited, so here the beginning of will seems to imply that intelligence finds itself determined in relation to certain definite objects which it seeks to realize. In answering this question, 8chelling, in substan- tial agreement with (^ichte, finds the explanation, at once of the fact that there are a number of finite intelligences, and that for each of these there is a world which is not only external, in the sense of being in space, but also as being independent of each finite intelligence as such, in the peculiar char- acter of will as determining intelligence to individ- uality. For mere knowledge there can be no con- sciousness either of a world of finite intelligences or of a world of objects independent of any one of these intelligences. There can be no such con- sciousness, because, prior to explicit self-conscious- ness, intelligence has made no separation between itself and objects, but contemplates its own laws in the world that immediately presents itself, as in a mirror. Will, however, as the determination of in- telligence in a specific way — in other words, as the consciousness by the individual of his own free activity — explicitly brings up the problem: how do I become conscious of my own self-activity as limited or determined? The solution of this prob- lem is briefly as follows. The dogmatist of course 158 schelling's transcendental idealism. assumes that we first have a knowledge of other finite intelligences besides our own, and that the limitation of the will of each is explained by their mutual action and reaction. Inherited disposition, education and the force of circumstances make the individual what he is, and explain why he acts as he does. Such an explanation the idealist cannot possi- bly accept. Assuming the existence of independent intelligences, which is the very thing to be ex- plained, dogmatism virtually denies all will or indi- viduality by asserting that it is absolutely deter- mined by something external to itself. It need not be said that such a denial is of all absurdities the most absurd, since it makes not only practical activity but even knowledge impossible. We must therefore in explaining the limitation of intelli- gence proceed in exactly the reverse way. As noth- ing can be known for me which is out of relation to my thinking activity, so nothing can be done by me which is out ( f relation to my practical activity. No other intelligence, human or divine, can act upon me except in so far as I act on myse.f. How, then, (1) do I know that there are other intel- ligences besides myself? and how (2) can I be said in any sense to be acted upon by them? If these two questions can be satisfactorily answered, we shall have explained how it is that I, as an PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 159 individual, am free and yet limited in my free activity. (1) The answer to the first question is implied in the fact that in willing I find myself limited to certain specific ends. In the conscious- ness of that limitation I become conscious of mv- self as an individual and hence of other individ- uals as in relation to me. I cannot determine myself or will without being conscious of myself, and I cannot be conscious of myself except in rela- tion to other selves. The consciousness therefore of myself as limited implies the correlative conscious- ness of the activity of other selves. (2) But this consciousness of self-limitation must not be con- founded with any supposed consciousness of the direct activity of other intelligent beings upon me. There can be no such activity, simply because no in- telligence can, so to speak, go out of itself to act upon another intelligence. This, however, does not hinder that there should be an indirect relation of diiFerent intelligences to one another, a relation which, after Leibnitz, we may call a " pre-established harmony." The world of nature as I know it, exists only in relation to my knowledge; it has no independent existence of its own. But this is not incompatible with the recognition that to other intelligences the world is in its essence the same as it is to me. What this common world is, may be I 160 schelling's transcendental idealism. seen if we abstract from the peculiarities of myself as an individual. The world of nature is thus for each finite intelligence the same in its broad out- lines. For all it is a world of objects in space and time, acting and reacting on each other, and form- ing an organic unity or system. But besides this common world, there is for each individual a con- sciousness of his own acts, and a representation of the acts of others. Thus others can act upon me only in and through my representations of their acts: their action is not direct but indirect; it does not compel but only limits me. This limitation is therefore compatible with my freedom, while yet it explains the fact of my limitation as an individual. I cannot be conscious of myself as an individual among other individuals unless there is a common world of objects which presents itself as the same to us all. Moreover, my individuality must be con- stituted through the limitations under which I am placed by the represented activity of the individ- uality of other individuals. Hence the correlativity of the natural talent or capacities which I possess, and the process of education to which I am sub- jected by the indirect influence of others upon me. Education in the widest sense is the continuous action of one intelligence on another. The begin- ning of actual volition as the starting-point of free PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 161 myself lus for ,d out- ice and [ form- ies this a con- ation of ipon me teir acts : does not nation is ile yet it ^dividual, idividual common |the same ,t be con- lich I am individ- relativity I possess, am sub- upon me. continuous 'he begin- int of fvee and conscious acts can only be explained when we contemplate, not isolated intelligence, but the com- munity of intelligences as constituting the histori- cal life of man. It has now to be added that the knowledge of nature as objective or independent of individual consciousness, is explicable solely from the nature of practical intelligence. Knowledge, of itself, is merely the presentation of objects in space and time; the origination for intelligence of inde- pendent realities is due to will. That there are such realities can only mean that nature exists even when it is not perceived by me, not that it exists as a thing in itself. The only objectivity which the world can have for the ind'"vidual con- sists in its being perceived by other individuals. The pre-establicjhed 1 armony between the repre- sentations of different individuals, which we have shown to be im, ''ed in the jonsciousness of the individual as self-determined, is therefore the only condition under which the world can become ob- jective for the individual. " For the individual other . intelligences arc as it .vere the bearers of the universe, and there are as many indestructible mirrors of the objective world ns. there are intelli- gences." A single individual alone by himself would not only not become conscious of his own 11 ! 102 soiielling's transcendental idealism. freedom, but he would not even become conscious of an objective world. Will or self-deter mird- tion is the necessary condition of our perception of the world of nature as we know it. It has been shown that in intelligence as will is to be found the explanation of intelligence as knowing; that the individual only knows himself as individual in relation to other self-conscious beings; and that the independence or objectivity of nature, in the only sense in which it can be admitted by a consistent idealism, consists in its relations to other intelligences. What has now to be considered is the exact nature of will or practical intelligence. The first point to which Schelling directs his attention is the relation of will to the external world. By a free act of self-determination intelligence raises itself entirely above the world of knowable or perceptible objects. This act can become the object of explicit conscious- ness only if it is directed upon some definite object of perception, which shall serve as the visible expres- sion of it. Pure self-determination, in other words, is thinkable only in contrast to some object pre- sented in perception, and only so can it be trans- lated into an actual volition. The act of volition, however, cannot be absolutely identical with the object of perception, for in that case it would be a PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 103 scious eption IS will nee as himself nscious ectivity can be 5 in its lias now will or which Lation of 3 act of entirely. e objects, jonscious- lite object e cxpres- ter words, )ject pre- be trans- f volition, with the rould he a perception; the act q,nd the object must remain distinct from each other. As we saw in consider- ing the reflective stage of knowledge, an act taken by itself is a conception or function of thought. To say, therefore, that the function and the object are distinct, is to say that the latter is external to the former; or, what is virtually the same thing, that an object is external for me just because my will is determined in relation to it. This peculiarity of will, that it is always directed upon an object external to itself, gives rise to a contradiction which must be solved. On the one hand, I am conscious of my freedom as pure self- activity or infinite, while on the other hand that self-activity can only manifest itself as in relation to a definite object, or as finite; how, then, can the infinity of will be reconciled with its seeming finitude? ,Will does not destroy the productive ac- tivity of perception, and hence, as having a world opposed to it, it cannot but seem to be limited; the two spheres touch, but the one is outside of the other. In willing I am free; in the compulsion to accept the world of objects as it presents itself in my perception I am apparently necessitated or limited. It results from this contradiction that there must be an activity which floats between the infinite and the finite, the object of which must be itl 1 164 schelling's transcendental jhkauhm. in one aspect unlimited, and in another aspect limited. This activity, which was by Kant called reason, and by Schelling is n^mod imagination, is neither purely theoretical nor purely practical, but is the mediator between the two. The products of this activity are ideas, which mu«t be carefully distinguished from the conceptiun^ of the under- standing. The understanding is an activity which manifests itself only in the dotorinination of specific objects of perception, and henue it is a finite or limited activity. Imagination is at once finite and infinite. If therefore we assimilate an idea to a conception, we destroy the infinite aspect of the former, and the result, as Kant has clearly shown, is a series of contradictions or antinomies. This free self-activity or will is finiti when viewed in relation to a particular object which is willed, but viewed as self-activity, it is infinite or capable of transcending all finite objects of volition. The source of antinomy is therefore where Kant placed it, viz.: ia the limitation of the infinite activity of freedoi-n to limited objects. When we reflect on the relation of an idea to a definite object, we may say that it is finite; when we reflect on the activity itself, we see that it is infinite; and this just means that the object of an idea is neither the one nor the other, but botlj in one. 4M. PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 165 r aspect \i called lation, is tical, but products carefully lie under- rity which of specific I finite or 3 finite and idea to a [)ect of the ,rly shown, jmies. This viewed in willed, but • capable of ition. The Kant placed ^e activity of e reflect on object, we leflect on the Lte; and this la is neither Ine. In willing, a transition must be made from the idea to a determinate object — a transition i. e. in thought, not in reality. Hence the idea of an object that is neither finite nor infinite, but is simply the transition from the one to the other, implies an ideal, which is a mediating element bearing the same relation to action as the schema to conception. By means of this ideal there arises for intelligence an opposition between the real or external world as given in perception, and the object which is set up by the idealizing activity. This opposition takes the form of impulse, which, as a state of feeling, implies like all feelings a contradiction that demands solution. This felt con^ tradiction is the condition of that free activity which intelligence without reflection seeks to tran- scend. Thus will is directed outwardly by means of impulse, and this impulse arises immediately from the contradiction between the idealizing and the perceptive self, the object aimed at being the restoration of that self- identity which has been destroyed. How, then, we have to ask, does this impulse lead to the transition from the mere idea of an object to its actual realization by will? How can a free act determine anything in the real or objective world? From the explanation of the nature of the idea, it 166 SCHKLLINO'S TRANSCKNDKNTAL IDKAMSM. will be readily understood that it can never be real- ized, but consists in the continual transcendence of the limits in which intelligence in acting finds itself placed. The ideal, on the other hand, as the specific determination of the idea, is continually being realized at each stage of action; it is simply the particular limited end set before intelligence by itself. The realization of the ideal leaves the idea unrealized, and hence the f^onsciousness of freedom as the persistence of self-consciousness is made pos- sible. In free activity there is a succession of per- ceptions, but the succession is related as means and end, not as cause and effect. Now it must be re- membered that to transcendental idealism the object- ive world is not a thing-in-itself, but is the system of perceptions in which intelligence manifests its own laws. To say that a change takes place in the objective world, is simply to say that a change occurs in my perceptions. The demand that something should be determined in the objective world, there- fore means that by a free act in me something should be determined in my external perception. That my free activity has causality thus means that I perceive it as having causality. Now the distinction between intelligence and will is a merely relative one, for there must be a point of view from which ilviy are identical. The distinction is one made by our PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 167 external reflection. In intelligence itself the I which acts and the I which knows are one and the same; the distinction is merely that the I as will is an object to itself, while the I as knowing is not; this in fact is the sole reason why we oppose the one to the other. The self which perceives is the same as the self which acts, the difference being that the former simply perceives, while the latter perceives itself as perceiving. It is in this explicit subject- objectivity that the relative distinction of intelli- gence and will consists; otherwise, the active self would appear simply as knowing. Conversely, the self knows itself as active in perception only be- cause it not only perceives, but contemplates itself as perceiving. The question, therefore, is not how the self as acting comes into contact with the self as thinking the outer world. There could be no ex- ternal perception, were there no internal activity of the self. My activity in forming an object must at the same time be a perception, and conversely, my perception must be an activity. That this is not at once apparent arises from the nature of perception, which is not, taken by itself, a perceiving but a per- ceived; hence the self which is still at the phenom- enal point of view is not aware of the identity of the perceiving and the acting self. The change which fol- lows from a free act in the outer world must be in V>JM'7"'^OJ8 W"y 168 SCIIELLINa'fi TRANSCEND KKTAL 1DKALI8M. conformity with the laws of productive perception, and 08 if freedom had no share in it. Productive perception acts as if it were completely isolated, and produces in accordari' '^ with its own laws what follows as a change. The reason why perception does not here present itself as an activity, is that the ideal activity, conception or function is opposed to the object instead of being united with it. But that the conception or activity precedes the object, is a matter of appearance. And if the conception does not really precede the object, the only objective is the self as actively perceiving. Just, therefore, as it might be said, that when 1 believed I was per- ceiving I was properly acting, so it can now be said that when I believe I am acting on the outer world I am properly perceiving. Everything which appears in action as outside of the perceiving self belongs only to the appearance of the sole objective, the per- ceiving self; and conversely, when we abstract from the active self everything which belongs to the appearance, nothing remains but the perception.* This may be put in another way. Transcen- dental idealism has shown that there is not, as is commonly supposed, any transition from the objective world of nature to the subjective world • What Schelling \a here attempting to show is that in every veil, tion proper there is an element of perception implied. When I will to raise my arm (to take a very simple case) the volition is a thought, the actual movement a perception. PRACTICAL P1IIL080PIIT. 169 )tion, ictive lated, what eption s that pposed But object, jeption ijective srefore, jas per- be said world I ippears elongs e per- bstraet to the ion." nscen- inot, as in the world Jvery voll- len I will , thought. of mind, but that the objective world is simply the subjective which has become an object to itself. A similar difficulty arises when we endeavor to explain action. For in action there seems to be a transition fr« the subjective to the objective world; in eve ^t ' conception is freely drawn, which is to pa^ • into a world of nature ap- parently independent ot us, and yet really relative to us. How, then, is the seeming transition to be explained consistently with the fundamental principle of idealism? Only on the supposition that the world of nature becomes objective for me by means of action. That we act freely or inde- pendently of all external action upon us of an independent world of nature, and that the world is in some sense independent of us — these two propositions must be synthetically united. Now, if the world is simply our perception, the world will become objective for us when our perception becomes objective. Hence it will be readily under- stood how it can be said, that " what appears to us as an act on the outer world is from the idealistic point of view simply a developed perception." Any change which is produced in the outer world by an act of mine is, looked at in itself, a perception like every other perception. The perception is here the objective; that which lies at the basis of the IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) // 1.0 1.1 b£|2j8 12.5 us HI lit L£ 12.0 mHs^s 11.25 HI 1.4 1.6 ^ ? ^^' ■> '/ Fhotogra{Aiic Sdences Corporalion •SJ iV \ ;\ 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. U5M (716)I72-4S03 '^ RBasHon 170 sohelling's tbanscendental idealism. phenomenon, that which in the perception belongs to the phenomenon, is the act on a sensible world thought as independent. Objectively or really there is no transition from the subject to the object, just as little as there is a transition from the object to the subject. The point here is simply that I can* not appear to myself as perceiving without perceiv- ing a subjective as passing over into an objective. The only diiBculty then is to explain how the change of that which objectively is perception, into an act as it presents itself phenomenally, can be made. This may be explained by an illustration. Suppose thai by my causality a change occurs in the outer world. If we reflect merely on the fact of this change, we must certainly say that I produce the change, since there is for me nothing in the outer world at all which is not due to my productive activity. This production of a change, so far as it is a perception — and in reality it is nothing else — is not preceded by any conception of change. But if I make the act of producing the change an object of reflection, the conception of change must precede the change. The object which here is to appear is the act of production itself. In actual production no conception precedes the perception: the precedence is purely ideal, or exists only for -PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 171 the self as perceiving itself; in other words, it is only an appearance. From what has been said it evidently follows that all action roust take place in accordance with the laws of nature. Hence I cannot know myself as acting except by the mediation of matter, and more particularly of that part of matter which I recog- nize as identical with myself, viz: my own organ- ism. And the impulse which we have seen to be the cause of action must also appear as a natural impulse, acting irrespectively of my freedom and apparently compelling me to act by the pain of want. So also the change in the outer world, in which action consists, must appear as the conse- quence of all the external conditions which make it possible. The inevitable conclusion seems to be that I am not free at all, but under the compulsion of material law. If freedom is to be saved there must, therefore, be some other conception of will than that of an action upon the external world. Will is something more than this: its distinctive characteristic in fact is not to be found in the determination of an external object by action, but in pure self-determination, or the self as determin- ing itself. It is in the ideal activity, as directed upon- the pure Ego, that the nature of will becomes known. This pure self-determination constitutes I r ,'iimiiMftMifJiiiitsumi'- 172 SCHBLLINO'S TBANSCBNDBKTAL IDEALISM. ■ the common essence in which all intelligences are identical. Self-determination is the primary con- dition of all consciousness. The activity by which the self becomes an explicit olrject of intelligence cannot be deduced theoretically, but only by a postulate, i.e., by a demand to act. The self ought to will nothing but its own self-determination. This "categorical imperative" is the moral law which commands us, in Kant's words, to " will only that which all intelligences are capable of willing." As that which all intelligences can will is pure self-determination or autonomy, it is by the moral law that the self as such becomes its own object. That law does not apply to me as a particular individual, but only to me as intel- ligence in general — to that which is objective or eternal in me. But the moral law must not re- main as a pure idea, but must be realised by the individual in the sphere of nature; it must, in other words, be brought into relation to natural impulse, which of itself works blindly like pro- ductive perception. The 'ect of this impulse is in the widest sense hap^iaess. As natural im- pulse there can be no command to be happy, for that which takes place according to a law of na- ture needs not to be commanded. The immediate activity whose object is pure self- M. PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 173 loei are try con* ly which iUigence ly by a If ought ninaiion. oral law to •♦ will ipable of can will , it is by icomes iti to me as as intel- ijective or gt not re- ed by the must, in ;o natural like pro- impulse is itural im- bappyi for aw of na- pure self- determination can only come into consciousness as the opposite of that merely natural impulse which is blindly directed on an external object. But both activities — that which is commanded by pure will, and that which is prompted by natural impulse — must present themselves in consciousness as equally possible. This opposition is therefore the condition under which alone the absolute act of will can be- come an object to the self; it is that which makes volition possible, and hence volition is not the original act of will itself, but the manifestation of absolute will in the act of freedom which has be- come an object for the self. Of will as absolute we cannot say that it is either free or not free, since it can only act according to the law of its own nature ; but as volition, presenting itself as independent of something foreign to itself, we can say that the self as empirical may be free. Freedom thus consists in independence on natural impulse, or identification with the moral law as a categorical imperative. Thus, without directly intending it, we have solved the problem of transcendental freedom. The ques- tion of freedom has no bearing on the absolute Ego, which cannot but be pure self-determina- tion, but only upon the empirical Ego ; and hence it is only as empirical that the will can be said to be free. The will in so far as it is absolute is lifted iSM«^Wt*««»«»«^^.,^, 174 8Chblli>;g*8 transobndbntal idealism. above freedom; it is not sabject to law, bnt is itself the source of all law. Only as it manifests itself does it appear as volition, and this manifestation of the absolute will is freedom in the proper sense of the term. And since the self in its free action must contemplate itself to infinity as absolute will, and in its innermost nature is nothing other than this contemplation of absolute will, the manifes- tation of it is as certain and undoubted as is the reality of the self. Conversely, volition can only be conceived as the phenomenal appearance of an absolute will under the limits of finitude, and hence it is a perpetual revelation of the absolute will in us. And as the moral law and volition are equally essential conditions of self-conscious- ness, intelligence in its practical activity as will has come to have before it a world whicl^ it dis- tinguishes from itself, and which it yet contemplates as determined by itself. To complete the practical part of Transcendental Philosophy it only remains to show the bearing of the conception of freedom which has just been set forth upon the conception of rights, the state and history. We have seen that impulse, the activity of the self as tending outward, and self-determination or the action of self upon itself, are contrary to each PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 176 is itself ts iUelf ation of sense of e action ate will, ber than manifei- eks is the can only ice of an ;ude, and ) absolute i volition conscious- y as will icV it dis- itemplates scendental le bearing just been the state ity of the ination ov try to each other, and roast yet be harmonised in the free action of the individual man. What, then, is the exact relation of these two contrary activities? It is manifest that the pure will can never become an object for the self except in relation to an external object, which, however, has no indepen- dent reality, but is simply the medium in which pure will expresses or realizes itself. Happiness, when exactly analysed, is the identity or har- mony of the pure will with that which is inde- pendent of it. In other words, happiness can only be truly realized when natural impulse and the moral law are coincident. A happiness con- sisting in the realization of mere natural impulse is a dream, and not less a happiness which is pure self-determination apart from impulse. A finite being cannot make the mere form of morality his end, and just as little is the end mere impulse; the true end or highest good is self-realization in the real or objective world, or pure will as dominant in the realm of nature. The reciprocal action of individuals through the outer world must not be a matter of pure caprice or accident, but must be controlled by inviolable law, so that none may destroy the possibility of free self-real- ization in another. Such a law cannot directly control the freedom of the individual, nor can it «'iM«M«li:K0>«#»'jul!i. 176 BOMKLLINO'S TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM. apply to pure will; it can only be a limitation of natural impulse. The outer world must be so organized as to cause an impulse which transcends its proper limit to act against itself; and this self-adjustment of impulse must receive the sanc- tion of all rational beings. Now, such a law is not to be found in the world of nature as such, which is perfectly indifferent to the actions of men, but only in the world of rational beings. But f| law which is for human action what the law of causality is for external events, is the law of justice, which is as inexorable as the laws of na- ture, and which therefore, as perfectly distinct from the law of morality, is an object, not of practical, but of theoretical philosophy. The law of justice is a sort of second nature set above the first, under which free beings must be placed in the interest of the freedom of each. It is the natural mechanism by which they can be thought as in mutual action and reaction. The purely mechanical or inevitable character of the law of justice is proved by experience, which shows that any attempt to identify it with morality leads to despotism in its most terrible form. Now, if this law of right is the necessary condition of the real- ization of freedom in the outer world, it is of great importance to determine how it can be con- PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY. 177 on of be 80 Bcends d ibis I sane- law is 3 such, >f men, Bat i| law of law of \ of na- distinct , not of The law »ove the [laced in is the thought purely law of )ws that leads to r, if this Ithe real- it is of be con- ceived as originating independently of the will of the individual. Manifestly men must have been driven to establish it, without any clear conscious- ness on their part, by the promptings of their im- mediate needs and as a reaction against violence; and it must be gradually modified in accordance with the stage of culture at which the nation to which they belong may have arrived. Hence the perpetual modification of the law under the stress of circumstances. To secure the highest form of consciousness in each individiial state, there ought, as Kant contended, to be a subordination of all states to a common law of justice, administered by an areopagus of nations. The gradual realization of law is the substance of history. Here we re-enter the sphere of prac- tical philosophy, since history exhibits the develop- ment of human freedom, as the philosophy of nature is an account of the evolution of external existence. The idea of history is the special prob- lem of the philosophy of history. There is, strictly speaking, no theory of history, for a theory implies rigid conformity to a law, from the comprehension of which events can be determined in advance. Such a conformity to law as is found in nature does not obtain in history, which is the product of freedom. At the same time there could be no IP _ir«Sl*«lb.i.-...^:«^^, 178 SCMELLING'b TBANBCENDBNTAL IPBALIHlf. philosophy of history, if history were the m^re expression of lawless caprice, and hence it must be shown how will and law are in it united. The peculiarity of historical development is that its var- ious stages are not fixed in a goal which is attained once for all, but that it is an eternal pt ogress. Individuals and generations pass away, but the race of man remains; each epoch is the condition of a higher epoch, which includes and transcends Uie one that has gone before. History is thus a con- tinual advance toward a pre-determined goal, an advance which is realized in and through the will of individuals and yet in spite of the free play of individual caprice. That ideal goal is not culture or science, but a perfect state, of which all men shall be citizens; and to this goal the race is contin- ually approaching. History is thus the realization of freedom through necessity. Necessity and free- dom are related as unconscious and conscious action. Such necessity rules over our free acts, and hence there arises what we do not consciously pro- pose to ourselves, or even the opposite of that which we intended. This necessity is more potent than our humali freedom, and prevails .in spite of it. Not only tragic art, but all high deeds, rests upon the belief in something higher than ourselves. How should we will anything great or good, were PRACTICAL PHILOtiOPHY. 179 ) mere liust be 1.^ The its var- attained but the idition of cends the us a con- goal, an the will of e play 0^ iot culture |b all men is contin- realixation and free- conscious )e acts, and sibusly pro- ite of that nove potent l\in spite of deeds, rests n ourselves, good, were we not assured that it must follow, however men may strive against it? The power of such a belief is rooted in the conviction of the impotence of any man or of all men to fight against the progress of the race toward its ideal goal. Such an order of things is not the moral order of the world, which is dependent upon freedom and can be made a conscious end, but is something absolutely objective, moving the will in its deepest depths and giving us security that the highest ends will be realized. Such security is a delusion, unless there is a power which serves as the foundation and the goal of all human development, and which converts even the follies and crimes of men into means for its own ends. This complete synthesis of all acts is the absolute. In the absolute or unconditioned there is no opposition of freedom and necessity, of conscious and unconscious action, but perfect unity or " absolute identity." This unity of all the phases of human development as lying at the foundation of all consciousness, is the " eternally unconscious," which can never be an object of knowledge, but is an object only of belief, and the eternal presupposition of all action. The more man' progresses the more apparent becomes the identity of freedom and law, and the less frequent the disturbances and aberrations of 180 SCUKLLINU*I1 TRANKCBNDMNTAL IDKAU8M. individual caprice. Hence the history of the world is a continuous unfolding of the absolute, " the pro- gressive proof of the existence of God/* God is not a personal or purely objective being, but the gradual revelation of the divine in man. That revelation can never be complete, for then all development and with it the manifestation of freedom would come to an end. The world is a divine poem, and history a drama in which individuals are not merely actors but authors; but it is one spirit which informs all and directs the confused play of individuality to a rational development. There are three periods in the evolution of the absolute. In the first or tragi- cal period, the ruling power is fate, which destroys unconsciously the greatest and grandest ; in the second period, beginning with the spread of the Roman Republic, the absolute appears as nature or conformity to external law; in the third period, which has not yet come and the time of whose advent we cannot forestall, it will become evident that even the two former periods were really the imperfect manifestation of Providence or God. II. B world he pro- d U not gradual velation kent and come to history y actors 'orms all lity to a eriods in or tragi- destroys ; in the d of the nature or d period, of whose e evident really the God. '>i CHAPTER VTT. TELEOLOGY AND ART. ri lO complete the edifice of Transcendental Ideal- "*- ism, it only remains to lay the cope-iione. So far Schelling has in his exposition done little more than connect together in systematic unity the various thoughts which with the powerful aid of Fichte he had put into shape in his earlier writings. And it is significant that the freshest part of his treatise is the conclusion of the practical philoso- phy, in which with rapid hand he sketches out the plan of a philosophy of history to be filled in after- ward ; for it is here that there first emerges info clear and definite outline the idea of the flbi»olute as a synthesis of necessity and freedom which is realised in the incarnate poem of human his- tory. Tt was but natural therefore that Rebel- ling should seek to show how that unity of the unconscious and conscious, which unrolls itself be- fore the eyes of the philosopher in the large move- ments of history, should become a part of the actual self- conscious life of the individual intelli- gence. It is not enough that the absolute should manifest itself to the abstract vision of the philoso- 181 182 SCH£LLING^8 TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALKIM. pher in an objective way, but it must repeat itself in the concrete consciousness of man. In what phase of mind, then, is self-consciousness in its full- est sense realized? To Fichte a final answer seemed to be implied in the nature of intelligence as realizing itself in action, and building up around it an objective world; but, dissatisfied with the dualism of nature and action, theoretical and prac- tical intelligence, which this explanation does not perfectly resolve, Schelling seeks for a still more intimate union. It is usual to say that the solu- tion he was led to propose was due to his close personal connection with the romanticists. And no doubt the exaggerated importance which, as we shall immediately see, Schelling attached to art, was in some measure due to this cause. But here, as in other cases, the main source of his inspiration came from his intimate acquaintance with the writings of Kant, and more particularly with the CHtique of Judgment^ the work in which Kant endeavors to transcend the dualism from which he started. The connection between Schelling and Kant is here peculiarly close, for in both the imma- nent teleology of organic life and the conscious teleology of art are brought into relation with one another. It must not be supposed, however, that Schelling has simply appropriated the Kantian TKLEOLOOY AND ART. 183 itself what s full- ,nswei' igence iround th tlie I prac- >es not I more e solu- s close And , as we to art, it here, )iration ith the ith the h Kant hich he ng and imraa- mscious ith one er, that antian theory without assimilation or change: here as always he adapts it to the new point of view arising from a denial of the absolute limitation of intelli* gence by something not itself, and from the persist- ent effort to exhibit intelligence as a living process or development. 1. All action must be conceived as an original union of freedom and necessity, consciousness and unconsciousness, as is shown by the fact that the action at once of the individual and the race is free and yet must conform to the laws of nature. In our immediate consciousness it is we who act, but objectively it is rather something else through us. This something else is the unconscious, which must be shown to be identical with the con- scious in us. Intelligence must not only be the identity of necessity and freedom, but it must con- sciously perceive that identity as its own product; or, in Schelling's phraseology, " It has to be ex- plained how the I can itself become conscious of the original harmony of subject and object." And as that harmony can only consist in the reconcilia- tion of mechanical or natural law with the con- ception of a first cause, the product of necessity and freedom must exhibit the adaptation of means to ends, or at least the appearance of such adapta- tion. Is there any object of perception which com- i I 184 8CHELLINO*S TRANSCBNDKNTAL IDEALISM. bines those two characteristics? There is. Organ- isms are at once under the invincible sway of mechanical law, and are inexplicable apart from the idea of final cause. It is true that we have no right to say that they have been originated by an intelligence externally constructing them after a pre-existing pattern or idea, but it is equally true that their characteristic difference from other ob- jects of perception is utterly inexplicable on merely mechanical principles. Neither the explanation of hylicism nor of conscious teleology will bear ex- amination. Both fail to account for the uncon- scious development of organic beings. The former is driven to suppose that matter is itself conscious intelligence, the latter that it is acted upon ex- ternally by an intelligence distinct and separate from it. Either supposition, it need hardly be said, is fatal to the explanation of organized ex- istence. The first leads to a dogmatic hylicism which is essentially absurd and self-contradictory, the second regards organisms as artificial products and entirely fails to account for their possibility. The only theory which avoids the imperfection of both views is that which, recognizing that matter is no independent reality or thing-in-itself, but the unconscious product of intelligence as percep- tive, accounts for the appearance of adaptation MM TELEOLOGY AND ART. 185 Jicep- tation in organisms from the fact that they are the pro- duct of an intelligence which acts according to its own necessary laws, and therefore exhibits in, its unconscious products that finality which is the characteristic of conscious or free . activity. Hence it is that organisms are under the dominion of natural law — which is really the law given by in- telligence to itself — and yet appear to be formed by conscious purpose. An organized being is pro- duced by the natural law of blind mechanism, and yet the product in its structure and functions displays the character of adaptation to an end. An organism cannot be explained by teleology, it cannot be known without it; the teleological ex- planation is inadmissible, the teleological percep- tion is necessary. In organic beings, therefore, we have objectively the fusion of consciousness and unconsciousness, of freedom and necessity. Hence it is that, so far as perception goes, intelligence finds in organized existence that identity of the unconscious and conscious, mechanism and tele- ology, of wnich it was in search. In life we have outwardly, or in the product, that which intelli- gence is inwardly, or as productive. Our next step must therefore be to find in intelligence it- self the explicit consciousness of that unity. This Schelling finds in Art. 186 SC'llKLLINti's TRANSCENDBNTAL WKAUtiM, 2. In the account of the immanent teleology of organized nature Schelling differs from Knnt mainly in explaining the union of mechanism and teleology, in accordance with the central principle of his philosophy, as the product of the unconsciouH operation of intelligence in the individual, while Kant rather regarded the union as the form in which we, from our limited human point of view, are compelled to represent to ourselves a form of existence that might after all be explicable on purely mechanical principles, were our intelli- gence one that contemplated things as a whole and not merely in part. The distinction between master and pupil is, in short, that the former \h haunted by the shadow projected from the dualism of human and divine intelligence, and hence \n unable to say with any certainty that the mode in which existence manifests itself to us is any- thing but a sensible symbol of existence m it truly is; while the latter is firmly convinced that the explanation of reality given by philosophy can- not be set aside by any hypothesis of an intel- ligence essentially different from ours, an intelli- gence which ex hypothesi is transcendent or un- real. At the same time Schelling, as we i^hall see more fully hereafter, does not really lay the spectre of dualism, but reintroduces it in the form i TELEOLOGY AND ART. 187 " unconscious " is at of the unconscious; for the bottom that which is past finding out, in a very literal sense. The difference between Kant and Schelling in their views of art is similar to that implicit in their divergent explanation of organic nature. Here also Schelling finds an explanation of the original production of reality, where Kant sees nothing but such a revelation of the divine as is possible for limited human intelligence. Every real work of art is, according to Schelling, a prod- uct of free and conscious activity; and yet it is impossible to explain its characteristic quality without reference to the necessary or uncon- scious element which it contains, and which sep- arates it toto coelo from what Aristotle distin- guishes as the productive arts. The artist does indeed put forth a conscious activity in shaping the materials at his command into forms of grace and beauty, but this purely technical skill is widely different from the poetic activity itself. Let the creative power be absent, and the product is desti- tute of life. The "maker" is under the sway of his genius, that wonderful faculty which is some- times found in scientific activity, but which is always manifest in every genuine work of art. (Genius is thus for aesthetics what intelligence is '188 SCHELLING^S TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM. for the philosopher, the supreme reality which never itself becomes an object' of definite conscious- ness, but is the cause of all that is objective. There is a marked contrast between the prod* nets of art and the organized products of nature. In both there is an immediate union of free- dom and necessity; but in organisms the activity of intelligence as productive is hidden or un- conscious, and hence the adaptation of means to ends presents itself only in the products, while in art it is the productive activity which is con- scious, and the product which contains the ele- ment of unconsciousness. The fundamental char- acter of every genuine work of art is its uncon- scious infinity. The artist builds better than he knows, and by a divine instinct expresses that which is but half revealed to himself, and which is not capable of being grasped by the finite understand- ing. This contradiction of the finite and the in- finite is for the artist an inexplicable feeling, which will not let him rest until he has found for it an external form, whereupon there supervenes an in- finite satisfaction, which is the subjective expres- sion of perfect objective harmony. This union of necessity and freedom is the source of beauty which, as the realization of the infinite in the finite, is the fundamental character of artistic products. TELEOLOGY AND ART. 189 and not for any finite end wliatever, such as pleas- ure, utility, morality, or science. In art intelligence for the first time becomes self- conscious in the fullest sense of the term. Philoso- phy does indeed show that nature and history are the unconscious products of intelligence, but, as being merely an abstract picture of reality, it is not an actual unity of consciousness and unconscious- ness. It is only in art that the activity of intelli- gence, which appears as a phenomenon beyond con- sciousness, comes explicitly within consciousness. At every point of our enquiry into the nature of intel- ligence we have been compelled to suppose a pri- mary limitation of the essential infinity of intelli- gence, but only when we reach the realm of art does intelligence discern the actual union of its opposite activities. Here, therefore, we have at last reached the goal toward which intelligence has been slowly moving by successive steps. Art is the true organon of philosophy. Nature and history are no longer for the artist, as are action and thought for the philosopher, an ideal world which presents itself under continual limitations, but they are forever reconciled. Thus our system is completed.. The intellectual perception with which we began, has become an explicit object of ffisthetic perception, a perception which does not 190 SCHEIiLINQ^S TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM. merely contemplate the world like theoretical in- telligence, or order it like practical intelligence, but produces or creates it. M. cal in- igence, \ CHAPTER VIII. THE SYSTEM OF IDENTITY. TT may be hoped that, even in the imperfect "*- medium of a summary restatement, the stimu* lating and suggestive character of Schelling's Trans- eendental Idealism has been partially visible to the reader. Especially for those who desire to see the transition from Kant to Hegel made before their eyes, an acquaintance with that treatise is indispensable. At the same time, while "naught should be set down in malice,'' so neither should " aught be extenuated." To accept with " child-like faith " the dicta of the leaders of philosophy is, as Schelling himself frequently insists, but to prove traitor to their spirit; and we shall best show our appreciation of the divine gift they have given to us by subjecting their philosophy to the severest scrutiny. The main value of Schelling's work, apart from its advance in special points, consists in the em- phasis which it everywhere places on the truth, that the universe is not a dead, inanimate prod- uct, but a living process, in which intelligence creates and is conscious of itself in creating. All m 102 8CflELLmG*8 TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM. forms, modes, shows of things are more or less complete manifestations of the same eternal, infi- nite principle. Self-activity rules in nature as in man. There are no dead products; matter, which to the eye of sense is an inert and lifeless mass, is instinct with the crescent life of intelligence; and hence the various phases which it manifests on its way to man, in whom intelligence, which before was implicit, at last becomes explicit. Simi- larly, if we start from the side of the subject as knowing, the same continuous process of evolution from lower to higher modes of activity is mani- fest. The immediate feeling of " something not- ourselves,'* which is characteristic of sensation, breaks into the explicit opposition of subject and object in perception, while in reflection the appre- hension of the activity of the mind in relation to objects is raised into the clear light- of conscious- ness. Nor does the process of ideal evolution end here; for in the action of man there is revealed to him that which was vaguely present from the first, and which became ever more apparent, namely, the existence for him as a self-conscious being of a world of self-conscious beings like him- self, bound under the same moral law, and like himself destined for a life of freedom in a free state, or rather in that great iruktreia, the world. THE SYSTEM OP IDENTITY. 103 And, last of all, the explicit recognition of the movement of a divine intelligence toward an end but dimly seen, is revealed to us in the activity adapted to ends of living beings, and more clearly still in the intuitions of the poet, who working consciously, creates a product that reveals more than was present to his own mind in its creation. In this recognition of development, process, final- ity, Schelling, is at one with Hegel; in fact the purposely general terms in which we have just summarized his theory might pass for a hurried outline of Hegers own system. Closer inspection, however, makes it apparent that Schelling is only Hegel in germ, and Hegel with much that is most characteristic and most valuable in him left out. It will, therefore, be advisable to make a few crit- ical remarks on the Transcendental Idealism, with the view of bringing out in clear relief, so far as that can be done here, some of its excellences and defects. Comparatively short as the Transcendental Ideal- ism is, it goes over in a sense the whole ground of philosophy. It is at once a metaphysic, a philosophy of nature, and a philosophy of spirit; or, more ex- actly, it sets forth the supreme conditions of know- able reality, the grades of nature, the phases of knowledge, the basis of ethics, the principles of art 18 M 194 SCIIELLINQ^B TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM. and the nature of religion. A complete encyclopae- dia of the philosophical sciences like this, no man, however highly he may be endowed, can construct all at once; and it is not to be wondered at that it is in large measure vague, sketchy, and unsatisfac- tory. The value of a philosophy must be measured, not merely by the firmness with which it grasps a central principle, but by the thoroughness and consistency with which the principle is worked out and applied to the multifarious phases of human thought and action. Even with the labors of Kant from which to start, and with the brilliant light cast back upon Kant by Fichte, Schelling could not be expected to do more than develop to some degree that which he found ready to his hand. And perhaps it is not unfair to say that no amount of self-restraint could ever have enabled Schelling, with his quick imaginative temperament, to build up such an edifice of philosophy as his great suc- cessor Hegel has left to us. With fiery impatience he dashes «off a philosophical treatise almost " in one hot sitting,'* and immediately upon the revelation to him of some logical consequence, which in his haste he had not at first seen, he once more rushes before the public with a new work, the preface to which explains with amusing self-deception that what he is going to say has been kept back only THE SYSTEM Or IDENTITY. 105 from regard for the intellectual needn of hb readem. The Transcendental Idealism, it must in juitice to Schelling be said, is less of a mere tract than most of his other writings; but for the reasons MUggested it is very unequally worked out, and it really holds in solution two opposite principles which are never perfectly reconciled, and fails to draw a clear line of demarcation between metaphysics, as the philos- ophy of knowable reality, and psychology, the philosophy of the individual mind. The most de- veloped and perhaps the most perfect part of the treatise is the theoretical, in which the various phases of knowledge are described; next in impor- tance is the practical part, which is very valuable as a short and clear statement of the basis of ethics as conceived by Fichte, and, besides, contains the conception of historical development, which is the most purely original part of the work, with the ex- ception of the idea of art as the final solution of the identity of intelligence and nature. The Tran- scendental Idealism as a whole is not in the strict sense an original work; it is not original even as Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre, which owed its inspira- tion to Kant, is original, and much less in the larger sense of the three Critiques of Kant. But it would be unfair to Schelling not to remember that v'hile, especially in the theoretical part, he draws 196 SCHELLINO'S TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM. largely on Fichte, his Transcendental Idealism is pervaded by the explicit conception of process or development, by means of which all the elements he has borrowed are fused into unity; and that even the theoretical part contains a most significant and intrinsically valuable attempt to connect the categories of relation, — substance, cause and reci- procity, — which in Kant had remained in stiflF and abrupt contrast, in the true order of their ideal development. 1. In the introduction Schelling draws a strong contrast between the philosophy of nature and the philosophy of knowledge, which is at once the source of the strength and of the weakness of his system. All knowledge consists in the agreement of the subjective and the objective, and the sum- total of the latter is nature, of the former intelli- gence. Hence it is as necessary, he holds, to show how nature rises through successive stages to in- telligence, as to explain the successive steps by which intelligence constructs nature for itself. This opposition of two fundamental sources or " disci- plines " was to Fichte, as is well known, a stone of stumbling and a rock of oflFence. How can there be, he not unnaturally asked, any "object" that is not in relation to a " subject," and how, therefore, can we hold the parallelism of intelligence and nature? THE SYSTEM OP IDENTITY. 197 And undoubtedly the view of Schelling suffers from grave defects. It is impossible to free him from the charge of isolating in an illegitimate way things which are indissolubly bound together. Nature apart from intelligence at once lapses back into a mere thing-in-itself, and all Schelling's ef- forts to recover the ground he has lost at the start turn out to be unavailing. His final attempt to combine what he had put asunder by means of the poetic faculty as at once creative and un- conscious is a virtual confession of failure, and prepares the way for the leap into the dark, which he soon felt himself compelled to make. It may be doubted, however, how far Fichte had any just ground of complaint against his too eager follower. As we have seen, there is in his own theory an inexplicit fusion of two distinct principles which really lie at the root of Schelling's opposition of intelligence and nature. The philosophy of Fichte was an attempt to explain reality on the supposi- tion that there is no intelligence other than the sum of finite intelligences, which in Schelling's phrase, are " the bearers of the universe." But Fichte, almost in spite of himself, was compelled to distinguish between the absolute Ego and the finite Ego, and to regard the latter as eternally striving toward a goal it is forever incapable 198 SCHELLING*S TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM. of reaching. This "striving" is therefore some- thing revealed in and to the individual intelligence, something which it is compelled to submit to by the very law of its being. Thus there gradually emerges a distinction between the individual and the absolute Ego, which admits on Fichte's prin- ciples of no further explanation. It is something we-kno\v-not-what, or in other words, the Kantian thing-in-itself, without the explanation by which Kant attempted to determine it. The same tendency is shown in Fichte's conception of knowledge as a process by which intelligence at once gives itself laws and submits to them. And Fichte himself insists that knowledge and life are distinct; that the former is a picture, the latter alone reality. Thus in Fichte we have implicitly the two ele- ments which afford a relative justification for Schel- ling's contrast of intelligence and nature. On the one hand he practically admits a "something not- ourselves" working in and through us, and on the other hand he opposes knowing and being. It can hardly be said, therefore, that Schelling has absolutely contradicted Fichte, however he may have seemed to do so, and however he may have failed to work out that side of Fichte's philosophy which, as we may see in Hegel, leads to a higher result. THE SY8TBM OP IDENTITY. 199 on It To appreciate the true and the false in the oppo* sition of nature and intelligence, as it is set forth by Schelling, we must begin by drawing a clear distinction between individual and absolute intelli- gence. Nature is manifestly independent of the individual as such, and may therefore be legiti- mately regarded as in some sense independent of his knowledge. But when this is said, it must be immediately added, that there is no nature apart from all relation to intelligence. Nor indeed does Schelling really mean to say that there is: all that he holds is that the "objective" world, i.e., the world of external things, including organic beings and even man as an organism, are separable in thought from the self-conscious intelligence in man and exist prior in time to it. The great imperfec- tion of Schelling is not in contrasting man and nature, but in maintaining the complete parallelism of the two distinguishable realms. From the phe- nomenal point of view, in which we are tracing the various manifestations of nature, we must rather hold that, just as each lower phase of nature points forward to a higher phase in which it is merged, so nature as a whole can only be explained by man as including and transcending it. Instead of opposing nature and intelligence as two coordi- nate realms, each explicable by itself, we must hold %00 SCHELLING's TBANSCBNDBKTAL IDBALI8K. that the former is simply a lower phase of the latter. In this way alone can we get rid of the dualism which, implicit in Kant and Fichte, is made explicit in Schelling. For, when we say that nature and intelligence are like two parallel lines, we virtually reduce intelligence to nature. Both must be explained as the manifestation of an activity which appears now as nature and again as intelligence, and this activity evidently cannot be defined as higher in the one sphere than in the other without its becoming at once apparent that the one must be regarded as the imperfect or in- complete form of the other. The essence of each is, therefore, assimilated by Schelling, and accord- ingly nature and intelligence are alike conceived by him as the manifestation of pure self-activity. Now self-activity may undoubtedly be explained as identical with self-conscious intelligence; but for Schelling such an explanation is precluded from the fact that he has opposed the two worlds as parallel. Hence as a matter of fact the " self" disappears and all that remains is the " activity." This is evident in his conception of the " I am " as the supreme principle of philosophy, in his uncritical assimilation of intelligence to two opposite forces as limiting each other, in his supposed discovery of the unity of nature and intelligence in the unconscious creations THE SYSTEM OP IDENTITY. 201 of poetry, and ultimately in his leap beyond intelli- gence and nature into the " night in which all cows are black." The only wonder, in fact, is how Schel- ling did not see, at the time he wrote the Transcen- dental Idealism, that the parallelism of nature and intelligence necessarily carried with it the implica- tion of a unity transcending both, a unity which for him could only be that in which they agreed, or their " absolute indifference." It must be said, then, that while Schelling is justified in seeking to define the objective world of nature more exactly than Fichte had done, he is not justified in putting it upon the same plane with intelligence. This in fact is the source and ratio- nale of his, as of all other pantheism. For, when intelligence and nature are so absolutely opposed, even the assertion that nature exists only for knowl- edge cannot prevent intelligence from being con- ceived as a finite subject, standing opposite to which is a world of finite objects; and hence the unity of both must be found in the conception of a power which manifests itself, now as thinking subject and again as thought object, neither the subject nor the object having any reality except as a phase of the Power which is over or behind both. 2. In his account of the fundamental principles of idealism Schelling cannot be said to make any 202 schelling's transcendental idealism. advance beyond Ficlite. Both start from the im- mediate perception of intelligence by itself; both find in the nature of intelligence an original duality of opposite activities; and both connect with the three main principles the logical laws of identity, opposition and ground. In Schelling per- haps the tendency to assume that "all determina- tion is negation" is most conspicuous. Hence he finds the explanation of knowledge in the necessity under which intelligence labors to limit its original infinity. The infinity of intelligence, it is cer- tainly of great importance to recognize, but it must not be conceived, as Schelling has a ten- dency to conceive it, as simply the negation of all determinateness. For when the infinite is re- garded in this way, the definite content which makes it to be what it is, necessarily appears as something accidental or extraneous that it must seek to get rid of. In itself intelligence is held to be pure infinity, and only because it is to be conscious of itself is it necessary to regard it as limited or determined. Self-consciousness thus be- comes an accidental determination of the pure self, and hence, as in the opposition of nature and intelligence, the supreme reality is to be sought in the mere abstraction of pure being. But while this tendency to strip intelligence of all its de- II. THE SYSTEM OP IHENTITY. 203 he ira- f; both )riginal connect laws of ng per- armina- ence ho ecessity original is cei'- but it a ten- i,tion of e is re- ; which )ears as it must is held is to be rd it as thus be- le pure ure and 1 sougVit at while its de- terminateness, and to set up the residuum as the absolute Ego, is manifest in Schelling, it must be added that his system shows a contrary tendency as well. The Ego is not merely pure infinity, but it is that which continually affirms itself in all knowledge and action; it is not an inert substance, but a self-affirming or self- perpetuating activity. Prom this point of view the self is that to which all objects must be referred, and in relation to whicli only they have any reality. The various stages of knowledge and action are but the fuller and more perfect forms in which intelligence re- veals its nature, and comes to an ever higher self- consciousness. In Schelling we everywhere find the conflict of the opposite principles of abstrac- tion and concretion, and it can hardly be said that either ever gains the victory. The abstract prin- ciple we saw before in the opposition of nature and intelligence, and the concrete principle in the ideal evolution of nature; and here again we find the struggle for mastery of the same principles, the abstract being represented in the conception of intelligence as pure identity or negative in- finity, and the concrete in its manifestation as an eternal process or progressive self- consciousness. 3. The theoretical part of Schelling's philosophy has already been characterised generally as a mix- S04 BCH£LLIXO*S TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM, ture of metaphysic and psychology. As a psychology it contains a most instructive and, on the whole, accurate characterization of the various phases of knowledge as shown in sensation, perception and reflection. That for the knowing subject sensation implies the consciousness of a limit, or of something not made by himself, is manifestly a correct account of its nature; and when it is added by Schelling that it has no reality except as a self-limitation of intelligence, the character of sensation as im- plicit thought or self-consciousness is grasped in a way that at once explodes its supposed passivity, and makes the view of the empirical psychologist manifest foolishness. So also the account of per- ception as but sensation made explicit, together with the explanation of the rise of the opposition of subject and object, leaves little to be desired; and when it is further shown that all perception — from the simplest form which it assumes in the determination of the object as in space and time, to the fuller determination of it as a congeries of objects limiting each other by their reciprocal ac- tivity — is the manifestation of the activity of in- telligencf;, we have an advance over Kant at least in the mode of statement. Finally in his account of reflection as simply the further determination of intelligence by an analytical distinction of the THE SYSTEM OF IDENTITY. 205 product from the process of thought, we get a clear insight into the nature of knowledge, and of that transcendence of the abstract opposition of thought and reality, which is the characteristic feature of a genuine idealism. 4. Schelling, however, is unable to see that the account he has given of the evolution of knowl- edge has destroyed the opposition of intelligence and nature with which he started; and hence he goes on, in the manner of Fichte, to subordinate theoretical to practical intelligence. Such a sub- ordination has no truth except from the phenome- nal point of view. If in all reality intelligence knows only itself, there can be no propriety in any longer denying the essential correlativity of intelligence and nature. The reason given by Schelling for holding that in knowledge the per- fect unity of subject and object is not obtained, namely, that only in the explicit recognition of its own activity does intelligence come to a con- sciousness of itself, gets its force entirely from the point of view of common sense dualism, in which nature is regarded as something passively appre- hended. In other words, while Schelling is justi- fied in saying that even the highest phase of knowledge leaves unresolved the opposition of subject and object, so long as we do not ascend 206 SCIIELLINO*S TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM. to the plane of idealist philosophy, he is not justi- fied in treating theoretical intelligence as abso- lutely subordinated to practical intelligence. Each in truth is a partial manifestation of the one in- divisible intelligence, and hence neither is higher or lower than the other. The faci> that in know- ing the object is made more prominent, and the subject in acting, is no reason for elevating the one over the other. It is only an imperfect lib- eration from the trammels of subjective idealism that lends countenance to such a view. ^ 5. It is virtually confessed by Schelling himself that his explanation of objectivity as due to the practical activity of intelligence is not satisfactory, inasmuch as he goes on to seek in art for a final explanation of the unconscious element implied in both knowledge and action. His explanation can be satisfactory to no one who asks seriously what is meant by the unconsciousness of art. That the products of artistic genius, like the great deeds which have left an impress on the world's history, contain in them an element of unconsciousness is manifest enough; but it is by no means manifest that the " unconscious " is to be straightway iden- tified with ultimate reality. The element of un- consciousness is simply the shadow thrown by human finitude, a shadow which can only be dis- THE SYSTEM OF IDENTITY. 207 placed by the light of philosophy. In all knowledge and in all action there is a feeling of something which we do not make for ourselves. This feeling is in our ordinary consciousness what the recogni- tion of human finitude or dependence is in religion and philosophy. In other words, the unconscious or unknown is that "thing in itself" which in the philosophy of Kant finally emerged as God, and which must so emerge in any philosophy which follows out the implications of the activity of human intelligence. Schelling, however, at the stage which he had reached in the Transcendental Idealism had not freed himself from the shackles of a one-sided idealism, and hence he labors to show that in artistic activity there is a fusion of the infinite and the finite which in theoretical and practical intelligence is only the hidden goad im- pelling the mind forward to ever new self-mani- festations. The practical idealism of Fichte he found unsatisfactory, as he could hardly help doing; but he seemed to find in the creative activity of art the unity of intelligence and nature of which he was in search. In thus at last taking refuge in the " unconscious," Schelling practically confesses his failure to solve the problem of phi- losophy, a failure which, as we have tried to show above, is the inevitable consequence of the untena- 208 8CHELLINO*8 TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM. ble opposition of intelligence and nature from which he set out. His next step has already been indicated. Finding that neither the process by which nature advances to intelligence, nor the process by which intelligence advances to nature, yields that unity of both which a true instinct, not to speak of his philosophical training, showed him to be the goal of philosophy, he seeks for it in the abstract identity or indifference of subject and object. To the System of Identity, which is almost explicit in the Tmuscendental Idealism^ a \ few words must now be devoted. It is somewhat misleading to speak of Schelling as " leaping in a variety of directions according to the latest goad." There is no solution in the continuity of his philosophical development. As in the Transcendental Idealism he endeavored to combine the main principles of Fichte with the conclusions he had worked out for himself in regard to nature, and was inevitably led in that endeavor to go beyond the point from which he had started; so in the Statement of my System (Darstellung meines Systems), and the Lectures on the Method of Academical Study, the two trea- tises which sum up the philosophy of identity, he takes a step which in logical consistency he could not avoid taking. That in the former of \ THE 8YHTKM OP IDENTITY. 200 those works Schelling adopts the mathematical mode of statement familiar to us in Spinoza arose from that instinct iur literary form which rarely failed him. How could a system of identity be better set forth? To say that he was led to the philosophy of identity externally by a study of 8pinoza is a remark to which only a superficial study of Schelling lends any countenance. In- deed, apart from any deeper objections to it, the fact that his familiarity with Spino/a dates back to the very beginning of his philosophical career ought to set the matter at rest. In the introduction to the first of the works named, Schelling virtually confesses that the paral- lelism and independence of the philosophy of knowl- edge and the philosophy of nature is a half-truth which needs to be supplemented by the other half, and that both must be united in the philosophy of existence as a whole. This admission is made in a way which reveals that craving for recognition as an original thinker, which we have seen to be char- acteristic of Schelling, and which brings into promi- nence a certain fragility of moral fibre that has its counterpart in the eagerness he displays to place the public in possession of his newest thought be- fore it has had time to lose its fi^shness. The complete system, he says, which be had had in his 14 310 schellinq's transcendental idealism. mind all along, and which he had presented from various points of view, he now finds himself com- pelled, from the prevalent state of opinion about it, to give to the public as a whole earlier than he had intended. This of course is mere self-delusion; but Schelling is undoubtedly justified when he goes on to say that in his previous writings there ex- ists in germ that system of identity which he now proposes to set forth in an explicit way. Phil- osophy of nature and transcendental philosophy are the opposite poles of his philosophizing; the philosophy of identity starts from the point of in- difference, and goes on to show how the opposite poles may be developed from it. The whole system must therefore rest, not on the reflective opposi- tion of intelligence and nature, subject and object, but on the production of all reality by and in the absolute. If it is correct to formulate the idealism of Fichte in the proposition, Ego=All, his own idealism may be thrown into the form. All = Ego; in other words, whereas Fichte starts from the intel- ligence as having an objective world opposed to it, and therefore as finite or subjective, and seeks to show that that world exists only in relation to the finite subject, Schelling begins with Reason as above the dualism of subject and object, and pro- ceeds to establish the identity of the two. By THE SYSTEM OF IDENTITY. 211 reason, then, is meant not the reason of any in- dividual intelligence, but that which is the total indiiFerence or absolute identity of intelligence and nature. This idea is obtained by complete abstraction from the ordinary dualism of subject and object, and therefore by abstraction from one- self as thinking reason. In this way we get the true and only reality. Philosophy thus shows that the only intelligible meaning of '*things-in- themselves" is the knowledge of things, or rather of the finite, as they are in the absolute reason. It is characteristic of philosophy that it rises above all finite distinctions, such as those of time and space, and in general of all the differences to which imagination gives an apparent independence and reality, and puts itself at the point of view of reason. Beyond reason there cannot be any reality, for the finite as such is not real; the finite subject exists only in opposition to the finite object, the finite object only in contrast to the finite subject; the unity of both lies in that which is both because it is neither. It is evident that reason is one in the most absolute sense, since outside of it there is nothing that could possibly limit it, and within it there is no phenomenal distinction such as that of subject and object. The supreme law of reason, and therefore of all reality, is the law of identity. 31S SCHELLIXO'S TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM. A=A — a law which, as independent of time or eternal, is absolutely true. Again, reason is the same as the absolute identity; it is infinite, and its identity can never be destroyed. From the point of view of reason there is therefore no finite existence, and hence it is absurd to attempt, as all philosophers except Spinoza have attempted, to explain how the infinite identity proceeds out of itself; the true view is that all reality is infinite,^ while the finite is merely apparent reality. The knowledge of the absolute, which as unconditioned does not admit of proof, but follows immediately from the law of identity, is not separable from the absolute in so far as it is real, but is involved in the very nature of the absolute. This form is given in and with the reality of the absolute, and hence there is no sequence in time of the absolute and its form, but both are eternally united. The distinction of subject and predicate, in the formula A=A, does not alBfect the inner nature of the. ab- solute, but is a mere formal or relative distinction; in other words, the absolute is only under the form of the perfect identity. The absolute cannot know itself as absolute identity or infinite, without know- itself as subject and object; but this distinction affects only its form, not its inner nature or essence. There can be no qualitative difference of subject THE SYSTEM OP IDENTITY. 213 and object, for that would imply an opposition in the inner nature of the absolute; all distinction of reality is therefore purely quantitative, or im- plies the preponderance of subject or object, knowl- edge or being; and only because of this distinction in quantity is the form of subject-objectivity actual. The distinction of finite things is not a distinction in the nature or essence of the absolute, but merely a formal distinction due to reflection- In relation to the absolute totality, there is not even quan- titative difference, but the perfect equilibrium of subject and object; mind and matter are manifesta- tions of the same power, the distinction being, that in the one the real and in the other the ideal, preponderates. The separation of subject and object has no justification from the point of view of reason, and is the source of all error in phi- losophy. Each individual thing has reality in and through the absolute, and its finite differ- ence is simply the form in which the reality of the absolute appears as a determinate quantitative difference. As a particular expression or mani- festation of the absolute, each individual thing may be regarded as relative totality, or as in a sense infinite. The absolute as manifesting in its form the quantitative difference which distinguishes mind and matter, subject and object, may be represented 214 scuellinq's transcendental idealism. by the formula A=A, the point of indifference, while the contrast of subject and object, which may be likened to the opposite poles of a magnet, may be represented respectively by the formulue +A=B and A=B+. The system thus indicated cannot be called either idealism or realism, but, as uniting both, it is properly distinguished &H a system of absolute identity. This general state- ment of his main principles Schelling evidently intended to be followed by an account of the \ various phenomenal stages in which the absolute manifests itself on the one hand as nature and on the other hand as mind, but as a matter of fact he exhibited only the phases of matter. As the statement of these does not differ substantially from other statements of his philosophy of nature it need not be given here. A more complete for- mulation of his philosophy is given in the Lectures on the Method 0/ Academical Study, but the main outlines of the system, apart from occasional antici- pations of a later mysticism, are the same. 1 In the phase of speculation now under considera- tion, we see in a very clear way that conflict of two opposite principles for the mastery, which we have seen to run through the whole of the Trau* scendental Idealism and to vitiate its absolute value. , Oh the one hand, the absolute or reason is THE SYSTEM OF IDENTITY. :il5 completely separated from its manifestations, and thus lapses into a cold, dead identity, admitting of no movement or life; while on the other hand, as manifesting itself in intelligence and nature, the concreteness which is at first denied is restored to it. Taken literally the opening sections of the Statement of My System, are open to the criti cism which Fichte has directed against them with terrible effect. A reason, as he says, which is the "complete indifference of, subject and object" is "at once completely determined and in itself ended or dead;" there is no possible way of "getting out of the first proposition in any honest and logical way a second proposition;" and hence the determinations applied to it of nothingness, totality, unity, self- equality, etc., are perfectly gratuitous. Instead of saying that "outside of reason is nothing and in reason is all," Schelling ought to have said, that "in reason and for reason there is nothing what- ever," since there can be nothing for reason unless it is subject or object or both, whereas it is ex- plicitly held to be merely the indifference of the two. So, also, it is utterly illogical to say that " reason is absolutely one and absolutely self-equal;" the true inference from the preceding sections being, that it is " neither one nor self-equal, as for reason there is, as has been shown, nothing at all," But 21G SCHELLINO'S TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM. while Fichte shows very clearly the weakness of the philosophy of identity as it is stated by Schellinj^, he does not detect so well the source of that weak- ness, and hence he is unable to do justice to the rela* tive truth it contains. The indifference of subject and object -is the result of the immediate negation of subject and object, which is the first step beyond the individualistic idealism of Fichte. There is something higher than intelligence and nature, conceived of as the opposition of the finite subject and the finite object; and this "something," as the immediate negation of the opposition, is naturally conceived as that which is free from all distinction, Schelling's mistake is to rest satisfied with this first step, Nvithout advancing to the next step, in the .res- toration of the distinction of subject and object in the higher form of a concrete unity. "The finite as such has no independent reality" — this is the truth in his view; "the infinite is the negation of the finite" — in this lies its falsity. The infinite must be conceived as manifesting itself in the finite or it necessarily remains dead. Why Schel- ling separates the two terms of an inseparable unity in duality we have already seen. Having coordinated nature and intelligence, he was unable to get rid of the dualism to which he had thus com- mitted himself. But when it is seen that nature in THE SYSTEM OP IDENTITY. 217 its various phases has no reality apart from intel- ligence, or, in other words, that the distinctions made in characterizing the world of nature and of intelligence are not absolute but relative, the unity of the infinite and the finite is seen to be one which must not be sought in the pure blank of a perfectly indeterminate absolute, but in the whole universe as its manifescation. Nature is thus merged in intelligence and both receive their due. The one is no mere thing-in-itself, the other is not an abstract I-in-itself. The absolute reveals itself to us at the end of the ideal process of evolution, not at the beginning: it is not selfless identity, but self-conscious spirit. But, while in words Schelling puts the absolute away in an inaccessible realm, he yet seeks at least to restore it by bringing it into relation with its manifestations in nature and in man ; and, while we condemn the imperfect idealism which leads him to seek for the absolute afar off, when it really was " tumbling out at his feet," we must not omit to credit him with an insight into the problem which demanded solution, and with taking the first step toward its solution. m CHAPTER IX. SCHELLING'S LATER PHILOSOPHY. rriHE thread of speculation was taken up by Hegel at the point reached by Schelling in the Nystem of identity, but Schelling's own development took an independent course, some account of which it seems advisable to give to prevent misunderstand- ing. The later or mystical phase of his philosophy 18 expressed mainly in Philosophy and Religion (1804), Philosophical Enquiries into the Nature of Human Freedom, (1809), with its supplements, the reply to Jacob! and the letter to Eschenmeyer (1812), and in the introduction to the Philosophy of Mythology and the Philosophy of Revelation, made public only after Schelling's death. In these writings the criticism of the system of identity, set down at the end of Chapter VIII, is vir- tually endorsed by Schelling himself ; and the attempt is made to show that for the indeterminate absolute must be substituted a personal God, and for the coordination of man and nature, the subor- dination of nature to a system of free beings. The transition is made in Philosophy and Religion, which in one aspect is the completion of the system 818 \ 8CUELLINU 8 LATER PHILOSOPHY. ;J19 lade iThe em of Identity, and in another a* Tct a mystical tran- scendence of it. The absolute is, on the one hand, completely separated from the world of finite exist- ence as it appears in nature and in history, and on . the other hand, the finite world is the result of a primal break or fall from the absolute. The inner dialectic by which Schelling was driven from the abstract opposition of subject and object to the affir- mation of an utter void between the finite and the infinite is here visibly at work; but not less the burden laid upon reason to fill up the void, if not by the steady persevering work of reason then by the nebulous forms of imagination under the unseen impulse of reason. Starting from the idealist solu- tion of the reality of the known world of finite exist- ence, Schelling could not well be satisfied with a theory which virtually undid all the work of con- struction in the region of knowledge, which he had achieved: the world of nature he at least never intended to attenuate to a ghostly thing-in-itself existing independently of intelligence, and it was inevitable that he should seek to restore the life and movement which by his doctrine of the abstract absolute he had at least in appearance destroyed. Moreover, as Schelling at a later period expressly avers, the pantheistic absorption of all things in the absolute is a necessary stage towards a genuine 220 SCHBLL1N0*8 TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM. monotheism. The denial, in other words, of the finite as such is the condition of the apprehension of the infinite, but it is folly to remain forever in this purely negative attitude. The supersensible nature of the universe is first apprehended as a withdrawal into its inner essence; but this essence ought not to be conceived as a dead identity, but as the spirit which enfolds the finite within itself and yet realizes itself in the finite. This is in brief the intuition which gives to Schelling's mysticism its speculative value. That he can give no other than a mystical solution results partly from the limita- tions of his philosophical genius, and partly from the false course on which he embarked when he coordinated nature and spirit, instead of subordi- nating the one to the other. The treatise on human freedom begins with some general remarks on pantheism, by no means the least valuable part of the work, which areJntended to prepare the way for the monotheistic solution that follows. It is usually held that pantheism is destructive at once of all individuality and of all freedom; the former because it absolutely identifies the finite with the infinite, the latter because it refers the volitions of men to God as their cause. But if by pantheism is meant the immanence of all things in God, neither of these charges can be sub- SCIIELLINU 8 LATKR rillLOSOrilY. 221 stantiated. The individuality of things is not denied in any but a true sense, when things are referred to God as the ground of their existence; to say that the finite is nothing apart from God is very different from saying that the finite has no reality at all. Nor is the doctrine of immanence incompatible with freedom. The supposition ^hat it is, arises from the base mechanical view, which regards God and man as two separate things among other things. The real truth is that man could not be free were he not dependent upon God; for only the free can be in God, while that which is not free is necessarily outside of God. Only in freely act- ing beings mn God reveal himself, and they are just as truly as He is. Not the pantheism of Spinoza, who is the typical instance of this mode of thought, but his one-sided realism or determinism, is responsible for the denial of human freedom. The source of all his mistakes is the assumption of the independent reality of things, an assumption which leads him to conceive even of God and the will as things outside of other things, and to regard each volition as the mechanical effect of a precedent cause, which again has a prior cause and so on to infinity. His system with its dead mechanical explanations may be compared to the statue of Pygmalion before it was quickened into life by the 22^ MCIIBLLINUV TRAxNSCBNDENTAL IDEALISM. breath of love. This dead and motionless panthe- ism of Spinoza, spiritualized by idealism, is the true philosophy of nature; which, however, must be carried up into a philosophy of spirit resting upon the supremacy of free will. For it is not enough to say wi h Fichte that " activity, life and freedom is the only true reality;*' but we must show that this is true of nature no less than of man, and we must advance beyond the purely formal notion of freedom as self-activity to freedom as the faculty of willing good and evil. Here the philosophy which admits the immanence of all things in God first enters upon its life-and-death struggle, for here it is confronted by the dilemma, that if evil is in God his perfection seems to be destroyed, while on the other hand, if there is no evil, as little can there be any freedom. No half-solutions are here of any avail, such as, that God permits evil, or the Manichaean opposition of two independent powers of good and evil, or the doctrine of the origin of evil by succes- sive emanations which seem to make it real and yet independent of God. After this striking introduction, which is still more striking in the extended form in which Schel- ling presents it, the special problem of the work is entered upon in a new mystical theodicy, the outlines of which are largely due to the deep in- Ht'HBLLlNO^H LATER IMIILOHOI'IIY. ^'23 tuitions of Jacob BOhmen. The divine Hubntance, according to Btihmfen, is primarily a formlesH inH* nite, which, in the feeling of its own vague infin* ity, shrinks into finitude in the ground of nature, whence, gradually raised into the light of spirit, it lives and moves as God in an eternal realm of bliss. In agreement with this threefold ideal move- ment, Schelling, starting from the absolute in the shape of pure indifference or primal baselesfs- ness, as it had been reached in the system of identity, goes on to maintain that God first aptiears as the diremption of existence and ground, in order that he may finally transform his original indiffer- ence into identity, and thus become a self-conscious person or will. First of all, the possibility of evil must be recon- ciled with the personality of God. The first phase or potency of the divine life in that of pure indiffer- ence, the original, undifferentiated "ground" of existence, which is prior to all duality or disruption. Out of this indifference break forth two equally eter- nal beginnings, in order that ground and existence may become one in love. The division takes place that by it the divine may become spirit or person- ality. Since before or beyond God there is nothing, the ground or foundation of his existence must be within himself, but it must not be identified 224 schelling's transcendental idealism. with God considered absolutely, or in his real ex- istence; it is nature in God, and as such inseparable but distinct from him. Nature is not to be thought as posterior either in time or in essence to the absolute; it no doubt precedes his concrete ex- istence, but on the other hand God is the prius of nature, and the condition of its existence. In na- ture, as distinguishable and yet inseparable from God, the eternal One feels the yearning to beget himself, the yearning after understanding or self-^ revelation; and, the ground moving like a heaving sea in obedience to some dark and indefinite law, there arises in God himself an inner reflexive idea, in which God contemplates himself in his own image. This idea is God born in God himself, the eternal word in God, which gives light or under- standing. The understanding united with the ground becomes freely creative and almighty will. The work of this enlightened will is the reduction of nature as a perfectly lawless ground to law, order, form; and from this transformation of the real by the ideal comes the creation of the world. In the evolution of the world, the first stage is the birth of light, or the gradual development from nature to man; the second and higher stage, the birth of spirit, or man's development in history. Nature parts into two opposing forces, the inner- SCHELLING^S LATER PHILOSOPHY. 225 most bond of which only gradually unfolds itself; and it is the task of the philosophy of nature to exhibit the process by which the separation is grad- ually made until at last the innermost center or essence of nature is disclosed. Every natural ex- istence has a double principle within itself. That which separates it from God originates from the ground, and constitutes its self-will, as distin- guished from the universal will. In merely na- tural beings these two principles never come together in unity, but the particular will is mere rage and greed in them, whilst the universal will acts independently as controlling instinct. Only in man are the two principles united as they are in the absolute, and in the illumination of self- will by the universal will consists the spirituality of man. In God, however, the two principles are inseparable, while in man they are not only separ- able, but opposed, and on this opposition depends the possibility of good and evil. As spirit or will man is no unconscious instrument of the universal will, but stands above and beyond both of the op- posing principles. Good is the voluntary identifi- cation of the particular with the universal will, evil the voluntary separation of the one from the other. Evil is therefore not a mere negation or 16 3«e SCIBLUNO'S TiUNs«K„^,,.^, *««t. but a positive inversion of th. * Of particular a„a universal !)i,T '"'"' '^'^"""^ -•»'eUt::i'::jfv'-".'>»ntsaetn., f-» tl.e necessit^Tt; • "^ "'^'"'""^ ""■- '« -• Did the two „':':. """"- »^ '•'-elf '"•J'-^oluble unity in „T « """">'«» e™e i„ ""«« could be „o re ;r; "' ' "'"'' '» ^'^' '»-. f- We is r vea loT "'' ''""' "'""- - """3' onl, as the oppos J : '1 ""'""' '" """'• 'o^' and the „ii, of t, "''■ ^''« *'" ot "'^ -«> .et insepa a ;. ^ ^ ^'-^"^a- "«' independently, in oral,, """' *■='• "n" "" ^^e .round" a^ I ^m' 'T' "''^ "o«. that spirit as win !, *'"' "PP"*'" '•'^«'f « striving agaill the' "" """' ""'"""'" '•«»•»» Of nature se^ , "^ '" '"« '»>-• "•-'ity or disorder an '"""'^ ''''^'' ^ "-- "■""ai in the for™ 'ofl T ""'°""'^"^ '" "■« ""'^ in the reaI„rLvr ''"''''"" "'" "-'o'Hed and il '2:,. r ;t? ^''''- ««n is a record of the IT; ^' '"^""•^ »"■ ■"■ivemi «.ii,, ,„d thet °' ^^''•'"" and «'c' constitute the g t : '"^ "•"" "' ""^ -»- After the ,.riod of' ril ^ "' """*'■ "^^'»'T. '»'•'•<' -hen nature wartr „ T""'"^ """« '"« "" time when the elrth 1 ' •" '''^'- «"' e «arth was sunk in ^i,,, I '"^ J"^' the time when the ^- ■ spirit *a. born i„ ci^-Ll '"' ''«'" "^ 'he , « Christ, that «a„ : tr ";• ^^^ "^'^^ »«« '-' P-iod of the wo "dt th ■; '" ''•"'• T"" « which self-win and '"'''" °^ ""^ *P''». «»^ »a, hecce al, in ^7 "' """"•'«^- *"«' ^^vti"ra:':i:^^-pji»edi3h^ ^"^ ordinary e,p JJ:;:;; '"'■ ^o^ o. evii. f-edo« :.,,«„„„_ :,'.7''^^--." Which ,nakes ^'«>y« freedom alt^gethj ,f' "•'»''''^'». -"ieh de- '^ fiance, the othef to ll °"' ^'"^'^ "« «ver f "-«->- the same th nV™??"''^ '^'""•' ^ ''■- -'»tio«, When he iJ"'/"'''"*'"^ '<■« '"'^^iWe cha..aete,. man'^tt;;; ""f '"■"■"^ «'""» of mechanical cansatil T """ "^ "■« «™e. To act freelv "t " *"' '"'"^^"^ '"'»»« •'"t the necessity of „„r „ " '''"'" *"• "'"'^^iiy "ho'ce falls outside of tL ! ^"' ""■' -•"• ">«. first creatlr 'r ."'^^<'^'"» ''^ --, . ^'-. hut his empiricaT'nat '"'"" """ '« •"" "■■^ »- ftee act a It :. " "'« '-^-' of "■"« are predestinated bit T "" "'='' '" -^- ^'-'■^--aasiir:::^^^^^^^ "wr any other crea- 228 SCHELLINQ^S TRANSCENDENTAL IDKALWM. ture could prevent him from betraying Ohrist, and yet lie was not compelled to betray him, but did so voluntarily, and with perfect freedom. Hence the radical evil of human nature, which is merely raised into consciousness by the entrance of opposition. This, however, does not mean that moral progress is impossible, but only that such progress is the consequence of the timeless act by which man's nature and life in time are deter- mined.* The first and second waves are past, but a third and bigger wave is upon us. Is God's revelation of himself a blind or a conscious act? And if by his own free act evil has originated, how shall his stain- less perfection and holiness be preserved? Schel- ling's solution of this old problem is not altogether satisfactory. We must distinguish, he says, be- tween God as the ground and God in his perfection, and we must observe that even as ground God h not the author of evil as such, but merely solicits the self-will of man, as a means of awakening him to the distinction of good and evil. The ground but calls forth the particular will of the individual, that love may have a material whereon to realize *For an acute criticism of this part of Schelling^H doctrine, lee Schnrman'a Kantian Ethics and the Ethics of Evolution, p, 6 if, It must of course be understood that full justice canncH be doni to Schulling*8 argument in an epitome. schklling's later philosophy. 229 itself, and hence it is indirectly the condition of good. Evil, in short, is a necessary stage in the process towards the complete realization of good. If it is objected that this is a Manichscan dualism, Schelling answers, in his reply to Jacobi, that the perfection of God is not incompatible with this gradual manifestation of himself. Imperfection is perfection itself in the process of becoming. Unless there be a dark ground or negative principle in God, there can be no talk of his personality. It is impossible to think of God as self-conscious unless we think of him as limiting himself by a negative power within himself. In God, as in man, true personality arises only by the realization of feeling through understanding; the abstract unity of reason, beautiful as it is, must be broken up by the separative and organizing understanding before there can be self-conscious personality. The main interest of Schelling's Philosophy qf Mythology and Philosophy of Revelation^ apart from their suggestiveness, lies in the application of the idea of the self- revelation of God as realized in the gradual development of the religious consciousness. The introductory part in which are set forth the doctrine of "potencies" and the various stages by which nature rises to self-consciousness in man, is in substantial agreement with the theosophic specu- 230 SCllELLINO^S TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM. lations of the Enquiries into Human Freedom and its pendants. All that need be said of this section is, that the various stages of the human spirit on its way to a comprehension of the idea of God are, as in the earlier treatises, declared to be, first, it^ theoretical relation to nature, secondly its practical relation to the moral law, and, lastly, the freedom of artistic contemplation, which consists in what \n characterized by Aristotle as thinking on thought, and the object of which is God, as the first principle of the world. The end of this process, however, U not union with God, but merely the abstract com- prehension of the idea of God. Only when religion becomes its object, does philosophy advance from its negative to its positive phase. For religion rests upon the actual realization of will, and hence phi- losophy, to come in real contact with God, must follow up the actual realization of the religious consciousness from its beginnings in mythology to its completion in religion as the perfect revelation of God. Even the pre-Christian religions are to be regarded as phases in God's revelation of himself. The forces by which the religious consciousness is developed are at the same time the potencies tbi^ough which God realizes himself in the process of the world. Mythology is the history of God in consciousness. From the very beginning man had IM SCHELLINCj's LATER PHILOSOPHY. ^31 a consciousness of God, although God was not an object of definite knowledge. From this stage of relative monotheism the religious cfonsciousness was carried away from God and assumed the form of polytheism, which was a necessary stage in the tran< sition to a frer ac 'leism. The firs' *'"rm of religfion was Sabeism, tue worship of God as mani- fested in the stars; which was followed by th^ Egyptian worship of the gods as individualized in the form of animals; and this again gave way to the. religion of Greece, in which the worship of beautiful personalities in human form prevailed. Finally, the Greek mysteries prepared the way for a more spiritual faith in the religion of revelation, the absolute monotheism in which all antitheses are reconciled. The main object of the philosophy of revelation is to explain the personality of Clirlst; and hence Schelling considers his existence prior to his incarnation, the incarnation itself and the mediation of man and God accomplished by it. The completion of Christ's work allows of the period of the spirit, through the action of which the church exists. The two first periods of the church, Catholicism and Protestantism, are past, and the third, the Christianity of John, is at hand. The philosophy of Schelling thus closes with a vision xif the new Jerusalem coming down from heaven. 282 SCHELLINO'S TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM. The main value of Schelling^s later philosophy, as it seems to me, lies in its vivid presentation of problems for solution, and in its prophecy of a reconciliation of contradictions which it does not itself reconcile. Starting from the denial of any Ood other than the moral order of the world, and compelled by the coordination of subject and ob- ject to take refuge in a pantheistic absorption of all things in an indeterminate absolute, Schelling was at last led to see the necessity of maintaining the personality of God, and of seeking for a recon- ciliation of that personality with the freedom of man. The conception of God, as by his very nature compelled to reveal himself in the world, un- doubtedly contains a truth of pre-eminent impor- tance; but it is not arrived at by any rational and well-ordered method, but is simply accepted on the guarantee of a flash of poetic insight. The mysticism which views all things as bathed in the omnipresent light of the divine nature, and dips the sharp contradictions of the analytic un- derstanding in the medium of a rational phantasy, has for most minds a peculiar glamour and fas- cination. But it is not a frame of mind which can be cultivated with impunity. It is almost in- evitably followed by a process of enervation, which is fatal to vigorous and sustained philosophical SCHELLINM*S LATER PHILOSOPHY. fm thought. Too many draughts of the divine elixir are intoxicating. The spoils of philosophy cannot be won by day-dreaming, but must be conquered by energetic, persistent and long-continued toil. Apart from this general objection to Schelling's later method of speculation, it must be said that he has not solved the problems that he set himself to solve. To talk of God as necessarily opposing a ground to himself, by which he may come to a consciousness of himself, is merely to say that, some- how or other, nature is dependent upon God. Nor can it be said that Schelling has made any decided advance beyond his earlier position in his solution of the problem of human freedom. One cannot indeed be too thankful ."or the true insight, that freedom is neither unmotived volition nor mechani- cal necessitation, but the realization of one's own inner nature. But to explain the freedom to will evil or good as due to a timeless act really explains nothing; it is further away, indeed, from a true explanation than the view of Kant, which it affects to improve but really distorts. Kant held that man as a rational will is independent of the me- chanical law of causation, but he did not make the extravagant attempt to show that man wills his own empirical character before he enters the realm of consciousness at all. No doubt the view 234 SCHELUNO*8 TRANSCENDRNTAL IDEAMSM. of Schelling may be made more consonant w^th ihe soberness of unintoxicated reason by regarding it as merely a poetical rendering of the truth, that autonomy, or self-determination by the pure idea of duty, is the condition of morality; but, thus interpreted, it lapses back into the uncolored prose of Kant's " categorical imperative." Schel- ling is not more successful in reconciling the fact of evil with the goodness of God. All that he has to say is, at bottom, that God does not directly will evil, and that evil is a necessary stage towards good. ' These may be accepted as vague intuitions of the truth, but in the form into which they are thrown they do not help us much. The truth is, that there is absurdity in the very attempt to answer the quid sit in place of the quod sit, as Schelling expressly tells us his aim was. Such an attempt to construct the world before it exists, is really an attempt to derive the rational and con- scious out of the irrational and unconscious. We do not see things any more clearly by seeking for them behind the mirror. The explanation of the "what is" is all that is possible, and indeed all that is required. Schelling's complaint that the philosophy of Hegel was mere logic, only shows that, he was himself attempting the impossible feat of .explaining reality by that vyhich was not RCilELL1NG*A LATER PHILOSOPHY. S85 reality; and it is not surprising that on the dark background of the night he saw but the brilliant shapes thrown out by his own too fervid imagina*, tion. The truth was no doubt symbolized in these creatures of a rationalizing phantasy, but only because Schelling did not really turn his back on the actual, but only supposed that he had done so. In making these remarks I do not wish to be understood as seeking to underrate the suggestive- ness of Sehelling's speculations, or to throw any discredit on their value as an important stage in the history of human thought. Nor, ^ hope, am I insensible to the great value of his lectures on Mythology and Revelation as contributions to the philosophy of religion, and as a powerful and, on the whole, beneficent incentive to the study of religion in its history. But I cannot refrain from saying that, with all his brilliancy, fertility and poetic insight, Schelling in his later days committed himself to a mode of philosophizing, the form of which is radically unsound, valuable as its sub- stance in many respects is; and that whatever is best in his system has been absorbed and super- seded by a greater than he. The higher problems of philosophy, as they were thrown down before the world by Kant, were taken up by Hegel, after Schelling had done his best to solve them and had !^36 RCHBLLINO'S TRANSCENDENTAL If)EALI8M. in large measure failed, and were attacked anew with a vigor, pertinacity and originality that have never been excelled in any age. If in Hegel the pure light of philosophy does not shine, it may safely be said that it has not yet shone upon the earth. b-e-—^ CHAPTER X. CONCLUDING RFMAWKS. TN previous chapters an attempt has been made -^ to exhibit the phases of Scbelling's philosophi- cal development as they are registered in the various treatises which form their vehicle. All the elements for an independent judgment have been supplied to the reader, together with some hints of the weak parts of the system, but it ma;- be of some little use to students of Schelling to sf y a word or two on the relation of his philosophy as a whole to that of Kant, anfl to suggest one or two points of analogy with the thought of our own day. There is a sort of dramatic interest in follow- ing the course of Schelling*s speculations that does not attach in quite the same way to ^h? study of the fully articulated system of Hegel. The start- ing point and the goal of Schelling seem, and in some sense are, the exact opposite of each other; his development is not so much evolution as revo- lution. In the one we have the unqualified denial of God as other than the ideal of moral perfec- tion; in the other, we have the unflinching affir- 8S7 238 SCIIELLIN0*8 TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM. mation of the reality of God as a being who is the sole ground of explanation of all finite exist- ence. To Schelling, in the first stage of his speculation, man is all in all; and not only so, but it is man as a practically active or moral being who is regarded as the centre and ground of explanation of all things. At the end of his career, man has ceased for Schelling to be more than the medium through which the Divine Being manifests his infinite perfection, although without interfering with human freedom. The process by which these two extremes are united constitutes the main value of Schelling^s philosophy, and the contemplation of the manner in which the transi- tion is effected has all the interest attaching to an exhibition of the links, by which the three great spheres of reality — Man, the World and God — are bound together in unity. Whatever may be said of Schelling's solutions, he has at least traced for us the path by which a philoso- phy that makes any effort to explain all the facts of life must proceed. In looking back over the course of Schelling's development, it cannot fail to suggest itself that the point from which his philosophy begins is the point to which the empirical philosophy, until lately preeminent in England and elsewhere, in- CONCLUDING KEMARKS. ;2dO evitably tends. Many of the leaders of thought in England seem to have come to the conclusion that the only "supersensible" reality, if it may so be designated, is the reality of moral law, and that the only solution of the " riddle of the pain- ful earth," is to strive manfully to do one's duty. This is in large measure the gospel which the followers of Comte, Carlyle, Arnold, and many Others have to deliver; and the burden of it all is: "Cease to seek for the solution of the insolu- ble problems of metaphysic, and concentrate your energies on the actual which is here and now." That this should be regarded as the last word of speculation is a presumption at least against the truth of the method of speculation which leads to it. For the advice " Don't speculate " is one that cannot be taken. Agnosticism is at best a tem- porary phase of thought, and must be replaced by something more positive. And it throws fresh light on the weakness of empiricism when we see that the source of the agnosticism, which charac- terizes the beginning of Schelling's speculations, is to be found in that negative attitude towards the supersensible, which is maintained by Kant in the Critique of. Pure Reason, mainly because Kant was determined to allow full rights to the purely secular consciousness. Caprice and arbitrariness 240 fiCHELLING^S TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM. must be banished from the realm of our every-daj life and experience, and hence no interference with the inviolable laws of nature can be allowed. It is this determination to recognize law and order in that which is around us, which led Kant, as it has led others, to deny to the theoretical faculty any power of knowing that which is above sensi- ble experience. In one way this tendency deserves hearty commendation. It is the beginning of the speculative reformation in the realm of fact and human life, corresponding to the religious refor- mation inaugurated by Luther. Nothing is to be accepted that is not certified in actual sensible ex- perience. But that only the lower side of things is in this way taken note of, is also taught us by Schelling, not less than by Kant. A supersensible that is inconsistent with the absoluteness of natural law must be cast aside, but not a supersensible which ennobles and transfigures the sensible. While the result of Schelling's speculation in its first form is identical with that of empiricism, its tendency is widely different, and it is because of this different tendency that it gradually developed, or at least tended to develop, into something higher and better. The empiricist's denial of the supersensible is but the obverse of his assumption that all real existence is independent of intelli- CONCLUDING REMARKS. 241 gence; and hence that man, both as intellectual and as moral, is governed by the same law as applies to external nature. The Absolute cannot be confined within the frames which fit the par- ticular and finite; it is not a sensible thing to be determined as substance, as cause, or as in recip- rocal activity with other things. The recognition of this truth constitutes one of the valid claims on our gratitude of Kant and his idealist follow- ers. It is one thing to say that the Absolute is unknowable because all that is knowable is condi- tioned or sensible; another and a very different thing to say that the Absolute is unknowable as conditioned or sensible. The former is the empir- ical formula, the latter the formula of a true idealism. For one who takes up the first attitude, there is no advance to the supersensible, so long as he persists in it, and shuts his eyes to the pos- sibility that the limitation is in his own formula, rather than in real existence as a whole. If th«3 physical categories of substance, cause and reci- procity are the only modes in which rea-lity can be thought by us, there can be no knowledge of God, and therefore for us no God. But if we only say with Kant that these categories are not applicable to the Absolute, on supposition that there is an Absolute, the outlook is of a different 16 ^42 SCHELLING's transcendental IDEALIiM. and more hopeful kind. The denial of the finitude or conditioned character of the Absolute is an indi- rect tribute to its perfection. Should it be possible to show subsequently that, while the categories which are adequate to existence as conceived in its parts are inadequate to the Absolute as the Totality or Ground of existence, there yet are categories which are adequate to it, our first or negative attitude will be but the germ and prophecy of the positive. Now this, as we have seen (Ghap. I), is the position taken up by Kant in respect to the supersensible. With the calmness and caution charac^'^ristic of all his speculations, Kant points out that the Absolute, as the unconditioned totality of all conditions, cannot be brought under the rubric which is appropriate to the conditioned or relative. The imperfection of Kant here was that, identifying knowledge as a whole with knowledge of the conditioned, he was driven to the conclusion that reason in the form of knowl- edge cannot attain to the comprehension of the Absolute, but can only indicate what its nature is not. Hence his attempt to make reason as practical bear up the whole weight of the Abso- lute. The inevitable result was that God becomes for Kant a " moral belief," not an object of knowledge — as if belief and knowledge could thus f. CONCLUDING REMARKS. 243 Initude n indi- )0%nih\e egories I in its 'otalifcy ;egorie8 egative of the imp. I), peci to caution points totality ier the oned or re was I with iven to knowl- of the nature lason as 16 Abso* becomes bject of uld thus be sundered without suspicion being cast upon the very possibility of God's existence. There was, therefore, a certain justification for the negative attitude assumed by Schelling towards an "ob- jective" God; a justification (1) in the fact that the God whose reality he denied was, as the tran- scendent God of deism, really finite, and (2) in the self-contradiction of the Kantian theory from which he started. However little we can at- tribute to Kant Schelling's interpretation of the term "postulate" — the interpretation that, like the postulates of geometry, it means something to be done, not something to be believed in as objective — it must be admitted that it is a fair deduction from the letter of Kant's theory. For if God is made merely an object of " belief," he is as existing thrust out beyond our consciousness, and so becomes a transcendent Being, who, as out of all real relation to our reason, is for us "as good as nothing." On the other hand, an inter- pretation of Kant, based on the spirit rather than on the letter of his doctrine, leads to a different result. God may be beyond knowledge in the sense of being unconditioned or non-finite, and may yet be an object of reason. This is what Kant strove to say, however he may have failed to say it in an unambiguous and self-consistent 244 SCHELLING^S TRAXSCBNDBNTAL IDEALISM. way; and hence we can understand how Schelling, starting from the critical position that nothing exists which is out of relation to intelligence, should first deny the reality of a transcendent God, and should next, hy the inner dialectic which led to that denial, be compelled ultimately to affirm his reality. This leads us to the second pcilod of Schelling's speculative activity, as represented by his philoso- phy of nature, his transcendental philosophy, and the unity of both in the system of identity. The ethical idealism of Schelling's first phase of thought — an idealism without God — could not be permanently satisfactory to one who had drunk deep of the spring of critical idealism. " Conduct," as Mr. Matthew Arnold is so fond of saying, may be " three-fourths of life," but conduct cannot rest on the bosom of nothing. When a contrast is drawn, as it so commonly is drawn, between "con- duct " and " thinking," it seems to be forgotten that the conduct of a man is determined by the quality of his thinking. No doubt men may have good thoughts while their conduct is bad; but, there is not, conversely, any good conduct that is not set in motion and controlled by good thinking. The sup- position that there is arises from confusing explicit or reflective thinking with thinking in general. It CONCLUDING RBMARKS. 245 elUng, othing igence, endent which ely to slling'i! >hilo80- ly, and '. The ase of Id not drunk nduot," ig, may lot rest trast is I t(, con- en that quality re good there is t set in 'he sup- explicit iral. It is one thing to be dominated by a true thought, and another thing to be able to give a formal and precise statement of what that thought is, and the ultimate grounds of it. But the task of philosophy just is, to state in the explicit form of reflection that which is implicit in the life and action of good men. Hence it is that no philosophy, which knows what it is about, can decline the task of bringing the scientific view of the real world into harmony with its view of morality. The attempt to put asunder two things so indissolubly joined together inevitably revenges itself, as the history of philoso- phy has shown, in agnosticism or mysticism. In a philosophy which makes morality all in all, and knowledge nothing, the reality of the supersensible is naturally denied on the ground that a knowledge of it is unnecessary to conduct; or at best it is bodied forth as a mysterious and inaccessible region. Schelling was therefore right when he refused to acquiesce in the ethical idealism of Fichte, and, under the guidance of Kant, "broke through to nature." But even in the very phrase of a " breach to nature," by which he designated his diflference from Fichte, Schelling proclaims at once the weak- ness and the strength of his peculiar position in the march of an idealist philosophy. The strength of the new attitude is that a knowledge of nature is *H6 SCHELLINO'S TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM. regarded as essential to a complete solution of the problem of philosophy: its weakness is that it still' opposes thinking and being as if they were two separate realities of equal worth. Pass along the line of thought, and you do indeed find that there is no thought that has not being as its object; but, on the other hand, this being is conceived as in some sense merely the representation or picture of reality, not reality itself. Follow out the evolution of being, and you at last come to thinking, but this thinking is somehow a product of being. Evi- dently Schelling has not got rid of dualism, refined as the dualism is to which he has committed him- self. Hence he feels himself compelled to seek for a uniting principle, which shall bind together what he has illicitly separated. This principle or abso- lute thus becomes a sort of "pre-established har- mony," accounting for the corres; ^.dence of the "subjective subject-object" and the "objective sub- ject-object." Now the idea of a pre-established harmony is merely an enunciation of the problem, not a solution of it. Two relatives are illegiti- mately separated and then artificially united. The source of Schelling's mistake lies, as I have tried to show above (Chap. VIII), in his failure to subordi- nate nature to spirit, and in the consequent elimi- nation of self-consciousness from the universe. The CONCLUDING REMARKS. 247 of the it still' e two ng the here is )Ut, Oil 1 some ire of olution ig, but Evi- refined id him- leek for er what ►r abso- ed har- of the ive sub- Eiblished )roblein, illegiti- i. The tried to subordi- it elinii- se. The proof of this need not be repeated, but it may be of advantage to show the relation of this second phase of Schelling's speculation to the philosophy of Kant. At the point reached by Kant in the second part of his Critique of Pure Reason, the phenomenal world is shown to lead necessarily to the idea of the noumenal world, the conditioned to the uncondi- tioned, the relative to the absolute, the part to the whole. The absolute, however, is presented in a purely negative way as that which is not condi- tioned, relative or partial. Hence it tends to assume the form of a pure blank identity, in which the differences of things as yet are not. Now if we take up the philosophy of Kant at this point, and treat it as final, we are inevitably driven to the pantheistic absorption of all things in the absolute. Hence, as a matter of fact, those who like Schopen- hauer, assume that Kant has here said the last true word, are led to regard man and nature as manifes- tations of an unconscious will, which is in reality simply a blind force. Schelling, in the second phase of his speculation, to a certain extent does JEissume the finality of this stage in the Kantian . philosophy: with the result as we have seen, of unspiritualising nature because he has denatural- ized spirit. Here in fact we find Schelling, vrith MOH 248 schbllino'b transcendental idealism. disastrous consequences to his philosophy, branching off from Fichte in a wrong direction. In the idea of a unit> combining both mind and nature he is perfectly right, and to that extent he is entirely at one with Hegel ; but in virtually making that unity abstract instead of concrete he has let go of the principle of a self-consistent idealism. For if nature is nothing apart from its relations to intelli- gence, as Schelling in agreement with Kant meant to affirm, it is evident that the absolute must be sought not in the abstract residuum which arises from the elimination of the differences of spirit and nature, but in the concrete unity embracing both and therefore lifting nature into the pure ether of spirit. It would be unjust however to Schelling, as it is to Kant, to hold him tightly to the bare letter of his system. His philosophy is not a mere repetition of the philosophy of Spinoza; for by Spinoza thought and extension are conceived simply as the attributes of substance, mind and nature as things in reciprocal relation to each other; whereas Schelling never surrenders the belief in the self-conscious activity of mind, but rather seeks to show that both nature and mind are manifestations of a single self-conscious activity. Hence, while the final result of the philosophy of Spinoza is the denial of freedom and the degrada- CONCLUDING REMARKS. 249 lion of human actions to mere links in the chain of a blind causality, Schelling, with a noble inconsist- ency, holds fast by the unconditioned freedom of man and his elevation above the ceaseless flow of mechanical succession. In the second phase of his philosophic development, as in the first, we see at work two rival claimants for powei neither of which can gain the mastery over the other. In the last phase of his speculation Schelling labors, with sinking spirits and only under the guidance of stray flashes of light, to establish the self-conscious personality of God. Judged by his actual achievements, this flnal stage of his develop- ment is very unsatisfactory. The belief in the universe as the abode of spirit Schelling cannot give up, feeling it to be the truth of truths; but that belief he does not see his way to justify by an ascent of the hard path of pure speculation, and so he gives us not philosophy but poetry. The fatal mistake which he made in co('>rdinating na- ture and spirit, when he swerved from the narrow path of ethical idealism, he was seemingly unable to retrieve, and he can but fall back on uncritical intuition. Here also his relation to Kant is of the closest kind. The critical philosophy had found in the idea of the world as a manifestation of that which we are compelled to figure to ourselves ae 250 BCII£LLINO*8 TBAM8CBNDENTAL IDEALIHM. purpose, the fulcrum by which the negations of empiricism were to be overthrown and ^he existence of a supreme reason established. But Kant could not persuade himself that the universe is actually a teleological system; the furthest he was pre- pared to go was that we cannot otherwise present it to ourselves. Thus to the end the shadow thrown by the empirical conception of the world comes between Kant and Him who is "not far from every one of us.'* For Kant*s denial of teleology as an absolute truth is mainly due to his assumption that knowledge can only be of the finite, phenom- enal or relative; or, what is at bottom the same thing, that the only constitutive categories are those which he has shown to be true of finite things. Schelling therefore erred by taking Kant too literally, and neglecting the spirit of his phi- losophy. For that spirit, carried out to its fine issues, assuredly leads to the reasoned conviction that the world as a whole is the self-revelation of spirit, and therefore the manifestation of purpose. Hegel in relieving the critical philosophy of the beggarly elements clinging to it and allowing it to rise up to the higher zones of spirit, is the true follower of Kant. Discarding with Fichte the gratuitous fiction of a thing-in-itself beyond knowledge, he agrees with Schelling in holding i CONCLUDING KKMAKKH. 251 I that nature is nothing apart from intelligence; but, instead of degrading intelligence by assimila- ting it to nature, he raises nature up to intelli- gence. Nor will he allow of any leaps from the lowest to the highest categories, but seeks to put every category in its place, and to connect all by the bond of an organic movement. Hence the im- portance he attaches to the separate consideration of the variouif functions by which the world is thought, and by which at last it is seen to be a fully rounded system. In the same way the con- crete world is followed up from its lowest ideal beginnings in space and time until it issues in a universe radiant in the light and love of a personal God. The best fruit of the study of Schelling is the hold it enables us to have over the infinitely richer and fuller system of his successor Hegel. Fichte and Schelling may perhaps be neglected without serious loss, although the study of their writings is not to be despised, but to neglect Kant and Hegel is to lose the highest philosophical edu- cation which the flow of human thought has brought down and laid at our feet.