(1.) Organic nature Schelling thus deduces: Nature absolutely apprehended is nothing other than infinite activity, infinite productivity. If this were unhindered in expressing itself, it would at once, with infinite celerity, produce an absolute product, which would allow no explanation for empirical nature. If this latter may be explained—if there may be finite products, we must consider the productive activity of nature as restrained by an opposite, a retarding activity, which lies in nature itself. Thus arises a series of finite products. But since the absolute productivity of nature tends towards an absolute product, these individual products are only apparent ones, beyond each one of which nature herself advances, in order to satisfy the absoluteness of her inner productivity through an infinite series of individual products. In this eternal producing of finite products, nature shows itself as a living antagonism of two opposite forces, a productive and a retarding tendency. And, indeed, the working of this latter is infinitely manifold; the original productive impulse of nature has not only to combat a simple restraint, but it must struggle with an infinity of reactions, which may be called original qualities. Hence every organic being is the permanent expression for a conflict of reciprocally destroying and limiting actions of nature. And from this, viz., from the original limitation and infinite restraint of the formative impulse of nature, we see the reason why every organization, instead of attaining to an absolute product, only reproduces itself ad infinitum. Upon this rests the special significance for the organic world, of the distinction of sex. The distinction of sex fixes the organic products of nature, it restrains them within their own processes of development, and suffers them only to produce the same again. But in this production nature has no regard for the individual, but only for the species. The individual is contrary to nature; nature desires the absolute, and its constant effort is to represent this. Individual products, therefore, in which the activity of nature is brought to a stand, can only be regarded as abortive attempts to represent the absolute. Hence the individual must be the means, and the species the end of nature. Just so soon as the species is secured, nature abandons the individuals and labors for their destruction. Schelling divides the dynamic scale of organic nature according to the three grand functions of the organic world: (a) Formative impulse (reproductive energy); (b) Irritability; (c) Sensibility. Highest in rank are those organisms in which sensibility has the preponderance over irritability; a lower rank is held by those where irritability preponderates, and lower still are those where reproduction first comes out in its entire perfection, while sensibility and irritability are almost extinct. Yet these three powers are interwoven together in all nature, and hence there is but one organization, descending through all nature from man to the plant.
(2.) Inorganic nature offers the antithesis to organic. The existence and essence of inorganic nature are conditioned through the existence and essence of organic nature. While the powers of organic nature are productive, those of inorganic nature are not productive. While organic nature aims only to establish the species, inorganic nature regards only the individual, and offers no reproduction of the species through the individual. It possesses a great multitude of materials, but can only use these materials in the way of conjoining or separating. In a word, inorganic nature is simply a mass held together by some external cause as gravity. Yet it, like organic nature, has its gradations. The power of reproduction in the latter has its counterpart in the chemical process in the former; that which in the one case is irritability, in the other is electricity; and sensibility, which is the highest stage of organic life, corresponds to the universal magnetism, the highest stage of the inorganic.
(3.) The reciprocal determination of the organic and inorganic world, is made clear by what has already been said. The result to which every genuine philosophy of nature must come, is that the distinction between organic and inorganic nature is only in nature as object, and that nature, as originally productive, waves over both. If the functions of an organism are only possible on the condition that there is a definite external world, and an organic world, then must the external world and the organic world have a common origin. This can only be explained on the ground that inorganic nature presupposes in order to its existence a higher dynamical order of things, to which it is subject. There must be a third, which can unite again organic and inorganic nature; which can be a medium, holding the continuity between the two. Both must be identified in some ultimate cause, through which, as through one common soul of nature (world-soul), both the organic and inorganic, i. e. universal nature, is inspired; in some common principle, which, fluctuating between inorganic and organic nature, and maintaining the continuity of the two, contains the first cause of all changes in the one, and the ultimate ground of all activity in the other. We have here the idea of a universal organism. That it is one and the same organization which unites in one the organic and inorganic world, would appear from what has already been said of the parallel gradations of the two worlds. That which in universal nature is the cause of magnetism, is in organic nature the cause of sensibility, and the latter is only a higher potency of the former. Just as in the organic world through sensibility, so in universal nature through magnetism, there arises a duality from the ideality. In this way organic nature appears only as a higher stage of the inorganic; the very same dualism which is seen in magnetic polarity, electrical phenomena, and chemical differences, displays itself also in the organic world.
2. Transcendental Philosophy.—Transcendental philosophy is the philosophy of nature become subjective. The whole succession of objects thus far described, becomes now repeated as a successive development of the beholding subject. It is the peculiarity of transcendental idealism, that so soon as it is once admitted, it requires that the origin of all knowledge shall be sought for anew; that the truth which has long been considered as established, should be subjected to a new examination, and that this examination should proceed under at least an entirely new form. All parts of philosophy must be exhibited in one continuity, and the whole of philosophy must be regarded as that which it is, viz., the advancing history of consciousness, which can use only as monuments or documents that which is laid down in experience. (Schelling’s transcendental idealism is, in this respect, the forerunner to Hegel’s Phœnomenology, which pursues a similar course). The exhibition of this connection is properly a succession of intuitions through which the Ego raises itself to consciousness in the highest potency. Neither transcendental philosophy nor the philosophy of nature, can alone represent the parallelism between nature and intelligence; but, in order to this, both sciences must be united, the former being considered as a necessary counterpart to the other. The division of transcendental philosophy follows from its problem, to seek anew the origin of all knowledge, and to subject to a new examination every previous judgment which had been held to be established truth. The pre-judgments of the common understanding are principally two: (1) That a world of objects exist independent of, and outside of, ourselves, and are represented to us just as they are. To explain this pre-judgment, is the problem of the first part of the transcendental philosophy (theoretical philosophy). (2) That we can produce an effect upon the objective world according to representations which arise freely within us. The solution of this problem is practical philosophy. But, with these two problems we find ourselves entangled, (3) in a contradiction. How is it possible that our thought should ever rule over the world of sense, if the representation is conditional in its origin by the objective? The solution of this problem, which is the highest of transcendental philosophy, is the answer to the question: how can the representations be conceived as directing themselves according to the objects, and at the same time the objects be conceived as directing themselves according to the representations? This is only conceivable on the ground that the activity through which the objective world is produced, is originally identical with that which utters itself in the will. To show this identity of conscious and unconscious activity, is the problem of the third part of transcendental philosophy, or the science of ends in nature and of art. The three parts of the transcendental philosophy correspond thus entirely to the three criticks of Kant.
(1.) The theoretical philosophy starts from the highest principle of knowledge, the self-consciousness, and from this point developes the history of self-consciousness, according to its most prominent epochs and stations, viz., sensation, intuition, productive intuition (which produces matter)—outer and inner intuition (from which space and time, and all Kant’s categories may be derived), abstraction (by which the intelligence distinguishes itself from its products)—absolute abstraction, or absolute act of will. With the act of the will there is spread before us,
(2.) The Field of Practical Philosophy.—In practical philosophy the Ego is no longer beholding, i. e. consciousless, but is consciously producing, i. e. realizing. As a whole, nature developes itself from the original act of self-consciousness, so from the second act, or the act of free self-determination, there is produced a second nature, to find the origin for which is the object of practical philosophy. In his exposition of the practical philosophy, Schelling follows almost wholly the theory of Fichte, but closes this section with some remarkable expressions respecting the philosophy of history. History, as a whole, is, according to him, a gradual and self-disclosing revelation of the absolute, a progressing demonstration of the existence of a God. The history of this revelation may be divided into three periods. The first is that in which the overruling power was apprehended only as destiny, i. e. as a blind power, cold and consciousless, which brings the greatest and most glorious things of earth to ruin; it is marked by the decay of the magnificence and wonders of the ancient world, and the fall of the noblest manhood that has ever bloomed. The second period of history is that in which this destiny manifests itself as nature, and the hidden law seems changed into a manifest law of nature, which compels freedom and every choice to submit to and serve a plan of nature. This period seems to begin with the spread of the great Roman republic. The third period will be that where what has previously been regarded as destiny and nature, will develope itself as Providence. When this period shall begin, we cannot say; we can only affirm that if it be, then God will be seen also to be.
(3.) Philosophy of Art.—The problem of transcendental philosophy is to harmonize the subjective and the objective. In history, with which practical philosophy closes, the identity of the two is not exhibited, but only approximated in an infinite progress. But now the Ego must attain a position where it can actually look upon this identity, which constitutes its inner essence. If now all conscious activity exhibits design, then a conscious and consciousless activity can only coincide in a product, which, though it exhibits design, was yet produced without design. Such a product is nature; we have here the principle of all teleology, in which alone the solution of the given problem can be sought. The peculiarity of nature is this, viz., that though it exhibits itself as nothing but a blind mechanism, it yet displays design, and represents an identity of the conscious subjective, and the consciousless objective activity; in it the Ego beholds its own most peculiar essence, which consists alone in this identity. But in nature the Ego beholds this identity, not as something objective, which has a being only outside of it, but also as that whose principle lies within the Ego itself. This beholding is the art-intuition. As the production of nature is consciousless, though similar to that which is conscious, so the æsthetic production of the artist is a conscious production, similar to that which is consciousless. Æsthetics must therefore be joined to teleology. That contradiction between the conscious and the consciousless, which moves forward untiringly in history, and which is unconsciously reconciled in nature, finds its conscious reconciliation in a work of art. In a work of art, the intelligence attains a perfect intuition of itself. The feeling which accompanies this intuition, is the feeling of an endless satisfaction; all contradictions being resolved, and every riddle explained. The unknown, which unexpectedly harmonizes the objective and the conscious activity, is nothing other than that absolute and unchangeable identity, to which every existence must be referred. In the artist it lays aside the veil, which elsewhere surrounds it, and irresistibly impels him to complete his work. Thus there is no other eternal revelation but art, and this is also the miracle which should convince us of the reality of that supreme, which is never itself objective, but is the cause of all objective. Hence art holds a higher rank than philosophy, for only in art has the intellectual intuition objectivity. There is nothing, therefore, higher to the philosopher than art, because this opens before him, as it were, the holy of holies, where that which is separate in nature and history, and which in life and action, as in thought, must ever diverge, burns, as it were, in one flame, in an eternal and original union. From this we see also both the fact and the reason for it, that philosophy, as philosophy, can never be universally valid. Art is that alone to which is given, an absolute objectivity, and it is through this alone that nature, consciously productive, concludes and completes itself within itself.
The “Transcendental Idealism” is the last work which Schelling wrote after the method of Fichte. In its principle he goes decidedly beyond the standpoint of Fichte. That which was with Fichte the inconceivable limit of the Ego, Schelling derives as a necessary duality, from the simple essence of the Ego. While Fichte had regarded the union of subject and object, only as an infinite progression towards that which ought to be, Schelling looked upon it as actually accomplished in a work of art. With Fichte God was apprehended only as the object of a moral faith, but with Schelling he was looked upon as the immediate object of the æsthetic intuition. This difference between the two could not long be concealed from Schelling. He was obliged to see that he no longer stood upon the basis of subjective idealism, but that his real position was that of objective idealism. If he had already gone beyond Fichte in setting the philosophy of nature and transcendental philosophy opposite to each other, it was perfectly consistent for him now to go one step farther, and, placing himself on the point of indifference between the two, make the identity of the ideal and the real, of thought and being, as his principle. This principle Spinoza had already possessed before him. To this philosophy of identity Schelling now found himself peculiarly attracted. Instead of following Fichte’s method, he now availed himself of that of Spinoza, the mathematical, to which he ascribed the greatest evidence of proof.
III. Third Period: Period of Spinozism, or the Indifference of the Ideal and the Real.