Phrases of like import are not infrequent in Schelling's works (about 1800-1), e.g. Werke,1. Abth. iii. 341: 'The dead and unconscious products of nature are only unsuccessful attempts to "reflect" itself; so-called dead nature is in all cases an immature intelligence' (unreife Intelligenz), or iv. 77, 'Nature itself is an intelligence, as it were, turned to rigidity (erstarrte) with all its sensations and perceptions'; and ii. 226 (Ideen zu einer Philosophie der Natur, 1797), 'Hence nature is only intelligence turned into the rigidity of being; its qualities are sensations extinguished to being; bodies are its perceptions, so to speak, killed.'
A close approach to the phrase quoted is found in the words of another of the 'Romantic' philosophers: 'Nature is a petrified magic-city' (versteinerte Zauberstadt). (Novalis, Schriften, ii. 149.)
P. [48], § 24. Cf. Fichte to Jacobi: (Jacobi's Briefwechsel, ii. 208) 'My absolute Ego is obviously not the individual: that explanation comes from injured snobs and peevish philosophers, seeking to impute to me the disgraceful doctrine of practical egoism. But the individual must be deduced from the absolute ego. To that task my philosophy will proceed in the "Natural Law." A finite being—it may be deductively shown—can only think itself as a sense-being in a sphere of sense-beings,—on one part of which (that which has no power of origination) it has causality, while with the other part (to which it attributes a subjectivity like its own) it stands in reciprocal relations. In such circumstances it is called an individual, and the conditions of individuality are called rights. As surely as it affirms its individuality, so surely does it affirm such a sphere the two conceptions indeed are convertible. So long as we look upon ourselves as individuals—and we always so regard ourselves in life, though not in philosophy and abstract imagination—we stand on what I call the "practical" point of view in our reflections (while to the standpoint of the absolute ego I give the name "speculative"). From the former point of view there exists for us a world independent of us,—a world we can only modify; whilst the pure ego (which even on this altitude does not altogether disappear from us,) is put outside us and called God. How else could we get the properties we ascribe to God and deny to ourselves, did we not after all find them within us, and only refuse them to ourselves in a certain respect, i.e., as individuals? When this "practical" point of view predominates in our reflections, realism is supreme: when speculation itself deduces and recognises that standpoint, there results a complete reconciliation between philosophy and common sense as premised in my system.
'For what good, then, is the speculative standpoint and the whole of philosophy therewith, if it be not for life? Had humanity not tasted of this forbidden fruit, it might dispense with all philosophy. But in humanity there is a wish implanted to behold that region lying beyond the individual; and to behold it not merely in a reflected light but face to face. The first who raised a question about God's existence broke through the barriers, he shook humanity in its main foundation pillars, and threw it out of joint into an intestine strife which is not yet settled, and which can only be settled by advancing boldly to that supreme point from which the speculative and the practical appear to be at one. We began to philosophise from pride of heart, and thus lost our innocence: we beheld our nakedness, and ever since we philosophise from the need of our redemption.'
P. [50]. Physics and Philosophy of Nature: cf. Werke, vii. i, p. 18: 'The Philosophy of Nature takes up the material, prepared for it by physics out of experience, at the point to which physics has brought it, and again transforms it, without basing it ultimately on the authority of experience. Physics therefore must work into the hands of philosophy, so that the latter may translate into a true comprehension (Begriff) the abstract universal transmitted to it, showing how it issues from that comprehension as an intrinsically necessary whole. The philosophic way of putting the facts is no mere whim once in a way, by way of change, to walk on the head, after walking a long while on the legs, or once in a way to see our every-day face besmeared with paint. No; it is because the method of physics does not satisfy the comprehension, that we have to go on further.'
P. [51], § 24. The distinction of ordinary and speculative Logic is partly like that made by Fichte (i. 68) between Logic and Wissenschaftslehre. 'The former,' says Fichte, 'is conditioned and determined by the latter.' Logic deals only with form; epistomology with import as well.
P. [54], § 24. The Mosaic legend of the Fall; cf. similar interpretations in Kant: Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft, 1ster Stück; and Schelling, Werke, i. (1. Abth.) 34.
CHAPTER III.
P. [61], § 28. Fichte—to emphasise the experiential truth of his system—says (Werke, ii. 331): 'There was a philosophy which professed to be able to expand by mere inference the range thus indicated for philosophy. According to it, thinking was—not, as we have described it, the analysis of what was given and the recombining of it in other forms, but at the same time—a production and creation of something quite new. In this system the philosopher found himself in the exclusive possession of certain pieces of knowledge which the vulgar understanding had to do without. In it the philosopher could reason out for himself a God and an immortality and talk himself into the conclusion that he was wise and good.'