In all that is, his truth-enlightened eyes
Detect the May-be through its thin disguise;
And in the Absolute’s unclouded sun,
To him the two already are the one.
THE JOURNAL OF SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY.
Vol. I. 1867. No. 4.
INTRODUCTION TO THE OUTLINES OF A SYSTEM OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY;
OR,
ON THE IDEA OF SPECULATIVE PHYSICS AND THE INTERNAL ORGANIZATION OF A SYSTEM OF THIS SCIENCE.
1799.
[Translated from the German of Schelling, by Tom Davidson.]
I.
WHAT WE CALL NATURAL PHILOSOPHY IS A NECESSARY SCIENCE IN THE SYSTEM OF KNOWING.
The Intelligence is productive in two modes—that is, either blindly and unconsciously, or freely and consciously;—unconsciously productive in external intuition, consciously in the creation of an ideal world.
Philosophy removes this distinction by assuming the unconscious activity as originally identical, and, as it were, sprung from the same root with the conscious; this identity is by it directly proved in the case of an activity at once clearly conscious and unconscious, which manifests itself in the productions of genius, indirectly, outside of consciousness, in the products of Nature, so far as in them all, the most complete fusion of the Ideal with the Real is perceived.
Since philosophy assumes the unconscious, or, as it may likewise be termed, the real activity as identical with the conscious or ideal, its tendency will originally be to bring back everywhere the real to the ideal—a process which gives birth to what is called Transcendental Philosophy. The regularity displayed in all the movements of Nature—for example, the sublime geometry which is exercised in the motions of the heavenly bodies—is not explained by saying that Nature is the most perfect geometry; but conversely, by saying that the most perfect geometry is what produces in Nature;—a mode of explanation whereby the Real itself is transported into the ideal world, and those motions are changed into intuitions, which take place only in ourselves, and to which nothing outside of us corresponds. Again, the fact that Nature, wherever it is left to itself, in every transition from a fluid to a solid state, produces, of its own accord, as it were, regular forms—which regularity, in the higher species of crystallization, namely, the organic, seems to become purpose even; or the fact that in the animal kingdom—that product of the blind forces of Nature—we see actions arise which are equal in regularity to those that take place with consciousness, and even external works of art, perfect in their kind;—all this is not explained by saying that it is an unconscious productivity, though in its origin akin to the conscious, whose mere reflex we see in Nature, and which, from the stand-point of the natural view, must appear as one and the same blind tendency, which exerts its influence from crystallization upwards to the highest point of organic formation (in which, on one side, through the art-tendency, it returns again to mere crystallization) only acting upon different planes.