CHAPTER XIV.
TRANSITION TO HEGEL.
Thus far Schelling (aetat. 25) had gone in 1800. Two sides of philosophy had been alternately presented as complementary to each other; and now the task lay before him to publish the System itself which formed the basis of those complementary views. To that task Schelling set himself in 1801 (in his Journal for Speculative Physics): but the Darstellung meines Systems remained a torso. The Absolute was abruptly 'shot from the pistol': but little followed save a restatement in new terms of the Philosophy of Nature. Meanwhile Hegel, who had inherited some little means by his father's death, began to think that the hour had struck for his entrance into the literary and philosophical arena, and wrote in the end of 1800 to Schelling asking his aid in finding a suitable place and desirable surroundings from which to launch himself into action. What answer or advice he received is unknown: at any rate in the early days of 1801 he took up his quarters at Jena, and in the autumn he gave his first lectures at the University. Gossip suggested that Schelling, left alone (since Fichte's departure) to sustain the onset of respectability and orthodoxy upon the extravagances of the new Transcendentalism, had summoned his countryman and old friend to bear a part in the fray. And the rumour seemed to receive corroboration. The two friends issued conjointly a Critical Journal of Philosophy, which ran through two years. So closely were the two editors associated that in one article it seems as if the younger had supplied his more fluent pen to expound the ideas of his senior.
The influence of Hegel is to be seen in the Bruno, or on the Divine and Natural Principle of Things, published in 1802. It is a dialogue, in form closely modelled after the Timaeus of Plato, dealing with the old theme of the relation of art (poesy) and philosophy, and with the eternal creation of the universe. It presents philosophy as a higher than Art; for while Art achieves only an individual truth and beauty, philosophy cognises truth and beauty in its essence and actuality (an und für sich). Philosophy itself Bruno (the chief speaker of the dialogue) does not profess to set forth, but 'only the ground and soil on which it must be built up and carried out': and that soil is 'the Idea of something in which all antitheses are not so much combined, as rather one, and not so much superseded, as rather not at all parted,'—'a unity, in which unity and antithesis, the self-similar with the dissimilar, are one[1].' From such a standpoint it is not wonderful that 'in the finite understanding (Verstand,) compared with the supreme Idea and the way in which all things are in it, everything seems reversed, and as if standing on its head, exactly like the things we see mirrored on the surface of water[2].'
This supreme Unity is essentially a trinity: an Eternal, embracing infinite and finite; an eternal and invisible father of all things, who, never issuing forth from his eternity, comprehends infinite and finite in one and the same act of divine knowledge. The infinite, again, is the Spirit, who is the unity of all things; while the finite, though potentially equal to the infinite[3], is by its own will a God suffering and made subject to the conditions of time[4]. This trinity in unity (which is the Absolute) is by logic—a mere science of understanding—rent asunder: and the one Subject-object of philosophy becomes for reflection and understanding the three independent objects which such a 'logical' philosophy calls respectively the Soul (erewhile the infinite), the world (once the finite), and God (the eternal unity). 'Opposing and separating the world of intelligence from the world of nature, men have learned to see nature outside God, and God outside nature, and withdrawing nature from the holy necessity, have subordinated it to the unholy which they name mechanical, while by the same act they have made the ideal world the scene of a lawless liberty. At the same time as they defined nature as a merely passive entity, they supposed they had gained the right of defining God, whom they elevated above nature, as pure activity, utter "actuosity," as if the one of these concepts did not stand and fall with the other, and none had truth by itself[5].'
The problem therefore of philosophy is on one hand to 'find the expression for an activity which is as reposeful as the deepest repose, for a rest which is as active as the highest activity[6].' On the other hand; 'to find the point of unity is not the greatest thing, but from it also to develop its opposite, this is the proper and deepest secret of art[7].' The world as it first presents itself labours under a radical antithesis: it offers a double face, body and soul, finite and infinite. But to an absolute philosophy, or that high idealism which sees all things in the light of the Eternal, the two sides are not so separate as they first appeared. Each is also the whole and one, but under a phase, a 'Differenz' a preponderating aspect which disguises the essential identity of both. Behind mind, as it were, looms body: through body shines mind. The ideal is but a co-aspect with the real. The difference of nature and spirit presupposes and leads back to the indifference of the Absolute One. 'Wherever in a thing soul and body are equated, in that thing is an imprint of the Idea, and as the Idea in the Absolute is also itself being and essence, so in that thing, its copy, the form is also the substance and the substance the form[8].'
'Thus,' so Bruno concludes, 'we shall, first in the absolute equality of essence and form, know how both finite and infinite stream forth from its heart, and how the one is necessarily and for ever with the other, and comprehend how that simple ray, which issues from the Absolute and is the very Absolute, appears parted into difference and indifference, finite and infinite. We shall precisely define the mode of parting and of unity for each point of the universe, and prosecute the universe to that place where that absolute point of unity appears parted into two relative unities. We shall recognise in the one the source whence springs the real and naturals world; in the other, of the ideal and divine world. With the former we shall celebrate the incarnation of God from all eternity; with the latter the necessary deification of man. And while we move freely and without resistance up and down on this spiritual ladder, we shall, now, as we descend, see the unity of the divine and natural principle parted, now, as we ascend and again dissolve everything into one, see nature in God and God in nature[9].' Such was the programme which Schelling offered. Hegel accepting it,—or perhaps helping to frame it—made two not unimportant changes. He attempted in his Phenomenology to lead up step by step to, and so warrant, that strange position of idealism u which claims to be the image of the Absolute. He tried in his Logic to give for this point of view a systematic basis and a filling out of the bare Idea of a Unity, neither objective nor subjective, neither form nor substance, neither real nor ideal, but including and absorbing these. He tried, in short, to trace in the Absolute itself the inherent difference which issued in two different worlds, and to show its unity and identity there.
A System of philosophy, and a philosophy of the Absolute! The project to the sober judgment of common sense stands self-condemned, palpably beyond the tether of humanity. For if there be anything agreed upon, it is that the knowledge of finite beings like us can never be more than a—comparatively poor—collection of fragments, and can never reach to that which—and such is the supposed character of the Absolute—is utterly un-related, rank non-relativity. But in the first place, let us not be the slaves of words, and let us not be terrified by unfamiliar terms. After all, a System is only our old friend the unity of knowledge, and the Absolute is not something let quite loose, but the consummation and inter-connexion of all ties. It is no doubt an audacious enterprise to set forth on the quest of the unity of knowledge, and the completion of all definition and characterisation. But, on the other hand, it may perhaps claim to be more truly modest than the self-complacent modesty of its critics. For ordinary belief and knowledge rest upon presuppositions which they dare not or will not subject to revision. They too are sure that things on the whole, or that the system of things, or that nature and history, are a realm of uniformity, subject to unvarying law, in thorough interdependence. They are good enough, occasionally, to urge that they hold these beliefs on the warranty of experience, and not as, what they are pleased to call, intuitions, a priori ideas, and what not. But to base a truth on experience is a loose manner of talking: not one whit better than the alleged Indian foundation of the earth on the elephant, and the elephant erected on the tortoise. For by Experience it means experiences; and these rest one upon another, one upon another, till at length, if this be all that holds them together, the last hangs unsupported, (and with its superincumbent load), ready to drop in the abyss of Nought.