SCHELLENBERG 



SCHELLING 



205 



monopolised the navigation of the lower Scheldt 

 and levied tolls upon all foreign vessels sailing on 

 its waters. When Belgium was separated from 

 Holland in 1831 the rights passed to the former, 

 though they were vainly disputed by the latter. 

 Belgium in 1863 finally renounced her rights for 

 an indemnity of three-quarters of a million sterling 

 paid by the foreign nations using the Scheldt, 

 Great Britain contributing 175, 650. 



Schelleilbcrg, a village 9 miles S. of Salzburg, 

 near the south-east border of Bavaria, was the 

 scene of the first engagement in the war of the 

 Spanish succession in which the English took 

 part. Marlborough's army of 40,000 men drove 

 an Austrian corps of 12,000 from the fortified 

 heights above the village, after a short, fierce fight, 

 on 4th July 1704. 



Soliciting, FRIEDRICH WILHELM JOSEPH 

 (afterwards mn Schelling), was born at Leonberg 

 in Wurtemberg, 27th Jamiurv 1775; studied the- 

 ology and philosophy at Tiitinjjen ; then (1796) 

 science and mathematics at Leipzig ; bcjjan his 

 career as a teacher of philosophy in the university 

 of Jena in 1798 as successor to Fichte, from which 

 time he was, with Fichte and Hegel, one of the 

 pioneers of post-Kantian speculative thought. In 

 1803 he married Carolina ( 1763-1809), the divorced 

 wife of A. W. von Schlegel (q.v.). From 1803 

 to 1808 he was professor at Wiirzburg ; then until 

 1820 secretary of the Royal Academy of Arts at 

 Munich ; again professor at Erlangen until 1827, 

 when he returned to Munich to the new university 

 there; and was finally called in 1841 by Frederick- 

 William IV. to Berlin amid great expectation of 

 results from his long-promised final, positive philo- 

 sophy. He died at the baths of Ragaz in Switzer- 

 land, 20th August 1854. 



Schelling's significance consists not in his being 

 the founder of a philosophical system, but in his 

 having by the force of his genius and prolonged 

 fervid activity lived into and through the specula- 

 tive questions of hU day, condensing them into 

 profound intuitions and thoughts which not only 

 excited others to systematic thinking, but entered 

 into the philosophical development as landmarks 

 of speculation. His manifold productions may be 

 grouped around the leading ideas of three distinct 

 periods, the first of which extends from 1797 to 

 1800, when Schelling was under the influence chiefly 

 of Fichte, and embraces the so-callud ' Philosophy 

 of Nature ' and ' Transcendental Philosophy;' the 

 second culminates in the ' Philosophy of Identity,' 

 and falls between 1801 and 1803, Schelling's lights 

 being then Spinoza and Boehme ; the third and 

 least valuable of the three represents the growth 

 of what Schelling called his Positive (in opposition 

 to the previous Critical or Negative) Philosophy, 

 and may be traced as far back as 1809, when The 

 Inquiry into the Nature of Human Freedom 

 appeared. Schelling began as an adherent of 

 Fichte's principle of the Ego as the supreme prin- 

 ciple of philosophy : the Ego alone cannot be ex- 

 plained by anything ouUtide itself; it posits itself 

 and is conditioned only by itself i.e. in it form 

 and matter coincide ; such are the ideas of his first 

 production, On the Possibility of any Form of Philo- 

 sophy (1795). In the next work, On the Ego as 

 Principle of Philosophy, Schelling seems to make 

 the transition to the Absolute Ego as the ground 

 of the opposition between the Ego and Non-Ego, 

 and thus arrives at the pantheism characteristic of 

 the idealism of Fichte and Hegel. In the Letters 

 on Dogmatism and Criticism ( \ 796-98 ) he sets at 

 naught Kant's arguments for the limitation of 

 knowledge to phenomena, in laying claim to a 

 'secret wonderful faculty which dwells in ns all' 

 of beholding the transcendental ground of all 



reality, which he calls ' Intellectual Intuition 'a 

 conception to be associated with the Reason or 

 faculty of ideas of Spinoza and Kant and Plato, 

 and with the intuition of the mystics. This 

 notable doctrine, though resting on some basis of 

 psychological experience (such, for example, as the 

 'Consensus Gentium ' talked of in theistic proof or 

 the ' Faith ' of Jacobi ), is apt to be either vague 

 or presumptuous; the former as it hardly admits of 



exact definition, and the latter as it is apt to look 



whi 

 not be enjoyed by'everybody. 



like a claim to a private view of truth which may 



In the Philosophy of Nature writings, and in 

 The World-Soul (1797-99), we find Schelling sup- 

 plementing the Fichtian doctrine of the Ego or 

 Alisolnte Ego, by showing that the whole of Nature 

 may be regarded as an enilxwlinient of a process by 

 which Spirit tends to rise to a consciousness of 

 itself that in fact we may supplement Subjective 

 Idealism by an Objective Idealism in which Nauire 

 is seen to l>e the other pole of Spirit, slumliering or 

 petrified intelligence. We might therefore say : ' I 

 is everything, because everything is I.' Because of 

 this affinity with Spirit that Nature has we may, 

 thought Schelling, construct a ' Philosophy of 

 Nature ' i.e. we can say what Nature is prior to 

 actual empirical research and we find him trying 

 to explain Nature by a logical manipulation of such 



Idealism (1800), one of the most important of 

 Schelling's works, speaks of the two fundamental 

 and complementary sciences, Transcendental Philo- 

 sophy and Speculative Physics, which together 

 constitute the whole of knowledge ; the one starts 

 with the Subjective and shows how the Objec- 

 tive belongs thereto, while the other shows how 

 the Objective must become Subjective. Schel- 

 ling about this time edited two journals, the 

 one for Sperulatire Physics, and the other (with 

 Hegel) the Critical Jovrnal of Philosojthy, which 

 not only contain some important articles of his 

 own, bnt express at a stage of white heat the move- 

 ment of thought which can only l>e said to cul- 

 minate in the stupendous system of Hegel. It is 

 easy to see in the Transcendental Idealism the 

 germs of the 'Philosophy of Identity.' If either 

 Spirit or Nature conduct ns to the unity which 

 Philosophy seeks, the metaphysical ground of 

 Being may be viewed as a supra-sensuous Identity 

 that is above all difference : the Alisolute as the 

 unity of the Ideal and the Real is higher than 

 either Spirit in itself or Nature in itself, and Spirit 

 Philosophy and Nature Philosophy merge in Iden- 

 tity Philosophy, the theory of the One which in 

 above dualism and multiplicity. Following 

 Spinoza, Schelling teaches (Method of Academical 

 *ri></>r, 1803; Bruno, 1803, &c.) that it is only the 

 imagination and the reflecting Understanding 

 which cause us to separate things or conceive them 

 separately ; Reason beholds all things in their 

 totality or oneness ; the Absolute is not only tin 

 unity of all contradictions, but the unitv of unity 

 and itself unendingness. We here see the root* of 

 the Dialectic or Logic of Hegel, who, however, is 

 careful to avoid, as the grave of thought, a mere 

 formal identity (i.e. to say that the Absolute is 

 that which is one with itself is to say practically 

 nothing almut it) and to set forth a unity which is 

 concrete (i.e. a unity in which all variety persists 

 and is not lost). 'Schelling differs though from 

 Spino/a in keeping the process of development 

 strongly to the fore as indeed the truth of the 

 world) ' In the beginning was the Act,' in Goethe's 

 words), a most valuable side of his philosophy, 

 linking it through disciples of his with the tre- 

 mendous development of the historic method i'i 



