OF NATURE. 



549 



in opposition to the more fruitful " Natural Philosophy," 

 which has its home in this country, it cannot be denied 

 that it formed an important, though premature, step, 

 and that many of the ideas put forward by its votaries 

 have, in the latter half of the nineteenth century, been 7. 



,.,..,.. . , i i Importance 



revived with little alteration, though with more precise of this last. 



when he opposes or criticises the 

 labours of others, such as Fechner's 

 ' Atomenlehre ' (1855 ; ' Kleine 

 Schriften,' vol. iii. p. 215 sqq.), or 

 the younger Fichte's ' Anthrop- 

 ology ' (' Streitschriften,' 1857 ; 

 'Kleine Schriften,' vol. iii. p. 324 

 sqq. ). The review of the former 

 work contains the following pass- 

 age, most clearly indicating what 

 Schelling intended: "Criticism, 

 which now so often does not go to 

 the original sources but contents 

 itself with a frequently blurred 

 picture of a philosophical view as 

 it has entered into popular con- 

 sciousness, seems to me in com- 

 bating Schelling's views only too 

 customarily to overlook an import- 

 ant point. Schelling did not place 

 before himself the tasks which phy- 

 sical science considers, and must 

 consider, to be its own, and we 

 are unavoidably unjust towards 

 him if we accuse him of the failure 

 of an attempt upon which he never 

 ventured. AVhat he in principle 

 aimed at was to view things in the 

 Absolute or sub specie ceternitatis, a 

 task which we may express in this 

 way : that he tried to discover the 

 ideal content which single pheno- 

 mena, themselves parts of one in- 

 carnate idea, were destined to 

 represent ; but he did not consider 

 it to be the task of philosophy, but 

 left this to physical science, to show 

 through what means and through 

 what mechanical connections and 

 interaction they did succeed in 

 fulfilling their vocation. All these 

 means of realisation in the connec- 

 tion of a finite world seemed to him 



inferior objects of research, for they 

 neither increase, nor are they the 

 ground of, the ideal value of the 

 result. As little as we deem that 

 we understand better the aesthetic 

 value of a play if we follow up the 

 movements of the vocal muscles of 

 the speaking performers, just as 

 little did he think it possible to in- 

 crease our insight into the spiritual 

 connection of nature, which alone 

 interested him, through an investi- 

 gation of the genesis of single 

 phenomena. I do not share this 

 opinion, but I should like to point 

 out that the supposition of any 

 other intention imports faults and 

 confusion into Schelliug's views 

 which at least in principle do not 

 encumber him. though they may 

 through inadvertence" ('Kleiue 

 Schriften,' vol. iii. p. 228). And 

 he proceeds to give the following 

 quotation from Schelling: "Gen- 

 erally speaking, if only that is 

 truth which is cognised through 

 the highest form of knowledge, 

 then only those sciences can boast 

 of truth in which this character- 

 istic of absolute knowledge is to be 

 found, and as the main criterion 

 of this we have noted the absolute 

 contrast to the law of causality 

 and to the world in which this 

 obtains." And Lotze concludes: 

 " One cannot make such an as- 

 tounding statement without mean- 

 ing in earnest what is expressed in 

 it : and this is nothing else but 

 this, that the machinery which pro- 

 duces the image of a phenomenon 

 is not identical with the meaning 

 of this image" (p. 229). 



