328 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



the higher and especially of the Christian religion. 

 Schelling, in the quest of a satisfactory statement of this 

 conviction which dominated the whole of the second half 

 of his speculations, came under the influence of the 

 mystical writings of Jacob Boehme. It seems that he 

 was also much influenced through his personal relations 

 with Franz von Baader, who has been correctly called a 

 pupil as well as a teacher of Schelling. But Schelling 

 never arrived at any finality in these his later specu- 

 lations, in which the task of reconciling the omnipotence 

 and all-goodness of a Divine Creator with the freedom of 

 his creatures to choose between good and evil presented 

 insurmountable difficulties. Yet it cannot be denied 

 that Schelling correctly pointed to the great defect of 

 Hegel's system, in which no proper place existed for the 

 conception of personality and which attempted no solu- 

 tion of the ethical paradox. Hence it came about that 

 on these two points the whole scheme of Hegel's philo- 

 sophy had to be either abandoned or amended. The 

 former was accomplished by what is termed the " left " 

 wing of Hegel's School. They solved the problem of 

 personality by reducing the applicability of this idea to 

 human beings and by transforming the theological into 

 a purely anthropological treatment of the ethical problem. 

 On the other side, the " right " wing of Hegel's School, 

 of which Weisse was the most prominent and original 

 representative, undertook to carry further and think out 

 or rather to amend what seemed to them on the whole 

 the correct line of reasoning on which Hegel had em- 

 barked. To this end Hegel's scheme itself seemed to 

 offer a fruitful indication. For it seemed that the 



