634 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



principle, of that universal agency which in the 

 sphere of the individual mind appears as conscious 

 free will. 



As stated above, the discovery, during that age, of 

 animal electricity and magnetism seemed to open out 

 an entirely new region of research wherein to explore 

 and explain the phenomena of life. Thus it became 

 for Schelling a necessity to look upon nature from a 

 philosophical or idealistic point of view, and this was 

 to be a counterpart to the purely realistic, empirical, 

 and mechanical study of nature. Further, he found 

 encouragement towards this undertaking in the spiritual 

 side of Leibniz' philosophy and in Leibniz' doctrine of 

 development, as he significantly points out in one of 

 his earliest Tracts referring to the Fichtean form 

 of philosophy (1797). 1 



"We now see how the position occupied by Kant and 

 prepared by British philosophy before him is gradu- 

 ally, almost imperceptibly, being abandoned. I said 

 above that Kant among Continental philosophers took 

 the first step in the direction of the psychological 

 view of the great philosophical problem. We may 

 now define this more exactly by saying that it was 

 not psychological in the sense which the term con- 

 veys at the present day, mainly as a result of the 

 independent and original psychological labours in this 

 country. But it was a step in that direction, inasmuch 

 as it was introspective. More than that : it was essen- 

 tially self-reliant. It was so, not only in relation to the 

 solution of the intellectual problem, but still more so in 



1 Schelling, 'Werke,' I., vol. i. p. 443. 



