OF THE UNITY OF THOUGHT. 637 



he advances a step beyond Spinoza inasmuch as he 

 inckides the idea of development, the historical be- 

 coming, in the physical as well as in the mental 

 world. He introduces into philosophy the historical 

 spirit. This had in his time made great progress 

 both in France and Germany, and this in the study 

 of natural as well as of mental phenomena. It signi- 

 fied a recognition of the Leibnizian point of view. 

 Whereas in the system of Spinoza, the inner and the 

 outer world, the order of ideas and the order of things, 

 were placed parallel to each other and conceived as 

 the two known aspects of the appearance of the Divine 

 principle, with Schelling the two developments of nature 

 and mind were placed in succession : the first being 

 conceived as preparatory to the latter, the latter the 

 consummation and explication of the former. And 

 Schelling introduced into his scheme, which assimilated 

 ideas taken from earlier thinkers, likewise the artistic 

 or poetical view of which Plato was the great ex- 

 ponent in antiquity. Being the first among the great 

 modern philosophers in Germany who came from the 

 poetic South, with a poetic trait in his own nature 

 and style, he appreciated above all that poetic com- 

 prehension of nature which found such a classical 

 representative in Goethe. In the mind of the latter 

 the intuitive intellect, at which Kant had merely 

 hinted, had become a reality, and thus we find that 

 Schelling, in quest of an expression for the unity, 

 identity, and harmony which he conceived to be the 

 essence of Eeality, inclined at one period of his 

 speculation to see this actually attained, or to be 



