OF REALITY. 453 



Rousseau, that of the earlier poetry of the English 

 naturalistic school and that of Herder, combined, as it 

 were, to form the mental environment in which Goethe's 

 original genius grew up ; they found expression in his 

 intuitive comprehension of nature, which forms such a 

 prominent characteristic of his poetical genius. The 

 speculative philosopher who came most under the influ- 

 ence of this twofold interest in nature and natural 

 things, the scientific and the poetical, was Schelling. 

 He was, after Wieland and Schiller, the third great 

 personality in whom the South of Germany made its 

 contribution to the assembly of representative minds 

 which formed the circle at Weimar and Jena. Herder 

 and Fichte came from the North and East of Germany, 

 whence also had come the influence of Lessing and 

 Kant. 



It appears that, in the case of Schelling, the scientific 20. 

 interest in nature succeeded the artistic or poetical 

 interest, and that the latter remained always the 

 dominant one. 



In spite of the more matured labours of Kant and 

 the more comprehensive and systematic speculations of 

 Hegel, Schelling deserves to be looked upon as the 

 central figure during the idealistic period of German 21 

 philosophy, 1 and this for several reasons. In the long 



1 This is being more and more 

 recognised and brought out by the 

 latest historians of philosophy in 

 Germany. The standard work on 

 Schelling is still that of Kuno 

 Fischer, forming the 6th vol. of his 

 History (1st ed. 1872). And yet, 

 even this monumental work stops 

 short of an adequate and complete 



comprehension of Schelling's philo- 

 sophic development : the last phase 

 of his philosophy is not treated. 

 The reason of this is that forty 

 years ago, when Kuno Fischer com- 

 pleted this section of his History, 

 that phase of Schelling's thought 

 appeared to stand outside of the 

 historical progress of German philo- 



German 

 Idealism. 



