490 



PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



The middle of the century thus found the problem of 

 Eeality pushed .into the foreground from many sides. A 

 multitude of ideas was floating about in the philo- 

 sophical atmosphere. They were largely remnants of 

 the idealism which pervaded the earlier systems as well 

 as the classical and romantic literature of the first third 

 of the century ; they were partly also new suggestions 

 coming from the recently cultivated and prolific fields of 

 the natural and the historical sciences, and they were 

 lastly in no small degree revivals or reminiscences of the 



has more and more become concen- 

 trated. These two problems are 

 not kept sufficiently separate in 

 Schelling's writings. To have 

 separated them is, inter alia, one of 

 the merits of Lotze's philosophy ; 

 to have attempted the solution one 

 of the claims of two systems, both 

 of which have had an important 

 influence upon Continental thought. 

 I refer to the philosophy of the 

 Unconscious (v. Hartmann in Ger- 

 many) and the system termed 

 " Personnalisme " (Renouvier in 

 France). Of both these we shall 

 have to take cognisance in the 

 sequel. For the moment the simple 

 statement of the two problems may 

 suffice. The first problem has not 

 necessarily an ethical or religious 

 meaning. It is most clearly defined 

 by Schelling in the well - known 

 Preface which he wrote in the year 

 1 834 to a translation of the lengthy 

 explanation which Victor Cousin 

 prefixed to the 2nd edition of his 

 ' Fragments Philosophiques ' (1833). 

 It contains also the distinct enun- 

 ciation of Schelling's objection to 

 the development which his and 

 Hegel's common position had found 

 in Hegel's own doctrine. He there 

 explains that if the purely Rational, 

 that which we cannot help thinking, 

 is pure subject, then that other 



subject which rises through becom- 

 ing objective to higher subjectivity 

 is no longer the purely rational, 

 but is endowed with an empirical 

 specification. " One who has come 

 later and whom Nature seems to 

 have predestined to give to our age 

 a new Wolffianism, has removed 

 that empirical element, putting in 

 its place the logical notion to which 

 he attributes by a remarkable feat 

 of hypostasis a similarly necessary 

 movement. . . . The logical move- 

 ment of thought sufficed so long as 

 the system moved within the 

 purely logical ; as soon as it has to 

 take the weighty step into reality 

 the thread of dialectical movement 

 breaks ; a new hypothesis is neces- 

 sary so that the idea we do not 

 know why may happen to fall 

 asunder into its different moments, 

 so that nature might originate" 

 (Schelling's ' Werke,' vol. x. p. 212). 

 This means, expressed in modern 

 language, that to the necessary 

 must be added the contingent. 

 But, of all that is merely contingent, 

 a matter of accident or of free 

 choice, the most mysterious and 

 inexplicable is the problem of 

 Evil ; upon this problem Schelling 

 concentrated his thoughts during 

 the latter half of his lifetime. 



