OF THE BEAUTIFUL. 41 



poetical visions and, on closer examination, reveal their 

 ephemeral transient character. Thus during the earlier 27. 

 period of his career when he lived, wrote, and lectured transitional 



point of 



in Jena and Weimar, he thought that he had found in view - 

 the Beautiful and in Art the consummation of his 

 philosophical system, the revelation of the Absolute or 

 truly Eeal ; but the solution satisfied him only for a 

 moment. 



In his system of Transcendental Idealism, which was 

 published in the year 1800, Schelling had passed through 

 that phase of philosophical development in which he 

 assigned to Art the highest function. He had there 

 attained to what he considered a higher position than 

 that occupied by his predecessor Fichte. The latter's 

 interest was centred in the ethical problem. For him 

 the conscious self was the beginning, its development in 

 the sphere of self-constrained freedom, the end of life 

 and the problem of philosophy. From this point of view 

 he had neglected nature. His career coincided mo- 

 mentarily with that of Schiller, but he never did justice 

 to the spirit of Goethe's implied but unwritten philo- 

 sophy of nature. This was reserved for Schelling, who 

 realised that a better understanding of the problems 

 formulated by Kant on the one side, and forming the 

 deeper interests of the new era of culture on the other, 

 could only be attained by moving the centre of thought 

 away from the extreme subjective position of Fichte, by 

 recognising the underlying unity of nature and mind. 

 Accordingly, Schelling took up in real earnest an idea 

 thrown out by Kant. Goethe himself had done the 

 same, as he explained in a series of autobiographical 



