206 PHILOSOPHY 



ledge (4 vols. 1837) are noteworthy contributions to epistemological 

 doctrine. In the latter we have developed at great length the import- 

 ant thought that the illative character of prepositional judgments 

 implies an objective relation; and that in all truths the subject-idea 

 must be objective. In the work on religion there is found as thor- 

 oughly dispassionate and rational a defense of Catholic doctrine as 

 exists anywhere in philosophical literature. The limited influence of 

 these works, due in part to their bulk and their technical character, is 

 on the whole, I think, sincerely to be regretted. 



It was, however, chiefly that remarkable series of philosophers 

 which may be grouped under the rubric of a "rational Idealism," 

 who filled so full and made so rich the philosophical life of Germany 

 during the first half of the last century; whose philosophical thoughts 

 and systems have spread over the entire Western World, and who are 

 most potent influences in shaping the development of philosophy 

 down to the present hour. Of these we need do little more than that 

 we can do mention their names. At their head, in time, stands 

 Fichte, who although Kant is reported to have complained of this 

 disciple because he lied about him so much really divined a truth 

 which seems to be hovering in the clouds above the master's head, 

 but which, if the critical philosophy truly meant to teach it, needed 

 helpful deliverance in order to appear in perfectly clear light. Fichte, 

 although he divined this truth, did not, however, free it from internal 

 confusion and self-contradiction. It is his truth, nevertheless, that in 

 the Self, as a self-positing and self-determining activity, must some- 

 how be found the Ground of all experience and of all Reality. 



The important note which Schelling sounded was the demand that 

 philosophy should recognize "Nature" as belonging to the sphere 

 of Reality, and as requiring a measure of reflective thought which 

 should in some sort put it on equal terms with the Ego, for the con- 

 struction of our conception of the Being of the World. To Schelling it 

 seemed impossible to deduce, as Fichte had done, all the rich concrete 

 development of the world of things from the subjective needs and con- 

 stitutional forms of functioning which belong to the finite Self. And, 

 indeed, the doctrine which limits the origin, existence, and value of 

 all that is known about this sphere of experience to these needs, and 

 which finds the sufficient account of all experience with nature in 

 these forms of functioning, must always seem inadequate and even 

 grotesque in the sight of the natural sciences. Both Nature and Spirit, 

 thought Schelling, must be allowed to claim actual existence and 

 equally real value; while at the same time philosophy must reconcile 

 the seeming opposition of their claims and unite them in an har- 

 monious and self-explanatory way. In some common substratum, 

 in which, to adopt Hegel's sarcastic criticism, as in the darkness of 

 the night " all cows are black," that is in the Absolute, as an 



