456 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



It was in the form which he gave to some of the leading 

 ideas in modern German philosophy that these became 

 known in this country through Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 

 and it was he also who among German thinkers made 

 the deepest impression upon Victor Cousin and, through 

 him, upon French thought.^ And though so much has 

 been said against the " philosophy of nature," some of the 

 leading ideas of its way of looking at natural phenomena 

 found their response partly independently and partly 

 through Schelling's indirect influence in France as well 

 as in this country. 



We have already seen that in Fichte the philosophical 

 interest had moved away from the critical position to 

 the dogmatic and constructive, that the problem of 

 knowledge had to give way to the problem of Eeality. 

 In Schelling we find little interest in the critical 

 problem of Knowledge and no contributions to its 

 solution. But this interest was not overcome, as it was 

 22. in Fichte, by the ethical or practical interest; both of 



Pra^'tical '' ^ 



and poetical thcsc wcre thrust aside by the artistic or poetical 



interests. '' ^ 



interest. The first Kantian school studied mainly the 

 first Critique and its doctrines. Fichte threw the whole 

 weight of his personality on to the moral and practical 

 teaching as initiated in Kant's second Critique. 

 Schelling's starting-point is that of the third Critique, 

 which deals with final causes in nature and the concep- 

 tion of art, with the meaning and beauty of things. 



But nowhere is the central position which Schelling 

 takes up more marked than in this, that he made the 



^ And even further afield the as is hardly generally known and 

 influence of Schelling is to be appreciated, 

 found in the writings of Emerson, 



