OF NATURE. 547 



'^ 



these departures we have already become intimately 



acquainted in the earlier part of this work. I have 

 there called it the scientific or exact study of Nature. *• 



•' _ _ The exact 



As a tolerably compact and consistent doctrine, it first ^T^^u^je^ 

 presented itself to the French mind : in its extreme form 

 to the mathematical genius of Laplace. The second 

 original departure is to be found in the naturalistic 

 school of En2:lish poetry and art. The love of nature ^, , 5. 

 and the return to it which arose in this country towards poSry'and 

 the end of the eighteenth century spread into Germany, 

 and formed there one of the most important agencies in 

 stimulating the national mind to individual and original 

 productions in poetry and literature. It found there its 

 greatest exponent in Goethe, whose personality and 

 whose works have, to succeeding generations, become 

 as great and as inexhaustible a subject of study and re- 

 flection as nature itself had been to him throughout his 

 long career. Somewhat influenced by the last-named 

 movement, there sprang up as the third original contribu- 

 tion to the solution of the problem of nature, that phil- 

 osophy which called itself, par excellence, the philosophy of s. 

 ^ •' ' -^ ' r r J Philosophy 



Nature. As I have already shown in the last chapter, of Nature, 

 this movement centred in Schelling, in whose mind it 

 formed as much an opposition to the one-sided moralism 

 and intellectualism of Kant and some of his followers as 

 it also marked the desire to reconcile the mechanical 

 with the ideal or artistic study of nature in the midst 

 of which Schelling found himself placed. In this latter 

 desire Schelling had indeed a forerunner to whom he 

 frequently refers in the introduction to his ' Philosophy 

 of Nature.' This was Leibniz, with whom, probably for 



