(1.)The theoretical philosophystarts from the highest principle of knowledge, the self-consciousness, and from this point developes the history of self-consciousness, according to its mostprominent epochs and stations, viz., sensation, intuition, productive intuition (which produces matter)—outer and inner intuition (from which space and time, and all Kant’s categories may be derived), abstraction (by which the intelligence distinguishes itself from its products)—absolute abstraction, or absolute act of will. With the act of the will there is spread before us,
(2.)The Field of Practical Philosophy.—In practical philosophy the Ego is no longer beholding,i. e.consciousless, but is consciously producing,i. e.realizing. As a whole, nature developes itself from the original act of self-consciousness, so from the second act, or the act of free self-determination, there is produced a second nature, to find the origin for which is the object of practical philosophy. In his exposition of the practical philosophy, Schelling follows almost wholly the theory of Fichte, but closes this section with some remarkable expressions respecting the philosophy of history. History, as a whole, is, according to him, a gradual and self-disclosing revelation of the absolute, a progressing demonstration of the existence of a God. The history of this revelation may be divided into three periods. The first is that in which the overruling power was apprehended only as destiny,i. e.as a blind power, cold and consciousless, which brings the greatest and most glorious things of earth to ruin; it is marked by the decay of the magnificence and wonders of the ancient world, and the fall of the noblest manhood that has ever bloomed. The second period of history is that in which this destiny manifests itself as nature, and the hidden law seems changed into a manifest law of nature, which compels freedom and every choice to submit to and serve a plan of nature. This period seems to begin with the spread of the great Roman republic. The third period will be that where what has previously been regarded as destiny and nature, will develope itself as Providence. When this period shall begin, we cannot say; we can only affirm that if it be, then God will be seen also to be.
(3.)Philosophy of Art.—The problem of transcendental philosophy is to harmonize the subjective and the objective. In history, with which practical philosophy closes, the identity ofthe two is not exhibited, but only approximated in an infinite progress. But now the Ego must attain a position where it can actually look upon this identity, which constitutes its inner essence. If now all conscious activity exhibits design, then a conscious and consciousless activity can only coincide in a product, which, though it exhibits design, was yet produced without design. Such a product is nature; we have here the principle of allteleology, in which alone the solution of the given problem can be sought. The peculiarity of nature is this, viz., that though it exhibits itself as nothing but a blind mechanism, it yet displays design, and represents an identity of the conscious subjective, and the consciousless objective activity; in it the Ego beholds its own most peculiar essence, which consists alone in this identity. But in nature the Ego beholds this identity, not as something objective, which has a being only outside of it, but also as that whose principle lies within the Ego itself. This beholding is the art-intuition. As the production of nature is consciousless, though similar to that which is conscious, so the æsthetic production of the artist is a conscious production, similar to that which is consciousless.Æstheticsmust therefore be joined to teleology. That contradiction between the conscious and the consciousless, which moves forward untiringly in history, and which is unconsciously reconciled in nature, finds its conscious reconciliation in a work of art. In a work of art, the intelligence attains a perfect intuition of itself. The feeling which accompanies this intuition, is the feeling of an endless satisfaction; all contradictions being resolved, and every riddle explained. The unknown, which unexpectedly harmonizes the objective and the conscious activity, is nothing other than that absolute and unchangeable identity, to which every existence must be referred. In the artist it lays aside the veil, which elsewhere surrounds it, and irresistibly impels him to complete his work. Thus there is no other eternal revelation but art, and this is also the miracle which should convince us of the reality of that supreme, which is never itself objective, but is the cause of all objective. Hence art holds a higher rank than philosophy, for onlyin art has the intellectual intuition objectivity. There is nothing, therefore, higher to the philosopher than art, because this opens before him, as it were, the holy of holies, where that which is separate in nature and history, and which in life and action, as in thought, must ever diverge, burns, as it were, in one flame, in an eternal and original union. From this we see also both the fact and the reason for it, that philosophy, as philosophy, can never be universally valid. Art is that alone to which is given, an absolute objectivity, and it is through this alone that nature, consciously productive, concludes and completes itself within itself.
The “Transcendental Idealism” is the last work which Schelling wrote after the method of Fichte. In its principle he goes decidedly beyond the standpoint of Fichte. That which was with Fichte the inconceivable limit of the Ego, Schelling derives as a necessary duality, from the simple essence of the Ego. While Fichte had regarded the union of subject and object, only as an infinite progression towards that which ought to be, Schelling looked upon it as actually accomplished in a work of art. With Fichte God was apprehended only as the object of a moral faith, but with Schelling he was looked upon as the immediate object of the æsthetic intuition. This difference between the two could not long be concealed from Schelling. He was obliged to see that he no longer stood upon the basis of subjective idealism, but that his real position was that of objective idealism. If he had already gone beyond Fichte in setting the philosophy of nature and transcendental philosophy opposite to each other, it was perfectly consistent for him now to go one step farther, and, placing himself on the point of indifference between the two, make the identity of the ideal and the real, of thought and being, as his principle. This principleSpinozahad already possessed before him. To this philosophy of identity Schelling now found himself peculiarly attracted. Instead of following Fichte’s method, he now availed himself of that of Spinoza, the mathematical, to which he ascribed the greatest evidence of proof.
III.Third Period: Period of Spinozism, or the Indifference of the Ideal and the Real.
The principal writings of this period are:—“Exposition of my System of Philosophy” (Journal for Speculative Physics, ii. 2); the second edition, with additions, of the “Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature” 1803; the dialogue, “Bruno, or concerning the Divine and the Natural Principle of Things” 1802; “Lectures on the Method of Academical Study,” 1803; three numbers of a “New Journal for Speculative Physics,” 1802-3. The characteristic of the new standpoint of Schelling, to which we now arrive, is perfectly exhibited in the definition of reason, which he places at the head of the first of the above-named writings; I give to reason the name absolute, or the reason in so far as it is conceived as the totalindifference of the subjective and the objective. To think of reason is demanded of every man; to think of it as absolute, and thus to reach the standpoint which I require, every thing must be abstracted from the thinking subject. To him who makes this abstraction, reason immediately ceases to be something subjective, as most men represent it; neither can it be conceived as something objective, since an objective, or that which is thought, is only possible in opposition to that which thinks. We thus rise through this abstraction to the reality of things (zum wahren an-sich), which reality is precisely in the indifference point of the subjective and the objective. The standpoint of philosophy is the standpoint of reason; its knowledge is a knowledge of things as they are in themselves,i. e.as they are in the reason. It is the nature of philosophy to destroy every distinction which the imagination has mingled with the thinking, and to see in things only that through which they express the absolute reason, not regarding in them that which is simply an object for that reflection which expends itself on the laws of mechanism and in time. Besides reason there is nothing, and in it is every thing. Reason is the absolute. All objections to this principle can only arise from the fact, that men are in the habit of looking at things not as they are in reason, but as they appear. Every thing which is, is in essence like the reason, and is one with it. It is not the reason which posits something external to itself, but only the false use of reason, which is connected with theincapacity of forgetting the subjective in itself. The reason is absolutelyoneand like itself. The highest law for the being of reason, and since there is nothing besides reason, the highest law for all being, is the law of identity. Between subject and object therefore—since it is one and the same absolute identity which displays itself in both—there can be no difference except aquantitativedifference (a difference of more or less), so that nothing is either simple object or simple subject, but in all things subject and object are united, this union being in different proportions, so that sometimes the subject and sometimes the object has the preponderance. But since the absolute is pure identity of subject and object, there can be no quantitative difference except outside of the identity,i. e.in the finite. As the fundamental form of the Infinite is A = A, so the scheme of the finite is A = B (i. e.the union of a subjective with another objective in a different proportion). But, in reality, nothing is finite, because the identity is the only reality. So far as there is difference in individual things, the identity exists in the form of indifference. If we could see together every thing which is, we should find in all the pure identity, because we should find in all a perfect quantitative equilibrium of subjectivity and objectivity. True, we find, in looking at individual objects, that sometimes the preponderance is on one side and sometimes on the other, but in the whole this is compensated. The absolute identity is the absolute totality, the universe itself. There is in reality (an-sich) no individual being or thing. There is in reality nothing beyond the totality; and if any thing beyond this is beheld, this can only happen by virtue of arbitrary separation of the individual from the whole, which is done through reflection, and is the source of every error. The absolute identity is essentially the same in every part of the universe. Hence the universe may be conceived under the figure of a line, in the centre of which is the A = A, while at the end on one side is A+; = B,i. e.a transcendence of the subjective, and at the end on the other side is A = B+,i. e.a transcendence of the objective, though this must be conceived so that arelative identity may exist even in these extremes. The one side is the real or nature, the other side is the ideal. The real side developes itself according to three potences (a potence, or power, indicates a definite quantitative difference of subjectivity and objectivity). (1) The first potence is matter and weight—the greatest preponderance of the object. (2) The second potence is light (A2), an inner—as weight is an outer—intuition of nature. The light is a higher rising of the subjective. It is the absolute identity itself. (3) The third potence is organism (A3), the common product of light and weight. Organism is just as original as matter. Inorganic nature, as such, does not exist: it is actually organized, and is, as it were, the universal germ out of which organization proceeds. The organization of every globe is but the inner evolution of the globe itself; the earth itself, by its own evolving, becomes animal and plant. The organic world has not formed itself out of the inorganic, but has been at least potentially present in it from the beginning. That matter which lies before us, apparently inorganic, is the residuum of organic metamorphoses, which could not become organic. The human brain is the highest bloom of the whole organic metamorphosis of the earth. From the above, Schelling adds, it must be perceived that we affirm an inner identity of all things, and a potential presence of every thing in every other, and therefore even the so-called dead matter may be viewed only as a sleeping-world of animals and plants, which, in some period, the absolute identity may animate and raise to life. At this point Schelling stops suddenly, without developing further the three potences of the ideal series, corresponding to those of the real. Elsewhere he completes the work by setting up the following three potences of the ideal series: (1) Knowledge, the potence of reflection; (2) Action, the potence of subsumption; (3) the Reason as the unity of reflection and subsumption. These three potences represent themselves: (1) as the true, the imprinting of the matter in the form; (2) as the good, or the imprinting of the form in the matter; (3) as the beautiful, or the work of art, the absolute blending together of form and matter.
Schelling sought also to furnish himself with a new method for knowing the absolute identity. Neither the analytic nor the synthetical method seems to him suitable for this, since both are only a finite knowledge. Gradually, also, he abandoned the mathematical method. The logical forms of the ordinary method of knowledge, and even the ordinary metaphysical categories, were now insufficient for him. Schelling now places the intellectual intuition as the starting point of true knowledge. Intuition, in general, is an equal positing of thought and being. When I behold an object, the being of the object and my thought of the object is for me absolutely the same. But in the ordinary intuition, some separate sensible being is posited as one with the thought. But in the intellectual or rational intuition, being in general, and every being is made identical with the thought, and the absolutesubject-objectis beheld. The intellectual intuition is absolute knowledge, and as such it can only be conceived as that in which thought and being are not opposed to each other. It is the beginning and the first step towards philosophy to behold, immediately and intellectually within thyself, that same indifference of the ideal and the real which thou beholdest projected as it were from thyself in space and time. This absolutely absolute mode of knowledge is wholly and entirely in the absolute itself. That it can never become taught is clear. It cannot, moreover, be seen why philosophy is bound to have special regard to the unattainable. It seems much more fitting to make so complete a separation on every side between the entrance to philosophy and the common knowledge, that no road nor track shall lead from the latter to the former. The absolute mode of knowledge, like the truth which it contains, has no true opposition outside of itself, and as it cannot be demonstrated by any intelligent being, so nothing can be set up in opposition to it by any.—Schelling has attempted to bring the intellectual intuition into a method, and has named this method construction. The possibility and the necessity of the constructive method is based upon the fact that the absolute is in all, and that all is the absolute. Construction is nothing other than the proving that the whole is absolutely expressedin every particular relation and object. To construe an object, philosophically, is to prove that in this object the whole inner structure of the absolute repeats itself.
In Schelling’s “Lectures on the Method of Academical Study” (delivered in 1802, and published in 1803), he sought to treat encyclopædiacally, every philosophical discipline from the given standpoint of identity or indifference. They furnish a connected and popular exposition of the outlines of his philosophy, in the form of a critical modelling of the studies of the university course. The most noticeable feature in them is Schelling’s attempt at a historical construction of Christianity. The incarnation of God is an incarnation from eternity. The eternal Son of God, born from the essence of the father of all things, is the finite itself, as it is in the eternal intuition of God. Christ is only the historical and phenomenal pinnacle of the incarnation; as an individual, he is a person wholly conceivable from the circumstances of the age in which he appeared. Since God is eternally outside of all time, it is inconceivable that he should have assumed a human nature at any definite moment of time. The temporal form of Christianity, the exoteric Christianity does not correspond to its idea, and has its perfection yet to be hoped for. A chief hindrance to the perfection of Christianity, was, and is the so-called Bible, which, moreover, is far inferior to other religious writings, in a genuine religious content. The future must bring a new birth of the esoteric Christianity, or a new and higher form of religion, in which philosophy, religion and poesy shall melt together in unity.—This latter remark contains already an intimation of the “Philosophy of Revelation,” a work subsequently written by Schelling, and which exhibited many of the principles current in the age of the apostle John. In the work we are now considering, there are also many other points which correspond to this later standpoint of Schelling. Thus he places at the summit of history a kind of golden age. It is inconceivable, he says, that man as he now appears, should have raised himself through himself from instinct to consciousness, from animality to rationality. Another human race, must, therefore, have preceded the present,which the old saga have immortalized under the form of gods and heroes. The first origin of religion and culture is only conceivable through the instruction of higher natures. I hold the condition of culture as the first condition of the human race, and considere the first foundation of states, sciences, religion and arts as cotemporary, or rather as one thing: so that all these were not truly separate, but in the completest interpenetration, as it will be again in the final consummation. Schelling is no more than consistent when he accordingly apprehends the symbols of mythology which we meet with at the beginning of history, as disclosures of the highest wisdom. There is here also a step towards his subsequent “Philosophy of Mythology.”
The mystical element revealed in these expressions of Schelling gained continually a greater prominence with him. Its growth was partly connected with his fruitless search after an absolute method, and a fitting form in which he might have satisfactorily expressed his philosophic intuitions. All noble mysticism rests on the incapacity of adequately expressing an infinite content in the form of a conception. So Schelling, after he had been restlessly tossed about in every method, soon gave up also his method of construction, and abandoned himself wholly to the unlimited current of his fancy. But though this was partly the cause of his mysticism, it is also true that his philosophical standpoint was gradually undergoing a change. From the speculative science of nature, he was gradually passing over more and more into the philosophy of mind, by which the determination of the absolute in his conception became changed. While he had previously determined the absolute as the indifference of the ideal and the real, he now gives a preponderance to the ideal over the real, and makes ideality the fundamental determination of the absolute. The first is the ideal; secondly, the ideal determines itself in itself to the real, and the real as such is the third. The earlier harmony of mind and matter is dissolved: matter appears now as the negative of mind. Since Schelling in this way distinguishes the universe from the absolute as its counterpart, we see that he leavesdecidedly the basis of Spinozism on which he had previously stood, and places himself on a new standpoint.
IV.Fourth Period: the Direction of Schelling’s Philosophy As Mystical and Allied To New-platonism.
The writings of this period are:—“Philosophy and Religion,” 1804. “Exposition of the true relation of the Philosophy of Nature to the improved Theory of Fichte,” 1806; “Medical Annual” (published in company withMarcus) 1805-1808.—As has already been said, the absolute and the universe were, on the standpoint of indifference, identical. Nature and history were immediate manifestations of the absolute. But now Schelling lays stress upon the difference between the two, and the independence of the world. This he expresses in a striking way in the first of the above named writings, by placing the origin of the world wholly after the manner of New-Platonism, in a breaking away or a falling off from the absolute. From the absolute to the actual, there is no abiding transition; the origin of the sensible world is only conceivable as a complete breaking offper saltumfrom the absolute. The absolute is the only real, finite things are not real; they can, therefore, have their ground in no reality imparted to them from the absolute, but only in a separation and complete falling away from the absolute. The reconciliation of this fall, and the manifestation of God made complete, is the final cause of history. With this idea there are also connected other representations borrowed from New-Platonism, which Schelling brings out in the same work. He speaks in it of the descent of the soul from intellectuality, to the world of sense, and like the Platonic myth he allows this fall of souls to be a punishment for their selfhood (pride); he speaks also in connection with this of a regeneration, or transmigration of souls, by which they either begin a higher life on a better sphere, or intoxicated with matter, they are driven down to a still lower abode, according as they have in the present life laid aside more or less of their selfhood, and become purified in a greater or less degree, to an identity with the infinite; but we are especially reminded of New-Platonism by the high place and the mystical and symbolical significance, which Schellinggives in this work to the Greek mysteries (as did Bruno), and the view that if religion would be held in its pure ideality, it can only exist as exoteric, or in the form of mysteries.—This notion of a higher blending together of religion and philosophy goes through all the writings of this period. All true experience, says Schelling in the “Medical Annual,” is religious. The existence of God is an empirical truth, and the ground of all experience. True, religion is not philosophy, but the philosophy which does not unite in sacred harmony, religion with science, were unworthy of the name. True, I know something higher than science. And if science has only these two ways open before it to knowledge, viz., that of analysis or abstraction, and that of synthetic derivation, then we deny all science of the absolute. Speculation is every thing,i. e.a beholding, a contemplation of that which is in God. Science itself has worth only so far as it is speculative,i. e.only so far as it is a contemplation of God as he is. But the time will come when the sciences shall more and more cease, and immediate knowledge take their place. The mortal eye closes only in the highest science, where it is no longer the man who sees, but the eternal beholding which has now become seeing in him.
With this theosophic view of the world, Schelling was led to pay attention to the earlier mystics. He began to study their writings. He answered the charge of mysticism in his controversy with Fichte as follows:—Among the learned of the last century, there was a tacit agreement never to go beyond a certain height, and, therefore, the genuine spirit of science was given up to the unlearned. These, because they were uneducated and had drawn upon themselves the jealousy of the learned, were called fanatics. But many a philosopher by profession might well have exchanged all his rhetoric for the fulness of mind and heart which abound in the writings of such fanatics. Therefore I am not ashamed of the name of such a fanatic. I will even seek to make this reproach true; if I have not hitherto studied the writings of these men correctly, it has been owing to negligence.
Schelling did not omit to verify these words. There were some special mental affinities between himself andJacob Boehme,with whom he now became more and more closely joined. A study of his writings is indeed indicated in Schelling’s works of the present period. One of the most famous of Schelling’s writings, his theory of freedom, which appeared after this (“Philosophische Untersuchungen über das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit,” 1809), is composed entirely in the spirit of Jacob Boehme. We begin with it a new period of Schelling’s philosophizing, wherethe willis affirmed as the essence of God, and we have thus a new definition of the absolute differing from every previous one.
V.Fifth Period:—Attempt at a Theogony and Cosmogony after the Manner of Jacob Boehme.
Schelling had much in common with Jacob Boehme. Both considered the speculative cognition as a kind of immediate intuition. Both made use of forms which mingled the abstract and the sensuous, and interpenetrated the definiteness of logic with the coloring of fancy. Both, in fine, were speculatively in close contact. The self-duplication of the absolute was a fundamental thought of Boehme. He started with the principle, that the divine essence was the indeterminable, infinite, and inconceivable, the absence of ground (Ungrund). This absence of ground now projects itself in a proper feeling of its abstract and infinite essence, into the finite,i. e.into a ground, or the centre of nature, in the dark womb of which qualities are produced, from whose harsh collision the lightning streams forth, which, as mind or principle of light, is destined to rule and explain the struggling powers of nature, so that the God who has been raised from the absence of ground through a ground to the light of the mind, may henceforth move in an eternal kingdom of joy. This theogony of Jacob Boehme is in striking accord with the present standpoint of Schelling. As Boehme had apprehended the absolute as the indeterminable absence of ground, so had Schelling in his earlier writings apprehended it as indifference. As Boehme had distinguished this absence of ground from a ground, or from nature and from God, as the light of minds, so had Schelling, in the writings of the last period, apprehended the absolute as a self-renunciation, and a returnback from this renunciation into a higher unity with itself. We have here the three chief elements of that history of God, around which Schelling’s essay on freedom turns: (1) God as indifference, or the absence of ground; (2) God as duplication into ground and existence, real and ideal; (3) Reconciliation of this duplication, and elevation of the original indifference to identity. The first element of the divine life is that of pure indifference, or indistinguishableness. This, which precedes every thing existing, may be called the original ground, or the absence of ground. The absence of ground is not a product of opposites, nor are they containedimplicitein it, but it is a proper essence separate from every opposite, and having no predicate but that of predicatelessness. Real and ideal, darkness and light, can never be predicated of the absence of ground as opposites; they can only be affirmed of it as not-opposites in a neither-nor. From this indifference now rises the duality: the absence of ground separates into two co-eternal beginnings, so that ground and existence may become one through love, and the indeterminable and lifeless indifference may rise to a determinate and living identity. Since nothing is before or external to God, he must have the ground of his existence in himself. But this ground is not simply logical, as conception, but real, as something which is actually to be distinguished in God from existence; it is nature in God, an essence inseparable indeed from him, but yet distinct. Hence we cannot assign to this ground understanding and will, but only desire after this; it is the longing to produce itself. But in that this ground moves in its longing according to obscure and uncertain laws like a swelling sea, there is, self-begotten in God, another and reflexive motion, an inner representation by which he beholds himself in his image. This representation is the eternal word in God, which rises as light in the darkness of the ground, and endows its blind longing with understanding. This understanding, united with the ground, becomes pre-creating will. Its work is to give order to nature, and to regulate the hitherto unregulated ground; and from this explanation of the real through the ideal, comes the creation of the world. The development ofthe world has two stadia: (1) the travail of light, or the progressive development of nature to man; (2) the travail of mind, or the development of mind in history.
(1.) The progressive development of nature proceeds from a conflict of the ground with the understanding. The ground originally sought to produce every thing solely from itself, but its products had no consistence without the understanding, and went again to the ground, a creation which we see exhibited in the extinct classes of animals and plants of the pre-Adamite world. But consecutively and gradually, the ground admitted the work of the understanding, and every such step towards light is indicated by a new class of nature’s beings. In every creature of nature we must, therefore, distinguish two principles: first, the obscure principle through which the creatures of nature are separate from God, and have a particular will; second, the divine principle of the understanding, of the universal will. With irrational creatures of nature, however, these two principles are not yet brought to unity; but the particular will is simple seeking and desire, while the universal will, without the individual will, reigns as an external power of nature, as controlling instinct.
(2.) The two principles, the particular and the universal will, are first united in man as they are in the absolute: but in God they are united inseparably, and in man separably, for otherwise God could not reveal himself in man. It is even this separableness of the universal will, and the particular will, which makes good and evil possible. The good is the subjection of the particular will to the universal will, and the reverse of this right relation is evil. Human freedom consists in this possibility of good and evil. The empirical man, however, is not free, but his whole empirical condition is posited by a previous act of intelligence. The man must act just as he does, but is nevertheless free, because he has from eternity freely made himself that which he now necessarily is. The history of the human race is founded for the most part on the struggle of the individual will with the universal will, as the history of nature is founded on the struggle of the ground with the understanding. The different stagesthrough which evil, as a historical power, takes its way in conflict with love, constitute the periods of the world’s history. Christianity is the centre of history: in Christ, the principle of love came in personal contact with incarnate evil: Christ was the mediator to reconcile on the highest stage the creation with God; for that which is personal can alone redeem the personal. The end of history is the reconciliation of the particular will and love, the prevalence of the universal will, so that God shall be all in all. The original indifference is thus elevated to identity.
Schelling has given a farther justification of this his idea of God, in his controversial pamphlet against Jacobi, (1812). The charge of naturalism which Jacobi made against him, he sought to refute by showing how the true idea of God was a union of naturalism and theism. Naturalism seeks to conceive of God as ground of the world (immanent), while theism would view him as the world’s cause (transcendent): the true course is to unite both determinations. God is at the same time ground and cause. It no way contradicts the conception of God to affirm that, so far as he reveals himself, he developes himself from himself, advancing from the imperfect to the perfect: the imperfect is in fact the perfect itself, only in a state of becoming. It is necessary that this becoming should be by stages, in order that the fulness of the perfect may appear on all sides. If there were no obscure ground, no nature, no negative principle in God, we could not speak of a consciousness of God. So long as the God of modern theism remains the simple essence which ought to be purely essential, but which in fact is without essence, so long as an actual twofoldness is not recognized in God, and a limiting and denying energy (a nature, a negative principle) is not placed in opposition to the extending and affirming energy in God, so long will science be entitled to make its denial of a personal God. It is universally and essentially impossible to conceive of a being with consciousness, which has not been brought into limit by some denying energy within himself—as universally and essentially impossible as to conceive of a circle without a centre.
VI. Since the essay against Jacobi, which in its philosophicalcontent accords mainly with his theory of freedom, Schelling has not made public any thing of importance. He has often announced a work entitled “Die Weltalter,” which should contain a complete and elaborate exposition of his philosophy, but has always withdrawn it before its appearance.Paulushas surreptitiously brought his later Berlin lectures before the public in a manner for which he has been greatly blamed: but since this publication is not recognized by Schelling himself, it cannot be used as an authentic source of knowledge of his philosophy. During this long period, Schelling has published only two articles of a philosophical content: “On the Deities of Samothracos,” 1815, and a “Critical Preface” toBecker’stranslation of a preface ofCousin, 1834. Both articles are very characteristic of the present standpoint of Schelling’s philosophizing—he himself calls his present philosophyPositive Philosophy, or the Philosophy of Mythology and Revelation,—but as they give only intimations of this, and do not reach a complete exposition, they do not admit of being used for our purpose.
The great want of Schelling’s philosophizing, was its inability to furnish a suitable form for the philosophic content. Schelling went through the list of all methods, and at last abandoned all. But this absence of method into which he ultimately sank, contradicted the very principle of his philosophizing. If thought and being are identical, yet form and content cannot be indifferent in respect to each other. On the standpoint of absolute knowledge, there must be found for the absolute content an absolute form, which shall be identical with the content. This is the position assumed byHegel. Hegel has fused the content of Schelling’s philosophy by means of theabsolute method.Hegel sprang as truly from Fichte as from Schelling; the origin of his system is found in both. His method is essentially that of Fichte, but his general philosophical standpoint is Schelling’s. He has combined both Fichte and Schelling.
Hegel has himself, in his “Phenomenology,” the first work in which he appeared as a philosopher on his own hook, having previously been considered as an adherent of Schelling—clearly expressed his difference from Schelling, which he comprehensively affirms in the following three hits (Schlagworte):—In Schelling’s philosophy, the absolute is, as it were, shot out of a pistol; it is only the night in which every cow looks black; when it is widened to a system, it is like the course of a painter, who has on his palette but two colors, red and green, and who would cover a surface with the former when a historical piece was demanded, and with the latter when a landscape was required. The first of these charges refers to the mode of attaining the idea of the absolute, viz., immediately, through intellectual intuition; this leap Hegel changes, in hisPhenomenology, to a regular transit, proceeding step by step. The second charge relates to the way in which the absolute thus gained is conceived and expressed, viz., simply as the absence of all finite distinctions, and not as the immanent positing of a system of distinctions within itself. Hegel declares that every thing depends upon apprehending and expressing the true not as substance (i. e.as negation of determinateness), but as subject (as a positing and producing of finite distinction). The third charge has to do with Schelling’s manner of carrying out his principle through the concrete content of the facts given in the natural and intellectual worlds, viz., by the application of a ready-made schema (the opposition of the ideal and the real) to the objects, instead of suffering them to unfold and separate themselves from themselves. The school of Schelling was especially given to this schematizing formalism, and that which Hegel remarks, in the introduction to hisPhenomenology, may very well be applied to it: “If the formalism of a philosophy of nature should happen to teach that the understanding is electricity, or that the animate is nitrogen, the inexperienced might look upon such instructionswith deep amazement, and perhaps revere them as displaying the marks of profound genius. But the trick of such a wisdom is as readily learned as it is easily practised; its repetition is as insufferable as the repetition of a discovered feat of legerdemain. This method of affixing to every thing heavenly and earthly, to all natural and intellectual forms, the two determinations of the universal scheme, makes the universe like a grocer’s shop, in which a row of closed jars stand with their labels pasted on them.”
The point, therefore, of greatest difference between Schelling and Hegel is their philosophical method, and this at the same time forms the bond of close connection which unites Hegel with Fichte. Thesis, antithesis, synthesis—this was the method by which Fichte had sought to deduce all being from the Ego, and in precisely the same way Hegel deduces all being—the intellectual and natural universe—from the thought, only with this difference, that with him that which was idealistically deduced had at the same time an objective reality. While the practical idealism of Fichte stood related to the objective world as a producer, and the ordinary empiricism as a beholder, yet with Hegel the speculative (conceiving) reason is at the same time productive and beholding. I produce (for myself) that which is (in itself) without my producing. The result of philosophy, says Hegel, is the thought which is by itself, and which comprehends in itself the universe, and changes it into an intelligent world. To raise all being to being in the consciousness, to knowledge, is the problem and the goal of philozophizing, and this goal is reached when the mind has become able to beget the whole objective world from itself.
In his first great work, the “Phenomenology of the Mind,” Hegel sought to establish the standpoint of absolute knowledge or absolute idealism. He furnishes in this work a history of the phenomenal consciousness (whence its title), a development of the formative epochs of the consciousness in its progress to philosophical knowledge. The inner development of consciousness consists in this, viz., that the peculiar condition in which it findsitself becomes objectified (or conscious), and through this knowledge of its own being the consciousness rises ever a new step to a higher condition. The “Phenomenology” seeks to show how, and out of what necessity the consciousness advances from step to step, from reality to beingper se(vom Ansich zum Fürsich), from being to knowledge. The author begins with the immediate consciousness as the lowest step. He entitled this section: “The Sensuous Certainty, or the This and the Mine.” At this stage the question is asked the Ego: what isthis, or what ishere? and it answers,e. g.the tree; and to the question, what isnow? it answers now is the night. But if we turn ourselves around,hereis not a tree but a house; and if we write down the second answer, and look at it again after a little time, we find thatnowis no longer night but mid-day. Thethisbecomes, therefore, a not-this,i. e.a universal. And very naturally; for if I say: this piece of paper, yet each and every paper is a this piece of paper, and I have only said the universal. By such inner dialectics the whole field of the immediate certainty of the sense in perception is gone over. In this way—since every formative step (every form) of the consciousness of the philosophizing subject is involved in contradictions, and is carried by this immanent dialectics to a higher form of consciousness—this process of development goes on till the contradiction is destroyed,i. e.till all strangeness between subject and object disappears, and the mind rises to a perfect self-knowledge and self-certainty. To characterize briefly the different steps of this process, we might say that the consciousness is first found as a certainty of the sense, or as thethisand themine; next as perception, which apprehends the objective as a thing with its properties; and then as understanding,i. e.apprehending the objects as being reflected in itself, or distinguishing between power and expression, being and manifestation, outer and inner. From this point the consciousness, which has only recognized itself, its own pure being in its objects and their determinations, and for which therefore every other thing than itself has, as such, no significance, becomes the self-like Ego, and rises to the truth and certainty of itself to self-consciousness.The self-consciousness become universal, or as reason, now traverses also a series of development-steps, until it manifests itself as spirit, as the reason which, in accord with all rationality, and satisfied with the rational world without, extends itself over the natural and intellectual universe asitskingdom, in which it finds itself at home. Mind now passes through its stages of unconstrained morality, culture and refinement, ethics and the ethical view of the world to religion; and religion itself in its perfection, as revealed religion becomes absolute knowledge. At this last stage being and thought are no more separate, being is no longer an object for the thought, but the thought itself is the object of the thought. Science is nothing other than the true knowledge of the mind concerning itself. In the conclusion of the “Phenomenology,” Hegel casts the following retrospect on the course which he has laid down: “The goal which is to be reached, viz., absolute knowledge, or the mind knowing itself as mind, requires us to take notice of minds as they are in themselves, and the organization of their kingdom. These elements are preserved, and furnished to us either by history, where we look at the side of the mind’s free existence as it accidentally appears, or by the science of phenomenal knowledge, where we look at the side of the mind’s ideal organization. These two sources taken together, as the ideal history, give us the real history and the true being of the absolute spirit, the actuality, truth, and certainty of his throne, without which he were lifeless and alone; only ‘from the cup of this kingdom of minds does there stream forth for him his infinity.’”
George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegelwas born at Stuttgart, the 27th of August, 1770. In his eighteenth year he entered the university of Tübingen, in order to devote himself to the studyof theology. During his course of study here, he attracted no marked attention; Schelling, who was his junior in years, shone far beyond all his contemporaries. After leaving Tübingen, he took a situation as private tutor, first in Switzerland, and afterwards in Frankfort-on-the-Main till 1801, when he settled down at Jena. At first he was regarded as a disciple, and defender of Schelling’s philosophy, and as such he wrote in 1801 his first minor treatise on the “Difference between Fichte and Schelling.” Soon afterwards he became associated with Schelling in publishing the “Critical Journal of Philosophy,” 1802-3, for which he furnished a number of important articles. His labors as an academical teacher met at first with but little encouragement; he gave his first lecture to only four hearers. Yet in 1806 he became professor in the university, though the political catastrophe in which the country was soon afterwards involved, deprived him again of the place. Amid the cannon’s thunder of the battle of Jena he finished “the Phenomenology of the Mind,” his first great and independent work, the crown of his Jena labors. He was subsequently in the habit of calling this book which appeared in 1807, his “voyage of discovery.” From Jena, Hegel for want of the means of subsistence went to Bamberg, where for two years he was editor of a political journal published there. In the fall of 1808, he became rector of the gymnasium at Nuremberg. In this situation he wrote hisLogic, 1812-16. All his works were produced slowly, and he first properly began his literary activity as Schelling finished his. In 1816, he received a call to a professorship of philosophy at Heidelberg, where in 1817 he published his “Encyclopædia of the philosophical sciences,” in which for the first time he showed the whole circuit of his system. But his peculiar fame, and his far-reaching activity, dates first from his call to Berlin in 1818. It was at Berlin that he surrounded himself with an extensive and very actively scientific school, and where through his connection with the Prussian government he gained a political influence and acquired a reputation for his philosophy, asthephilosophy of the State, though this neither speaks favorably for its inner purity, nor its moral credit. Yet in his“Philosophy of Rights,” which appeared in 1821 (a time, to be sure, when the Prussian State had not yet shown any decidedly anti-constitutional tendency), Hegel does not deny the political demands of the present age; he declares in favor of popular representation, freedom of the press, and publicity of judicial proceedings, trial by jury, and an administrative independence of corporations.
In Berlin, Hegel gave lectures upon almost every branch of philosophy, and these have been published by his disciples and friends after his death. His manner as a lecturer was stammering, clumsy, and unadorned, but was still not without a peculiar attraction as the immediate expression of profound thoughtfulness. His social intercourse was more with the uncultivated than with the learned; he was not fond of shining as a genius in social circles. In 1829 he became rector of the university, an office which he administered in a more practical manner than Fichte had done. Hegel died with the cholera, Nov. 14th, 1831, the day also of Leibnitz’s death. He rests in the same churchyard with Solger and Fichte, near by the latter, and not far from the former. His writings and lectures form seventeen volumes which have appeared since 1882: Vol. I. Minor Articles; II. Phenomenology; III-V. Logic; VI.-VII. Encyclopædia; VIII. Philosophy of Rights; IX. Philosophy of History; X. Æsthetics; XI.-XII. Philosophy of Religion; XIII.-XV. History of Philosophy; XVI.-XVII. Miscellanies. His life has been written by Rosenkranz.
Hegel’s system may be divided in a number of ways. The best mode is by connecting it with Schelling. Schellings’s absolute was the identity or the indifference point of the ideal and the real. From this Hegel’s threefold division immediately follows. (1) The exposition of the indifference point, the development of the pure conceptions or determinations in thought, which lie at the basis of all natural and intellectual life; in other words, the logical unfolding of the absolute,—the science of logic. (2) The development of the real world or of nature—natural philosophy. (3) The development of the ideal world, or of mind as it shows itself concretely in right, morals, the state, art, religion, andscience.—Philosophy of Mind. These three parts of the system represent the three elements of the absolute method, thesis, antithesis, synthesis. The absolute is at first pure, and immaterial thought; secondly, it is differentiation (Andersseyn) of the pure thought or its diremption (Verzerrung) in space and time—nature; thirdly, it returns from this self-estrangement to itself, destroys the differentiation of nature, and thus becomes actual self-knowing thought or mind.
I.Science of Logic.—The Hegelian logic is the scientific exposition and development of the pure conceptions of reason, those conceptions or categories which lie at the basis of all thought and being, and which determine the subjective knowledge as truly as they form the indwelling soul of the objective reality; in a word, those ideas in which the ideal and the real have their point of coincidence. The domain of logic, says Hegel, is the truth, as it isper sein its native character. It is as Hegel himself figuratively expresses it, the representation of God as he is in his eternal being, before the creation of the world or a finite mind. In this respect it is, to be sure, a domain of shadows; but these shadows are, on the other hand, those simple essences freed from all sensuous matters, in whose diamond net the whole universe is constructed.
Different philosophers had already made a thankworthy beginning towards collecting and examining the pure conceptions of the reason, as Aristotle in his categories, Wolff in his ontology, and Kant in his transcendental analytics. But they had neither completely collected, nor critically sifted, nor (Kant excepted) derived them from one principle, but had only taken them up empirically, and treated them lexicologically. But in opposition to this course, Hegel attempted, (1) to completely collect the pure art-conceptions; (2) to critically sift them (i. e.to exclude every thing but pure thought); and (3)—which is the most characteristic peculiarity of the Hegelian logic—to derive these dialectically from one another, and carry them out to an internally connected system of pure reason. Hegel starts with the view, that in every conception of the reason, every other is containedimplicite,and may be dialectically developed from it. Fichte had already claimed that the reason must deduce the whole system of knowledge purely from itself, without any thing taken for granted; that some principle must be sought which should be of itself certain, and need no farther proof, and from which every thing else could be derived. Hegel holds fast to this thought. Starting from the simplest conception of reason, that of pure being, which needs no farther establishing, he seeks from this, by advancing from one conception ever to another and a richer one, to deduce the whole system of the pure knowledge of reason. The lever of this development is the dialectical method.
Hegel’s dialectical method is partly taken from Plato, and partly from Fichte. The conception of negation is Platonic. All negation, says Hegel, is position, affirmation. If a conception is negated, the result is not the pure nothing—a pure negative, but a concrete positive; there results a new conception which extends around the negation of the preceding one. The negation of the onee. g.is the conception of the many. In this way Hegel makes negation a vehicle for dialectical progress. Every presupposed conception is denied, and from its negation a higher and richer conception is gained. This is connected with the method of Fichte, which posits a fundamental synthesis; and by analyzing this, seeks its antitheses, and then unites again these antitheses through a second synthesis,—e. g.being, nothing, becoming, quality, quantity, measure, &c. This method, which is at the same time analytical and synthetical, Hegel has carried through the whole system of science.
We now proceed to a brief survey of the Hegelian Logic. It is divided into three parts; the doctrine ofbeing, the doctrine ofessence, and the doctrine ofconception.
1.The Doctrine of Being.(1.)Quality.—Science begins with the immediate and indeterminate conception ofbeing. This, in its want of content and emptiness, is nothing more than a pure negation, anothing. These two conceptions are thus as absolutely identical as they are absolutely opposed; each of the two disappears immediately in its contrary. This oscillation of the two is the purebecoming,which, if it be a transition from nothing to being, we callarising, or, in the reverse case, we call it adeparting. The still and simple precipitate of this process of arising and departing, isexistence(Daseyn). Existence is being with a determinateness, or it isquality; more closely, it isrealityor limited existence. Limited existence excludes every other from itself. This reference to itself, which is seen through its negative relation to every other, we call beingper se(Fürsichseyn). Beingper sewhich refers itself only to itself, and repels every other from itself, isthe one. But, by means of this repelling, the one posits immediatelymanyones. But the many ones are not distinguished from each other. One is what the other is. The many are therefore one. But the one is just as truly the manifold. For its exclusion is the positing of its contrary, or it posits itself thereby as manifold. By this dialectic ofattractionandrepulsion, quality passes over into quantity: for indifference in respect of distinction or qualitative determinateness isquantity.
(2.)Quantity.—Quantity is determination of greatness, which, as such, is indifferent in respect of quality. In so far as thegreatnesscontains many ones distinguishably within itself, it is adiscrete, or has the element ofdiscretion; but on the other hand, in so far as the many ones are similar, and the greatness is thus indistinguishable, it iscontinuous, or has the element ofcontinuity. Each of these two determinations is at the same time identical with the other; discretion cannot be conceived without continuity, nor continuity without discretion. The existence of quantity, or the limited quantity, is thequantum. The quantum has also manifoldness and unity in itself; it is the enumeration of the unities,i. e.number. Corresponding to the quantum or the extensive greatness, is the intensive greatness orthe degree. With the conception of degree, so far as degree is simple determinateness, quantity approaches quality again. The unity of quantity and quality isthe measure.
(3.)The measureis a qualitative quantum, a quantum on which the quality is dependent. An example of quantity determining the quality of a definite object is found in the temperatureof water, which decides whether the water shall remain water or turn to ice or steam. Here the quantum of heat actually constitutes the quality of the water. Quality and quantity are, therefore, ideal determinations, perpetually turning aroundonone being, on athird, which, is distinguished from the immediate what and how much (quality and quantity) of a thing. This third is theessence, which is the negation of every thing immediate, or quality independent of the immediate being. Essence is being in se, being divided in itself, a self-separation of being. Hence the twofoldness of all determinations of essence.
2.The Doctrine of Essence.(1.)The Essence as such.The essence as reflected being is the reference to itself only as it is a reference to something other. We apply to this being the term reflected analogously with the reflection of light, which, when it falls on a mirror, is thrown back by it. As now the reflected light is, through its reference to another object, something mediated or posited, so the reflected being is that which is shown to be mediated or grounded through another. From the fact that philosophy makes its problem to know the essence of things, the immediate being of things is represented as a covering or curtain behind which the essence is concealed. If, therefore, we speak of the essence of an object, the immediate being standing over against the essence (for without this the essence cannot be conceived), is set down to a mere negative, to anappearance. The being appears in the essence. The essence is, therefore, the being asappearance in itself. The essence when conceived in distinction from the appearance, gives the conception of theessential, and that which only appears in the essence, is the essenceless, or theunessential. But since the essential has a being only in distinction from the unessential, it follows that the latter is essential to the former, which needs its unessential just as much as the unessential needs it. Each of the two, therefore, appears in the other, or there takes place between them a reciprocal reference which we callreflection. We have, therefore, to do in this whole sphere with determinations of reflection, with determinations, each one of which refers to the other, and cannot be conceived without it(e. g.positive and negative, ground and sequence, thing and properties, content and form, power and expression). We have, therefore, in the development of the essence, those same determinations which we found in the development of being, only no longer in an immediate, but in a reflected form. Instead of being and nothing, we have now the forms of the positive and negative; instead of the there-existent (Daseyn), we now have existence.
Essence is reflected being, a reference to itself, which, however, is mediated through a reference to something other which appears in it. This reflected reference to itself we callidentity(which is unsatisfactorily and abstractly expressed in the so-called first principle of thought, that A = A). This identity, as a negativity referring itself to itself, as a repulsion of its own from itself, contains essentially the determination ofdistinction. The immediate and external distinction is thedifference. The essential distinction, the distinction in itself, is theantithesis(positive and negative). The self-opposition of the essence is thecontradiction. The antithesis of identity and distinction is put in agreement in the conception of the ground. Since now the essence distinguishes itself from itself, there is the essence as identical with itself or theground, and the essence as distinguished from itself or thesequence. In the category of ground and sequence the same thing,i. e.the essence, is twice posited; the grounded and the ground are one and the same content, which makes it difficult to define the ground except through the sequence, or the sequence except through the ground. The two can, therefore, be divided only by a powerful abstraction; but because the two are identical, it is peculiarly a formalism to apply this category. If reflection would inquire after a ground, it is because it would see the thing as it were in a twofold relation, once in its immediateness, and then as posited through a ground.
(2.)Essence and Phenomenon.—Thephenomenonis the appearance which the essence fills, and which is hence no longer essenceless. There is no appearance without essence, and no essence which may not enter into phenomenon. It is one and the same content which at one time is taken as essence, and at anotheras phenomenon. In the phenomenal essence we recognize the positive element which has hitherto been called ground, but which we now namecontent, and the negative element which we call theform. Every essence is a unity of content and form,i. e.it exists. In distinction from immediate being, we call that being which has proceeded from some ground,existence,i. e.grounded being. When we view the essence as existing, we call itthing. In the relation of a thing to itspropertieswe have a repetition of the relation of form and content. The properties show us the thing in respect of its form, but it is thing in respect of its content. The relation between the thing and its properties is commonly indicated by the verbto have(e. g.the thinghasproperties), in order to distinguish between the two. The essence as a negative reference to itself, and as repelling itself from itself in order to a reflection in analterum, ispowerandexpression. In this category, like all the other categories of essence, one and the same content is posited twice. The power can only be explained from the expression, and the expression only from the power; consequently every explanation of which this category avails itself, is tautological. To regard power as uncognizable, is only a self-deception of the understanding respecting its own doing.—A higher expression for the category of power and expression is the category ofinnerandouter. The latter category stands higher than the former, because power needs some solicitation to express itself, but the inner is the essence spontaneously manifesting itself. Both of these, the inner and the outer, are also identical; neither is without the other. That,e. g.which the man is internally in respect of his character, is he also externally in his action. The truth of this relation will be, therefore, the identity of inner and outer, of essence and phenomenon, viz.:
(3.)Actuality.—Actuality must be added as athirdto being and existence. In the actuality, the phenomenon is a complete and adequate manifestation of the essence. The true actuality is, therefore (in opposition topossibilityandcontingency), a necessary being, a rationalnecessity. The well-known Hegelian sentence that every thing is rational, and every thing rational isactual, is seen in this apprehension of “actuality” to be a simple tautology. The necessary, when posited as its own ground, identical with itself, issubstance. The phenomenal side, the unessential in the substance, and the contingent in the necessary, areaccidences. These are no longer related to the substance, as the phenomenon to the essence, or the outer to the inner,i. e.as an adequate manifestation; they are only transitory affections of the substance, accidentally changing phenomenal forms, like sea waves on the water of the sea. They are not produced by the substance, but are rather destroyed in it. The relation of substance leads to the relation ofcause. In the relation of cause there is one and the same thing posited on the one side ascause, and on the other side aseffect. The cause of warmth is warmth, and its effect is again warmth. The effect is a higher conception than the accidence, since it actually stands over against the cause, and the cause itself passes over into effect. So far, however, as each side in the relation of cause presupposes the other, we shall find the true relation one in which each side is at the same time cause and effect,i. e.reciprocal action. Reciprocal action is a higher relation than causality, because there is no pure causality. There is no effect without counteraction. We leave the province of essence with the category of reciprocal action. All the categories of essence had shown themselves as a duplex of two sides, but when we come to the category of reciprocal action, the opposition between cause and effect is destroyed, and they meet together; unity thus takes again the place of duplicity. We have, therefore, again a being which coincides with mediate being. This unity of being and essence, this inner or realized necessity, is the conception.
3.The Doctrine of the Conception.—A conception is a rational necessity. We can only have a conception of that whose true necessity we have recognized. The conception is, therefore, the truly actual, the peculiar essence; because it states as well that which is actual as that which should be.
(1.)The subjective conceptioncontains the elements ofuniversality(the conception of species),particularity(ground of classification, logical difference), andindividuality(species—logicaldifference). The conception is therefore a unity of that which is distinct. The self-separation of the conception is thejudgment. In the judgment, the conception appears as self-excluding duality. The twofoldness is seen in the difference between subject and predicate, and the unity in the copula. Progress in the different forms of judgment, consists in this, viz., that the copula fills itself more and more with the conception. But thus the judgment passes over into theconclusionor inference,i. e.to the conception which is identical with itself through the conception. In the inference one conception is concluded with a third through a second. The different figures of the conclusion are the different steps in the self-mediation of the conception. The conception is when it mediates itself with itself and the conclusion is no longer subjective; it is no longer my act, but an objective relation is fulfilled in it.
(2.)Objectivityis a realityonlyof the conception. The objective conception has three steps,—Mechanism, or the indifferent relation of objects to each other;Chemism, or the interpenetration of objects and their neutralization;Teleology, or the inner design of objects. The end accomplishing itself or the self-end is,
(3.)The idea.—The idea is the highest logical definition of the absolute. The immediate existence of the idea, we calllife, or process of life. Every thing living is self-end immanent-end. The idea posited in its difference as a relation of objective and subjective, is thetrueandgood. The true is the objective rationality subjectively posited; the good is the subjective rationality carried into the objectivity. Both conceptions together constitute theabsolute idea, which is just as truly as itshouldbe,i. e.the good is just as truly actualized as the true is living and self-realizing.
The absolute and full ideais in space, because it discharges itself from itself, as its reflection; this its being in space isNature.
II.The Science of Nature.—Nature is the idea in the form of differentiation. It is the idea externalizing itself; it is the mind estranged from itself. The unity of the conceptionis therefore concealed in nature, and since philosophy makes it its problem to seek out the intelligence which is hidden in nature, and to pursue the process by which nature loses its own character and becomes mind, it should not forget that the essence of nature consists in being which has externalized itself, and that the products of nature neither have a reference to themselves, nor correspond to the conception, but grow up in unrestrained and unbridled contingency. Nature is a bacchanalian god who neither bridles nor checks himself. It therefore represents no ideal succession, rising ever in regular order, but, on the contrary, it every where obliterates all essential limits by its doubtful structures, which always defy every fixed classification. Because it is impossible to throw the determinations of the conception over nature, natural philosophy is forced at every point, as it were, to capitulate between the world of concrete individual structures, and the regulative of the speculative idea.
Natural philosophy has its beginning, its course, and its end. It begins with the first or immediate determination of nature, with the abstract universality of its beingextra se, space and matter; its end is the dissevering of the mind from nature in the form of a rational and self-conscious individuality—man; the problem which it has to solve is, to show the intermediate link between these two extremes, and to follow out successively the increasingly successful struggles of nature to raise itself to self-consciousness, to man. In this process, nature passes through three principal stages.
1.Mechanics, or matter and an ideal system of matter. Matter is the beingextra se(Aussersichseyn) of nature, in its most universal form. Yet it shows at the outset that tendency to beingper sewhich forms the guiding thread of natural philosophy—gravity. Gravity is the beingin se(Insichseyn) of matter; it is the desire of matter to come to itself, and shows the first trace of subjectivity. The centre of gravity of a body isthe onewhich it seeks. This same tendency of bringing all the manifold unto beingper selies at the basis of the solar system and of universal gravitation. The centrality which is the fundamental conceptionof gravity, becomes here a system, which is in fact a rational system so far as the form of the orbit, the rapidity of motion, or the time of revolution may be referred to mathematical laws.
2.Physics.—But matter possesses no individuality. Even in astronomy it is not the bodies themselves, but only their geometrical relations which interest us. We have here at the outset to treat of quantitative and not yet of qualitative determinations. Yet in the solar system, matter has found its centre, itself. Its abstract and hollow beingin sehas resolved itself into form. Matter now, as possessing a quality, is an object ofphysics. In physics we have to do with matter which has particularized itself in a body, in an individuality. To this province belongs inorganic nature, its forms and reciprocal references.
3.Organics.—Inorganic nature, which was the object of physics, destroys itself in the chemical process. In the chemical process, the inorganic body loses all its properties (cohesion, color, shining, sound, transparency, &c.), and thus shows the evanescence of its existence and that relativity which is its being. This chemical process is overcome by the organic, the living process of nature. True, the living body is ever on the point of passing over to the chemical process; oxygen, hydrogen and salt, are always entering into a living organism, but their chemical action is always overcome; the living body resists the chemical process till it dies. Life is self-preservation, self-end. While therefore nature in physics had risen to individuality, in organics, it progresses to subjectivity. The idea, as life, represents itself in three stages.
(1.) The general image of life ingeologicalorganism, or themineral kingdom. Yet the mineral kingdom is the result, and the residuum of a process of life and formation already passed. The primitive rock is the stiffened crystal of life, and the geological earth is a giant corpse. The present life which produces itself eternally anew, breaks forth as the first moving of subjectivity,
(2.) In the organism ofplantsor thevegetable kingdom. The plant rises indeed to a formative process, to a process of assimilation,and to a process of species. But it is not yet a totality perfectly organized in itself. Each part of the plant is the whole individual, each twig is the whole tree. The parts are related indifferently to each other; the crown can become a root, and the root a crown. The plant, therefore, does not yet attain a true beingin seof individuality; for, in order that this may be attained, an absolute unity of the individual is necessary. This unity, which constitutes an individual and concrete subjectivity, is first seen in
(3.) Theanimalorganism, theanimal kingdom. An uninterrupted intus-susception, free motion and sensation, are first found in the animal organism. In its higher forms we find an inner warmth and a voice. In its highest form, man, nature, or rather the spirit, which works through nature, apprehends itself as conscious individuality, as Ego. The spirit thus become a free and rational self, has now completed its self-emancipation from nature.
III.Philosophy of Mind.—1.The Subjective Mind.—The mind is the truth of nature; it is being removed from its estrangement, and become identical with itself. Its formal essence, therefore, is freedom, the possibility of abstracting itself from every thing else; its material essence is the capacity of manifesting itself as mind, as a conscious rationality,—of positing the intellectual universe as its kingdom, and of building a structure of objective rationality. In order, however, to know itself, and every thing rational,—in order to posit nature more and more negatively, the mind, like nature, must pass through a series of stages or emancipative acts. As it comes from nature and rises from its externality to being,per se, it is at first soul or spirit of nature, and as such, it is an object ofanthropologyin a strict sense. As this spirit of nature, it sympathizes with the general planetary life of the earth, and is in this respect subject to diversity of climate, and change of seasons and days; it sympathizes with the geographical portion of the world which it occupies,i. e., it is related to a diversity of race; still farther, it bears a national type, and is moreover determined by mode of life, formation of the body, &c., while these natural conditions work alsoupon its intelligent and moral character. Lastly, we must here take notice of the way in which nature has determined the individual subject,i. e.his natural temperament, character, idiosyncrasy, &c. To this belong the natural changes of life, age, sexual relation, sleep, and waking. In all this the mind is still buried in nature, and this middle condition between beingper seand the sleep of nature, is sensation, the hollow forming of the mind in its unconscious and unenlightened (verstandlos) individuality. A higher stage of sensation is feeling,i. e.sensationin se, where beingper seappears; feeling in its completed form is self-feeling. Since the subject, in self-feeling, is buried in the peculiarity of his sensations, but at the same time concludes himself with himself, as a subjective one, the self-feeling is seen to be the preliminary step to consciousness. The Ego now appears as the shaft in which all these sensations, representations, cognitions and thoughts are preserved, which is with them all, and constitutes the centre in which they all come together. The mind as conscious, as a conscious beingper se, as Ego, is the object of thephenomenologyof consciousness.