James Frederick Ferrier

“ Hamilton's opinion is grounded on the assumption that whatever man knows he knows only in relation, that is, only in relation to his own faculties of knowledge. He can, therefore, apprehend only relative or conditioned truth. ”

“ The unconditioned (truth in itself) is beyond his grasp. But it is plain that this argument proves too much; it proves that the unconditioned truth is equally beyond the grasp of Omniscience; because it is surely manifest that omniscience can know things only in relation to itself; and therefore Omniscience is just as incompetent as man is to apprehend the unconditioned, if this must be apprehended out of all relation to intelligence. If that be the idea of the unconditioned, Schelling's conception of philosophy must be given up, and Hamilton's must be accepted. ”

“ He holds that philosophy is the pursuit of truth as it stands related to pure intellect, i.e., to intellect considered universally, and as not modified in any particular way: he holds that man is competent to the attainment of such truth, and that such truth is absolute and unconditioned. The other party (among whom we venture to place Hamilton) maintains that philosophy is the pursuit of truth as it stands related to our minds considered as a particular kind or form of intelligence—that man can attain to no other truth than this, and that this truth is relative and conditioned. ”

“ But the victory is Schelling's if he has succeeded in showing, or if it be admitted, that every intelligence has something in common, some point or points of resemblance, with every other intelligence (for that is the fundamental question, the decision of which decides all) ; while again, his opponents must be pronounced triumphant if they have proved that intelligent natures differ from each other entirely, and have no point or principle in common. ”

“ Schelling's ground is that there is a common nature or quality in all intelligence; that man, through his participation in this common nature, is, so far, a pure—that is, a non-particular or universal—intelligence, and hence is, so far, capable of cognising universal or unconditioned truth. ”

“ This does not imply that works of speculative thought are chiefly to be weighed in the critic's scales as mere exercises of style; but it does imply that a philosophy whose contents cannot be made intelligible to every well-educated people, and expressed in every cultivated language, cannot be the true and universal philosophy." Such were Schelling's words in 1834, in passing sentence on the speculations generally of his countrymen. ”

“ It shows how a man's eyes may be open to faults in others, which he either does not see in himself, or seeing, does not choose or is unable to amend. "The philosophers of Germany," says Schelling, "have been for so long in the habit of philosophising merely among themselves, that by degrees their thoughts and language have become further and further removed, even in Germany, from the understanding of general readers ”

“ As families who abandon the intercourse of their fellow-men acquire, in addition to other disagreeable peculiarities, certain peculiar modes of expression intelligible only to themselves; so have the German philosophers made themselves remarkable for forms of thought and expression which are unintelligible to all the world besides. ”

“ His attempt to unite the process of the physical sciences in one affiliated line with the study of man, both in his individual constitution and historic development, has also had a very considerable result out of his own country. No one, for example, who compares the philosophic method of Schelling with the 'Philosophie positive' of Auguste Comte, can have the slightest hesitation as to the source from which the latter virtually sprang. ”

“ Schelling's writings may be classified as belonging to five periods. To the first period, 1795-96, belong—'On the possibility of a Form of Philosophy in general;' 'On the Ego as the Principle of Philosophy, or on the unconditioned in human knowledge;' 'Explanations of the Idealism involved in the Theory of Knowledge;' 'Letters on Dogmatism and Criticism. In these writings he adheres closely to Fichte, who welcomed him as his best expositor. Later in life their relations were less amicable. In the second period, 1797-1801, appeared—'Ideas towards a Philosophy of Nature' (second edition, 1802) ”

“ He resided for some time at Erlangen, where he delivered a course of lectures. In 1841 he was summoned to the University of Berlin to lecture against Hegelianism, which was then carrying everything before it. ”