Matthias Jakob Schleiden

“ Shelley, the enthusiastic atheist, attributes the principal miseries of social humanity to traditional religion. "Unerring" nature is the divinity he substitutes for the God of the Bible. He considers that man has the right to demand happiness, and, like a true Englishman, contends, without troubling much about the psychology of the matter, for the freedom of the individual from the compulsion of external law. Schleiermacher warns against what is foolish, because, once the foolish step is taken, it is binding; but he, the Protestant pastor, only indirectly incites to revolt. ”

“ Schelling, however, has met with an opponent in Jacobi, whose philosophy is daily acquiring ground in Germany, and daily inculcating the maxim, that the boasted absolute reason, which must solve every enigma contained in it, because it is the absolute reason, is, after all, but a poor faculty of a poor worm, man. Jacobi has been called a dreamer, because he has shown that the foundations of reason itself are first principles, which we implicitly believe, and for which there is no evidence from reasoning. ”

“ Khlesl was the child of Protestant parents; his father had been a baker in Vienna. He was converted by the court preacher, George Scherer. From the time of Scherer until the suspension of the order the court preachers were chosen in unbroken succession from the Jesuits. Khlesl became Provost of St. Stephen's, Chancellor of the university, and Bishop of Vienna. During the reigns of Ernst and his brother Matthias, Khlesl was all powerful. Rudolph II having shut himself up in Prague, the members of the Hapsburg family chose the Archduke Matthias to be their head. ”

“ According to Schelling a new philosophical significance is given to art by the doctrine that the identity of subject and object—which is half disguised in ordinary perception and volition—is only clearly seen in artistic perception. The perfect perception of its real self by intelligence in the work of art is accompanied by a feeling of infinite satisfaction. Art in thus effecting a revelation of the absolute seems to attain a dignity not merely above that of nature but above that of philosophy itself. Schelling throws but little light on the concrete forms of beauty. ”

“ Schelling, in his earlier writings, while he was Professor at Jena, and before the change of sentiment which he avowed at Berlin, represented God as the one only true and really absolute existence; as nothing more or less than Being, filling the whole sphere of reality; as the infinite Being (Seyn) which is the essence of the Universe, and evolves all things from itself by self-development. ”

“ There we find in the Schlegels a weakness which we think may also be detected in Lessing; for the latter is as weak in affirming as he is strong in denying. He rarely succeeds in laying down a fundamental principle, still more seldom a correct one. He wants the firm basis of a philosophy or of a philosophical system. And this is still more sadly the case with the brothers Schlegel.
Much is fabled as to the influence of Fichtean Idealism and Schelling's Philosophy of Nature on the Romantic school, which is even declared to have sprung from it. ”

“ But as he himself here perils the fact of his priority to and independence of Schlegel upon the truth of what he says respecting his priority to and independence of Schelling, placing both instances upon exactly the same footing, we are entitled to say, that as in the case of Schelling we know him to be a consummate plagiarist, and original in nothing; so in the case of Schlegel, we think it more than probable that he has borrowed ready made from that author every thing in which he "genially coincides" with him. ”

“ Schleiermacher could not contemplate the wretched meagreness and degradation of his age without being moved as by 'a heavenly impulse.' His spirit was stirred within him as he saw men turning from the true God to base idols. He felt himself impelled to go forth with the power of a fresh and youthful enthusiasm, for the restoration of religion; to present it in its most sublime aspect, free from its perversions, disentangled from human speculation, as founded in the essential nature of man, and indispensable to the complete unfolding of his inward being. ”

“ Schelling was intimately associated in a personal sense with all his fellow romanticists. If his intense metaphysical tastes kept him from attempting very seriously either dramas or romances, his early speculations bear everywhere the mark of his friendships; they are the work of a restless and artistic soul, who loved the universe with a sort of tender passion, and whose philosophy is, even in its most technical subtleties, as much the confession of a fiery heart as it is the outcome of a brilliant imagination and a wonderfully skillful wit. ”

“ Little comforting as such a revelation must have been to the Emperor, the prospect of so powerful a support gave him greater boldness to oppose the Protestants. Their demands were rejected, and the Diet broke up without coming to a decision. But Matthias was the victim of this dispute. The Protestants refused him their supplies, and made him alone suffer for the inflexibility of the Roman Catholics.
The Turks, however, appeared willing to prolong the cessation of hostilities, and Bethlem Gabor was left in peaceable possession of Transylvania. The empire was now free from foreign enemies ”

“ As it is hard for common apprehension to conceive this absolute, and seize upon this identity of thought and thing, Schelling invented a faculty of mind expressly for the comprehension of such profound doctrines of philosophy. He called it intellectual intuition. Those who possess it not—and it is by no means general—must be content to live without philosophy. Nor can those on whom nature has failed to bestow this intellectual intuition, acquire it by any study or industry of their own. Philosophus nascitur, non fit. ”

“ To those who cannot rise beyond a philosophy of reflection, Schelling candidly allows that the doctrine of the absolute can appear only as a series of contradictions; and he has at least the negative merit of having clearly exposed the absurdity of a philosophy of the unconditioned, as founded on a knowledge by difference, if he has utterly failed in positively proving the possibility of such a philosophy, as founded on a knowledge in identity, and through an absorption into the absolute. ”

“ There is a revival of interest in his philosophy, and new editions of his books are now being published.
Like most philosophers of note, Schelling reckons with the various tendencies of his times. With idealism he interprets the universe as identical in essence with what we find in our innermost selves; it is at bottom a living dynamic process. If that is so, nature cannot be a merely externalized obstacle for the ego, nor a dead static spatial mechanical system; as the expression of an active spiritual principle there must be reason and purpose in it. ”

“ Schelling was a man of ardent, sanguine temperament, and it was his natural proclivities that gave rise to his system of philosophy. He attributes a real existence to the material as well as to the immaterial world, but permits it a different mode of existence. He makes history a necessity. This natural philosophy conveys to us no knowledge of God, and the little it does reveal appears opposed to religion. ”

“ Schelling promised magnificent operations in the heyday of his youth, on a basis very similar to that laid down in this first proposition. But the world has been waiting for the fulfilment of these promises,—for the fruits of that exuberant blossom,—during a period of more than fifty years. May its hopes be one day realised! No man is fitter, if he would but take the pains, than this octogenarian seer, to show that Speculation is not all one "barren heath." ”

“ But the organ of the mind for apprehending nature is the intuition which takes, as object of the external sense, the space which has been filled and limited by the attracting and repelling forces. Thus Schelling was led to the conclusion that the same absolute appears in nature as in mind, and that the harmony of these is something more than a thought in reference to them. “Or if you affirm that we only carry over such an idea to nature, then have you utterly failed to apprehend the only nature which there can be to us. ”

“ Schelling was himself, always, even as philosopher, a creature of the moment. His moments were indeed often very great ones and might need each a whole volume to express itself. But Schelling is not, like Kant, a systematic and long-plotting thinker; nor yet, like Fichte, a man who, after many adventures, is completely overwhelmed and thenceforth possessed by a single idea. No, Schelling possesses directly the wavering passion of his romantic friends. His kaleidoscopic philosophy, which changed form with each new essay that he published, was like their whole scheme of life and of art. ”

“ The appearance of a work by Schleiermacher is always an enrichment to literature. Any product of a mind like his cannot fail to shed light and life on the minds of others. And of works of this kind our theological literature has certainly in these days no superfluity. ”

“ Viewed from one aspect, Schelling's philosophy is not without a certain charm. "Spirit is invisible nature, nature is visible spirit." In this view of things, if mind loses its pre-eminence, nature, or the visible world, is exalted and spiritualised. It is a system likely to fascinate the poet and the artist, and we believe it has had a recognised influence on the cultivation of the fine arts in Germany. ”

“ It may be more instructive, as well as more practicable, to confine ourselves to a smaller field—to consider, namely, the main point at issue between Schelling and some of the leading philosophers of this country. Perhaps some light will be thrown on his philosophy, its drift and purpose will perhaps become apparent in our attempt, not indeed to settle, but to adjust the terms of this dispute.
It is admitted on all hands, that truth of one kind or another is the proper aim of philosophy. But there are two kinds of truth: truth as it exists in itself, and truth as it exists in relation to us. ”

“ But the loss of all interest in the life of the day is still more markedly shown in Schelling's absorption in nature. As the mystics held that it was the working of the imagination of God which created the world, so Schelling held that it was the corresponding power in man which alone gave ideal reality to the productions of his intellect. ”

“ Amongst the many sagacious sayings of the patient and profound thinkers of Germany, not the least noteworthy was Schelling’s affirmation that the phenomena of instinct are some of the most important of all phenomena, and capable of serving as a very touch-stone whereby the value of competing theories of the universe may be effectually tested. His prescience has been justified by our experience. The greatest scientific event of the present time is the wide acceptance of the theory of evolution, and its use as a weapon of offence and defence. ”

“ The Archduke Matthias, Maximilian's second son, Viceroy in Hungary, and Rodolph's presumptive heir, now came forward as the stay of the falling house of Hapsburg. In his youth, misled by a false ambition, this prince, disregarding the interests of his family, had listened to the overtures of the Flemish insurgents, who invited him into the Netherlands to conduct the defence of their liberties against the oppression of his own relative, Philip the Second. Mistaking the voice of an insulated faction for that of the entire nation, Matthias obeyed the call. ”

“ Schelling’s Religious Philosophy. Romanticism took a religious turn at the beginning of the eighteenth century under the influence of Schleiermacher.66 The motive of this movement was the thought that religious feeling lies below art. Reason can be completed only in religion, by which is meant not dogma, nor morality, but an æsthetic relation to the world-ground, a pious feeling of absolute dependence. It is the feeling of being permeated by the Absolute. Schleiermacher taught in the true Romantic spirit that religion is an individual matter and is different from church organization. ”

“ In like manner, annihilating consciousness in order to reconstruct it, Schelling has never yet been able to connect the faculties conversant about the conditioned, with the faculty of absolute knowledge. One simple objection strikes us as decisive, although we do not remember to have seen it alleged. 'We awaken,' says Schelling, 'from the intellectual intuition as from 'the state of death, we awaken through reflection.' [3] We cannot, at the same moment, be in the intellectual intuition and in common consciousness ”

“ To avoid this blow, Matthias willingly availed himself of the offer made by Moravia, to act as mediator between him and the Estates of Austria. Representatives of both parties met in Vienna, when the Austrian deputies held language which would have excited surprise even in the English Parliament. "The Protestants," they said, "are determined to be not worse treated in their native country than the handful of Romanists. By the help of his Protestant nobles had Matthias reduced the Emperor to submission; where 80 Papists were to be found, 300 Protestant barons might be counted. ”

“ Schelling’s hero, in whose character he speaks, is supposed to be trying to play the irreligious materialist, whom the priests have been driving to despair, and who at last rebels. Nature is his religion, he says. He loves good cheer and fair faces, and he hates superstition. Isn’t this world of the senses after all the genuine thing? ”

“ Schelling published his Transcendental Idealism in 1800. In the next year he published his System of Identity in the hope of finding some common ground for his two preceding points of view. For Nature is not absolute, but is a limited objective Ego ”