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. But reason is not identified
by Schelling with self-conscious intelligence, for with the
faith-philosophies and Romanticism he takes it in a wider sense; in
physical and organic nature it is a slumbering reason, an unconscious,
instinctive, purposive force similar to the Leibnizian monad,
Schopenhauer's will, and Bergson's _elan vital_. In this way the
dualism between mechanism and teleology is reconciled. Nature is
a teleological order, an evolution from the unconscious to the
conscious; in man, the highest stage and the climax of history, nature
becomes self-conscious. With this organic conception both Romanticists
and many natural scientists of the age were in practical agreement;
it was the view that had always appealed to Goethe--and Herder before
him--and it gained for Schelling a large following. In his earlier
system he regarded nature as a lower stage in the evolution of
reason and sought to answer the problems: How does Nature become
Consciousness or Ego? the problem of the Philosophy of Nature; and,
How does Consciousness or the Ego become Nature? the problem of
Transcendental Idealism.
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