In his philosophy of identity, nature and
mind are conceived as two different aspects of one and the same
principle, which is both mind and nature, subject and object, ego and
non-ego. All things are identical in essence but differentiated in the
course of evolution. It was not inconsistent with these tenets that
Schelling sought, in his last period, to discover the meaning
of universal history in the obscure beginnings of mythology
and revelation rather than in the lucid regions of an advanced
civilization.
With the opponents of rationalism Schelling agrees that we cannot
reach the inner meaning of reality, "the living, moving element
in nature," through the scientific intelligence, but that we must
envisage it in intuition. "What is described in concepts," he tells
us, "is at rest; hence there can be concepts only of _things_ and of
that which is finite and sense-perceived. The notion of movement is
not movement itself, and without intuition we should never know what
motion is. Freedom, however, can be comprehended only by freedom,
activity only by activity." Schelling, who is a poet as well as a
philosopher, comes to regard this intuition or inner vision as an
artistic intuition. In the products of art, subject and object, the
ideal and the real, mind and nature, form (or purpose) and matter,
are one; here the harmony aimed at by philosophy lies before our very
eyes, and may be seen, touched, and heard.
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