Schelling indicated the turning points of his philosophical career as follows:—(i) the transition from Fichte's method to the more objective conception of nature—the advance, in other words, to Naturphilosophie; (2) the definite formulation of that which implicitly, as Schelling claims, was involved in the idea of Natur philosophic, viz., the thought of the identical, indifferent, absolute substratum of both nature and spirit, the advance of Identiteits philosophic ; (3) the opposition of negative and positive philo sophy, an opposition which is the theme of the Berlin lectures, though its germs may be traced back to 1804. Only what falls under the first and second of the divisions so indicated can be said to have discharged a function in developing philosophy; only so much constitutes Schelling's philosophy proper.
Nature and spirit, Naturphilosophie and Transcendentalphilo sophie, stand as two relatively complete, but complementary parts of the whole. Schelling, who sought the reconciliation of differences moved towards the conception of the uniting basis of which nature and spirit are manifestations, forms or consequences.
For this common basis, however, he found at first only the nega tive expression of indifference. The identity, the absolute, which underlay all difference, all the relative, is to be characterized simply as neutrum, as absolute undifferentiated self-equivalence.
Spinoza appeared to Schelling as the thinker whose form of pres entation came nearest to his new problem. The Darstellung meines Systems, and the more expanded and more careful treat ment contained in the lectures on System der gesammten Philo sophie und der Naturphilosophie insbesondere given in Wiirzburg, 1804 (published in the Samtliche W erke, vol. vi. pp. are thoroughly Spinozistic in form, and to a large extent in sub stance. They are not without value, indeed, as extended com mentary on Spinoza. But Schelling does not succeed in bringing his conceptions of nature and spirit into any vital connection with the primal identity, the absolute indifference of reason. No true solution could be achieved by resort to the mere absence of dis tinguishing, differencing feature. The absolute was left with no other function than that of removing all the differences on which thought turns. The criticisms of Fichte, and more particularly of Hegel (in the "Vorrede" to the Pheinomenologie des Geistes), point to the fatal defect in the conception of the absolute as mere featureless identity.
In all his later writings Schelling strove to amend the concep tion of absolute reason as the ultimate ground of reality. He sought to give to this absolute a character, to make of it some thing more than empty sameness, and to clear up the relation in which the actuality or apparent actuality of nature and spirit stood to the ultimate real. He had already (in the System der ges.
Phil.) sought an amalgamation of the Spinozistic conception of substance with the Platonic view of an ideal realm. Things— nature and spirit—have an actual being. They exist not merely as logical consequence or development of the absolute, but have a stubbornness of being in them. The actuality of things is a de fection from the absolute, and their existence compels a recon sideration of our conception of God. There must be recognized in God as a completed actuality, a dim, obscure ground or basis, which can only be described as not yet being, but as containing in itself the impulse to externalization, to existence. It is through this ground of Being in God Himself that we must find explanation of that independence which things assert over against God. From this position Schelling was led on to the further statements that not in the rational conception of God is an explanation of existence to be found, but that God is to be conceived as act, as will, as something over and above the rational conception of the Divine. Hence the stress laid on will as the realizing factor, in opposition to thought, a view in which Schelling is a precursor of Schopen hauer and Von Hartmann, and on the ground of which he has been recognized by the latter as the reconciler of idealism and realism. Finally, then, there emerges the opposition of negative, i.e., merely rational philosophy, and positive, of which the content is the real evolution of the divine as it has taken place in fact and in history, and as it is recorded in the varied mythologies and religions of mankind. Not much satisfaction can be felt with the exposition of either as it appears in the volumes of Berlin lectures.