Schelling has here rounded out the theory of absolute idealism which Fichte had carried through in a one-sided way.  He has given us also a wonderful anticipation of certain modern ideas concerning nature’s preparation for the doctrine of evolution, which was a stroke of genius in its way.  He attempted to arrange the realm of unconscious intelligences in an ascending series which should bridge the gulf between the lowest of natural forms and the fully equipped organism in which self consciousness, with the intellectual, the emotional, and moral life, at last integrated.  Inadequate material and a fondness for analogies led Schelling into vagaries in following out this scheme.  Nevertheless, it is only in detail that we can look askance at his attempt.  In principle our own conception of the universe is the same.  It is the dynamic view of nature and an application of the principle of evolution in the widest sense.  His errors were those into which a man was bound to fall who undertook to forestall by a sweep of the imagination that which has been the result of the detailed and patient investigation of three generations.  What Schelling attempted was to take nature as we know it and to exhibit it as in reality a function of intelligence, pointing, through all the gradations of its varied forms, towards its necessary goal in self-conscious personality.  Instead, therefore, of our having in nature and personality two things which cannot be brought together, these become members of one great organism of intelligence of which the immanent God is the source and the sustaining power.  These ideas constitute Schelling’s contribution to an idealistic and, of course, an essentially monistic view of the universe.  The unity of man with God, Fichte had asserted.  Schelling set forth the oneness of God and nature, and again of man and nature.  The circle was complete.

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If we have succeeded in conveying a clear idea of the movement of thought from Kant to Hegel, that idea might be stated thus.  There are but three possible objects which can engage the thought of man.  These are nature and man and God.  There is the universe, of which we become aware through experience from our earliest childhood.  Then there is man, the man given in self-consciousness, primarily the man myself.  In this sense man seems to stand over against nature.  Then, as the third possible object of thought, we have God.  Upon the thought of God we usually come from the point of view of the category of cause.  God is the name which men give to that which lies behind nature and man as the origin and explanation of both.  Plato’s chief interest was in man.  He talked much concerning a God who was somehow the speculative postulate of the spiritual nature in man.  Aristotle began a real observation of nature.  But the ancient and, still more, the mediaeval study of nature was dominated by abstract and theological assumptions.  These prevented any real study of