390 SCHELLING has been often exaggerated, but doubtless they contributed to strengthen his natural tendency to dwell rather on the large historico-speculative problems than on the difficulties of abstract thinking. Before the date of his last essay noted above, a new and much more important influence had begun to operate on him. In conjunction with some of his fellow-students he was in 1793 studying the Kantian system. The difficulties or imperfections of that system he claims soon to have perceived, and no doubt the per- ception was quickened by acquaintance with the first of those writings in which Fichte put forward his amended form of the critical philosophy. The " Review of ^Eneside- mus " and the tractate On the Notion of WissenscJiaf tslehre found in Schelling's mind most fruitful soil With characteristic zeal and impetuosity Schelling had no sooner grasped the leading ideas of Fichte's new mode of treating philosophy than he threw together the thoughts suggested to him in the form of an essay, which appeared, under the title Ueber die Moglichkeit einer Form der Philo- sophic iiber haupt, towards the end of 1794. There was nothing original in the treatment, but it showed such power of appreciating the new ideas of the Fichtean method that it was hailed with cordial recognition by Fichte himself, and gave the author immediately a place in popular estimation as in the foremost rank of existing philosophical writers. The essay was followed up in 1795 by a more elaborate writing, Vom Ich als Princip der Philosophic, oder uber das Unbedingte im menschlichen Wissen, which, still remaining within the limits of the Fichtean idealism, yet exhibits unmistakable traces of a tendency to give the Fichtean method a more objective application, and to amalgamate with it Spinoza's more realistic view of things. The reputation so quickly gained led soon to its natural result. In midsummer 1798 Schelling was called as extraordinary professor of philosophy to Jena, and thus stepped into the most active literary and philosophical circle of the time. The intervening period had not been unfruitful. While discharging for two years at Leipsic the duties of companion or tutorial guardian to two youths of noble family, Schelliug had contributed various articles and reviews to Fichte and Niethammer's Journal, and had thrown himself with all his native impetuosity into the study of physical and medical science. From 1796 date the Brief e iiher Dogmatismus und Kriticismus, an admirably written critique of the ultimate issues of the Kantian system, which will still repay study ; from 1797 the essay entitled Neve Deduction des Natiirrechts, which to some extent anticipated Fichte's treatment in the Grundlage des Naturrechts, published in 1796, but not before Schelling's essay had been received by the editors of the Journal. The reviews of current philosophical literature were afterwards collected, and with needful omissions and corrections appeared under the title " Ab- handlungen zur Erlauterung des Idealismus der Wissen- schaf tslehre " in Schelling's Philos. Schriften, vol. i., 1809. The studies of physical science bore rapid fruit in the Ideen zu einer Philosophic der Natur, 1797, and the treatise Von der Weltseele, 1798, the drift of which will be noted later. Schelling's professoriate in Jena lasted till the early part of 1803. His lectures were extraordinarily attrac- tive ; his productive powers were at their best ; and the circumstances of his surroundings developed forcibly the good and evil qualities of his character. Of his writings during this period a merely chronological notice will mean- while suffice. In 1799 appeared the Erster Entwurf eines Systems der NaturphUoso2)hie, with an independent and sub- sequent Einleitung ; in 1800 the System des transcenden- talen Idealismus, in form one of the most finished, in substance one of the most satisfactory of his works; in the same year, in the Zeitschrift fur speculative Physik, edited by him, " Allgemeine Deduction des dynamischen Processes "; and in 1801 the Dantetbutff meines Systems der Philosophic ; in 1802, in the NeueZeitschr.fiir qiek. Ph //.>//-, the " Fernere Darstellungen aus dem System der Philo- sophic"; also in 1802 the dialogue Bruno and the excellently written Vorlesungen iiber die Methode des akadonlvhai Studiums. In conjunction with Hegel, who in 1801 at Schelling's invitation had come to Jena, he edited the KritiscJtes Journal fur Philosophic, the greater part of which was written by Hegel. Regarding the authorship of certain articles in the volume and a half of this Journal a discussion of no great significance has arisen, concerning which perhaps the best statement is that by Schelling's son in the preface to vol. v. of the Sdmmtliche Werke, Abth. i. The philosophical renown of Jena reached its culminat- ing point during the years of Schelling's residence there, in no small measure through the imposing force of his character and teaching. Recognized as of the first rank among living thinkers he was received with every mark of distinction, and his intellectual sympathies soon united him closely with some of the most active literary tenden- cies of the time. With Goethe, who viewed with interest and appreciation the poetical fashion of treating fact characteristic of the Naturphilosophie, he continued on excellent terms, while on the other hand he was repelled by Schiller's less expansive disposition, and failed alto- gether to understand the lofty ethical idealism that animated his work. By the representatives of the Romantic school, then in the height of their fervour and beginning their downward course, he was hailed as a most potent ally, and quickly became par excellence the philo- sopher of the Romantic type. The Schlegels and their friends, who had found at least one fundamental prin- ciple of Romantic strain in Fichte, had begun to be dis- satisfied with the cold and abstract fashion of viewing nature that seemed necessarily to follow from the notion of the Wissenschaf tslehre, and at the same time the deep- seated antagonism of character between Fichte and the impetuous litterateurs of the Romantic school was begin- ning to be felt. In Schelling, essentially a self-conscious genius, eager and rash, yet with undeniable power, they hailed a personality of the true Romantic type, and in his philosophy a mode of conceiving nature adequate to the needs of poetic treatment. During the Jena period the closest union obtained between Schelling and those who either at Jena or at Berlin earned on warfare for the Romantic idea. With August Wilhelm Schlegel and his gifted wife Caroline, herself the embodiment of the Romantic spirit, Schelling's relations were of the most intimate kind. Personal acquaintance made at Dresden before Schelling began his professorial career at Jena rapidly developed into a warm friendship, to which circum- stances soon gave a new and heightened colour. Caroline Schlegel, a woman of remarkable receptive and apprecia- tive power, emotional to excess, and full of the ardent ill- balanced sympathies that constituted the Romantic tone, felt for Schelling unbounded admiration. In him she found the philosophic view which gave completeness and consistency to the tumultuous literary and personal feel- ings that animated her, and she was not less attracted by the dominating force of his personal character. It is pro- bable that in the early stages of their friendship a future marriage between Schelling and Caroline's young daughter, Auguste Bohmer, was, if not definitely understood, yet vaguely contemplated by both, and that in consequence neither was fully aware of the nature of the feelings springing up between them. The untimely death of Auguste in the summer of 1800, a death in which Schel- ling's rash confidence in his medical knowledge was unfor-
