with our inner life? If we can, then, our doctrine will become what is teclinically called objective idealism. The outer world is, then, God’s thought shown to our eyes; the inner world is God’s thought become conscious of itself. This doctrine was the centre of Schelling’s Naturphilosophie, Unfortunately he was no man to prove such a theory. He could only suggest, develop imaginatively, and in later essays treat with a marvelous, but fragmentary technical skill. As poet, he indeed broke through Fichte’s charmed circle; but as poet, he never stated the essence of his Naturphilosophie more clearly or more boldly than he did in a poetic fragment written under the eyes of Caroline, and meant largely for her approval. Of this production he himself never published more than a brief portion; in later years it has been printed from his papers. I refer to his whimsically so-called Epikurisch Glaubensbekenntniss Heinz Widerporstens, “Epicurean Confession of Faith of Hans Bristleback.”
In this thoroughly wayward sketch in verse, Schelling assumes a grotesque name and character, in order to give himself greater freedom to express the heart of his Naturphilosophie in the boldest and most pantheistic terms. The meter is borrowed from the well-known revival, in Goethe’s “Faust,” of the old Knittelvers, or free rhyme of early German poetry. Schelling’s hero, in whose character he speaks, is supposed to be trying to play the irreligious materialist, whom the priests have been driving to despair, and who at last rebels. Nature is his religion, he says. He loves good cheer and fair faces, and he hates superstition. Isn’t this world of the senses after all the genuine thing? Heinz grows fairly rollicking in his materialistic and epicurean speeches. Suddenly, without warning, he assumes another tone, From beneath the mask of the epicurean, the voice of the romantic mystic sounds. Why, then, is this world of
