tian philosophy, to elevating Christianity from the sphere of mere notions and opinions into the sphere of what it called the triune idea; at its exhibition of the State, and particularly of the Prussian State, as perfectly conformed to the highest ethical conceptions and to the divine will. According to Hegel's principle "what is actual is also rational," whatever is, is reasonable, and the Prussian State being actual, was called the perfection of reason. The great defects of the system were veiled. The government did not see that the fruit of this tree of knowledge was deadly. It was waked up from its deception only when the poison began to penetrate into the organism of the State, when teachers of religion came who had no religion, and who concealed from their congregations their real sentiments; when officers of State were produced who were very well acquainted with Hegel's logic, but wholly unacquainted with State matters and averse to all the details of business; and especially when there came young politicians who applied the new philosophy to the State in a somewhat different fashion, who said "that whatever was actual was also reasonable," and if a republic should only actually exist, it would of course be reasonable. And in fact in Hegel's scheme the monarch in a constitutional State is nothing more than the dot over the letter i: and the young liberals thought that the dot might as well be left out, 2. Hegel had clothed his ideas in a hard and abstruse form so that few could follow him. He was not unaware of the revolutionary tendencies of his system; but he had reverence for positive institutions. He would not rob men of everything. But some of the logical results of his system became apparent when the "German Annals" (Deutsche Jahrbücher) at Halle became the organ of some of the perverse and enthusiastic disciples of this school, in which they spoke out without reserve all that they had in their hearts. They did not conceal their design of undermining all that at present was established, so that a young and new Germany might be formed on the ruins. L. Feuerbach and Bruno Bauer were the boldest in avowing this tendency in religious matters. They proclaimed open war against Christianity and religion. "Christianity is to them only a figure of speech. Religion is contrary to the true nature of man; its mother is the night. The existence of God is a chimera." Societies were formed which repudiated Christianity and religion. Emancipated humanity was to find its joys in sensual lust; it was no longer to be frightened by the ghost of a government or by the dark future. All this reminds us of a declaration of Count Mira 1845.] Views of Schelling untenable. 289 beau: "Nothing has been done for the revolution, so long as France is not unchristianized." Theology was transformed into Anthropology. The Universities were attacked, for here authority still prevailed. The Prussian government was spared so long as it remained a quiet spectator. But as soon as it began to oppose their revolutionary and blasphemous sentiments, their weapons were turned against it. They accused it of suppressing freedom of mind, of love for a dead orthodoxy, of pietism, of despotism. And in all these accusations Schelling has freely shared, because he was avowedly called to Berlin as the opponent of the Hegelian scheme, which had borne such bitter fruits. (It ought in justice to be stated that it is only a small faction of the Hegelian school which has run to these extremes; and that Hegel himself never would have countenanced them. Whether his system logically leads to these results is a different question. Some of his most logical followers deny that it does. There are conservatives both in church and State who are also Hegelians.) According to the specimens we have hitherto had, it is the intention of Schelling, in what he now calls the Positive Philosophy, not only to give a Philosophy of Revelation, of the Trinity, of the Fall and of Redemption, but also a Somatology and a doctrine of Aeons in the way of the Gnostics, and that too without giving up his system of Absolute Identity and his Natural Philosophy. He intends then not merely to unite what is incompatible, realize what has been held to be impossible, but to carry back philosophy far behind the Reformation to the fantastic doctrines of the Gnostics and the dark labyrinth of scholastic dialectics. In the metropolis of German philosophy the fate of German philosophy is to be decided, and by him. It is not then a mere question of the position of philosophy in respect to the Prussian State, but it embraces matters that concern the whole German fatherland, the destiny of philosophy itself, for which there is no legislative metropolis, since often according to the testimony of history great things have proceeded from small cities. In this point of view the opposition which has been raised against Schelling from various quarters is a cheering sign. It has indeed chiefly proceeded from the school of Hegel, and this party seems to know no alternative than, Schelling or Hegel; as though where Schelling is wrong, Hegel must be right, and no third term were conceivable. Are the principles of Schelling's present system adapted to 1 Vide Bibl. Sacra and Theol. Rev. Vol. I. pp. 211, 212. satisfy the demands of the age? His very first lecture in Berlin, in spite of the great promises which it made, sufficiently told us what was to be expected from the new science which was "to carry human consciousness beyond its present boundaries." No one who was well acquainted with the previous progress of philosophy, could for a moment cherish the hope that Schelling was fitted to realize the promises he so profusely made. To do this he must have been born anew, and gone through a new culture, and then he would not have clung so tenaciously to the discoveries of his youth. He adheres to these. Upon his pair of scales he makes again the division into positive and negative philosophy. Of the latter, the negative philosophy, he has already given the outlines in the noted preface to the German translation of Cousin's Philosophical Fragments. In this preface he broke the silence of many years, and spoke with contempt of Hegel's system and pretensions. Commenting upon the mode in which Hegel declares that he has gone beyond and annulled the theory of Spinoza, Schelling says that he had long since done the same. Spinoza maintains, he asserts, that all things proceed from the nature of the Absolute Substance (this Absolute Substance is that which it is absolutely impossible not to think of,1) with a necessity as inevitable, as from the nature of the triangle it follows that its angles are together equal to two right-angles. We see here that he does not yet understand the real principle of movement in the system of Spinoza, on which account he had before compared it with the statue of Pygmalion which became living only when the fire of love quickened it. His own philosophy, he adds, “in its infinite subject-object includes a principle of necessary progress or movement. And it proceeds thus. The Absolute Subject from the necessity of its nature becomes Object, but from every objective state it issues victorious and returns back again into a higher state, or (using the word in its mathematical sense) a higher power of subjectivity, until after exhausting its whole possibility of becoming objective, it remains the Infinite Subject, victorious over all. This Subject which at last remains is wholly different from The phraseology of Schelling in respect to this is peculiar. The Absolute Substance is "das nicht Nicht-zu-denkende," literally, is that which "cannot not-be-thought," which we are absolutely obliged to think of, if we think at all. That is, there is something which is the ground of all our special thoughts, without which all our notions and ideas have no basis or connection, which is absolutely essential to thinking. If one should try not to think, he would still think of this-it cannot not-be-thought, 1845.] Schelling unable to meet the wants of the Age. 291 the first merely intellectual Subject, since it has ascended from every state of objectivity, to a higher an intenser subjectivity, and at the same time has drawn into itself, has made its own all that actually exists." Here is the one arm of the lever, and it forms his negative philosophy. The other arm, the positive philosophy, that is, the construction of history according to his views, is to go through a similar process of the same elements or powers, only in another sense. The outlines of this positive philosophy we already have in the published works of Schelling, especially in his System of Transcendental Idealism, his Lectures upon Academic Studies, his work on Philosophy and Religion, and in the essay upon Human Freedom, to which his book against Jacobi, the "Denkmal," may be taken as a supplement. We think then that we are warranted in saying that Schelling has not only not given a new science which transcends all previous systems and "the present bounds of human thought," but that he has not even gone beyond the position of his earlier system. The utmost which he could, in such a conjuncture, be expected to accomplish was to have given a logical exhibition of his own philosophy. But apart from the consideration, that he does not possess the logical culture and the philosophical calmness which such a task would have demanded, he would have been obliged in order to accomplish this object to go through with that re-casting of his whole scheme, which Hegel had already effected, and to have conceded the merits and consistency of the Hegelian system. For the latter is only the philosophy of Schelling and Spinoza carried out to its logical results; it is the elaboration and development of all that lay concealed in the fundamental principle of this school. It has done more than this; by carrying the principle to its last results it has at the same time laid the foundation for its overthrow. It has given us the principle in a double shape, in its abstract form in the system of logic, and in its concrete form in its application to all the other departments of science. Its inadequacy to solve the problems which the other sciences present gives us the assurance that it must be superseded by another and better system. Schelling, then, with his new discoveries has at any rate come post festum for the progress of the human mind has already carried it beyond the boundaries of the principle which he looks upon as essential, and as the means of enlarging the domain of thought, In his new researches and studies he may have attained to a broader and deeper insight into the principles of his own philosophy; those who were educated in the times in which he first came upon the stage, when his renown was in its fullest bloom; and those who are still to be made acquainted with the speculative questions and problems which have been agitated during the last fifty years, may find some enjoyment and satisfaction in the new theories of Schelling. But the problems of the present age cannot be solved, the interest of present times cannot be permanently attracted, by the new shape in which his system is to appear. Yet even for the present age his reäppearance upon the stage will not be fruitless; for the history of the past teaches us what the future demands, what the present ought to accomplish. Our gaze must be directed to the guidance of the unseen hand in history, if we would find the path and the means of our future spiritual progress. The history of the last fifty years-and Schelling's reäppearance will again turn our attention to them-contains the materials out of which the present age is to construct its peculiar system of philosophy. Kant laid the corner-stone, his successors have brought together the quarried blocks of marble. Hail to the men of German science who shall rear the temple of Freedom! ARTICLE IV. THE NATURE OF OUR LORD'S RESURRECTION-BODY. By E. Robinson, Prof. in Union Theol. Seminary, New York. THE inquiry respecting the nature of our Lord's resurrectionbody has at the present day an interest, not only in itself considered, but also from its near relation to several other questions just now before the public mind. The raising up of Jesus is every where spoken of as the "first fruits" of the resurrection from the dead, as the earnest and pledge and pattern of the future resurrection of the saints. If then we can ascertain the character and circumstances of this great fact in our Lord's history, it may be expected to afford us some aid in obtaining a more clear and defi 1 1 Cor. 15: 12-23. Col. 1: 18.-Rom. 6: 5, 8. 1 Cor. 6: 14. 2 Cor. 4: 14. Phil. 3: 10, 11. 1 Pet. 1: 21. |