nic, and universal
organizing (according to Harms, cosmical) nature, of which the two former
arise from the third and are brought by it into connection and harmony. (As
Schelling here takes an independent middle course between the mechanical
explanation of life and the assumption of a specific vital force, so in
all the burning physical questions of the time he seeks to rise above the
contending parties by means of mediating solutions. Thus, in the question
of "single or double electricity," he ranges himself neither on the side of
Franklin nor on that of his opponents; in regard to the problem of light,
endeavors to overcome the antithesis between Newton's emanation theory and
the undulation theory of Euler; and, in his chapter on combustion, attacks
the defenders of phlogiston as well as those who deny it).

[Footnote 1: Schelling terms his philosophy of nature dynamic atomism,
since it posits pure intensities as the simple (atoms), from which
qualities are to be explained.]

Schelling's philosophy of nature[1] proposes to itself three chief
problems: the construction of general, indeterminate, homogeneous
matter, with differences in density alone, of determinate, qualitatively
differentiated matter and its phenomena of motion or the dynamical process,
and of the organic process. For each of these departments of nature an
original force in universal nature is assumed--gravity, light, and their
copula, universal life. Gravity--this does not mean that which as the force
of attraction falls within the view of sensation, for it is the union of
attraction and repulsion--is the principle of corporeality, and produces
in the visible world the different conditions of aggregation in solids,
fluids, and gases. Light--this, too, is not to be confounded with actual
light, of which it is the cause--is the principle of the soul (from it
proceeds all intelligence, it is a spiritual potency, the "first subject"
in nature), and produces in the visible world the dynamical processes
magnetism, electricity, and chemism. The higher unity of gravity and
light is the copula or life, the principle of the organic, of animated
corporeality or the processes of growth and reproduction, irritability,
and sensibility.

[Footnote 1: This is contained in the following treatises: _Ideas for a
Philosophy of Nature, 1797; On the World-soul, 1798; First Sketch of a
System of the Philosophy of Nature, 1799; Universal Deduction of the
Dynamical Process