the goal of _history_, in which caprice and conformity
to law are one, in so far as the conscious free action of individuals
subserves an unconscious end prescribed by the world-spirit. History is the
never completed revelation of the absolute (of the unity of the conscious
and the unconscious) through human freedom. We are co-authors in the
historical world-drama, and invent our own parts. Not until the third (the
religious) period, in which he reveals himself as "providence," will God
_be_; in the past (the tragical) period, in which the divine power was felt
as "fate," and in the present (the mechanical) period, in which he appears
as the "plan of nature," God is not, but is only _becoming_.

[Footnote 1: With this transformation of the antithesis between knowledge
and volition into a mere difference in degree, Schelling sinks back to the
standpoint of Leibnitz. In all the idealistic thinkers who start from Kant
we find the endeavor to overcome the Critical dualism of understanding and
will, as also that between intellect and sensibility. Schiller brings the
contrary impulses of the ego into ultimate harmonious union in artistic
activity. Fichte traces them back to a common ground; Schelling combines
both these methods by extolling art as a restoration of the original
identity. Hegel reduces volition to thought, Schopenhauer makes intellect
proceed from will.]

An interesting supplement to the Fichtean philosophy is furnished by the
third, the _aesthetic_, part of the transcendental idealism, which makes
use of Kant's theory of the beautiful in a way similar to that in which the
philosophy of nature had availed itself of his theory of the organic.
Art is the higher third in which the opposition between theoretical and
practical action, the antithesis of subject and object, is removed; in
which cognition and action, conscious and unconscious activity, freedom and
necessity, the impulse of genius and reflective deliberation are united.
The beautiful, as the manifestation of the infinite in the finite, shows
the problem of philosophy, the identity of the real and the ideal, solved
in sensuous appearance. Art is the true organon and warrant of philosophy;
she opens up to philosophy the holy of holies, is for philosophy the
supreme thing, the revelation of all mysteries. Poesy and philosophy (the
aesthetic intuition of the artist and the intellectual intuition of
the thinker) are most intimately related; they were united