t is neither
the one nor the other, but the unity of both which is raised above all
contrariety, the indifference of objective and subjective. Although amid
the finitude of the things of the world the self-identity of the absolute
breaks up into a plurality of self-developing individual existences, yet
even in the phenomenal world of individuals the unity of the ground is not
entirely lost: each particular existence is a definite expression of the
absolute, and to it as such the character of identity belongs, though in
a diminished degree and mingled with difference (Bruno's "monads"). The
world-ground is absolute, the individual thing is relative, identity and
totality; nothing exists which is merely objective or merely subjective;
everything is both, only that one or other of these two factors always
predominates. This Schelling terms quantitative difference: the phenomena
of nature, like the phenomena of spirit, are a unity of the real and the
ideal, only that in the former there is a preponderance of the real, in the
latter a preponderance of the ideal.

At first Schelling, in Neoplatonic fashion, maintained the existence of
another intermediate region between the spheres of the infinite and the
finite: absolute knowing or the self-knowledge of the identity. In this,
as the "form" of the absolute, the objective and the subjective are not
absolutely one, as they are in the being or "essence" of the absolute, but
ideally (potentially) opposed, though one _realiter_. Later he does away
with this distinction also, as existing for reflection alone, not for
rational intuition, and outbids his earlier determinations concerning the
simplicity of the absolute with the principle, that it is not only the
unity of opposites, but also the unity of the unity and the opposition or
the identity of the identity, in which fanciful description the dialogue
_Bruno_ pours itself forth. A further alteration is brought in by
characterizing the absolute as the identity of the finite and the infinite,
and by equating the finite with the real or being, the infinite with the
ideal or knowing. With this there is joined a philosophical interpretation
of the Trinity akin to Lessing's. In the absolute or eternal the finite
and the infinite are alike absolute. God the Father is the eternal, or the
unity of the finite and the infinite; the Son is the finite in God (before
the falling away); the Spirit is the infinite or the return of the finite
into