r example, now signifies unconscious being,
becoming, and production, now represented reality, now the real, in so far
as it is not represented, but only _is_. "God" sometimes means the whole
absolute, sometimes only the infinite, spiritual moment in the absolute.
Scarcely a single term is sharply defined, much less consistently used in a
single meaning.

%3b. Philosophy of Mythology and Revelation.%

Once again Schelling is ready with a new statement of the problem.
Philosophy is the science of the existent. In this, however, a distinction
is to be made between the _what (quid sit)_ and the _that (quod sit)_, or
between essence and existence. The apprehension of the essence, of the
concept, is the work of reason, but this does not go as far as actual
being. Rational philosophy cognizes only the universal, the possible,
the necessary truths (whose contradictory is unthinkable), but not the
particular and factual. This philosophy can only assert: If anything exists
it must conform to these laws; existence is not given with the _what_.
Hegel has ignored this distinction between the logical and the actual, has
confused the rational and the real. Even the system of identity was merely
rational, _i.e., negative_, philosophy, to which there must be added, as a
second part, a positive or existential philosophy, which does not, like the
former, rise to the highest principle, to God, but starts from this supreme
Idea and shows its actuality.

The content of this phase of Schelling's thought[1] was so unfruitful, and
its influence so small, that brief hints concerning it must here suffice.
First of all, the doctrine of the divine potencies and of creation is
repeated in altered form, and then there is given a philosophy of the
history of religion as a reflection of the theogonic process in human
consciousness.

[Footnote 1: On Schelling's negative and positive philosophy, published in
the four volumes of the second division of the _Works_, cf. Karl Groos,
_Die reine Vernunftwissenschaft, systematische Darstellung von Schellings
negativer Philosophie_, 1889; Konstantin Frantz, _Schellings positive
Philosophie_, in three parts, 1879-80; Ed. von Hartmann, _Gesammelte
Studien und Aufsaetze_, 1876, p. 650 _seq_.; Ad. Planck, _Schellings
nachgelassene Werke_, 1858; also the essay by Heyder, referred to above].

The potencies are now called the infinite ability to be (inactive will,
subject), pure being (being without potentiality