and caprice, and even a lawless
ego. Such an ego is read into nature; for, filled with occult magic
forces, nature can be understood only by the sympathetic divining
insight of the poetic genius. And so, too, authority and tradition, as
representing the instinctive and historical side of social life, come
into their own again.

Fichte's chief interest was centred upon the ego; nature he regarded
as a product of the absolute ego in the individual consciousness,
intended as a necessary obstacle for the free will. Without opposition
the self cannot act; without overcoming resistance it cannot become
free. In order to make free action possible, to enable the ego to
realize its ends, nature must be what it is, an order ruled by the
iron law of causality. This cheerless conception of nature--which,
however, was not Fichte's last word on the subject, since he afterward
came to conceive it as the revelation of universal life, or the
expression of a pantheistic God--did not attract Romanticism. It was
Schelling, the erstwhile follower and admirer of Fichte, who turned
his attention to the philosophy of nature and so more thoroughly
satisfied the romantic yearnings of the age.

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling was born at Leonberg, Wuertemberg,
January 27, 1775, the son of a learned clergyman and writer on
theology. He was a precocious child and made rapid progress in his
studies, entering the Theological Seminary at Tuebingen at the age of
fifteen. Between the ages of nineteen and twenty-two he wrote a
number of able treatises in the spirit of the new idealism, and
was recognized as the most talented pupil of Fichte and his best
interpreter. After the completion of his course at the University
(1795), he became the tutor and companion of two young noblemen with
whom he remained for two years (1796-98) at the University of Leipzig,
during which time he devoted himself to the study of mathematics,
physics, and medicine, and published a number of philosophical
articles. In 1798 he received a call to a professorship at Jena, where
Fichte, Schiller, Wilhelm Schlegel, and Hegel became his colleagues,
and where he entered into friendly relations with the Romantic circle
of which Caroline Schlegel, who afterward became his wife, was a
shining light. This was the most productive period of his life; during
the next few years he developed his own system of philosophy and
gave to the world his most brilliant writings. In 1803 he accepte