lectual intuition_. Those
who possess it not--and it is by no means general--must be content to
live without philosophy. Nor can those on whom nature has failed to
bestow this intellectual intuition, acquire it by any study or industry
of their own. _Philosophus nascitur, non fit_.

Viewed from one aspect, Schelling's philosophy is not without a certain
charm. "Spirit is invisible nature, nature is visible spirit." In this
view of things, if mind loses its pre-eminence, nature, or the visible
world, is exalted and spiritualised. It is a system likely to fascinate
the poet and the artist, and we believe it has had a recognised
influence on the cultivation of the fine arts in Germany. It awakens our
enthusiasm for nature. More than ever is mind, is deity, seen in the
visible world. Nature is, in fact, deified, whatever other sacrifices
are made.

But if there was something for enthusiasm to lay hold of in the system
of Schelling, there was much wanting, it seems, to satisfy the rigid
demands of philosophy. _His_ cosmogony, his manner of tracing, _a
priori_, the development of all things from the absolute, was
considered, by those who understand such profundities, to be deficient
in accuracy. Hegel next trod

"with wandering feet
The dark, unbottomed, infinite abyss."

And we are told gravely, by grave expositors, how, beginning with
_nothing_, he showed, with logical precision, how every thing had
regularly proceeded from it!

In the system of Hegel, object and subject are both lost sight of:
nothing exists but the relation between them. As the thing and the
thought of it are identical, and as the essence of a thought is the
relation between two terms, it follows very logically that this relation
is all, and that nothing really exists but relations. We should have
supposed this to be a fair _reductio ad absurdum_, proving (if the
matter could need of proof) that the _thing_ and the _thought_ were not
identical. But the march of ideal philosophy was not to be so easily
arrested.

We have now reached what is distinguished as _absolute idealism_.

"They (the three idealisms) may be thus illustrated," (writes Mr Lewes
in his _History of Philosophy_.) "I see a tree. Fichte tells me that it
is I alone who exist; the tree is a modification of my mind. This is
_subjective_ idealism. Schelling tells me that both the tree and my
_ego_ are existences equally real, or ideal, but they are nothing less
than mani