Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/558

548 of Speculative Physics.' In the fourth period, 1804-1809, he published a Treatise on 'Philosophy and Religion;' 'A Statement of the True Relation of the Philosophy of Nature to the Improved Doctrine of Fichte;' 'On the Relation of the Real and the Ideal;' 'Philosophical Inquiries concerning the Nature of Human Freedom;' 'Philosophical Writings,' first volume. This latter publication (of 1809) was designed to contain all Schelling's already published works, with the addition, it may be supposed, of many new ones. But it stopped at the first volume, and contains only a portion of the compositions enumerated above. The fifth period extended from 1809 to 1854. During this long period, Schelling's literary activity, which hitherto had been so prolific, was comparatively in abeyance. That his pen was still busy his posthumous works testify; but whether it was that he was discouraged by the reception which his collected writings had met with, or that he had misgivings respecting the validity of his system, or that he was silently labouring to give it greater finish and completeness, his published contributions to science during this period of forty-five years were very small and far between. Of these the most important was a 'Critical Preface' to Beckers's translation into German of a work by the French philosopher Cousin. From this preface, the following extract on the obscurity of the German philosophers is curious and memorable. It shows how a man's eyes may be open to faults in others, which he either does not see