Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XIV.djvu/693

 SCHELLING vols., Stuttgart and Augsburg, 1856-'61). The first ten volumes give all his writings in chro- nological order, including several treatises pre- viously unpublished. The remaining volumes give the later system. Fundamental in his system, in its latest exposition, is the distinc- tion between the negative and the positive philosophy ; between the abstract and the his- torical ; between the philosophy of the idea and the philosophy of what is real. The neg- ative philosophy gives the logical and meta- physical basis of the whole ; it is the prima philosophic^, the first, but not the highest, philosophy ; the quid sit, but not the quod sit. He reviews the old metaphysics from Plato and Aristotle to Kant and Hume ; and the result is the system of pure ideas, of being as such, but yet of being, not in its reality, but in its abstract and necessary possibilities. Logically antece- dent to being, as one of its potences or pow- ers, is the possibility of being (das Seyn-Kdn- nen) ; then comes pure being itself (purus actus das reine Seyri) ; and then the union of the two, as the subject-object, or spirit. These thfee potences are at the basis of all, in idea ; they are the potences of absolute being, which as a principle of development can only be grasped as absolute spirit, absolute personality, absolute will. In other words, the transition from the absolute to the relative, from the infi- nite to the finite, cannot be deduced from being and its predicates, but can only be achieved by personal will. Yet in making this transition, these three potences of being are also the means or factors of the developing process. The three potences become distinct personali- ties in the process of creation, and work for a time separately and even in collision. Thus the Trinity is not a God in three Gods, but God in three personalities, and at the consum- mation of the process takes on a still higher form. Man was created with the possibility of good and evil ; against God's will he chose the evil, and became subject to temporal and eternal death ; and yet the ground for this evil is also found, says Schelling, in the first of the three principles of the Divine Being, passing through the "theogonic process," in conflict with the other principles. Satan is not eternal, and is not a creature ; it is a prin- ciple, a spirit, which became personal, especial- ly in the height of the conflict with Christ. The fall is before and beyond history; the narrative in Genesis is true on the mythologi- cal standpoint. After the fall came the my- thological process, through which the second divine personality passes; the whole history of mythology is not an accidental but a neces- sary process. In the Old Testament he recog- nizes type and symbol as everywhere pointing to Christ, the Logos ; mythology and Judaism unite in him. But in Christianity Christ is the centre, the very substance. The incarnation is not a parting with the divine glory and attri- butes, but a resuming of them. Christ as incar- nate is not from, but in, two natures ; there is SCHEMNITZ 6C9 not a human personality, the only personality is divine. His sacrificial death was necessary to make expiation for sin; and through this death man again obtains freedom and justification. Justification precedes good works. So, too, the resurrection comes through Christ alone ; with- out the resurrection, the soul, separate from the body, would be in an unnatural state, a state of comparative torpor. Through and by this process of redemption, the Trinity too is completed. God is no longer merely in three personalities (as in the creation), but there are now three persons, each of whom is God. Schelling also unfolds the philosophy of church history, making three stages, corresponding respectively to the apostles Peter, Paul, and John. We are now in the Pauline stadium ; that of John will follow, and complete the whole. Paul is the apostle of the Son, and John of the Spirit. Schelling found many dis- ciples and followers, and the development given by them to the principal doctrines has caused their philosophy to be designated as " New Schellingism." Schleiermacher and Hegel were in a measure pupils of Schelling, though they established philosophical schools of their own. See Rosenkranz, Schelling (1843) ; Miche- let, Die neueste Deutsche Philosophic (1843); Noack, Die Philosophic der Romantik (I860) ; and the histories of philosophy by Chalybaus, Hitter, Erdmann, Ueberweg, and Thilo. Erd- mann has also published a valuable sketch of his negative philosophy. In Coleridge's "Bio- graphia Literaria " will be found some account of Schelling's system in its absolute identity phase. Of special interest, particularly in re- gard to the history of the growth of Schel- ling's views, is Fichte's und Schelling^t .philo- sophischer Briefwechsel (1856). The "Intro- duction " to Schelling's Erster Entwurf eines Systems der Naturphilosophie has been trans- lated by Davidson in the "Journal of Spec- ulative Philosophy" (St. Louis, 1867). His life has been written by Plitt, Aus Schelling's Leben (3 vols., 1869-'7l). See also Friedrieh Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling,. cine Jubildums- Gedachtnissrede, by O. Pfleiderer (Stuttgart, 1875), and Schelling ' GeistesentwicJcelung, by Hubert Becker (Munich, 1875). SdlEMMTZ (Hun. Selmeca-Bdnyd), a town of N. W. Hungary, in the county of Hont, on the Schemnitz, a tributary of the Gran, 65 m. N. by W. of Pesth; pop. in 1870, 14,029. It is closely hemmed in by hills, and consists chiefly of one steep and narrow street and of several suburbs. It contains four Catholic churches and one for Protestants, and a mining academy founded in 1760. The gold, silver, lead, copper, iron, sulphur, and arsenic mines, long among the most important in Europe, have much fallen off in production, though still employing about 8,000 persons. All the gov- ernment mines are connected with each other, and below them are two main adits, of which the lower one, the Joseph II. adit, is a mag- nificent work, 12 ft. high, 10 ft. wide, and ex'