It was the meagreness of Fichte's treatment of nature which impelled
Schelling to what he called his outbreak into reality. Nature will not
be dismissed, as simply that which is not I. You cannot say that nature
is only the sphere of my self-realisation. Individuals are in their way
the children of nature. They are this in respect of their souls as much
as of their bodies. Nature was before they were. Nature is, moreover,
not alien to intelligence. On the contrary, it is a treasure-house of
intelligible forms which demand to be treated as such. It appeared to
Schelling, therefore, a truer idealism to work out an intelligible
system of nature, exhibiting its essential oneness with personality.

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling was born in 1775 at Leonberg in
Württemberg. His father was a clergyman. He was precocious in his
intellectual development and much spoiled by vanity. Before he was
twenty years old he had published three works upon problems suggested by
Fichte. At twenty-three he was extraordinarius at Jena. He had
apparently a brilliant career before him. He published his _Erster
Entwurf eines Systems der Naturphilosophe_, 1799, and also his _System
des transcendentalen Idealismus_, 1800. Even his short residence at Jena
was troubled by violent conflicts with his colleagues. It was brought to
an end by his marriage with the wife of Augustus von Schlegel, who had
been divorced for the purpose. From 1806 to 1841 he lived in Munich in
retirement. The long-expected books which were to fulfil his early
promise never appeared. Hegel's stricture was just. Schelling had no
taste for the prolonged and intense labour which his brilliant early
works marked out. He died in 1854, having reached the age of
seventy-nine years, of which at least fifty were as melancholy and
fruitless as could well be imagined.