through this process of self-development before there were any men to
contemplate it. It would go through this process were there no longer
men to contemplate it.

Schelling has here rounded out the theory of absolute idealism which
Fichte had carried through in a one-sided way. He has given us also a
wonderful anticipation of certain modern ideas concerning nature's
preparation for the doctrine of evolution, which was a stroke of genius
in its way. He attempted to arrange the realm of unconscious
intelligences in an ascending series which should bridge the gulf
between the lowest of natural forms and the fully equipped organism in
which self consciousness, with the intellectual, the emotional, and
moral life, at last integrated. Inadequate material and a fondness for
analogies led Schelling into vagaries in following out this scheme.
Nevertheless, it is only in detail that we can look askance at his
attempt. In principle our own conception of the universe is the same. It
is the dynamic view of nature and an application of the principle of
evolution in the widest sense. His errors were those into which a man
was bound to fall who undertook to forestall by a sweep of the
imagination that which has been the result of the detailed and patient
investigation of three generations. What Schelling attempted was to take
nature as we know it and to exhibit it as in reality a function of
intelligence, pointing, through all the gradations of its varied forms,
towards its necessary goal in self-conscious personality. Instead,
therefore, of our having in nature and personality two things which
cannot be brought together, these become members of one great organism
of intelligence of which the immanent God is the source and the
sustaining power. These ideas constitute Schelling's contribution to an
idealistic and, of course, an essentially monistic view of the universe.
The unity of man with God, Fichte had asserted. Schelling set forth the