Ask anybody in Berlin today on what field the battle for 
dominion over German public opinion in politics and religion, that 
is, over Germany itself, is being fought, and if he has any idea of 
the power of the mind over the world he will reply that this 
battlefield is the University, in particular Lecture-hall No. 6, where 
Schelling is giving his lectures on the philosophy of revelation. For 
at the moment all the separate oppositions which contend with 
Hegel’s philosophy for this dominion are obscured, blurred and 
pushed into the background by the one opposition of Schelling; all 
the attackers who stand outside philosophy, Stahl, Hengstenberg, 
Neander, are making way for a fighter who is expected to give 
battle to the unconquered on his own ground. And the battle is 
indeed peculiar enough. Two old friends of younger days, room 
mates at the Ttibingen theological seminary, are after forty years 
meeting each other again face to face as opponents; one of them 
ten years dead but more alive than ever in his pupils; the other, as 
the latter say, intellectually dead for three decades, but now sud- 
denly claiming for himself the full power and authority of life. 
Anybody who is sufficiently “impartial” to profess himself equally 
alien to both, that is, to be no Hegelian, for surely nobody can as yet 
declare himself on the side of Schelling after the few words he has 
said— anybody, then, who possesses this vaunted advantage of 
“impartiality” will see in the declaration of Hegel’s death pro- 
nounced by Schelling’s appearance in Berlin the vengeance of the 
gods for the declaration of Schelling’s death which Hegel pro- 
nounced in his time. 

An imposing, colourful audience has assembled to witness the 
battle. At the front the notables of the University, the leading 
lights of science, men everyone of whom has created a trend of his 
own; for them the seats nearest to the rostrum have been 
reserved, and behind them, jumbled together as chance brought 
them to the hall, representatives of all walks of life, nations, and 
religious beliefs. In the midst of high-spirited youths there sits 
here and there a grey-bearded staff officer and next to him 
perhaps, quite unembarrassed, a volunteer who in any other 
society would not know what to do for reverence towards such a 
high-ranking superior. Old doctors and ecclesiastics the jubilee of 
whose matriculation can soon be celebrated feel the long-forgotten 
student haunting their minds again and are back in college. 
Judaism and Islam want to see what Christian revelation is all 
about; German, French, English, Hungarian, Polish, Russian, 
modern Greek and Turkish, one can hear all spoken to- 
gether —then the signal for silence sounds and Schelling mounts 
the rostrum. | 

A man of middle stature, with white hair and light-blue, bright 
eyes, whose expression is gay rather than imposing and, combined 
with a certain fullness of figure, indicates more the jovial family- 
man than the thinker of genius, a harsh but strong voice, 
Swabian-Bavarian dialect with a recurring “eppes” for etwas,* that is 
Schelling’s outward appearance. 

I pass over the contents of his first lectures so as to come 
immediately to his utterances on Hegel, with the reservation that I 
shall add later whatever is necessary to explain them. I reproduce 
them as I took them down myself during the lecture. 

“The philosophy of identity, as I have set it out, was only one aspect of the whole 
philosophy, namely, the negative aspect. This ‘negative’ had either to be satisfied by 
the presentation of the ‘positive’, or, absorbing the positive content of previous 
philosophies, to posit itself as the ‘positive’ and hence to set itself up as absolute 
philosophy. Over the fate of man also presides a reason which makes him persist in 
one-sidedness until he has exhausted all its possibilities. Thus it was Hegel who 
established the negative philosophy as the absolute philosophy— I mention Herr 
Hegel’s name for the first time. Just as 1 have expressed myself freely on Kant and 
Fichte, who were my teachers, so will I also on Hegel, although it gives me no 
pleasure to do so. But I will do it for the sake of the frankness which I have 
promised you, gentlemen. It must not appear as if I had anything to be afraid of, 
as if there were points on which I could not speak freely. I recall the time when 
Hegel was my listener, my comrade in life, and I must say that while in general the 
understanding of the philosophy of identity was shallow and superficial, he it was 
who saved its fundamental thought for the time to come and acknowledged it 
constantly to the last, as his Vorlesungen tiber die Geschichte der Philosophie above all 

proved to me. Having found the great material already mastered, he concerned 
himself chiefly with the method, while the rest of us preferred to concentrate on 
the material. I myself, not satisfied with the negative results achieved, would readily 
have accepted any satisfactory conclusion, even from a stranger’s hand. 

“Incidentally, the question here is whether Hegel’s position in the history of 
philosophy, the position which is to be accorded to him among the great thinkers, 
is precisely that he attempted to raise the philosophy of identity to the absolute, the 
final philosophy, a thing which could be done, of course, only with significant 
changes; and this I intend to prove from his own writings, which are open to all 
the world. If one were to say that this is precisely what Hegel is to be reproached 
with, I would reply that Hegel did that which lay closest to him. The philosophy of 
identity had to wrestle with itself, to transcend itself, so long as the science of the 
‘positive’, which covers existence as well, was not yet there. Hence in this endeavour 
Hegel had to raise the philosophy of identity above its limitation, the power of 
being, the pure ability to be, and to make existence subject to it. 

“Hegel, who with Schelling rose to the recognition of the absolute, diverged 
from him in that he wished the absolute to be conceived, not as presupposed in 
intellectual perception, but rather as discovered by scientific method.’ These words 
form the text on which I shall now speak to you.— At the basis of the above 
passage lies the view that the philosophy of identity has as its result the absolute 
not only in substance but in existence; since the starting point of the philosophy of 
identity is the indifference of subject and object, their existence is also assumed 
because validated by intellectual perception. In this way Hegel assumes quite 
artlessly that I wished to prove the existence, the being, of that indifference by 
intellectual perception, and reproaches me for the inadequate proof. That I did 
not wish to do so is shown by the protest I have so often voiced that the philosophy 
of identity is not a system of existence, and, as concerns intellectual perception, the 
term in question does not occur at all in the presentation of the philosophy of 
identity which is the sole and only one of the earlier period that I recognise as 
scientific. This presentation is to be found where no one looks for it, namely, in the 
Zeitschrift für spekulative Physik, Vol. Il, Part 2. Elsewhere it does indeed occur and 
is part of Fichte’s legacy. Fichte, with whom I did not wish to break outright, 
arrives through it at his immediate consciousness, the ‘I’; from this, I went further 
and thus arrived at the indifference. Since in intellectual perception the ‘I’ is no 
longer regarded as being subjective, it enters the sphere of thought and thus its 
existence is no longer immediately certain. Accordingly, intellectual perception 
would not even prove the existence of the ‘I’, and though Fichte uses it for this 
purpose, I cannot base myself on it to prove from it the existence of the absolute. 
Hence Hegel could not reproach me for the inadequacy of a proof which I never 
wished to provide, but only for not having stated explicitly enough that I was not at 
all concerned with existence. For if Hegel demands proof of the being of the 
infinite power he goes beyond reason; should the infinite power exist, philosophy 
would not be free of being, and we must here ask whether something prior to 
existence can be thought. Hegel denies it, for he begins his logic with being and 
proceeds directly to an existential system. But we affirm it, by beginning with the 
pure power of being as existing only in thinking. Hegel, who so often speaks of 
immanence, nevertheless is only immanent in that which is not immanent in 
thinking, for being is this non-immanent. To retreat into pure thinking means in 
particular to retreat from all being outside thought. Hegel’s contention that the 
existence of the absolute is proved by logic has the further disadvantage that in this 
way one has the infinite twice, at the end of the logic and again at the end of the 
whole process. In general one cannot conceive why the logic is put first in the 
Enzyklopddie, instead of pervading and animating the entire cycle.” 

Thus far Schelling. In large part and so far as I could I have 
quoted his very words and can boldly claim that he could not 
refuse to put his signature to these excerpts. To complete this 
presentation I add from the preceding lectures that he considers 
things from two aspects, separating the quid from the quod, the 
essence and the concept from existence. The first he apportions to 
the pure science of reason or negative philosophy, the second to a 
science to be newly founded and containing empirical elements, 
positive philosophy. Of the latter we have not yet heard anything; 
the former appeared forty years ago in an inadequate form 
abandoned by Schelling himself, and is now being developed by 
him in its true, adequate expression. Its basis is reason, the pure 
power of cognition, which has as its immediate content the pure 
power of being, the infinite ability to be. The necessary third 
element to be added here is the power over being, which can no 
longer alienate itself, and this is the absolute, the spirit, that 
which is released from the necessity of transition into being and 
persists in eternal freedom in relation to being. The absolute can 
also be called the “orphic” unity of these powers, as that outside 
of which there is nothing. When these powers come into con- 
tradiction with each other this mutual exclusiveness is finiteness. 

These few sentences suffice, I think, for the understanding of 
the preceding passages and as an outline of neo-Schellingianism as 
far as this can be given here and up to now. It only remains for 
me to draw from this the conclusions probably intentionally 
concealed by Schelling, and to enter the lists for the great dead 
man. 

If Schelling’s death sentence on Hegel’s system is divested of its 
bureaucratic language, it comes down to this: Hegel actually had 
no system whatever of his own, but eked out a miserable existence 
with the leavings of my thoughts; while I occupied myself with the 
partie brillante, the positive philosophy, he revelled in the partie 
honteuse, the negative, and since I had no time for it he took upon 
himself its completion and elaboration, infinitely happy that I had 
entrusted this to him. Will you reproach him for this? “He did 
that which lay closest to him.” He has nevertheless a “position 
among the great thinkers”, for “he was the only one who 
recognised the fundamental thought of the philosophy of identity, 
while all the others had a shallow and superficial understanding of 
it”. All the same, prospects seemed bad for him, for he wanted to 
make half of philosophy into the whole. 

A well-known saying is quoted, allegedly from Hegel’s mouth, 
but which, after the above utterances, doubtless stems from 
Schelling: “Only one of my pupils understood me, and even he 
unfortunately understood me wrongly.” 

But to be serious, can such libels be engraved upon Hegel’s 
tombstone and we, who owe him more than he owed Schelling, 
not dare to issue a challenge to protect the honour of the dead, 
however terrible the opponent? And they are libels, let Schelling 
say what he will, and the form be ever so scientific in appearance. 
Oh, “in a purely scientific manner” I could show up Herr von 
Schelling, or anybody else, if that were required, in such a 
thoroughly bad light that he would certainly recognise the advan- 
tages of the “scientific manner”, but what help would that be to 
me? It would in any case be frivolous of me, the youth, to teach an 
old man, and particularly Schelling, who, however decisively he 
may have deserted freedom, nevertheless always remains the 
discoverer of the absolute and in his part as Hegel’s forerunner is 
mentioned by all of us only with the deepest reverence. But 
Schelling as Hegel’s successor can only lay claim to a certain piety 
and will demand calm and coolness least of all from me, for I am 
standing up for a dead man, and it is fit for a fighter to have a 
certain amount of passion: he who draws the sword in cold blood 
rarely has much enthusiasm for the cause for which he is fighting. 

I must say that Schelling’s speech here and especially these 
invectives against Hegel leave little doubt that the portrait painted 
in the preface to Riedel’s well-known latest pamphlet? is a likeness, 
something one was hitherto reluctant to believe. Schelling presents 
the entire development of philosophy in this century, Hegel, Gans, 
Feuerbach, Strauss, Ruge and the Deutsche Jahrbiicher as dependent 
on himself to begin with, and then not only negates it, but, 
with a flourish merely intended to bring him more into the 
limelight, presents it as a luxury in which the spirit indulges with 
itself, a curio collection of misunderstandings, a gallery of useless 
aberrations. If this does not exceed all that Schelling is reproached 
with in that pamphlet, then I have no idea what is customary in 
mutual intercourse. It might, of course, be difficult for Schelling 
to find a middle way which compromised neither him nor Hegel, 
and the egoism which caused him to sacrifice his friend so as to 
preserve himself, might be pardonable; but it is a little too much 
when Schelling asks the century to take back forty years of effort 
and work, forty years of thinking, of sacrifice of the dearest 

interests and the most sacred traditions, as a waste of time, an 
erroneous trend, only so that he-shall not have lived these forty 
years too long; it sounds like more than irony when he allocates to 
Hegel a position among the great thinkers precisely by deleting 
him in reality from their number and by treating him as his 
creature, his servant; and finally it appears somewhat like intellec- 
tual meanness, like petty—what does one call that well-known, 
pale-yellow passion?— when Schelling claims each and every thing 
he acknowledges in Hegel as his own property, nay, as flesh of his 
own flesh. It would indeed be strange if Schelling’s old truth had 
only been able to maintain itself in Hegel’s bad form, and in that 
case the reproach of obscurity of expression, which the day before 
yesterday Schelling levelled against the man he was attacking, 
would of necessity recoil upon himself, as mm the common 
judgment it already does, in spite of the promised clarity. Anyone 
who indulges in such periods as Schelling constantly does, who 
uses expressions like quidditativ and quodditativ, orphic unity, etc., 
and even with them is so often at a loss that every moment Latin 
and Greek phrases and words have to help out, clearly forfeits the 
right to criticise Hegel’s style. 

Incidentally, Schelling is most of all to be pitied because of the 
unfortunate misunderstanding concerning existence. The good, 
naive Hegel with his belief in the existence of philosophical results, 
in the right of reason to enter into existence, to dominate being! 
But it would be really strange if he, who after all studied Schelling 
thoroughly and for a long time maintained personal intercourse 
with him, if all the others who tried to penetrate the philosophy of 
identity, had noticed nothing of the real joke, namely, that all this 
was just bits of nonsense which existed only in Schelling’s head 
and laid no claims whatever to any influence on the external 
world. Somewhere that must have been in black and white and 
somebody would certainly have found it. But one is in fact 
tempted to doubt whether this was Schelling’s view from the 
beginning or whether it is a later addition. 

And the new version of the philosophy of identity? Kant freed 
rational thinking from space and time, Schelling takes existence 
away as well. What then are we left with? This is not the place to 
prove against him that existence belongs indeed to thought, that 
being is immanent in the mind and that the foundation of all 
modern philosophy, the cogito, ergo sum,* cannot thus be stormed 
and overrun; but I may be permitted to ask whether a power 

which itself has no being can produce a being, whether a power 
which can no longer alienate itself is still power, and whether 
the trichotomy of the powers does not correspond in a remarkable 
manner with the trinity of idea, nature and mind which emerges 
from Hegel’s Enzyklopadie? 

And what will result from all this for the philosophy of 
revelation? It belongs, of course, to the positive philosophy, to the 
empirical side. Schelling will have no other course open to him 
than to assume the fact of a revelation, which he will perhaps 
substantiate in one way or another, only not by reason, for he has 
locked the door on himself in that respect. Hegel made things a little 
harder for himself—or can it be that Schelling has other sources 
of information up his sleeve? This philosophy can thus quite cor- 
rectly be called empirical, and its theology positive, while its jurispru- 
dence will probably be historical. That would indeed be not unlike a 
defeat, for we already knew all that before Schelling came to Berlin. 

It will be our business to follow the course of his thinking and to 
shield the great man’s grave from abuse. We are not afraid to 
fight. Nothing more desirable could have happened to us than for 
a time to be ecclesia pressa.* There the minds part. What is genuine 
is proved in the fire, what is false we shall not miss in our ranks. 
The opponents must grant us that youth has never before flocked 
to our colours in such numbers, that the thought which dominates 
us has never before unfolded itself so richly, that courage, 
conviction, talent have never been so much on our side as now. 
Hence we shall rise confidently against the new enemy; in the end, 
one will be found among us who will prove that the sword of 
enthusiasm is just as good as the sword of genius. 

Let Schelling see whether he can muster a school. Many only join 
him now because like him they are opposed to Hegel and accept 
with gratitude anybody who attacks him, be it Leo or Schubarth. 
But for these, I think, Schelling is far too good. Whether he will 
find any other adherents remains to be seen. I do not yet believe 
so, although some of his hearers are making progress and have 
already got as far as indifference.