462 SCHELLING. deducible self-will of the finite. Then after Eschcnmayer* {Philosophy in its Transition to Not-philosopJiy, 1803) had characterized the procession of the Ideas out of the God- head as an impenetrable mystery for thought, before which philosophy must yield to faith, Schelling, in the essay Re- ligion and Philosophy, 1 804, goes more deeply into the prob- lem. The origin of the sense-world is conceivable only as a breaking away, a spring, a falling away, which consists in the soul's grasping itself in its selfhood, in its subordina- tion of the infinite in itself to the finite, and in its thus ceasing to be in God. The procession of the world from the infinite is a free act, a fact which can only be described, not deduced as necessary. The counterpart of this attain- ment of independence on the part of things or creation is history as the return of the world to its source. They are related to each other as the fall to redemption. Both the dismission of the world and its reception back, together with the intervening development, are, however, events needed by God himself in order to become actual God : He develops through the world. (A similar thought was not unknown in the Middle Ages : if God is to give a complete revelation of himself he must make known his grace ; and this presupposes sin. As the occasion of divine grace, the fall is a happy, saving fault ; without it God could not have revealed himself as gracious, as forgiving, hence not completely.) Schelling's study of Jacob Bohme, to which he was led by Baader, essentially contributed to the concentration of his thought on this point. The Expo- sition of the True Relation, etc., already distinctly betrays the influence of this mystic. In correspondence with Bohme's doctrine that God is living God only through his inclusion of negation in himself, it is here maintained: A being can manifest itself only when it is not merely one, but has another, an opposition (the many), in itself, whereby it is revealed to itself as unity. With the addition of certain Kantian ideas, in particular the idea of transcen- dental freedom and the intelligible character, Schelling's theosophy now assumes the following form:
- K. Ad. Eschenmayer was originally a physician, then, 1811-36, professor
o! philosophy in Tubingen, and died in 1S52 at Kirchheim unter Teck.
