Page:History of Modern Philosophy (Falckenberg).djvu/481

SYSTEM OF IDENTITY. 459 nected his endeavor, in correspondence with the principles of the theory of identity, to show in every phenomenon the operation of all three moments of the absolute. In each natural product all three " potencies " or stages, gravity A', light A', and organization A", are present, only in subordina- tion to one of their number. Since the third potency is never lacking, all is organic ; that which appears to us as inorganic matter is only the residuum left over from organization, that which could become neither plant nor animal. New here is the cohesion-series of Steffens (the phenomenon of magnetism), in which nitrogen forms the south pole, carbon the north pole, and iron the point of indifference, while oxygen, hydrogen, and water represent the east pole, west pole, and indifference point in electrical polarity. In the organic world plants represent the carbon pole, animals the nitrogen pole ; the former is the north pole, the latter the south. Moreover, the points of indifference reappear : the plant corresponds to water, the animal to iron. Schelling was far outdone in fantastic analogies of this kind by his pupils, especially by Oken, who in his Sketch of the Philosophy of Nature, 1805, com- pares the sense of hearing, for example, to the parabola, to a metal, to a bone, to the bird, to the mouse, and to the horse. As nature was the imaging of the infinite (unity or essence) into the finite (plurality or form), so spirit is the taking up of the finite into the infinite. In the spiritual realm also all three divine original potencies are every- where active, though in such a way that one is dominant. In intuition (sensation, consciousness, intuition, each in turn thrice divided) the infinite and the eternal are subordi- nated to the finite ; in thought or understanding (concept, judgment, inference, each in three kinds) the finite and the eternal are subordinated to the infinite ; in reason (which comprehends all under the form of the absolute) the finite and the infinite are subordinated to the eternal. In- tuition is finite cognition, thought infinite cognition, reason eternal cognition. The forms of the understanding do not suffice for the knowledge of reason ; common logic with its law of contradiction has no binding authority for specula- tion, which starts with the equalization of opposites. In