466 SCHELLING. philosophy, to which there must be added, as a second part, a positive or existential philosophy, which does not, like the former, rise to the highest principle, to God, but starts from this supreme Idea and shows its actuality. The content of this phase of Schelling's thought* was so unfruitful, and its influence so small, that brief hints con- cerning it must here suffice. First of all, the doctrine of the divine potencies and of creation is repeated in altered form, and then there is given a philosophy of the history of religion as a reflection of the theogonic process in human consciousness. The potencies are now called the infinite ability to be (inactive will, subject), pure being (being without poten- tiality, object), and spirit, which is free from the one- sidednesses of mere potentiality and of mere being, and master of itself (subject-object); to these is added, fur- ther — not as a fourth, but as that which has the three predicates and is wholly in each — the absolute proper, as the cause and support of these attributes. The original unity of the three forms is dissolved, as the first raises itself out of the condition of a mere potency and with- draws itself from pure being in order to exist for itself ; the tension extends itself to the two others — the second now comes out from its selflessness, subdues the first, and so leads the third back to unity. In creation the three potencies stand related as the unlimited Can-be, the limit- ing Must-be, and the Ought-to-be, or operate as material, formal, and final causes, all held in undivided combina- tion by the soul. It was not until the end of creation that they became personalities. Man, in whom the potencies come to rest, can divide their unity again; his fall calls forth a new tension, and thereby the world becomes a world outside of God. History, the process o progressive reconciliation between the God-estranged world and
- On Schelling's negative and positive philosophy, published in the four
volumes of the second division of the Works, cf. Karl Groos, Die reine Ver- nunftwis sense haft, systematise he Darstellung von Schelliugs negativer Phi- losophie, i88g ; Konstantin Frantz, Schellings positive Philosophie, in three parts, 1879—80 ; Ed. von Hartmann, Gesammelte Studiett und Aufsdtze, 1876, p. 650 seq.; Ad. Planck, Schellings nachgelassene Werke, 1858 ; also the essay by Heyder, referred to, p. 446, note %.
