Page:Ferrier's Works Volume 3 "Philosophical Remains" (1883 ed.).djvu/556

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
546
biography of schelling.

ing genius of the place—a man whose heroic character raises him as high among the patriots, as his speculative power does among the philosophers of his country. Schelling became Fichte's devoted disciple, and in 1798 he succeeded him as professor of philosophy at Jena. Here he lectured with great applause until 1803, when he was invited to fill the chair of philosophy at Wurzburg. Having been ennobled by the King of Bavaria, he removed to Munich in 1807, and remained there until 1841. During part of this time he discharged the duties of a professor in the University of Munich (founded in 1827), and after Jacobi's death he was appointed president of the Academy of Sciences. He resided for some time at Erlangen, where he delivered a course of lectures. In 1841 he was summoned to the University of Berlin to lecture against Hegelianism, which was then carrying everything before it. If Hegel's reign is over, it cannot be affirmed that Schelling had much share in deposing him. His lectures were generally regarded as a failure. They combined with the obscurity of his earlier writings a higher degree of prolixity and mysticism. Schelling's latter years seem to have been spent in retirement. He died in 1854. No life of him, on any extended scale, has as yet appeared. In his 'Biographia Literaria' (first published in 1817), Coleridge embodied large extracts from the writings of Schelling, without any sufficient acknowledgment.—(See 'Blackwood's Magazine,' March 1840.) This, however, should be attributed rather to forgetfulness