valuable series of observations of the sun's disc, which he recorded in a book published in 1630, under the whimsical title of "Rosa Ursina" (being dedicated to the Prince Orsini). He invented the erecting eyepiece for the telescope, and the instrument for copying, enlarging, and reducing outlines, well-known as the "Pantograph." He was a violent opponent of the Copernican system, and of the mechanical discoveries of Galileo.—W. J. M. R.
SCHELLER, Immanuel Johann Gerhard, a German philologist, was born at Ihlow, 22nd March, 1735. He studied at Leipsic, and in 1761 was appointed head master of the gymnasium at Lübben, Lusatia. In 1772 he was translated in the same capacity to Brieg, Silesia, where he died on 5th July, 1803. He owes his fame to his Latin dictionary, which after his death has been edited, improved, and abridged by various hands, especially by Lünemann and Georges. The work has been of the greatest service both to teachers and pupils. His Latin grammar also and his "Precepta stili bene Latini" deserve to be noticed.—K. E.
SCHELLING, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph, one of the most celebrated and productive philosophers of Germany, was born at Leonberg in Würtemberg in 1775. He was the son of a country clergyman. Such was the precocity of his genius, that he entered the university of Tübingen in his fifteenth year. Here he formed a close intimacy with Hegel, afterwards his great rival in philosophy (see Hegel), although, in principle, their systems are very much alike. At the age of seventeen, with the view of taking the highest honours in philosophy, he published a Latin dissertation on "The Origin of Evil as laid down in the third chapter of Genesis." He remained at Tübingen until 1795, when he published an inaugural dissertation in theology, entitled "On Marcion the corrector of the Pauline Epistles." He then went to Leipsic, where he resided for a short time as tutor to the Baron von Riedesel. From Leipsic he went to the university of Jena, where he studied medicine and philosophy; the latter under Fichte, the presiding 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 or carelessness, than to wilful plagiarism on the part of the English poet.
Schelling's writings may be classified as belonging to five periods. To the first period, 1795-96, belong—"On the possibility of a Form of Philosophy in general;" "On the Ego as the Principle of Philosophy, or on the unconditioned in human knowledge;" "Explanations of the Idealism involved in the Theory of Knowledge;" "Letters on Dogmatism and Criticism." In these writings he adheres closely to Fichte, who welcomed him as his best expositor. Later in life their relations were less amicable. In the second period, 1797-1801, appeared—"Ideas towards a Philosophy of Nature" (second edition, 1802); "On the World-Soul;" "First Sketch of a System of the Philosophy of Nature;" "Journal of Speculative Physics;" "System of Transcendental Idealism." During both of these periods, he also contributed largely to the Philosophical Journal of Fichte and Niethammer. In the second period he devoted himself more to the study of nature, and less to the exposition of Fichte. The third period, 1801-1803, gave birth to "Exposition of my System of Philosophy;" "Bruno, a dialogue on the divine and natural principle of things;" "Lectures on the Method of Academical Study;" "New Journal of Speculative Physics." In the fourth period, 1804-1809, he published a treatise on "Philosophy and Religion;" "A Statement of the True Relation of the Philosophy of Nature to the Improved Doctrine of Fichte;" "On the Relation of the Real and the Ideal;" "Philosophical Inquiries concerning the Nature of Human Freedom;" "Philosophical Writings," first volume. This latter publication (of 1809) was designed to contain all Schelling's already published works, with the addition, it may be supposed, of many new ones. But it stopped at the first volume, and contains only a portion of the compositions enumerated above. The fifth period extended from 1809 to 1854. During this long period, Schelling's literary activity, which hitherto had been so prolific, was comparatively in abeyance. That his pen was still busy his posthumous works testify; but whether it was that he was discouraged by the reception which his collected writings had met with, or that he had misgivings respecting the validity of his system, or that he was silently labouring to give it greater finish and completeness, his published contributions to science during this period of forty-five years were very small and far between. Of these the most important was a "Critical Preface" to Becker's translation into German of a work by the French philosopher Cousin. From this preface, the following extract on the obscurity of the German philosophers, is curious and memorable. It shows how a man's eyes may be open to faults in others, which he either does not see in himself, or seeing, does not choose or is unable to amend. "The philosophers of Germany," says Schelling, "have been for so long in the habit of philosophizing merely among themselves, that by degrees their thoughts and language have become further and further removed, even in Germany, from the understanding of general readers; and at length the degree of this remoteness from common intelligibility has come almost to be regarded as the measure of philosophic proficiency. Examples of this we hardly require to adduce. As families who abandon the intercourse of their fellow-men, acquire, in addition to other disagreeable peculiarities, certain peculiar modes of expression intelligible only to themselves; so have the German philosophers made themselves remarkable for forms of thought and expression which are unintelligible to all the world besides. The fact of their having been repeatedly nnsuccessful in their attempts to spread the knowledge of the Kantian philosophy beyond Germany—though, indeed, it compelled them to abandon the hope of making themselves understood by the natives of other countries—yet it never led them to conclude that there was anything wrong either with their philosophy itself, or with their method of communicating it. On the contrary, the oftener and the more signally they failed in their endeavours to disseminate the highly-cherished opinions, the stronger did their conviction become that philosophy was something which existed for themselves alone—not considering that to be universally intelligible is the primary aim of every true philosophy—an aim which, though often missed, ought yet never to be lost sight of, and ought to be the ruling and guiding principle of every system. This does not imply that works of speculative thought are chiefly to be weighed in the critic's scales as mere exercises of style; but it does imply that a philosophy whose contents cannot be made intelligible to every well-educated people, and expressed in every cultivated language, cannot be the true and universal philosophy." Such were Schelling's words in 1834, in passing sentence on the speculations generally of his countrymen. Their severity is not greater than their truth. Would that Schelling and his compeers had profited more largely by the advice! Since Schelling's death in 1854 a complete edition of his writings has been published by his son. It is comprised in fourteen volumes, and contains many works now printed for the first time. Of these the principal are "Historico-critical Introduction to the Philosophy of Mythology;" "The Philosophy of Mythology;" "The Philosophy of Revelation." This vast theosophic system fills four large volumes.
In each of the four periods during which Schelling poured forth so many publications, his philosophy assumed a different phasis or aspect. It is not possible, within the limits of this sketch, to give any account of even the simplest of these varying and incomplete manifestations. The last and posthumous form in which the system has appeared, and in which the reflective labours of
