only added as an accident, a means of assistance to the phenomenon of that inner being, and can therefore apprehend that being itself only in proportion to its own nature, which is designed with reference to quite different ends (those of the individual will), consequently very imperfectly. Here lies the reason why a perfect understanding of the existence, nature, and origin of the world, extending to its ultimate ground and satisfying all demands, is impossible. So much as to the limits of my philosophy, and indeed of all philosophy.
The (
Greek characters), i.e., that the inner nature in all things is absolutely one and the same, my age had already grasped and understood, after the Eleatics, Scotus Erigena, Giordano Bruno, and Spinoza had thoroughly taught, and Schelling had revived this doctrine. But what this one is, and how it is able to exhibit itself as the many, is a problem the solution of which is first found in my philosophy. Certainly from the most ancient times man had been called the microcosm. I have reversed the proposition, and shown the world as the macranthropos: because will and idea exhaust its nature as they do that of man. But it is clearly more correct to learn to understand the world from man than man from the world; for one has to explain what is indirectly given, thus external perception from what is directly given, thus self-consciousness – not conversely.
With the Pantheists, then, I have certainly that (Greek characters) in common, but not the (Greek characters); because I do not go beyond experience (taken in its widest sense), and still less do I put myself in contradiction with the data which lie before me. Scotus Erigena, quite consistently with the spirit of Pantheism, explains every phenomenon as a theophany; but then this conception must also be applied to the most terrible and abominable phenomena. Fine theophanies! What further distinguishes me from Pantheism is principally the following, (1). That their (Greek characters) is an x, an unknown quantity; the will, on the other hand, is of
