Schelde (Fr. Escout, Lat. Scaldis), a river of the Netherlands, issues from a small lake in the French department of Aisne, flows in an irregular course mostly N.E., through the department of Nord; enters the kingdom of Belgium and traverses the provinces of Hainault and East Flanders. At Ghent, in the latter, it takes a sudden curve towards the east, and flowing between Antwerp and East Flanders, enters the Dutch territory below the city of Antwerp. Here it turns westwards, spreads itself out, and enters the sea by two broad estuaries; between which lie the islands of Walcheren and Beveland. Its whole length is about 200 miles, for nearly the whole of which it is navigable. Its principal affluents are the Haine, Dender, and Rupel, from the right; and the Scarpe and Lys from the left. Its commercial importance is very great, as it is connected by canals with the Somme, the Seine, and the Loire, while its estuaries communicate with the Meuse and Rhine, and lie directly opposite that of the Thames. In the lower part of its course the Scheldt is protected by dykes, as it traverses a very low and flat country.

Scheldestadt, or Schlestadt, a fortified town of France, capital of an arrondissement, in the department of Bas-Rhin, on the left bank of the Ill, 26 miles S.W. of Strasbourg. It has narrow, crooked, but clean streets, lined with irregular houses; and contains several fine churches and other buildings. The church of St George is a Gothic edifice of the fourteenth century; and St Foy is much more ancient, and is a copy of that of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. Near the latter is a large convent, now used for barracks. The chief other building is the court-house, once a Jesuit college. The fortifications are regular, the work of Vauban; and the place is entered by three gates. Flour, beer, vinegar, starch, leather, linen, and earthenware, are the chief manufactures of Scheldestadt. There is some trade in these and other articles. Martin Bucer the reformer was born here. Pop. (1856) 9086.

Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von, Schelling, the last of the great German philosophers inaugurated by Kant, was born at Leonberg, in the kingdom of Württemberg, on the 27th of January 1775. He studied theology at the University of Tubingen, where he had Hegel for his college companion, and with whom he formed a friendship which lasted for long years, but which led subsequently to give way before the bitterness of philosophic rivalry. Schelling, though the younger man, was the older philosopher, and he had the honour of indoctrinating Hegel in the sublime mysteries of subjective idealism. Schelling continued his studies at Leipzig and at Jena, whither he had been attracted by the eloquence of Fichte, and whom he afterwards succeeded, on the removal of his master in 1798. His friend Hegel rejoined him at Jena, and wrought in conjunction with him at the Jena Zeitschrift, in promulgating their then common doctrine. Schelling published three works in 1795, ere he had completed his twentieth year.—Vom Ich als Princip der Philosophie (Of the Ego as the Principle of Philosophy); Philosophische Briefe über Dogmatismus und Criticismus (Philosophical Letters on Dogmatism and Criticism); Ueber die Möglichkeit einer Form der Philosophie überhaupt (On the Possibility of a form of Philosophy in general). These works were followed by others in quick succession—Abhandlungen zur Erläuterung des Idealismus der Wissenschaftstheorie (Dissertations on the Idealism of the Theory of Science) appeared in 1796-97; Ideen zu einer Philosophie der Natur (Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature) 1797, second edition 1803; Von der Weltseele (On the Soul of the World) 1798, third edition 1809; Erster Entwurf eines Systems der Naturphilosophie (First Sketch of a System of the Philosophy of Nature) 1799; Einleitung zu seinem Entwurf eines Systems, &c. (Introduction to his Sketch of a System, &c.) 1799. When we reflect that those works were all written within the period of five years, we will not be inclined to find fault with the youthful philosopher for being too sluggish in the philosophic cause which he had espoused. The years which immediately preceded and which immediately succeeded the commencement of the century, constitute the most interesting epoch in the history of German philosophy. In 1802 Schelling graduated in medicine, and the following year quitted Jena, the principal centre of Protestant thought, for the Catholic university of Würzburg. He left Hegel to fill his shoes at the University of Jena, when this great dialectician began to forge a system of resolute logic, so wild and strange, that Germany, that land of chimeras, might have crowned him as the high priest of intellectual legerdemain. (See Hegel.) In 1807 Schelling was appointed Member of the Academy of Sciences of Munich, and subsequently perpetual secretary of the Academy of the Fine Arts. Schelling continued still to ply his pen with untiring energy. For the next fifteen years he kept the printing-presses of Germany almost in constant operation, promulgating his transcendental philosophy. Hegel had now caught the ear of the German public with his "Logische Idee," and Schelling, in partial disgust, allowed the favourite to have his day. From 1815 till the day of his death, he wrote nothing of any importance. The following is a list of his works during this second period of his philosophic activity:—Zeitschrift für die Speculative Physik, containing a brief account of his system, under the title of Darstellung meines Systems der Philosophie, 2 vols., 1800-1803; System des Transcendentalen Idealismus (System of Transcendental Idealism) 1800, translated into French by Grimblot, Paris, 1842; Brumé, a dialogue on the divine and natural principle of things, 1802, in French, by Husson, Paris, 1845; Neue Zeitschrift, 1803; Vorlesungen über die Methode des Akademischen Studiums (Lectures upon the Method of Academical Studies), 1803, new edition, 1813; Philosophie und Religion, 1804; Apho... Schelling, *Riemen zur Einleitung in die Naturphilosophie* (Aphorisms for an Introduction to the Philosophy of Nature) 1806; *Über das Verhältniss des Realen und Idealen in der Natur* (On the Relation of the Real and the Ideal in Nature) 1806; *Darlegung des wahren Verhältnisses der Naturphilosophie zu der verbesserten Fichteschen Lehre* (Exposition of the true relation of the Philosophy of Nature to the reformed doctrine of Fichte) 1806; *Über das Verhältniss der bildenden Künste zu der Natur* (Concerning the Relation of the Arts of Design to Nature) 1807; *Philosophische Untersuchungen über das Wesen der Menschlichen Freiheit* (Philosophical Researches on the Essence of Human Liberty) 1809; A reply to the accusations of Jacobi, entitled, *Denkmal der Schrift von den Göttlichen Dingen*, 1812; and *Die Gottheiten von Samothrace* (The Divinities of Samothrace) 1815. With the exception of his first lecture at Berlin in 1841 (*Erste Vorlesung in Berlin*), this work on the Divinities of Samothrace closed his published writings. In 1820 he retired to Erlangen, where he was ennobled by the King of Bavaria. On the creation of the University of Munich he was appointed to the chair of philosophy. He was afterwards chosen Chevalier of the Legion of Honour, and foreign associate of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences of France. From 1841, when he was chosen professor in the University of Berlin, he elaborated in silence a new species of philosophy, which was to bear the name of the positive philosophy. This system he had not matured, or at least he had not given it to the public, when he died at Ragaz, in Switzerland, whither he had gone for the benefit of his health, in August 1854, at the age of seventy-nine.

Schelling never produced a definite system, and pursued his studies, as Hegel phrased it, "in the presence of the public." But it is necessary to add, that the public of Germany followed him with a lively interest, and the young and ardent writer exercised over it a very powerful influence. If he failed to expound his philosophy with a systematic precision, if he presented it under various guises, returning continually upon his former work, he in no case proved false to his own genius, and from first to last his works breathe out the same sublime spirit. When, in 1841, he made his first appearance before the public of Berlin, he could tell them, in his first lecture, without any sacrifice of truth, that he did not disavow the speculations of his youth. A man of genius cannot change his ideas as he changes his will; he is under their empire more than they are under his; his ideas belong to him in a more emphatic sense than he can be said to possess his ideas. Schelling is a philosopher in the largest sense of that term; and had he kept the intellectual rein more closely upon his Pegasus, he would doubtless have ranked with those sublime philosophers of which Plato is the acknowledged chief. He is a philosopher among poets, and a poet among philosophers. As he has frequently said, every system of philosophy, when it is pushed to the last source of intellectual inspiration, in its attempt to represent the physical and moral world, is not a poem in the highest sense of that word, does not adequately represent the universe, that vast and sublime poem, of which all philosophies, and all poems alike, are but the faint resemblances and imperfect imitations. His philosophical genius developed itself under the influence of the school of Kant and of Fichte, but he gave early indications of a tendency to soar over the heads of his instructors. He drank deeply at the fountain of the Neo-Platonists, of Giordano Bruno, and particularly of Spinoza; and arose from the draught, strong as a giant refreshed with wine, to weave the endless threads of his wandering thoughts into a web of idealistic pantheism.

The genuine philosophy of Schelling places him historically between Fichte and Hegel. It has never been presented by himself in a systematic form: he has proceeded by adding fragment to fragment, without apparently heed-

ing whether these were mutually exclusive or not. To say the truth, his mind was more under the government of the imagination than it was under law to the harder elements of the intelligence. The pure intellect was seldom permitted to shape out any proposition without being dazzled by the fiery light which the imagination threw upon it; so that, when he faltered in his speculative course, he could not calmly survey his work by reason of the brilliant and blinding glow which was cast over it by this subtle and potent agent. After all, however, considering the region in which he chose to move, it mattered very little which faculty of the mind predominated, where all its faculties would have been at fault. Schelling's great error lay in permitting his mind to be bewildered in the pursuit of a vain phantom, which arose only to lure him on, and which allowed itself to be apparently grasped, only to destroy its pursuer. We shall here limit ourselves, in characterizing his philosophy, to point out in a very general manner its leading thoughts and its principal results.

The ruling idea of Schelling's philosophy is the identity of the Subject and Object of thought, of the Ego and the Non-ego, of the ideal and the real; an identity which Fichte had only presented as an ideal which the Ego should continually endeavour to realize. While Fichte accorded to ideas only a subjective value, Schelling attributed to them an objective meaning. This objective something which the Ego contemplated was not, however, according to Schelling, anything external to the Ego and independent of it; on the contrary, it was precisely within the sphere of the Ego where this subject-object was found. He identified thought with things, and things with thought. According to him, Reason is one, and human reason is identical with divine reason. The ideas of the divine intelligence realize themselves in being thought; things, again, are their reflection, or phenomenal expression. Human intelligence conceives, by its own laws, these divine ideas; and human thought is a faithful transcript of the divine dialectics which produced the universe. There is thus a pre-established harmony between our ideas and external objects, which are but identical copies of the same model. By the Intellectual Intuition (Anschauung) which enables the spectator to disrobe himself of his manhood, and temporarily to become a god, he rises above the region of the understanding, and identifies his reason with the divine. Thus the true philosophical method consists in casting aside reflection, by whose sluggish movement things had been taken for real existences, independent of the subject of thought, and rising into the genuine philosophical Intuition, by which thought and things are perceived to be one, even as human reason is identified with the absolute. To show how all things emanate from the absolute, is what Schelling calls the method of construction. Things are, according to this system, but the expression of the absolute reason, which necessitates the total indifference of subjective and objective. The absolute, by its tendency to objectify itself, moves forward by an expansive law, and out of the abundance of the natura naturans comes the whole variety of the natura naturata. Again, by its tendency to subjectify itself, it moves backward, as it were, and by a contractive excitement, draws the natura naturata back upon the natura naturans, when it becomes conscious of itself. The creation of the universe, in short, or the evolution of the absolute, is an act of eternal knowledge, and philosophy is the free reproduction in the reflective consciousness of this act of knowledge. Whoever, according to Schelling, cannot elevate himself to this Intellectual Intuition, or philosophic ecstacy, is entirely incapable of philosophy, and there is no true philosophy which does not recognize this as its genuine foundation. There is a speculative rapture, as there is a poetical enthusiasm, and philosophy is the most magnificent and the most sublime of poems.

The philosophy of the absolute, or of the All-one (die Alleinleibere), as it has been called, divides itself into transcendental idealism and the philosophy of nature. The whole is sometimes comprised under the general designation of the philosophy of nature, or absolute idealism. Absolute idealism thus includes relative idealism, or the philosophy of the ideal world; and the philosophy of nature, properly so called, comprises the philosophy of the visible world. The degrees of identical development of mind and of nature are called powers or potencies, and the potencies of these two parallel systems are absolutely contemporaneous. Transcendental philosophy and the philosophy of nature express two parallel series, each of which develops itself under the three potencies—of inorganic nature; of vegetable and animal life; and of conscious life. As the real world is divine knowledge, or the external manifestation which Deity has of his own thoughts, so philosophy is the knowledge of that knowledge. It is idealism in so far as it represents the ideal world; realism in so far as it represents the real world. But in so far as the sensible world is but an imperfect image of the intelligible world, it is thus far idealism in the most absolute sense. Besides the ideal world, as it exists in Deity, and as it is found by the intellectual intuition in the human reason, and the visible world or nature, its identical expression, there is yet another world to be recorded, the world of history. This third department, the product of our moral activity, and but another mode of active intuition, is the return of decayed ideas, so to speak, again to Deity, whose end is the final restoration of all things to the state of unity. Thus one sole and simple cause produces the real world and the world of ideas, of which the former exists without consciousness, and the latter exists with consciousness; and the same spirit which manifests itself in nature and in man, manifests itself also in history. It is by this third form of development that Deity realizes himself, and by it he brings back to himself the full and distinct consciousness of his own ideas. Deity, accordingly, manifests himself everywhere; in the mind, in nature, and in history. Absolute unity of substance lies beneath all the apparent forms of the world, as absolute unity of action works out all the developments of the universe. And thus the last threads of the web are woven, and man awakes to the discovery, that while he slept, he has been enveloped in a most subtle texture of idealistic pantheism. For a critical estimate of the system of Schelling, the reader is referred to the section on "Ontology," in the article Metaphysics, and especially to the masterly discussion of it in Sir William Hamilton's Discussions on Philosophy, p. 18.

The philosophy of Schelling has had numerous adherents, many of them men of the foremost reputation. Oken, Stéphens, and G. H. Schubert have applied its principles to the natural sciences and to psychology; while others have applied them to aesthetics, to mythology, to history, and to religion. What was destructible in the philosophy has now well-nigh died out in Germany, while what was vital and fresh in it will grow and increase for ever.

SCHENNICHTZ, the principal mining town in Hungary, stands between two hills, in the county of Homlú, 65 miles N. by W. of Buda. It is irregularly built on very uneven ground; and contains a mining academy, founded by Maria Theresa in 1760; and several other educational institutions. The gold and silver mines employ about 10,000 hands, and yield annually 300 lbs. Troy of gold, and 48,400 of silver. The population of the town itself is only 8500; but including the adjacent villages, it amounts to 20,000.