The “_Transcendental Idealism_” is the last work which Schelling wrote after the method of Fichte. In its principle he goes decidedly beyond the standpoint of Fichte. That which was with Fichte the inconceivable limit of the Ego, Schelling derives as a necessary duality, from the simple essence of the Ego. While Fichte had regarded the union of subject and object, only as an infinite progression towards that which ought to be, Schelling looked upon it as actually accomplished in a work of art. With Fichte God was apprehended only as the object of a moral faith, but with Schelling he was looked upon as the immediate object of the æsthetic intuition. This difference between the two could not long be concealed from Schelling. He was obliged to see that he no longer stood upon the basis of subjective idealism, but that his real position was that of objective idealism. If he had already gone beyond Fichte in setting the philosophy of nature and transcendental philosophy opposite to each other, it was perfectly consistent for him now to go one step farther, and, placing himself on the point of indifference between the two, make the identity of the ideal and the real, of thought and being, as his principle. This principle _Spinoza_ had already possessed before him. To this philosophy of identity Schelling now found himself peculiarly attracted. Instead of following Fichte’s method, he now availed himself of that of Spinoza, the mathematical, to which he ascribed the greatest evidence of proof.
III. THIRD PERIOD: PERIOD OF SPINOZISM, OR THE INDIFFERENCE OF THE IDEAL AND THE REAL.