[Footnote 1:  Schelling terms his philosophy of nature dynamic atomism, since it posits pure intensities as the simple (atoms), from which qualities are to be explained.]

Schelling’s philosophy of nature[1] proposes to itself three chief problems:  the construction of general, indeterminate, homogeneous matter, with differences in density alone, of determinate, qualitatively differentiated matter and its phenomena of motion or the dynamical process, and of the organic process.  For each of these departments of nature an original force in universal nature is assumed—­gravity, light, and their copula, universal life.  Gravity—­this does not mean that which as the force of attraction falls within the view of sensation, for it is the union of attraction and repulsion—­is the principle of corporeality, and produces in the visible world the different conditions of aggregation in solids, fluids, and gases.  Light—­this, too, is not to be confounded with actual light, of which it is the cause—­is the principle of the soul (from it proceeds all intelligence, it is a spiritual potency, the “first subject” in nature), and produces in the visible world the dynamical processes magnetism, electricity, and chemism.  The higher unity of gravity and light is the copula or life, the principle of the organic, of animated corporeality or the processes of growth and reproduction, irritability, and sensibility.

[Footnote 1:  This is contained in the following treatises:  Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature, 1797; On the World-soul, 1798; First Sketch of a System of the Philosophy of Nature, 1799; Universal Deduction of the Dynamical Process or the Categories of Physics (in the Zeitschrift fuer spekulative Physik) 1800.  In the above exposition, however, the modified philosophy of nature of the second period has also been taken into account.]

General matter or the filling of space, arises from the co-operation of three forces:  the centrifugal, which manifests itself as repulsion (first dimension), the centripetal, manifested as attraction (second dimension), and the synthesis of the two, manifested as gravity (third dimension).  These forces are raised by light to a higher potency, and then make their appearance as the causes of the dynamical process or of the specific differences of matter.  The linear function of magnetism is the condition of coherence; the surface force of electricity, the basis of the qualities perceivable by sense; the tri-dimensional force of the chemical process, in which the two former are united, produces the chemical qualities.  Galvanism forms the transition to living nature, in which through the operation of the “copula” these three dynamical categories are raised to organic categories.  To magnetism as the most general, and hence the lowest force, corresponds reproduction (the formative impulse, as nutrition, growth, and production, including the artistic impulse); electricity