V
67 V Still at a time bordering between winter and spring, a beautiful day was chosen to climb up to the old chapel in the wood. On the way Clara recounted: the fishermen told her yesterday that the lake was showing signs of spring, the irregular rise and fall of the water was dying down, and even the waterfowl that go away over winter had been seen. I’ve longed to see the lake all winter, she continued. We spoke so much and so often about the spirit life and then the picture of the lake would always stand before my eyes. The ancients certainly didn’t set the seat of the blessed on islands surrounded by a lake for nothing. This line of thought seems very natural, the doctor said. The river is more a picture of real life [des wirklichen Lebens]: it draws our imagination along with it into unrestricted bounds, as into a distant future. The lake is a picture of the past, of eternal peace, and of isolation [Abgeschlossenheit].1 I confess, she continued, that your talks nevertheless still left me with an unsatisfied wish. And what is that? I asked. Should I say? she answered. You spoke so often about places and areas in the invisible realm, and also about places midway between our visible world and the one that is truly invisible; but then you also spoke about a place that was the highest of all, to which only a very few go immediately after death. Now, at the very least, we would so much like to get some idea about this place, the true and actual heaven; or where else should the passion come from that seems to be able to open up to us to some extent and with which everything, albeit still having so very much the appearance of illusion, is received? [93] And even your calling that abode a “place” is very puzzling. Can spirits, too, be in a place? Indeed, I said, this is one of the most puzzling things of all, for it’s based on the mysteriousness of place and space in general, and now I just can’t refrain from really putting down some of the foundations. Consider the matter in this way: that since, like all created beings, we can’t be eternally for ourselves, we must therefore be conceived within another that embraces all the other beings, too. And now, let’s call this the place, just as so many others have also said that God Himself is the spirits’ heaven and place, or that His magnificence is. 68 SCHELLING At least, she said, after your speeches the idea that some people have of looking for their future abode or even heaven in one of the countless stars up above, comes across to me as an almost childish impression.2 And yet, I said, wouldn’t greater certainty about the starry world beyond our Earth also help us more than a little in these higher questions, for, even here, surely our thoughts can rise up to the invisible only from the visible; and how can we hope to determine anything about the spirit world if we don’t yet know what the limits of the visible one are? It isn’t clear to me that this conclusion holds, the doctor said; for although it’s important for us to know the limits of things that merge into each other, for things that are complete opposites it seems to be of no account. But, I answered, I’ve often doubted just this, and at this very moment I doubt yet again that nature and the spirit world really are as opposed as their concepts would lead us to believe. For, first and foremost, the spirit world is at least just as real a world as this visible one here is; or should we consider the spirit world to be one that exists only in our heads? By no means, he answered. Certainly, most people usually consider the spiritual to be less real than the corporeal, I said. And, yet, even this [94] subordinated nature, whose witnesses and observers we are, exhibits so much that is spiritual and that is itself no less real and physical than anything to which we usually so refer. And we have even stated that after death the spiritual is followed by something physical. Certainly, he said. So, I continued, mustn’t that other, or spiritual, world be in its own...
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