But it was the processes of nature, not the career of humanity, that absorbed the best energies of Schelling, and the elaboration of a philosophical idea of organic evolution was the prominent feature of his speculation.

His influence--and it was wide, reaching even scientific biologists--lay chiefly in diffusing this idea, and he thus contributed to the formation of a theory which was afterwards to place the idea of Progress on a more imposing base.
[Footnote: Schelling's views notoriously varied at various stages of his career.

In his System of Transcendental Idealism (1800) he distinguished three historical periods, in the first of which the Absolute reveals itself as Fate, in the second as Nature, in the third as Providence, and asserted that we are still living in the second, which began with the expansion of Rome (Werke, i.

3, p.

603).