These two ideas are intrinsically connected. For all their rejection of the concept of knowledge among contemporary natural scientists, which they thought to be too narrow, the romantic natural scientists were convinced that human beings cannot grasp the ultimate elements of nature. They thought that human understanding was limited. According to C. J. H.
Windischmann, all natural phenomena are the effects of an activity, but this activity itself cannot be derived further: "The basic cause of this activity lies outside our range of vision, as we can only perceive it and nothing outside it." 25 All attempts to discover the primal ground of all
perceptions are therefore fruitless. For I. P. V. Troxler, the absolute which underlies nature and the spirit can be grasped neither by "Intellectual contemplation" nor by "belief in reason"; any word for the absolute is only a "sign" of it. 26 Similarly, J. W. Ritter wants to see the recognition
of an unsurpassable limit for human knowledge: "The highest a priori' deduction is a
misunderstanding, and human beings are not its master." 27 The Absolute escapes human reason.
According to H. C. Oersted, despite its original affinity with the infinite, human reason is "Imprisoned in the finite, and cannot completely tear itself away from it"; 28only a weak picture
of the whole is possible, and not a complete "explanation." The absolutizing of knowledge is said to have a negative effect on human beings and their relationship to reality: A. C. A. von
Eschenmayer fears a loss of faith and a sickness of the soul: "The desire to explain ever/thing and understand ever/thing has sullied the purity of our souls and taken heaven from our eyes." 29
But the romantic natural scientists are not content with the limitation of human understanding. In their view not only understanding, but faith, feeling, and dreams should contribute to grasping
nature. Troxler makes true knowledge arise only from intimation: "Only that knowledge is perfect and complete which springs from intimation and by reflection and experience can form itself into reason; and only that knowledge is living which takes up into itself the knowledge of reflection at all times and at the same time." 30 For many adherents of this movement faith is an
essential source of knowledge, and significant insights are communicated to human beings even in dreams. Feeling can also appear as enthusiasm or inspiration, but a communication of this psychological capacity and these states is always striven for by understanding. Romantic natural science is not a one-sided glorification of the irrational.
The conception of human knowledge is also matched by the literary form given to it: romantic natural science appears in unsystematic, fragmentary,
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aphoristic, and also poetical and mystical form. This form is chosen deliberately; it is meant to reflect what can be understood from nature. Novalis's demand that "the complete form of the sciences must be poetic" 31 takes up the antipathy toward systems widespread among the
romantics and follows their striving to combine science and art. According to Novalis, the tendency to investigate nature is often lost "with the discovery of a system," which is only sought "in order to be further raised above the labour of reflection." 32 Romantic natural science seeks to
avoid both empirical specialization and speculative systematization. In its implementation, however, the danger of formal constructions could not always be avoided.
The romantic conceptions of nature are based on the identity of nature and spirit; the laws of nature are supposed to correspond to spiritual laws. Von Eschenmayer "Deduction of the Living Organism" of 1799 is governed by the presupposition "that precisely this object comes under the necessary conditions of self-consciousness." 33 For Troxler the correspondence between nature
and spirit follows from the fundamental "animation" of nature:
Only because a life ensouls and gives body to the universe do the norms which we find in the Spirit correspond to the forms which are evident to the senses; therefore the laws in our
intelligence are the same as the forces in nature and what is manifested to the senses is the same as what is expressed by objects. 34
Görres saw the Spirit as being composed of three potencies, each potency in turn manifesting itself under a positive and a negative aspect: reason, imagination, and motive power are the positive series; and understanding, sense, and excitability the negative series. All can be found again in nature. Reason appears in nature as the sun (positive), understanding as gravity
(negative), imagination as electricity (positive), sense as magnetism (negative), motive power as atmosphere (positive), and finally the excitability as fuel (negative). 35 The fact that nature and
spirit are identical also increases the possibilities of self-knowledge. To the assertion that matter shows its true nature in heating and in the process of fusion, Ritter adds the conclusion: "So also it is with us. The warmer we are, the more we can understand and comprehend; we thaw out." 36
For the romantics, self-knowledge and knowledge of nature are inseparable; each sphere heightens the other. So H. Steffens thinks: "Do you want to investigate nature? Then cast a glance inwards and in the stages of spiritual formation it may be granted to you to see the stages of natural development. Do you want to know yourself? Investigate nature and your actions are those of the Spirit there." 37
Various scientists begin from an intrinsic relationship between mathematics and nature and refute the supposed hostility of romantic natural science to mathematics. L. Oken sees mathematics as the spiritual expression of what is manifested corporeally in nature: "If we know the main sections, the basic actions, the central pillar of mathesis in number and quality, so we know for certain that the same number and quality of basic actions, main sections, must recur in nature." 38
As elements of "mathesis" on the first level Oken mentions line, circle, and ellipse; as elements of the second level, parabola, hyperbola, and oval; as elements of the third stage, cone, sphere, and synthesis. In nature the phenomena of time and space, the basic forces and the elements, and the three spheres of nature are supposed to correspond to these three stages.
The leading idea is the unity of nature. As in a number of other items, here too naïve views of nature and the romantic concept of nature correspond. The natural and artificial systems and encyclopedic overall accounts of nature from the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth are attempts to give a general account of nature on an empirical basis. Von Humboldt with his "Kosmos" also takes this line. According to the romantic view, the multiplicity of natural phenomena and the difference between inorganic and organic nature cannot conceal the connection and the unity of nature. The deduction of natural phenomena from a metaphysical basis, derivation from vegetable or organic categories, and attribution to
mathematical principles are all different approaches to a contemplation of nature as a whole. Novalis calls for the investigation of inner connections as opposed to the isolating knowledge of the natural sciences: "In physics the phenomena have long been torn from their context and their mutual relations are not pursued. Any phenomenon is a link in an incalculable chain -- which understands all phenomena as links." 39 Oken compares the essential task of science to nature
thus: "just as nature, originally torn apart, attempts to gather itself together again by bringing together the individual members." 40 The mathematical foundation provides evidence for a unity
of nature that is not seen or striven for by contemporary science but is even destroyed by it. For Ritter, too, the knowledge of the unity of nature is also the highest goal of the study of nature. "Anyone who finds in infinite nature nothing but one whole, one complete poem, in whose every word, every syllable, the harmony of the whole rings out and nothing destroys it, has won the highest prize of all," 41 and similarly in his researches G. H. Schubert is guided above all by the
link between natural phenomena:
The history of nature has to do not just with individual, finite, imminently perishable being, but with an imperishable basis of all that can be seen, which
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unites it all and gives it soul. It teaches a love which loves in all things, a universal soul which sets everything, even that which is most remote and apart, in a living interplay that gives to all that can be seen, from the firmament of heaven to the ephemeral insect, one rhythm of time and law of life. 42
Polarity is contrasted with unity, difference with identity. In nature a conflict of opposed principles and powers and manifold forms of its communication are recognized in accordance with the dualism of nature and spirit or, in the human consciousness, of sense perception and understanding. Throughout nature the formal principle of thesis-antithesis or dualism and the overcoming of it is observed. In principle the polar character of nature is derived from the dualism of forces of attraction and repulsion; nature with the wealth of its phenomena is said to have come into being from its conflict and the results of its mediation. F. von Baader
movement into nature and makes possible the production of phenomena: "The great lever of nature would remain in eternal rest, i.e. in the O of its action and reality, unless something external, permeating it, from within, brought it into play, and supported it in itself through a reciprocally divided predominance of one action of its forces over the others." 43 Baader's
specific position over against romantic natural science and speculative natural philosophy is also to be understood on this basis. For Oken, polarity and constant mediation are indisputable: "At first glance it emerges that earth and air are opposed and that water forms their indifference, similarly metal and sulphur, whose indifference is salt, and thus finally coral and plants, whose supreme crown is the animal world." 44 Ritter derives this fundamental polarity of nature from its
original activity:
A proof of the absolute polarity in nature. Nature is an action, and only to this degree is it nature. Now action calls for multiplicity, for only in that way does an action come into being, and with multiplicity action also disappears. Thus every action presupposes difference. But this is contrast, polarity, and as nature is only where action is, so polarity, too, must be everywhere. 45
Steffens stresses the painful yet necessary fundamental polarity of nature: "all things of the world oppose one another in compulsory tension." 46
Analogy, series, potency, and metamorphosis play a major role alongside identity and difference; they are valid for all spheres of nature and even individual natural phenomena. Oken associates earth and metal, air and sulphur, water and salt; Steffens describes the attractiveness of nitrogen to oxygen in plants as the "hidden beast." 47Görres draws analogies in two directions when he
not only observes the spiritual in nature but also pursues the natural into the Spirit: "Therefore what is reason in our
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personality is the sun in nature outside; what is idea there is light here; the sun thinks in light, reason shines in the idea, and shines and sparkles around itself." 48 Even philosophical positions
can be understood as analogues of natural phenomena and regularities; Görres describes Fichte's idealism as "leaven" and Schelling's absolute idealism as "atmosphere." 49 In addition to many
simple analogies, above all in Ritter there are double and triple analogies. So, for example, he says, "The brain of plants is the earth." 50 Or, "The whole race of cats is the human race and
human beings are merely the most noble cats, as it were their sun." Or, "The worms seem to be the maggots of land vegetation, and the amphibia those of water vegetation. Here the earth itself is the animal." 51 The nature and function of romantic natural analogies will have to be
investigated in even more detail in the future and compared with the function of analogies in the empirical natural sciences. Life has towering significance: often the proofs of the unity of nature are based on a transference of organic categories to the inorganic. Nature is to reach its
consummation in the organic, and the world of corporeal manifestations make contact with the world of the spirit; the organism is to reflect the essence of nature and make a decisive
contribution to physical, chemical, and geological phenomena.
For the romantic philosophers the phenomena of nature are in a hierarchical order. Series,
potency, and metamorphosis are expressions for this thinking in terms of orders. The gradation of the basic principles produces the multiplicity of phenomena and forces. Ideal genesis determines the ideas, and not a real descent; but the boundaries are not always observed clearly enough. Ritter regards the "spherical" as a potency of iron; from this it follows for him that the earth is "such a potentiated iron," and moreover any solar system is "a higher chemical system." It is
important to recognize the "affinity," the "transitions" of the planets. 52 The earth and metals that
Oken uses in analogies, or air and sulphur, or water and salt, each belong in a series: "but only in a series which runs through a number of stages; so the earths are only debased metals, and the latter elevated earths; so is the air at a lower level, and salt is water at a higher level." 53 The
other natural substances are derived from the earth as the principle of the corporeal world; they came into being by metamorphosis from it. Oken explicitly rejects the conception of a real change: "To say that the earth and metal have been elevated to coral conveys as little as to say that the earth as such has really changed into coral, when he asserts above that it has become metal, or air has become sulphur . . . all is to be taken in a philosophical sense." 54 For Oken,
higher forms of nature too can undergo metamorphosis and are interrelated as potencies: the insect is "the human eye still hovering free," the snail "his separated hand," and the bird "his ear in the making." 55
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Troxler formulates a general natural philosophical presupposition for the principle of potency: "The eternal is a spontaneous potency and the infinite is the independent substance of the living from which accidents emerge into time only in the dynamism in which the substance limits the potency, and the attributes rise up into space only in the organism in which the potency limits the substance." 56 Steffens, who speaks of a "theory of evolution," regards the digestion of animals as
a "depotentiated digestion of plants" and from this hierarchical analogy between vegetable and animal processing of food it follows for him that "the animals extract the animal in plants, and therefore we understand why the herbivorous animals, when they are transformed into
carnivorous animals, increase in strength and animal energy, and meat-eating animals decrease when they eat grass." 57 Novalis also puts particular stress on the applicability of the concept of
potency in mineralogy: stones in potencies--fossils of different speciesstones differing by degree.
58
In principle, in his view science should seek "the degree of vegetability, animality, minerality."
59
Series, metamorphosis, and potency are connected with the analogy; like this, however, they also appear in empirical natural science.