III. Thinking as the Instrument of Knowledge

Schelling says: “To know Nature means to create Nature.” If we take these words of this daring philosopher of Nature literally, we shall have to renounce for ever all hope of gaining knowledge of Nature. For Nature after all exists, and if we have to create it over again, we must know the principles according to which it has originated in the first instance. We should have to borrow from Nature as it exists the conditions of existence for the Nature which we are about to create. But this borrowing, which would have to precede the creating, would be a knowing of Nature, and would be this even if after the borrowing no creation at all were attempted. Only a kind of Nature which does not yet exist could be created without prior knowledge.