The principal writings of this period are:—“_Exposition of my System of Philosophy_” (Journal for Speculative Physics, ii. 2); the second edition, with additions, of the “_Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature_” 1803; the dialogue, “_Bruno, or concerning the Divine and the Natural Principle of Things_” 1802; “_Lectures on the Method of Academical Study_,” 1803; three numbers of a “_New Journal for Speculative Physics_,” 1802-3. The characteristic of the new standpoint of Schelling, to which we now arrive, is perfectly exhibited in the definition of reason, which he places at the head of the first of the above-named writings; I give to reason the name absolute, or the reason in so far as it is conceived as the total _indifference of the subjective and the objective_. To think of reason is demanded of every man; to think of it as absolute, and thus to reach the standpoint which I require, every thing must be abstracted from the thinking subject. To him who makes this abstraction, reason immediately ceases to be something subjective, as most men represent it; neither can it be conceived as something objective, since an objective, or that which is thought, is only possible in opposition to that which thinks. We thus rise through this abstraction to the reality of things (_zum wahren an-sich_), which reality is precisely in the indifference point of the subjective and the objective. The standpoint of philosophy is the standpoint of reason; its knowledge is a knowledge of things as they are in themselves, _i. e._ as they are in the reason. It is the nature of philosophy to destroy every distinction which the imagination has mingled with the thinking, and to see in things only that through which they express the absolute reason, not regarding in them that which is simply an object for that reflection which expends itself on the laws of mechanism and in time. Besides reason there is nothing, and in it is every thing. Reason is the absolute. All objections to this principle can only arise from the fact, that men are in the habit of looking at things not as they are in reason, but as they appear. Every thing which is, is in essence like the reason, and is one with it. It is not the reason which posits something external to itself, but only the false use of reason, which is connected with the incapacity of forgetting the subjective in itself. The reason is absolutely _one_ and like itself. The highest law for the being of reason, and since there is nothing besides reason, the highest law for all being, is the law of identity. Between subject and object therefore—since it is one and the same absolute identity which displays itself in both—there can be no difference except a _quantitative_ difference (a difference of more or less), so that nothing is either simple object or simple subject, but in all things subject and object are united, this union being in different proportions, so that sometimes the subject and sometimes the object has the preponderance.