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Clara or On Nature’s Connection to the Spirit World – F W J Schelling

Now then, he asked, what do you understand by the very concept of nature? Without doubt you think of it as an essentially creative force?

Above all, she said.

A force, then, that in its essence is concerned only with creation?

Of course, she answered.

Which, therefore, can never in itself be concerned with destruction?

Why not? she countered. For it seems that the very force that creates is also that which destroys.

I asked, he responded, whether that force in itself would ever be concerned with destruction and I consider this to be impossible. Rather, as long as the creative force is unconstricted and free, it will carry on satisfying its pure pleasure in creating. However, if it came up against a resistant material that let itself be formed only up to a certain point and that therefore limited the force's pleasure in creating, the force would abandon or even intentionally destroy this material just to carry on enjoying its pleasure in creating, even if it also knew that with the next creation it would come up against the same point again.

That's likely, she said in reply.

Now then, he continued, the basis on which the creative force becomes a destructive one doesn't lie in the creative force itself, and, thus, nor does the basis of destruction either, but lies in something foreign, in something that has come into it, in a restriction or limitation.

Certainly, she answered.