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Philosophical Inquiries into the Nature of Human Freedom – F W J Schelling

Goodness without effective selfhood is itself an ineffective goodness. The same thing which becomes evil through creature-will (if it isolates itself completely, to exist for itself) is in itself good, so long, that is, as it remains enwrapped in goodness and in the depths.

Only selfhood which has been overcome, that means brought back from activity to potentiality, is good; and as potential, having been overcome by the good it remains ever-more in the good.

If there were in the body no source of coldness, warmth could not be felt. It is impossible to think of an attracting or a repelling force in itself, for on what can the repelling force operate if the attracting one does not give it an object, or on what can attraction operate if it does not contain within it a repellent?

Hence it is quite correct to say dialectically: Good and evil are the same, only regarded from different aspects; or evil in itself, that is regarded at the root of its identity, is goodness; just as goodness, on the other hand, regarded in its division or non-identity, is evil.

For this reason the statement is also quite correct that whoever has no material or force for evil in himself is also impotent for good, of which we have seen sufficient examples in our time.

 The passions against which our negative morality is at war are forces each of which has a common root with its corresponding virtue. The soul of all hatred is love, and in the most violent anger there is seen nothing but the quietude which was attacked and aroused in the innermost center. In their proper measure and organic equilibrium, the passions are the very strength of virtue itself and its immediate tools.