Among those present were Jakob Burkhardt, Swiss cultural historian, Friedrich Engels, one of Karl Marx’s collaborators, and Russian philosopher Michael Bakunin. In a letter (December 14, 1841) to Emil Boesen, Kierkegaard wrote, “Schelling is lecturing to an extraordinary audience.”69 To Peter Johannes Spang, one of his teachers during Borgerdyds school days, he wrote:

Schelling has commenced, but amidst so much noise and bustle, whistling, and knocking on the windows by those who cannot get in the door, in such an overcrowded lecture hall, that one is almost tempted to give up listening to him if this is to continue. I happened to sit between notable people—Prof. Werder70 and Dr. Gruppe.71 Schelling himself is a most insignificant man to look at; he looks like a tax collector, but he did promise to assist science, and us with it, to the flowering it has long deserved, to the highest it can attain. This would be gratifying enough for an old man, but for a young man it is always problematical to become contemporary with that rare flower at such an early age.72 However, I have put my trust in Schelling and at the risk of my life I have the courage to hear him once more. It may very well blossom during the first lectures, and if so one might gladly risk one’s life.73

To Professor Sibbern, Kierkegaard wrote:

Schelling lectures to a select, numerous, and yet also an undique conflatum auditorium [audience blown together from everywhere]. During the first lectures it was almost a matter of risking one’s life to hear him. I have never in my life experienced such uncomfortable crowding—still, what would one not do to be able to hear Schelling? His main point is always that there are two philosophies, one positive and one negative. The negative is given, but not by Hegel, for Hegel’s is neither negative nor positive but a refined Spinozaism. The positive is yet to come.74

It was worth the risk—so thought Kierkegaard during the second lecture:

I am so happy to have heard Schelling’s second lecture—indescribably. I have been pining and thinking mournful thoughts long enough. The embryonic child of thought leapt for joy within me, as in Elizabeth,75 when he mentioned the word “actuality”76 in connection with the relation of philosophy to actuality. I remember almost every word he said after that. Here, perhaps, clarity can be achieved. This one word recalled all my philosophical pains and sufferings. —And so that she, too, might share my joy, how willingly I would return to her, how eagerly I would coax myself to believe that this is the right course. —Oh, if only I could! —now I have put all my hope in Schelling. . . .77

As time went on, however, Kierkegaard’s estimate of Schelling’s lectures decreased. To Emil Boesen, he wrote January 16, 1842: “Schelling’s most recent lectures have not been of much significance.”78 On February 6, he wrote to Boesen: “I have completely given up on Schelling. I merely listen to him, write nothing down either there or at home.”79 To his brother Peter Christian, he wrote in February:

Dear Peter,

Schelling talks the most insufferable nonsense. If you want to get some idea of it, I must ask you—for your own punishment, even though voluntarily assumed—to submit yourself to the following experiment. Imagine Pastor R[othe]’s80 harebrained philosophy, his whole accidental character in the scholarly world; imagine in addition the late Pastor Hornsyld’s81 persistence in the betrayal of learning; imagine these combined and then add the insolence in which no philosopher has outdone Schelling; keep all this vividly in your poor brain, and then walk out to the workhouse in Our Savior’s parish or to the work halls at Ladegaarden,82 and you will have an idea of the Schelling philosophy and of the circumstances in which it is presented. To make matters worse, he has now gotten the idea of lecturing longer than is customary, and therefore I have gotten the idea that I will not attend the lectures as long as I otherwise would have. Question: Whose idea is the better? —In other words, I have nothing more to do in Berlin. My time does not allow me to ingest drop by drop what I would hardly willingly open my mouth to swallow all at once. I am too old to attend lectures, just as Schelling is too old to give them. His whole doctrine of potencies83 betrays the highest degree of impotence.

I shall leave Berlin as soon as possible.