Considering Herman Melville's keen interest in European philosophy, it seems highly probable that, at one point, he must have become acquainted with the central ideas of the German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling as well. Even though no solid evidence of his knowledge of Schelling's philosophy can be given, there are several instances in Melville's life that at least suggest this may have been the case. While on his trip to Europe in 1849, for example, he made friends with George J. Adler and Dr. Franklin Taylor, two experts on German literature and philosophy. Their encounter led to a number of nights filled with long conversations on the subject of German Idealism—a pastime Melville himself referred to as “riding on the German horse.”

On October 22 of the same year, moreover, he states in his journal that “[w]e had an extraordinary time & did not break up after two in the morning. We talked metaphysics continually, & Hegel, Schlegel, Kant &c were discussed under the influence of whiskey.” That Schelling might also have been a subject of these intense discussions, seems very likely given that he was still giving lectures in Berlin until 1845 and, in addition, was one of the most renowned and influential philosophers in Germany during that time. Furthermore, it is known that Melville possessed an edition of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Biographia Literaria, which is not only substantially shaped by Schelling's thoughts but also mentions the German philosopher explicitly as one of Coleridge's main influences.

Apart from these biographical instances, however, it is Melville's own literary work which most clearly indicates an intellectual affinity between these two thinkers, if not a clear Schellingian influence on Melville. What is certain is, as Sanford E. Marovitz observes, that there are noticeable “correspondences between Schelling's Of Human Freedom (1809) and Moby- Dick…. Not only elements of the thought but at times even the images are similar.” One of these corresponding images, I am going to argue in this paper, is what Melville calls “the ungraspable phantom of life”7 and what Schelling terms “the indivisible remainder.”