We do not live in vision; our knowledge is piecework, that is, it must be produced piece by piece in a fragmentary way, with divisions and gradations… . In the external world everyone sees more or less the same thing, and yet not everyone can express it. In order to complete itself, each thing runs through certain moments - a series of processes following one another, in which the later always involves the earlier, brings each thing to maturity.

— F.W.J. Schelling, The Ages of the World, 1815