at the destruction of Hedonism, by a proof that happiness, the end postulated by the Hedonist, is an illusion, and can no more be reached by man than the horizon by the traveller. The shafts from the Pessimist's bow fly wide of the thinker who has never set this supreme value upon happiness, who cannot look upon his true self as 'a stream of feelings' demanding a state of feeling as the end (Endzweck), and who is content to pursue a line of conduct laid down in accordance with principles in which no regard whatever is paid to the probable resultant in pain or pleasure of the course of action. It is for the Hedonist and Utilitarian to look to his defence. Kant finds for us 'the idea that our existence has a different and far nobler end, for which, and not for happiness, reason is properly intended, and which must therefore be regarded as the supreme condition to which the private ends of man must for the most part be postponed.' In connexion with Schopenhauer's Essays we may briefly note two points; and first his refusal to admit that suicide is a legitimate mode of escape from the pains of existence. It is not so, because in self-destruction is involved an affirmation of the will-to-live, a denial of which is the first duty of man. To most men, whether philosophers or men of the world, it would appear more admirable and infinitely less selfish to make whatever affirmation of the will suicide involved and the only objection to it by hypothesis consists in this affirmation-bidding farewell in Byron's phrase,

'I have not loved the world, nor the world me,

But let us part fair foes

than to insist upon wandering up and down its highways, bemoaning and magnifying in unseemly publicity the petty disappointments and aches of a mortal's lot. Contrast with this the spirit that inspires the volunteers of the 'forlorn hope,' or in Spartan mood, caring not that the field is lost, makes good to the last an honest cause, of whose defenders, though unvictorious, it can at least be said, Es starben den Heldentod.'

To pass to the second point, an important section of the discussion, the possibility of fixing what has been called 'the eudemonistic unit' and of 'summing the series,' despite the extremely incomplete account given by modern psychology of the phenomena of desire' and the sources and character of pleasures and pains, we may arrive at certain clearly defined

1 Significant is the exception made in favour of suicide by starvation. 2 Barlow, Ultimatum of Pessimism, p. 14.

judgments. Any attempt to compare the intensity of two pleasures, not unlike in quality (leaving the time or duration estimate for the moment aside), will be found by most of us a difficult task. Accomplish it and you have a subjective judgment, which it is probable your next-door neighbour will reverse. Now add the difficulty of deciding between two pleasures absolutely unlike in quality, of a totally different order, such as, for example, the pleasure accompanying the reading of a favourite poet, and that of eating a favourite pudding. Add also the difficulty of estimating the value of unlike pleasures of very varied duration, and you get a problem highly complicated, and at the most only susceptible of subjective solution. But with this solution the end is by no means reached. You have but given, as a preliminary, their value to one set of symbols with which your calculation has to be worked out, and before proceeding to which you must go through the same process as regards 'pains,' and finally draw up an equation in which you will have achieved the feat of comparing heterogeneous mental conditions.' In brief, either a fixture of the' eudemonistic unit' or a 'summation of the series' preparatory to the mensuration proper is scientifically impossible.

Before passing on to Von Hartmann, the best known among Schopenhauer's successors, it might be well to mention the names of Bahnsen (whose Weltanschauung is styled 'Miserabilismus' by Hartmann) and Taubert. The first-named has carried the system to its (presumably) highest point in declaring that Von Hartmann, the discoverer of the three great hallucinations of mortal men, has himself fallen into an illusion, which consists in an indulgence of the hope that at last, far off, the suffering universe will reach rest in annihilation. Taubert, in excess of holy zeal, preaches the Evangelium of Pessimism. The Pessimist alone is the wise man, and holds the lamp of truth. By its aid he can do much to light up the gloomy and erring paths in which the ignorant and blind must suffer most.

Hartmann, by profession a soldier, claims for his philosophical work a merit rare, he thinks, in Germany-that it has a singleness of aim, the discovery of truth. And this because the author was not trammelled in its production by the traditions of a university chair, or by the desire to court favour with the authorities in whose hands lie the professorial appointments of the Fatherland. Like Schopenhauer, while writing attractively, he takes several ponderous volumes to 1 Hartmann says they are homogeneous, differing in quantity.

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expound his views, and, like him, opens with a reference to Kant (Unconscious mental representations'). An examination 2 of the movements and processes of organic life, says Hartmann, results in the conclusion from abundant evidence that a large number of mental processes, as in the case of instinctive actions, and the representation before the mind's eye of ideas not voluntarily summoned, are unconscious. Materialism fails to explain many actions purely instinctive, such as, for example, the migration of birds before a severe winter, or the fear betrayed by young birds, without any experience of the danger, at the sight of birds of prey. 'Instinct,' he says, which is the spring of such involuntary action, 'is the choice of means towards ends not consciously willed, and known only by a kind of clairvoyance ('Hellsehen '). In organic growth, in reflex actions, in spontaneous feelings and impulses, in emotions, in the sudden and often unaccountable passage from joy to depression, the same action of unconscious mental states behind consciousness is clearly evidenced. The presence of the Unconscious may be felt also in art and literature. Behind the artist whom we credit with original genius stands a power that determines his hand and eye, forcing him to write or paint or compose things which are of infinite import, but the force or truth of which he himself does not fully grasp. What then is this Unconscious? It is the unity of Wille and Vorstellung, and just as the 'Substance' of Spinoza is known through its attributes or modes of thought and extension, so through matter and consciousness is manifested the Unconscious. The relation of this Weltprincip to the world as we know it is thus explained. Physical science has proved matter to consist of atomic forces whose action is spontaneous, and may be (perhaps in absence of a better term) described as 'willing.' Wille and Vorstellung, then, as seen above, make up the totality of existence

1 'Vorstellungen zu haben, und sich ihrer doch nicht bewusst zu sein,' &c. (Kant, Anthropologie).

It ought to be noted that with Hartmann the extreme pessimistic conclusion, as set forth in Byron's verse,

'Count o'er the joys thine hours have seen,

Count o'er thy days from anguish free,
And know, whatever thou hast been,
'Tis something better not to be,'

-is but the foundation stone of his philosophical edifice. 'Die Philosophie selbst aber ist das namenlose Elend des Daseins—als zur Erscheinungkommen der Thorheit des Wollens-nur Durchgangsmoment der theoretische Entwickelung des Systems' (Die Philosophie des Unbewusstseins, Abschnitt C, Capitel xiii. 390).

3 Die Philosophie des Unbewusstseins, vol. ii. v. and passim.

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on both sides, that of mind as well as matter, whose identity is thus demonstrable. The single acts of volition on the part of the atoms composing matter are summed up in the Universal Will, which directs organic evolution through all its phases, up to the genesis of consciousness. It will afterwards be seen that the 'purpose' or 'intelligence' which Hartmann is compelled for the sake of the efficiency of his Weltprincip, to predicate of it, proves a fatal flaw in the conception of its pure unconsciousness. While the Unconscious remains strictly unconscious we need not greatly care to quarrel with it, nor with those who rest satisfied with the jugglery of names and are content to philosophize with the empty forms of metaphysical terminology. But when an intelligence, such as we only know exhibited in consciousness, is predicated of what we have been cajoled into believing was a perfectly harmless, unconscious, noumenal reality, and we are told that the 'Will' is directed by the 'Idea' towards its deliverance in consciousness, we must ask for ourselves indulgence in a logical scepticism. It is not, however, in any mood of sceptical reserve that we receive the explanation of the origin of consciousness itself, in the Von Hartmann system; that explanation cannot be fitly honoured in its reception, save by bewildered smiles. Consciousness, it seems, is the result of a shock of surprise experienced by the individual mind in the entry of a

sensation.

'Suddenly, upon the peace of the Unconscious with itself, organized matter breaks in, and impresses upon the astonished individual mind a conception which falls upon it, as it were from heaven, because it finds within itself no will for this idea, and for the first time the content of intuition is given from outside. The great revolution has taken place, the first step has been made to the redemption of the world, the idea is delivered from the will, in order to step against it in the future, as an independent might, so as to crush the power to which aforetime it was a slave.' 2

This is lucid and withal poetical, and cannot but interest the reader. The monism of Hartmann is preserved by the insistence upon the fact that although inorganic matter is due to the conflict between atomic forces, each a will, and consciousness to a similar conflict between the wills of organic individuals, all these will forces, atomic or otherwise, are but manifestations of one and the same principle. Like Schopen

1 The world is mere phenomena without reality. Were the unconscious to cease at any time to will the world, the play of intersecting activities of the unconscious world would cease also to exist.'

2 Abschnitt C, Capitel iii. 34, Band ii. (siebente Auflage).

hauer, Hartmann is no true discoverer in the unknown noumenal land. He finds it a desert barren of vegetation, save for the anthropomorphic flowers of his own fancy, which he has so skilfully transplanted from the garden of experience. In his anxiety to set his deity above consciousness Hartmann makes him unconscious. But is the Conscious in any sense upon a lower scale of being than the Unconscious? In their fatuous determination to avoid anthropomorphism in the conception of God, modern scientists of certain schools make desperate efforts to discredit consciousness, merely, apparently, because it is a human attribute, or, more probably, because it cannot be adequately explained without the hypotheses of religion or philosophy, which are their pet aversions. It seems little more satisfactory to make the Supreme Power unconscious than to call it 'a something not ourselves which makes for righteousness.' And if 'a something not ourselves which makes for righteousness,' why not God? But the scientist of the school mentioned is quite inexorable, and, while insisting on his close and certain relationship to the chimpanzee, will admit of none to an intelligent Creator. We shall not stay to attempt an elaborate refutation of the theory of the Unconscious. It is generally admitted by sound thinkers that unconscious processes of mind cannot be demonstrated, and that the whole argument built upon the supposed discovery of such is an elaborate and ingenious begging of the question.' It is enough to ask of the adherent of the Hartmann theory, if there be one, of the rise of consciousness, 'How does the ego come to know the non-ego, or how does the mind hitherto unconscious come to know the opposing matter?'

The resulting practical doctrines of the later Pessimism are not altogether those of Schopenhauer. The final purpose of consciousness is to retrace, according to Hartmann, the slow and painful steps by which the consummation was reached. The laborious striving of the Unconscious which has resulted in consciousness, the struggle upwards to the light, has achieved a sorrowful success. The risen sun of

consciousness has but served to illuminate this world of woe, and in the light of its garish day man sees the horror of its misery and unseemliness. In relying upon the empirical proof rather than the à priori demonstration of the essential wretchedness of the world, Hartmann differs from Schopenhauer. He abandons and disproves the doctrine of the negativity of pleasure, which we noticed, and asserts that 1 Sully's Pessimism, chaps. vii. and viii. p. 194.