A NEW PHASE OF GERMAN THOUGHT. i 57 



its disdainful pity, mingled with irony, upon the unfortunates cheated 

 with the shows of happiness as upon those who yield to despair when, 

 at last, the soul, bracing its strength to fight this fatality, discerns a 

 plain escape and issue from this hell these again are but facts which 

 philosophy, still calm and impassive, verifies and records, and its work 

 is done. 



We readily admit that there is a grandeur in these ideas of hu- 

 manity and philosophy. But the critic's duty is, to ascertain whether 

 they are correct, and do not merely create still a new illusion to add 

 to those the world has hitherto been cradled in one equally empty 

 with the rest, and only perhaps differing from them by the disadvan- 

 tage of being far less cheerful and helpful to humanity. As it relates 

 to the world's progress, all these systems may be reduced to two 

 classes : on the one side, those which hold up the universe as tending 

 toward a designed aim, and guided by an intelligent principle toward 

 a providential end, such as the realization of happiness for the indi- 

 vidual, or a certain perfection of humanity, or, still more generally, 

 some kind of cosmic condition: on the other side must be placed all 

 those systems according to which the world is not moving toward a 

 foreseen and chosen end, and is ruled only by the force of things, in- 

 telligence itself, wherever it is manifested, being nothing more than a 

 resultant and a particular phenomenon. According to these latter sys- 

 tems, if humanity and our world were to come to an end, these results 

 would only flow from the necessary relations between the facts of the 

 universe; and these systems, if they are pantheistic ones, can find a 

 very clear exj:>ression for their doctrine in the formula that the occur- 

 rences of the universe have as their principle not a divine will, but 

 merely the eternal nature of God. 



Hartmann, who belongs, at several points, to the traditioned spir- 

 itualistic philosophy, displays a strong attachment to the idea of an 

 intelligence presiding over the destiny of the world. Although a 

 pantheist, he continually reasons as a mere deist, a contradiction which 

 seems to us to be the source of most of his errors. His God, who is 

 supremely wise, omniscient, and prescient, but who is not omnipotent, 

 for he had not the power to prevent the production of this evil world, 

 ought a priori to govern every thing toward the best end. Now, this 

 end cannot be individual happiness, for the individual dies, and Hart- 

 mann does not admit the survival of personality. It cannot be the 

 perfection of the race, for humanity is doomed to perish whenever the 

 burnt-out sun shall cease to furnish its conditions of existence. Must 

 the end proposed by Providence be sought for in the destiny of our 

 world itself? But modern science teaches us that the world also is 

 doomed to inevitable destruction. Thus, from the necessity of reject- 

 ing all these positive ends, nothing remained but to seek the solution 

 of the problem in a purely negative end, and this is what Hartmann, 

 following Schopenhauer, has undertaken. The best possible end for 



