A NEW PHASE OF GERMAN THOUGHT. 311 



A NEW PHASE OF GERMAN THOUGHT. 

 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. 



FROM THE FRENCH OF LEON DTJMONT. 

 II. 



HARTMANN adopts the following words as the title of his prin- 

 cipal work: "Speculative results according to the inductive 

 method of the natural sciences." If we were to trust to these words, 

 we might suppose that the author's system takes an essentially scien- 

 tific form, and relies exclusively on the observation and analysis of 

 facts. But the reading of a very few chapters soon leaves quite an 

 opposite impression. Although Hartmann gives proof of abundant 

 acquisitions in physics and physiology, he puts himself completely at 

 odds with the naturalist school, and, soaring away at once, launches 

 into the metaphysical regions haunted by Schelling and Schlegel. He 

 begins, it is true, by setting forth quite a number of facts belonging 

 to the domain of the natural sciences, but he follows with the imme- 

 diate declaration that such facts can only be explained by a cause of 

 the supernatural order. Now, to take any fact whatever, and en- 

 deavor to show that it is not a result of physical conditions, but has 

 its cause in a spiritual principle, intelligent and distinct from its real- 

 ity, may not, we suppose, be necessarily false, but we certainly cannot 

 recognize, in such a procedure, " the inductive method of the natural 

 sciences." 



The principle of final causes is the starting-point of the system. In 

 vain Bacon, Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, have successively combated it ; in 

 vain Darwin has given it its death-blow, by the proof that every thing 

 heretofore conceived as a final cause in the organic world might be 

 hypothetically, if not by demonstration, explained as a result; in 

 Hartmann's teaching, the idea of finality once more takes a place per- 

 Iiaps as high as in that of ancient philosophic systems. He says, the 

 causes of a fact are necessarily either material or spiritual there is 

 no middle way ; therefore, when material circumstances fail to explain 

 a fact sufficiently, we must resort to the admission of a spiritual cause. 

 Now, when the mind acts, there is always a will joined with an idea, 

 a force tending to the realization of an end conceived ; in a word, there 

 is always a final cause. Therefore, to prove the existence of a provi- 

 dential principle, it is enough to show that certain facts cannot possi- 

 bly be reduced to material conditions. 



This doctrine may be thus stated : Whatever we have not yet suc- 

 ceeded in grasping by observation is of a spiritual nature, or, what- 

 ever in the production of a fact has hitherto eluded our experimental 

 research, must be a priori a principle like the human intellect. Is not 



