From the Unconscious to the Conscious 



joys when he has attained consciousness of his essential 

 identity with a world in which evil reigns supreme ? 

 How should he not suffer in sympathy with the vast and 

 general pain ? 



How is it that he does not understand that the will 

 to live is a misfortune, and should be annulled by the 

 abdication of desire and by renunciation of the illusory 

 motives with which intelligence rocks itself to sleep, 

 in order to find a sufficient reason for living ? It is 

 only by attaining to this, that the reason for life and 

 suffering can be understood. 



The sufferings of animals are explained ' by the 

 fact that the will to live, finding absolutely nothing 

 beyond itself in the world of phenomena, and being a 

 famished will, must devour its own flesh.' For the 

 higher consciousness of man ' the value of life consists 

 entirely in learning not to desire it.' Existence is 

 nothing but a kind of aberration of which a better 

 knowledge of the world should cure us. 



3. VON HARTMANN S SYSTEMATISATION 



Von Hartmann has taken up Schopenhauer's thesis, 

 adding thereto certain data derived from the natural 

 sciences and psychology. 



Besides and above the causes admitted by the 

 mechanical concept of nature, he finds a superior principle 

 which he calls the Unconscious. The Unconscious 

 is that which is essential and Divine in the universe. 

 In it will and representation exist potentially. Every- 

 thing therefore that comes into realisation does so by 

 the will of the unconscious. 



In evolution the unconscious plays the primary part: 

 natural selection does not explain the origin of new 

 forms : it is but a means, one of the means by which the 

 unconscious attains its ends. 



196 



