Foreword 



that this essential dynamopsychism, by the very fact 

 that it is something concrete and conceivable and that 

 we can in a measure understand it, is no longer the 

 thing in itself, abstracted from all representation, which 

 is, as Kant finally proved, essentially inconceivable. 



We reply that the same objection can be raised 

 against all systems based on the distinction between the 

 divine essence of the universe and its phenomenal 

 manifestations. Schopenhauer thought to elude this 

 difficulty by making the Thing in Itself a * Will ' 

 unconscious of itself, having neither substratum nor cause 

 nor end, because it is ' outside the realm of pure reason.' 

 Thus deprived of all attributes the 'Will,' which knows 

 not what it wills, nor how, nor why it wills, nor even 

 the fact of its willing, is an abstraction as inconceivable 

 as the ' Thing in Itself/ 



Hartmann's Unconscious is more conceivable simply 

 because our understanding naturally, spontaneously, and 

 necessarily, attributes to the unconscious a 'concrete 

 substratum, and makes of it the very thing that we 

 here unequivocally advance an unconscious dynamo- 

 psychism. 



This dynamo-psychism also is, if we will have it 

 so, a * representation,' but it is the only means by which 

 we can understand ' the nature of things.' For a relative 

 intelligence to endeavour to understand the Absolute 

 is, we must always remember, to limit the Absolute. 



What does it matter that the thing in itself should be 

 inaccessible to us ? We can at least reach it under a 

 first limitation. Under the immeasurable variety of 

 transitory and phenomenal appearances which constitute 

 the physical, dynamic, and intellectual universe, there 

 is one essential, permanent, and real dynamo-psychism. 

 Its immanent activity is revealed to us in the immense 

 series of facts which evolution presents ; and Evolution 

 itself is, as we shall see, nothing else than the transition 

 from unconsciousness to consciousness. 



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