670 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



with him, if we except certain smaller productions of 

 Schelling and Schleiermacher and the later popular 

 writings and addresses of Fichte. He has, moreover, 

 one point in common with Lotze : both had a large body 

 of reasoned speculation immediately before them in 

 which they could find suggestions varied and numerous. 

 But the study and contemplation of this great material 

 did not produce with Schopenhauer the same result as it 

 did in the mind of Lotze, who, in the Leibnizian spirit, 

 declared that " after such a long development of philo- 

 sophical thought, in which every possible point of view 

 had been discovered, forgotten, and discovered again, 

 there was no longer any merit of originality but only 

 that of accuracy." Schopenhauer was in this respect 

 not so modern and so modest. He started in a romantic 

 spirit and continued the idealistic tradition, believing 

 that through some intuition, similar to that of the artist, 

 an idea could be discovered which should unify thought 

 and solve the highest philosophical problem. Unlike 

 Lotze also he coined for his fundamental ideas definite 

 terms through which they have become popular in 

 subsequent literature. These terms are given in the 

 title of Schopenhauer's first and greatest work : ' The 

 World as Will and Idea.' 



By putting the Will, the active principle, in the 

 foreground, Schopenhauer gave expression to an idea 

 which was not foreign to his forerunners Kant, 

 Fichte, and Schelling. In various important passages 

 of their writings they led up to a conception for which 

 Schopenhauer found the right word. Unconsciously he 

 also anticipated a movement of thought which has since 



