74 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



had no inclination to deny or minimise the gravity of 

 the latter; he affirmed the Freedom of the Will, and 

 he affirmed, still more strongly, the existence of Evil. 

 Following Kant, he considered the Will to be transcen- 

 dental — i.e., anterior and superior — to the visible and 

 intellectual order of things ; the latter, the empirical 

 order of things, he considered to be characterised by the 

 necessary and rigid sequences of Cause and Effect. In- 

 asmuch as the Will, or the inherent essence of the 

 mind, did not belong to the empirical order of things, 

 but had really created it, it stood outside of this order, 

 it was not subject to, but the origin of, the law of Cause 

 and Effect with its necessary sequences in the flux of 

 time. The Will was timeless, and hence free, but 

 through descending out of its original sphere of freedom 

 by creating the empirical world with its ascending stages 

 or objectivations, and its rigid sequences of Cause and 

 Effect, it did not unfold and augment its own reality, 

 but, on the contrary, it reduced and lowered the same. 

 The World-spirit committed a mistake, took as it were 

 a false step, and this false step is the cause of the evil 

 and suffering, of the pain and sin in the existing phenom- 

 enal world. The fundamental error, the cause of all 

 that is perverse and wrong, is the very World-process 

 itself, the assertion, the endless striving of the Will. 

 This original error can only be made good, redemption 

 is only possible, by a negation, not by an aftirmation, 

 of the World-process, of the promptings, desires, and 

 workings of the Will. To become quiescent, to return 

 again into the original state of repose, to reverse the 

 World-process, is the only way out of the misery of 



