668 



PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



45. 

 Schopen- 

 hauer and 

 von Hart- 

 mann. 



on the popular thinking mind outside of the schools, 

 which in some instances was quite phenomenal. 



With the philosophies of Schopenhauer and von 

 Hartmann we enter upon a different phase of philosophic 

 thought. Both thinkers consider the first task of 

 philosophy to be a unification of thought; the discov- 

 ery of some principle through which what in science 

 and life remains fragmentary and disconnected can be 

 brought together into a coherent and consistent system. 

 But the interest which led Schopenhauer to his specula- 

 tions was not so much a personal concern, a religious 

 demand, the reconciliation of knowledge and belief, or 

 of faith and reason, as it was with Kant, Fichte, Hegel, 

 Schleiermacher, and Lotze. Although eminently sub- 

 jective, his writings contain less of the personal element. 

 His personality stands as it were outside of the frame- 

 work of his system. He did not live his philosophy, 

 though he lived exclusively for it. His philosophy was 

 essentially for others, not for himself. We do not find 

 with him the long years of labour which preceded the 

 publication of Kant's ' Critiques,' nor the unrest and 

 spiritual striving of Fichte's youthful years, nor the 

 profound and many-sided studies in and through which 

 the central idea of Hegel's system gradually crystallised, 

 nor the religious background of Schleiermacher's thought, 

 nor even that underlying conviction upon which Lotze's 

 speculation rested from the beginning. We feel by con- 

 trast how all these thinkers aimed at expressing in their 

 philosophical writings the most serious convictions which 

 guided not only their thought but also their conduct, 

 and that they conceived themselves eminently responsible 



