68 Heredity. 



Idealism has recently found learned and able advocates; its 

 details will hereafter be noticed. Enough here to explain, in a 

 few words, that idealism is that metaphysical system which holds 

 thought to be the only reality. Sometimes, regarding thought or 

 intellect as a secondary and derivative mode of existence, it strives 

 to ascend still higher, and to discover in will the first cause of all 

 things, the supreme reality. Such is the position of Schopenhauer 

 and his school, that is to say, the most philosophic form of con- 

 temporary idealism. Thus exalted, and under this exceedingly 

 abstract form, idealism is as far removed as it well can be from 

 experience, in the common acceptation of that term. To ex- 

 perience, however, it must come. This system, like all others, must 

 account for the world of sense, for nature, and her phenomena and 

 laws. There being no other absolute existence save thought, 

 matter must be referred to thought Matter, according to Schel- 

 ling, can be nothing else but ' extinct or exteriorized mind.' Hegel 

 defines it to be idea made objective to itself. It matters little 

 what these theories are worth. Idealism has never explained the 

 transition from the absolute to the relative, from mind to matter, 

 except by metaphors, a process, moreover, which it has in common 

 with every other metaphysical system. It is enough that it admits 

 the material world, with its laws, as a purely phenomenal existence. 

 In this admission we find the basis for a reconciliation between 

 idealism and heredity. 



For if we hold, with Schopenhauer, that the will is the primitive 

 element in everything and in every being, then intellect will be 

 only a derived faculty, a first step toward materialization. Hence 

 it will be subject to the mechanism of logic, emprisoned in the 

 ' forms of thought,' in the categories discovered and analyzed by 

 Kant, and, like all the rest of nature, it will have its laws. This 

 admission is enough. Henceforth, between the idealists and 

 ourselves there exists no real opposition. Their theory is that there 

 are two distinct modes of existence : the noumenon in the will and 

 the phenomenon in the intellect and in nature. To the mind, 

 regarded as noumenon, none of our conceptions of laws, logical 

 necessity, or categories are applicable; for all this only pertains to 

 the mind considered as phenomenon. Consequently, since we 

 restrict ourselves to the studv of experience that is to say, of 



