84 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



believe." Many of these writers have been influenced, 

 consciously or unconsciously, by the great truth, amount- 

 ing almost to a discovery, contained in the philosophy 

 of Schopenhauer, which emphasised the independence of 

 the Will in its relation to the Intellect, and found the 

 very essence of Eeality, the truly Eeal, in a principle 

 of Action. As I remarked above, it was unfortunate 

 for the reputation of Schopenhauer, as well as for 

 the development of German philosophy, that Schopen- 

 hauer saw in the Will, in the active principle, not a 

 source of good, but of evil, and that in consequence 

 his writings, which otherwise might have had an inspir- 

 ing and reassuring influence, became on the contrary the 

 gospel of pessimism which has blighted so many hopes 

 and deadened so many aspirations. 



It is interesting to note that the necessity of a de- 

 velopment such as is aimed at in many modern schools 

 of philosophic thought was not unexpected by earlier 

 thinkers during the century ; that Lotze, after review- 

 ing all the doubts and difficulties which beset the accept- 

 ance of the belief in a spiritual and personal Creator 

 and Euler, declared that belief was " a resolution of the 

 character " and not of the intellect. 



It cannot be said that the tendency to which I 

 refer, and which permeates much of recent philosophical 

 literature, has yet attained that clearness which belongs 

 to some earlier speculations. Perhaps the very nature 

 of it will prevent it from ever submitting to the ordinary 

 categories of logic, though the very fact is significant 

 that logic itself, which for a long time was supposed 

 to be permanently crystallised in Aristotelian formula, 



