484 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



of the Eeal, the core and kernel of existence. He there 

 finds in addition to our external sensations, perceptions 

 and impressions, the fact of the Will : this manifests 

 itself in striving and feeling, in pleasure, pain, and 

 desire. The whole of these manifestations of the Will 

 he opposes to the region of the intellect and, by analogy, 

 explains the reality of the not-self, i.e., of things around 

 us, as consisting in a similar activity, which, in the form 

 of resistance, they oppose to our own reality, i.e., to our 

 Will. Schopenhauer maintains that this is the last and 

 only step which can be taken beyond Kant's agnostic 

 position. In the place of the unknown and unknowable 

 x of Kant's philosophy, he boldly places the Will, which 

 we know by inner or immediate experience, i.e., in- 

 tuitively, and a large part of his writings is occupied 

 with showing how something analogous to the Will, i.e., 

 to the active principle within us, is to be found every- 

 where, and how the whole world consists of the two 

 principles of the Will and the Intellect, the active and 

 the receptive sides of Eeality. To this purely meta- 

 physical conception he gives further significance and 

 interest by attaching to it an ethical interpretation. 

 This will occupy us in a subsequent chapter. It does 

 not form a necessary conclusion from the metaphysical 

 position, but it differentiates Schopenhauer's philosophy 

 from the main idealistic movement ; to the optimism of 

 which it opposes an equally decided pessimism. Through 

 this it became, after having been ignored for more than 

 a generation, the favourite philosophy of all those who 

 turned away in disappointment when they found that 

 Hegelianism did not fulfil the hopes it had created, and 



