586 



PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



Thus the panlogism which found its extreme expression 

 in the Hegelian philosophy lost its hold of the philo- 

 sophical mind, or continued to live only in branches of 

 inquiry which were either purely mechanical, like the 

 exact sciences, or purely critical and expository, like the 

 historical sciences. 



II. 



si. 

 hauer'sph 



osophical 



view of 



Nature. 



The possibility of approaching the philosophical prob- 

 lem of Nature from a different side had already been 

 shown much earlier in the century. This was done in 

 a short treatise which Schopenhauer published just at 

 the time when the philosophy of nature as suggested 

 by Schelling was losing its attractiveness, and when the 







new science of Biology was laying the foundations of its 

 subsequent brilliant development. 1 It consisted in an 

 application of the fundamental idea of Schopenhauer's 

 system to a subject which had been only imperfectly 

 handled in his first great work. 2 Although it is true 



1 As to the chemical and physio- 

 logical discoveries which produced 

 the reform of Biology during the 

 second quarter of the century, see 

 the first section of this History 

 (vol. i. p. 194 sqq. ; vol. ii. p. 208 

 sqq.) 



2 The treatise appeared in the 

 year 1835 with the title 'On the 

 Will in Nature,' seventeen years 

 after the completion of the prin- 

 cipal work, and purported to be 

 a "discussion of the verifications 

 which the philosophy of the author 

 since its appearance had received 

 through the empirical sciences." 



In the Introduction Schopenhauer 

 lays great stress upon the fact 

 that his metaphysic was the only 

 one which harmonised with the 

 physical sciences, inasmuch as both 

 had independently arrived at the 

 same point. In this way he con- 

 siders that his metaphysic differs 

 even from that of Kant, which 

 " leaves a wide gap between its 

 own results and experience, and 

 still more from that of Schelling, 

 which is secretly abstracted from 

 the empirical sciences, and only 

 discovers a priori what it had 

 really learnt a posteriori." 



