I06 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY 



achievements " of recent science ; the latter, his 

 ambition to frame a system that should blend in a 

 single higher unity whatever of preceding theory he 

 knew — Schopenhauer's pessimism and sundry ideal- 

 istic gleanings and fragments, no doubt also first 

 suggested by Schopenhauer, but in detail borrowed 

 largely from Schelling and the "left-wing" adherents 

 of Hegel. 



Schopenhauer, seizing upon Kant's doctrine of the 

 ex viente origin of Nature, and the consequently phe- 

 nomenal character of the world, asked the question 

 that cannot but rise upon Kant's results. What, 

 then, is this "Thing-in-itself," assumed as the 

 source ^ of the sensations that our a priori reason 

 coordinates into a cosmos ? He felt the force of 

 Kant's arguments for the limitation of knowledge 

 to the world of experience, the force of the contra- 

 dictions into which reason was apparently shown to 

 fall when attempting to apply its categories to a 

 Thing-in-itself supposed to lie beyond that region. 

 But he also felt the necessity of the Thing-in-itself, 

 of an Absolute, in order to the relativity which, 

 according to Kant, was an essential feature of know- 

 ledge. He perceived, too, the chasm that separated 

 Kant's doctrines of the will and of the intellect. 



1 The reader must understand that this phrase represents Schopen- 

 hauer's interpretation of Kant, rather than Kant's own view. So, also, 

 regarding much else that follows. 



