LATER GERMAN PHILOSOPHY 109 



to issue from conditions that bear solely on the 

 purely theoretical question of the origin of experi- 

 ence, there can hardly be any doubt that with 

 Hartmann the pessimism was first, and the hypothe- 

 sis of the Unconscious an afterthought to explain 

 it.^ His problem has the look of being this : Given 

 misery as the sum of existence, what must be pre- 

 supposed in order to account for it ? 



The method and the contents of his solution 

 both show what a weight empirical evidence has 

 with him, in contrast with dialectical. He professes 

 a certain allegiance to the latter, and also makes free 

 resort to a priori deduction of a somewhat antiquated 

 type ; but his general drift to fact, induction, and 

 analogy is the patent and distinguishing feature of 

 his book.2 p^^ t]-,g explanation of his problem, and, 

 indeed, of life itself, he seizes upon a striking but oc- 

 cult class of facts in physiological and psychological 

 history. There is given directly in our experience, he 

 says, the manifest presence of an unconscious agency. 

 He refers in this to the class of experiences com- 



^ This is quite evident in the earlier editions of Hartmann's first 

 work, but becomes less and less so as the editions multiply and his 

 thought gets more critical. In fact, in its latest form, his philosophy 

 supplements this pessimism with a sort of concomitant optimism, op- 

 erative in the present, while the effective pessimism is relegated to a 

 remote future. 



2 E. von Hartmann : 77^1? Philosophy of the Unconscious. Trans- 

 lated by W. C. Coupland. London: Triibner and Co., 1883. 



