no ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY 



monly grouped under the term "reflex action": 

 facts of somnambulism, trance, clairvoyance, mem- 

 ory independent of conscious perception, and 

 instinctive knowledge • — all those " unconscious 

 modifications," in short, the emphasising of which 

 formed such a memorable dissonance in the think- 

 ing of Sir William Hamilton. The recognition of 

 "unconscious ideation" he traces clearly, too, to 

 Leibnitz, to Kant, to Schelling, and to Schopenhauer. 

 The Unconscious is actually here zvitk us, Hartmann 

 holds : there is a something beneath our conscious- 

 ness, that performs for us, even when consciousness 

 is suspended, all that is most characteristic of life, 

 and that, too, with a swift and infallible surety and 

 precision. What less can we do, then, than accept 

 this Unconscious as the one absolute reality .-* We 

 accept, and so come by the PJiilosopJiy of the Uncon- 

 scious. 



Just here, however, Hartmann is confronted by the 

 warning of Kant. On grounds of a critical determi- 

 nation of the limits of reason, Kantianism forbids 

 the philosopher to undertake the discussion of an ob- 

 ject thus removed beyond the bounds of possible ex- 

 perience. This warning must first of all be silenced. 

 So Hartmann now provides a metaphysics to meet 

 the Kantian thesis that knowledge can only be of the 

 phenomenal. Here he unavoidably leaves his favour- 

 ite basis of facts, and resorts to hypotheses purely 



