114 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY 



Absolute popping up as if shot out of a pistol," since 

 it is now construed in terms vouched for by actual 

 experience. Moreover, the conception is here found 

 that will embosom the system of Hegel himself : the 

 " logical Idea " {das logiscJic Idee) falls as a mere con- 

 stituent into the vaster being of the Unconscious. 

 For what is the Unconscious, as revealed in expe- 

 rience, but that which works by the incessant inter- 

 play of representation and will } And just as will in 

 its essence is only blind Struggle, so is representation 

 in its essence nothing other than luminous Idea — the 

 all-embracing logical bond that grasps the vague of 

 sensation into distinct objects, and these objects again 

 into genera, and these genera at last into a single 

 organised whole of being.^ The Unconscious, then, 

 is primordially Will and Idea ; and from the connexion 

 of these arises the twofold world of finitude, pouring 

 forth from the Unconscious in the counterpart streams 

 of object and subject, of sensible world and conscious 

 perception. 



^ A one-sided and superficial construction is here put upon Hegel's 

 theory. Justice to Hegel requires us to remember that his Idea i^Idee) 

 is never represented as a bond merely " logical," in contradistinction 

 from the " will," but always as the " negative " or " sublating " unity of 

 intellect and \v'\A. — a unity that takes up and solves the antinomy that 

 appears between them when their distinction and contrast is taken ab- 

 stractly ; taken, that is, in neglect of their correlative union, and so 

 viewed partially instead of in the whole. Hartmann's leap, too, from 

 idea as representation ( Vorstellung) to the hegelian Idea (Jdee) is, to 

 say the least, a bit sudden and violent. 



