LATER GERMAN PHILOSOPHY \2.'i^ 



of "substance at once conscious and material," so 

 that everything is for him "ensouled." Besides, even 

 were his protests disregarded, he would here have 

 to give way to Diihring, on the ground of not con- 

 cerning himself seriously with the philosophic foun- 

 dations of materialism, but only with such of its 

 phenomenal details as belong more especially to 

 organic existence. 



Diihring names his system the PJiilosopJiy of the 

 Actual. This title sounds almost like a direct 

 challenge to Hartmann, as much as to say, " No 

 mystical Subconscious, no incognisable Background 

 here!'' And to have this really so is Duhring's 

 first and last endeavour. The Absolute for him is 

 just this world of sense, taken literally as we find 

 it ; briefly and frankly, matter. As we perceive 

 and think it, so it is — extended, figured, resistant, 

 moving, a total of separate units collected into a 

 figured whole, and into a uniformity of processes, by 

 mechanical causation ; in short, a variable constant, a 

 changeless substantive whole undergoing by change- 

 less laws ceaseless changes in form and in detail. 



This striking conception of an indissoluble polar 

 union between Permanence and Change is accord- 

 ing to Diihring the vital nerve of the Actual, and 

 the key to its entire philosophy.^ But this polar 



^ In this he apparently presents a one-sided reflection from Hegel, 

 with whom Identity and Difference are the elementary dynamic " mo- 



