142 ESSJYS IN PHILOSOPHY 



hopeless oblivion. The yearnings of her offspring, 

 imparted to them by her " Cosmic Emotion," Nature 

 does not share. She brings them forth, "to laugh 

 and weep, to suffer and rejoice " for a season, then 

 to pass to the Abyss, whereto she also, with her 

 latest and highest, too surely is speeding. 



Life upon such terms is essentially worthless, let 

 it be painted in what bewitching colours it may. 

 The resistless drift of such a theory is either to 

 despair, as in the case of the frank pessimism of a 

 Hartmann, or else to illusions of reconstructing 

 the future in behalf of capricious desire. We can- 

 not hope for the abiding : let us then turn to the 

 satisfactions of the hour ! In effect, the professed 

 hedonism of Diihring's theory is at the last pure 

 egoism. Covering the horror in the depths of life 

 with an optimistic gloze upon the surface, Actualism 

 can have no final precept but to cultivate the Whole 

 so far, and only so far, as it may be means to the 

 greatest sum of individual enjoyment : therefore, 

 *' whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy 

 might ; for there is neither wisdom nor device nor 

 knowledge in the grave — and thither thou goest." 



Ill 



We have now seen monism, in two of its most 

 strongly contrasted forms, undergo dissolution by the 

 inner necessities of its own logic. Pseudo-idealism 



