216 CANON W. SAUMAREZ SMITH, B.D. 
of Schopenhauerism is this: an unconscious will somehow 
objectivises itself in individual beings who, finding conscious- 
ness a burden, seek, by means of true knowledge, the goal 
of utter unconsciousness !* Nor is Hartmann’s theory less 
absurd, though his exposition of it 1s, perhaps, more interest- 
ing and less misanthropical. Hartmann reasons from “‘ the 
Unconscious”’ in terms of consciousness. He ascribes to It 
—the great THAT whence comes all that is; the central 
monad which manifests itself in consciousness and matter—- 
all the attributes of a perfect intelligence, the predetermina- 
tion of a course, the omniscient use of means, the regulation 
of a world-course, which, although bad all through, is to end 
in the perfect peace of primitive unconsciousness. Surely 
this is either making irony of all philosophic expositicn, or it 
is very unphilosophical. The suicide of existence cannot be 
the explanation of it. 
7. In all philosophy we have to choose between a theistic 
and a non-theistic line of speculation. If the “theistic 
inference” is a valid one; if we are led by the observation of 
what we call “nature” around us, by reflection upon our own 
mental constitution, and by certain moral intuitions or 
requirements, to the acknowledgment of a Supreme Being in 
whom the ideas of power, wisdom, and righteousness, which 
are revealed to us in our own mental experience and by the 
history of mankind, find their source and culmination,t 
we shall become “ practical optimists.””? Pessimism is only 
possible for those who will not accept, or who arbitrarily set 
aside, Theism. And Optimism varies according to the degree 
in which men’s minds realise the existence and operation of 
a Divine Will superior to finite conditions and transcending 
human science. The Pantheism which confounds God with 
“Nature,” the Materialism which will. not look above 
“‘ Nature,” and the Atheism which refuses to believe in God 
at all, tend to a pessimistic view of life ; and although theories 
of natural development or evolution may throw some con- 
solatory gleams upon the view of the world-process, the 
optimistic tendency will eventually fail to be of any practical 
worth, when faith in a Divine Order, regulated by a Per- 
sonal will, dies out. 
* “* A. Schopenhauer,” says Emerson, “‘ with logic and learning and wit, 
teaching pessimism—teaching that this is the worst of all possible worlds, 
and inferring that sleep is better than waking, and death than sleep—all the 
talent in the world cannot save him from being tedious.” 
+ Lotze speaks of God as “the One Being whom we regard as the indis- 
pensable presupposition of ull intelligibility in finite things.” 
