231 



objective forms. The Will is more fully realised in plants 

 and animals up to man^, in whom it attains to consciousness of 

 itself. As far as the word Will has any meaning, when 

 applied to matter, it must be looked upon as equivalent to 

 what earlier writers have called Anima Mmidi, or the ener- 

 gising Soul of the World ; but no reason can be given why 

 the single attribute of Volition should be chosen to the entire 

 exclusion of Intelligence and Power. With this hazy Pan- 

 theism Schopenhauer incorporated Buddhistic notions about 

 the evils of active life, and the blessedness of absolute repose. 

 Accordingly, as the desire to live on the part of the Universal 

 Will has only produced misery and failure, the highest duty of 

 man is the free renunciation and annihilation of his own 

 Individual Will to live. It is rather singular that Schopenhauer 

 combines with his half-Eastern philosophy the Platonic Theory 

 of Ideas. Between the Universal Will and the individual 

 objects stand the Ideas. These are intermediate stages in the 

 process by which the Will becomes objective : " imperfectly 

 expressed in numberless individuals, they exist as the eternal 

 forms of things, not entering themselves into space and time, 

 immovable, unchangeable, uncreated, eternal "^ (a bit of pure 

 Platonism). 



Eduard von Hartmann is still aHve^ and may yet edify the 

 world with fresh developments of doctrine. His system, 

 also, is a kind of coarse Pantheism, influenced for the worse 

 by the crude and arrogant Materialism which is the plague 

 of this generation. He prefers to call it Monism, i.e., a 

 philosophy which denies the reality of separate individual 

 beings, but affirms the existence of a Universal- One (in 

 German, All-Bin), which is at first unconscious in the world of 

 matter, but becomes partaker of transitory consciousness in 

 transitory individuals, and, as a result of the unsatisfactory 

 nature of this experience, yearns to return to its former state 

 of unconsciousness. This Universal-One is not a Person ; it 

 is not, as in Schopenhauer's system, the blind, irrational Will, 

 but it is Will and the Idea combined. It seems that this 

 extraordinary Entity is intensely miserable. We are not told 

 how an Unconscious Being can be aware either of pain or 

 pleasure. But let that pass. Transcendental philosophers 

 must not be profanely cross-examined like other people. Nor 

 are we told how the individual von Hartmann learned the 

 terrible secret of the intense misery of the Absolute Existence. 

 However, it appears that this wretched Being, in order to 



* Ueberweg, vol. ii. p. 263. 



