Introduction to Von Hartmann 89 



To turn now to Von Hartmann. When I read Mr. Sully's 

 article in the Westminster Review, I did not know whether 

 the sense of mystification which it produced in me was 

 wholly due to Von Hartmann or no ; but on making ac- 

 quaintance with Von Hartmann himself, I found that Mr. 

 Sully has erred, if at all, in making him more intelligible 

 than he actually is. Von Hartmann has not got a meaning. 

 Give him Professor Hering's key and he might get one, 

 but it would be at the expense of seeing what approach he 

 had made to a system fallen to pieces. Granted that in 

 his details and subordinate passages he often both has 

 and conveys a meaning, there is, nevertheless, no coherence 

 between these details, and the nearest approach to a broad 

 conception covering the work which the reader can carry 

 away with him is at once so incomprehensible and repulsive, 

 that it is difficult to write about it without saying more 

 perhaps than those who have not seen the original will 

 accept as likely to be true. The idea to which I refer is 

 that of an unconscious clairvoyance, which, from the 

 language continually used concerning it, must be of the 

 nature of a person, and which is supposed to take possession 

 of living beings so fully as to be the very essence of their 

 nature, the promoter of their embryonic development, 

 and the instigator of flieir instinctive actions. This 

 approaches closely to the personal God of Mosaic and 

 Christian theology, with the exception that the word 

 " clairvoyance " ^ is substituted for God, and that the 

 God is supposed to be unconscious. 



Mr. SuUy says : — 



" When we grasp it [the philosophy of Von Hartmann] 

 as a whole, it amounts to nothing more than this, that all 

 or nearly all the phenomena of the material and spiritual 

 world rest upon and result from a mysterious, unconscious 

 being, though to call it being is really to add on an idea not 

 immediately contained within the all-sufficient principle. 



1 I am obliged to Mr. Sully for this excellent translation of 

 " Hellsehen." 



