lieve the sufferings of those with whom the Idea had not seen fit to concern itself, Hegel seemed to have nothing to say. Indeed, to men of such a temper, he appeared even a reactionary one who had found the highest expression of human freedom in that latest development of History, the corrupt Prussian State of his day, beyond which it was idle to attempt to look. Without trying, then, to disentangle all the complexity of recent philosophical thought, we may consider, briefly, three or four of the more representative names and movements: the return, in Schopenhauer, to the thing-in-itself as a reality deeper than experience and thought; the combination of scientific method and social amelioration, with an ultimate agnosticism, in the Positivism of Comte; and the rise of the theory and philosophy of Evolution in Darwin and Spencer. LITERATURE Hegel, Chief Works: Phenomenology of Spirit (1807); Logic (1816); Encyclopedia of Philosophical Sciences (1817); Philosophy of Right (1821); Philosophy of Religion; Esthetics; Philosophy of History; History of Philosophy. Translations: Wallace (Logic, Philosophy of Mind); Sibree (Philosophy of History); Dyde (Philosophy of Right); Bosanquet, (Philosophy of Art); Hastie (Esthetics); Haldane (History of Philosophy). Sterrett, The Ethics of Hegel. Caird, Hegel. Kedney, Hegel's Esthetics. Morris, Hegel's Philosophy of the State and of History. Seth, From Kant to Hegel. Seth, Hegelianism and Personality. Wallace, Prolegomena to the Study of Hegel. McTaggart, Studies in Hegelian Dialectic. McTaggart, Studies in Hegelian Cosmology. Ritchie, Darwin and Hegel. Baillie, Origin and Significance of Hegel's Logic. Hibben, Hegel's Logic. Mackintosh, Hegel and Hegelianism. PHILOSOPHY SINCE HEGEL § 39. Schopenhauer Arthur Schopenhauer was born in 1788. His father died when he was a youth, and between himself and his mother, who was a popular novelist of the day, so little sympathy existed, that they found it desirable to live apart. Schopenhauer's system was conceived early in life, and his chief work The World as Will and as Idea was published in 1819. The cold reception which it received was a severe blow to Schopenhauer's vanity, which was considerable; and it increased his disgust with the reigning philosophy. He was thoroughly convinced that there was a conspiracy among the school philosophers against him, and he could find nothing too disparaging to say of them in turn, particularly of Hegel. He had come in contact with Hegel at Berlin, where he was appointed Privatdocent in 1820. He apparently had cherished hopes that he could easily triumph over the great philosopher, whose popularity was then at its height; and he deliberately set himself in rivalry, by choosing the same hour for his lectures. When, consequently, he found his own lectures unattended, and Hegel's classroom thronged, he was greatly disappointed and embittered, and finally was led to give up all thought of an academic career. The rest of his life was spent in quiet at Frankfort-on-the-Main. Toward the close of his life, the recognition he had failed of in his youth seemed on the point of coming to him. His book began to be talked about, and, especially in its pessimism, to find converts, if not among the technical philosophers, at least among the laity. This growing fame soothed his last days. He died in 1860. 1. The World as Will. The two notable things about Schopenhauer's philosophy are (1) his doctrine of the Will as the thing-in-itself, and (2) the way in which he founds on this basis the first systematic philosophy of Pessimism. Schopenhauer's whole doctrine relates itself to Kant, to whom he professes to go back in opposition to the idealistic tendency which culminated in Hegel. According to Kant, the world as we know it is a phenomenal construction of the self. "The world is my idea' this is a truth which holds good for everything that lives and knows, though man alone can bring it into reflective and abstract consciousness. If he really does this, he has attained to philosophical wisdom. It then becomes clear and certain to him that what he knows is not a sun and an earth, but only an eye that sees a sun, a hand that feels an earth; that the world that surrounds him is there only as idea, i.e., only in relation to something else—the consciousness which is himself."1 But if the world is illusion, appearance, there also exists back of it the reality which appears, the thing-in-itself of Kant, which Schopenhauer defends vigorously against the attacks of the Idealists. Is, however, this thing-in-itself unknowable? Here Schopenhauer ceases to follow Kant's leading. It is true we cannot reach it by the pathway of the logical reason; we cannot demonstrate it in the strict sense of the word. It is rather the result of an intuition of genius. But still we may attain to a highly probable conception of its nature. For we ourselves are a part of the real universe, and in ourselves we come upon reality at first hand, through immediate experience. If, accordingly, we can get at our own true nature, we may by analogy extend this to other things as well, since it is natural to assume that reality is all of a piece. Now the inner essence of man's nature is will this is the first insight of Schopenhauer. Man, that is, is not primarily a thinking, an in 1 The World as Will and Idea. Translation by Haldane and Kemp, Vol. I, p. I. (Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co.) tellectual being, as philosophy has tended to assume; he is primarily active, willing. The reality of his own body is given to him immediately as will. Will, and the movement of the body, are one thing; my body is the objectivity of my will. The various parts of the body are the visible expression of desires. Teeth, throat, and bowels are objectified hunger. The brain is the will to know, the foot the will to go, the stomach the will to digest. It is only on the basis of this active self-expansion that the thought life arises. We think in order to do; the active impulse precedes, and is the necessary basis for any conscious motive. Now this thought, once attained, throws a flood of light on the outer world. The eternally striving, energizing power which is working everywhere in the universe in the instinct of the animal, in the life process of the plant, in the blind force of inorganic matter is not this just the will which underlies all existence? "If we observe the strong and unceasing impulse with which the waters hurry to the ocean, the persistency with which the magnet turns ever to the north pole, the readiness with which iron flies to the magnet, the eagerness with which the electric poles seek to be reunited, and which, just like human desire, is increased by obstacles; if we see the crystal quickly take form with such wonderful regularity of construction, which is clearly only a perfectly definite and accurately determined impulse in different directions, seized and retained by crystallization; if we observe the choice with which bodies repel and attract each other; lastly, if we feel directly how a burden which hampers our body by its gravitation toward the earth, increasingly presses and strains upon it in pursuit of its one tendency, - if we observe all this, I say, it will require no great effort of the imagination to recognize, even at so great distance, our own nature. That which in us pursues its ends by the light of knowl edge, but here, in the weakest of its manifestations, only strives blindly and dumbly in a one-sided and unchangeable manner, must yet in both cases come under the name of Will, as it is everywhere one and the same; just as the first dim light of dawn must share the name of sunlight with the rays of the full mid-day.' Reality, then, is Will, which is one and indivisible. All apparent multiplicity is due to those subjective forms of merely human thought, which come between us and the truth—namely, space and time. "As the magic lantern shows many different pictures, which are all made visible by one and the same light, so in all the multifarious phenomena which fill the world together, or throng after each other as events, only one will manifests itself, of which everything is the visibility, the objectivity, and which remains unmoved in the midst of this change."2 But now from will we must cut away all that action for intelligent ends which characterizes the human will. Intelligence is only a surface phenomenon - a form which existence assumes for the attainment of its hungry striving, but a form quite foreign to its real nature. In itself, will is blind and irrational. In all its lower aspects it is without knowledge; the nests of birds and the webs of spiders are not the product of intelligence, but of unforeseeing instinct. It is only as its manifestations become more complex, that it kindles for itself, in intellect, a light as a means of getting rid of the disadvantages arising from this complexity. The will is thus more original than the intellect; it is the blind man carrying on his shoulders the lame man who can see. 2. The Philosophy of Pessimism.- And this gives the basis for Schopenhauer's pessimism; it follows from the very nature of will. All willing arises from want, and so from deficiency, and so from suffering. "The satisfaction of a wish ends it, yet for one wish that is satisfied there remain at least ten that are denied. Further, the desire lasts long, and demands are infinite; the satisfaction is short and scantily measured out. It is like the alms thrown to a beggar, that keeps him alive to-day, that his misery may be prolonged till the morrow. So long as we 11, p. 153. 2 I, p. 199. |