his doctrines in practice, was scarce well over, its wild dreams of an unobtainable freedom had hardly been dispelled, ere the disease of the age began to reassert itself, not indeed with fresh symptoms, but for new causes.

Byron in England, Leopardi in Italy, De Musset, Baudelaire, Gautier, and Leconte de Lisle in France, Heine in Germany, Lenau in Hungary, Poushkin in Russia, bore witness to widespread unrest. The hopedfor heaven upon earth could be found nowhere, and these writers gave utterance to the universal disappointment. Differences among them there certainly were, from the self-obtrusion of Byron to the impersonality of Leconte de Lisle. But one and all protest against the impassable barriers to intellectual satisfaction raised by human imperfection. The studied impassiveness, which so many now deem essential to art -especially to literary art is only another phase of Byron's implora eterna quiete. "I hope that whosoever may survive me, and shall see me put in the foreigners' burying-ground at the Lido, will have those two words and no more put over me-'Implora pace.' Statuesque impassibility amid human woes and the peace of the tomb are impracticable ideals. Born of the so-called unintelligible, they reduce not one whit the unintelligibility of things. Sentimental Pessimism, whether in Ferrara seventy years ago or in Paris 1 to-day, seeks to assuage grief by the grievous. Repression is without pity, and the peace of death is no anodyne for the sorrow of life.

1 Cf., e.g., Mons. Paul Bourget's 'Un Crime d'Amour,' or Mons. Maurice Barrès' 'Homme Libre.'

II. Schopenhauer's System.

The pessimism of the poets was not only unreasoned but also subjective. Each writer gave expression to his own dissatisfaction, and sought relief for himself after the manner which best pleased him. But the "sadness which clings to all finite life" was then so universally felt as to demand a more systematic explanation. Byron and Leopardi were aweary; so were many others everywhere. The high-strung sensibility of the genius is racked by unavoidable evils, but does not talent go unrewarded, and is not hunger the labourer's lot? Pessimism, in short, is as reasonable for society at large as for a few of its more gifted members. That is, it has objective no less than subjective validity; as such it cannot be compassed or mitigated by poetical caprice. A system is now necessary. If defect is not to reduce the world to moral and spiritual impotence, a reasoned account of it must be forthcoming. Leopardi's Icelander was opportunely devoured by a couple of famishing lions immediately after he had put his inconvenient question to Nature. The question still remained, and Schopenhauer was the first to attempt a systematic reply. "But since that | which is destroyed suffers, and that which is born from its destruction also suffers in due course, and finally is in its turn destroyed, would you enlighten me on one point, about which no philosopher has hitherto satisfied me? For whose pleasure and service is this wretched life of the world maintained, by the suffering and death of all the beings which compose it?" A theory of Essays and Dialogues, p. 79 (Edwardes' ed.)

1

1

the ultimate reality of the universe is indispensable to the solution of this problem, and Schopenhauer was the earliest to formulate it fully on the given premisses.

Now Schopenhauer, being a philosopher, was affected by the speculations of previous thinkers as were none of his poetic contemporaries. No doubt he too lived throughout the Sturm und Drang period, and brought its Weltschmerz to a point of unity. But his thought, as distinguished from his standpoint, was largely determined by Kant. Add Indian Buddhism, Plato, mediæval mysticism, and Schelling, and the elements of his system are enumerated. Its peculiar doctrines were drawn from these sources; the diffused discontent expressed by the poets called it forth; its aim was the diagnosis of misery and the prescription of a cure; reasoned pessimism was its result. Schopenhauer professedly sets out from the point where Kant stopped. In this he only followed his pet aversions, Fichte and Hegel.

In Kant's philosophy, rigorously interpreted, knowledge is ever shadowed by two unknown and unknowable realities. First, there is the much-debated thingin-itself. Experience is composed of two elements. -the form, which belongs to mind, and the matter, which is perceived indirectly through the medium of the senses. Mind is able to superimpose its forms upon sensation, and knowledge results. Thus, all that we know consists of a series of sensations, which have been moulded into thoughts by the action of the mind. That is to say, knowledge is only of ideas, not of realities, but of ideas into which an element of sensation necessarily enters. If this be true, evidently external objects as they actually are have no place in experience. Sensation interposes between the thing and the thinker;

it veils realities, but helps to disclose representations of them. The object never reaches the subject, nor he it. The thing-in-itself is thus the unknowable cause of our sensations. That it originates them we well know, what it actually is in its ultimate nature we are wholly ignorant. It is one of the inexplicables of life which testify to the limitation of human thought. "The understanding makes nature, but out of a material which it does not make.” (Man, consequently, never knows realities, but only phenomena; yet realities exist.) Secondly, on the subjective as well as on the objective side of experience, there is an unknowable residuum. In a manner no one can ever fully fathom his own personality. That synthetic power-most familiar in the operation of memory-which, as it were, is a spectator of every changing state, and is itself unmoved, constitutes each individual all that he ultimately is. But for the very reason that this ego transcends change, it is above experience. (Like the thing-in-itself, it can never be made a direct object of thought) The definite acts of imagination, perception, and the like, are all cognisable. Their indispensable condition-the subjective reality which brings them to a unity in relation to a single self- remains ever hidden. There is, thus, a subjective or mental reality beyond thought; yet this reality exists.

Consequently, as Schopenhauer saw, reality is finally explained by Kant neither on the side of things nor on that of thought. Nevertheless, reality, both subjective and objective, has an independent certainty of its own. Schopenhauer addressed himself to this dilemma, and attempted to explain the Kantian inexplicables. Proceeding to his task, he agrees, as we have already

Ꭱ

seen,1 that objects are simply representations constituted by the mind. The known realities are, as with Kant, no more than phenomena. Precluded in this way from reaching the essential being of things objectively, Schopenhauer naturally falls back upon subjectivity. The key to the position is not to be found in the external, but in the internal, sphere. The world, Schopenhauer seems to reason, is unquestionably a mere series of representations conjured up by the intellect, But are my activities as a thinking being exhausted in such representation? Have I no other faculties? It is in this direction that he seeks the way to the absolutely real. Continuous energising, unwearied effort to assert himself, are, he concludes, the ultimate in every man's nature. The thinker is not a mere machine for grinding out phenomenal representations, he is far rather a subject who wills. Will, the persistent and impelling power in all acts, is thus the ego beyond experience with which Kant failed to grapple. The fact that I exist is consequent to the fact that I will. I am I, because I will. So the unknowable "I" of Kant is abolished. Nor is this all. Will is not only indirectly cognised through the intellect, but is directly perceived in bodily movements, which are its manifestations.) "The body is the objectification of the will." This doctrine enables Schopenhauer to remove another difficulty. For he can constitute body the link between subjective personality -which is all compact of will-and the outer thing-initself. If my body be my will, then by an obvious analogy the phenomena represented to me in the guise of objects are each of them revelations of a will. As my being is ultimately grounded on will, so too is 1 See above, p. 224 sq.; cf. p. 204 sq.