the greatest act of affirmation of the Will; and in the Buddhistic doctrine the suicidal soul only passes by re-birth (metempsychosis) into another form of Will. Schopenhauer uses two phrases that have become classic in the description of the two attitudes possible to man: (1) if man is merely a part of the World as Idea he is "affirming the Will to life"; and (2) if he seeks a way of deliverance he "is denying the Will to life." Suicide is an act of affirmation of the Will to life.

How may the Will be denied? and since we are in essence Will, the question takes this form, How may the Will deny the Will? This question presupposes a transcendental freedom which may be sought in two ways: one in which the freedom is temporary and the other in which it is permanent.

1. The temporary deliverance of the Will may be found in artistic contemplation (Schiller's disinterested contemplation). Art deals not with particular forms, but eternal types (Platonic Ideas). Art isolates an eternal object from out the stream of the world's changes, and places it beyond all relations of time, place, and cause. Art not only removes its object from the World as Idea, but it removes the contemplator as well. The contemplating subject and the contemplated object thus become one, and the subject is temporarily saved, for he is elevated above all desire and pain. This, however, is possible not to the majority of men, but only to those few possessing æsthetic fancy, and for them only at intervals. Music is ranked by Schopenhauer as the highest form of art, even above poetry, and it is not surprising therefore that among the Schopenhauerian worshipers have been many prominent musicians.

2. But artistic ecstasy is too fleeting and restricted to offer lasting deliverance from the affirmation of the Will to life and the World as Idea. Another act of transcendental freedom will bring man into more complete freedom; but this act is a miracle and a mystery, since it is the complete transformation of our nature. This act must be supernatural, and the church is right in calling it a new birth and a work of grace. Complete freedom from the Will comes through moral deliverance.

This lasting escape from the Will is open to the man who appreciates two facts: that all striving for happiness is vain; and that all men are alike manifestations of the Will. To take this double view of life involves the feeling of sympathy with others in their misery. Sympathy is thus the only true moral motive and the fundamental ethical feeling. The Will in us is moral if we feel another's hurt as our own. But sympathy is only a palliative, and it does not remove the cause of disease. The misery still exists, and our sympathy has only changed its form. Even though our sympathy goes out to the whole world, the endless tragedy would still pass on.

In the moral deliverance sympathy can be made complete by absolute denial, and this will come by asceticism, mortification, and complete eradication of want and desire. The Hindu sannyasi shows the way. This is the mystery of the Will. But Schopenhauer is not quite sure that extreme asceticism can be made effective, since we are full of Will. At the close of his work he says that even if we could be completely ascetic the result would be Nothingness. "In thy Nothing I hope to find the ALL." Schopenhauer despairs of deliverance

for himself, but does not count it unachievable by others. Absolute deliverance even by asceticism seems impossible to him. The only hope is that through art and science the Will may be some time overcome.

CHAPTER XIII

THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Summary View. The nearer we approach our own time, the more do events become a chronicle and the less a history. There is no such thing as a history of our own time, for the simple reason that an event to become historical must be seen in the light of its assured future as well as its past. Present events have but one background-the past. Historical events have two backgrounds- the future as well as the past.

Thus it is that the nineteenth century seems to the eye of people now living to be filled only with individual philosophers. The individual looms large; the currents of thought have become less and less distinct, and an assessment of their value has become less and less possible. From our contemporary near point of view the systems of thought of the nineteenth century seem to be in constant flux some not fully formed, some dissolving. The century has the appearance of an epoch which has had no common spiritual problem-none in which all have been interested. Each thinker seems to have gone his own way, listening only to some sympathetic fellow. Apparently there have been no schools with inner connections, and few points of impact between repellent spiritual forces. Time is the only true historian, and time has not sifted this contemporary material.

1. In contrast with the preceding epochs of modern philosophy the nineteenth century does not appear to

have been engaged in reflection. Its spiritual interests have been engulfed in the demands of science and practical life. Its isolated systems have touched only the periphery of thought and not the center. Just as the Renaissance was interested in the "new universe," the Enlightenment in the "new man," German philosophy in man in his spiritual environment, so the nineteenth century has been absorbed in the problem of man in his material environment. The middle of the century was the point when this interest was greatest. In the last part of the century the special sciences felt the need of a common basis and the call was back to Kant. During the entire century, however, the pressure of empirical discoveries and inventions has been felt at all points.

2. The dominating direction of thought in the first half of the nineteenth century was toward materialistic realism. Our study of the history of philosophy has shown us that Realism is one of those great types of metaphysical thought which may affect a whole civilization. It is the belief that reality exists quite independent of anybody's knowledge of it. We have found three kinds of realism in history: the aesthetic realism of the ancient Greeks; the ecclesiastical realism of the mediæval people; and now the materialistic realism of the nineteenth century.

Discoveries and Inventions. It was quite in the order of things for the materialistic Realism of the first half of the nineteenth century to grow out of the spiritualistic Idealism of the eighteenth century, for the German Romanticists were themselves deeply interested in investigations in science. To be sure their researches were mainly in the realms of history, literature, lan