Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 15.djvu/583

 NEW BOOKS. 569' Weltwesen und Wahrheitwille : ein Ziveigespriich mil dem Leben. Von HERMANN GOTTSCHALK. Stuttgart : Strieker & Schroder, 1905. Pp. viii, 464. This is in many respects a striking and original work, written with extreme candour and courage, but marred by a perverse fondness for- novel terminology, and a consequent obscurity of expression. The general philosophy of the book might be described with only half-justice, however as an extreme individualism : progress in the individual is the supreme end; but we do not and cannot find that there is any further formulation of the goal of progress possible. " We must learn to be artist and philosopher in all the relations of life. Each one is alone. Each matters to himself alone. Consider that all social forms are merely forms of self-determination, that each in making a social demand on his brother is giving up a portion of himself." No one can live for another, but only for himself ; and the truth of self is the truth of reality. The ideal man of Herr Gottschalk is the " Kunstler- mensch um seiner selbst willen " : " He alone feels, in one whole, what, humanity feels ; he alone knows and comprehends the innermost heart of the world-being in the human will and what he creates, sees, thinks or receives, is perfection of purest being " (p. 453). Being is dual ; all substances or existences are forms of interaction between two polar forces, a positive absolute movement or eternal will and a negative inertia, persistence, absolute non-willing. These forces are real only in their conflict one with the other. All organisms, including man, are ' victims ' of the combat of the cosmic forces, without influence on their own destiny, or power in their development. But they become, through an illusion, engendered presumably by the positive force, partisans of that force against the negative, against inertia, and against death. The highest expression in man of this partisanship is the Love of Truth, which in its turn is the highest form of the Con- sciousness of Self (Ich-bewusstsein), and which has its ground not in the organism, but in the forces of which the organism itself is but a passing" phase. Self-determination, accordingly, or the will to know, the will towards truth, in the individual, is ultimately the expression of the tendency of the universe as a whole towards some end. This absolute end cannot, however, mean the suppression of one force, e,g. the negative, by the other ; for the two exist, or are real, only in conflict with one another : the suppression of one would be the suppression of the other also. The only end that remains appears to be the restless and endless creation of new and ever new forms, hence it is that the artist or the creative mind is the highest finite expression of the absolute will. Truth is not something ready-made, to be acquired by the mind, but something which ever " is to be," something to be created, willed, and transformed from being to being. " The highest knowledge is art, and the highest art is knowledge" is a saying in which Gottschalk seems to sum up his philosophy. It is essentially a philosophy of the "modern" life, the life of movement and of effort, of striving for the novel, the individual, the bizarre, the unique. Thus the artist-man knows nothing of, and cares nothing for, the Absolute Spirit, because it is formless, but "it works in him as a positive life-asserting part of his being, and becomes in him, through action of the counter-force,. . - the personal spirit ". The theory of knowledge which supports this theory of being reads like a magnifying of instinct, impulse, feeling, and especially of the sub- conscious in mind over clear, exact knowledge ; this is only natural, however, since it is in these subconscious strivings that the force of the-;