Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 6.djvu/262

 246 CRITICAL NOTICES: is a tour de force in self-contradiction, with an appreciative dis- cernment of the pregnant truth and force in it. Possibly the study of ethics and " social philosophy " tend, in general, to impart a sympathetic and magnanimous tone to criticism. Dwelling, on the one hand, much upon ' the good,' the ethicist seeks the resul- tant felicific influence in a system in spite of flaws, and interprets and complements it in keeping with his own beliefs and aspirations regarding the bettering of the world. On the other hand Volker- psychologie sees in the individual thinker the efflorescence of a tendency on which he is borne along and thus, understanding him in the light of larger conditions, forgives. At any rate, Professor Caldwell's conviction is that Schopenhauer, in his theory of will, had hold of " the key which unlocks all reality for us, the explana- tion of the whole visible and tangible world" (p. 473), but that, owing to the drift of tradition and the bent of his individual dis- position, he had neither insight enough nor courage enough to work out the true and far-reaching implications of that theory. He holds that, "viewed in its realistic and positive and non- polemical aspects, Schopenhauer's philosophy is simply an im- manent evolutionism in which the effort (natural in the case of the animals, and spiritualised in the case of man) of all organised existence after life and more life is made out to be the supreme characteristic of the world ". " And this view of the system is the only one that the world at large will chronicle as distinctively Schopenhauer's view of things " (p. 493). Here again, the thought " that the reality of the world and of the individual consists in will," that " the significance of the world is ethical," naturally appeals with great cogency to an ethicist ; and the main burden of these essays is to unfold the full content of that thought, and to vindicate its claims against the philosophy of the Idea that culminated in Hegel. They remind us that philosophy, since Descartes, has made too little account of the supreme all compris- ing fact of action, too much account of man's reflective doubts about his action. Had Descartes but started with Ago ergo sum! If philosophy is to be regarded, not merely as the study of thought, but as a general systematisation of all knowledge, it cannot afford to neglect action and events ; it must deal with tendencies emerg- ing in action, and not only with the history of ideas. And, in so far as it is concerned with knowledge as real, it must face the fact that " our test of reality is the possibility of a thing affecting our will". "Every being knows about the world just what is in dynamic relation to his will and activity " (p. 99). But Schopenhauer was a philosopher in the older sense of the word " one trying to solve the problem of the essence of all things ". Thus he walked, for all his originality and independ- ence, in a line with tradition, and its influence weighed heavily on him. To this, according to Professor Caldwell, is due all that is or will be sterile in his thought, and all its many inherent con- tradictions. And the task of interpreting his philosophy resolves