Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 11.djvu/423

 422 CRITICAL NOTICES : selves, the weakening of force becomes more and more rapid, and thus the ultimate end is more effectively promoted. This is seen especially in the history of human civilisation, under its forms of "social friction" and the growth of intellect. "Civilisation kills " ; and by its universal diffusion the weakening of force will be carried to its limit. In philosophical reflection, which begins when civilisation is sufficiently advanced, the " will to die " again becomes conscious of itself. The will of the sage becomes iden- tified with the movement of the whole world towards annihila- tion. He desires consciously the end to which all beings are impelled by a desire that is deeper than their desire for continued life. To this end, as has been seen, they move the more rapidly the more they seek to avoid it ; for the putting forth of activity, by reason of the obstacles that resist it, only brings activity to an end the sooner. Yet it is destined that in all men the will to live shall at length disappear and give place to a full consciousness of the profounder will to die. For this result, the attainment of an ideal State is necessary. There are, indeed, a few who can find redemption in any State ; but the mass of mankind can only be redeemed in a State where education and leisure and possibilities of enjoyment are the common lot. To see the vanity of all things, they must first have experienced all things. It remains, therefore, in some sense a duty of those who have already discovered the worthlessness of existence to promote social reform, in order to hasten the advent of the ideal State ; which, however, will inevitably arrive sooner or later, although the efforts of individuals may promote or retard it. When the ideal State has been attained, the emptiness of existence will fully reveal itself. Only one longing will now fill the heart "to be struck for ever out of the great book of life," and, since a stationary state is impossible, this desire will be satisfied. The final description of the movement of human his- tory as a whole, is therefore not "movement towards the ideal State," but "movement from being to not-being," and in it the movement of the whole world is consummated. It will have been observed that much of Mainliinder's cosmical system is the translation into subjective and at the same time highly abstract terms of real scientific generalisations. Sometimes he is even more in agreement with accepted science than he thinks. The law of " the weakening of force," for example, is placed by him in opposition to the law of " the conservation of force," as he supposes it to be understood by physicists. If for this last expression the more accurate expression " conservation of energy " is substituted, the law of the "degradation of energy" at once suggests itself as the physical analogue of Mainliinder's " weaken- ing of force". And some physical speculators, assuming, like Mainlander, a finite universe situated in infinite space, have shown how, according to the law of the degradation of energy, all the bodies in the universe must at length collect into a single mass from which all motion will have disappeared.