Page:Philosophical Review Volume 8.djvu/612

594 up all we have learned,' Hartmann (1) enunciates the singular proposition that the only real reason I (strange that 'I' should reappear after the disappearance of separate personalities in the absolute process!) could have for identifying myself and my effort with God as absolute process is that I could do God some good (le pauvre diable! we cannot but think). If by so doing I could not do Him any good, I would not help Him. My ends then must (!) help God. He needs my help. (2) In the next place, God's end must be a logical or positive one, and it must be a happiness one. It must be logical and positive as a necessity of thought; and Hartmann simply assumes this or rather states it (s. 843, line 5) without proof. It must be a happiness end too, because all the reasons of all the theologies and all the philosophies for God's creating the world, reduce themselves to the idea that it must have made God happier to create the world—all talk about God's creating us for His 'glory' and 'honor' or out of 'pure love,' being idle and fatuous. The world process then must make God happier than He was before the creation of the world. (What a descent from philosophical monism to crude theism!) (3) From the eudæmonological (i.e., 'happiness') character of the absolute end, it follows that the world process itself cannot be essentially social. The argument at this stage is far from being clear and intelligible, but Hartmann means that if this whole world exists to make only one being (God) happy, it can hardly be said to be a very altruistic or humanitarian kind of arrangement. Indeed the word 'sociability,' maintains Hartmann, has no ultimate or transcendent meaning. We may admit this if he means that it is absurd to talk about God's end being a 'social' one, although we are troubled a good deal by his way of sometimes identifying and sometimes separating God's happiness and human happiness. (4) The end of the Absolute can after all only be a negative happiness, because pain predominates over pleasure in