Page:The Limits of Evolution (1904).djvu/182

Rh ing to do battle, at least on field of paper and under fire of ink, for the high privilege of a general self-annihilation in the considerably distant future.

It is true, however, and encouraging, that this class of minds does not form the whole of the German or other public; that authority goes by weight and not by numbers; and that Germans of the higher and more thorough order of culture early discerned the bubble, and pricked it without ado. On the other hand, it would be materially unjust to take leave of Hartmann and Schopenhauer without emphatically acknowledging the service they have both rendered by so completely unveiling the pessimism latent in any theory that represents the Eternal as impersonal. They cast a light far back of their own work, and illuminate for our instruction the void which confronts us, in the systems of their greater predecessors, when we look for a doctrine of the Real that answers to our need of a Personal God.

When we turn now to Dühring, we find ourselves suddenly in the opposite extreme of the emotional climate. Dühring is materialist, but he is optimist still more. Indeed, it seems not unlikely that he is optimist before he is materialist, just as Hartmann