to issue from conditions that bear solely on the purely theoretical question of the origin of experience, there can hardly be any doubt that with Hartmann the pessimism was first, and the hypothesis of the Unconscious an afterthought to explain it.[1] His problem has the look of being this: Given misery as the sum of existence, what must be presupposed in order to account for it?
The method and the contents of his solution both show what a weight empirical evidence has with him, in contrast with dialectical. He professes a certain allegiance to the latter, and also makes free resort to a priori deduction of a somewhat antiquated type; but his general drift to fact, induction, and analogy is the patent and distinguishing feature of his book.[2] As the explanation of his problem, and, indeed, of life itself, he seizes upon a striking but occult class of facts in physiological and psychological history. There is given directly in our experience, he says, the manifest presence of an unconscious agency. He refers in this to the class of experiences com-
- ↑ This is quite evident in the earlier editions of Hartmann’s first work, but becomes less and less so as the editions multiply and his thought gets more critical. In fact, in its latest form, his philosophy supplements this pessimism with a sort of concomitant optimism, operative in the present, while the effective pessimism is relegated to a remote future.
- ↑ E. von Hartmann: The Philosophy of the Unconscious. Translated by W. C. Coupland. London: Trübner and Co., 1883.
