so far reveals its real nature that we know it is something infallibly and infinitely intelligent. Strictly, it is not the Unconscious, but rather the Subconscious, the Unbeknown (das Unbewusste).[1] In its infallible infinite-swiftness of perception, however, as experience testifies of it, there is a transcendent type of the flashing inspirations of genius. It is therefore not self-conscious; its intelligence is clairvoyant, and has no “large discourse of reason, seeing the end in the beginning.” But as intelligent energy, it must contain grounds for the two constituents that we find present in all intelligent activity within experience — will and representation; and here is the point at which to correct and complete Schopenhauer’s doctrine of the Absolute. Will is not the Absolute: for will as well as representation is part of conscious experience; will is itself phenomenal. Rather are will and representation the two coordinate primal manifestations of the one Unconscious; and we thus get an inductive basis for Will and Idea as metaphysical realities, both unconscious, however, — factors inherent in the being of the Unconscious.
Here in the Unconscious, too, is the truth of Schelling’s famous Neutrum — the something neither subject nor object, that he set up for the Absolute; and no longer, Hartmann thinks, a target for Hegel’s “the
- ↑ Zekle crep’ up quite unbeknown.
- Lowell: The Courtin’.
