and out of this proceeds the moral life in human society and in history. Schopenhauer has inverted it, since, according to him, the natural impulse, or the Will to Live, must be first affirmed, wherefore nothing remains after this mistaken experiment but to negate it finally. Schopenhauer has been, not incorrectly, called, Fichte on his head.

Pessimism, with its negation of the Will, was a life in India; in Germany it is only an idle speculation, in conformity to which no one has tried or dared to live. This idle speculation was diffused in Germany at a time when many despaired of the political mission and moral power of the German people. And that it has not disappeared, after the great successes through which the German Empire has been founded, and a more hopeful life has animated the German nation, shows only that plants that have once taken root are eradicated with difficulty, and need a long time to die out. Besides the negation of the Will, Schopenhauer knows in this (in his opinion) thoroughly bad world, still another means which releases from its suffering and affords relief-a means, which if not lasting, is still momentary, and if not for all, is, nevertheless, the portion of gifted men of genius. Art furnishes this, according to him, the work of genius, the gifted artist's intuition of the world. For it frees from the suffering of life, it is exalting, it creates pure desires, free from all that is displeasing, a blessedness of intuition without Will, an unalloyed enjoyment, which is preceded neither by suffering nor want, nor does repentance, sorrow, emptiness, or satiety necessarily follow. The only drawback is, that this happiness cannot fill the whole of life, but only some of its moments. According to this, Schopenhauer also knows of a world, which would be worse than that is which he calls the worst of all possible worlds. For the world, which is still worse than the worst of all possible worlds, as he conceives it, would be the world in which there is no negation of the Will, and no creative insight of genius. Whoever uses mere relative notions, as the notions of the worst and the best, always incurs the danger of making propositions which negate one another by their inner contradiction. Thus, Schopenhauer's world, in comparison with a worse world—a world in which there is no creative insight of genius and no negation of the Will-can be called the better among the possible worlds. Pessimism is not so far removed.

*

from Optimism the doctrine that the world is the best of possible worlds-as those think, who are in the habit of conceiving everything in the world according to these vague relative notions. Both notions have a very limited sphere of application, and, among other things, have no application in the doctrine of Spinoza, according to which the infinite proceeds out of the infinite in an infinite way, a divine world follows necessarily out of God, perfect or infinite as God, which cannot be better or worse than it is, since it cannot be other than it is, by reason of its origin out of God. According to Spinoza's doctrine, it is not the best of possible worlds, but it is the only possible world, and, therefore, infinite as God. It is not finite in itself, but only for us, or in its genesis (Becoming).

The creative knowledge of art arises, according to Schopenhauer, by the knowing subject tearing itself suddenly away from the service of the Will, in which are all knowledge and science, that are forever seeking the grounds of phenomena, but never finding them. The cognitive Ego, in the absence of Will, thus rises from the individual, and is limited to the universal and only objective and true intuition and perception of things.

But in this way a miracle happens, when the cognitive Ego suddenly tears itself away from the root of the world-the Will and its servitude; when consciousness, the intellect, the accident, masters and annuls the Will-the substance-even if only, as Schopenhauer adds, for a short time. With the disappearance of the Will in consciousness all suffering and want are abolished. That which is otherwise impossible takes place now in gifted men, who become free from the Will and their suffering, and enjoy the blessing of creative insight. Like the romantic school, Schopenhauer extols creative insight and inspiration as the solace of life, which men of genius attain through a mystery, which is in contradiction to all the notions of this Pessimistic view of the world.

In the exaltation of this creative insight, the man of genius views the world from quite another standpoint than the ordinary man. For to the latter, his cognitive faculty is only the lantern which lights his way; but to the man of genius, his faculties are a sun which reveals the world. He does not seek any more after the whence and the whither and the why, but, released from this commonplace, creative insight in art beholds

the true nature of things, their enduring, immutable form, independent of the temporal existence of individual beings. The Platonic ideas should be the objects of art, which consists only in the stages of the objectivations of the Will, viewed in their purity and essential character.

This part of Schopenhauer's work, "The World as Will and Presentation" (Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung), which is full of ingenious notions on the works of the fine arts, and sheds a gladdening light in this otherwise dark and despairing view of the world, has, without doubt, brought him many admirers and disciples. Art, which is said to be the intuitive knowledge of ideas, appears, with Schopenhauer, as with Schelling, to be the true science, and all true science is said to be the creative intuition of the artist, endowed with genius.

If, according to the Platonic conception, true science should be the knowledge of ideas (in which we pass over the question, whether art and science are the same, a view which leads us to confound the characteristic with the beautiful, and to ground science upon personal intuitions), then the whole view of the world of Arthur Schopenhauer needs a total revision; for this science, which is a knowledge of ideas, is wanting with him. His view of the world asks only after the commonplace, whence and the whither, and says only that everything is out of the Will to Live, which affirms and negates itself, but it says not what in truth is. For the Will is a predicate that we cannot understand without a subject, without an entityit is the Will of man, the Will of nature, or the Will of God. The Will determines how the meaning of the predicate depends upon the subject, the entity, of which it is predicated. The Will is different, according to the subject whose Will it is. This notion of the Will, or the so-called Will-in-itself, is nothing, and is able to produce nothing. This thinking in mere predicable notions always brings forth an unhealthy condition in the life of philosophy, whose only remedy consists in giving up this habit, since all predicates receive their force and definite signification from the subjects of which they are affirmed. From the standpoint of science, which has its necessary form, without which there is no truth, we cannot, therefore, accept nor comprehend Arthur Schopenhauer's view of the world, though it may contain much that is interesting. And we are unable to understand it, especially, because it is based on a Will

which wills that which it cannot, and does that which it should not, and therefore tortures and negates itself in despair.

The world may be a Will, but Schopenhauer himself says that he does not know whence it is, and thinks there can be a still higher existence, which has the freedom of being Will to Live or not; and this world does not embrace the whole possi bility of existence, especially that inconceivable nothing, in which the consummation of the world is thought of. But this consummation of existence, which has the freedom to be Will to Live, and also not be it, is God, without whom we cannot interpret the world, as Schopenhauer involuntarily proves. Kant's Transcendental Dialectic, which belongs to the Critic of Pure Reason, teaches, that whoever would interpret the world must necessarily think of God as the cause of the world, even if he cannot demonstrate the existence of God. This necessity ceases to exist only for those who do not seek to interpret the world, but who would only live and act.

If this insatiable Will, in Schopenhauer's view of the world, which wills only in order to will, is not necessary, but is only the refuge of a despairing view of the world, then it presupposes, also, an absolute being, a God, who, if the Will of the world is from him, has created it, so that it (the Will) wills what it can, and does not will what it cannot, and does what it should, and need not despair, but hopes that its work will succeed, since it knows that all that is created has an eternal plan and is of an imperishable nature.

Through its form of knowledge, we have said, the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer forms a striking contrast with the German philosophy since Kant. In its form of knowledge lies, also, the reason of the contradictions and deficiencies of Schopenhauer's philosophy. No single proposition is in itself philosphical, however paradoxical this may seem. It is only philosophical in its connection with a whole. Philosophy, says Fichte, is science out of one piece. It is, above all things, logical and uncontradictory thought. But whoever begins with contradictions ends in absurdities. The principle, to believe something because it is absurd, is justly rejected. seems, however, that philosophy has, at present, made this principle its maxim, in holding that the more absurd its thoughts are, they more truth they contain.

It

Art. VI. PERPETUITY OF THE SABBATH.

BY A LAYMAN.

BRITISH and American Evangelical Christians commonly regard the fourth commandment as of universal and perpetual obligation. Continental Christians, while they admit the necessity for some day of rest and worship, commonly regard that commandment as a mere national statute, binding only on the children of Israel.

We shall endeavor to prove that the law of the Sabbath, contained in the fourth commandment, is perpetually binding on all mankind.

Experience shows, that where the obligation to keep the Sabbath is admitted to rest on divine command, it is much better kept than where that obligation is held to rest only on expediency. As the latter opinion is gaining ground, the Sabbath is less and less observed. The consideration of the subject is, therefore, urgently called for.

We shall not attempt an exhaustive argument; our single point is, that the fourth commandment is binding on us.

We admit that the fourth commandment, like all the rest of the decalogue, is, on its face, not addressed to us, but to that particular people whom God had just brought out of Egypt, and thus rescued from slavery, as mentioned in the preface, and who were going to a particular country which God was to give them, as mentioned in the fifth commandment. For the purposes of this argument, we admit that the fourth commandment is not, prima facie, binding on us, but that its obligation must be proved.

Of course, it is not sufficient to say that a law addressed to somebody else, is binding on us now, because given by God, however solemnly, and never repealed, unless it be first shown that it ever was binding on anybody else than those to whom it was addressed. The command to the Israelites not to wear linsey-woolsey,* or the command to them to appear in the presence of the ark three times a year,† would not have been

* Lev. xix: 19; Deut. xxii: II.

Deut. xvi: 16.