Page:Books and men.djvu/174

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BOOKS AND MEN.

himself. But does Mr. Saltus really suppose that Schopenhauer and Hartmann have made much headway in reducing sadness to a science, that love is in any danger of being supplanted by the "genius of the species," or that the "principle of the unconscious" is at all likely to extinguish our controlling force? What have these two subtle thinkers said to the world that the world has not practically known and felt for thousands of years already? Hegesias, three centuries before Christ, was quite as systematic as Schopenhauer, and his system begot more definite results; for several of his disciples hanged themselves out of deference for his teachings, whereas it may be seriously doubted whether all the persuasive arguments of the Welt als Wille und Vorstellung have ever made or are likely to make a single celibate. Marcus Aurelius was as logically convinced of the inherent worthlessness of life as Dr. Hartmann, and, without any scientific apparatus whatever, he stamped his views on the face of a whole nation. We are now anxiously warned by Mr. Saltus not to confound scientific pessimism with that accidental melancholy which is the result of our own per-