Page:Philosophical Review Volume 8.djvu/615

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597
MORAL AND SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY.
[Vol. VIII.

ness, he might have given us as positive a philosophy of life as is to be found in the teaching of men like Goethe and Herder and Lessing, men for whom the practical wisdom of life consists in helping to further, to the best of our ability, the great world process. It is true that we can claim[1] for Hartmann some of the tendencies of this very 'positive philosophy.' In particular, I think that the philosophy of history owes him a debt for making us conscious of the extent to which the unforeseen and the incalculable and the unexpected (the 'unconscious') enter into human history. History ought to teach many of us (nations as well as individuals) the fatuity and the dangerous consequences of many of our desires for mere gratification and aggrandizement.[2] But then (2), as we soon see, Hartmann also construes the Unconscious (this was apparent in our first paper) as unconscious desire and the logic (or the procedure) of unconscious desire or impulse. The mere gratification of natural impulse can never permanently satisfy human beings. Equally little can man be satisfied with the endless search after the gratification of desire. If man would be permanently happy; he must completely transform the merely natural basis of his life, he must spiritualize his nature. And Hartmann has his own peculiar way of expressing this fact by teaching us that we must invert many of our ordinary ways of looking at the relation of God to the world of our action. Instead of looking to God as a mere guarantor of happiness, we have to see that even God Himself must grieve over or deplore or suffer on account of many of the endlessly foolish pursuits of men. To be sure, it is impossible for Hartmann, by reason of the fact of the unconscious nature of his deity, to see in man's disappointment and dissatisfaction a possible means of bringing man into communion and cooperation with a God who never 'seeks amiss' nor 'strives in vain' but to whom the end of history is somehow present at its beginning. (3) Then, thirdly, there is the fact of the radical evil or selfishness or weakness of human nature.[3] While it is extremely difficult to ex-

  1. Cf. preceding paper, p. 472; also p. 477.
  2. Cf. preceding paper, p. 475.
  3. I cannot pause to consider, in our main argument, the views and claims of those to whom evil is negative and relative rather than positive. Cf. preceding paper, p. 481.