V.
The estimate of the doctrine which we now have before us will be greatly aided if we bear in mind the nature of its historic genesis. The problem bequeathed by Kant to his successors was, as we have seen throughout both this and the preceding discussion, the problem of the relation of the empirical self of each moment to the total or universal self. This problem exists alike for Hegel and for Schopenhauer. Hegel undertakes to solve it by examining the process of self-consciousness. This process, developed according to his peculiar and paradoxical logic, which we have ventured to call the Logic of Passion, shows him that in the last analysis there is and can be but one self, the absolute spirit, the triumphant solver of paradoxes. Sure of his process, Hegel despises every such mystical and immediate seizing of the Universal as had been characteristic of the romanticists. With just these romanticists, however, Schopenhauer has in common the immediate intuition whereby he seizes, not so much the universal self as, in his opinion, the universal and irrational essence or nature that is at the heart of each finite self, and of all things, namely, the Will. Yet when he describes this will, after his intuition has come to grasp it, he finds in it just the paradox that Hegel had logically developed. For Hegel, self-consciousness is, as even Fichte already had taught, essentially the longing to be more of a self than you are. Just so, for Schopenhauer, if you exist you will, and if you will you are striving to escape from your present nature. It is of the essence of will to be always desiring a change. If the Will makes a world, the Will as such will be sure, then, thinks Schopenhauer, to be endlessly dissatisfied with its world. For, once more, when you will, the very essence of such will is discontentment with what is yours now. I no longer make that an object of desire which I already
