not now in question, but only their value as evidence of the
trend towards a critical animism. The inadequacy of the
mechanical view came home even to a mathematician like
Clifford!

We turn to a very different form of speculation, yet one equally
favourable to the essential contention of the nature-mystic--that
of Schopenhauer, a philosopher whose system is attracting
closer and keener attention as the years pass by. Certain of his
views have been cursorily mentioned in what has preceded, and
will find further mention in what is to follow. But here, the aim
is to focus attention on his fundamental doctrine, that the
Ground of all existence is Will. His line of argument in arriving
at this conclusion is briefly to be stated thus. The nature of
things-in-themselves would remain an eternal secret to us, were
it not that we are able to approach it, not by knowledge of
external phenomena, but by inner experience. Every knowing
being is a part of nature, and it is in his own self-consciousness
that a door stands open for him through which he can approach
nature. That which makes itself most immediately known within
himself is will; and in this will is to be found the _Welt-stoff_.
Let Schopenhauer speak for himself. "Whoever, I say, has
with me gained this conviction . . . will recognise this will
of which we are speaking, not only in those phenomenal
existences which exactly resemble his own, in men and animals,
as their inmost nature, but the course of reflection will lead him
to recognise the force which germinates and vegetates in the
plant, and indeed the force through which the crystal is formed,
that by which the magnet turns to the North Pole, the force
whose shock he experiences from the contact of two different