Metaphysic of the Unconscious--our feet are clogged at every step.
We are encircled by the merest play of words, the most unsatisfactory
demonstrations, and most inconsistent inferences. The theory of
final causes has been hitherto employed to show the wisdom of the
world; with our Pessimist philosopher it shows nothing but its
irrationality and misery. Consciousness has been generally supposed
to be the condition of all happiness and interest in life; here it
simply awakens us to misery, and the lower an animal lies in the
scale of conscious life, the better and the pleasanter its lot.

. . . . .

"Thus, then, the universe, as an emanation of the unconscious, has
been constructed. {90c} Throughout it has been marked by design, by
purpose, by finality; throughout a wonderful adaptation of means to
ends, a wonderful adjustment and relativity in different portions has
been noticed--and all this for what conclusion? Not, as in the hands
of the natural theologians of the eighteenth century, to show that
the world is the result of design, of an intelligent, beneficent
Creator, but the manifestation of a Being whose only predicates are
negatives, whose very essence is to be unconscious. It is not only
like ancient Athens, to an unknown, but to an unknowing God, that
modern Pessimism rears its altar. Yet surely the fact that the
motive principle of existence moves in a mysterious way outside our
consciousness no way requires that the All-one Being should be
himself unconscious.


I believe the foregoing to convey as correct an idea of Von
Hartmann's system as it is possible to convey, and will leave it to