creation by unravelling and bringing into the light and into relief all
that is beautiful in it relatively to man, and all that in consequence
should render it lovely, respected, and dear to him; religion, finally,
seeks to be a bond between all men and a bond between all men and God; it
sketches the plan of universal brotherhood which is ideally the last state
of humanity, a state which no doubt it will never attain, but which it is
essential it should imagine and believe to be possible, without which it
always would be drawn towards animality more and much more than it is.

The Hegelian philosophy has exercised an immense influence throughout
Europe not only on philosophic studies, but on history, art, and
literature. It may be regarded as the last "universal system" and as the
most daring that has been attempted by the human mind.

SCHOPENHAUER.--Schopenhauer was the philosopher of the
will. Persuaded, like Leibnitz, that man is an epitome and a picture of the
world, and that the world resembles us (which is hypothetical), he takes up
the thought of Leibnitz, changing and transforming it thus: All the
universe is not thought, but all the universe is will; thought is only an
accident of the will which appears in the superior animals; but the will,
which is the foundation of man, is the foundation of all; the universe is a
compound of wills that act. All beings are wills which possess organs
conformed to their purpose. It is _the will to be_ which gave claws to
the lion, tusks to the boar, and intelligence to man, because he was the
most unarmed of animals, just as to one who becomes blind it gives
extraordinarily sensitive and powerful sense of hearing, smell, and
touch. Plants strive towards light by their tops and towards moisture by
their roots; the seed turns itself in the earth to send forth its stalk
upwards and its rootlet downward. In minerals there are "constant
tendencies" which are nothing but obscure wills; what we currently term