the gains of positive inquiry no reader of a work replete with illustrations from all the sciences will for a moment doubt; but, on the other side, he is an unfaltering ontologist, and believes no less firmly that he that hath eyes to see can divine the riddle of the universe, and that there is no peace for the intellect and heart until Religion, Philosophy, and Science are not merely "reconciled," but are seen to be one, as root, stem, and leaves are organic expressions of one same living tree.

The English reader may wish to know something of the author himself, and the circumstances of the production of this book. More than enough has been written on this subject in Germany, but all that need be said on the matter here may be told in a very few words. Dr. Eduard von Hartmann is a retired military officer, compelled almost at the outset of his career to abandon his profession through a serious affection of the left knee-cap. Constrained to alter his plan of life, the width and varied nature of his attainments (mostly independently acquired) caused him not a little embarrassment. After some wavering, and after casting many longing looks on the fair realms of art, in some of whose departments his talents would doubtless have commanded success, he obeyed the whispers of his most powerful genius, and yielded himself up once and for all to the calls of a career of philosophical authorship. It will be noticed by the reader with what keen satire he speaks of the professed students and teachers of the Science of Sciences. In this he is at one with his immediate forerunner, and a far older and more potent name. But the circumstances of modern life are quite other than they were in the age of the Sophists; and positions that did not cramp the genius of a Kant, a Schelling, and a Hegel, can hardly of necessity be the fortresses of orthodox opinion the modern free-lance would have the world believe. At the same time we can well imagine that the atmosphere of a University would hardly have been favourable to that direct intercourse with the mind

of the people which the literary spirit of our author craved; and Von Hartmann, like Socrates, doubtless took good counsel of his "Dæmon," when he went straight to the public, and confided in his own intellectual strength to give him a wide and attentive hearing.

In the spring of 1868, when in his twenty-seventh year, Eduard Von Hartmann placed in the hands of a well-known Berlin bookseller the original draught of the work now translated, with the title "Philosophy of the Unconscious, Popular Physiological-PsychogicalPhilosophical Inquiries on the Manifestation and Essential Nature of the Unconscious, and the Origin and Meaning of Consciousness." The publisher, with unusual penetration, saw the value of the work, and in November 1868 the book appeared in one volume, the first words of the proposed title alone being retained.

Since 1868 Von Hartmann has been an untiring and voluminous writer. The full list of his publications extends to about a score of volumes, some of them running to 700 or 800 pages, to say nothing of magazine articles and such like trifles. Any one who would pronounce an adequate judgment on the author's philosophical powers would have undoubtedly to make acquaintance with the more important of these; and, in justice to the author, I append a few words of his own concerning the book which has made his reputation. "It is not the product of reflection and maturity, but the bold experiment of juvenile talent, presenting all the defects and qualities of the work of youth. Fifteen years have passed since the manuscript first went to press, and I should conceive many things differently to-day than I presented then." This unripeness has been in a measure corrected by the Appendix and supplementary notes, and the reviewer should bear these in mind when exercising his critical function. That the work is open to criticism of various kinds the present translator does not for a moment doubt; but, when criticism has done its worst, he believes that there will be

enough of worth left to justify the enthusiasm the " Philosophy of the Unconscious" has evoked in the land of its birth, as also to secure it a welcome from a wide circle of new and appreciating readers.

LONDON, March 1884.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THE SEVENTH EDITION.

THAT I am in general no friend of prefaces, the previous six editions of this book have proved. When, however, a work meets with so kindly and indulgent a reception as the present one, it might be interpreted as a kind of affectation in the author if he persistently avoided that direct communication with his readers which is customary in prefaces. As I know myself to be as free from such prudery as from obtrusiveness, I will no longer abstain from appearing before the curtain in the usual fashion, and from discussing certain points of a somewhat external or even personal nature,—the less, as the attacks of opponents on my character and private life have already compelled me, by a frank description of my course of life,1 to afford my readers the requisite materials for forming a judgment of their own on the value of those attacks.

I can truly say that never was author more surprised by the success of his book than I by that of the "Philosophy of the Unconscious." A moderate acquaintance with the history of the book-trade as regards philosophical literature would alone have sufficed to destroy any possible illusion of a young author's vanity; the lamentations of Schopenhauer on the tardiness with which a really important work makes its way, bore emphatic testimony to the compatibility of a certain self-consciousness with incredulity concerning outward literary results; public opinion at the time of the

1 Cf. "Die Gegenwart," 1875, Nr. 1-3. The article has been reprinted in the "Gesammelte Studien und

Aufsätze gemeinverständlichen Inhalts."

formation of the North German Alliance appeared moreover as unfavourable as possible for the reception of a systematic philosophical work; and lastly, I was, at the bottom of my heart, far too much of a Pessimist not to be prepared for the worst, as was only naturally to be expected from the apathy of the public as regards philosophical things in general, and the ill-will of the professional class towards the dilettante interloper in particular. If the result proved this prognosis to be erroneous, the reason was partly that it had been founded only on an observation of symptoms discernible on the mere fringe of the spiritual life; partly that journalism busied itself with unwonted energy with the new venture; partly, lastly, that my publisher had taken an especial interest in my efforts, and zealously exerted himself to push the sale of the book (all risks being from the first taken on his own shoulders).

The importance of the latter fact had been entirely overlooked by Schopenhauer, who had imagined that it was enough to write an important book and to print it at his his own cost, and the rest was the affair of the public. This view is, however, just as one-sided as the opposite one, that an altogether worthless book of an unknown author without any attraction for the public, even in a bad sense, could be helped to a trade success by a mere publisher's puff. Whilst all the industry of a publisher in respect of a book, that is not recommended by one reader to another, always leads only to commercial loss, it is true that what is good and important, commonly at the end of a chapter of accidents, is preserved from total oblivion, but it may have to make its way with extreme slowness.

If Schopenhauer had had my good fortune to find a publisher, who would have personally interested himself for his great work, those long decennia of entire neglect would have been spared him, which contributed so much more and more to embitter his peculiarly constituted mind, and to paralyse his rich creative powers. The consequence