themselves up to the full enjoyment of Schopenhauer's works, without incurring the risk of imbibing false doctrines.

The first error of Schopenhauer consists in his having undertaken to build on Kant's Ontology what Kant himself either could not or would not build on it, namely, a system of metaphysics. He thus stood committed to both Idealism and metaphysics: that is to say, he had to assert that the world is phenomenal, that we know nothing but our own impressions, never the Ding an sich; and having pronounced this Ding an sich to be unknowable, he had to propound a speculative doctrine concerning it.

His second error was that he called the essence of all things Will, instead of calling it Reason or Wisdom, vous or λóyos, and that, having proclaimed the Will to be aimless and lawless, he talks of an evidently progressive series of self-objectivations of the Will, so that the laws and forms of thought, the great logical and mathematical necessities which must have existed, either outside of or in the Will, from all eternity, are not at all accounted for.

All the incongruities to be found in Schopenhauer's system may be considered as results of these two fundamental errors. If we could suppose for a moment that Schopenhauer had admitted the Logos by the side of the "aimless Will," and had represented the world as the battle-field of these two contending and mutually complementary principles, all that he ever said about the Will would appear to us as perfectly correct. There is, from this point of view (though not from Schopenhauer's own), an immense deal of striking truth in this doctrine of a blind and restless agency manifesting itself in a world of blindness and restlessness, and therefore of suffering. It is quite undeniable that most sufferings (if not all) are directly or indirectly due to the various forms of self-love and self-assertion. From the untold miseries inflicted by the first Napoleon on millions of men down to the unseen cruelties described in Tom Hood's "Song of the Shirt," all were the work of ambition (which is self-assertion) and of vanity (which is self-love). And, although this is admitted, as a matter of course, by every man or woman, ambition and vanity continue to be nursed and fostered and stimulated in every imaginable manner.

school-children are no longer allowed to do their duty without becoming prize-fighters. Prizes, of course, are not intended to make them vain and mercenary. Nor need that be intended. For the restless, self-asserting Will is steadily at work within us from the cradle to the grave; and those who pray to God, Thy Will be done, can see no reason why they should not continue to do the behests of another Will, the repressing and deadening of which is the very essence of morality.

We should not forget to say a few words here on another kind of suffering, which is known to us under the name of ennui. Since nothing positive, but everything negative, can be predicated of Schopenhauer's First Principle, his "Will" is not only aimless, but empty. Therefore, the sufferings produced by the restlessness of that Will must be either pain or ennui. Schopenhauer says, humorously, that the former is represented by our working-days, the latter by our Sundays, and, he might have added, by the whole life of those whose week has seven Sundays. Vacuity craves filling; and ennui, or the mental horror vacui, becomes, like vanity and ambition, a real force or motive-power. Like vanity and ambition, it works good only in exceptional cases, its usual manifestations being love of pleasure, love of sights, love of strong emotions, love of change. Solitude and monotony of life are dreaded and abhorred.

But enough. We cannot help admitting that Schopenhauer's Ethics are remarkably good, considering the rottenness of their metaphysical foundation. Even his Pessimism has done some good in Germany, where the optimistic faith in the certainty of human progress had produced a dangerous degree of political apathy and religious indifference. Schopenhauer's Pessimism thus became a substitute for the pessimism of Christianity. Both agree in saying that the world is bad and wicked, and that the future is uncertain. And this uncertainty implies the necessity of an effort, according to Schopenhauer; the necessity of Divine intercession, according to Christianity. Fichte, too, had said that the world was bad, but the end was sure to be good, so that the necessity of moral effort could only be asserted, not proved; while Hegel's world was altogether good, because real, the reality of anything essentially

bad being irrational and as such impossible. From an educational point of view, these last two doctrines must appear more dangerous and less useful than Schopenhauer's, though Schopenhauer may be wrong for all that. Pessimistic philosophy is always a contradictio in adjecto; and the greatest objection to Schopenhauer's Pessimism will always be that, if it teaches us how to kill the evil, it also kills the killer, and good and evil die the same death.

Schopenhauer could never have founded a school on such a faith. He has had many readers and many admirers, but hardly any follower or disciple. Hartmann and Frauenstädt are the only philosophers of note in Germany who call Schopenhauer their master. But neither of them has accepted his doctrine in toto. And we may say of this philosophy what Hegel quoted with reference to other philosophies, "The feet of them which shall carry thee out are at the door."

Schopenhauer's greatest merit, which is independent of his success and of the truth of his doctrines, consists in his having remained faithful to speculative philosophy at a time when the reign of philosophy had passed away. He outlived all his rivals, and his mental solitude was even greater in his old age than it had been in his youth. Like a promontory forming the last link of a long chain of lofty mountains, he stands alone in the low though fertile plain of science and of positivism. The horizon may appear flat just now; but other mountains are ahead, and they will heave in sight as time

wears on.

Those who believe that Schopenhauer has been the last of the metaphysicians seem to expect too much from that new discipline called Positive Philosophy, which is neither positive nor a philosophy, since it mistakes knowledge for truth and induction for thinking. It is easy to say, as Newton did, "Physicists, beware of metaphysics." The boy who was beaten by the schoolmaster for always talking in hexameters, cried,

"Desine, præceptor, posthac non carmina fundam."

His very vow belied his penitence, and his promise not to sin was itself a new sin. When scientific men say they will hear no more of metaphysics, and yet aspire to something higher

than formal logic and dry learning, or knowledge of names and facts, they deceive themselves and others. The human mind will never give up, though it may hush, its metaphysical cravings.

Speculation may be an idle occupation. But so is art and so is poetry. Yet art and poetry will not be given up as useless, any more than philosophy or religion, though they may all be ignored by those who have no time for them, their whole attention being absorbed either by the frivolities of social life or by the exigencies of some serious pursuit. We admit that the philosopher of the future ought to be a scientific man and, if possible, a mathematician, a man, at any rate, brought up under the chastening and sobering influences of modern science. But he must be a man who knows how to handle results, not only how to find them and to label them. Science is not a building-ground, but a mere brick-yard. Its results are building-stones, not buildings; and even mathematics and formal logic are scaffoldings rather than houses. Who can build without stones or without scaffoldings and plumb-lines? But the bricklayers and the carpenters ought to know what they are before they aspire to be builders and masters, and ought to become conscious that they belong to the very lowest grade in that lodge of Freemasonry whose masters are to build a temple greater than Solomon's. In the mean time, it may be highly desirable that the brick-yard should be left undisturbed by metaphysical intruders. Philosophy can afford to wait until science shows signs of fatigue or distress. Nay, more, science has the strongest claims on our gratitude and admiration. If it has led to nothing better than Agnosticism (which, after all, is an improvement on Atheism and Materialism); if it denies the existence and, a fortiori, the immortality of the soul; and if it has reduced morality to a mere system of social dynamics, we ought, the more readily, to acknowledge our obligation to co-operate with those fearless and sagacious workers who obtained these results, and whose greatest wrong does not lie in these results, but in the presumption of their finality. Many of those who profess these doctrines are men of warm hearts and open minds, men who. would be metaphysical enough to die for their country, and to

own allegiance to all that, according to their lights, is good and beautiful and true. But it still remains to be seen how long mankind could abide by those doctrines without impairing this allegiance, and whether human society would be possible or individual life worth having, if that allegiance could ever, for any length of time, be forgotten or disowned.

E. GRYZANOVSKI.

ART. III. THE PROPOSED CHANGES IN THE TELEGRAPHIC SYSTEM.

THE present age has witnessed greater changes in the habits of the people, and the methods of transacting business, than many previous generations. This is mainly due to the accumulation of wealth in the nation, which has probably been greater within the last twenty years than in all its previous history, and to the increase and wide dispersion of its population. There is, undoubtedly, more wealth and comfort, especially among the laboring classes, than at any previous era, but the tendency is to heap up enormous wealth and power in a few hands and in large corporations. While we do not believe that the poor are growing poorer, we do think the rich are growing richer, and that the disparity between the two classes is continually increasing. A few firms in the large cities transact the largest part of the business in each, where formerly a much smaller amount was divided among ten times as many firms. Two or three large manufacturing companies employ more hands and capital than did all our factories combined thirty years ago; while a few large railroad and coal-mining companies control the anthracite coal mines, and set the price of one half the coal mined in this country. The same tendency is noticed in England and on the Continent of Europe. Mr. Gladstone has said that England has accumulated greater wealth in fifty years than in the previous eighteen hundred, and more in the last twenty than in the preceding thirty years. The evil effects of this tendency are less felt abroad, since along with this increase of wealth the influence of the laboring