sentations, or formal manifestations of that will
which is the only thing-in-itself that actually subsists. Thus he
stands among philosophers as the uncompromising antagonist of
Hegel, Fichte, Schelling and all the champions of the theory of
consciousness and absolute reason as the essential foundation of
the faculty of thought. The defect of his system is its tendency to
a sombre pessimism, but his literary style is magnificent and his
power of reasoning is exceptional. The epitome here given has been
prepared from the original German.

_I.--The World as Idea_

"The world is my idea," is a truth valid for every living creature,
though only man can consciously contemplate it. In doing so he attains
philosophical wisdom. No truth is more absolutely certain than that all
that exists for knowledge, and therefore this whole world, is only
object in relation to subject, perception of a perceiver, in a word,
idea. The world is idea.

This truth is by no means new; it lay by implication in the reflections
of Descartes; but Berkeley first distinctly enunciated it; while Kant
erred by ignoring it. So ancient is it that it was the fundamental
principle of the Indian Vedanta, as Sir William Jones points out. In one
aspect the world is idea; in the other aspect, the world is will.

That which knows all things and is known by none is the subject; and for
this subject all exists. But the world as idea consists of two essential
and inseparable halves. One half is the object, whose form consists of
time and space, and through these of multiplicity; but the other half is
the subject, lying not in space and time, for it subsists whole and
undivided in every reflecting being. Thus any single individual endowed
with the faculty of perception of the object, constitutes the whole
world of idea as completely as the millions in existence; but let this
single individual vanish, and the whole world as idea would disappear.
Each of these halves possesses meaning and existence only in and through
the other, appearing with and vanishing with it. Where the object begins
the subject ends. One of Kant's great merits is that he discovered that
the essential and universal forms of all objects--space, time,
causality--lie _a priori_ in our consciousness, for they may be
discovered and fully known from a consideration of the subject, without
any knowledge of the object.

Ideas of perception are distinct from