Englishmen are beginning to understand that pessimism also stands for a recent development of speculation which provides a complete theory of the universe, and which appears to be adopted, at least in the land of its birth, by a large and growing school. The attention which the great founder of German pessimism, Arthur Schopenhauer, now receives in his own country, thanks more especially to the labours of faithful expositors like Frauenstädt, and of partial disciples like Hartmann, has for some little time aroused a certain curiosity in England. And so it has become the fashion, among those who would pass as experts in the movements of German philosophy, to talk in a half-mysterious and esoteric manner of Schopenhauer and his system of pessimism. Quite recently, moreover, attempts have been made to unfold the leading doctrines of the pessimists to English readers. I may refer to Miss Zimmern's Life of Schopenhauer' (1875) and to an account of Hartmann's philosophy in the Westminster Review' (January 1876) as being among the first efforts in this direction. It is this modern philosophical pessimism which will more especially engage our attention in the present inquiry.
At first sight it might seem that these two kinds of pessimism, the popular and instinctive, and the philosophic and reasoned, have nothing to do with one another, and that no light can be thrown on the later by the earlier development. It is, no doubt, true that modern German pessimism as a philosophy of existence must be examined and estimated on its own grounds, and be accepted or rejected according as it shows itself to be or not to be a consistent and well-reasoned system of thought. At the same time the full significance of this speculative doctrine cannot be understood except by a reference to pre-philo