difference of degree. The association of ideas likewise presupposes that the unconscious within us selects the ideas which are most closely related or possess an affinity for the stock of ideas on hand. In the process of history the unconscious operates in such a way that individuals, whilst seeming to themselves to be striving for their own conscious ends, serve the higher purposes of the universe as a whole.—The activity of the unconscious is thus everywhere manifest—from atom to world-process. This principle is not personal, but rather super-personal. Hartmann nevertheless regards himself in agreement, barring several modifications, with the speculative theism of Schelling, Weisse and Lotze.
Hartmann's philosophy did not originate from pure induction. It rests on the subsumption of a psychologico-historical aperçu: namely, the observation on the one hand of the prejudicial view of mere reflection and analysis, the onesided attitude of criticism, and the tremendous importance of the immediate, the instinctive and ingenious on the other. Consciousness, according to Hartmann, is predominantly analytical, critical and negative; it is only the unconscious that furnishes the grand total and provides for the new insertions. Starting from this theoretical motive, suggesting the influence of Rousseau, and Romanticism, Hartmann finally ascribes a mystic-metaphysical character to the unconscious which is active everywhere in nature and in history—and which, in Hartmann's view, explains everything.
Replying to his opponents, in an anonymous self-criticism (Das Unbewusste vom Standpunkte der Physiologie und der Descendenslehre, 1872), he demonstrates his mastery of the methods and results of the natural sciences. He had the satisfaction of doing this work regarded as the
