al. Kant is an uncompromising opponent of eudaemonism. "If we take
enjoyment or happiness as the measure, it is easy," he says, "to
evaluate life. Its value is less than nothing. For who would begin one's
life again in the same conditions, or even in new natural conditions, if
one could choose them oneself, but of which enjoyment would be the sole
end?"

There was, in fact, a strongly-marked vein of pessimism in Kant. One
of the ablest men of the younger generation who were brought up on his
system founded the philosophical pessimism--very different in range and
depth from the sentimental pessimism of Rousseau--which was to play a
remarkable part in German thought in the nineteenth century. [Footnote:
Kant's pessimism has been studied at length by von Hartmann, in Zur
Geschichte und Begrundung des Pessimismus (1880).] Schopenhauer's
unpleasant conclusion that of all conceivable worlds this is the
worst, is one of the speculations for which Kant may be held ultimately
responsible. [Footnote: Schopenhauer recognised progress social,
economic, and political, but as a fact that contains no guarantee
of happiness; on the contrary, the development of the intelligence
increases suffering. He ridiculed the optimistic ideals of comfortable,
well-regulated states. His views on historical development have been
collected by G. Sparlinsky, Schopenhauers Verhaltnis zur Geschichte, in
Berner Studien s. Philosophie, Bd. lxxii. (1910).]

4.

Kant's considerations on historical development are an appendix to his
philosophy; they are not a necessary part, wrought into the woof of his
system. It was otherwise with his successors the Idealists, for whom his
system was the point of departure, though they rejected its essential
feature, the limitation of human thought. With Fichte and Hegel
progressive development was directly deduced from their principles. If
their particular interpretations of history have no permanent value, it
is significant that, in their ambitious attempts to explain the universe
a priori, history was conceived as progressive, and their philosophies
did much to reinforce a conception which on very different principles
was making its way in the world. But the progress which their systems
involved was not bound up with the interest of human happiness, but
stood out as a fact which, whether agreeable or not, is a consequence of
the nature of thought.

The process of the universe, as it appeared to Fichte, [Footnote:
F