in the deepest affliction from the absolute
impartiality of the causal law, is on so good terms with death, whose
inflexibility he comprehends, that without reluctance he gives to it the
universe into the bargain." (p. 353.)

We give these glimpses into the dreary waste of the very latest advocate of
pessimism which, as it seems, has fully and formally become the fashion, in
order to show what monstrosities are demanded from thought, what revolting
hardness from feeling, what nonentities of ethical striving, are offered as
valuable wares, if man has once begun to break the bond between himself and
his living Creator and Master. For this reason, not only the
anti-teleological monists meet the fate of Nihilism, whether they appear in
the plebeian roughness of Buechner or in the aristocratic gentility of
Strauss, but also such a brilliant advocate of teleology as Eduard von
Hartmann does not know of any other final end to offer to the world and
mankind than nothingness, because he did not wish to be driven from his
perception of ends in the world to the only conclusion to which it
leads--namely: to the perception of an absolute intelligent and ethical
personality that directs these ends. He prefers, rather, to suppose an
unconsciously seeing substance of the world, which, after having once in
the dark impulse of its unconscious will, made the mistake of creating a
world, leads the same by the instinct of unconscious teleology in sad,
melancholy, and yet relatively {206} best development, until it is ripe to
sink back into nothingness, and thereby to bring the absolute to rest.

Although we pity the individuals who came under the ban of such a
pessimism, we nevertheless can be glad of the fact that the consequences of
such a separation from God are at least exposed so clearly, and return from
wandering through such barren steppes with renewed thankfulness to our
Christian view of the world, with its divine plan and aim.

We have, next, however to review the representatives of theism and of the
Christian view of the world--which review will show us that the song of
triumph which monism began to raise before its expected victory, came very
near disturbing the composure of persons here and there.

Sec. 5. _Re-echo of Negation on the Side of the Christian View of the World._

In this condition of affairs, it certainly could not happen otherwise than
that, even on the part of the theistic and positive Christian view of the
w