Von Hartmann's hypostasis of the Unconscious has been often and justly criticised. But his chapter on Mysticism is of great value. He begins by asking, "What is the _Wesen_ of Mysticism?" and shows that it is not quietism (disproved by mystics like Böhme, and by many active reformers), nor ecstasy (which is generally pathological), nor asceticism, nor allegorism, nor fantastic symbolism, nor obscurity of expression, nor religion generally, nor superstition, nor the sum of these things. It is healthy in itself, and has been of high value to individuals and to the race. It prepared for the Gospel of St. John, for the revolt against arid scholasticism in the Middle Ages, for the Reformation, and for modern German philosophy. He shows the mystical element in Hamann, Jacobi, Fichte, and Schelling; and quotes with approval the description of "intellectual intuition" given by the last named. We must not speak of thought as an antithesis to experience, "for thought (including immediate or mystical knowledge) is itself experience." This knowledge is not derived from sense-perception,--the conscious will has nothing to do with it,--"it can only have arisen through inspiration from the Unconscious." He would extend the name of mystic to "eminent art-geniuses who owe their productions to inspirations of genius, and not to the work of their consciousness (e.g. Phidias, Æeschylus, Raphael, Beethoven)", and even to every "truly original" philosopher, for every high thought has been first apprehended by the glance of genius. Moreover, the relation of the individual to the Absolute, an essential theme of philosophy, can _only_ be mystically apprehended. "This feeling is the content of Mysticism [Greek: kat exochên], because it finds its existence _only_ in it." He then shows with great force how religious and philosophical systems have full probative force only for the few who are able to reproduce mystically in themselves their underlying suppositions, the truth of which can only be mystically apprehended. "Hence it is that those systems which rejoice in most adherents are just the poorest of all and most unphilosophical (e.g. materialism and rationalistic Theism)." 9. _Du Prel_. "If the self is not wholly contained in self-consciousness, if man is a being dualised by the threshold of sensibility, then is Mysticism possible; and if the threshold of sensibility is movable, then Mysticism is necessary." "The mystical phenomena of the soul-life are anticipations of the biological process." "Soul is our spirit within the self-consciousness, spirit is the soul beyond the self-consciousness."