More original and far more uncompromising is the work of Ed. v. Hartmann (1842-1906). Personally he enjoyed the twofold distinction--whatever it may be worth--of having served as an officer for a short time in the Prussian army, and of never having taught in a university. His great work, published at twenty-seven, appeared under the telling title of the _Philosophy of the Unconscious_. It won immediate popularity, and reached its eleventh edition in 1904. Hartmann adopts, {145} with some slight attenuation, Schopenhauer's pessimism, and his metaphysics with a considerable emendation. In this new version the world is still conceived as Will and Representation; but whereas for Schopenhauer the intellective side had been subordinated to the volitional, with Hartmann the two are co-equal and intimately united, together forming that "Unconscious" which is the new Absolute. In this way Reason again becomes, what it had been with Hegel, a great cosmic principle; only as the optimistic universe had argued itself _into_ existence, so conversely the pessimistic universe has to argue itself _out of_ existence. As in the process of developing differentiation, the volitional and intellective sides draw apart, the Unconscious becomes self-conscious, and thus awakens to the terrible mistake it committed in willing to be. Thenceforth the whole of evolution is determined by the master-thought of how not to be. The problem is how to annul the creative Will. And the solution is to divide it into two halves so opposed that the one shall be the negation and destruction of the other. There will be then, not indeed a certainty, but an equal chance of definitive self-annihilation and eternal repose. Thus, the immediate duty for mankind, as also their predestined task, is the furtherance of scientific and industrial progress as a means towards this consummation, which is likewise their predestined end. A religious colouring is given to the process by representing it as an inverted Christian scheme in which man figures as the redeemer of God--_i.e._ the Absolute--from the unspeakable torments to which he is now condemned by the impossibility of satisfying his will.