Hartmann, however, attempts to strike a more fundamental blow than this at the presupposition involved in the argument for evolutionist hedonism. For he contends that, throughout all life, the great pulse of progress is neither, on the one hand, desire for pleasure, nor, on the other, the more complex and varied motives just referred to, but that it is the incessant striving towards fulness of life by a universal unconscious will, which is manifested in all things, and which is for ever pressing onwards towards conscious realisation, regardless of the increase of pain which the course of evolution implies. But this hypothesis of unconscious will is not a justifiable metaphysical principle got at by the analysis of experience, and necessary for its explanation, though lying beyond it. It is a "metempirical," or rather mythical, cause interpolated into the processes of experience. Hence the antagonism in which it stands to psychological fact: its disregard of the effect of pleasure as a powerful motive in volition; and its neglect of the obvious truth that function so reacts upon organ that all actions have simply by continuance a tendency to be performed with greater ease, and therefore to yield in their performance increase of pleasure. The smoothness and precision with which it works may, indeed, lead to a function being performed unconsciously, and thus without either pain or pleasure. But the normal exercise of conscious activity is uniformly pleasurable.[168] [Sidenote: (_bb_) the nature of volition;]