By what means is this end to be attained? Hartmann is no advocate of suicide as the best remedy of the evils of human existence. Upon this point he agrees with Schopenhauer, and thinks that such a course would have no effect upon the general progress of the cosmic process. A renunciation of pleasure—asceticism—would present no better solution of the problem. Even abstinence from reproduction would not serve the purpose. “What good would it do,” says Hartmann, “if humanity were to cease to be by means of sexual abstinence? This unfortunate universe would continue to exist, and the Unconscious would immediately take advantage of the opportunity to create a new man or some other similar type.”[236] Thus it is not the disappearance of mankind that should constitute our aim, but “the complete abandonment of the individual to the cosmic process, in order that the latter may accomplish its end and bring about the universal deliverance of the world.”[237] This being so, the instinctive love of life reasserts itself, and it becomes necessary to admit, at least as provisional truth, “the validity of the will to live; for it is only by complete resignation to life and its troubles, and not by cowardly renunciation and abandonment, that one may contribute one’s share in the development of the cosmic process.”[238] Hartmann’s proposed solution of the problem of human existence belongs undoubtedly to the category of systems advocating resignation. He is unable to tell us what is the cosmic process to which he bids man lend all his forces. He advises humanity to continue to live and to multiply in the full certainty that happiness cannot be attained. Hartmann obviously demands a true renunciation and an absolute submission. His solution has the appearance of being more exact, and of furnishing a guide to human conduct more clear than that vague aspiration to Nirvâna proposed by Schopenhauer. But on closer investigation it becomes at once plain that the greater precision is illusory.