Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/722

690 PESSIMISM But Hartmann is not merely a metaphysician ; he pro poses to supply inductive proof for his propositions. The question of the preponderance of pleasure or pain in the world is to be worked out by observation of facts and summation of figures. So far differing from Schopenhauer, he admits the positivity of pleasure, but maintains nevertheless that pleasure and pain are representable by quantities of the same denomination, prefaced respectively by the plus or minus sign. When the accounts of debt and credit are drawn out, it appears that the balance is enormously on the side of pain. To him who has once perceived the surplus of pain it is an obvious duty to extinguish the source whence sprang the unmitigated evil. Yet mankind in the past has shrunk from the acceptance of this conclusion, and sought refuge in three successive illusions: (1) the naive illusion of the natural mind that happiness is to "be found in this present world ; (2) the illusion that happiness, though a failure here, will be realized in the world beyond the grave ; (3) the illusion which puts its hopes on the amelioration of humanity in the future history of the world. One after another these illusions are shown to be vanity. A little taste of pleasure, amid the insipidity and bitterness of life, is snatched by a select few from the consolations of art and science. But at last, as wisdom grows and the hopeless monotony of grief is more acutely felt by the race, humanity will rise up boldly to the last great act of despairing suicide, and reduce the unconscious to its primeval nullity. Von If we pass from this grandiose drama of the birth and Hart- destruction of the universe to consider the ethical doctrine which Hartmann supposes himself to base upon his meta physical theory, we find ourselves on safer ground. For, apart from the method by which he reaches it, his moral principle is not very different from the general view on such subjects. The basis of morality in his theory is the relation of the individual consciousness to the Absolute in which consists its true being. It is in this ultimate identity of the individual with the All-one not merely in the preservation of his phenomenal welfare, or of the welfare of the society he belongs to, or the furtherance of some one ideal good that the obligation to be moral is to be sought. On the other hand, there is nowhere in the universe a surplus of pleasure ; and therefore the moral agent cannot either here or elsewhere look for happi ness in a positive sense as the reward of his virtue. Ego ism of every range from the more materialistic to the more religious pleasures is incompatible with genuine virtue. The aim of morality is the redemption of the whole world from the evil into which its initial act has plunged it. And in this act of redemption the result of which will not be joy, but rest, the quietude of the universe man by his intelligence and will is the main worker, the fellow-worker of the Absolute ; it is by him that God works out the redemption of himself and of the universe. " Real existence," so closes the Phenomenology of the Moral Consciousness, " is the incarnation of the God head ; the world-process is the story of the Passion of the God who has become flesh, and at the same time the way to the redemption of Him who is crucified in the flesh; but morality is the co-operation towards shortening this way of suffering and redemption." Critical- It would be vain to criticize in detail these speculations, remarks. ou ^ O f wn i c h a few principal points have been adduced, and which, besides being in themselves vague, are pliable in the hands of their author. But a few remarks may be made on some main issues involved in the dispute. It may be admitted in the first place that the doctrine of the origin of existence in an a-logical principle is but an extra vagant way of stating that the intelligence when it awakes to consciousness finds itself in presence of another world of nature and custom which seems irrational and antagonistic a world which is outside of us and seems to mock our puny individual efforts for its improvement. Secondly, it may be admitted that there is no evidence for the thesis that the world was intended to suit the convenience of man, or of any species whatever. As a matter of fact, there is abundance of misery in the world. But, quite apart from the reducibility of the amount by the application of intelligent means, it seems certain that no attempt to draw up a balance-sheet of absolute cosmic misery or hap piness is ever likely to be successful. It is as irrational to pronounce this to be the worst of all possible worlds as the best. The superlatives employed in the terms " optimism " and " pessimism " betray a passionate estimate of things. Life, one has said, would be tolerable but for its pleasures. Even those who, like Leopardi, have declared themselves in love with death, show, by still electing to live, that life has something not measurable by pleasures, yet chosen even amid mental tortures and extreme ill -health. As Aristotle said long ago, we are not unbiassed judges in re Pleasure v. Pain. Thirdly, if it were worth while, it might be urged that the main terms of the pessimists are ex tremely vague. The " Will " and the " Unconscious " can not be tied down to a definite meaning without losing their power ; the contrast between the positivity and negativity of pleasure and pain shows an ignorance of logic ; and, above all, the habit of transferring the terms of religion to express what are supposed to be analogous ideas in pessimistic metaphysics is misleading. The pessimistic theories of modern times are in part a commendable protest against the common compromises which slur over the antithesis between the moral and the natural. They show tolerably conclusively that the world is not a felicific institution, and that he who makes happi ness the aim of his life is on the wrong tack. But, when they proceed to dogmatize that existence has a root of bitterness and life is a burden of pain, they fall into the common error of exaggerating a statement relatively true into an absolute principle. You cannot tell if life is worth living, so long as life is held to be the sum or difference of pains and pleasures. If pains and pleasures were only and always such, the argument might be admitted ; if they were permanent real entities, not liable to be transformed into each other, not constantly associated in the same act, it might be possible to treat them as ultimate and irreversible standards for our estimate of life and the guidance of our conduct. If pleasure and pain are unequally and unfairly distributed, it is probable that this is a fault which human agency can cure to an unspeakable degree, quite without the desperate remedy of self-torture or cosmic suicide. If pessimism can teach the world that the highest reward of virtue is self-respect, and that there is no pleasure available anywhere to bribe us to be good, it has done well. It has also done well if it points out the barriers to happiness in this world, so long as these barriers prevent true life and can be removed by wise methods. But in the meanwhile, till the burden of existence has become universally unbear able, it may be well to remember that we shall be as likely to benefit the Absolute by doing our work well as by macerating ourselves, and that the sum of existence is a big thing, of which it were rash to predicate either that it is altogether and supremely good or altogether and supremely bad. The works on pessimism have been numerous lately. Most of them, however, deal with it mainly in connexion with the two German philosophers, and of these several treat exclusively of the special metaphysical and psychological theories. For Buddhism, see BUDDHISM, vol. iv. p. 424 sq. , and also Oldenberg s Biuldlm (1881), since translated into English. An account of Schopen hauer was given by R. Adamson in Mind for 1876, and in Miss Zimmern s Life of ScJ/oj)cnhaucr (1876) ; the first account of Hart-