Unless _suffering_ is the direct and immediate object of life, our
existence must entirely fail of its aim. It is absurd to look upon
the enormous amount of pain that abounds everywhere in the world, and
originates in needs and necessities inseparable from life itself, as
serving no purpose at all and the result of mere chance. Each separate
misfortune, as it comes, seems, no doubt, to be something exceptional;
but misfortune in general is the rule.
I know of no greater absurdity than that propounded by most systems of
philosophy in declaring evil to be negative in its character. Evil is
just what is positive; it makes its own existence felt. Leibnitz is
particularly concerned to defend this absurdity; and he seeks to
strengthen his position by using a palpable and paltry sophism.[1]
It is the good which is negative; in other words, happiness and
satisfaction always imply some desire fulfilled, some state of pain
brought to an end.
[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note_, cf. _Thèod_, §153.--Leibnitz argued
that evil is a negative quality--_i.e_., the absence of good; and that
its active and seemingly positive character is an incidental and not
an essential part of its nature. Cold, he said, is only the absence of
the power of heat, and the active power of expansion in freezing water
is an incidental and not an essential part of the nature of cold. The
fact is, that the power of expansion in freezing water is really an
increase of repulsion amongst its molecules; and Schopenhauer is quite
right in calling the whole argument a sophism.]
This explains the fact that we generally find pleasure to be not
nearly so pleasant as we expected, and pain very much more painful.
The pleasure in this world, it has been said, outweighs the pain; or,
at any rate, there is an even balance between the two. If the reader
wishes to see shortly whether this statement is true, let him compare
the respective feelings of two animals, one of which is engaged in
eating the other.
The best consolation in misfortune or affliction of any kind will
be the thought of other people who are in a still worse plight than
yourself; and this is a form of consolation open to every one. But
what an awful fate this means for mankind as a whole!
We are like lambs in a field, disporting themselves under the eye of
the butcher, who chooses out first one and then another for his prey.
So it is that in our good days we are all unconscious of the evil Fate
may have presently in store for us--sickness, poverty, mutilation,
loss of sight or reason.
No little part of the torment of existence lies in this, that Time is
continually pressing upon us, never letting us take breath, but always
coming after us, like a taskmaster with a whip. If at any moment Time
stays his hand, it is only when we are delivered over to the misery of
boredom.
But misfortune has its uses; for, as our bodily frame would burst
asunder if the pressure of the atmosphere was removed, so, if the
lives of men were relieved of all need, hardship and adversity; if
everything they took in hand were successful, they would be so swollen
with arrogance that, though they might not burst, they would present
the spectacle of unbridled folly--nay, they would go mad. And I may
say, further, that a certain amount of care or pain or trouble is
necessary for every man at all times. A ship without ballast is
unstable and will not go straight.
Certain it is that _work, worry, labor_ and _trouble_, form the lot of
almost all men their whole life long. But if all wishes were fulfilled
as soon as they arose, how would men occupy their lives? what would
they do with their time? If the world were a paradise of luxury and
ease, a land flowing with milk and honey, where every Jack obtained
his Jill at once and without any difficulty, men would either die of
boredom or hang themselves; or there would be wars, massacres, and
murders; so that in the end mankind would inflict more suffering on
itself than it has now to accept at the hands of Nature.
In early youth, as we contemplate our coming life, we are like
children in a theatre before the curtain is raised, sitting there
in high spirits and eagerly waiting for the play to begin. It is a
blessing that we do not know what is really going to happen. Could we
foresee it, there are times when children might seem like innocent
prisoners, condemned, not to death, but to life, and as yet all
unconscious of what their sentence means. Nevertheless, every man
desires to reach old age; in other words, a state of life of which it
may be said: "It is bad to-day, and it will be worse to-morrow; and so
on till the worst of all."
If you try to imagine, as nearly as you can, what an amount of misery,
pain and suffering of every kind the sun shines upon in its course,
you will admit that it would be much better if, on the earth as little
as on the moon, the sun were able to call forth the phenomena of life;
and if, here as there, the surface were still in a crystalline state.
Again, you may look upon life as an unprofitable episode, disturbing
the blessed calm of non-existence. And, in any case, even though
things have gone with you tolerably well, the longer you live the more
clearly you will feel that, on the whole, life is _a disappointment,
nay, a cheat_.
If two men who were friends in their youth meet again when they are
old, after being separated for a life-time, the chief feeling
they will have at the sight of each other will be one of complete
disappointment at life as a whole; because their thoughts will be
carried back to that earlier time when life seemed so fair as it
lay spread out before them in the rosy light of dawn, promised so
much--and then performed so little. This feeling will so completely
predominate over every other that they will not even consider it
necessary to give it words; but on either side it will be silently
assumed, and form the ground-work of all they have to talk about.
He who lives to see two or three generations is like a man who sits
some time in the conjurer's booth at a fair, and witnesses the
performance twice or thrice in succession. The tricks were meant to
be seen only once; and when they are no longer a novelty and cease to
deceive, their effect is gone.
While no man is much to be envied for his lot, there are countless
numbers whose fate is to be deplored.
Life is a task to be done. It is a fine thing to say _defunctus est_;
it means that the man has done his task.
If children were brought into the world by an act of pure reason
alone, would the human race continue to exist? Would not a man rather
have so much sympathy with the coming generation as to spare it the
burden of existence? or at any rate not take it upon himself to impose
that burden upon it in cold blood.
I shall be told, I suppose, that my philosophy is comfortless--because
I speak the truth; and people prefer to be assured that everything the
Lord has made is good. Go to the priests, then, and leave philosophers
in peace! At any rate, do not ask us to accommodate our doctrines to
the lessons you have been taught. That is what those rascals of sham
philosophers will do for you. Ask them for any doctrine you please,
and you will get it. Your University professors are bound to preach
optimism; and it is an easy and agreeable task to upset their
theories.
I have reminded the reader that every state of welfare, every feeling
of satisfaction, is negative in its character; that is to say, it
consists in freedom from pain, which is the positive element of
existence. It follows, therefore, that the happiness of any given life
is to be measured, not by its joys and pleasures, but by the extent to
which it has been free from suffering--from positive evil. If this
is the true standpoint, the lower animals appear to enjoy a happier
destiny than man. Let us examine the matter a little more closely.
However varied the forms that human happiness and misery may take,
leading a man to seek the one and shun the other, the material basis
of it all is bodily pleasure or bodily pain. This basis is very
restricted: it is simply health, food, protection from wet and cold,
the satisfaction of the sexual instinct; or else the absence of these
things. Consequently, as far as real physical pleasure is concerned,
the man is not better off than the brute, except in so far as the
higher possibilities of his nervous system make him more sensitive to
every kind of pleasure, but also, it must be remembered, to every kind
of pain. But then compared with the brute, how much stronger are the
passions aroused in him! what an immeasurable difference there is in
the depth and vehemence of his emotions!--and yet, in the one case,
as in the other, all to produce the same result in the end: namely,
health, food, clothing, and so on.
The chief source of all this passion is that thought for what is
absent and future, which, with man, exercises such a powerful
influence upon all he does. It is this that is the real origin of
his cares, his hopes, his fears--emotions which affect him much
more deeply than could ever be the case with those present joys
and sufferings to which the brute is confined. In his powers of
reflection, memory and foresight, man possesses, as it were, a machine
for condensing and storing up his pleasures and his sorrows. But the
brute has nothing of the kind; whenever it is in pain, it is as though
it were suffering for the first time, even though the same thing
should have previously happened to it times out of number. It has
no power of summing up its feelings. Hence its careless and placid
temper: how much it is to be envied! But in man reflection comes in,
with all the emotions to which it gives rise; and taking up the same
elements of pleasure and pain which are common to him and the brute,
it develops his susceptibility to happiness and misery to such a
degree that, at one moment the man is brought in an instant to a state
of delight that may even prove fatal, at another to the depths of
despair and suicide.
If we carry our analysis a step farther, we shall find that, in order
to increase his pleasures, man has intentionally added to the number
and pressure of his needs, which in their original state were not much
more difficult to satisfy than those of the brute. Hence luxury in all
its forms; delicate food, the use of tobacco and opium, spirituous
liquors, fine clothes, and the thousand and one things than he
considers necessary to his existence.
And above and beyond all this, there is a separate and peculiar source
of pleasure, and consequently of pain, which man has established for
himself, also as the result of using his powers of reflection; and
this occupies him out of all proportion to its value, nay, almost more
than all his other interests put together--I mean ambition and the
feeling of honor and shame; in plain words, what he thinks about the
opinion other people have of him. Taking a thousand forms, often very
strange ones, this becomes the goal of almost all the efforts he makes
that are not rooted in physical pleasure or pain. It is true that
besides the sources of pleasure which he has in common with the
brute, man has the pleasures of the mind as well. These admit of many
gradations, from the most innocent trifling or the merest talk up to
the highest intellectual achievements; but there is the accompanying
boredom to be set against them on the side of suffering. Boredom is
a form of suffering unknown to brutes, at any rate in their natural
state; it is only the very cleverest of them who show faint traces
of it when they are domesticated; whereas in the case of man it has
become a downright scourge. The crowd of miserable wretches whose one
aim in life is to fill their purses but never to put anything into
their heads, offers a singular instance of this torment of boredom.
Their wealth becomes a punishment by delivering them up to misery of
having nothing to do; for, to escape it, they will rush about in all
directions, traveling here, there and everywhere. No sooner do they
arrive in a place than they are anxious to know what amusements it
affords; just as though they were beggars asking where they could
receive a dole! Of a truth, need and boredom are the two poles
of human life. Finally, I may mention that as regards the sexual
relation, a man is committed to a peculiar arrangement which drives
him obstinately to choose one person. This feeling grows, now and
then, into a more or less passionate love,[1] which is the source of
little pleasure and much suffering.
[Footnote 1: I have treated this subject at length in a special
chapter of the second volume of my chief work.]
It is, however, a wonderful thing that the mere addition of thought
should serve to raise such a vast and lofty structure of human
happiness and misery; resting, too, on the same narrow basis of joy
and sorrow as man holds in common with the brute, and exposing him
to such violent emotions, to so many storms of passion, so much
convulsion of feeling, that what he has suffered stands written and
may be read in the lines on his face. And yet, when all is told, he
has been struggling ultimately for the very same things as the brute
has attained, and with an incomparably smaller expenditure of passion
and pain.
But all this contributes to increase the measures of suffering in
human life out of all proportion to its pleasures; and the pains of
life are made much worse for man by the fact that death is something
very real to him. The brute flies from death instinctively without
really knowing what it is, and therefore without ever contemplating it
in the way natural to a man, who has this prospect always before his
eyes. So that even if only a few brutes die a natural death, and most
of them live only just long enough to transmit their species, and
then, if not earlier, become the prey of some other animal,--whilst
man, on the other hand, manages to make so-called natural death the
rule, to which, however, there are a good many exceptions,--the
advantage is on the side of the brute, for the reason stated above.
But the fact is that man attains the natural term of years just as
seldom as the brute; because the unnatural way in which he lives, and
the strain of work and emotion, lead to a degeneration of the race;
and so his goal is not often reached.
The brute is much more content with mere existence than man; the plant
is wholly so; and man finds satisfaction in it just in proportion as
he is dull and obtuse. Accordingly, the life of the brute carries less
of sorrow with it, but also less of joy, when compared with the life
of man; and while this may be traced, on the one side, to freedom from
the torment of _care_ and _anxiety_, it is also due to the fact
that _hope_, in any real sense, is unknown to the brute. It is thus
deprived of any share in that which gives us the most and best of our
joys and pleasures, the mental anticipation of a happy future, and the
inspiriting play of phantasy, both of which we owe to our power of
imagination. If the brute is free from care, it is also, in this
sense, without hope; in either case, because its consciousness is
limited to the present moment, to what it can actually see before
it. The brute is an embodiment of present impulses, and hence what
elements of fear and hope exist in its nature--and they do not go very
far--arise only in relation to objects that lie before it and within
reach of those impulses: whereas a man's range of vision embraces the
whole of his life, and extends far into the past and future.
Following upon this, there is one respect in which brutes show real
wisdom when compared with us--I mean, their quiet, placid enjoyment of
the present moment. The tranquillity of mind which this seems to give
them often puts us to shame for the many times we allow our thoughts
and our cares to make us restless and discontented. And, in fact,
those pleasures of hope and anticipation which I have been mentioning
are not to be had for nothing. The delight which a man has in hoping
for and looking forward to some special satisfaction is a part of the
real pleasure attaching to it enjoyed in advance. This is afterwards
deducted; for the more we look forward to anything, the less
satisfaction we find in it when it comes. But the brute's enjoyment
is not anticipated, and therefore, suffers no deduction; so that the
actual pleasure of the moment comes to it whole and unimpaired. In the
same way, too, evil presses upon the brute only with its own intrinsic
weight; whereas with us the fear of its coming often makes its burden
ten times more grievous.
It is just this characteristic way in which the brute gives itself up
entirely to the present moment that contributes so much to the delight
we take in our domestic pets. They are the present moment personified,
and in some respects they make us feel the value of every hour that
is free from trouble and annoyance, which we, with our thoughts and
preoccupations, mostly disregard. But man, that selfish and heartless
creature, misuses this quality of the brute to be more content than we
are with mere existence, and often works it to such an extent that he
allows the brute absolutely nothing more than mere, bare life. The
bird which was made so that it might rove over half of the world, he
shuts up into the space of a cubic foot, there to die a slow death in
longing and crying for freedom; for in a cage it does not sing for
the pleasure of it. And when I see how man misuses the dog, his best
friend; how he ties up this intelligent animal with a chain, I feel
the deepest sympathy with the brute and burning indignation against
its master.
We shall see later that by taking a very high standpoint it is
possible to justify the sufferings of mankind. But this justification
cannot apply to animals, whose sufferings, while in a great measure
brought about by men, are often considerable even apart from their
agency.[1] And so we are forced to ask, Why and for what purpose does
all this torment and agony exist? There is nothing here to give the
will pause; it is not free to deny itself and so obtain redemption.
There is only one consideration that may serve to explain the
sufferings of animals. It is this: that the will to live, which
underlies the whole world of phenomena, must, in their case satisfy
its cravings by feeding upon itself. This it does by forming a
gradation of phenomena, every one of which exists at the expense of
another. I have shown, however, that the capacity for suffering is
less in animals than in man. Any further explanation that may be given
of their fate will be in the nature of hypothesis, if not actually
mythical in its character; and I may leave the reader to speculate
upon the matter for himself.
[Footnote 1: Cf. _Welt als Wille und Vorstellung_, vol. ii. p. 404.]
_Brahma_ is said to have produced the world by a kind of fall or
mistake; and in order to atone for his folly, he is bound to remain
in it himself until he works out his redemption. As an account of the
origin of things, that is admirable! According to the doctrines
of _Buddhism_, the world came into being as the result of some
inexplicable disturbance in the heavenly calm of Nirvana, that blessed
state obtained by expiation, which had endured so long a time--the
change taking place by a kind of fatality. This explanation must be
understood as having at bottom some moral bearing; although it is
illustrated by an exactly parallel theory in the domain of physical
science, which places the origin of the sun in a primitive streak of
mist, formed one knows not how. Subsequently, by a series of moral
errors, the world became gradually worse and worse--true of the
physical orders as well--until it assumed the dismal aspect it wears
to-day. Excellent! The _Greeks_ looked upon the world and the gods as
the work of an inscrutable necessity. A passable explanation: we may
be content with it until we can get a better. Again, _Ormuzd_ and
_Ahriman_ are rival powers, continually at war. That is not bad. But
that a God like Jehovah should have created this world of misery and
woe, out of pure caprice, and because he enjoyed doing it, and should
then have clapped his hands in praise of his own work, and declared
everything to be very good--that will not do at all! In its
explanation of the origin of the world, Judaism is inferior to any
other form of religious doctrine professed by a civilized nation;
and it is quite in keeping with this that it is the only one which
presents no trace whatever of any belief in the immortality of the
soul.[1]
[Footnote 1: See _Parerga_, vol. i. pp. 139 _et seq_.]
Even though Leibnitz' contention, that this is the best of all
possible worlds, were correct, that would not justify God in having
created it. For he is the Creator not of the world only, but of
possibility itself; and, therefore, he ought to have so ordered
possibility as that it would admit of something better.
There are two things which make it impossible to believe that this
world is the successful work of an all-wise, all-good, and, at the
same time, all-powerful Being; firstly, the misery which abounds in
it everywhere; and secondly, the obvious imperfection of its highest
product, man, who is a burlesque of what he should be. These things
cannot be reconciled with any such belief. On the contrary, they are
just the facts which support what I have been saying; they are our
authority for viewing the world as the outcome of our own misdeeds,
and therefore, as something that had better not have been. Whilst,
under the former hypothesis, they amount to a bitter accusation
against the Creator, and supply material for sarcasm; under the latter
they form an indictment against our own nature, our own will, and
teach us a lesson of humility. They lead us to see that, like the
children of a libertine, we come into the world with the burden of sin
upon us; and that it is only through having continually to atone for
this sin that our existence is so miserable, and that its end is
death.
There is nothing more certain than the general truth that it is the
grievous _sin of the world_ which has produced the grievous _suffering
of the world_. I am not referring here to the physical connection
between these two things lying in the realm of experience; my meaning
is metaphysical. Accordingly, the sole thing that reconciles me to the
Old Testament is the story of the Fall. In my eyes, it is the only
metaphysical truth in that book, even though it appears in the form of
an allegory. There seems to me no better explanation of our existence
than that it is the result of some false step, some sin of which
we are paying the penalty. I cannot refrain from recommending the
thoughtful reader a popular, but at the same time, profound treatise
on this subject by Claudius[1] which exhibits the essentially
pessimistic spirit of Christianity. It is entitled: _Cursed is the
ground for thy sake_.
[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note_.--Matthias Claudius (1740-1815), a
popular poet, and friend of Klopstock, Herder and Leasing. He edited
the _Wandsbecker Bote_, in the fourth part of which appeared the
treatise mentioned above. He generally wrote under the pseudonym of
_Asmus_, and Schopenhauer often refers to him by this name.]
Between the ethics of the Greeks and the ethics of the Hindoos, there
is a glaring contrast. In the one case (with the exception, it must be
confessed, of Plato), the object of ethics is to enable a man to lead
a happy life; in the other, it is to free and redeem him from life
altogether--as is directly stated in the very first words of the
_Sankhya Karika_.
Allied with this is the contrast between the Greek and the Christian
idea of death. It is strikingly presented in a visible form on a fine
antique sarcophagus in the gallery of Florence, which exhibits, in
relief, the whole series of ceremonies attending a wedding in ancient
times, from the formal offer to the evening when Hymen's torch lights
the happy couple home. Compare with that the Christian coffin,
draped in mournful black and surmounted with a crucifix! How much
significance there is in these two ways of finding comfort in death.
They are opposed to each other, but each is right. The one points to
the _affirmation_ of the will to live, which remains sure of life for
all time, however rapidly its forms may change. The other, in the
symbol of suffering and death, points to the _denial_ of the will to
live, to redemption from this world, the domain of death and devil.
And in the question between the affirmation and the denial of the will
to live, Christianity is in the last resort right.
The contrast which the New Testament presents when compared with the
Old, according to the ecclesiastical view of the matter, is just that
existing between my ethical system and the moral philosophy of Europe.
The Old Testament represents man as under the dominion of Law, in
which, however, there is no redemption. The New Testament declares
Law to have failed, frees man from its dominion,[1] and in its stead
preaches the kingdom of grace, to be won by faith, love of neighbor
and entire sacrifice of self. This is the path of redemption from the
evil of the world. The spirit of the New Testament is undoubtedly
asceticism, however your protestants and rationalists may twist it to
suit their purpose. Asceticism is the denial of the will to live; and
the transition from the Old Testament to the New, from the dominion
of Law to that of Faith, from justification by works to redemption
through the Mediator, from the domain of sin and death to eternal life
in Christ, means, when taken in its real sense, the transition from
the merely moral virtues to the denial of the will to live. My
philosophy shows the metaphysical foundation of justice and the love
of mankind, and points to the goal to which these virtues necessarily
lead, if they are practised in perfection. At the same time it is
candid in confessing that a man must turn his back upon the world, and
that the denial of the will to live is the way of redemption. It is
therefore really at one with the spirit of the New Testament, whilst
all other systems are couched in the spirit of the Old; that is
to say, theoretically as well as practically, their result is
Judaism--mere despotic theism. In this sense, then, my doctrine might
be called the only true Christian philosophy--however paradoxical a
statement this may seem to people who take superficial views instead
of penetrating to the heart of the matter.
[Footnote 1: Cf. Romans vii; Galatians ii, iii.]
If you want a safe compass to guide you through life, and to banish
all doubt as to the right way of looking at it, you cannot do better
than accustom yourself to regard this world as a penitentiary, a
sort of a penal colony, or [Greek: ergastaerion] as the earliest
philosopher called it.[1] Amongst the Christian Fathers, Origen, with
praiseworthy courage, took this view,[2] which is further justified by
certain objective theories of life. I refer, not to my own philosophy
alone, but to the wisdom of all ages, as expressed in Brahmanism and
Buddhism, and in the sayings of Greek philosophers like Empedocles and
Pythagoras; as also by Cicero, in his remark that the wise men of old
used to teach that we come into this world to pay the penalty of crime
committed in another state of existence--a doctrine which formed
part of the initiation into the mysteries.[3] And Vanini--whom his
contemporaries burned, finding that an easier task than to confute
him--puts the same thing in a very forcible way. _Man_, he says, _is
so full of every kind of misery that, were it not repugnant to the
Christian religion, I should venture to affirm that if evil spirits
exist at all, they have posed into human form and are now atoning for
their crimes_.[4] And true Christianity--using the word in its right
sense--also regards our existence as the consequence of sin and error.
[Footnote 1: Cf. Clem. Alex. Strom. L. iii, c, 3, p. 399.]
[Footnote 2: Augustine _de cìvitate Dei_., L. xi. c. 23.]
[Footnote 3: Cf. _Fragmenta de philosophia_.]
[Footnote: 4: _De admirandis naturae arcanis_; dial L. p. 35.]
If you accustom yourself to this view of life you will regulate your
expectations accordingly, and cease to look upon all its disagreeable
incidents, great and small, its sufferings, its worries, its misery,
as anything unusual or irregular; nay, you will find that everything
is as it should be, in a world where each of us pays the penalty of
existence in his own peculiar way. Amongst the evils of a penal colony
is the society of those who form it; and if the reader is worthy of
better company, he will need no words from me to remind him of what he
has to put up with at present. If he has a soul above the common, or
if he is a man of genius, he will occasionally feel like some noble
prisoner of state, condemned to work in the galleys with common
criminals; and he will follow his example and try to isolate himself.
In general, however, it should be said that this view of life will
enable us to contemplate the so-called imperfections of the great
majority of men, their moral and intellectual deficiencies and the
resulting base type of countenance, without any surprise, to say
nothing of indignation; for we shall never cease to reflect where we
are, and that the men about us are beings conceived and born in
sin, and living to atone for it. That is what Christianity means in
speaking of the sinful nature of man.
_Pardon's the word to all_! [1] Whatever folly men commit, be
their shortcomings or their vices what they may, let us exercise
forbearance; remembering that when these faults appear in others, it
is our follies and vices that we behold. They are the shortcomings of
humanity, to which we belong; whose faults, one and all, we share;
yes, even those very faults at which we now wax so indignant, merely
because they have not yet appeared in ourselves. They are faults that
do not lie on the surface. But they exist down there in the depths of
our nature; and should anything call them forth, they will come and
show themselves, just as we now see them in others. One man, it
is true, may have faults that are absent in his fellow; and it is
undeniable that the sum total of bad qualities is in some cases very
large; for the difference of individuality between man and man passes
all measure.
[Footnote 1: "Cymbeline," Act v. Sc. 5.]
In fact, the conviction that the world and man is something that had
better not have been, is of a kind to fill us with indulgence towards
one another. Nay, from this point of view, we might well consider the
proper form of address to be, not _Monsieur, Sir, mein Herr_, but _my
fellow-sufferer, Socî malorum, compagnon de miseres_! This may perhaps
sound strange, but it is in keeping with the facts; it puts others in
a right light; and it reminds us of that which is after all the most
necessary thing in life--the tolerance, patience, regard, and love
of neighbor, of which everyone stands in need, and which, therefore,
every man owes to his fellow.