_Earth and Heaven_
The word justice is on all men's lips. But do men indeed so highly
prize justice as one would think, who believed all that has been
said and is still being said concerning it? More than this, is it so
highly appreciated by its sworn advocates and panegyrists--poets,
philosophers, moralists, theologians--even by the best of them, the
most sincere and gifted? I doubt it, I doubt it deeply. Glance at the
works of any wise man, whether of the modern or the ancient world.
Justice, if we understand it as the equality of all living men before
the laws of creation--and how else can we understand it?--never
occupied any one's attention. Plato never once asked Destiny why she
created Thersites contemptible and Patroclus noble. Plato argues that
men should be just, but never once dares to arraign the gods for their
injustice. If we listen to his discourses, a suspicion will steal into
our souls that justice is a virtue for mortals, while the immortals
have virtues of their own which have nothing in common with justice.
And here is the last trial of earthly virtue. We do not know whether
the human soul is mortal or immortal. Some, we know, believe in
immortality, others laugh at the belief. If it were proved that they
were both in the wrong, and that men's destinies after death are as
unequal as they are in life: the successful, the chosen take up their
abode in heaven, the others remain to rot in the grave and perish with
their mortal clay. (It is true that such an admission is made by our
Russian prophet, the priest of love and justice, Dostoevsky, in his
_Legend of the Grand Inquisitor._) Now, if it should turn out that
Dostoevsky is really immortal, while his innumerable disciples and
admirers, the huge mass of grey humanity which is spoken of in _The
Grand Inquisitor,_ end their lives in death as they began them with
birth, would Dostoevsky himself (whom I have named deliberately as
the most passionate defender of the ideal of justice, though there
have been yet more fervent and passionate and remarkable defenders of
justice on earth whom I ought perhaps to name, were it not that I would
avoid speaking lightly of sacred things--let him who finds Dostoevsky
small, himself choose another)--would Dostoevsky reconcile himself to
such an injustice, would he rise in revolt beyond the grave against the
injustice, or would he forget his poor brethren when he occupied the
place prepared for him? It is hard to judge _a priori: a posteriori_
one would imagine that he would forget.
And between Dostoevsky and a small provincial author the gulf is
colossal; the injustice of the inequality cries out to heaven.
Nevertheless we take no heed, we live on and do not cry, or if we
do, we cry very rarely, and then, to tell the truth, it is hard to
say certainly why we cry. Is it because we would draw the attention
of the indifferent heaven, or is it because there are many amateurs
of lamentation among our neighbours, like the pilgrim woman in
Ostrovsky's _Storm,_ who passionately loved to hear a good howl? All
these considerations will seem particularly important to those who,
like myself at the present moment--I cannot speak for to-morrow--share
Dostoevsky's notion that even if there is immortality, then it is
certainly not for everybody but for the few. Moreover, I follow
Dostoevsky further and admit that they alone will rise from the dead
who on the existing hypotheses should expect the worse fate after
death. The first here will be the first still, there, while of the last
not even a memory will remain. And no one will be found to champion
those who have perished: a Dostoevsky, a Tolstoi, and all the other
'first' who succeed in entering heaven will be engaged in business
incomparably more important.
So continue, if you will, to take thought for the just arrangement of
the world, and, after the fashion of Plato, to make the teaching of
justice the foundation of philosophy.
V
_The Force of Argument_
Schopenhauer answered the question of the immortality of the soul in
the negative. In his opinion, man as Thing-in-Himself is immortal, but
as phenomenon mortal. In other words, all that is individual in us
exists only in the interval between birth and death; but since each
individual according to Schopenhauer's teaching is a manifestation of
'Will' or 'Thing-in-Itself,' the unalterable and eternal principle
which is the only reality of the world, continually made object in the
manifold of phenomena, then, in so far as this principle is displayed
in man, he is eternal. This is Schopenhauer's opinion, evidently
derived as a logical conclusion from his general philosophic doctrine,
both from that relating to the Thing-in-Itself, and from that which
relates to the individual. The first part shall go unregarded: after
all, if Schopenhauer was mistaken, and the Thing-in-Itself is mortal,
we need not weep over it, nor is there any cause to rejoice over its
immortality. But here is the individual. He is deprived of his right to
immortality, and for reason is alleged an argument which is at first
sight irrefutable. Everything which has a beginning has an end also,
says Schopenhauer. The individual has a beginning, birth; therefore an
end, death, awaits him. To Schopenhauer himself the general proposition
as well as the conclusion seemed so obvious, that he did not admit
the possibility of mistake even for a moment. But this time we have
an incontestable case of a wrong conclusion from a wrong premiss.
First, why must everything which has a beginning also have an end? The
observations of experience point to such an hypothesis; but are the
observations of experience really strong enough to support general
propositions? And are we really entitled to make use of propositions
so acquired as first principles for the solution of the most important
problems of philosophy? And even if we admit that the premiss is
correct, nevertheless the conclusion at which Schopenhauer arrived is
wrongly drawn. It may indeed be that everything which has a beginning
also has an end; it may indeed be that the individual is sooner or
later doomed to perish; but why identify the moment of the soul's
destruction with the death of the body? It may be that the body will
die, but the soul which the same fate attends at some future time will
find for itself a more or less suitable integument somewhere in a
distant planet, perhaps still unknown to us, and live on, though only
for a little while and not for all eternity, as the extreme optimists
believe. How important would it be for poor humanity to retain even
such a hope: particularly seeing that we can hardly say with certainty
what it is that men desire when they speak of the immortality of the
soul. Is it that they merely desire at all costs to live eternally, or
would they be satisfied with one or two lives more, especially if the
subsequent lives should appear to be less offensively insignificant
than this earthly existence, wherein even the lowest rank of nobility
is to many an unattainable ideal? It seems to me that it is not every
one who would consent to live eternally. And what if every possibility
should have been exhausted, and endless repetition should begin?
It does not of course follow from this that we have the right to
reckon upon an existence beyond the grave. The question remains open
as before, even when Schopenhauer's arguments have been refuted. But
it does follow that the best arguments on closer consideration often
appear worthless. _Quod erat demonstrandum--_ naturally pending the
discovery of arguments to refute my refutation of Schopenhauer's. I
make this reserve to deprive my critics of the pleasure and possibility
of a little wordplay.