THE PROBLEM OF THE OPTIMISTIC WORLD-VIEW
The Western and the Indian conceptions of civilization
FOR us Westerners civilization consists in this, that we work for the
perfecting of ourselves and of the world at the same time.
But do the activities that are directed outwards and inwards
necessarily belong together? Cannot the spiritual and moral perfecting
of the individual, which is the ultimate aim of civilization, also be
secured if he works for himself only and leaves the world and its
circumstances to themselves? Who gives us any guarantee that the
course of the world can be influenced so as to promote the special aim
of civilization, viz., the perfecting of the individual? Who tells us
that it has any meaning at all which can be further developed? Is not
any action of mine which is directed on the world a diversion of what
could be directed on myself, though everything depends finally upon
the latter?
Moved by these doubts the pessimism of the Hindus and that of
Schopenhauer refuse to allow any importance to the material and social
achievements, which form the outward and visible part of civilization.
About society, nation, mankind, the individual is not to trouble
himself; he is only to strive to experience in himself the sovereignty
of spirit over matter.
This, too, is civilization, in that it pursues the final object of the
latter, viz., the spiritual and ethical perfecting of the individual.
If we Westerners pronounce it incomplete, we must not do so too
confidently. Do the outward progress of mankind and the inner
completion of the individual really belong together as we imagine them
to? Are we not, under an illusion, forcing together things which are
[pg 012] different in kind? Has the spirit in one kind of action
actually some gain for the other?
What we set up as our ideal we have not realized. We lost ourselves in
outward progress, allowing the moralization and inward deepening of
the individual to come to a stop. So we have not been able to produce
practical proof of the correctness of our view of what civilization
is. We cannot, therefore, simply put aside that other narrower
conception, but must come to terms with it.
There will come a time—it is already being prepared for—when
pessimistic and optimistic thought, which have hitherto talked past
each other almost as strangers, will have to meet for practical
discussion. World-philosophy is just dawning. It will shape itself in
a struggle as to whether its world-view shall be optimistic or
pessimistic.
The struggle for the optimistic world-view
The history of Western philosophy is the history of the struggle for
an optimistic world-view. If in antiquity and in modern times the
peoples of Europe have managed to produce a civilization, it is
because in their thought the optimistic world-view was dominant, and
held the pessimistic permanently in subjection, although it was not
able to suppress it altogether.
The accessions of knowledge which have come in the course of our
philosophy have been nothing in themselves: they always stand in the
service of one world-view or the other, and attain only in it to their
real significance.
But the characteristic thing about the way in which the settlement is
made on each occasion, is that it never is made openly. The two
world-views are never brought face to face and the case of each heard.
That the optimistic alone is in the right is a conviction which is
accepted as more or less self-evident. The only thing felt as a
problem is how to marshal all possible knowledge in the triumphal
procession of proof to defeat the other, and to knock on the head
anything that may still wish to rise in its defence.
[pg 013]
Since the pessimistic world-view has never made its presence properly
felt, Western thought manifests a lofty unwillingness to understand
it, though it has a splendid faculty for detecting it. Where it finds,
as in Spinoza, too little interest for activity directed upon the
world, it reacts immediately with rejection of it. Yet all objectively
thinking investigation of the reality of nature is disliked by it
because it may lead to the central position of the human spirit in the
world being insufficiently emphasised. It is because materialism seems
likely to be the last ally of pessimism that it carries on so
embittered a struggle against it.
In the discussion of the problem of the theory of knowledge from
Descartes to Kant and beyond him it is really the cause of the
optimistic world-view which is being maintained. That is why the
theoretical possibility of a depreciation or a denial of the world of
sense is attacked with such obstinacy. By proving the ideality of
space and time Kant hopes to make finally secure the optimistic
world-view of rationalism with all its ideals and demands. Only so can
it be explained that the most acute examinations of the theory of
knowledge are carried through with the most naïve conclusions about
world-view. The great post-Kantian systems of thought, however much
they differ from one another in their subject-matter and the process
of the speculation with which they deal with it, are all united in
this, that they crown the optimistic world-view in their cloud-castles
as the ruler of the universe.
To fit in the aims of mankind with those of the universe in a
logically convincing fashion, that is the endeavour in which European
philosophy serves the optimistic world-view. Anyone who does not help,
or who is indifferent about it, is an enemy.
In its prejudice against scientific materialism philosophy was right.
Materialism has done much more to shake the position of the optimistic
world-view than Schopenhauer has, although it never proceeded against
it with outspoken hostility. When, after the collapse of the great
systems, [pg 014] it was allowed to seat itself at table with
philosophy, which had now become more modest, it even exerted itself
to find out in what sort of tone the latter would like the
conversation to be carried on. In dealing with Darwin and others,
philosophizing natural science made touchingly naïve attempts so to
extend and stretch out the history of zoological development which led
up to man, that mankind and with it the spiritual should appear again
as the goal of the world-process, as in the speculative systems. But
in spite of these well-meant efforts of the proletarian guest the
conversation could no longer be carried on in the old spirit. Of what
use was it for him to try to be better than his reputation? He brought
with him more respect for nature and facts than was consistent with
the convincing establishment of the optimistic world-view. He
therefore shook it, even when he did not intend to.
To such a disregard of nature and science as was shown by the earlier
philosophy we can never return. Nor can we expect the return of a
system of thought which makes it possible to discover in any
convincing way in the universe the aims and objects of mankind, as was
allowed by the old methods. The optimistic world-view ceases,
therefore, to be self-evident to us, or to be demonstrable by the arts
of philosophy. It must give up the idea of finding for itself a solid
foundation.
Optimism and Pessimism
Confusion is caused by the fact that the optimistic and pessimistic
world-views seldom come forward in their purity in the history of
human thought. Their relations are usually such that the one is
predominant, while the other treats with it without being officially
recognized. In India a tolerated world- and life-affirmation maintains
for pessimism something of interest in the external civilization which
it nominally denies. With us pessimism slips in and gnaws at the
civilizing energies of the optimistic view, the result being that
belief in the spiritual progress of [pg 015] mankind has left us. From
it, too, comes the fact that we everywhere conduct the business of
life with lowered ideals.
Pessimism is a lowered will-to-live, and is to be found wherever man
and society are no longer under the pressure of all those ideals of
progress which must be thought out by a will-to-live that is
consistent with itself, but have sunk to the level of letting
actuality be, over wide stretches of life, nothing but actuality.
It is where pessimism is at work in this anonymous fashion, that it is
most dangerous to civilization. It attacks then the most valuable
ideas belonging to life-affirmation, leaving the less valuable ones
untouched. Like some concealed source of magnetic power it disturbs
the world-view’s compass, so that it takes, without suspecting it, a
wrong course. Thus the unavowed mixture of optimism and pessimism in
our thought has the result that we continue to approve the external
blessings given us by civilization, things which to thinking pessimism
are a matter of indifference, while we abandon that which alone it
holds to be valuable, the pursuit of inner perfection. The desire for
progress which is directed to objects of sense, goes on functioning
because it is nourished by actuality, while that which reaches after
the spiritual becomes exhausted, because it is thrown back upon the
inner stimulus which comes from the thinking will-to-live. As the tide
ebbs, objects which reach deep down are left stranded, while what is
just on the surface remains afloat.
Our degeneration, then, traced back to our world-view and what
resulted from it, consists in true optimism having, without our
noticing it, disappeared from among us. We are by no means a race
weakened and decadent through excessive enjoyment of life, and needing
to pull ourselves together to show vigour and idealism amid the
thunderstorms of history. Although we have retained our vigour in most
departments of the direct activities of life, we are spiritually
stunted. Our conception of life with all that depends on it has been
lowered both for individuals and for the community. The higher forces
of volition and [pg 016] influence are impotent in us, because the
optimism from which they ought to draw their strength has become
imperceptibly permeated with pessimism.
A characteristic feature of the presence at the same time of optimism
and pessimism as lodgers in “Thoughtless House” is that each goes
about in the other’s clothes, so that what is really pessimism gives
itself out among us as being optimism, and _vice versâ_. What passes
for optimism with the mass of people is the natural or acquired
faculty of seeing things in the best possible light. This illumination
of them is the result of a lowered conception of what ought to be now
and in the future. A person ill with consumption is brought by the
poison of the disease into the condition which is called Euphoria, so
that he experiences an imaginary feeling of health and strength.
Similarly there is an external optimism present in individuals and in
society just in proportion as they are, without realizing it, infected
with pessimism.
True optimism has nothing to do with any sort of lenient judgement. It
consists in contemplating and willing the ideal in the light of a deep
and self-consistent affirmation of life and the world. Because the
spirit which is so directed proceeds with clear vision and impartial
judgement in the valuing of all that is given, it wears to ordinary
people the appearance of pessimism. That it wishes to pull down the
old temples in order to build them again more magnificently is by the
vulgar optimism put down to its discredit as sacrilege.
The reason, then, why the only legitimate optimism, that of volition
inspired by imagination, has to carry on such a hard struggle with
pessimism is that it always has first to track the latter down in
vulgar optimism and unmask it. That is a task which optimism has never
finished, for so long as it allows the enemy to emerge in any shape
there is danger for civilization. When that happens, activity in
promoting the special aims of civilization always diminishes, even if
satisfaction with its material achievements remains as strong as
before.
[pg 017]
Optimism and pessimism, therefore, do not consist in counting with
more or less confidence on such or such a future for the existing
state of things, but in what the will desires to have as the future.
They are qualities not of the judgement, but of the will. The fact
that up to now that inadmissible definition of these qualities was
current side by side with the correct one, so that there were four
items to deal with instead of two, made the game easier for the
unthinking by deceiving us about what true optimism is. Pessimism of
the will they passed off as optimism of the judgement, and optimism of
the will they put aside as pessimism of the judgement. These false
cards must be taken from them, so that they may not continue to
deceive the world in such a fashion.
Optimism, Pessimism, and Ethics
In what relation do optimism and pessimism stand to ethics?
That close and peculiar relations do exist between them is clear from
the fact that in the thought of mankind the two struggles, that for
optimistic or pessimistic world-view and that about ethics, are
usually involved in each other. It is the general belief that when one
is being fought out the other is being fought as well.
This mutual connexion is very convenient for thought. When a
foundation for ethics is being laid, optimistic or pessimistic
arguments are unawares pressed into the service, and _vice versâ_
ethical arguments when optimism or pessimism have to be established.
In this process Western thought lays most stress on justifying a
life-affirming ethical system, that is an activist one, and thinks
that merely by doing so it has proved the case for optimism in its
world-view. With Indian thought the most important thing is finding a
logical foundation for pessimism, and the justifying of a life-denying
ethical system, _i.e._ a passivist one, is rather a derivative from
that.
The confusion which resulted from the two struggles for [pg 018]
optimism and pessimism and for ethics not being kept distinct, has
contributed almost more than anything else to prevent the thought of
mankind from attaining to clarity.
It was an easy mistake to make. The question whether it is to be
affirmation or denial of life and the world, crops up in ethics in the
same way as in the dispute between optimism and pessimism. Things
which by their nature belong together feel themselves drawn together,
so that optimism naturally thinks it can support itself on an
affirmative ethical system, and pessimism thinks the same about a
negative one. Nevertheless, the result has hitherto always been that
neither of these two closely-related entities could stand firm,
because neither of them chose to depend on itself alone.
[pg 019]