THE FOUNDATIONS OF OPTIMISM SECURED FROM THE WILL-TO-LIVE
The pessimistic result of knowledge
THERE are two things which thought has to do for us; it must lead us
up out of the naïve world- and life-affirmation to a deepened one, and
it must let us go on from mere ethical impulses to an ethic which is a
necessity of thought.
Deepened world- and life-affirmation consists in this, that we have
the will to maintain our own life and every kind of existence that we
can in any way influence, and to bring them to their highest value. It
demands from us that we think out all ideals of the material and
spiritual perfecting of individual men, of society, and of mankind as
a whole, and let ourselves be determined by them to steady activity
and steady hope. It does not allow us to withdraw into ourselves, but
orders us to bring to bear a living and so far as possible an active
interest on everything which happens around us. To endure a state of
unrest through our relation to the world, when by withdrawing into
ourselves we might enjoy rest; that is the burden which deeper world-
and life-affirmation lays upon us.
We begin our life-course in an unsophisticated world- and
life-affirmation. The will-to-live which is in us gives it to us as
something which is a matter of course. But later, when thought awakes,
the questions crop up which make a problem of what has hitherto been a
matter of course. What meaning will you give your life? What do you
mean to do in the world? When, along with these [pg 213] questions, we
begin trying to reconcile knowledge and will-to-live, facts get in the
way of this with confusing suggestions. Life attracts us, they say,
with a thousand expectations, and fulfils hardly one of them. And the
fulfilled expectation is almost a disappointment, for only anticipated
pleasure is really pleasure; in pleasure which is fulfilled its
opposite is already stirring. Unrest, disappointment, and pain are our
lot in the short span of time which lies between our entrance on life
and our departure from it. The spiritual is in a dreadful state of
dependence on the bodily. Our existence is at the mercy of meaningless
happenings and can be brought to an end by them at any moment. The
will-to-live gives me an impulse to action, but the action is just as
if I wanted to plough the sea, and to sow in the furrows. What did
those who worked before me effect? What significance in the endless
chain of world-happenings have their efforts had? With all its
illusive promises the will-to-live only means to mislead me into
prolonging my existence, and allowing to enter on existence, so that
the game may go on without interruption, other beings to whom the same
miserable lot has been assigned as to myself.
The discoveries in the field of knowledge against which the
will-to-live knocks when it begins to think, are therefore altogether
pessimistic. It is not by accident that all religious world-views,
except the Chinese, have a more or less pessimistic tone and bid man
expect nothing from his existence here.
Who will stop us from making use of the freedom we are allowed, and
casting existence from us? Every thinking human being makes
acquaintance with this thought. We let it take a deeper hold of us
than we suspect from one another, as indeed we are all more oppressed
by the riddles of existence than we allow others to notice.
What determines us, so long as we are comparatively in our right mind,
to reject the thought of putting an end to our existence? An
instinctive feeling of repulsion from such a deed. The will-to-live is
stronger than pessimistic [pg 214] facts of knowledge. An instinctive
Reverence for Life is within us, for we are will-to-live. . . .
Even the consistently pessimistic thought of Brahmanism makes to the
will-to-live the concession that voluntary death may only come about
when the individual has put behind him a considerable portion of life.
The Buddha goes still further, rejecting any violent exit from
existence and demanding only that we let the will-to-live within us
die out.
All pessimism, then, is inconsistent. It does not push open the door
to freedom, but makes concessions to the obvious fact of existence. In
Indian thought, which tends to pessimism, it attempts to make these
concessions as small as possible, and to maintain the impossible
fiction that merely the bare life is being lived with complete
abstinence from any share in the happenings which are taking place
here, there, and everywhere about it. With us the concessions are
larger, since the conflict between the will-to-live and pessimistic
recognition of facts is to a certain extent damped down, and obscured
by the optimistic world-view which prevails in the general mode of
thought. There arises an unthinking will-to-live which lives out its
life trying to snatch possession of as much happiness as possible, and
meaning to do something active without having made clear to itself
what its intentions really are.
Whether somewhat more or somewhat less of world- and life-affirmation
is retained matters little. Whenever the deepened world- and
life-affirmation is not reached there remains only a depreciated
will-to-live, which is not equal to the tasks of life. Thought usually
deprives the will-to-live of the force lent it by its freedom from
pre-conceptions, without being able to induce it to adopt a practice
of reflexion in which it would find new and higher force. Thus it
still possesses energy enough to continue in life, but not enough to
overcome pessimism. The stream becomes a swamp.
That is the experience which determines the character [pg 215] of
men’s existence, without their confessing it to themselves. They
nourish themselves scantily on a little bit of happiness and many vain
thoughts, which life puts in their manger. It is only by the pressure
of necessity, exerted by elementary duties which throng upon them,
that they are kept in the path of life.
Often their will-to-live is changed into a kind of intoxication.
Spring sunshine, trees in flower, passing clouds, fields of waving
corn provoke it. A will-to-live which announces itself in many forms
in magnificent phenomena all around them, carries their own
will-to-live along with it. Full of delight, they want to take part in
the mighty symphony which they hear. They find the world beautiful. .
. . But the transport passes. Horrid discords allow them once more to
hear only noise, where they thought they perceived music. The beauty
of nature is darkened for them by the suffering which they discover
everywhere within it. Now they see once more that they are drifting
like shipwrecked men over a waste of waters, only that their boat is
at one moment raised aloft on mountainous waves and the next sinks
into the valleys between them, and that now sunbeams, and now heavy
clouds, rest upon the heaving billows.
Now they would like to persuade themselves that there is land in the
direction in which they are drifting. Their will-to-live befools their
thinking, so that it makes efforts to see the world as it would like
to see it. It compels it also to hand them a chart which confirms
their hopes of land. Once more they bend to the oars, till once more
their arms drop with fatigue, and their gaze wanders, disappointed,
from billow to billow.
That is the voyage of the will-to-live which has abjured thought.
Is there, then, nothing else that the will-to-live can do but drift
along without thought, or sink in pessimistic knowledge? Yes, there
is. It must indeed voyage across this boundless sea; but it can hoist
sails, and steer a definite course.
[pg 216]
The world- and life-affirmation of the will-to-live
The will-to-live which tries to know the world is a shipwrecked
castaway; the will-to-live which gets to know itself is a bold
mariner.
The will-to-live is not restricted to maintaining its existence on
what the ever unsatisfying knowledge of the world offers it; it can
feed on the life-forces which it finds in itself. The knowledge which
I acquire from my will-to-live is richer than that which I win by
observation of the world. There are given in it values and incitements
bearing on my relation to the world and to life which find no
justification in my reflexion upon the world and existence. Why then
tune down one’s will-to-live to the pitch of one’s knowledge of the
world, or undertake the meaningless task of tuning up one’s knowledge
of the world to the higher pitch of one’s will-to-live. The right and
obvious course is to let the ideas which are given in our will-to-live
be accepted as the higher and decisive kind of knowledge.
My knowledge of the world is a knowledge from outside, and remains for
ever incomplete. The knowledge derived from my will-to-live is direct,
and takes me back to the mysterious movements of life as it is in
itself.
The highest knowledge, then, is the knowing that I must be true to the
will-to-live. It is this knowledge that hands me the compass for the
voyage I have to make in the night without the aid of a chart. To live
out one’s life in the direction of its course, to raise it to a higher
power, and to ennoble it, is natural. Every depreciation of the
will-to-live is an act of unveracity towards myself, or a symptom of
unhealthiness.
The essential nature of the will-to-live is determination to live
itself to the full. It carries within it the impulse to realise itself
in the highest possible perfection. In the flowering tree, in the
strange forms of the medusa, in the blade of grass, in the crystal;
everywhere it strives to reach the perfection with which it is
endowed. In everything [pg 217] that exists there is at work an
imaginative force, which is determined by ideals. In us, beings who
can move about freely and are capable of pre-considered, purposive
working, the impulse to perfection is given in such a way that we aim
at raising to their highest material and spiritual value both
ourselves and every existing thing which is open to our influence.
How this striving originated within us, and how it has developed, we
do not know, but it is given with our existence. We must act upon it,
if we would not be unfaithful to the mysterious will-to-live which is
within us.
When the will-to-live arrives at the critical point where its early
unsophisticated world- and life-affirmation has to be changed into a
reflective one, it is the part of thought to assist it by holding it
to the thinking out of all the ideas which are given within it and to
the surrender of itself to them. That the will-to-live within us
becomes true to itself and remains so; that it experiences no
degeneration but develops itself to complete vitality, that is what
decides the fate of our existence.
When it comes to clearness about itself, the will-to-live knows that
it is dependent on itself alone. It is meant to attain to freedom from
the world. Its knowledge of the world can prove to it that its
striving to raise to their highest value its own life and every living
thing which can be influenced by it remains in the course of the
world-whole, something problematic. In this it has not been misled.
Its world- and life-affirmation carries its meaning in itself. It
follows from an inward necessity, and is sufficient for itself. By its
means my existence joins in pursuing the aims of the mysterious
universal will of which I am a manifestation. In my deepened world-
and life-affirmation, I manifest reverence for life. With
consciousness and with volition I devote myself to Being. I become of
service to the ideals which it thinks out in me; I become imaginative
force like that which works enigmatically in nature, and thus I give
my existence a meaning from within outwards.
[pg 218]
Reverence for life means to be in the grasp of the infinite,
inexplicable, forward-urging Will in which all Being is grounded. It
raises us above all knowledge of things and lets us become a tree
which is safe against drought, because it is planted among running
streams. All living piety flows from reverence for life and the
compulsion towards ideals which is given in it. In reverence for life
lies piety in its most elemental and deepest form, in which it has not
yet involved itself with any explanation of the world or no longer
does so, but is piety which comes simply from inward necessity, and
therefore asks no questions about ends to be pursued.
The will-to-live, too, which has become reflective and has made its
way through to deeper world- and life-affirmation, tries to secure
happiness and success, for as will-to-live it is will to the realizing
of ideals. It does not, however, live on happiness and success.
Whatever of these it obtains is a strengthening of itself which it
thankfully accepts, though it is resolved on action, even if happiness
and success must be denied it. It sows as one who does not count on
living to reap the harvest.
The will-to-live is not a flame which burns only when events provide
suitable fuel; it blazes up, and that with the purest light, when it
is forced to feed on what it derives from itself. Then, too, when
events seem to leave no future for it but suffering, it still holds
out as an active will. In deep reverence for life it makes the
existence which according to usual ideas is no longer in any way worth
living, precious, because even in such an existence it experiences its
own freedom from the world. Quiet and peace radiate from a being like
that upon others, and cause them also to be touched by the secret that
we must all, whether active or passive, preserve our freedom in order
truly to live.
True resignation is not a becoming weary of the world but the quiet
triumph which the will-to-live celebrates at the hour of its greatest
need over the circumstances of life. [pg 219] It flourishes only in
the soil of deep world- and life-affirmation.
In this way our life is a coming to an understanding between our
will-to-live and the world, along with which we have continually to be
on our guard against allowing any deterioration in our will-to-live.
The struggle between optimism and pessimism is never fought to a
finish within us. We are ever wandering on slipping rubble above the
abyss of pessimism. When that which we experience in our own existence
or learn from the history of mankind, falls oppressively upon our
will-to-live and robs us of our freshness and our power of
deliberation, we might lose hold, and be carried away with the moving
boulders into the abyss below. But knowing that what awaits us below
is death, we work our way up to the path again. . . .
Or it may perhaps be that pessimism comes over us, like the bliss of
complete rest over those who, tired out, sit down in the snow. No
longer to be obliged to hope for and aim at what is commanded us by
the ideals which are forced upon us by the deepened will-to-live! No
longer to be in a state of unrest when by lessening our efforts we can
have rest! . . . Gently comes the appeal from knowledge to our will to
tune itself down to the facts. . . .
That is the fatal state of complete rest in which men, and civilised
mankind as a whole, grow numb and die.
And when we think that the enigmas by which we are surrounded can no
longer harm us, there once more rises up before us somewhere or other
the most terrifying of them all, the fact that the will-to-live can be
shattered in suffering or in spiritual night. This enigma, too, before
which our will-to-live shudders as before the most inexplicable of all
inexplicable things, we must learn to leave unsolved.
Thus does pessimistic knowledge pursue us closely right on to our last
breath. That is why it is so profoundly significant that the
will-to-live rouses itself at last and once for all to insist on its
freedom from having to understand the world, and shows itself capable
of letting itself be [pg 220] determined solely by that which is given
within itself. With humility and courage it makes its way through the
endless chaos of enigmas, fulfilling its mysterious destiny, making a
reality of its union with the infinite will-to-live.
[pg 221]