There is only one inborn error, and that is, that we exist in order to be
happy. It is inborn in us because it is one with our existence itself, and
our whole being is only a paraphrase of it, nay, our body is its monogram.
We are nothing more than will to live and the successive satisfaction of
all our volitions is what we think in the conception of happiness.
As long as we persist in this inborn error, indeed even become rigidly
fixed in it through optimistic dogmas, the world appears to us full of
contradictions. For at every step, in great things as in small, we must
experience that the world and life are by no means arranged with a view to
containing a happy existence. While now by this the thoughtless man only
finds himself tormented in reality, in the case of him who thinks there is
added to his real pain the theoretical perplexity why a world and a life
which exist in order that one may be happy in them answer their end so
badly. First of all it finds expression in pious ejaculations, such as,
“Ah! why are the tears on earth so many?” &c. &c. But in their train come
disquieting doubts about the assumptions of those preconceived optimistic
dogmas. One may try if one will to throw the blame of one’s individual
unhappiness now upon the circumstances, now upon other men, now upon one’s
own bad luck, or even upon one’s own awkwardness, and may know well how
all these have worked together to produce it; but this in no way alters
the result that one has missed the real end of life, which consists indeed
in being happy. The consideration of this is, then, often very depressing,
especially if life is already on the wane; hence the countenances of
almost all elderly persons wear the expression of that which in English is
called disappointment. Besides this, however, hitherto every day of our
life has taught us that joys and pleasures, even if attained, are in
themselves delusive, do not perform what they promise, do not satisfy the
heart, and finally their possession is at least embittered by the
disagreeables that accompany them or spring from them; while, on the
contrary, the pains and sorrows prove themselves very real, and often
exceed all expectation. Thus certainly everything in life is calculated to
recall us from that original error, and to convince us that the end of our
existence is not to be happy. Indeed, if we regard it more closely and
without prejudice, life rather presents itself as specially intended to be
such that we shall _not_ feel ourselves happy in it, for through its whole
nature it bears the character of something for which we have no taste,
which must be endured by us, and from which we have to return as from an
error that our heart may be cured of the passionate desire of enjoyment,
nay, of life, and turned away from the world. In this sense, it would be
more correct to place the end of life in our woe than in our welfare. For
the considerations at the conclusion of the preceding chapter have shown
that the more one suffers the sooner one attains to the true end of life,
and that the more happily one lives the longer this is delayed. The
conclusion of the last letter of Seneca corresponds with this: _bonum tunc
habebis tuum, quum intelliges infelicissimos esse felices_; which
certainly seems to show the influence of Christianity. The peculiar effect
of the tragic drama also ultimately depends upon the fact that it shakes
that inborn error by vividly presenting in a great and striking example
the vanity of human effort and the nothingness of this whole existence,
and thus discloses the profound significance of life; hence it is
recognised as the sublimest form of poetry. Whoever now has returned by
one or other path from that error which dwells in us _a priori_, that
πρωτου ψευδος of our existence, will soon see all in another light, and
will now find the world in harmony with his insight, although not with his
wishes. Misfortunes of every kind and magnitude, although they pain him,
will no longer surprise him, for he has come to see that it is just pain
and trouble that tend towards the true end of life, the turning away of
the will from it. This will give him indeed a wonderful composedness in
all that may happen, similar to that with which a sick person who
undergoes a long and painful cure bears the pain of it as a sign of its
efficacy. In the whole of human existence suffering expresses itself
clearly enough as its true destiny. Life is deeply sunk in suffering, and
cannot escape from it; our entrance into it takes place amid tears, its
course is at bottom always tragic, and its end still more so. There is an
unmistakable appearance of intention in this. As a rule man’s destiny
passes through his mind in a striking manner, at the very summit of his
desires and efforts, and thus his life receives a tragic tendency by
virtue of which it is fitted to free him from the passionate desire of
which every individual existence is an example, and bring him into such a
condition that he parts with life without retaining a single desire for it
and its pleasures. Suffering is, in fact, the purifying process through
which alone, in most cases, the man is sanctified, _i.e._, is led back
from the path of error of the will to live. In accordance with this, the
salutary nature of the cross and of suffering is so often explained in
Christian books of edification, and in general the cross, an instrument of
suffering, not of doing, is very suitably the symbol of the Christian
religion. Nay, even the Preacher, who is still Jewish, but so very
philosophical, rightly says: “Sorrow is better than laughter: for by the
sadness of the countenance the heart is made better” (Eccles. vii. 3).
Under the name of the δεντρος πλους I have presented suffering as to a
certain extent a substitute for virtue and holiness; but here I must make
the bold assertion that, taking everything into consideration, we have
more to hope for our salvation and deliverance from what we suffer than
from what we do. Precisely in this spirit Lamartine very beautifully says
in his “_Hymne à la douleur_,” apostrophising pain:—
“_Tu me traites sans doute en favori des cieux,_
_Car tu n’épargnes pas les larmes à mes yeux._
_Eh bien! je les reçois comme tu les envoies,_
_Tes maux seront mes biens, et tes soupirs mes joies._
_Je sens qu’il est en toi, sans avoir combattu,_
_Une vertu divine au lieu de ma vertu,_
_Que tu n’es pas la mort l’âme, mais sa vie,_
_Que ton bras, en frappant, guérit et vivifie._”
If, then, suffering itself has such a sanctifying power, this will belong
in an even higher degree to death, which is more feared than any
suffering. Answering to this, a certain awe, kindred to that which great
suffering occasions us, is felt in the presence of every dead person,
indeed every case of death presents itself to a certain extent as a kind
of apotheosis or canonisation; therefore we cannot look upon the dead body
of even the most insignificant man without awe, and indeed, extraordinary
as the remark may sound in this place, in the presence of every corpse the
watch goes under arms. Dying is certainly to be regarded as the real aim
of life: in the moment of death all that is decided for which the whole
course of life was only the preparation and introduction. Death is the
result, the _Résumé_ of life, or the added up sum which expresses at once
the instruction which life gave in detail, and bit by bit; this, that the
whole striving whose manifestation is life was a vain, idle, and self‐
contradictory effort, to have returned from which is a deliverance. As the
whole, slow vegetation of the plant is related to the fruit, which now at
a stroke achieves a hundredfold what the plant achieved gradually and bit
by bit, so life, with its obstacles, deluded hopes, frustrated plans, and
constant suffering, is related to death, which at one stroke destroys all,
all that the man has willed, and so crowns the instruction which life gave
him. The completed course of life upon which the dying man looks back has
an effect upon the whole will that objectifies itself in this perishing
individuality, analogous to that which a motive exercises upon the conduct
of the man. It gives it a new direction, which accordingly is the moral
and essential result of the life. Just because a sudden death makes this
retrospect impossible, the Church regards such a death as a misfortune,
and prays that it should be averted. Since this retrospect, like the
distinct foreknowledge of death, as conditioned by the reason, is possible
only in man, not in the brute, and accordingly man alone really drinks the
cup of death, humanity is the only material in which the will can deny
itself and entirely turn away from life. To the will that does not deny
itself every birth imparts a new and different intellect,—till it has
learned the true nature of life, and in consequence of this wills it no
more.
In the natural course, in age the decay of the body coincides with that of
the will. The desire for pleasures soon vanishes with the capacity to
enjoy them. The occasion of the most vehement willing, the focus of the
will, the sexual impulse, is first extinguished, whereby the man is placed
in a position which resembles the state of innocence which existed before
the development of the genital system. The illusions, which set up
chimeras as exceedingly desirable benefits, vanish, and the knowledge of
the vanity of all earthly blessings takes their place. Selfishness is
repressed by the love of one’s children, by means of which the man already
begins to live more in the ego of others than in his own, which now will
soon be no more. This course of life is at least the desirable one; it is
the euthanasia of the will. In hope of this the Brahman is ordered, after
he has passed the best years of his life, to forsake possessions and
family, and lead the life of a hermit (_Menu_, B. 6), But if, conversely,
the desire outlives the capacity for enjoyment, and we now regret
particular pleasures in life which we miss, instead of seeing the
emptiness and vanity of all; and if then gold, the abstract representative
of the objects of desire for which the sense is dead, takes the place of
all these objects themselves, and now excites the same vehement passions
which were formerly more pardonably awakened by the objects of actual
pleasure, and thus now with deadened senses a lifeless but indestructible
object is desired with equally indestructible eagerness; or, also, if, in
the same way, existence in the opinion of others takes the place of
existence and action in the real world, and now kindles the same
passions;—then the will has become sublimated and etherealised into
avarice or ambition; but has thereby thrown itself into the last fortress,
in which it can only now be besieged by death. The end of existence has
been missed.
All these considerations afford us a fuller explanation of that
purification, conversion of the will and deliverance, denoted in the
preceding chapter by the expression δευτερος πλους which is brought about
by the suffering of life, and without doubt is the most frequent. For it
is the way of sinners such as we all are. The other way, which leads to
the same goal, by means of mere knowledge and the consequent appropriation
of the suffering of a whole world, is the narrow path of the elect, the
saints, and therefore to be regarded as a rare exception. Therefore
without that first way for most of us there would be no salvation to hope
for. However, we struggle against entering upon it, and strive rather to
procure for ourselves a safe and agreeable existence, whereby we chain our
will ever more firmly to life. The conduct of the ascetics is the opposite
of this. They make their life intentionally as poor, hard, and empty of
pleasure as possible, because they have their true and ultimate welfare in
view. But fate and the course of things care for us better than we
ourselves, for they frustrate on all sides our arrangements for an utopian
life, the folly of which is evident enough from its brevity, uncertainty,
and emptiness, and its conclusion by bitter death; they strew thorns upon
thorns in our path, and meet us everywhere with healing sorrow, the
panacea of our misery. What really gives its wonderful and ambiguous
character to our life is this, that two diametrically opposite aims
constantly cross each other in it; that of the individual will directed to
chimerical happiness in an ephemeral, dream‐like, and delusive existence,
in which, with reference to the past, happiness and unhappiness are a
matter of indifference, and the present is every moment becoming the past;
and that of fate visibly enough directed to the destruction of our
happiness, and thereby to the mortification of our will and the abolition
of the illusion that holds us chained in the bonds of this world.
The prevalent and peculiarly Protestant view that the end of life lies
solely and immediately in the moral virtues, thus in the practice of
justice and benevolence, betrays its insufficiency even in the fact that
so miserably little real and pure morality is found among men. I am not
speaking at all of lofty virtue, nobleness, magnanimity, and self‐
sacrifice, which one hardly finds anywhere but in plays and novels, but
only of those virtues which are the duty of every one. Let whoever is old
think of all those with whom he has had to do; how many persons will he
have met who were merely really and truly _honest_? Were not by far the
greater number, in spite of their shameless indignation at the slightest
suspicion of dishonesty or even untruthfulness, in plain words, the
precise opposite? Were not abject selfishness, boundless avarice, well‐
concealed knavery, and also poisonous envy and fiendish delight in the
misfortunes of others so universally prevalent that the slightest
exception was met with surprise? And benevolence, how very rarely it
extends beyond a gift of what is so superfluous that one never misses it.
And is the whole end of existence to lie in such exceedingly rare and weak
traces of morality? If we place it, on the contrary, in the entire
reversal of this nature of ours (which bears the evil fruits just
mentioned) brought about by suffering, the matter gains an appearance of
probability and is brought into agreement with what actually lies before
us. Life presents itself then as a purifying process, of which the
purifying lye is pain. If the process is carried out, it leaves behind it
the previous immorality and wickedness as refuse, and there appears what
the Veda says: “_Finditur nodus cordis, dissolvuntur omnes dubitationes,
ejusque opera evanescunt._” As agreeing with this view the fifteenth
sermon of Meister Eckhard will be found very well worth reading.