PESSIMISM AND OPTIMISM
I
PREVALENCE OF PESSIMISM
Oriental origin of pessimism—Pessimistic
poets—Byron—Leopardi—Poushkin—Lermontoff—Pessimism
and suicide
In the attempt to formulate a pessimistic theory of human nature, we
are naturally led to ask why it is that so many famous men have come to
a purely pessimistic conception of human life.
Pessimism, although it has been most prominent in modern times, is
extremely old. Everyone knows the pessimistic wail of Ecclesiastes,
written nearly ten centuries before our era: “Vanity of Vanities, all
is vanity.” Solomon, the supposed author, states that he “hated life,
because the work that is wrought under the sun is grievous unto me, for
all is vanity and vexation of spirit” (Eccl. ii., 17).
Buddha raised pessimism to the rank of a doctrine. All life seemed to
him sorrow. “Birth is sorrow, old age is sorrow, disease is sorrow,
union with one whom we do not love is sorrow, separation from one whom
we love is sorrow, not to gratify desire is sorrow, in short, our five
bonds with the things of the earth are sorrow.”[174] This Buddhistic
pessimism has been the source of most of the modern pessimistic
theories.
Pessimism arose in the East and was much in vogue in India even apart
from Buddhism. In the poems known under the name of Bhartrihari, and
dating from the beginning of the Christian era, human life has been
commiserated in the following fashion. “One hundred years are the
limit of the life of man; night takes half of them, half of the other
half is childhood and old age, the rest is filled with diseases, with
separations and the misfortunes that come from them, with working for
others and with wasting one’s time. Where can happiness be found in an
existence most like to the bubbles in broken water?” “Man’s health is
destroyed by every kind of care and disease. When fortune comes to him,
evil follows as if by an open door. Death takes all human beings, one
after the other, and they can offer no resistance to their fate. What
is there assured amongst all that the mighty Brahma has created?”[175]
Pessimistic theories spread from the Asiatic East to Egypt and Europe.
Three centuries before the Christian era, there arose the philosophy of
Hegesias, which maintained that experience was generally deceptive and
that enjoyment was quickly followed by satiety and disgust. According
to him, the sum of pain surpassed the sum of pleasure in life, so that
happiness was unattainable, and in reality never existed. It was vain
to seek pleasure and happiness, as these could not be realised. It was
better to try to be indifferent, dulling feeling and desire. In fact,
life was no better than death, and it was often preferable to end it
by suicide. Hegesias was called _Pisithanatos_, the adviser of death.
“Listeners thronged around him, his doctrine spread rapidly, and his
disciples, persuaded by his voice, gave themselves to death. Ptolemy
was perturbed by it, and fearing that the dislike of life would become
contagious, closed the school of Hegesias and exiled its master.”[176]
The pessimistic tendency sometimes appears in the writings of many
Greek and Latin philosophers and poets. Seneca wrote: “The spectacle of
human life is lamentable. New misfortunes overwhelm you before you have
freed yourself from the old ones.”[177]
It is in modern days, however, that there has been the greatest spread
of pessimism.
Besides the philosophical theories of the last century, those
of Schopenhauer, von Hartmann and Mailaender, which I discussed
sufficiently in _The Nature of Man_, poets have formulated a
pessimistic view of life. Even Voltaire was a pessimist in the
following lines:
Alas! what are the course and the goal of life?
Only follies and then the darkness.
Oh Jupiter! in creating us you made
A heartless jest.
In _The Nature of Man_ I described Byron’s expression of his conception
of the evils of human life. Soon after the death of the great English
poet, a celebrated Italian poet, Giacomo Leopardi, sounded a note of
abandoned pessimism.
Here are words which he addressed to his own heart[178]: “Be quiet for
ever, you have beaten enough, nothing is worthy of your beating and the
earth is not worthy of your sighs. Life is nothing but bitterness and
weariness, there is nothing else in it. The world is nothing but mire.
Repose from now onwards. Be in despair for ever. Destiny has given us
nothing but death. Despise henceforth yourself and nature, and the
shameful concealed power which decrees the ruin of all and the infinite
variety of all.”
Leopardi makes his readers witnesses of his distraction and his grief:
“I shall study the blind truth”—he wrote in a poem dedicated to
Charles Pépoli—“I shall study the blind fates of things mortal and
immortal. Why humanity came into existence, and was burdened with pain
and sorrow, to what final end destiny and nature are driving it, for
whose pleasure or advantage is our great pain, what order, what laws
rule this mysterious universe which wise men cover with praise, and I
am content to wonder at” (_ibid._, p. 15).
Quite a school of poets has been developed, singing the pain of the
world, the “Weltschmerz” of German authors, amongst whom Heine and
Nicolas Lenau are specially distinguished.
Russian poetry was born under the influence of Byronism, and its best
exponents, Poushkin and Lermontoff, often laboured over the problem of
the object of human existence, finding only sad answers. Poushkin, who
is justly regarded as the father of lyric poetry in Russia, stated his
pessimistic conception in the following lines:—
Useless gift, gift of chance,
Life, why wert thou given me?
And why from the beginning art thou doomed
Irrevocably to death?
What unfriendly power
Has drawn me from the darkness,
Has filled my soul with passion,
And breathed doubt into my soul?
There is no goal for me,
My heart and my soul are empty;
And the dull emotion of life
Has filled me with black care.
Recently, Mde. Ackermann, in a series of short poems, has given voice
to the grief caused to her by the world and life as they are, although
she does not state exactly the reason of her bitter complaints.
Whilst pessimistic philosophers and poets reflect the thoughts and
feelings of their contemporaries, it is certain that they also
seriously influence their readers. And so there has come into existence
a deeply rooted conviction that the miseries of human life are far
from being countervailed by its happiness. Probably such ideas have
influenced the number of suicides. We do not know with any certainty
the real motives of most cases of self-destruction, but it cannot be
denied that the trend of modern thought has played an important part.
According to statistics, the chief causes of suicide are “hypochondria,
melancholia, weariness of life, and unbalancing of the mind.” Thus from
the Danish statistics it appears (and Denmark is the country in which
suicide is most prevalent) that of 1,000 cases of suicides of males,
between 1866 and 1895, 224, or one-quarter, were referred to the causes
I have just mentioned. In the case of women, the corresponding figures
are higher, amounting to nearly one-half (403 out of 1,000). The second
most common cause of male suicides is alcoholism (164 in 1,000).[179]
It is very probable that pessimism was the determining condition in
most of the suicides referred to these two categories of causes.
Leaving out of the question the true cases of mental alienation,
amongst the victims of melancholia, hypochondria and weariness of life,
in whom the mental condition was not pathological in the strict sense
of the word, there must have been many who killed themselves because
their view of life was pessimistic. And amongst the victims of drink,
there are many who take to alcohol because they are convinced that
life is not worth preserving.
The progressive increase in the numbers of suicides in modern times
is an index of the great influence of pessimism. There have been even
societies for the promotion of suicide. In such a society, founded in
Paris in the beginning of last century, members placed their names
in an urn, to be drawn by chance. He whose name was drawn had to
kill himself in the presence of the other members. According to its
rules, this society admitted only persons of honour who must have had
experience of “the injustice of man, the ingratitude of a friend, the
infidelity of a wife or mistress, and who, moreover, for many years
had had a void in their souls and a distaste of what this world can
offer.”[180]
Although such societies no longer exist, individuals continue to put
their lives to an end, in greater numbers every year.
II
ANALYSIS OF PESSIMISM
Attempts to assign reasons for the pessimistic conception
of life—Views of E. von Hartmann—Analysis of
Kowalevsky’s work on the Psychology of Pessimism
In view of the facts I brought together in my last chapter, there
is occasion to inquire if it be possible to discover the intimate
mechanism by which men arrive at a conception of life as an evil to be
got rid of as quickly as possible. Why do so many think that man is
less happy than the beasts, and that cultured and intelligent men are
more unhappy than those who are ignorant or feeble-minded ?
I have related how in a society of friends of suicide, injustice and
unfaithfulness were regarded as prime factors in arousing a distaste
for life. Shakspeare made Hamlet exclaim that if it were possible to
put an end to our days no one would continue to live:—
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely?
For Byron, besides diseases, death and slavery, the evils that we see,
there are others:—
And worse, the woes we see not—which throb through
The immedicable soul, with heart-aches ever new.
In many of his works he insists on the feeling of satiety which was
almost continually upon him. Every sensation of pleasure that came to
him was rapidly succeeded by a still stronger feeling of disgust.
Heine thought that existence was evil and saw
... across the hard surfaces of the rocks
The homes of men and the hearts of men—
In the one as in the others, lies, imposture and misery.
As I urged in _The Nature of Man_, consciousness of the shortness of
human life has been an important factor in exciting pessimism, and we
find this theme recurring in pessimistic writers. Leopardi returns to
it again and again in his poems. “Falling in peril of death from some
mysterious disease,” he said in his _Souvenirs_, “I lamented over my
sweet youth and the flower of my poor days which was to fall so soon,
and often in the midnight hours wove from my sorrows, by the pale light
of my lamp, a sad poem, and in the silence of the night wept over my
fleeting life, and half fainting, sang to myself my funeral song”
(_loc. cit._, p. 28). The bas-relief on an ancient tomb, representing
the departure of a young girl who took farewell of her friends,
suggested to Leopardi the following thoughts: “Mother, who from their
birth makes her family of living beings tremble and weep, Nature,
monster unworthy of our praise, who brings into the world and nurtures
only to kill, if the premature death of a mortal be evil, why do you
bring it on so many innocent heads? If it be a good, why do you make it
sad for those who go and for those left behind? Why is it the hardest
grief to console? The only relief from our woes is death, death, the
inevitable end, the immutable law which you have established for human
beings. Why, alas, after the sad voyage of life, do you not make the
arrival joyful? This certain end, this end which is in our souls all
our lives, which alone can soothe our troubles, why do you drape it in
black and surround it with mournful shades? Why do you make the harbour
more terrible than the open seas?” (_loc. cit._, p. 55).
The three chief grievances—injustice, disease, and death—often come
together. From the anthropomorphic point of view fate is represented as
a sort of wicked being who commits injustice by visiting all kinds of
evils on mankind.
A pessimistic conception of life is arrived at by a complex
psychological process in which both feelings and reflection are
involved, and hence it is difficult to analyse it satisfactorily.
Formerly, therefore, writers were content with general and very vague
estimates of the process by which we may become pessimists. Ed. von
Hartmann has tried to deal more exactly with this inner process of
the human mind. In the first place, he lays stress on the fact that
pleasures always bring less satisfaction than pains bring grief.
False notes in music, for instance, are more painful than the best
music is delightful. The pain of toothache is much more violent
than the pleasure when relief comes. So also with all diseases. In
love, according to Hartmann, the pleasure is always very greatly
over-balanced by the pain. Muscular work brings pleasure only in a very
small degree, and devotion to science and art and intellectual work in
general brings more pain than pleasure to the votaries. As the result
of an analysis, Hartmann is convinced that there is much more pain than
pleasure in the world. Pessimism is founded upon the essential nature
of human feelings.
M. Kowalevsky,[181] a German philosopher at Koenigsberg, adopting the
modern habit of measuring mental processes as exactly as possible, has
recently published an attempt to analyse pessimism psychologically.
Although this has not solved the problem, it is extremely interesting
as an instance of the application of the methods now being adopted in
modern psychology.
M. Kowalevsky took advantage of all the known methods of estimating the
relative values of our emotions; he tried to make use of the notes of
Munsterberg, another living psychologist who kept a journal in which
he set down daily his psychical and psycho-physical impressions. The
object of the work had no relation to the question of pessimism, and
for that reason Kowalevsky thought that it was specially important in
his investigations.
Munsterberg was not content with the existing classification of
emotions as agreeable or painful. He subdivided them much further. He
recognised, for instance, emotions of tranquillity and excitement,
serious and pleasant impressions. Having completed the reckoning,
Kowalevsky came to the conclusion that his colleague, who was by
no means a pessimist, but a psychologist of well-balanced mind,
experienced many more painful emotions (about 60 per cent. as compared
with 40 per cent.) than agreeable emotions. “Such a result is in favour
of pessimism,” concluded Kowalevsky.
However, he went beyond the foregoing enquiry. By several other
methods, he tried to gain an exact idea of the value of our emotions.
He visited elementary schools in order to investigate the pleasures
and pains of the scholars. In the case of 104 boys, of eleven to
thirteen years of age, he found that pain was much more deeply felt
than corresponding pleasure. Thus, while in 88 cases illness was set
down as an evil, only in 21 was health reckoned as a good. One-third of
the pupils noted down war amongst evils, whilst only one noted peace
amongst the good things. Poverty was written down thirteen times as an
evil, against twice in which riches were put down as a good. In another
series of investigations, Kowalevsky took notes on the pleasures and
pains felt by pupils of the two sexes attending the same school. The
result was that the greatest evil, according to them, was illness,
noted 43 times, then death 42 times, after which came fire 37 times,
hunger 23 times, floods 20 times. Amongst the good things, the first
place was given, as might have been expected, to games (30) and the
second to presents.
As Kowalevsky did not find that such investigations could solve the
problem, he tried to discover a more exact method. With this object,
he turned to different sensations, such as those of smell, hearing and
taste, to which he applied methods of exact measurement. In the case of
taste, for instance, he determined the minimum quantity of different
substances which could excite definitely pleasant or unpleasant
sensations. In his experiments, Kowalevsky found that doses which
gave bad tastes were not balanced by those which gave good tastes.
For instance, to neutralise the unpleasant taste of quinine, it was
necessary to employ a much larger quantity of sugar. He was specially
pleased with one experiment. Four persons were given definite mixtures
of sugar and quinine in order to discover the proportion of the two
substances necessary to obtain a neutral sensation. He found that to
take away the bad taste of quinine, it was necessary to double the
quantity of sugar given. Similarly with smells, he found that those
which were unpleasant were appreciated much more strongly than those
which were pleasant. Here, then, was a series of scientific results
supporting the view of the pessimists. Must we really conclude from
them that the world is very badly arranged? The analysis of good and
bad temper made by Kowalevsky is in favour of such an interpretation.
In order to estimate these conditions of mind, he measured the gait,
that is to say, the number of steps taken in a minute. This method
depended upon the following idea. It is an accepted view that the
condition of mind is shown by the rapidity of the human walk; we
have only to compare the slow pace of a man in deep grief with the
rapid steps of a man in a state of joy. Pain, as a general rule,
depresses, while joy stimulates voluntary movements. The result of
the measurements taken according to this method give a new argument
in favour of pessimism. However, it is useless to attempt to analyse
these figures on which Kowalevsky had to employ the integral calculus,
because the principle of his method cannot be supported. As a matter of
fact, the rapidity of walking is an index of the degree of excitation,
and not of the happy or unhappy condition of the mind. When a person
suddenly undergoes a strong impression, either pleasant or unpleasant,
he takes to walking actively about in his room, and may even want to
go out of doors to walk more quickly. A letter which has been received
and which gives some unexpected news, as for instance of the infidelity
of a person one loves, or of an inheritance which one did not expect,
produces a condition of excitement shown chiefly by rapid walking. Many
orators and professors have to make gestures and to walk about in the
course of their lectures. A man of science to whom some new idea comes
and who wishes to think it out, rises from his chair and begins to
walk. But not only on such pleasant occasions, but when one has to face
an insult or an act of defiance which makes one very angry, the need to
walk actively is felt. It is therefore impossible to utilise records of
movements in the study of the pessimistic state of mind.
M. Kowalevsky employed still another mode of attacking the problem.
He examined the recollection of painful or pleasant impressions. He
asked the children of both sexes, whom he was investigating, questions
which gave him indications as to whether pleasures or pains made
the more lasting impression on the memory, and he registered the
answers. The result, which agreed with what had already been obtained
by Mr. Colegrove, an American psychologist, was unfavourable to the
pessimistic view. He found, in fact, that in the majority of cases (70
per cent.) recollection of pleasant impressions predominated. However,
in such investigations there is a facile source of error arising from
the condition of mind of those who are being questioned. It is probable
that Kowalevsky made his enquiry in school during recreation time, when
most of the pupils were free from the boredom of the actual class. When
we are happy the tendency exists in us to recall pleasant impressions
of the past. If the enquiry had been made during a difficult or
wearying lesson, or on children shut up in a hospital, or undergoing
punishment, it is probable that the result would have been reversed.
It is evident that all such attempts to solve a problem so complex as
that of pessimism, even by the so-called exact methods of physiological
psychology, cannot lead to any convincing result. Thus Kowalevsky’s
different investigations led to contradictory conclusions. Whilst some
of his series of facts supported the pessimistic conception, others
were opposed to it, and he obtained no definite general conclusion.
How can one expect to apply a method of measurement to sensations and
emotions so different, not only from the qualitative point of view,
but also in relation to their intensity? Take, for instance, the case
of an individual who has experienced in one day nine sensations which
were painful and one which was agreeable. According to the valuation
of experimental psychologists, he ought to have reason to become a
pessimist. However, this may be far from the case, if the nine painful
impressions were much weaker than the single happy impression. The
first were provoked by small wounds to his pride, fleeting pains of no
importance, and small losses of money, whilst the happy emotion came
from receiving a love letter. The sum of the ten impressions would be a
happy one, and might well put him in an optimistic frame of mind. The
learned attempts of experimental psychologists must be abandoned, as
incapable of illuminating the problem. If, however, the human spirit
still seeks some means of explaining the psychology of pessimism, there
remains only the less subtle method given by the biographical study of
human beings.
III
PESSIMISM IN ITS RELATION TO HEALTH AND AGE
Relation between pessimism and the state of the
health—History of a man of science who was pessimistic
when young, and who became an optimist in old
age—Optimism of Schopenhauer when old—Development of
the sense of life—Development of the senses in blind
people—The sense of obstacles
Animals and children in good health are generally cheerful and of
optimistic temperament. As soon as they fall ill they become sad
and melancholy until their recovery. We may infer from this that an
optimistic view is correlated with normal health, whilst pessimism
arises from some physical or mental disease. And so in the case of
the prophets of pessimism, we may seek for the origin of their views
in some affliction. The pessimism of Byron has been attributed to his
club-foot, and that of Leopardi to tuberculosis, these two nineteenth
century exponents of pessimism having died whilst young. Buddha and
Schopenhauer, on the other hand, reached old age, whilst Hartmann died
when sixty-four years old. Their diseases at the time when they formed
their theories could not have been very dangerous, and none the less
they took a most gloomy view of human existence. The recent historical
investigations of Dr. Iwan Bloch[182] make it very probable that
Schopenhauer, in his youth, contracted syphilis. There has been found
a note-book of the great philosopher in which he wrote down the details
of the severe mercurial treatment which he had to undergo. The disease,
however, was not contracted until several years after the appearance of
his great pessimistic work.
Although we must attach due weight to the connection between disease
and pessimism, we can assure ourselves that the problem is more complex
than it appears at first sight. It is well known that blind people
often enjoy a constant good humour, and, amongst the apostles of
optimism, there has been the philosopher Duering,[183] who lost his
sight during his youth.
Moreover, it has been noticed that persons affected with chronic
diseases frequently have a very optimistic conception of life, whilst
young people in full strength may become sad, melancholic, and
abandoned to the most extreme pessimism. Such a contrast has been
well described by Émile Zola in his novel _La Joie de Vivre_, where a
rheumatic old man, tried by severe attacks of gout, maintained his good
humour, whilst his young son, although vigorous and in good health,
professed extreme pessimism.
I have a cousin who lost his sight in early youth. When he grew up he
formed a most enviable judgment of life. He lived in his imagination
and everything in life seemed to him good and beautiful; he married,
and pictured his wife to himself as the most beautiful woman in the
world, and thus he feared nothing more than the recovery of his sight.
He had adapted himself to live without sight, and was convinced that
the reality was much lower than his imagination. He feared that if he
were able to see his wife she would appear to him less beautiful.
I know a girl twenty-six years old, blind from her birth, the subject
of infantile paralysis and liable to fits of epilepsy. She is nearly an
idiot, lives in a carriage, and sees life from its best side. She is
certainly the most happy member of all her family.
The good humour and megalomania of those affected with general
paralysis of the insane also is well known. All such examples show that
pessimism cannot be explained as depending on bad health.
Examination of the state of mind of a pessimist may throw some light on
the subject. There has been within my own circle a typical case of a
person who went through a phase of life in which everything seemed as
gloomy as possible. My intimate knowledge of him makes it possible to
apply my observations to the matter under discussion.
The subject was born of parents of good health and in comfortable
circumstances, so that, from the beginning of his life, he was
surrounded by a favourite environment. He lived in the country and
escaped the diseases of childhood, so that he reached maturity in good
health, and passed well through college and the university. Science
attracted him, and he had the ambition to become a distinguished
investigator. He threw himself into a scientific career with zeal and
ability. His ardent disposition, although certainly favourable to work,
was the cause of many troubles. He wished to succeed too quickly, and
the obstacles he encountered embittered him. As he thought himself
naturally talented, he conceived it to be the duty of his seniors to
aid his development. And so, when he met with natural and very common
indifference from those who had already become successful, the young
man thought that there was a plot against him, to bring to nothing his
scientific talents. From this view, many quarrels and difficulties
arose, and as he could not overcome these sufficiently quickly, he
fell into a mood of pessimism. In this life, he said to himself, the
main thing is to adapt oneself to external conditions. According to
Darwin’s law of natural selection, the individuals who do not succeed
in adapting themselves go to the wall. The survivors are not the
best but only the most cunning. In the history of the earth it has
been seen that many lower animals have long survived creatures much
higher in organisation and general evolution. Whilst so many of the
higher mammals, the nearest relatives of man, have been crushed out of
existence, simpler animals, such as evil-smelling cockroaches, have
survived from the remotest times, and multiply in the neighbourhood of
man in despite of his efforts to exterminate them. The animal series
and human evolution itself show that delicacy of the nervous system,
with its concomitant extreme development of the sensibilities, hinders
the power of adaptation and brings with it insuperable evils. The
least blow to his pride, or a slighting word from a comrade, threw
this pessimist into a most painful condition. No, he would cry, it
would be better to be without friends, if one is to be wounded so
deeply by them. It would be best to seclude oneself in some remote
spot and be engrossed in one’s work. He was very impressionable and a
lover of music, and from his visits to the opera, he retained in his
mind an air from the “Flûte enchantée.” “Were I as small as a snail,
I would hide myself in my shell.” His moral hypersensibility was
associated with physical hyperæsthesia. Noises of all kinds, such as
the whistling of railway-trains, the cries of street-vendors, or the
barking of dogs, excited extremely painful sensations. The least trace
of light prevented him from sleeping at night. The unpleasant flavour
of most drugs made it impossible for him to take medicine. He agreed
thoroughly with the pessimistic philosophers who declare that the ills
of life far surpass the good things. He required no experiments on the
sense of taste to convince him. He believed that the organisation of
his body prevented him from becoming adapted to external conditions and
that he would have to disappear like the mammoth and the anthropoid
apes.
The course of his life confirmed the convictions of our pessimist.
He had no private fortune and married a woman who became affected
with tuberculosis, and so was confronted with the greatest evils of
existence. A young lady, hitherto in good health, contracted influenza
in some northern town. It was a mere nothing, said the doctors;
influenza is everywhere and no one escapes it; after a little patience
and rest, she will be well again. However the “influenza” persisted
and brought with it feebleness and wasting. The doctors then found
that there was a little dullness in the apex of the left lung, but as
there was no bad family history, there was nothing to fear. I need not
describe the familiar course of events. The trifling influenza was
replaced by degeneration of the left lung, and brought death after four
years of great suffering. Towards the end, when there was no hope, the
patient found her only solace in morphine. Under the influence of that
drug, she passed hours free from pain and in relative calm, but her
excited imagination passed almost into hallucination.
It is not surprising that the death of his wife was a severe shock
to the husband. His pessimism became complete. He was a widower at
the age of twenty-eight years, and, in his condition of mental and
physical exhaustion, took to morphine like his wife. He knew that
it was a poison which would complete the ruin of his constitution
and make his work impossible. But what was the value of his life?
As his organisation was too nervous for him to adapt himself to
external conditions, was it not as well to come to the aid of natural
selection and so make room for others? As it happened, a large dose of
morphia did not solve the problem. It produced in him a condition of
extraordinary happiness combined with extreme physical weakness. Little
by little the instinct of life awoke in him, and he resumed his work.
Pessimism, however, remained the fundamental quality in his character.
Life was not worth the pains necessary to protect it. It would be
a true crime to bring into the world other living beings doomed to
elimination by natural selection. Moral and physical sensibility, as
they continued to develop, brought with them so much evil that there
could be no good end. The “injustice” of those who were unwilling to
“understand” him made life painful to the man himself and to those
about him. The closest absorption and hard work made his existence more
tolerable, but his pessimistic conception was not in the least altered.
Thus, he was easily driven to morphia for consolation, when he suffered
from some act of “injustice” or vexation. A severe fit of poisoning,
however, stopped this excess.
Years passed. When he discussed with his friends the problem of
the goal of human life and similar topics, he was always ardent in
supporting the point of view of pessimism. However, he occasionally
wondered if his pleading for this were really sincere. As his nature
was honest and frank, this question which he put to his conscience
appeared most curious to him. Analysis of what passed in his mind
revealed to him a change. It was not that his conceptions had changed
in the course of years, but rather his feelings and sensations. As
he was now in full maturity, between forty-five and fifty years old,
he found that there was a great change in the intensity of these
last. Disagreeable sounds did not trouble him to the same extent as
formerly, and he was undisturbed by the caterwauling of cats or by
harsh street cries. As his hypersensibility diminished his character
became more tolerant. Even the injustices or wounds to his pride which
formerly drove him to morphia, no longer provoked in him any painful
reaction. He could easily conceal the bad effect of these upon him,
and no longer felt them with the same intensity. Thus his character
had become much more supportable to those with him, and much better
balanced.
“It is old age which is come upon me,” he cried; “I feel painful
impressions much less acutely and pleasant impressions have less
effect on me. The relative proportions of the two remain as before,
that is to say, unpleasant things still impress me much more strongly
than pleasant things.” By analysing and comparing his emotions, he
discovered something new, in fact that some impressions were, so to
speak, neutral. As he was less sensitive to unharmonious sounds, and
at the same time less affected by music itself, he found himself in
a more tranquil condition. Awakening in the middle of the night, he
experienced a kind of happiness which reminded him of that formerly
produced by morphine, and which was characterised by his hearing no
sound, either pleasant or unpleasant. He became less disgusted by
drugs, but at the same time indifferent to the pleasures of the table
which he had appreciated in his youth. He also delighted in consuming
more and more simple food. A piece of black bread and a glass of water
became real treats to him. Insipid dishes, which he formerly despised,
were now specially agreeable to him.
Just as in the evolution of art, violent coloration has yielded to the
low tones of Puvis de Chavannes, as views of fields and meadows are
preferred to those of mountains and lakes; just as in literature,
tragic and romantic studies have been successfully replaced by scenes
of daily life, so the psychical development of my friend displayed
a similar change. Instead of taking his pleasure in mountains or in
places famed for their picturesqueness, he was content to watch the
budding of the leaves of the trees of his garden, or a snail overcoming
its fears and putting out its horns. The simplest occurrences, such
as the lisping or the smile of a baby or the first words of a child,
became sources of real delight to this elderly man of science. What
was the meaning of these changes which took so many years to be
accomplished? It was the growth of his sense of life. The instinct of
life is little developed in youth. Just as a young woman gets more
pain than pleasure from the earlier part of her married life, just as
a new-born baby cries, so the impressions from life, especially when
they are very keenly felt, bring more pain than pleasure during a long
period of human life. The sensations and feelings are not stable; they
undergo evolution, and when that takes place more or less normally, it
brings about a state of psychical equilibrium.
And thus my friend, formerly so entrenched in pessimism, came to share
my optimistic view of life. The discussions that we had had for so many
years ended in complete agreement. “However,” said he, “to understand
the value of life, one must have lived long; otherwise one is in the
position of a man blind from his birth to whom are recounted the
beauties of colours.” In a word, my friend towards the end of his life
changed from abject pessimism to complete optimism.
Such a transformation or evolution cannot be regarded as unusual.
In _The Nature of Man_, I showed that most of the great pessimistic
writers had been young men. Such were Buddha, Byron, Leopardi,
Schopenhauer, Hartmann, and Mailaender, and there might be added many
other names of less well known men.
The question has often been asked why Schopenhauer, who was certainly
sincere in his philosophy and who extolled Nirvana as the perfect
state, came to have a strong attachment to life, instead of putting
it to a premature end as was done later on by Mailaender. The reason
was that the philosopher of Frankfort lived long enough to acquire a
strong instinct of life. M. Moebius,[184] a well-known authority on
madness, has made a close investigation of Schopenhauer’s biography,
and has established the fact that towards the end of his life his views
were tinged with optimistic colours. On his seventieth anniversary, he
took pleasure in the consoling idea of the Hindoo Oupanischad and of
Flourens that the span of man’s life might reach a century. As Moebius
put it, “Schopenhauer as an old man enjoyed life and was no longer a
pessimist” (p. 94). Not long before his death he still hoped to survive
yet another twenty years. It is true that Schopenhauer never recanted
his early pessimistic writings, but that was probably because he did
not fully realise his own mental evolution.
In looking through the work of modern psychologists, I cannot
find recognition of the cycle of evolution of the human mind. In
Kowalevsky’s able and conscientious study of pessimism, I was specially
struck by one phrase. “Evils such as hunger, disease, and death are
equally terrible at all stages of life and in every rank of society”
(p. 95) said that author. I notice here a failure to recognise the
modification of the emotions in the course of life which, none the
less, is one of the great facts of human nature. Fear of death is by
no means equally great at all stages of life. A child is ignorant of
death and has no conscious aversion from it. The youth and the young
man know that death is a terrible thing, but they have not the horror
of it that comes to a mature man in whom the instinct of life has
become fully developed. And we see that young men are careless of the
laws of hygiene, whilst old men devote to them sedulous attention.
This difference is probably a notable cause of pessimism in young men.
In his studies of the mind, Moebius[185] has stated his view that
pessimism is a phase of youth which is succeeded by a serener spirit.
“One may remain a pessimist in theory,” he says, “but actually to be
one, it is necessary to be young. As years increase, a man clings more
firmly to life.” “When an old man is free from melancholia, he is not
a pessimist at heart.” “We cannot yet explain clearly the psychology
of the pessimism of the young, but at least we can lay down the
proposition that it is a disease of youth” (p. 182).
The cases of Schopenhauer and of the man of science whose psychical
history I have sketched fully confirm the view of the alienist of
Leipzig.
The conception that there is an evolution of the instinct of life in
the course of the development of a human being is the true foundation
of optimistic philosophy. It is so important that it should be examined
with the minutest care. Our senses are capable of great cultivation.
Artists develop the sense of colour far beyond the point attained
by ordinary men, and distinguish shades that others do not notice.
Hearing, taste, and smell also can be educated. Wine tasters have an
appreciation of wine much more acute than that of other men. A friend
of mine, who does not drink wine, can distinguish burgundy from claret
only by the shapes of the bottles, but is devoted to tea and has a very
fine palate for different blends. I do not know if a good palate is a
natural gift, but however this may be, it is certain that the palate
can be brought to a high condition of perfection.
The development of the senses is specially notable in the case of the
blind in whom other powers become extremely acute. As I thought that
investigation of the educability of other senses in blind persons very
important from the point of view of the development of the sense of
life, I have tried to obtain the best available information on the
question. The perfection of touch in the blind is accepted so generally
as a truth that one would have expected to find convincing facts in its
favour. However, it is not true. Griesbach,[186] using a well-known
method for estimating tactile discrimination, found that the sense of
touch is not more acute in the blind than in normal persons. Blind
persons distinguished the points of a pair of compasses as separate,
only when they were at least as far apart as in case of normal persons.
Dr. Javal,[187] a well-known oculist who himself became blind, stated
his surprise at finding that “tactile discrimination is quite notably
less acute in the case of the blind than in the case of those with
unimpaired vision. For instance, the index finger of a blind man who
was a great reader got separate sensations from the points of a pair
of compasses only when these were three millimetres apart, whilst a
man with normal sight had the double sensation at a distance of two
millimetres” (p. 123). Griesbach goes still farther, stating that
neither hearing nor smell is better developed in the blind than
amongst normal people. Although these senses may come to replace to a
certain extent the sense of sight, this occurs merely because the blind
person uses impressions which the clear-sighted person hardly notices.
As we see what is going on around us, we do not concentrate our
attention on the different sounds and smells or other such phenomena.
The blind person, on the other hand, not being absorbed by impressions
of sight, gives attention to the others. Such and such a sound tells
him that the garden gate of his neighbour has been opened to let out a
carriage which he must avoid. A particular smell lets him recognise the
place where he is, as stable or kitchen.
From the present point of view, it is not exactly the acuteness of the
senses which is most important. The acuteness might be equal in a blind
person and in a normal person. It might even be greater in the latter,
and yet it is only the blind person who can decipher without difficulty
raised points so as to understand their meaning as well as when a
normal person reads a printed book. This power of the blind person is
developed only after a long period of learning, and depends on the
appreciation of very delicate tactile impressions. I must point out,
moreover, that the method of deciding by means of a pair of compasses
gives information only with regard to one side of the tactile sense.
However, although we admit that blind people do not really gain
anything in the four remaining senses, there is developed in them a
special kind of sensibility, which is spoken of in their case as a
sixth sense, the “sense of obstacles.” Blind people, especially those
who have lost their sight in youth, acquire a surprising habit of
avoiding obstacles and of recognising at a distance objects round
about them. Blind children, for instance, can play in a garden, without
knocking themselves against the trees.
Dr. Javal[188] states that some blind people, when passing in front
of a house, can count the ground floor windows. A professor, who had
been blind from the age of four years, could walk in the garden without
striking against a tree or post. He appreciated a wall at a distance
of two metres from it. One day, going for the first time into a large
apartment, he recognised the presence of a big piece of furniture in
the middle, which he took to be a billiard table.
Another blind man, walking in the street, could distinguish houses from
shops and could count the number of doors and windows. The existence
of this sense of obstacles rests upon so many exact facts that it is
indubitable. The opinions as to the mechanism by which it operates,
however, are very varied. Dr. Zell[189] thinks that it is not a sense
peculiar to blind people and “that those of normal sight could equally
well acquire it by practice, because it exists in nearly everyone
without being noticed.” None the less, there are some blind people who,
even in the course of years, do not acquire it. M. Javal, for instance,
learnt to read with his fingers extremely well, but was never able to
distinguish obstacles at a distance.
The most probable hypothesis refers this sixth sense to the action of
the tympanic membrane and the auditory apparatus. It is known that
loud noise makes it more difficult to perceive obstacles, and snow,
by dulling the sound of steps, has a precisely similar effect. Blind
tuners, in whom the sense of hearing is well developed, have the sixth
sense very marked.
The examples I have given show that the human body possesses senses
which come into operation only in special conditions, and which
require a special education. The “sense of life” to a certain
extent comes within this category. In some persons it develops very
imperfectly, generally revealing itself only late in life, but
sometimes a disease or the danger of losing life stimulates its earlier
development. Occasionally in persons who have tried to commit suicide,
a strong instinct of life wakens suddenly, and impels them to make
frantic efforts to escape.
It happens, therefore, that the sense of life develops sometimes in
healthy people, sometimes in those who suffer from acute or chronic
disease. These variations are parallel with the development of the
sexual instinct, which in some women is completely absent and in others
develops only very late. In certain cases, it is awakened only by
special conditions, such as child-birth, or even some defect of health.
As the sense of life can be developed, special pains ought to be taken
with it, just as with the making perfect of the other senses in the
blind. Young people who are inclined to pessimism ought to be informed
that their condition of mind is only temporary, and that according to
the laws of human nature it will later on be replaced by optimism.