And to this world, to this scene of tormented and agonised beings, who only continue to exist by devouring each other, in which, therefore, every ravenous beast is the living grave of thousands of others, and its self-maintenance is a chain of painful deaths; and in which the capacity for feeling pain increases with knowledge, and therefore reaches its highest degree in man, a degree which is the higher the more intelligent the man is; to this world it has been sought to apply the system of optimism, and demonstrate to us that it is the best of all possible worlds. The absurdity is glaring. But an optimist bids me open my eyes and look at the world, how beautiful it is in the sunshine, with its mountains and valleys, streams, plants, animals, &c. &c. Is the world, then, a rareeshow? These things are certainly beautiful to _look at_, but to _be_ them is something quite different. Then comes a teleologist, and praises to me the wise arrangement by virtue of which it is taken care that the planets do not run their heads together, that land and sea do not get mixed into a pulp, but are held so beautifully apart, also that everything is neither rigid with continual frost nor roasted with heat; in the same way, that in consequence of the obliquity of the ecliptic there is no eternal spring, in which nothing could attain to ripeness, &c. &c. But this and all like it are mere _conditiones sine quibus non_. If in general there is to be a world at all, if its planets are to exist at least as long as the light of a distant fixed star requires to reach them, and are not, like Lessing"s son, to depart again immediately after birth, then certainly it must not be so clumsily constructed that its very framework threatens to fall to pieces. But if one goes on to the results of this applauded work, considers the players who act upon the stage which is so durably constructed, and now sees how with sensibility pain appears, and increases in proportion as the sensibility develops to intelligence, and then how, keeping pace with this, desire and suffering come out ever more strongly, and increase till at last human life affords no other material than this for tragedies and comedies, then whoever is honest will scarcely be disposed to set up hallelujahs. David Hume, in his "Natural History of Religion," ---- 6, 7, 8, and 13, has also exposed, mercilessly but with convincing truth, the real though concealed source of these last. He also explains clearly in the tenth and eleventh books of his "Dialogues on Natural Religion," with very pertinent arguments, which are yet of quite a different kind from mine, the miserable nature of this world and the untenableness of all optimism; in doing which he attacks this in its origin. Both works of Hume"s are as well worth reading as they are unknown at the present day in Germany, where, on the other hand, incredible pleasure is found, patriotically, in the most disgusting nonsense of home-bred boastful mediocrities, who are proclaimed great men. Hamann, however, translated these dialogues; Kant went through the translation, and late in life wished to induce Hamann"s son to publish them because the translation of Platner did not satisfy him (see Kant"s biography by F. W.
Schubert, pp. 81 and 165). From every page of David Hume there is more to be learned than from the collected philosophical works of Hegel, Herbart, and Schleiermacher together.
The founder of systematic optimism, again, is Leibnitz whose philosophical merit I have no intention of denying although I have never succeeded in thinking myself into the monadology, pre-established harmony, and _ident.i.tas indiscernibilium_. His "_Nouveaux essays sur l"entendement_"
are, however, merely an excerpt, with a full yet weak criticism, with a view to correction, of Locke"s work which is justly of world-wide reputation. He here opposes Locke with just as little success as he opposes Newton in the "_Tentamen de motuum clestium causis_," directed against the system of gravitation. The "Critique of Pure Reason" is specially directed against this Leibnitz-Wolfian philosophy, and has a polemical, nay, a destructive relation to it, just as it is related to Locke and Hume as a continuation and further construction. That at the present day the professors of philosophy are on all sides engaged in setting Leibnitz, with his juggling, upon his legs again, nay, in glorifying him, and, on the other hand, in depreciating and setting aside Kant as much as possible, has its sufficient reason in the _primum vivere_; the "Critique of Pure Reason" does not admit of one giving out Judaistic mythology as philosophy, nor of one speaking, without ceremony, of the "soul" as a given reality, a well-known and well-accredited person, without giving account of how one arrived at this conception, and what justification one has for using it scientifically. But _primum vivere, deinde philosophari_! Down with Kant, _vivat_ our Leibnitz! To return, then, to Leibnitz, I cannot ascribe to the Theodicee, as a methodical and broad unfolding of optimism, any other merit than this, that it gave occasion later for the immortal "_Candide_" of the great Voltaire; whereby certainly Leibnitz"s often-repeated and lame excuse for the evil of the world, that the bad sometimes brings about the good, received a confirmation which was unexpected by him. Even by the name of his hero Voltaire indicates that it only requires sincerity to recognise the opposite of optimism. Really upon this scene of sin, suffering, and death optimism makes such an extraordinary figure that one would be forced to regard it as irony if one had not a sufficient explanation of its origin in the secret source of it (insincere flattery, with insulting confidence in its success), which, as was mentioned above, is so delightfully disclosed by Hume.
But indeed to the palpably sophistical proofs of Leibnitz that this is the best of all possible worlds, we may seriously and honestly oppose the proof that it is the worst of all possible worlds. For possible means, not what one may construct in imagination, but what can actually exist and continue. Now this world is so arranged as to be able to maintain itself with great difficulty; but if it were a little worse, it could no longer maintain itself. Consequently a worse world, since it could not continue to exist, is absolutely impossible: thus this world itself is the worst of all possible worlds. For not only if the planets were to run their heads together, but even if any one of the actually appearing perturbations of their course, instead of being gradually balanced by others, continued to increase, the world would soon reach its end. Astronomers know upon what accidental circ.u.mstances-princ.i.p.ally the irrational relation to each other of the periods of revolution-this depends, and have carefully calculated that it will always go on well; consequently the world also can continue and go on. We will hope that, although Newton was of an opposite opinion, they have not miscalculated, and consequently that the mechanical perpetual motion realised in such a planetary system will not also, like the rest, ultimately come to a standstill. Again, under the firm crust of the planet dwell the powerful forces of nature which, as soon as some accident affords them free play, must necessarily destroy that crust, with everything living upon it, as has already taken place at least three times upon our planet, and will probably take place oftener still. The earthquake of Lisbon, the earthquake of Haiti, the destruction of Pompeii, are only small, playful hints of what is possible. A small alteration of the atmosphere, which cannot even be chemically proved, causes cholera, yellow fever, black death, &c., which carry off millions of men; a somewhat greater alteration would extinguish all life. A very moderate increase of heat would dry up all the rivers and springs. The brutes have received just barely so much in the way of organs and powers as enables them to procure with the greatest exertion sustenance for their own lives and food for their offspring; therefore if a brute loses a limb, or even the full use of one, it must generally perish. Even of the human race, powerful as are the weapons it possesses in understanding and reason, nine-tenths live in constant conflict with want, always balancing themselves with difficulty and effort upon the brink of destruction. Thus throughout, as for the continuance of the whole, so also for that of each individual being the conditions are barely and scantily given, but nothing over. The individual life is a ceaseless battle for existence itself; while at every step destruction threatens it. Just because this threat is so often fulfilled provision had to be made, by means of the enormous excess of the germs, that the destruction of the individuals should not involve that of the species, for which alone nature really cares. The world is therefore as bad as it possibly can be if it is to continue to be at all. _Q. E. D._ The fossils of the entirely different kinds of animal species which formerly inhabited the planet afford us, as a proof of our calculation, the records of worlds the continuance of which was no longer possible, and which consequently were somewhat worse than the worst of possible worlds.
Optimism is at bottom the unmerited self-praise of the real originator of the world, the will to live, which views itself complacently in its works; and accordingly it is not only a false, but also a pernicious doctrine.
For it presents life to us as a desirable condition, and the happiness of man as the end of it. Starting from this, every one then believes that he has the most just claim to happiness and pleasure; and if, as is wont to happen, these do not fall to his lot, then he believes that he is wronged, nay, that he loses the end of his existence; while it is far more correct to regard work, privation, misery, and suffering, crowned by death, as the end of our life (as Brahmanism and Buddhism, and also genuine Christianity do); for it is these which lead to the denial of the will to live. In the New Testament the world is represented as a valley of tears, life as a process of purifying or refining, and the symbol of Christianity is an instrument of torture. Therefore, when Leibnitz, Shaftesbury, Bolingbroke, and Pope brought forward optimism, the general offence which it gave depended princ.i.p.ally upon the fact that optimism is irreconcilable with Christianity; as Voltaire states and explains in the preface to his excellent poem, "_Le desastre de Lisbonne_," which is also expressly directed against optimism. This great man, whom I so gladly praise, in opposition to the abuse of venal German ink-slingers, is placed decidedly higher than Rousseau by the insight to which he attained in three respects, and which prove the greater depth of his thinking: (1) the recognition of the preponderating magnitude of the evil and misery of existence with which he is deeply penetrated; (2) that of the strict necessity of the acts of will; (3) that of the truth of Locke"s principle, that what thinks may also be material: while Rousseau opposes all this with declamations in his "_Profession de foi du vicaire Savoyard_," a superficial Protestant pastor"s philosophy; as he also in the same spirit attacks the beautiful poem of Voltaire which has just been referred to with ill-founded, shallow, and logically false reasoning, in the interests of optimism, in his long letter to Voltaire of 18th August 1756, which is devoted simply to this purpose. Indeed, the fundamental characteristic and the p??t?? ?e?d?? of Rousseau"s whole philosophy is this, that in the place of the Christian doctrine of original sin, and the original depravity of the human race, he puts an original goodness and unlimited perfectibility of it, which has only been led astray by civilisation and its consequences, and then founds upon this his optimism and humanism.
As in "_Candide_" Voltaire wages war in his facetious manner against optimism, Byron has also done so in his serious and tragic style, in his immortal masterpiece, "Cain," on account of which he also has been honoured with the invectives of the obscurantist, Friedrich Schlegel. If now, in conclusion, to confirm my view, I were to give what has been said by great men of all ages in this anti-optimistic spirit, there would be no end to the quotations, for almost every one of them has expressed in strong language his knowledge of the misery of this world. Thus, not to confirm, but merely to embellish this chapter, a few quotations of this kind may be given at the end of it.
First of all, let me mention here that the Greeks, far as they were from the Christian and lofty Asiatic conception of the world, and although they decidedly stood at the point of view of the a.s.sertion of the will, were yet deeply affected by the wretchedness of existence. This is shown even by the invention of tragedy, which belongs to them. Another proof of it is afforded us by the custom of the Thracians, which is first mentioned by Herodotus, though often referred to afterwards-the custom of welcoming the new-born child with lamentations, and recounting all the evils which now lie before it; and, on the other hand, burying the dead with mirth and jesting, because they are no longer exposed to so many and great sufferings. In a beautiful poem preserved for us by Plutarch (_De audiend.
poet. in fine_) this runs thus:-
"??? f??ta ????e??, e?? ?s? e??eta? ?a?a ??? d?a? ?a???ta ?a? p???? pepa?e???
?a????ta? e?f????ta? e?pepe?? d???."
(_Lugere genitum, tanta qui intrarit mala:_ _At morte si quis finiisset miserias,_ _Hunc laude amicos atque laet.i.tia exsequi._)
It is not to be attributed to historical relationship, but to the moral ident.i.ty of the matter, that the Mexicans welcomed the new-born child with the words, "My child, thou art born to endure; therefore endure, suffer, and keep silence." And, following the same feeling, Swift (as Walter Scott relates in his Life of Swift) early adopted the custom of keeping his birthday not as a time of joy but of sadness, and of reading on that day the pa.s.sage of the Bible in which Job laments and curses the day on which it was said in the house of his father a man-child is born.
Well known and too long for quotation is the pa.s.sage in the "Apology of Socrates," in which Plato makes this wisest of mortals say that death, even if it deprives us of consciousness for ever, would be a wonderful gain, for a deep, dreamless sleep every day is to be preferred even to the happiest life.
A saying of Herac.l.i.tus runs: "?? ??? ?? ???a e? ???, e???? de ?a?at??." (_Vitae nomen quidem est vita, opus autem mors. Etymologic.u.m magnum, voce_ ????; also _Eustath. ad Iliad._, i. p. 31.)
The beautiful lines of the "Theogony" are famous:-
"????? e? ? f??a? ep????????s?? a??st??, ??d? e?s?de?? a??a? ??e?? ?e????; F??ta d? ?p?? ???sta p??a? ??da? pe??sa?, ?a? ?e?s?a? p????? ??? epa?sae???."
(_Optima sors homini natum non esse, nec unquam._ _Adspexisse diem, flammiferumque jubar._ _Altera jam genitum demitti protinus Orco,_ _Et pressum multa mergere corpus humo._)
Sophocles, in "dipus Colonus" (1225), has the following abbreviation of the same:-
"?? f??a? t?? ?pa?ta ???a ?????; t? d? epe? fa??, ??a? ?e??e?, ??e? pe? ??e?, p??? de?te???, ?? ta??sta."
(_Natum non esse sortes vincit alias omnes: proxima autem est, ubi quis in lucem editus fuerit, eodem redire, unde venit, quam ocissime._)
Euripides says:-
"?a? d??d?????? ??? a????p??, ????? est? p???? a?apa?s??."
(_Omnis hominum vita est plena dolore,_ _Nec datur laborum remissio._)
-HIPPOL, 189.
And Homer already said:-
"?? e? ?a? t? est?? ??????te??? a?d???
?a?t??, ?ssa de ?a?a? ep? p?ee? te ?a? ??pe?."
(_Non enim quidquam alicubi est calamitosius homine_ _Omnium, quotquot super terram spirantque et moventur._)
-II. xvii. 446.
Even Pliny says: "_Quapropter hoc primum quisque in remediis animi sui habeat, ex omnibus bonis, quae homini natura tribuit, nullum melius esse tempestiva morte_" (_Hist. Nat._ 28, 2).
Shakspeare puts the words in the mouth of the old king Henry IV.:-
"O heaven! that one might read the book of fate, And see the revolution of the times, ... how chances mock, And changes fill the cup of alteration With divers liquors! O, if this were seen, The happiest youth,-viewing his progress through, What perils past, what crosses to ensue,- Would shut the book, and sit him down and die."
Finally, Byron:-
"Count o"er the joys thine hours have seen, Count o"er thy days from anguish free, And know, whatever thou hast been, "Tis something better not to be."
Baltazar Gracian also brings the misery of our existence before our eyes in the darkest colours in the "Criticon," Parte i., Crisi 5, just at the beginning, and Crisi 7 at the end, where he explicitly represents life as a tragic farce.
Yet no one has so thoroughly and exhaustively handled this subject as, in our own day, Leopardi. He is entirely filled and penetrated by it: his theme is everywhere the mockery and wretchedness of this existence; he presents it upon every page of his works, yet in such a multiplicity of forms and applications, with such wealth of imagery that he never wearies us, but, on the contrary, is throughout entertaining and exciting.
Chapter XLVII.(43) On Ethics.
Here is the great gap which occurs in these supplements, on account of the circ.u.mstance that I have already dealt with moral philosophy in the narrower sense in the two prize essays published under the t.i.tle, "_Die Grundprobleme der Ethik_," an acquaintance with which is a.s.sumed, as I have said, in order to avoid useless repet.i.tion. Therefore there only remains for me here a small gleaning of isolated reflections which could not be discussed in that work, the contents of which were, in the main, prescribed by the Academies; least of all those reflections which demand a higher point of view than that which is common to all, and which I was there obliged to adhere to. Accordingly it will not surprise the reader to find these reflections here in a very fragmentary collection. This collection again has been continued in the eighth and ninth chapters of the second volume of the Parerga.
That moral investigations are incomparably more difficult than physical, and in general than any others, results from the fact that they are almost immediately concerned with the thing in itself, namely, with that manifestation of it in which, directly discovered by the light of knowledge, it reveals its nature as _will_. Physical truths, on the other hand, remain entirely in the province of the idea, _i.e._, of the phenomenon, and merely show how the lowest manifestations of the will present themselves in the idea in conformity to law. Further, the consideration of the world from the _physical_ side, however far and successfully it may be pursued, is in its results without any consolation for us: on the _moral_ side alone is consolation to be found; for here the depths of our own inner nature disclose themselves to the consideration.
But my philosophy is the only one which confers upon ethics its complete and whole rights; for only if the true nature of man is his own _will_, and consequently he is, in the strictest sense, his own work, are his deeds really entirely his and to be ascribed to him. On the other hand, whenever he has another origin, or is the work of a being different from himself, all his guilt falls back upon this origin, or originator. For _operari sequitur esse_.
To connect the force which produces the phenomenon of the world, and consequently determines its nature, with the morality of the disposition or character, and thus to establish a _moral_ order of the world as the foundation of the _physical_,-this has been since Socrates the problem of philosophy. Theism solved it in a childish manner, which could not satisfy mature humanity. Therefore pantheism opposed itself to it whenever it ventured to do so, and showed that nature bears in itself the power by virtue of which it appears. With this, however, ethics had necessarily to be given up. Spinoza, indeed, attempts here and there to preserve it by means of sophistry, but for the most part gives it up altogether, and, with a boldness which excites astonishment and repugnance, explains the distinction between right and wrong, and in general between good and evil, as merely conventional, thus in itself empty (for example, _Eth._ iv., prop. 37, schol. 2). After having met with unmerited neglect for more than a hundred years, Spinoza has, in general, become too much esteemed in this century through the reaction caused by the swing of the pendulum of opinion. All pantheism must ultimately be overthrown by the inevitable demands of ethics, and then by the evil and suffering of the world. If the world is a theophany, then all that man, or even the brute, does is equally divine and excellent; nothing can be censurable, and nothing more praiseworthy than the rest: thus there is no ethics. Hence, in consequence of the revived Spinozism of our own day, thus of pantheism, the treatment of ethics has sunk so low and become so shallow that it has been made a mere instruction as to the proper life of a citizen and a member of a family, in which the ultimate end of human existence is supposed to consist: thus in methodical, complete, smug, and comfortable philistinism.
Pantheism, indeed, has only led to such shallow vulgarisms through the fact that (by a shameful misuse of the _e quovis ligno fit Mercurius_) a common mind, Hegel, has, by the well-known means, been falsely stamped as a great philosopher, and a herd of his disciples, at first suborned, afterwards only stupid, received his weighty words. Such outrages on the human mind do not remain unpunished: the seed has sprouted. In the same spirit it was then a.s.serted that ethics should have for its material not the conduct of individuals, but that of nations, that this alone was a theme worthy of it. Nothing can be more perverse than this view, which rests on the most vulgar realism. For in every individual appears the whole undivided will to live, the thing in itself, and the microcosm is like the macrocosm. The ma.s.ses have no more content than each individual.
Ethics is concerned not with actions and their results, but with willing, and willing itself takes place only in the individual. Not the fate of nations, which exists only in the phenomenon, but that of the individual is decided _morally_. Nations are really mere abstractions; individuals alone actually exist. Thus, then, is pantheism related to ethics. But the evil and misery of the world are not in accord even with theism; hence it sought a.s.sistance from all kinds of evasions, theodicies, which yet were irretrievably overthrown by the arguments of Hume and Voltaire. Pantheism, however, is completely untenable in the presence of that bad side of the world. Only when the world is regarded entirely from without and from the _physical_ side alone, and nothing else is kept in view but the constant restorative order, and the comparative imperishableness of the whole which is thereby introduced, is it perhaps possible to explain it as a G.o.d, yet always only symbolically. But if one enters within, thus considers also the _subjective_ and _moral_ side, with its preponderance of want, suffering, and misery, of dissension, wickedness, madness, and perversity, then one soon becomes conscious with horror that the last thing imaginable one has before one is a theophany. I, however, have shown, and especially in my work "_Ueber den Willen in der Natur_" have proved, that the force which works and acts in nature is identical with the will in us. Thereby the moral order of the world is brought into direct connection with the force which produces the phenomenon of the world. For the phenomenon of the will must exactly correspond to its nature. Upon this depends the exposition of eternal justice given in ---- 63 and 64 of the first volume, and the world, although subsisting by its own power, receives throughout a _moral_ tendency. Accordingly the problem which has been discussed from the time of Socrates is now for the first time really solved, and the demand of thinking reason directed to morality is satisfied. Yet I have never professed to propound a philosophy which leaves no questions unanswered. In this sense philosophy is really impossible: it would be the science of omniscience. But _est quadam prodire tenus, si non datur ultra_: there is a limit to which reflection can penetrate and can so far lighten the night of our existence, although the horizon always remains dark. My doctrine reaches this limit in the will to live, which in its own manifestation a.s.serts or denies itself. To wish, however, to go beyond this is, in my eyes, like wishing to fly beyond the atmosphere. We must stop there; even although new problems arise out of those which have been solved. Besides this, however, we must refer to the fact that the validity of the principle of sufficient reason is limited to the phenomenon; this was the theme of my first essay on that principle, which was published as early as 1813.