The problem of Pessimism resolves itself into two questions which admit of being kept distinct: (a) The first is, Does life on the whole give, or can it give, a balance of pleasure? This is the fundamental question of the value of life as put by those, whether optimists or pessimists, who assume that "value" means "pleasure-value." If it be answered in the negative, the hedonistic ideal must be the reduction of the adverse balance to the zero-point of feeling striven after by Eastern ascetics, but, to all appearance, obtained only and most easily by death.1 (b) The second question is, Does the evolution of life lead to an increase of pleasure and diminution of pain? This is the question brought into prominence in recent discussions, and of most importance for the present inquiry; and upon an affirmative answer to it Evolutionist Hedonism is plainly dependent. To both questions v. Hartmann gives an answer in the negative. cannot bring pain; (a) If the pessimist view of life is correct, Mr (a) that life Spencer holds, then "the ending of an undesirable more pleas existence being the thing to be wished, that which ure than causes the ending of it must be applauded." And this is so far true, though not necessarily true in the way Mr Spencer thinks. For this undesirable existence cannot, perhaps, be brought to a final conclusion merely by ending the individual life: this 1 Cf. Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics, 3d ed., p. 127. would only leave room for other individuals to fill the vacant places. Annihilation is the end not directly for the individual, but for the race. Not life itself, according to Schopenhauer, but the will to live, is to be killed in the individual man. Even this code of morals, Hartmann thinks, is a remnant of the false, pre-evolutionist individualism, and would hinder the course of the universe, by leaving the game to be played out by the remaining individuals whose wills were not strong enough to curb or kill themselves. It is a mistake to think that the will to live which pulses through all existence can be annihilated by the phenomenal individual. The individual's duty is not to seek for himself the painlessness of annihilation or passionless Nirwâna, but to join in the ceaseless painful striving of nature, and, by contributing to the development of life, to hasten its arrival once more at the goal of unconsciousness. The self-destruction, not of the individual will, but of the cosmic or universal will, is the final end of action. Apart from the metaphysical view of things with which this estimate of the value of life is connected, and which may be regarded perhaps as its consequent rather than its cause,1 the pessimist doctrine has a double foundation, in psychology and in the facts of life. 1 Cf. Vaihinger, Hartmann, Dühring und Lange (1876), p. negative Psychologically, it seems to be best supported (a) from the by Schopenhauer's doctrine of will or desire as an nature of incessant painful striving, pleasure being merely pleasure, the negative of this pain, and always coming short of completely satisfying it. But this position involves a double error in psychological analysis, and is relinquished even by Hartmann, though he still regards pleasure as in all cases satisfaction of desire. Desire is itself merely a secondary or derived fact in human nature, consequent on the inhibition of volitional energy.1 The pleasures we call passive are independent of it; and those which attend upon activity, but are not themselves part of the end of action, are also enjoyed without being striven after in order to satisfy a want. Further, it is a mistake to look upon the pleasure of attainment as a mere negation of the pain of desire. The painful element in desire comes from the inhibition of the attempted realisation of an ideal object. In unsatisfied desires, it is true, the pain is in proportion to the strength of the restrained longing. But, if the inhibition is overcome, the pain is not equal to the strength of the desire, but only to the amount of opposition that has to be conquered in satisfying it. Hence, not only are there other pleasures than those of satisfied desire, but even the pleasure got from such satisfaction is something more than a mere recompense for the pain accompanying the desire. 1 Cf. Sully, Pessimism, p. 216. (8) from the facts of human life; (b) that the evolution of The support got by pessimism from the facts of human life is more difficult to estimate at its true value. It is obvious that pleasure and pain are intermingled in almost every experience; and the proportion in which they are mixed varies greatly in different circumstances and according to the susceptibilities of different persons. If we ask a number of people whether life is on the whole pleasant to them, not only do we receive a variety of answers which it is hard to sum up and average, but the answers we get are apt to reflect the feeling of the moment rather than to represent an impartial estimate of the pleasure and pain of a lifetime. Thus experience seems unable to give us a trustworthy answer as to the average pleasure-value of life; but, if its verdict is correct, that to some life is pleasant, though to many painful, this shows that a surplus of pain does not follow from the nature of life, and thus destroys the position of thoroughgoing pessimism, which looks upon this as the worst of all possible worlds. (b) It may still be maintained, however-and life does not this is the position which chiefly concerns us here tend to pleasure. -that the course of evolution does not tend to increase the pleasure in life at the expense of the pain in it, and that, therefore, even although pleasure and evolution may both of them be possible ends of conduct, they are ends which point in different directions and lead to different courses of action. pleteness of tionist argu It is necessary for the evolutionist who holds (a) Incomthat the development of life does not tend to the evolu increased pleasure, to meet the argument already ment adduced to show their correspondence. Nor does that argument seem to be altogether beyond criticism. To compare progress or development with pleasure, we ought to know exactly what is meant by both terms. Yet it is impossible to have a clear notion of progress without an idea of the end to which it tends, and this has not yet been obtained. It is largely on account of the difficulty of obtaining such an idea that some evolutionists seem to have been driven to measure progress in terms of pleasure, just as, owing to the difficulty of estimating and summing up pleasures, some hedonists have been induced to measure them by the progress of evolution. What we have now to see is whether the correspondence assumed between progress and pleasure actually exists. And, to avoid the tautology of saying that progress is increase of life, we must judge of it simply by empirical observation of the nature of human activity and of the course of human affairs. Now the attempted identification of pleasurable and life-promoting activities rests on an incomplete account of the motives and results of action. For, in the first place, even admitting that pleasure and avoidance of pain are the only motives to action, 1 See above, p. 167 f. |