The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism
Chapter 1 · 1/2
The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism
Chapter 1
1THE ESSAYS OF ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER: STUDIES IN PESSIMISM TRANSLATED BY T. 2BAILEY SAUNDERS, M.A. 3CONTENTS. 4ON THE SUFFERINGS OF THE WORLD ON THE VANITY OF EXISTENCE ON SUICIDE IMMORTALITY: A DIALOGUE PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS ON EDUCATION OF WOMEN ON NOISE A FEW PARABLES NOTE. 5The Essays here presented form a further selection from Schopenhauer's _Parerga_, brought together under a title which is not to be found in the original, and does not claim to apply to every chapter in the volume. 6The first essay is, in the main, a rendering of the philosopher's remarks under the heading of _Nachträge zur Lehre vom Leiden der Welt_, together with certain parts of another section entitled _Nachträge zur Lehre von der Bejahung und Verneinung des Willens zum Leben_. 7Such omissions as I have made are directed chiefly by the desire to avoid repeating arguments already familiar to readers of the other volumes in this series. 8The _Dialogue on Immortality_ sums up views expressed at length in the philosopher's chief work, and treated again in the _Parerga_. 9The _Psychological Observations_ in this and the previous volume practically exhaust the chapter of the original which bears this title. 10The essay on _Women_ must not be taken in jest. 11It expresses Schopenhauer's serious convictions; and, as a penetrating observer of the faults of humanity, he may be allowed a hearing on a question which is just now receiving a good deal of attention among us. 12T.B.S. 13ON THE SUFFERINGS OF THE WORLD. 14Unless _suffering_ is the direct and immediate object of life, our existence must entirely fail of its aim. 15It is absurd to look upon the enormous amount of pain that abounds everywhere in the world, and originates in needs and necessities inseparable from life itself, as serving no purpose at all and the result of mere chance. 16Each separate misfortune, as it comes, seems, no doubt, to be something exceptional; but misfortune in general is the rule. 17I know of no greater absurdity than that propounded by most systems of philosophy in declaring evil to be negative in its character. 18Evil is just what is positive; it makes its own existence felt. 19Leibnitz is particularly concerned to defend this absurdity; and he seeks to strengthen his position by using a palpable and paltry sophism.[ 201] It is the good which is negative; in other words, happiness and satisfaction always imply some desire fulfilled, some state of pain brought to an end. 21[Footnote 1: _Translator's Note_, cf. 22_Thèod_, §153.--Leibnitz argued that evil is a negative quality--_i.e_., the absence of good; and that its active and seemingly positive character is an incidental and not an essential part of its nature. 23Cold, he said, is only the absence of the power of heat, and the active power of expansion in freezing water is an incidental and not an essential part of the nature of cold. 24The fact is, that the power of expansion in freezing water is really an increase of repulsion amongst its molecules; and Schopenhauer is quite right in calling the whole argument a sophism.] 25This explains the fact that we generally find pleasure to be not nearly so pleasant as we expected, and pain very much more painful. 26The pleasure in this world, it has been said, outweighs the pain; or, at any rate, there is an even balance between the two. 27If the reader wishes to see shortly whether this statement is true, let him compare the respective feelings of two animals, one of which is engaged in eating the other. 28The best consolation in misfortune or affliction of any kind will be the thought of other people who are in a still worse plight than yourself; and this is a form of consolation open to every one. 29But what an awful fate this means for mankind as a whole! 30We are like lambs in a field, disporting themselves under the eye of the butcher, who chooses out first one and then another for his prey. 31So it is that in our good days we are all unconscious of the evil Fate may have presently in store for us--sickness, poverty, mutilation, loss of sight or reason. 32No little part of the torment of existence lies in this, that Time is continually pressing upon us, never letting us take breath, but always coming after us, like a taskmaster with a whip. 33If at any moment Time stays his hand, it is only when we are delivered over to the misery of boredom. 34But misfortune has its uses; for, as our bodily frame would burst asunder if the pressure of the atmosphere was removed, so, if the lives of men were relieved of all need, hardship and adversity; if everything they took in hand were successful, they would be so swollen with arrogance that, though they might not burst, they would present the spectacle of unbridled folly--nay, they would go mad. 35And I may say, further, that a certain amount of care or pain or trouble is necessary for every man at all times. 36A ship without ballast is unstable and will not go straight. 37Certain it is that _work, worry, labor_ and _trouble_, form the lot of almost all men their whole life long. 38But if all wishes were fulfilled as soon as they arose, how would men occupy their lives? 39what would they do with their time? 40If the world were a paradise of luxury and ease, a land flowing with milk and honey, where every Jack obtained his Jill at once and without any difficulty, men would either die of boredom or hang themselves; or there would be wars, massacres, and murders; so that in the end mankind would inflict more suffering on itself than it has now to accept at the hands of Nature. 41In early youth, as we contemplate our coming life, we are like children in a theatre before the curtain is raised, sitting there in high spirits and eagerly waiting for the play to begin. 42It is a blessing that we do not know what is really going to happen. 43Could we foresee it, there are times when children might seem like innocent prisoners, condemned, not to death, but to life, and as yet all unconscious of what their sentence means. 44Nevertheless, every man desires to reach old age; in other words, a state of life of which it may be said: "It is bad to-day, and it will be worse to-morrow; and so on till the worst of all." 45If you try to imagine, as nearly as you can, what an amount of misery, pain and suffering of every kind the sun shines upon in its course, you will admit that it would be much better if, on the earth as little as on the moon, the sun were able to call forth the phenomena of life; and if, here as there, the surface were still in a crystalline state. 46Again, you may look upon life as an unprofitable episode, disturbing the blessed calm of non-existence. 47And, in any case, even though things have gone with you tolerably well, the longer you live the more clearly you will feel that, on the whole, life is _a disappointment, nay, a cheat_. 48If two men who were friends in their youth meet again when they are old, after being separated for a life-time, the chief feeling they will have at the sight of each other will be one of complete disappointment at life as a whole; because their thoughts will be carried back to that earlier time when life seemed so fair as it lay spread out before them in the rosy light of dawn, promised so much--and then performed so little. 49This feeling will so completely predominate over every other that they will not even consider it necessary to give it words; but on either side it will be silently assumed, and form the ground-work of all they have to talk about. 50He who lives to see two or three generations is like a man who sits some time in the conjurer's booth at a fair, and witnesses the performance twice or thrice in succession. 51The tricks were meant to be seen only once; and when they are no longer a novelty and cease to deceive, their effect is gone. 52While no man is much to be envied for his lot, there are countless numbers whose fate is to be deplored. 53Life is a task to be done. 54It is a fine thing to say _defunctus est_; it means that the man has done his task. 55If children were brought into the world by an act of pure reason alone, would the human race continue to exist? 56Would not a man rather have so much sympathy with the coming generation as to spare it the burden of existence? 57or at any rate not take it upon himself to impose that burden upon it in cold blood. 58I shall be told, I suppose, that my philosophy is comfortless--because I speak the truth; and people prefer to be assured that everything the Lord has made is good. 59Go to the priests, then, and leave philosophers in peace! 60At any rate, do not ask us to accommodate our doctrines to the lessons you have been taught. 61That is what those rascals of sham philosophers will do for you. 62Ask them for any doctrine you please, and you will get it. 63Your University professors are bound to preach optimism; and it is an easy and agreeable task to upset their theories. 64I have reminded the reader that every state of welfare, every feeling of satisfaction, is negative in its character; that is to say, it consists in freedom from pain, which is the positive element of existence. 65It follows, therefore, that the happiness of any given life is to be measured, not by its joys and pleasures, but by the extent to which it has been free from suffering--from positive evil. 66If this is the true standpoint, the lower animals appear to enjoy a happier destiny than man. 67Let us examine the matter a little more closely. 68However varied the forms that human happiness and misery may take, leading a man to seek the one and shun the other, the material basis of it all is bodily pleasure or bodily pain. 69This basis is very restricted: it is simply health, food, protection from wet and cold, the satisfaction of the sexual instinct; or else the absence of these things. 70Consequently, as far as real physical pleasure is concerned, the man is not better off than the brute, except in so far as the higher possibilities of his nervous system make him more sensitive to every kind of pleasure, but also, it must be remembered, to every kind of pain. 71But then compared with the brute, how much stronger are the passions aroused in him! 72what an immeasurable difference there is in the depth and vehemence of his emotions!--and yet, in the one case, as in the other, all to produce the same result in the end: namely, health, food, clothing, and so on. 73The chief source of all this passion is that thought for what is absent and future, which, with man, exercises such a powerful influence upon all he does. 74It is this that is the real origin of his cares, his hopes, his fears--emotions which affect him much more deeply than could ever be the case with those present joys and sufferings to which the brute is confined. 75In his powers of reflection, memory and foresight, man possesses, as it were, a machine for condensing and storing up his pleasures and his sorrows. 76But the brute has nothing of the kind; whenever it is in pain, it is as though it were suffering for the first time, even though the same thing should have previously happened to it times out of number. 77It has no power of summing up its feelings. 78Hence its careless and placid temper: how much it is to be envied! 79But in man reflection comes in, with all the emotions to which it gives rise; and taking up the same elements of pleasure and pain which are common to him and the brute, it develops his susceptibility to happiness and misery to such a degree that, at one moment the man is brought in an instant to a state of delight that may even prove fatal, at another to the depths of despair and suicide. 80If we carry our analysis a step farther, we shall find that, in order to increase his pleasures, man has intentionally added to the number and pressure of his needs, which in their original state were not much more difficult to satisfy than those of the brute. 81Hence luxury in all its forms; delicate food, the use of tobacco and opium, spirituous liquors, fine clothes, and the thousand and one things than he considers necessary to his existence. 82And above and beyond all this, there is a separate and peculiar source of pleasure, and consequently of pain, which man has established for himself, also as the result of using his powers of reflection; and this occupies him out of all proportion to its value, nay, almost more than all his other interests put together--I mean ambition and the feeling of honor and shame; in plain words, what he thinks about the opinion other people have of him. 83Taking a thousand forms, often very strange ones, this becomes the goal of almost all the efforts he makes that are not rooted in physical pleasure or pain. 84It is true that besides the sources of pleasure which he has in common with the brute, man has the pleasures of the mind as well. 85These admit of many gradations, from the most innocent trifling or the merest talk up to the highest intellectual achievements; but there is the accompanying boredom to be set against them on the side of suffering. 86Boredom is a form of suffering unknown to brutes, at any rate in their natural state; it is only the very cleverest of them who show faint traces of it when they are domesticated; whereas in the case of man it has become a downright scourge. 87The crowd of miserable wretches whose one aim in life is to fill their purses but never to put anything into their heads, offers a singular instance of this torment of boredom. 88Their wealth becomes a punishment by delivering them up to misery of having nothing to do; for, to escape it, they will rush about in all directions, traveling here, there and everywhere. 89No sooner do they arrive in a place than they are anxious to know what amusements it affords; just as though they were beggars asking where they could receive a dole! 90Of a truth, need and boredom are the two poles of human life. 91Finally, I may mention that as regards the sexual relation, a man is committed to a peculiar arrangement which drives him obstinately to choose one person. 92This feeling grows, now and then, into a more or less passionate love,[1] which is the source of little pleasure and much suffering. 93[Footnote 1: I have treated this subject at length in a special
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