Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

11. Conclusion. Our conclusion is this: The summum bonum or highest good is that which human beings universally strive after for its own sake, which for them has absolute worth. It differs for different nations and times, depending upon different inner and outer conditions. Hence it is not possible to give a detailed picture of the highest good. All that we can do is to observe the similarities existing between the different ideals of humanity, and to embrace these under a general formula or principle. This formula or principle is, of course, bound to be vague and indefinite, a mere outline of the general direction of human strivings. We defined it as the preservation and unfolding of individual and social, physical and spiritual life, in adaptation to the surroundings. Whatever rules are developed by mankind for the realization of the highest good, and produce the moral sentiments referred to before, are called moral rules. The object

of these rules is to make the realization of the ideal possible. Morality is a means to an end, just as law is a means to an end. But in the case of morality the rules must, generally speaking, arouse certain sentiments, such as obligation, approval, disapproval, etc. Hence moral facts are characterized by the effects which acts and motives have upon the consciousness of the individuals as well as upon their general welfare.

The knowledge we have gained thus far will enable us to examine the different moral codes, and

to criticize them. We can now judge of a people's conduct in a more rational way; we can tell whether the race is realizing its purpose, the highest good. We can also tell what modes of conduct are necessary to the realization of the ideal, and say that they ought to be pursued. This part of our problem would belong to practical ethics.

CHAPTER X

OPTIMISM VERSUS PESSIMISM 1

[ocr errors]

We said that the

1. Optimism and Pessimism. end or aim of human life, i.e., the highest good, was the exercise of human functions. This means, of course, that human beings set a value upon things, that they regard certain ends as having absolute worth for them. They value their lives and those of others; they prize development and progress for its own sake. In other words, they regard life as worth living, as good, as the best thing for them (optimum). We may call this view optimism.

This conception is opposed by a set of thinkers who declare that life is not worth living, that it is not a good, but an evil, not the best thing, but the worst thing (pessimum). We may call this theory pessimism.

1 Dühring, Der Werth des Lebens; Hartmann, Zur Geschichte und Begründung des Pessimismus; Sully, Pessimism, A History and Criticism; Sommer, Der Pessimismus und die Sittenlehre; Plümacher, Der Pessimismus in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart; Paulsen, Ethics, Bk. II, chaps. iii, iv, vii; Wallace, "Pessimism," Encyclopedia Britannica; Lubbock, The Pleasures of Life. See the bibliography in Sully's Pessimism, pp. xvii, xix. For much that is contained in the following chapter I am indebted to Paulsen's admirable chapters on "Pessimism," "The Evil, the Bad and Theodicy," and "Virtue and Happiness."

Let us examine this view somewhat more in detail. There are two ways of treating the subject. I may say that my life is not worth living, that I do not care for it, that to me it seems an evil rather than a good. Here I offer no proofs for my statements, but simply express my personal feelings toward life, my individual attitude toward it. This is subjective or unscientific pessimism. Or I may attempt to prove scientifically that life in general is not worth living, that it is unreasonable or illogical for any one to care for it. This is objective or scientific or philosophical pessimism. We shall have occasion to refer to both forms in the course of the following discussion.

2. Subjective Pessimism. - Lord Bacon gives us a characteristic estimate of the value of life in these pessimistic lines :

"The world's a bubble, and the life of man

Less than a span:

In his conception wretched, from the womb
So to the tomb;

Curst from his cradle, and brought up to years
With cares and fears.

Who then to frail mortality shall trust,

But limns on water, or but writes in dust.”

Shakespeare's Hamlet expresses himself in a simi

lar strain:

"How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable

Seem to me the uses of this world;

Fie on't, oh, fie! 'Tis an unweeded garden

That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely."

And Keats in his Ode to the Nightingale draws an equally mournful picture of the world in which his unhappy lot has been cast:

"Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget

What thou among the leaves hast never known,

The weariness, the fever, and the fret

Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs;

Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,

Or new love pine at them beyond to-morrow."

These pessimistic utterances, however, prove nothing but the temporary mood of the poet who gives vent to them. They are common to every age and every clime, and are symptoms of the weariness and disappointment that lay hold upon the race in its struggle toward perfection. There is scarcely a person living who does not sometimes succumb to the black demon of melancholy, who does not at times long "to lie down like a tired child and weep away this life of care." And we may say that he is Pessimistic broodings are

none the worse for it.

like the storm-clouds that gather on the horizon, and in a healthy life pass away as quickly as they came, leaving the mental atmosphere calm and pure. It is only when such moods become chronic and permanent that they prove dangerous to both the individual and the race, for unless we regard life as worth living we shall not live it as it ought to be lived.

« AnteriorContinuar »