Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

There are persons, however, with whom pessimism is not merely a passing feeling, but a philosophic creed. A man may, like Hamlet or Faust, look upon life as burdensome to him, and express himself to that effect. When Hamlet says that the world seems weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable to him, we cannot refute him, because he is simply telling how the world affects him, what feelings it arouses in him. His feelings are facts, and as such incontrovertible. When you tell me that you do not value life, that you prefer death to life, and wish you had never been born, I cannot refute you any more than you can refute me when I say that I love life and am glad I am here. We are both simply giving expression to our feelings, and no one knows better how we feel than we ourselves. De gustibus non disputandum.

3. Scientific Pessimism. But when you dogmatically declare that life is not worth living, that there is nothing in it for anybody, that it has absolutely no value, that instead of being a blessing it is a curse, you are making general assertions which call for proof. You are advancing a theory of life which shall be valid for all, and theories can be proved and refuted. You will have to show why life is not worth living; you will have to give reasons for your view, and reasons we can examine and criticise. Now, it can be shown, I believe, that pessimism as a philosophic creed is untenable, and that the optimistic conception of life is far more rational.1

1 Philosophical pessimists: Schopenhauer, World as Will and

U

Let us see. The pessimist may argue that life is not worth living because it does not realize the end or goal desired by man. Life is worthless because it fails to yield what human beings most prize, because it fails to realize the summum bonum or the highest good. Hence, to desire life is to desire something you really do not want, an exceedingly senseless procedure.

But what is the highest good? it may be asked; what is the goal at which we are all aiming? There are as many different forms of pessimism as there are answers to this question. Let us consider some of them.

(a) The highest good is knowledge, one pessimist may argue; life does not realize it for us, we do not and cannot know anything; hence, life is not worth living. Let us call this intellectual pessimism. It is preached by such characters as Faust:

"I've studied now Philosophy,

And Jurisprudence, Medicine, —
And even, alas, Theology, -
From end to end, with labor keen;

And here, poor fool, with all my lore
I stand no wiser than before." 1

(6) The highest good is pleasure or happiness, says another pessimist. Now life does not realize

Idea, English translation by Haldane and Kemp, Vol. I, Bk. IV; Vol. II, Appendix to Bk. IV; Parerga, chaps. xi, xii, xiv; Bahnsen, Zur Philosophie der Geschichte; Mainländer, Die Philosophie der Erlösung; Hartmann, Die Philosophie des Unbewussten, translated by Coupland. Consult Sully's bibliography referred to before, and read his preface to the second edition.

1 Bayard Taylor's translation of Goethe's Faust.

this end; indeed, it yields more pain than pleasure; hence, life is a failure. We find traces of this view, which we might call emotional pessimism, in the Old Testament, as, indeed, we are bound to find them in every book that holds the mirror up to the soul of man. "For what hath man of all his labor, and of all the vexation of his heart, wherein he hath labored under the sun. For all his days are sorrows, and his travail grief; yea, his heart taketh not rest in the night." "The days of our age are threescore years and ten, and though men be so strong that they come to fourscore years: yet is their strength then but labor and sorrow; so soon passeth it away, and we are gone.'

[ocr errors]

(c) No, says still another, the highest good is virtue; life does not realize virtue, men are wicked, the world is thoroughly bad; hence, life in a world like this is not worth living. "The race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong; neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill." This way of looking at the world let us characterize as volitional pessimism.

4. Intellectual Pessimism. All these syllogisms contain unproved premises. Take the first. Knowledge is the highest good, knowledge is impossible, we do not know anything and we cannot know anything. In the first place, knowledge is not the highest good, but a part of the good, a means to an end. As we said before, the goal for which we are striving is a mixed life of knowledge, feeling, and

willing. The perfect or well-rounded man is not one in whom the intellectual faculties are developed at the expense of the emotional and volitional elements, but one who knows, feels, and wills in a normal manner. Besides, it cannot be said that we know nothing and can know nothing, nor can it be said that we are growing more ignorant in the course of history. We may not be able to discover the ultimate essences of things, or to solve all the riddles of existence, but our knowledge is sufficient to guide us in the practical affairs of life. We are gaining a deeper insight into the workings of nature, and our power over the world is increasing in consequence. The wonderful progress that has been made in modern technics is undoubtedly due to our improved knowledge of the laws of the physical universe, and it is safe to predict that we shall make even greater advances along these lines in the future. But we have learned from experience in all departments of life, and are doing our work much better than it has been done in the past, and succeeding generations will most likely improve upon methods.

our

5. Emotional Pessimism. This form of pessimism is also open to criticism. Let us see. Pleasure or happiness is the highest good. Life does not procure it for us; hence life is not good. But pleasure is

not the end of life, as we have already pointed out; pleasure or happiness is a means to a higher end and a part of that end. However, let us waive this point,

and examine the other statement, the one that life yields more pain than pleasure. There are two possible ways of arguing for the truth of this assertion. We must either show, by reference to experience, that the world is a vale of tears, which would give us an inductive proof; or we must prove on a priori grounds that life cannot possibly be happy, that human nature and the very universe itself are so constituted as to preclude the possibility of such a thing.

(1) Now, I ask, can either proof be furnished? Pessimists are fond of telling us that life yields a surplus of pain, that the balance is on the pain side of the ledger. But it is impossible to make the necessary calculations in this field. Take your own individual existence. Can you say that a particular pain is more painful than a particular pleasure is pleasurable? Then can you add up the different pleasures and pains which you have experienced during a single day or hour of your life, and compare the results? And can you, in like manner, compute the pleasures and pains of your entire life, and say that your pains exceed your pleasures? And if you cannot give a safe estimate of the pleasures and pains of your own life, with which you are reasonably familiar, how can you make the calculations for others, and for the entire race, and say that they suffer more than they enjoy? How can you say that the amount of pleasure realized by one individual is counterbalanced or exceeded by the pain suffered by another?

« AnteriorContinuar »