 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Studies in Pessimism by Arthur Schopenhauer Translated by T. Bailey Saunders The essays here presented form a further selection from Schopenhauer's Parerica, 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. The first essay is, in the main, a rendering of the philosopher's remarks under the heading of Nachtrege Zulea vom Leiden der Welt, together with certain parts of another section, entitled Nachtrege Zulea von der Bejahung und Verneinung des Villens zum Leben. Such 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. The dialogue on immortality sums up views expressed at length in the philosopher's chief work, and treated again in the Parerica. The psychological observations in this and the previous volume practically exhaust the chapter of the original, which bears this title. The essay on women must not be taken in jest. It 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. T. Bailey Saunders End Note This recording is in the public domain. This is the LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Studies in Pessimism by Arthur Schopenhauer Chapter 1 On the Sufferings of the World Unless suffering is the direct and immediate object of life, our existence must entirely fail of its aim. It 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. Each separate misfortune as it comes seems, no doubt, to be something exceptional. But misfortune in general is the rule. I know of no greater absurdity than that propounded by most systems of philosophy in declaring evil to be negative in its character. Evil is just what is positive. It makes its own existence felt. Leibniz is particularly concerned to defend this absurdity and he seeks to strengthen his position by using a palpable and paltry sophism. Transletters Note Confer Theod Section 153 Leibniz 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. Cold, he said, is only the absence of the power of heat and the active power of expansion and freezing water is an incidental and not an essential part of the nature of cold. The fact is that the power of expansion and freezing water is really an increase of repulsion amongst its molecules and Schopenhauer is quite right in calling the whole argument a sophism. End Transletters Note 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. This explains the fact that we generally find pleasure to be not nearly so pleasant as we expected and pain very much more painful. The pleasure in this world, it has been said, outweighs the pain or at any rate there is an even balance between the two. If 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. The best consolation and 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 everyone. But what an awful fate this means for mankind as a whole. We 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. So 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. No 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. If at any moment time stays his hand it is only when we are delivered over to the misery of boredom. But 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. And I may say further that a certain amount of care or pain or trouble is necessary for every man at all times. A ship without ballast is unstable and will not go straight. Certain it is that work, worry, labour, and trouble form the lot of almost all men their whole life long. But if all wishes were fulfilled as soon as they arose, how would men occupy their lives? What would they do with their time? If 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 dive 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. In early youth, as we contemplate our coming life, we are like children in the theatre before the curtain is raised, sitting there in high spirits and eagerly waiting for the play to begin. It is a blessing that we do not know what is really going to happen. Could 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. Nevertheless, every man desires to reach old age, in other words, a state of life of which it may be said. It is bad today, and it will be worse tomorrow, and so on till the worst of all. If 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 is there the surface were still in a crystalline state. Again, you may look upon life as an unprofitable episode, disturbing the blessed calm of nonexistence. And, 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. If two men who were friends in their youth meet again when they are old, after being separated for a lifetime, 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. This 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 groundwork of all they have to talk about. He 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. The tricks were meant to be seen only once, and when they are no longer a novelty and cease to deceive, their effect is gone. While no man is much to be envied for his lot, there are countless numbers whose fate is to be deplored. Life is a task to be done. It is a fine thing to say, defunctus est, it means that the man has done his task. If children were brought into the world by an act of pure reason alone, would the human race continue to exist? Would not a man rather have so much sympathy with the coming generation as to spare it the burden of existence, or at any rate, not take it upon himself to impose that burden upon it in cold blood? I 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. Go to the priests, then, and leave philosophers in peace. At any rate, do not ask us to accommodate our doctrines to the lessons you have been taught. That is what those rascals of sham philosophers will do for you. Ask them for any doctrine you please, and you will get it. Your university professors are bound to preach optimism, and it is an easy and agreeable task to upset their theories. I 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. It 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. If this is the true standpoint, the lower animals appear to enjoy a happier destiny than man. Let us examine the matter a little more closely. However 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. This basis is very restricted. It is simply health, food, protection from what and cold, the satisfaction of the sexual instinct, or else the absence of these things. Consequently, as far as real physical pleasure is concerned, the man is not much better off than the brute, except on 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. But then, compared with the brute, how much stronger are the passions aroused in him, what 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. The 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. It 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. In his powers of reflection, memory, and foresight, man possesses, as it were, a machine for condensing and storing up his pleasures and his sorrows. But 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. It has no power of summing up its feelings, hence its careless and placid temper. How much it is to be envied. But 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 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. If 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. Hence, luxury in all its forms, delicate food, the use of tobacco and opium, spiritous liquors, fine clothes, and the thousand to one things that he considers necessary to his existence. And 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. Taking 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. It 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. These 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. Boredom 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. The 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. Their 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, travelling here, there, and everywhere. No 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 of a truth need in boredom are the two poles of human life. Finally, 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. This feeling grows now and then into a more or less passionate love which is the source of little pleasure and much suffering. It is, however, a wonderful thing that the mere addition of thought should serve to raise such a vast and lofty structure of human happiness and misery resting too on the same narrow basis of joy and sorrow as man holds in common with the brute and exposing him to such violent emotions, to so many storms of passion, so much convulsion of feeling that what he has suffered stands written and may be read in the lines on his face. And yet, when all is told, he has been struggling ultimately for the same things as the brute has attained and with an incomparably smaller expenditure of passion and pain. But all this contributes to increase the measures of suffering in human life out of all proportion to its pleasures and the pains of life are made much worse for man by the fact that death is something very real to him. The brute flies from death instinctively without really knowing what it is and therefore without ever contemplating it in the way natural to a man who has this prospect always before his eyes. So that even if only a few brutes die a natural death and most of them live only just long enough to transmit their species and then, if not earlier, become the prey of some other animal, whilst man, on the other hand, manages to make so-called natural death the rule to which, however, there are good many exceptions. The advantage is on the side of the brute for the reason stated above. But the fact is that man attains the natural term of years just as seldom as the brute because the unnatural way in which he lives and the strain of work and emotion lead to a degeneration of the race. And so his goal is not often reached. The brute is much more content with mere existence than man. The plant is wholly so. And man finds satisfaction in it just in proportion as he is dull and obtuse. Accordingly, the life of the brute carries less sorrow with it but also less of joy when compared with the life of man. And while this may be traced on the one side to freedom from the torment of care and anxiety, it is also due to the fact that hope, in any real sense, is unknown to the brute. It is thus deprived from any share in that which gives us the most and best of our joys and pleasures, the mental anticipation of a happy future, and the inspiring play of fantasy, both of which we owe to our power of imagination. If the brute is free from care, it is also in this sense without hope. In either case, because its consciousness is limited to the present moment to what it can actually see before it, the brute is an embodiment of present impulses, and hence what elements of fear and hope exist in its nature, and they do not go very far, arise only in relation to objects that lie before it and within reach of those impulses, whereas a man's range of vision embraces the whole of his life and extends far into the past and future. Following upon this, there is one respect in which brutes show real wisdom when compared to us. I mean their quiet, placid enjoyment of the present moment. The tranquility of mind which this seems to give them often puts us to shame, for the many times we allow our thoughts and our cares to make us restless and discontented, and in fact those pleasures of hope and anticipation which I have been mentioning are not to be had for nothing. The delight which a man has in hoping for and looking forward to some special satisfaction is a part of the real pleasure attached to it, enjoyed in advance. This is afterwards deducted. For the more we look forward to anything, the less satisfaction we find in it when it comes. But the brute's enjoyment is not anticipated and therefore suffers no deduction so that the actual pleasure of the moment comes to it whole and unimpaired. In the same way too, evil presses upon the brute only with its own intrinsic weight, whereas with us the fear of it coming often makes its burden ten times more grievous. It is just this characteristic way in which the brute gives itself up entirely to the present moment that contributes so much to the delight that we take in our domestic pets. They are the present moment personified, and in some respects they make us feel the value of every hour that is free from trouble and annoyance, which we, with our thoughts and preoccupations, mostly disregard. But man, that selfish and heartless creature, misuses this quality of the brute to be more content than we are with mere existence, and often works it to such an extent that he allows the brute absolutely nothing more than mere bare life. The bird which was made so that it might rove over half of the world, he shuts up into the space of a cubic foot, there to die a slow death and longing and crying for freedom. For in a cage it does not sing for the pleasure of it. And when I see how man misuses the dog, his best friend, how he ties up this intelligent animal with a chain, I feel the deepest sympathy with the brute, and burning indignation against its master. We shall see later that by taking a very high standpoint, it is possible to justify the sufferings of mankind. But this justification cannot apply to animals, whose sufferings, while in a great measure brought about by men, are often considerable, even apart from their agency. And so we are forced to ask, why and for what purpose does all this torment and agony exist? There is nothing here to give the will pause. It is not free to deny itself, and so obtain redemption. There is only one consideration that may serve to explain the sufferings of animals. It is this. That the will to live, which underlies the whole world of phenomena, must, in their case, satisfy its cravings by feeding upon itself. This it does by forming a gradation of phenomena, every one of which exists at the expense of another. I have shown, however, that the capacity for suffering is less than animals than a man. Any further explanation that may be given of their fate will be in the nature of hypothesis, if not actually mythical in character. And I may leave the reader to speculate upon the matter for himself. Brahma said to have produced the world by kind of fall or mistake, and in order to atone for his folly his bound to remain in it himself until he works out his redemption. As an account of the origin of things, that is admirable. According to the doctrines of Buddhism, the world came into being as the result of some inexplicable disturbance in the heavenly calm of nirvana, that blessed state obtained by expiation, which had endured for so long a time the change taking place by a kind of fatality. This explanation must be understood as having at bottom some moral bearing, although it is illustrated by an exactly parallel theory in the domain of physical science, which places the origin of the sun in a primitive streak of mist, formed one knows not how. Subsequently, by a series of moral errors the world became gradually worse and worse, true of the physical orders as well, until it assumed the dismal aspect it wears today. Excellent. The Greeks looked upon the world and the gods as the work of an inscrutable necessity. A passable explanation. We may be content with it until we can get a better. Again, Ormust and Ariman are rival powers continually at war. That is not bad. But that a god like Jehovah should have created this world of misery and woe out of pure caprice and because he enjoyed doing it, and should then have clapped his hands in praise of his own work and declared everything to be very good. That will not do at all. In its explanation of the origin of the world, Judaism is inferior to any other form of religious doctrine professed by a civilized nation. And it is quite in keeping with this, that it is the only one which presents no trace whatever of any belief in the immortality of the soul. Even though Leibniz's contention that this is the best of all possible worlds were correct, that would not justify God in having created it. For he is the creator not of the world only, but of possibility itself, and therefore he ought to have so ordered possibility as that it would admit of something better. There are two things which make it impossible to believe that this world is the successful work of an all wise, all good, and at the same time all powerful being. Firstly, the misery which abounds in it everywhere. And secondly, the obvious imperfection of its highest product, man, who is a burlesque of what he should be. These things cannot be reconciled with any such belief. On the contrary, they are just the facts which support what I've been saying. They are our authority for viewing the world as the outcome of our own misdeeds, and therefore has something that it better not have been. Whilst under the former hypothesis, they amount to a bitter accusation against the creator and supply material for sarcasm. Under the latter, they form an indictment against our own nature, our own will, and teach us a lesson of humility. They teach us to see that, like the children of a libertine, we come into the world with a burden of sin upon us, and that it is only through having continually to atone for the sin that our existence is so miserable. And that its end is death. There is nothing more certain than the general truth that it is the grievous sin of the world which has produced the grievous suffering of the world. I am not referring here to the physical connection between these two things lying in the realm of experience. My meaning is metaphysical. Accordingly, the sole thing that reconciles me to the Old Testament is the story of the fall. In my eyes, it is the only metaphysical truth in that book, even though it appears in the form of an allegory. There seems to me no better explanation of our existence than that it is the result of some false step, some sin, of which we are paying the penalty. I cannot refrain from recommending the thoughtful reader a popular, but at the same time profound, treatise on this subject by Claudius, which exhibits the essentially pessimistic spirit of Christianity. It is entitled, Cursed is the ground for thy sake. Between the ethics of the Greeks and the ethics of the Hindus, there is a glaring contrast. In the one case, with the exception it must be confessed of Plato, the object of ethics is to enable a man to lead a happy life. In the other, it is to free and redeem him from life altogether, as it is directly stated in the very first words of the Sankya Kerika. Allied with this is the contrast between the Greek and the Christian idea of death. It is strikingly presented in a visible form on a fine antique sarcophagus in the gallery of Florence, which exhibits in relief the whole series of ceremonies attending a wedding in ancient times, from the formal offer to the evening one Hyman's torch lights the happy couple's home. Compare that with the Christian coffin, draped in mournful black and surmounted with a crucifix. How much significance there is in these two ways of finding comfort in death. They are opposed to each other, but each is right. The one points to the affirmation of the will to live, which remains sure of life for all time, however rapidly its forms may change. The other, in the symbol of suffering and death, points to the denial of the will to live, to redemption from this world, the domain of death and devil. And in the question between the affirmation and the denial of the will to live, Christianity is in the last resort right. The contrast which the New Testament presents when compared to the Old, according to the ecclesiastical view of the matter, is just that existing between my ethical system and the moral philosophy of Europe. The Old Testament represents man as under the dominion of law, in which, however, there is no redemption. The New Testament declares law to a failed, frees man from its dominion, and in its stead preaches the kingdom of grace to be won by faith, love of neighbour, and entire sacrifice of self. This is the path of redemption from the evil of the world. The spirit of the New Testament is undoubtedly asceticism. However, your Protestants and rationalists may twist it to suit their purpose. Asceticism is the denial of the will to live and the transition from the Old Testament to the New, from the dominion of law to that of faith, from justification by works, to redemption through the mediator, from the domain of sin and death to eternal life in Christ, means, when taken in its real sins, the transition from the merely moral virtues to the denial of the will to live. My philosophy shows the metaphysical foundation of justice and the love of mankind and points to the goal to which these virtues necessarily lead if they are practiced in perfection. At the same time, it is candid and confessing that a man must turn his back upon a world and that the denial of the will to live is the way of redemption. It is therefore really at one with the spirit of the New Testament, whilst all other systems are couched in the spirit of the Old, that is to say, theoretically as well as practically, they result as Judaism, mere despotic theism. In this sense, then, my doctrine might be called the only true Christian philosophy, however paradoxical a statement this may seem to people who take superficial views, instead of penetrating to the heart of the matter. If you want a safe compass to guide you through life and to banish all doubt as to the right way of looking at it, you cannot do better than accustomed yourself to regard this world as a penitentiary, a sort of penal colony, or agisterion, as the earliest philosopher called it. Amongst the Christian fathers, Origen, with praiseworthy courage, took this view, which is further justified by certain objective theories of life. I refer not to my own philosophy alone, but to the wisdom of all ages as expressed in Brahmanism and Buddhism, and in the sayings of Greek philosophers like Empedocles and Pythagoras, as also by Cicero, in his remark that the wise men of old used to teach that we come into this world to pay the penalty of crime committed to their state of existence, a doctrine which formed part of the initiation into the mysteries, and Vanini, whom his contemporaries burned, finding that an easier task than to confute him, puts the same thing in a very forcible way. Man, he says, is so full of every kind of misery that were it not repugnant to the Christian religion, I should venture to affirm that if evil spirits exist at all, they have posed into human form, and are now atoning for their crimes, and true Christianity, using the word in its right sense, also regards our existence as the consequence of sin and error. If you accustom yourself to this view of life, you will regulate your expectations accordingly and cease to look upon all its disagreeable incidents, great and small, its sufferings, its worries, its misery, as anything unusual or irregular. Nay, you will find that everything is as it should be in a world where each of us pays the penalty of existence in his own peculiar way. Amongst the evils of a penal colony is the society of those who form it, and if the reader is worthy of better company, he will need no words from me to remind him of what he has to put up with it present. If he has a soul above the common or if he has a man of genius, he will occasionally feel like some noble prisoner of state condemned to work in the galleys with common criminals, and he will follow his example and try to isolate himself. In general, however, it should be said that this view of life will enable us to contemplate the so-called imperfections of the great majority of men that are moral and intellectual deficiencies and the resulting base type of countenance without any surprise to say nothing of indignation. For we shall never cease to reflect where we are and that the men about us are beings conceived and born in sin and living to atone for it. That is what Christianity means in speaking of the sinful nature of man. Pardons the word to all. Whatever folly men commit, be their shortcomings or their vices what they may, let us exercise for barons, remembering that when these faults appear in others it is our follies and vices that we behold. They are the shortcomings of humanity to which we belong, whose faults one and all we share. Yes, even those very faults at which we now wax so indignant, merely because they have not yet appeared in ourselves. They are faults that do not lie on the surface, but they exist down there in the depths of our nature. And should anything call them forth they will come and show themselves just as we now see them in others. One man, it is true, may have faults that are absent in his fellow and it is undeniable that the sum total of bad qualities is in some cases very large for the difference of individuality between man and man passes all measure. In fact, the conviction that the world and man is something that it better not have been is of a kind to fill us with indulgence towards one another. Nay, from this point of view we might well consider the proper form of address to be not Monsieur, Sir, Mein Herr, but my fellow sufferer, so she malorum, compagnante de miscée. This may perhaps sound strange, but it is in keeping with the facts it puts others in a right light that reminds us of that which is after all the most necessary thing in life. The tolerance, patience, regard and love of neighbor of which everyone stands in need and which therefore every man owes to his fellow. And Chapter 1 on the Sufferings of the World This recording is in the public domain. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Studies in Pessimism by Arthur Schopenhauer Chapter 2 on the Vanity of Existence This vanity finds expression in the whole way in which things exist in the infinite nature of time and space as opposed to the finite nature of the individual in both in the ever-passing present moment as the only mode of actual existence in the interdependence and relativity of all things and continual becoming without ever being in constant wishing and never being satisfied in the long battle which forms the history of life where every effort is checked by difficulties and stopped until they are overcome. Time is that in which all things pass away. It is merely the form under which the will to live the thing in itself and therefore imperishable has revealed to it that its efforts are in vain. It is that agent by which at every moment all things in our hands become as nothing and lose any real value they possess. That which has been exists no more. It exists as little as that which has never been. But of everything that exists you may say in the next moment that it has been. Hence something of great importance now passed is inferior to something of little importance now present in that the latter is a reality and related to the former as something to nothing. A man finds himself to his great astonishment suddenly existing after thousands and thousands of years of non-existence. He lives for a little while and then again comes an equally long period when he must exist no more. The heart rebels against this and feels that it cannot be true. The crudest intellect cannot speculate on such a subject without having a presentment that time is something ideal in its nature. This ideality of time and space is the key to every true system of metaphysics because it provides for quite another order of things that is to be met with in the domain of nature. This is why Kant is so great. Of every event in our life we can say only for one moment that it is forever after that it was. Every evening we are poorer by a day. It might perhaps make us mad to see how rapidly our short span of time ebbs away if it were not that in the further steps of our being we are secretly conscious of our share in the inexhaustible spring of eternity so that we might always hope to find life in it again. Consideration of the kind touched on above might indeed lead us to embrace the belief that the greatest wisdom is to make the enjoyment of the present the supreme object of life because that is the only reality all else being merely the play of thought. On the other hand such a course might just as well be called the greatest folly for that which in the next moment exists no more and vanishes utterly like a dream can never be worth a serious effort. The whole foundation on which our existence rests is the present, the ever-fleeting present. It lies then in the very nature of our existence to take the form of constant motion and to offer no possibility of our ever attaining the rest for which we are always striving. We are like a man running downhill who cannot keep on his legs unless he runs on and will inevitably fall if he stops. Or again, like a pole balanced on the tip of one's fingers. Or a planet which would fall into its sun the moment it ceased to hurry forward on its way. Unrest is the mark of existence. In a world where all is unstable and not can endure but is swept onward at once in the hurrying whirlpool of change where a man, if he is to keep erect at all must always be advancing and moving like an acrobat on a rope. In such a world happiness is inconceivable. How can it dwell where, as Plato says, continual becoming and never being is the sole form of existence? In the first place, a man never is happy but spends his whole life in striving after something which he thinks will make him so. He seldom attains his goal, and when he does it is only to be disappointed. He is mostly shipwrecked in the end and comes into harbor with masts and rigging gone. And then it is all one whether he has been happy or miserable, for his life was never anything more than a present moment always vanishing, and now it is over. At the same time it is a wonderful thing that in the world of human beings as in that of animals in general this manifold restless motion is produced and kept up by the agency of two simple impulses hunger and the sexual instinct. Aided a little perhaps by the influence of boredom, but by nothing else. And that in the theatre of life these suffice to form the primum mobile of how complicated a machinery setting in motion, how strange and varied a scene. On looking a little closer we find that inorganic matter presents a constant conflict between chemical forces which eventually works to solution. And on the other hand that organic life is impossible with that constant change of matter that cannot exist if it does not receive perpetual help from without. This is the realm of finality and its opposite would be an infinite existence exposed to no attack from without and needing nothing to support it. The realm of eternal peace some timeless changeless state one and undiversified the negative knowledge of which forms the dominant note of the platonic philosophy. It is to some such state as this that the denial of the will to live opens up the way. The scenes of our life are like pictures done in rough mosaic. Looked at close they produce no effect. There's nothing beautiful to be found in them unless you stand some distance off. So to gain anything we have longed for is only to discover how vain and empty it is. And even though we are always living in expectation of better things, at the same time we often repent and long to have the past back again. We look upon the present as something to be put up with while it lasts and serving only as the way towards our goal. Hence most people if they glance back when they come to the end of life will find that all along they have been living at interim. They will be surprised to find that the very thing they disregarded and let slip by unenjoyed was just the life in the expectation of which they passed all their time. Of how many a man may not be said that hope made a fool of him until he danced into the arms of death. Then again how insatiable a creature is man. Every satisfaction he attains lays the seeds of some new desire so that there is no end to the wishes of each individual will. And why is this? The real reason is simply that taken in itself will is the Lord of all worlds. Everything belongs to it and therefore no one single thing can ever give it satisfaction. But only the whole which is endless. For all that it must rouse our sympathy to think how very little the will this Lord of the world really gets when it takes the form of an individual usually only just enough to keep the body together. This is why man is so very miserable. Life presents itself chiefly as a task the task I mean of subsisting at all Ganyasevi If this is accomplished life is a burden and then there comes the second task of doing something with that which has been won of warding off boredom which like a bird of prey hovers over us ready to fall whenever it sees a life secure from need. The first task is to win something. The second to banish the feeling that it has been won otherwise it is a burden. Human life must be some kind of mistake. The truth of this will be sufficiently obvious if we only remember that man is a compound of needs and necessities hard to satisfy and that even when they are satisfied all he obtains is a state of painlessness where nothing remains to him but abandonment to boredom. This is direct proof that existence has no value in itself for what is boredom but the feeling of the emptiness of life if life the craving for which is the very essence of our being were possessed of any positive intrinsic value there would be no such thing as boredom at all mere existence would satisfy us in itself and we should want for nothing but as it is we take no delight in existence except when we are struggling for something and then distance and difficulties to be overcome make our goal look as though it would satisfy us an illusion which vanishes when we reach it or else when we are occupied with some purely intellectual interest in reality we have stepped forth from life to look upon it from the outside much after the manner of spectators at a play and even sensual pleasure itself means nothing but a struggle and aspiration ceasing the moment its aim is attained whenever we are not occupied in one of these ways but cast upon existence itself its vain and worthless nature has brought home to us and this is what we mean by boredom the hankering after what is strange and uncommon and innate and ineradicable tendency of human nature shows how glad we are at any interruption of that natural course of affairs which is so very tedious that this most perfect manifestation of the will to live, the human organism with the cunning and complex working of its machinery must fall to dust and yield up itself and all its strivings to extinction this is the naive way in which nature who is always so true and sincere in what she says proclaims the whole struggle of this will as in its very essence, barren and unprofitable word of any value in itself anything unconditioned and absolute it could not thus end in mere nothing if we turn from contemplating the world as a whole and in particular the generations of men as they live their little hour of mock existence and then are swept away in rapid succession if we turn from this and look at life in its small details as presented say in a comedy how ridiculous it all seems it is like a drop of water seen through a microscope a single drop teeming within fusoria or a speck of cheese full of mites invisible to the naked eye how we laugh as they bustle about so eagerly and struggle with one another in so tiny a space and whether here or in the little span of human life this terrible activity produces a comic effect it is only in the microscope that our life looks so big it is an indivisible point drawn out and magnified by the powerful lenses of time and space and chapter 2 this recording is in the public domain this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org studies in pessimism by Arthur Schopenhauer chapter 3 on suicide as far as I know none but the votaries of monotheistic that is to say Jewish religions look upon suicide as a crime this is all the more striking and as much as neither in the old nor in the New Testament is there to be found any prohibition or positive disapproval of it so that religious teachers are forced to base their condemnation of suicide on philosophical grounds of their own invention these are so very bad that writers of this kind endeavor to make up for the weakness of their arguments by the strong terms in which they express their abhorrence of the practice in other words they declaim against it they tell us that suicide is the greatest piece of cowardice that only a madman could be guilty of it and other insipidities of the same kind or else they make the nonsensical remark that suicide is wrong when it is quite obvious that there is nothing in the world to which every man has a more unassailable title than to his own life in person suicide as I've said is actually accounted a crime and a crime which, especially under the vulgar bigotry that prevails in England is followed by an ignominious burial and the seizure of the man's property and for that reason in the case of suicide the jury almost always brings in a verdict of insanity let the reader's own moral feelings decide as to whether or not suicide is a criminal act think of the impression that would be made upon you by the news that someone you know had committed the crime say of murder or theft or have been guilty of some act of cruelty or deception and compare it with your feelings when you hear that he has met a voluntary death while in the one case a lively sense of indignation and extreme resentment will be aroused and you will call loudly for punishment or revenge in the other you will be moved to grief and sympathy and mingled with your thoughts will be admiration for his courage rather than the moral disapproval which falls upon a wicked action who has not had acquaintances, friends, relations who have their own will have left this world and are these to be thought of or as criminals? must emphatically, no I am rather of opinion that the clergy should be challenged to explain what right they have to go into the pulpit or take up their pens and stamp as a crime in action which many men whom we hold in affection and honour have committed and to refuse an honourable burial to those who relinquish this world voluntarily they have no biblical authority to boast of as justifying their condemnation of suicide nay, not even any philosophical argument that will hold water and it must be understood that it is arguments we want and that we will not be put off with mere phrases or words of abuse if the criminal law forbids suicide that is not an argument valid in the church and besides the prohibition is ridiculous for what penalty can frighten a man who is not afraid of death itself if the law punishes people for trying to commit suicide it is punishing the want of skill that makes the attempt a failure the ancients, moreover were very far from regarding the matter in that light Pliny says life is not so desirable a thing as to be protracted at any cost whoever you are you are sure to die even though your life has been full of abomination and crime the chief of all remedies for a troubled mind is the feeling that among the blessings which nature gives to man there is none greater than an opportune death and the best of it is that everyone can avail himself of it and elsewhere the same writer declares not even to God are all things possible for he could not compass his own death if he willed to die and yet in all the miseries of our earthly life this is the best of his gifts to man nay in Missilia and on the island of Seos the man who could give valid reasons for a relinquishing his life was handed the cup of hemlock by the magistrate and that too in public and in ancient times how many heroes and wise men died of voluntary death Aristotle it is true declared suicide to be an offence against the state although not against the person but in Stubbeius's exposition of the peripatetic philosophy there is the following remark the good man should flee life when his misfortunes become too great the bad man also when he is too prosperous and similarly so he will marry and beget children and take part in the affairs of the state and generally practice virtue and continue to live and then again if need be and at any time necessity compels him he will depart to his place of refuge in the tomb and we find that the Stoics actually praised suicide as a noble and heroic action as hundreds of passages show above all in the works of Seneca who expresses the strongest approval of it as is well known the Hindus look upon suicide as a religious act especially when it takes the form of self-immolation by widows but also when it consists in casting oneself under the wheels of the chariot of the god at juggernaut or being eaten by crocodiles in the Ganges or being drowned in the holy tanks in the temples and so on the same thing occurs on the stage at Mirror of Life for example in Lofelon de la Chine a celebrated Chinese play almost all the noble characters end by suicide without the slightest hint anywhere or any impression being produced on the spectator that they are committing a crime and in our own theatre is much the same Palmyra for instance in Mahomet or Mortimer in Maria Stewart Othello, Countess Tarotsky is Hamlet's monologue the meditation of a criminal he merely declares that if we had any certainty of being annihilated by it death would be infinitely preferable to the world as it is but there lies the rub the reasons advanced against suicide by the clergy of Monotheistic that is to say Jewish religions and by those philosophers who adapt themselves there too are weak Sophisms which can easily be refuted the most thorough going refutation of them is given by Hume in his essay on suicide this did not appear until after his death when it was immediately suppressed owing to the scandalous bigotry and outrageous ecclesiastical tyranny in England and hence only a very few copies of it were sold under cover of secrecy and at a high price this and another treatise by that great man have come to us from Basel and we may be thankful for the reprint it is a great disgrace to the English nation that a purely philosophical treatise which proceeding from one of the first thinkers and writers in England aimed at refuting the current arguments against suicide by the light of cold reason should be forced to sneak about in that country as though or some rascally production until at last it found refuge on the continent at the same time it chose what a good conscience the church has in such matters in my chief work I have explained the only valid reason existing against suicide and the score of morality it is this that suicide thwarts the attainment of the highest moral aim by the fact that for a real release from this world of misery it substitutes one that is merely a parent but from a mistake to a crime is a far cry and it is as a crime that the clergy of Christendom wish us to regard suicide translators note Schopenhauer refers to Diveltas Filion Faustalon, volume 1 section 69 where the reader may find the same argument stated at somewhat greater length according to Schopenhauer moral freedom the highest ethical aim is to be obtained only by a denial of the will to live far from being a denial suicide is an emphatic assertion of this will for it is in fleeing from the pleasures not the sufferings of life that this denial consists when a man destroys his existence as an individual he is not by any means destroying his will to live on the contrary he would like to live if he could do so with satisfaction to himself if he could assert his will against the power of circumstance but circumstance is too strong for him and footnote the inmost kernel of Christianity is the truth that suffering across is the real end an object of life hence Christianity condemns suicide as thwarting this end whilst in the ancient world taking a lower point of view held it in approval in honor but if that is to be accounted a valid reason against suicide it involves the recognition of asceticism that is to say it is valid only from a much higher ethical standpoint than has ever been adopted by moral philosophers in Europe if we abandon that high standpoint there is no tenable reason left on the score of morality condemning suicide the extraordinary energy and zeal with which the clergy of monotheistic religions attacks suicide is not supported either by any passages in the Bible or by any considerations of weight so that it looks as though they must have some secret reason for their contention may not be this that the voluntary surrender of life is a bad compliment for him who said that all things were very good if this is so it offers another instance of the crass optimism of these religions denouncing suicide to escape being denounced by it it will generally be found that as soon as the terrors of life reach the point at which they outweigh the terrors of death a man will put an end to his life but the terrors of death offer considerable resistance they stand like a sentinel at the gate leading out of this world perhaps there is no man alive who would not have already put an end to his life if this end had been of a purely negative character a sudden stoppage of existence there is something positive about it it is the destruction of the body and a man shrinks from that because his body is the manifestation of the will to live however the struggle with that sentinel is as a rule not so hard as it may seem from a long way off mainly in consequence of the antagonism between the ills of the body and the ills of the mind if we are in great bodily pain or the pain lasts a long time we become indifferent to other troubles all we think about is to get well in the same way great mental suffering makes us insensible to bodily pain we despise it nay, if it should outweigh the other it distracts our thoughts and we welcome it as a pause in mental suffering it is this feeling that makes suicide easy for the bodily pain that accompanies it loses all significance in the eyes of one who is tortured by an excess of mental suffering this is especially evident in the case of those who are driven to suicide by some purely morbid and exaggerated ill humor no special effort to overcome their feelings is necessary nor do such people require to be worked up in order to take the step but as soon as the keeper into his charge they are given leaves them for a couple of minutes they quickly bring their life to an end when, in some dreadful and ghastly dream we reach the moment of greatest horror it awakes us thereby banishing all the hideous shapes that were born of the night and life is a dream when the moment of greatest horror compels us to break it off the same thing happens suicide may also be regarded as an experiment a question which man puts to nature trying to force her to an answer the question is this what change will death produce in a man's existence and in his insight into the nature of things it is a clumsy experiment to make for it involves the destruction of the very consciousness which puts the question and awaits the answer End Chapter 3 This recording is in the public domain This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Studies in Pessimism by Arthur Schopenhauer Chapter 4 Immortality A Dialogue Translator's Note The word immortality when sterblichkeit does not occur in the original nor would it in its usual application find a place in Schopenhauer's vocabulary The word he uses is unser Störbarkeit in destructibility But I have preferred immortality because that word is commonly associated with the subject touched upon in this little debate If any critic doubts the wisdom of this preference let me ask him to try his hand at a short, concise and at the same time popularly intelligible rendering of the German original which runs thus Dramatis personae and Filolethes Thracymachus Tell me now, in one word what shall I be after my death and mind you be clear and precise Filolethes All and nothing Thracymachus I thought so I gave you a problem and you solved it by a contradiction That's a very stale trick Filolethes Yes, but you raised transcendental questions and you expect me to answer them in language that is only made for imminent knowledge It's no wonder that a contradiction ensues Thracymachus What do you mean by transcendental questions and imminent knowledge? I've heard these expressions before, of course They're not new to me The professor was fond of using them but only as predicates of the deity and he never talked of anything else which was all quite right and proper He argued thus If the deity was in the world itself he was imminent If he was somewhere outside it he was transcendent Nothing could be clearer and more obvious You knew where you were But this Kantian rigmarole won't do anymore It's antiquated and no longer applicable to modern ideas Why we've had a whole row of eminent men in the metropolis of German learning Filolethes German humbug, he means Thracymachus for instance and that gigantic intellect Hegel and at this time of day we've abandoned that nonsense I should rather say we're so far beyond it that we can't put up with it anymore What's the use of it then? What does it all mean? Filolethes Transcendental knowledge is knowledge which passes beyond the bounds of possible experience and strives to determine the nature of things as they are in themselves Eminent knowledge, on the other hand is knowledge which confines itself entirely with those bounds so that it cannot apply to anything but actual phenomena As far as you are an individual death will be the end of you But your individuality is not your true and inmost being It is only the outward manifestation of it It is not the thing in itself but only the phenomenon presented in the form of time and therefore with a beginning and an end But your real being knows neither time nor beginning nor end nor yet the limits of any given individual It is everywhere present in every individual and no individual can exist apart from it So when death comes on the one hand you are annihilated as an individual on the other you are and remain everything That is what I meant when I said that after your death you would be all and nothing It is difficult to find a more precise answer to your question and at the same time be brief The answer is contradictory I admit but it is so simply because your life is in time and the immortal part of you in eternity You may put the matter thus Your immortal part is something that does not last in time and yet is indestructible but there you have another contradiction You see what happens by trying to bring the transcendental within the limits of imminent knowledge It is in some sort doing violence to the latter by misusing it for ends it was never meant to serve Thracymachus Look here I shouldn't give two pence for your immortality unless I am to remain an individual Philoleithes Well, perhaps I may be able to satisfy you on this point Suppose I guarantee that after death you shall remain an individual but only on condition that you first spend three months of complete unconsciousness Thracymachus I shall have no objection to that Philoleithes But remember if people are completely unconscious they take no account of time So when you are dead it's all the same to you whether three months pass in the world of consciousness or ten thousand years In the one case, as in the other it is simply a matter of believing what is told you when you awake So far then you can afford to be indifferent whether it is three months or ten thousand years that pass before you recover your individuality Thracymachus Yes, if it comes to that I suppose you're right Philoleithes And if, by chance after those ten thousand years have gone by no one ever thinks of awakening you I fancy it would be no great misfortune You would have become quite accustomed to nonexistence after so long a spell of it following upon such a very few years of life At any rate you may be sure you would be perfectly ignorant of the whole thing Further If you knew that the mysterious power which keeps you in your present state of life had never once ceased in those ten thousand years to bring forth other phenomena like yourself and to endow them with life it would fully console you Thracymachus Indeed So you think you're quietly going to do me out of my individuality with all of this fine talk But I'm up to your tricks I tell you I won't exist unless I can have my individuality I'm not going to be put off with mysterious powers and what you call phenomena I can't do without my individuality and I won't give it up Philoleithes You mean, I suppose, that your individuality is such a delightful thing so splendid, so perfect, and beyond compare that you can't imagine anything better Aren't you ready to exchange your present state for one which, if we can judge by what is told us will hopefully be superior and more indurable? Thracymachus Don't you see that my individuality be at what it may is my very self to me it is the most important thing in the world For God is God and I am I I want to exist I, I that's the main thing I don't care about an existence which has to be proved to be mine but Philoleithes Think what you're doing and you say I, I I want to exist It is not you alone that says this Everything says it Absolutely everything that has the faintest trace consciousness It follows then that this desire of yours is just the part of you that is not individual the part that is common to all things without distinction It is the cry not of the individual but of existence itself It is the intrinsic element in everything that exists Nay, it is the cause of anything existing at all This desire craves for and so is satisfied with nothing less than existence in general Not any definite individual existence No, that is not its aim It seems to be so only because this desire, this will attains consciousness only in the individual and therefore looks as though it were concerned with nothing but the individual There lies the illusion An illusion it is true in which the individual is held fast but if he reflects he can break the fetters and set himself free It is only indirectly I say that the individual has this violent craving for existence It is the will to live which is the real and direct aspirant, alike and identical in all things Since then existence is the free work Nay, the mere reflection of the will where existence is there too must be will and for the moment the will finds its satisfaction in existence itself so far I mean as that which never rests but presses forward eternally can never find any satisfaction at all The will is careless The will is careless of the individual The individual is not at its business although, as I've said, this seems to be the case because the individual has no direct consciousness of will except in himself The effect of this is to make the individual careful to maintain his own existence and if this were not so there would be no surety for the preservation of the species From all this it is clear that individuality is not a form of perfection but rather of limitation and so to be freed from it is not loss but gain Trouble yourself no more about the matter Once thoroughly recognize what you are, what your existence really is, namely the universal will to live and the whole question will seem to you childish and most ridiculous Thracymachus Your childish yourself and most ridiculous like all philosophers and if a man of my age lets himself in for an hour's talk with such fools it is only because it amuses me and passes the time I have more important business to attend to so goodbye End Chapter 4 This recording is in the public domain